9/2/25: Modi Xi Putin Screw You To Trump, Demfluencers Rage After Dark Money Scandal

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election,
and we are so excited about what that means for
the future of this show.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is the only place where you can find honest
perspectives from the left and the right that simply does
not exist anywhere else.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
So if that is something that's important to you, please
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you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad free,
and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
We need your help to build the future of independent
news media and we hope to see you at Breakingpoints
dot com. Good morning, everybody, Happy Tuesday. Have an amazing
show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal?

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Indeed we do Trump bringing the world together, perhaps not
in the way that he intended. We'll take a look
at that big summit with China and India and Russia
all coming together, among others. Saga and I are also
going to do a little deep dive into that DEM
influencers scandal, the dark money funding of ninety plus Democratic
Party influencers, So a lot that's really interesting there, I

(01:00):
think to dig into about media and the future of
the Democratic Party. What is even independent media so excited
to talk about all of that. I'm a little obsessed
with the story, to be totally honest with you, We're
also going to take a look at some big questions
about Donald Trump's health. He has been very scarce, hasn't
spoken to the press on camera in quite a number
of days, very unusual for him. And Sager. I don't

(01:22):
know if you have the latest updates, but the pizza
tracker was off the charts.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Yeah, the tracker's been off the charts for weeks though.
That's part of the issue. Now, Look, we're going to
get into it, and just in general, I'm enjoying that.
I'm enjoying everyone having fun on the internet, which we
should all come together. Absolutely. I told you guys on
my planning called the most fun I ever had was
speculating about Hillary's health in twenty sixteen. So to the left,
you're welcome back to the internet. We're all about having fun.

(01:48):
No more taboos. Let's get down into the conspiracy land,
let's zoom in on Trump's brows, let's make shit up.
This is the fun stuff. Yeah, right, so this is
what we live for.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
I have a lot of questions about the pictures that
have been put posted Walter Reid entrances to it were closed,
like the roads were closed, the camera that's across from
it was turned off. There are many details to dig into,
and we will bring you as all of those.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
As a former White House correspondent who's actually been to
Walter Reid with Trump and more, I can also give
you some of my So I'm not debunking per se,
but I can give you some context. We will see
Trump later.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
Sounds like a buzzkill soccer.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Yeah, I will entertain and enjoy, and I will also
give some of the facts. Trump is scheduled though, by
the way, to speak sometime later today, So who knows,
who knows what he's gonna say? Who knows?

Speaker 3 (02:33):
Who knows?

Speaker 1 (02:34):
The plot?

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Sickends, all right, and then we'll turn to some very
serious news. With the card to Israel, two United States
senators were actually blocked by Israel from being able to
fly over Gaza. We also have now revealed the potential
Gaza Riviera Plan, which is one of the sickest and
most dystopian documents I have literally ever laid my eyes on. Also,

(02:56):
a group of scholars just overwhelmingly voted. The top side
scholars in the world just overwhelmingly voted yes, of course,
in fact, this is a genocide. And then on a
lighter note, we're going to take a look at a
US Open controversy that did grip the internet when a
Polish CEO stole the hat from a young boy who
had been given it by a star tennis player who

(03:16):
had just won his match.

Speaker 3 (03:18):
So we'll take a look at that.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
We're also going to and Shalla, do the AMA live today.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
Yes, yes, no, it's happening. It will happen in some form,
we promise, and we're very sorry about all the technical difficulties.
I won't bore everybody with exactly what's been happening, but
we have been agonizing and working to make sure that
we get it all done. So thank you all very
much to our premium subscribers for sticking with us, and
if you want to be able to support the show,
Breakingpoints dot com. Actually, you know, maybe I'll even save

(03:45):
the pitch for a little bit later on. But a
lot of what we have done to design the show
the way that it's funded and more not only keeps
us inculcated from scandals like this chorus thing going on
with the Influencer's block, But I do recommend for people
to stick around for that block in particular, just to
tell everyone the exact mechanics of how this stuff all
works and why we are set up the way that

(04:08):
we are, which is pretty unique compared to most like
you know, independent shows or whatever. And there are reasons
for that that keep us away and you know, insulated
from some of the major pressures that are out there,
business pressures, political pressures, and more.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
Yeah, we set up the show, as you guys know,
very intentionally to try to avoid any sort of even
appearance of impropriety. And you know, Soccer and I, both
jointly and separately, have learned a lot about the sort
of influence that can be exerted on you or attempted
to be exerted on you, and so we wanted to
make sure to insulate this show and guarantee that we

(04:42):
would never be in that position. So talk about the
scandal with the Democrats, we'll talk about, you know, why
we set up the show that we did. And I
think there's a lot to think about as we consider
what is even independent media and how do we build
an ecosystem that actually is is genuinely better the mainstream press,
so totally agree.

