Newt Gingrich Talks with Trace Gallagher About the People, Persistence, and Unexpected Lessons That Shaped His Life.
For nearly four decades, Trace Gallagher has made a career out of telling other people’s stories. As one of Fox News Channel’s original correspondents and now the anchor of Fox News @ Night, he has covered some of the biggest stories of a generation. But in his new memoir, Turns Out They Were Right All Along: Life Lessons I Learned Eventually, Gallagher turns the lens on his own life and the people who helped shape it.
In this episode of Newt’s World, Newt Gingrich talks with Gallagher about an unconventional journey that began with professional water skiing and small-market television and eventually led to the anchor desk at Fox News. Along the way, Gallagher shares stories about coaches, mentors, his parents, John Wooden, the early days of Fox News, and the moments that taught him some of his most enduring lessons. Again and again, the conversation returns to a simple idea: success is often built not through one dramatic breakthrough, but through fundamentals, persistence, optimism, and the willingness to keep showing up.
Listen to their conversation below, or scroll down for an edited transcript.
Edited Transcript
This conversation has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
Newt Gingrich:
Welcome to Newt’s World. My guest today is Trace Gallagher, chief breaking news correspondent for Fox News Channel and anchor of Fox News @ Night. He has been with Fox since the network launched in 1996, and for nearly four decades, he’s been telling other people’s stories.
Now, for the first time, he’s telling his own. His new memoir, Turns Out They Were Right All Along: Life Lessons I Learned Eventually, is about the people who shaped him and how some of the best advice arrives from the last place you would think to look.
Trace, I have to say, having watched you for years, I had no idea that before television you spent five years as a professional water skier. You even played Brutus in a Popeye show.
Trace Gallagher:
You’ve got to make a living somehow. I was a show skier for many years, and there are stories in the book about that.
I became a show skier because I thought it would be a fun way to spend summers, and it was. It didn’t pay much, but if you could do more tricks, like front flips and back flips, you could make an extra $25 a week for each trick.
So I was out there as a young person learning front flips, back flips, barefooting, and all these crazy things you do on water because it meant more money.
When I was learning front flips, you’d go up this ramp at about 35 miles an hour. If you under-rotated, the skis would hit the water first. After doing that 15 or 20 times, you were black and blue.
Eventually, they started putting padding from wetsuit vests behind me. I probably attempted about 150 front flips before I finally skied away from one. But I learned the trick, got the extra $25 a week, and thought I was rich.
Newt Gingrich:
So it took something like 150 attempts to finally get it down?
Trace Gallagher:
That’s a conservative estimate. And even when you finally make one, you might miss the next three.
You just have to keep going and keep going.
Newt Gingrich:
I also had no idea that you tried to teach Jimmy Buffett to water ski.
Trace Gallagher:
I tried.
Jimmy Buffett was performing at Six Flags one night, and we asked if we could meet him. He came out in flip-flops, shorts, and a T-shirt and was incredibly nice.
We told him we were part of the water ski show, so he came down to the dock. Eventually, we convinced him to give it a shot. He got out there, fell, and that was pretty much the end of it.
We tried to convince him that the music thing was going nowhere and he should join us in the water ski show. He wasn’t buying it.
Newt Gingrich:
What led you from water skiing to television?
Trace Gallagher:
One summer I hurt my knee and had to take about a month off. My boss gave me two choices: drive the pickup boat and collect the skis people dropped, or announce the ski show.
So I started announcing.
I got good enough at it that I began doing some television work. Then I went back to San Diego and even announced fashion shows, auctioning dresses in bars.
Eventually I got an internship and started in broadcasting in Yuma, Arizona. From there it was Boise, Orlando, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and eventually back to Los Angeles.
Newt Gingrich:
What was small-town television like?
Trace Gallagher:
It was hard, but it was also fun. I was making about $10,000 a year. Everybody at the station was making roughly the same amount, so we were all in the same boat, critiquing each other’s tapes and trying to get better.
When I got to Boise, I was making about $16,000 or $17,000. Then they offered me the weekend anchor job.
A friend of mine had been offered the same job a week earlier for $24,000 and turned it down. When they offered it to me, they said it paid $21,000.
I said, “No, the job pays $24,000.”
They told me they couldn’t pay that, so I quit.
I had no money. I was taking the bus to work and getting off a couple of stops early so nobody would see me getting off the bus. But I was serious. I thought I had tried television and it wasn’t going to work.
The main anchor told the news director, “Your weekend anchor isn’t kidding. He’s walking out the door.”
