The Hill's Rising (or simply Rising) is an American daily news and opinion web series produced by Washington, D.C. political newspaper The Hill. The series is available on The Hill's website and YouTube.
Gradually gaining popularity on YouTube throughout 2019 and 2020, the show's longest-serving hosts were Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, until their departure in May 2021. The show was hosted by journalist Ryan Grim and Emily Jashinsky until they also left in September 2022.[1] The current host is journalist Robby Soave.
About
Rising features commentary and analysis of political news and current events, in-studio interviews with politicians, campaign staff and surrogates, political advisors and strategists, and members of the news media. When Ball and Enjeti hosted, the show presented a synthesis of populist left and populist right viewpoints.[2]
The series is available on The Hill's website, YouTube, and a streaming channel.[3]
Format
Rising typically produces five episode a week, Monday-Friday. There are usually about eight pre-taped segments per episode. Each host presents a "radar" segment which analyze current events and present commentary in a monologue format, usually organized into three or four bullet-points. This is followed by an open discussion.
History
Logo the Buck Sexton and Krystal Ball-hosted iteration
In 2018, The Hill announced Krystal Ball and Buck Sexton as presenters of a new slate of original programming to be produced by John Solomon. Rising launched in June 2018 as Rising with Krystal & Buck with Buck Sexton as host. Sexton departed in June 2019, with Saagar Enjeti replacing him. In the press release, Ball was slated as the "progressive co-host on a morning show with a conservative co-host".[4][5][non-primary source needed] The show focused on attacking "establishment Democrats such as Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg."[citation needed]
In late 2019, it had an average of 600,000 viewers daily. As of October 2020[update], the Hill's YouTube channel averaged 1.48 million views per day,[6][7] and had around 1.2 million subscribers. Enjeti and Ball also co-authored a book, The Populist's Guide to 2020: A New Right and New Left Are Rising.[8][9][10] In 2020, the show did a few live-stream analysis programs for important political events like the 2020 Democratic primary and the 2020 general elections.[citation needed]
In March 2022, YouTube suspended Rising's channel for seven days for allegedly "violating the platform's rules around election misinformation". Then-Rising host Ryan Grim stated in The Intercept: "Two infractions were cited: First, the outlet posted the full video of former President Donald Trump's recent speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on its page. Second, Rising played a minutelong clip of Trump's commentary on Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which included the claim that none of it would have happened if not for a “rigged election.”"[11]
Iversen, a vaccine skeptic, left the show in July 2022 after Batya Ungar-Sargon rather than her was picked to interview Anthony Fauci (of whom Iversen had previously been critical) with Soave.[13]
Grim and Jashinsky, who were the regular Friday hosts of Rising, resigned in September 2022.[16] Also in September 2022, Rising refused to air a segment on their show in which left-wing political commentator Katie Halper called Israel an "apartheid government". She was subsequently fired from the show.[17]
As of 2023, Jessica Burbank and Amber Duke presented Rising on Fridays.[18]
On June 7, 2024, Briahna Joy Gray, who had frequently courted controversy during the 2023 Israel–Hamas war,[19] was fired from Rising after allegedly callously dismissing trauma and "rolling her eyes" during an interview with the sister of an Israeli woman held hostage by Hamas, who urged her to believe Israeli women’s accounts of sexual assault on October 7. Joy Gray responded by saying “There should be no doubt that @RisingTheHill has a clear pattern of suppressing speech — particularly when it’s critical of the state of Israel.”[20][21]
^"The American 'Populist Right' After Trump". The Wire. New Delhi: Foundation for Independent Journalism. February 17, 2021. Archived from the original on February 18, 2021. Retrieved June 27, 2022. Saagar himself recently surpassed a million subscribers on the morning news hour Rising with Krystal and Saagar,... which gained notoriety for its (rightly) favourable coverage of "anti-establishment" presidential candidates such as Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang when corporate-owned cable news was hostile to both. Soon after, Enjeti – a social conservative and fiscal liberal – and the avowed socialist Ball co-authored The Populist's Guide to 2020 (Strong Arm Press), their bestselling companion to the elections told from what they call 'populist left' and 'populist right' perspectives.
^"The Hill TV Bows as A Nexstar OTT Offering". Radio and Television Business Report (RBR+TVBR). August 10, 2022. GaleA713251397.
^Halper, Evan (December 12, 2019). "No #Bernieblackout here: Sanders rides a surge of alternative media". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved June 27, 2022. The populist hosts and their guests mercilessly rip into several of the top Democrats in the presidential race and the media covering them, especially MSNBC... The show's stars find South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg particularly objectionable.