Speaker 3 (05:01):
With all that being said. Let's go ahead and get
to this summit. Zogera.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
Yes, some major news out of the SEO. If you're
wondering what the SEO is, if you had heard about,
it's the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. It was set up back
in two thousand and one. It's kind of been China.
It is difficult to describe. It's not really like a
G seven alternative. It was originally kind of set up
as a regional summit by the Chinese to exert power

(05:25):
in East Asia, not just there, but specifically to try
and group together non US allies. Warsaw Pact might be,
you know, semi apt example, but it's not NATO, it's
not any of these types of things. It's just a
meeting kind of of the minds. It has become kind
of an alternative to the US and Western led order.
Now China this year, in particular, capitalizing on some of

(05:48):
the alienation by the Trump administration of many of the
global powers. And the number one story that has come
out of the SEO this year is the just red
carpet rolled out for a Prime Minister Narendra Modi of
India as well as President of Russia Vladimir Putin. The
three of them President she, President Putin and Prime Minister

(06:09):
Mody put on a full display of friendship, very non
subtly signaling to the United States at their pressure of
sanctions and all that is not going to work. And
the most stunning images really was the trilateral meeting between
those three leaders, walking together, smiling together and sending a
massive middle finger to Washington. So here is some of

(06:30):
the footage from the SEO.

Speaker 4 (06:32):
Putin and India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi held hands as
they met before the summit and appeared jovial together as
they spoke with g surrounded by translators. At a bilateral meeting,
Putin addressed Mody as his dear friend and said relations
with developing dynamically.

Speaker 1 (06:49):
So you could see the Prime Minister Modi was there
with Russian President Vladimir Putin sishingping joined the three of them.
Prime Minister Mody actually called Putin his dear friend. The
now continuing plans to build or to buy Russian oil.
Another major story that came out of the SEO this
year is actually a pipeline that was announced between China

(07:10):
and Russia deepening the energy ties. So basically all of
US policy currently towards India, towards China and Russia has
been trying to end the war in Ukraine. And some
of the things that we've been covering now here for
years has been how the US led financial system has
just simply not been able to deliver what was promised.
They said that they would crush the Russian war machine
and hasn't happened. They've gone after India with fifty percent tariffs.

(07:32):
They said that they would buckle. Instead the opposite nearind
Remodi flying to, I think is Tanjin, where he met
with these three leaders and again just holding up a
giant middle finger to Washington and basically embracing China and saying, hey, look,
we will cooperate with whoever we need to cooperate with.
Part of the reason this matters is that since twenty

(07:53):
eleven there has been a assessment here in Washington about
the so called pivot to Asia, which I believe with
all with all my heart, which is that Western Europe
and the Middle East have diminishing returns for our relationship
with those two places that we're too obsessed with them,
which we spent too much of our money obsessing over
these foreign conflicts. Israel and Ukraine are the perfect poster

(08:14):
children for that fifty percent of global GDP will be
in East Asia in just a few years. You're already
watching now the limited value of dollar sanctions. The bricks
phenomenon has been one that's been talked about for quite
some time, but this is kind of the closest that
bricks in particular has come to becoming a real thing,
and we're going to be covering it now. But in

(08:34):
the China, you know, in the China sense in particular,
it is just stunning to see how they have especially
used the Trump years and the Trump administration to put
themselves as the official like number two superpower in the world,
and in my opinion, you know, operating very smartly. So
let's put this up here on the screen. This was
Shishinping outlines China's ambition to reshape the world order in

(08:57):
show Peace Summit, a quote unquote shock and awe Victory
Day military parade. There's a real military parade. By the way,
they actually do not have to march over there in
China this week, we'll see thrust it out.

Speaker 3 (09:08):
Thanks the guys that are not a march. None of that.

Speaker 1 (09:12):
Seeks not sponsored by Palenteer or coinbase or any of
those guys. You know, they don't do that over there.
It seeks to quote recast the Second World War narrative.
He's called on Shi, Russia, Indian and other China countries
in the region to join China and leveraging their economic influence,
specifically to challenge the West at a time of rising

(09:32):
geopolitical and trade ambitions. Hosting the Regional Security Forum on
Monday with more than twenty leaders, he said that the
world is undergoing turbulence and change, that they need to
uphold a quote orderly multi polar world. So you could
not make it more clear what their goal was and
put a three please on the screen. I thought the
Washington Post did a pretty decent job of kind of

(09:53):
summing it up here. They just say trying to tries
to use Trump turmoil to unite leaders against the US
led order. It's interesting because all three of these leaders,
the flagship leaders that gathered at the SCO, have their
own reasons for challenging the US light status quo. Putin
has Ukraine, China just has its you know, they want
to declare complete independence from the West and seek to