A few minutes later, they came back and gave me the $24,000.
It literally saved my television career.
Newt Gingrich:
Then you get a job in Orlando, turn on the news, and see a young reporter doing a live shot from a Home Depot while pushing an orange shopping cart. What did you say to your wife?
Trace Gallagher:
I looked at her and said, “We are way out of our league.”
I had never seen anything like it. It was a seamless three- or four-minute live shot about preparing for a tropical storm. He was walking through the aisles, talking to people, completely ad-libbing.
That reporter was Shepard Smith.
I learned the next day that Shepard was leaving Orlando for Miami, and I was taking his job. Later, Shepard left Miami, and I was offered his job there. Then he went to Fox News, and Fox called me and said, essentially, “You remind us of this guy we just hired named Shepard Smith.”
That eventually brought me to Roger Ailes’ office.
Roger told me he would watch television with the sound down. If someone looked compelling, he’d turn the sound up. Then he looked at me and said the thing he didn’t like was all my curly hair.
I thought I was about to lose the job because of my hair.
Apparently he got over it, because he hired me.
Newt Gingrich:
You and Shepard eventually became quite a breaking-news team.
Trace Gallagher:
We did. In the early days of Fox, we covered everything because we had 24 hours of television to fill.
We covered car chases. We once covered a goat stranded on the side of a hill in San Diego for about three and a half hours until a helicopter rescued it.
The ratings kept going up as the goat stood there.
Newt Gingrich:
How do you talk for three and a half hours about a goat?
Trace Gallagher:
It’s an art form.
Shepard and I developed a system. If you use a sports analogy, he did the play-by-play and I did the color commentary.
He would describe what was happening, and I would explain the surrounding area, what rescuers might do, how they could approach the hill, and so on.
Over the years, we knew exactly where the other person was going. I could give him time to check the wires and get more information, and he could give me time to research the area.
We became a very good breaking-news team.
Newt Gingrich:
You were one of Fox News Channel’s original correspondents. What do you think when you look back at the growth of the network?
Trace Gallagher:
They originally signed me to a six-month contract because nobody knew if Fox News was going to make it.
When we went on the air October 7, 1996, I watched the first hour or so and looked at my wife and thought, “We’re going to be out of a job.”
It was clunky. They were still figuring things out.
But over the next few years, people began to resonate with what we were doing. By the time of Columbine, Fox had started to find its rhythm. We stayed at Columbine for a month because there were so many different aspects of the story.
Fox kept gaining momentum, and by 9/11, it had become a major force in cable news.
Newt Gingrich:
Your book is really about the people who taught you lessons you didn’t necessarily realize you were learning at the time.
You open with a junior peewee football coach who lined up a group of eight-year-olds and had them kiss the beat-up helmet from the previous year’s championship team. Why begin there?
Trace Gallagher:
Because, for me, the book is about leadership.
It’s about the people I encountered and the wisdom or leadership lesson in each story.
When I first joined that football team, I hated it. For the first couple of weeks, all we did was jumping jacks, pushups, laps, blocking, and tackling. We didn’t even touch a football.
I decided I wanted to quit. I told my mom, and she basically said, “Okay, go quit.”
I wanted her to quit for me.
Instead, she sent me to practice.
When I got there, the coach told me I was late and made me run five laps. Before I could tell him I wanted to quit, he ordered me into formation. That day, they finally brought out the footballs.
I fell in love with the game and played through college.
The helmet was about tradition. The team before us had won the county championship, and the coaches wanted us to understand that we were part of something. There was structure, discipline, and leadership.
One of my favorite sayings is, “Show me a coachable kid, and I will show you an employable adult.”
That story captures what the book is really about: wisdom, leadership, and the lessons people leave with us.
Newt Gingrich:
At 14, you spent months busing tables, hauling construction debris, and making beds at your parents’ ski lodge to earn enough money to attend John Wooden’s basketball camp.
Then you got there and Wooden talked to you about socks.
Trace Gallagher:
I was originally going to call the book Two Pairs of Socks because that experience stayed with me.
John Wooden had just come off this extraordinary run at UCLA. I thought he was going to teach me how to become a great basketball player.
We got to camp, and a couple hundred kids were sitting in the gym. Wooden walked in and told us to take off our shoes and socks.
He told us to put one pair of socks on inside out, put the second pair on normally, and then lace our shoes tightly because we wouldn’t get blisters.
“You cannot play good basketball with blisters.”
Then he walked out.
