- [Interviewer] Do you have any hidden talents?
- Nope!
(circus music)
- [Narrator] That's Steve Doocy.
- He's a great guy.
- You could not.
- Courageous, courageous.
- Right. - Like you.
- Yeah.
- [Narrator] Best-selling author, Emmy award recipient,
one third of the President's favorite show,
and the architect of a dangerously high
treehouse for his son.
- And she looked at it, and she goes,
"That is too tall,"
(laughter)
and I looked at it, and she was right.
It's too high, it is dangerously high.
- [Narrator] Steven James Doocy was born in 1956
in Algona, Iowa but grew up in Abilene, Kansas.
His first job was cleaning the parking lot at a
Tastee-Freez in Russell, Kansas
where he got paid 25¢ an hour.
Doocy graduated from high school in 1975,
just around the time the White House
was being pried by Washington Post reporters
Woodward and Bernstein,
whom Doocy credited with his journalism undertaking.
Doocy told the Washington Post in 1989,
"Gee whiz, it would be cool to be a newspaper reporter."
He attended the University of Kansas
that fall as a journalism major.
"I went to college in the fall
"and the first day I'm there, I'm walking
"to the journalism building and
"I walk past the college radio station
"and it was loud, and there's funky music coming out.
"Somehow I wind up in the building."
Doocy switched from journalism to disc jockey,
which eventually led to a weatherman gig in Topeka
after graduating from KU in '79.
"I didn't know anything about the weather.
"I can't do this because I haven't
"taken any meteorology classes."
- ;Doocy] I'm challenging former Vice President
Al Gore to a debate
- [Hannity] Are you?
- on climate change.
- [Narrator] After his stint calling the
highs and lows had more lows,
Doocy went to Wichita and hosted PM Magazine,
an entertainment-style news program which reported
on stories from the local and national level.
♪ PM Magazine, it's good TV ♪
- [Narrator] Doocy spent two and a half years
at PM Magazine, where he asked the hard-hitting questions.
- Are there any disadvantages to being so big and strong?
- [Narrator] After Doocy switched to host the
Kansas City version of the show,
the program was canceled and replaced by
a little show called Wheel of Fortune,
but Doocy wasn't out of a job for long.
He was asked to stay on the station
as a feature news reporter,
which he did for about nine months
before taking his talents to WRC-TV,
an NBC affiliate in Washington in 1984.
Doocy went right to bat working for WRC-TV
where he spent a large chunk of his time
wrestling high school students in a ring filled with Jell-O,
skiing down the side of the Washington Monument,
being catapulted from a circus tent on the Mall
into the Capitol Rotunda,
and reporting on potatoes.
- Today, the Potato Person came to Washington,
spreading good luck and Steve Doocy is here to tell us why.
So, why?
- Why is he so a-peel-ing?
- [Narrator] But for his Live at Five segments,
Doocy would report on the serious stuff,
but that sort of sometimes tragic thing
came easier to him.
Doocy told the Washington Post in 1989,
"A regular news story is pretty easy to tell
"because there's a car wreck or explosion,"
he said as he threw the remnants
of his lunch at a nearby wastebasket and missed.
He seemingly thought back to the tough improvisation
that came with swimming in Jell-O.
"We're making everything up here,"
he said.
- Steve Doocy was always a strange boy.
- [Narrator] It was at WRC-TV that Doocy met his soon-to-be
wife, Kathy, who was working in the same building.
Doocy was in awe the first time he saw her on TV,
working a World Series game as a sideline reporter.
He mustered up enough courage
to approach her one day at work.
Doocy saw her at the NBC commissary with a burger and fries.
He explains in his book,
"For a size six, she ate like a teamster."
The first line he spoke to his current wife
many years ago in the NBC commissary was,
"What's that stuff on your fries?
"Plasma?"
She told him it was ketchup, the well known condiment.
Doocy continued speaking at her
while peppering in compliments.
Kathy cut him off.
"My boss says you're a womanizer.
"You've dated every woman at NBC,
"and you've been seen lurking at CBS."
Doocy shot back,
"That's not true!"
and then he writes in his book,
"It was ABC,"
but eventually the two went on a date
where Steve accidentally spilled
wine and coffee on her lap in the same night
and then this happened.
- At the end of the date,
and this was our first date,
I said, you're gonna think I'm crazy,
but someday we're gonna be married,
and then you said,
- I think you need to go home now.
- [Narrator] But she saw something in him
because a few months later they married despite this.
- I said, Peter, P.
Mary, M.
Sally, S.
She goes, that's PMS.
You can't make a necklace for your wife that says PMS.
- He did, he made it.
- [Narrator] By 1996, Doocy joined a brand new
up and coming network, Fox News.
He began co-hosting Fox & Friends in 1998,
where he's been saying things like this ever since.
- It took a full 30 minutes for the driver
to squeeze into the parallel spot.
So who was behind the wheel?
Well, it turns out it was a woman.
- [Narrator] Doocy has a long record of sexist remarks.
When he was promoting his second book,
he went on a radio program and said this.
- [Doocy] With girls, girls don't really
want to play the sport.
They just want to hang out.
It's being a coach for girls is like herding cats.
- [Narrator] And he claimed Hollywood had a male deficiency.
- It would be nice for Hollywood to have more
male figures in those kind of movies.
- [Narrator] But those were just Doocy's words.
At Fox he was implicated in Gretchen Carlson's
lawsuit against Roger Ailes for sexual harassment.
Carlson said Ducey had
"created a hostile work environment
"by treating her in a sexist and condescending way,
"including putting his hand on her
"and shushing her during a live telecast."
The civil suit continues,
"Doocy engaged in a pattern and practice
"of severe and pervasive sexual harassment of Carlson,
"including but not limited to,
"mocking her during commercial breaks,
"shunning her off air, refusing to engage with her on air,
"belittling her contributions to the show,
"and generally attempting to put her
"in her place by refusing to accept and treat her
"as an intelligent and insightful female journalist
"rather than a blonde female prop."
(laughter)
- Shhh.
- [Female] Good going. - Chicks.
- [Narrator] While Ailes and a slew of others
resigned from Fox after allegedly sexually harassing women,
Doocy has remained intact,
and he's been a large part of taking
a right wing, run of the mill morning talk show
and turning it into the President's daily briefing,
and what the New York Times has labeled
"the most powerful TV show in America."
A former White House official told Politico
that Trump schedules meetings based on what the show airs.
With their number one fan in the White House,
Fox & Friends has the ability to change
the course of America, one segment at a time.
As the New York Times notes,
"President Trump is the show's subject,
"its programmer, its publicist,
"and its virtual fourth host."
- Supposing Hillary got elected instead of Trump,
you think it would be so exciting?
Your ratings would be way down.
Number one show in the morning, folks.
(happy music)