(10:16):
build a second financial system, the second global order that
they run, which obviously is to their benefit. It's the
same thing the United States did with the so called
US World Order. India has always kind of played its
cards close to its chest. They've been very suspicious of
the United States since the nineteen seventies. The US alliance
with Pakistan is something that continues to grind their gears.
Here in Washington, there has been a agreement under the

(10:39):
so called Pivot to Asia. It's like, well, if we
want to quote unquote isolate China or keep US friends
in the region, then we need to make sure that Japan,
South Korea, and India, the three most powerful nations in
East Asia, are rock solid with the US. But the
Trump terriffs have done more to offset the Pivot to
Asia than any single peace of foreign policy that I

(10:59):
could think of in just the last twenty years. Like, yes,
the Israeli Session, the Ukraine of Session indirectly takes away,
but the levying and the targeting of India, and then
the failure of the sanctions on Russia are just two
glaring opportunities for China, and you're really watching like a
reverse Nixon happen where Nixon famously opens China wants to

(11:21):
separate China from Russia and the Soviet Union, to split
the two powers, to establish and break apart, you know,
global communism, and instead we have had what we have
seen happen is is if we had forced the two
together through basically, you know, an entirely a fault of
our own. So it is the most important story in
the world, there's no question for a long time.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
And then you add Brazil to that mix, yes, and
you have of course we've been following the way that
you know, a series of tariffs have been levied on
Brazil because Trump isn't happy about what their court system
is doing with regard to Bolsonaro, trying to you know,
do his own coup in Brazil in a very Trumpian fashion,
and so you truly have a situation where he has
united these nations in an alliance that you know was

(12:05):
previously would have been very difficult because they are very
different nations. They have very different interests, They have their
own you know, concerns, squabbles, et cetera. And yet in
the face of this insane tariff regime, they truly have
sort of come together in this way. It's also very
interesting the narrative, like the rhetoric coming from China recasting
the end of World War Two and their own role

(12:26):
really highlighting their own role in defeating fascism and building
that post war international order, and effectively what they're saying
is listen, the US, they're a bunch of hypocrites. They've
dropped the ball on this. We're going to actually build
out the inclusive multipolar world based on international law and
be the true inheritors of.

Speaker 3 (12:45):
The legacy of the.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
Post war international order and build out this new multipolarity
in a way that respects the interest of all these
countries around the world. So, you know, for a lot
of nations that are being hit with tariffs in subjected
to this very sort of like capricious foreign policy from
the Trump administration, this is obviously extremely appealing, and it

(13:09):
also is a recognition of the reality of where we
are as as you know, a globe, as the world
right now. You know, the funny we were sharing with India.
One of the reasons that Trump got like upset with
India and started throwing all these tariffs on them, and
like throwing a fit about India is because Mody wouldn't
accept his narrative about brokering the seaspire between India and

(13:31):
Pakistani was like that really didn't have anything to do
with you. And then Trump wanted him to nominate him
for the Nobel Peace Prize and he was like, uh,
not doing that either, actual, yeah, and so, and that
is what sparks Trump's rage at India. So you know,
you can't deal with someone like that, Like, you can't
work with someone who is so unseerious, so capricious, and
so frankly insane in the way that he operates.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
Something I just have come to deeply respect about many
of these nations is the level of seriousness which that
they take their g politics. So in China, you know,
we I've talked to her endlessly about industrial policy. They
have orders of engineers in every bureau managing the state.
It's capitalism, making sure that the factories are being built properly,

(14:16):
put in the right places, spreading economic development, building roads,
high speed and all. The alternative to that is I
recently saw a video of a guy who was the
equivalent of Google searching the word dictator and they call
him in. They call it you need to come for
tea in Chinese to the Chinese police department. They literally
go through your search results. Why'd you search for this?
Why did you search for this? Why did you search

(14:37):
for this? That's just part of the social contract. In India,
for example, they Jay Schunker, who's their foreign minister, and
many of these other these tarned serious students of US
global foreign policy who sit around and are like, Okay,
what are all the big mistakes that we have made here?
How can India further itself? We have all these problems,
all of this poverty and corruption, and we also have

(14:58):
our own political issue. Use how do we square this circle?
Set India up for the future, have technological development, make
sure that the country is insulated from the West. You
know their seriousness around tariffs, and look, I'm not saying
I support their tariff system, but because bad it is
bad for us empirically. But one of the reasons why
they have such massive capital controls on the country is
they're like, we will not be messed with by other country, period,

(15:21):
even if it means sacrificing interim economic growth. I recently
just read a book by a guy named Dan Wang
about China. It's such an incredible book. I highly recommend
everybody go out and get it. One of the things
that she determined some ten years ago is he's like
financial markets and stock market shareholderism is good for the
super elite, it's bad for companies, it's bad for development.

