During his radio show Friday, Glenn Beck responded to The Daily Beast’s report that his TheBlaze network had to lay off 40 employees by essentially blaming his own staff for the downfall of his media empire.

“I’m a trusting guy,” he told his listeners. “I think anybody on the show will tell you my biggest problem is I trust everybody.” He continued: “I trusted the people that ran my company that they wanted the same things.” But, alas, he said, those confidants betrayed him: “Even though the managers were all saying the right things to me, those things were never getting done... I didn’t know who really got the vision—who got it and who didn’t.”

“These people were my friends, they were my partners,” he lamented, but, “They didn’t love the audience like I did.”

Beck suggested that his trusted managers had turned TheBlaze into a “status quo, big media company”—something he “never wanted.”

The conservative radio personality also admitted that he has lost some $500,000 traveling around the country with his preferred Republican candidate, Sen. Ted Cruz, as The Daily Beast reported. It’s because “I believe in something,” Beck said.

During the same show, Beck rolled his face in a plate of crushed Cheetos to mock Donald Trump’s distinctly orange hue.

—Andrew Kirell