‘Tooning Out the News’ with R.J. Fried

<p>10 years before he created the hilarious, Stephen Colbert-produced ‘Tooning Out the News,’ R.J. Fried spent time in the trenches of actual cable news, working for MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell. That experience, along with his years as a writer for ‘The Late Show with David Letterman’ and <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/robert-smigel-triumphs-again/id1456474041?i=1000480288424" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Robert Smigel’s Triumph the Insult Comic Dog</a>, helped prepare him to run what has somehow become the most consistently funny and hard-hitting political comedy show on TV. On this episode, Fried breaks down how he gets people like <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/alan-dershowitz-grilled-on-jeffrey-epstein-by-colberts-tooning-out-the-news" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Alan Dershowitz</a>, <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/tooning-out-the-news-busts-matt-schlapp-for-profiting-off-coronavirus" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Matt Schlapp</a> and real-life members of Congress to subject themselves to brutal interrogations from the show’s cartoon news anchors—and reveals which right-wing pundits he’s turned down.</p><p><br></p><p>Follow R.J. Fried on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/rjfried" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@rjfried</a></p><p>Follow Matt Wilstein on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/mattwilstein" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@mattwilstein</a></p><p>Follow The Last Laugh on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/lastlaughpod/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@lastlaughpod</a></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Highlights from this episode and others at <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/keyword/the-last-laugh" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Daily Beast</a>.</p> &#10;&nbsp;<br /><hr><p style='color: grey; font - size: 0.75em; '>See <a style='color: grey; ' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for privacy and opt-out information.</p>