(15:44):
So that's just not something that we're going to do
as a nation. Boom. I mean, and they have the
ability to be able to do that. I'm not saying
I favor their system, but I favor the seriousness and
the level of thought that they put into how they're
going to try and challenge the West. Let's put a
four please up on the screen and you can just
see here. I mean, this is the biggest troll that
you could ever have. Right after the Putin Trump summit,

(16:07):
Mody posts this photo of him in the Russian presidential
vehicle and he says, after the proceedings of the SEO
President Putin I traveled together to the venue of our
bilateral meeting. Conversations with him are always insightful. Apparently they
spent nearly an hour, you know, in the car together
just talking. I guess really about the challenges of Trump
about how they're going to navigate the relationship between their

(16:30):
two countries. And meanwhile, you know, we just have the
absolute base level of idiocy here in our nation. For
our discourse. Peter Navarro, who is the trade counselor for
Donald Trump has I mean, he's the attack dog, right
And by the way, I actually respected Peter in the
first term I read his book. I don't think he's

(16:50):
wrong necessarily about tariffs. But the worst problem with Peter
is that he turned himself into like this January sixth hero.
You know, he's Trump's most loyal warrior. So when Trump
decides to declare war on India because he's butt hurt
that they won't dominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize,
he goes all in. He adopts the rhetoric. He's like
a household name. Now in India, if you watch the

(17:12):
news over there, I've been checking in to see how
they tolerate this. And this is the level of discourse
that we're currently hearing for Peter Navarro and from the
Treasure Treasury Secretary Scott Bessen on India. Let's take a listen.

Speaker 5 (17:24):
Modi's a great leader I don't understand why he's getting
to bed with Putin and Shijin Peng Whin. He's the
biggest democracy in the world. So I would just simply
say the Indian people, please understand what's going on here.
You got Brahmins profiteering at the expense of the Indian people.
We need that to stop.

Speaker 1 (17:45):
So this is going to be a deep cut for
those of you who are not familiar with the Indian
cast system. But what Peter Navarro basically is saying there,
it's that these high cast Indians, the Brahmans in India
are profiteering. Now, if you knew anything about said system,
you would know that the Bramins are actually not the
business class and not the major oligarchs who are in India.

(18:06):
Just saying this is an empirical fact check, but it
just shows the extent to which they're basically just grasping
for whatever like low iq you know, cast to slash
like criticism that you can have of India and then
broadcasting it to the world. Their new line is that
India is a democracy, so they need to align with

(18:27):
democratic values. I have news for you here. India is
a democracy and they know who you are and they
know who Trump is, they know who America is. They've
been pissed at America ever since Biden's singled amount about
Russian oil. You guys are making it ten times worse,
I can guarantee you, by the way, Mody, you know,
it's not like he won a stunning reelection. He's probably
more popular than ever right now. But doing these types

(18:49):
of move the Indian intelligentsia, the Indian from the from
like the people who cannot even read, who vote, all
the way up to the intelligentsia are literally united against
the United States right now in a way that I
have never seen from a country which you know, how
many millions of people in India originally wanted to come here.
There's still a lot of Indian immigrants, you know, apply

(19:10):
h one bvs that we talked about that that's more
of a domestic political issue. But I see a lot
of that changing over in the next period, which you know,
I know some of the white nationalists and other people
will be happy about that. But at a very base level,
like America, the global empire is basically crumbling all around us.
For what for Ukraine or for Trump's ego, for israel

(19:30):
I mean, you know, all of these things are actually
all interconnected Israel. Israel is actually probably the most important
part of the story, which sounds crazy to say, but
the reason why is that for years, the United States
goes abroad wags its finger. It's like, oh, you can't
be doing this. You're authoritarian and you're bad. You're feeling
bad things around the world. And the Chinese and the

(19:51):
Russians and the Indian were like, oh, yeah, how's i
Raq doing the thriving democracy? But now you know, you
have Iraq, you have Libya, you have Syria, you have Israel,
you have Ukraine. Right, all of those things together, and
they're like, we're not listening to you anymore. We don't
care what you have to say. And you put that
together and that's how you get to saying hi the
SEO meeting of twenty twenty five, which I do think

(20:12):
will be a landmark moment.

Speaker 2 (20:13):
Yeah, and Ukraine is complex, right, so it's it's less
clear cut. Russia did invade, so there is a sort
of there is a liberal international value that is being
upheld there. Truly, Israel is not complex, like we are
supporting a genocide, we are supporting colonization, we are supporting
outright occupation.

Speaker 3 (20:33):
We're going to talk later about this, just.

Speaker 2 (20:34):
Like PowerPoint ethnic cleansing plan that's being floated, where by
the way, the US is going to be the protectorate.
So I'm sure you guys are all going to be
really excited about that. It is so glaringly obvious in fact,
you know, truly, I know they put on a sort
of like joint statement about Israel in the context of
this of this summit, want to they should do more.
I mean the opening is there's truly it's truly wide open.

