The company’s statement about Richards’ hiring is predictably insufferable. “We knew the answer was, ‘Who is Mike Richards?’ And now we can say ‘he’s an integral part of The Daily Wire’ was the question,” a representative said (via THR). “He’s won 5 Emmy’s [sic], produced over 4,000 hours of network programming, and run some of the most iconic shows the world has ever known. Thank you to the purple hairs. Please ‘cancel’ more creative geniuses.”
Oh, brother. Do you think Richards is really proud that his big new job is advertising him with the biggest flame-out of his career, and one that happened five years ago? He only started working behind the scenes at Jeopardy shortly before the hosting fiasco in 2020 (he had much longer tenures with The Price Is Right and Let’s Make A Deal). But that’s precisely what makes him attractive to a place like The Daily Wire: not just that he’s an experienced, high-level producer, but that he’s someone the imaginary “purple haired” liberal enemy would dislike.
Richards left Jeopardy! after disparaging podcast comments came to light, in addition to some workplace discrimination lawsuits rattling around in his past. “I’m an open book, proud of what I’ve done. I’m proud of my track record as a boss,” Richards tried to reset the narrative in a 2024 interview with People. “It was insinuated that I had been personally sued for sexual harassment. I never had, but that didn’t matter.” (The Price Is Right model Brandi Cochran alleged in her lawsuit that Richards joked that he would’ve fired her had he known about her pregnancy ahead of time and “decided that the models’ skirts should be shorter and said that he liked the models to look as if they were going out on a date.”)
“I did spend a lot of time reflecting on everything that had happened. I mean, it was quite a firestorm that engulfed my family,” Richards shared with People in 2024. “Why I am talking now is that I feel like I can be a force for good as far as having open, honest conversations. We can all disagree about a lot of things. We can disagree about politics, we can disagree about who hosts Jeopardy!. We can disagree about liking a final Jeopardy! clue. And we should. But I felt like there was a this rush to judgment, and a lot of people got joy in saying, ‘I got you.'”