I’m sitting there thinking, “Where’s my shooting technique? Where’s my dribbling?”
But eventually you realize it wasn’t about the socks. It was about the fundamentals.
John Wooden understood that before you can become great, you have to master the basics that allow you to keep showing up.
At his core, Wooden was a teacher. That brief encounter became one of the great influences on my life.
Newt Gingrich:
And that idea of showing up seems to run throughout the book.
Trace Gallagher:
Absolutely.
Life is about showing up, getting knocked around a little bit, regrouping, and going back for more.
I learned that playing quarterback in college. My first pass was intercepted and returned for a touchdown.
Then my second pass was intercepted.
I wanted to disappear.
A teammate came over, sat next to me, and said, “You can either lead this team or not. You have to pick one. If you’re going to lead us, get your head up and get back out there.”
He was right.
I eventually completed a pass, regained some confidence, and built from there.
That’s life. You have to keep showing up. You have to get back in there and take another punch.
Newt Gingrich:
You also tell an extraordinary story about your high school baseball coach in Mammoth Lakes, where hundreds of inches of snow made it nearly impossible to practice outside.
Trace Gallagher:
We were basically a baseball team that practiced in a gym.
Our coach, Reagan Green, came to Mammoth and discovered there was technically a baseball field behind the gym, except it was buried under snow until after the season ended.
So we practiced ground balls inside. Every once in a while, we’d go outside and hit fly balls into the snow. If you dropped one, you might not see the baseball again until June.
He coached there for 25 years and took his teams to the playoffs 22 times.
Eventually, after enough success, they built the program a field at a lower elevation where there was less snow.
He turned that program into one of the best in the Eastern Sierras.
What I remember most about him is his optimism. Everything was going to be great. We were going to win. We didn’t have a field, but that didn’t matter.
He cared about doing the job he loved.
Newt Gingrich:
There’s a parallel there with your father, who gave up golf during your competitive years because he said golf would always be there, but your athletic career wouldn’t.
Trace Gallagher:
My dad was at every practice. He didn’t interfere because he wasn’t the coach. He was just there.
He was also one of the most optimistic people I ever knew.
He went through periods when he had virtually no money. He bought an old condemned ski lodge in Mammoth, rebuilt it, turned it into a successful business, sold it, and finally made some money.
Then circumstances changed. Interest rates went up, the real estate business suffered, Mammoth had bad snow years, and eventually he was broke again.
But he still considered himself the luckiest guy on the planet.
He had five kids and loved being a dad. His attitude was always: How does it get better than this?
When he died, all of us were around him singing his favorite Irish song.
It was a remarkable moment, and I knew that story belonged in the book.
Newt Gingrich:
Every night on Fox News you do a 75-second segment called the Common Sense Department. Why that segment?
Trace Gallagher:
When I got the show, I thought we needed a little bit of common sense.
It’s a basic, sometimes snarky look at what makes sense. There are issues people argue about that seem so obvious, and we try to cut through that.
We experimented with the length. Ninety seconds was too long. A minute was too short. We found that a minute and 15 seconds was the sweet spot.
You’re in and out.
It struck a nerve because people seem to appreciate having something complicated reduced to its basic elements.
Newt Gingrich:
How much time does it take to write those 75 seconds?
Trace Gallagher:
Sometimes 15 or 20 minutes. Sometimes I labor over it for an hour and a half.
You want it to be right, and you want the closing line to be memorable.
One of the things we were always taught in broadcast writing is to leave people with your best information.
Television viewers are walking around, making dinner, doing other things. They may only be partly paying attention. You have to write for the ear and give them something compelling and easy to digest.
That’s what we try to do every night.
Newt Gingrich:
When we scheduled this podcast, I didn’t imagine it would range from professional water skiing to goats on hillsides, hundreds of inches of snow, baseball, John Wooden, and the early days of Fox News.
You’ve gone through life accumulating fascinating experiences, and it has been a lot of fun hearing about them.
Trace, thank you for joining me.
Trace Gallagher:
Mr. Speaker, thank you so much for having me. It was an honor, and I very much appreciate your time.
About the Guest
Trace Gallagher is the anchor of Fox News @ Night and Fox News Channel’s chief breaking news correspondent. He joined Fox News when the network launched in 1996 and has spent decades covering major breaking-news events and stories across the United States. His memoir, Turns Out They Were Right All Along: Life Lessons I Learned Eventually, reflects on the parents, coaches, mentors, colleagues, and unexpected experiences that shaped his approach to work, leadership, and life.
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