(20:58):
You know, the the last majority of the world's population
is in horror and shock at what is being done
in Gaza right now and disgusted with Israel. I mean,
Israel truly is a pariah nation everywhere except in this
particular area where we sit right now in DC among
elites right here. And so you know, there really is
a wide open lane to show global leadership and to

(21:21):
show no, we really are the true arbiters, we really
are the true representatives of this international world order.

Speaker 1 (21:27):
Yeah, and look, I think it's important in that context
just to show you how a lot of the rhetoric
is just crumbling. Let's put AA up on the screen, please,
and you can see very clearly. Like what they say
from the SEO is that Member States strongly condemned the
military strikes by Israel and the United States of America
against Iran in June of twenty twenty five. Quote. Such
aggressive actions against civilian targets, including nuclear energy, which results

(21:51):
in the debath of civilians, are a gross violation of
the principles and the norms of international law and the
UN Charter, and infringement on the sovereignty of the Islamac
Republic of vir On. They undermine regional and international security
and have serious implications for global peace and stability. Now,
no one should should delude themselves into thinking that China
and you know, Russia in particular care all that much

(22:13):
about civilian casualties. But that's where the rhetoric and all
that stuff matters, because you know, Russia, the United States
basically accused Russia of committing a quote genocide over Buka,
all right. I mean, if you look today in the
US intelligentsia, they're like, Putin is a child murderer, right
for the strikes, And that's true, it's true, right, you know, yes,
strikes have killed children, civilians all across of Ukraine. But

(22:36):
how can you sit there and say that you need
to use the full weight of the empire when you're
also backing up what's going on in Israel. You can't.
The thing doesn't square. So then it's actually not about
any of that. What it's really about is power, and
that's what those countries understand more than anything. You know,
the Chinese for long have held on this thing called
mutual respect, where they're like, look, well, you guys do

(22:59):
what you want to do, and we're going to do
what we want to do. But we don't want to
be hearing about any leaguers. We don't want you guys
to be talking about Taiwan or any of this other
stuff because that's our business and we don't tell you
how to run Alaska or Hawaii or any of that
type of stuff. Well, I think that that hits even
harder again in the year twenty twenty five, in the
context of everything that is all happening. And again, just
to highlight all this brick stuff, let's put this video

(23:22):
here of between Lula and between Mody. I mean, this
is not really something that you would see. It's not
that long ago. You could see the two leaders grasping hands, hugging,
you know, coming together, basically trying to broadcast to the
world that this alternative system is one which they are
fully embracing. These are both two leaders who have been

(23:44):
hit with some fifty percent tariffs, both capriciously under the
Trump administration, with no you know, strategy or any of
that behind it. And meanwhile Trump is just you know,
spouting off. Here's his latest. We could put it up
there on the screen. Quote. What few people understand is
that we do very little business with India. That's not true,
by the way. It's the tenth largest training partner with
the US, but they do a tremendous amount of business

(24:05):
with us. In other words, they sell us massive amounts
of goods their biggest client, but we sell them very
little until now, a totally one sided relationship. It has
been that way for decades. The reason is that India's
charged US until now such high tariffs the most of
any country, that our businesses are unable to sell into India.
It has been totally one sided disaster. India buys most
of its oil and military products from Russia, very little
from the US. They've now offered to cut their tariffs

(24:27):
to nothing, but it's getting too late. They should have
done so years ago. Just some simple facts for people
to ponder. But what Trump doesn't really get is that
this is a vindication of the Indian strategy. They're high tariffs,
high capital controls, and more on the country are exactly
what insulate them from tariff threats because they know they
planned for this for years. They saw what happened with

(24:48):
their nuclear program. By the way, they've banned bitcoin a
long time ago. Anything that challenges the primacy of the
state of the roopie and of the ability for India
to remain sovereign. They knewke it and they see it
very early. TikTok over there not even a question. They're like,
it's done. They panned it years ago because again, for them,
they care about sovereignty. It would be nice to live

(25:08):
in a country that actually cared about things like that.
Same with the Chinese, and so they know and they've
studied this Russian sanctions now for years and they see
they're like, oh, doesn't matter so much. Got oil, got guns,
We got a lot of production capacity. Some of the
world's i think the world's largest population in India will
be all right. And that's basically the you know, the

(25:29):
path that they are choosing. They can do enough business
to sustain themselves. Not gonna say it's gonna hurt. It
certainly will, but broadly they're making enough of a bet that,
especially you know, everyone again talks about democracy over there,
it would not be popular to capitulate to Donald Trump.
I can guarantee you that if people in China or
Russia could vote too, like for real vote, all of
them would probably back up standing up against the US.

