A Media Memoir of Faith, Fracture, and the Fight for Truth
Chapter 1: From Military to Media
When I left the Army in late 2012, the idea of sleeping in never took hold. Our son had just turned one. The move from El Paso to New Mexico — from staying with family to student family housing — took its toll. Building our family’s future, I used the GI Bill as my transition plan, getting back into video production through an interdisciplinary Film and Digital Media degree.
I found myself enjoying NBC’s Today show in the mornings, and it became a steady routine — light news, lifestyle segments, and celebrity interviews that felt calmingly comfortable. Something to do before heading to classes at the University of New Mexico.
In all honesty, it was Carson Daly who hooked me. A familiar face from my younger days watching Total Request Live, now anchoring the Orange Room and covering viral videos and social media trends. It felt like continuity — the same guy who’d introduced me to pop culture in my late teens and early twenties was now updating me through the social‑media age.
Savannah Guthrie’s new arrival and uplifting energy kept the segments fresh and engaging. Al Roker, thinner than I remembered, brought the veteran weather‑anchor stability that always kept me guessing how he would say what he would say next.
The tension between Matt Lauer and Natalie Morales occasionally peeked through — a cut‑off mid‑sentence here, a forced smile there. I couldn’t name it at the time, but something felt off. Kathie Lee & Hoda brought that big‑city, day‑drinking mimosa energy in Times Square, with a focus on people, Kathie Lee often engaging the audience with her faith.
I recall enjoying Live! with Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan, fresh from the NFL and still finding his footing as Regis’s replacement.
I had no clue there had recently been a blow‑up with Ann Curry’s forced exit and Matt Lauer’s dominance. I didn’t know Good Morning America was in the middle of taking out the Today show in the ratings game.
At this time, Donald Trump was an NBC ratings magnet as The Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice host, with a unique flair for saying “You’re fired.” Trump worked with the likes of Piers Morgan, Joan Rivers, Bret Michaels, Trace Adkins, Arsenio Hall, Lil Jon, Gary Busey, and Dennis Rodman on the show.
It wasn’t just NBC giving Trump massive, mostly positive‑to‑neutral coverage — it was all networks, amused by the entertainment. Donald Trump, a media celebrity in his own right, with cameos from Home Alone 2 to his own arc in the WWF, was about to make a choice that would flip the entire apolitical script the Today show, among others, had been working from.
From the day Donald Trump descended the golden escalator at Trump Tower on June 16, 2015 to announce his candidacy for President of the United States — with over twenty Republicans in the primary challenge and Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton making back‑room deals for the Democratic primary — news networks covered Trump with humor and entertainment. Ratings gold. An unserious marketer taking advantage of the Republican primary as a self‑promotion opportunity.
This dismissiveness — the smirks, the eye‑rolls, the “can you believe this guy?” energy — began to rub me wrong. Trump might have been a spectacle, but the condescension felt unearned. These were the same people who’d helped make him famous since the 1980s.
The breaking point came during the election season. The September 2016 Commander‑in‑Chief Forum was a mess — Lauer got roasted from all sides. But what pushed me away wasn’t that debate. It was what happened in November. The moment Trump won, Today flipped from amused detachment to resistance mode. The more they shifted from apolitical entertainment to ideological activism, the more I found myself reaching for the remote. By early 2017, I was no longer starting my mornings with Today.
I didn’t leave NBC. NBC left me. And I wasn’t alone.
Quinn's Next Step 