(25:52):
So that's part of the democratic principle. That a lot
of people in the West are not ready for democracy
doesn't ultimately mean we're all good friends here. It means
will of the people. I'm pretty sure that what's happening
there over there is actually the will of the people.

Speaker 2 (26:03):
Well, I mean it's ironic too, because Trump and Mody
in a lot of ways were natural allies because they
actually share like similar nationalist ideologies, and in the first
administration there was much more you could see much more
of that overlap and you know, that sort of sympatico
view of the world. Can we put a six backup
on the screen there, Sager, just take a look at
this image and tell me, do you think that this

(26:26):
is the cure for the toxic masculinity of the manisphere?

Speaker 3 (26:29):
Do you think this is it right here?

Speaker 1 (26:30):
What do you mean?

Speaker 2 (26:31):
This is this very tend more loving affectionate between these
two powerful alpha male Sure, yeah, I think this is
a model for the world.

Speaker 1 (26:40):
Yeah, I guess I could go with that. I can
see it. I mean, you know, Mody is an interesting character.
I wouldn't call him like an alpha male. He is
a lot of respect for things like yoga and fast
I mean, it's like Indian male in their context. It
doesn't really translate to the West. But I don't know.
I don't really know enough about Lula to be able
to say the same. But I do know watching all

(27:02):
of this is it's one of the most broadcasted screw
yous against the United States, genuinely. I mean, I can't
think of another time that the leaders of the most
powerful states outside of the Western hemisphere would gather together
and in an explicit go fuck yourself, you know, to

(27:23):
the United States.

Speaker 2 (27:23):
Well, I keep thinking about what Professor Jeffreys ACXE told us,
which is that our decision to levy these sanctions on
these tariffs on India as a result of their decision
to continue buying Russian oil. He called it one of
the most foolish policy mistakes, foreign policy mistakes that the
US has made in years. And that's saying a lot,
because we've made a lot of really horrific mistakes in

(27:46):
recent years and decades. And this is why, I mean,
this playing out in front of you is exactly why
he has united these countries. And it really is on him. Now,
there are other things that lead to this point. I'm
not saying it's the only fact, but his tariff policy
has to already be deemed like in terms of American interests,
one of the most disastrous economic policies ever pursued, ever pursued,

(28:11):
certainly in modern American history. It has made our economy here.
We can already see the effects in certain goods prices
going up. You can see you can see the rate
of growth in the economy slowing. You can see more
and more consumer debt being taken on, like all sorts
of red flags flashing here in our economy because of
his economic policy. So we aren't benefiting quite the contrary.

(28:34):
And meanwhile, he has clarified for the rest of the world. Okay,
it's time that we get together and we move on
from this mess, because this is a disaster and we
can't count on these people. This guy's a psycho. This
country is hypocritical, They're insane. We've got to figure out
how to do our own thing over here and make
sure that we are protecting our own nations.

Speaker 3 (28:53):
And it really does lay at the feet of Trump.

Speaker 1 (28:55):
Absolutely, it's about Trump's ego. It's about a miss reading,
I think entirely of the way that geopolitics and all
of this works. It also is completely counter to many
of the things that we're talked about by Donald Trump
and all of the people who work for them. It's
not an exaggeration to say this is the exact opposite.
This is the Lindsay Graham course. You know, Oh, we

(29:16):
got to lever Harvis on five hundred percent tariff on
India because of the war in Ukraine. While we continue
to back up. You know, it's like it's as if
the Israel and Ukraine conflict are the sun, the moon
and the stars and everything just revolves around them, and
that this entire you know, part of the world is
just these secondary or tertiary characters in reality. Japan number

(29:40):
three trading partner in the world. You think that the
Japanese people are are happy about that trade deal and
all the bullshit that they went through, They're not. Okay,
you can go and read their press. Same with the
South Koreans. I mean, the South Koreans similarly are in
this weird limbo state where they're like, you know, they
used to be understood as a massively important US ally
basically just on the back burner. They pay them no attention.

(30:03):
When they do pay them attention, it's to hit them
with some tariffs or to get mad at them over
Samsung or any of the other companies that they make.
We're just playing. We are playing like Little League baseball,
and that is what you know. Again, I have nothing
but admiration. Maybe that's bad and it speaks to me,
But like this, that is that those are countries run

(30:23):
by actual statesmen, and yes, putin all of them, they
do terrible things. I'm not, you know, absolving them of
all of the bad. I wouldn't want to live in Russia,
I wouldn't want to live in India, and I definitely
wouldn't want to live in China. But I have nothing
but admiration for the seriousness which they run their countries,
and we don't have any of that. I do not
have any of that. No, and that's the starkest and
the most depressing part, because you and I know for

(30:45):
the next three and a half year, probably the next
eight years, let's be honest, it's just we're locked in
and the Chinese Century it just seems more likely than
ever before.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
Yeah, we're run by a bunch of clownish, evil buffoons
who make some of the worst decisions of all time.
Very interesting story here, I am a little bit obsessed
with it. So Taylor Lorenz over at Wired Magazine really
breaking some significant news here about an incubator program funded
by a dem aligned dark money superpack called the sixteen

(31:15):
thirty Fund. So let's put her reporting up on the screen,
and I want to break down very specifically what she
reports out in this piece. So her headline here is
a dark money group is secretly funding high profile democratic influencers.
An initiative aimed at boosting democrats online offers influencers up
to eight thousand dollars a month to push the party line.

Speaker 3 (31:35):
All they have.

Speaker 2 (31:36):
To do is keep it secret and agree to restrictions
on their content. So the TLDR here is that this
incubator named Chorus was set up by Brian Tyler Cohen,
who you guys probably know is a big resistance creator
on YouTube, giant channel, four million subscribers, etc. And a
guy who used to be an aid for Johnny Armath,

(31:57):
who was a congressman from Kentucky. So they set up
this thing, and the way they fund it is by
taking money from this billionaire backed dark money super pac
called the sixteen thirty Fund. That fund has spent hundreds
of millions of dollars to back Democratic candidates and causes.
It's very influential, it's very well known. You can read

(32:19):
a bunch of reporting about it. But because it is
a dark money group, their donors are kept a secret. Okay,
So ninety plus Democratic Party aligned influencers were selected for
this program. They're paid anywhere from two hundred and fifty
dollars a month, which like, we all are really selling.

Speaker 3 (32:36):
Out for the shape if you're on that plan, but.

Speaker 2 (32:37):
We'll get back to that, all the way up to
eight thousand dollars a month. It has everybody from small creators.
I certainly had never heard of. Granted I'm not on
TikTok that much, so I'm not trying to like smirch
the level of their influence, but all the way up
to people like David Packman, who has a multimillion sub channel,
who has already been quite successful and has been around

(32:58):
for longer actually than we yah. Dave Pacman has been
in this game for a long time. So it's like
everybody from the small and the brand new, all the
way up to the David Pacman's of the world. So specifically,
Taylor was able to talk to people who were approached
about participating in this program, some of whom were put
off by the terms of the contract and said this

(33:20):
is not something that I can be a part of.
She was given access to some of the group chats
that were flying around between some of the people who
did end up in the cohort who were also expressing
concerns about some of the terms of the contract, And
she also apparently was able to get her hands on
the contract themselves and so here specifically what the contracts

(33:40):
that it says were viewed by Wired, what they indicated
in terms of restrictions on the way these individuals can
operate So, according to copies of the contract viewed by Wired,
creators in the program must funnel all bookings with lawmakers and.

Speaker 3 (33:54):
Political leaders through Chorus.

Speaker 2 (33:57):
Creators also have to loop Chorus in on any in
tendently organized engagement with government.

Speaker 3 (34:03):
Officials or political leaders.

Speaker 2 (34:05):
So one of the creators who was approached about participating
in Chorus said to Taylor, she said, quote, if I
want to work with another politician, I have to fully
collaborate with course. If I get Zoron and he wants
to do an interview with me, I don't want to
give that to them. So that was one of the concerns. Also,
it says creators in the program are not allowed to

(34:26):
use any funds or resources that they receive as part
of the program to make content that supports or opposes
any political candidate or campaign without express authorization from Chorus
in advance and in writing per the contract. So if
they want to support a candidate Graham Platner, let's say
in Maine, they have to get approval from Chorus before

(34:47):
they can say anything supportive of any sort of candidate
or campaign. In addition, the contracts reduced by Wired prohibit
standard partnership disclosures declaring that creators will not publicize their
relationship Course or tell others that they're members of the
program quote without Course's prior express consent. A screen chat
from a slideshow was shared with Wired following this article's

(35:08):
publication by Graham Wilson, a lawyer working with Courus, that
offers several talking points if a member of the go
court wanted to discuss Course publicly, so they're expressly saying
you can't talk about being in this program, and certainly
can't disclose the dark money funding of this program. And
they also forbid creators from disclosing the identity of any funder,
and give Course the ability to force creators to remove

(35:29):
or correct content based solely on the organization's discretion if
that content was made at a Course organized event. One
other piece that I thought was really noteworthy sogre is.
It also says you are not allowed to criticize any
of the other influencers who are part of the Course program. So,
for example, if you have a beef over David Pacman

(35:51):
either not saying anything about Gaza or in the early
days of the genocide he was actively defending Israel. If
you have a problem with that, and you're an influencer
in this cohort and you want to talk about it,
you are banned from doing that. So you have a
combination of a lot of restrictions on the way that
you operate having to run things through this course program.

Speaker 3 (36:13):
You have the.

Speaker 2 (36:14):
The forced secrecy around it that you're not allowed to
disclose course and you're certainly not allowed to disclose the
funding source of course. And then you also, on top
of that have these requirements that they check in that
they go to these daily messaging meetings to you know,
get the view of course. And we're going to show
you some of the responses from the creators themselves about

(36:36):
the revelation that they're part of this program, and you know,
they actually affirm that yes, much of this is in
fact true. They show relevant parts of the contract and
then you know, give reasons why it's not such a
big deal and it's not really a problem. But they
actually confirm Taylor's reporting here. So this seems pretty rock
solid at this point.

Speaker 1 (36:54):
Well, okay, so let's put that aside. I think the
question is about why is this important. I think it's
important not only for the con text of what you
laid out about specific issues. But it is an incentive
and media ecosystem which is so much worse than allegedly
with the dem and Republican alternative medias we're trying to
go after. Like, look, we can say a lot of

(37:14):
bad things about Jake Tapper, MSNBC, CNN, Fox News. They
do not get direct checks cut to them that specifically
say you can't criticize X, Y and Z. They are
actually less controlled in this particular way. And so that's
what I think I wanted to cover the story early

(37:34):
and I want people to grapple with that, is that
in this new ecosystem, just like in the original days
of the printing press, it's gone wild. The norms don't exist.
Everybody is a creator and a business person. They have
not had well established norms to try and create a
firewall a separation. Probably the most important is nobody is
thinking about the downstream consequences of that, because originally you're like, oh,

(37:57):
you know, a couple thousand a month, great, I could
pay my bills. I can do this, I don't have
to have a second job and all that, but you
don't ask what comes next. And you know, two people
who've been in this industry now for a long time
and experienced much of the downside of what that type
of stuff look like. Now, to be clear, I've never
taken a single dollar from a Republican group or any
of that type of stuff in the same way, which

(38:19):
you know, again, I don't really know how you ever
thought it was cool, because even when I was absolutely broke,
I never would have signed some sort of contract like that.
But the point remains that I think most of them
didn't think about it, and now they're retreating to their
corners because for them they have to defend it at
this point. But really, you are either controlled, quasi controlled,

(38:40):
or at the very least you are not truly free
to say what you want. Now the mainstream is controlled
in a separate way, right as in Fox News, guys
can't criticize, criticize each other. They also know that if
they cover X, Y or Z, that's not going to
look so nice to Rupert Murdoch or to Lachlan who
are you know, rapidly pro Israel and pro Ukraine. So
there's all these separate you know, issue use and incentive

(39:01):
structures that come with them. So don't get me wrong,
that obviously exists to the mainstream media, and I still
hate them for a variety of reasons. But this is
really really bad. And it is bad because I think
that the Democrats, in particular, I know that there are
a lot of dams. They're energized, they're ready. You know,
we're going to talk about Trump health. Everybody wants to
be online, having fun and resisting. But here being part

(39:22):
of a machine and that machine is being controlled for
very specific purposes and ends would unite may not be
aware of. That's what I think is very important, right, And.

Speaker 2 (39:32):
It would be one thing if this was disclosed.

Speaker 1 (39:34):
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 (39:35):
But and what they say is, oh, well, here are
some videos where people did talk about being in course,
and here's the course website and it lists some of
the creators who were participating in the program. So there
was some disclosure. Was there disclosure around a dark money
super pac funding this? No, there was not, And there's
you know, so there's a reason why Taylor had to
do an investigative journalism peace in order to reveal the

(39:57):
details of this program. It expressly HiT's them in the
contract from disclosing their funders, specifically from disclosing their participation
in the program. And you know, in terms of like
the ethics of all of this, that is almost the
biggest red line here because listen, it's very complicated all
of the different business structures within quote unquote independent media.

(40:21):
Right most places are different from us. Most of them
will do ad reads, which means they're directly talking advertised.
It is actually much more direct relationship than like, for example,
when I was at MSNBC, there was a firewall between
the hosts and the you know, people who were selling ads.
You had no idea what was on during the commercial break.
That wasn't your big you know you had, You were
not paying attention to that that had no bearing on

(40:42):
your like day to day.

Speaker 3 (40:43):
So you know, there's that, but at least that's upfront.

Speaker 2 (40:47):
Everybody knows, I'm paid to read this ad for Casper
Mattresses or whatever the heck it is, you know, Zin's
or whatever thing that they're selling. So that's upfront, and
you know, frankly, those corporate interests are going to only
collide with your coverage in sort of certain specific instances.
Whereas if you are backed by this kind of group

(41:08):
where you're going to daily messaging check ins, you're having
to run by them. You're supposed to run by them
every government official that you interview, and you have other
restrictions on your content, and they have a specific they
mentioned in one of these contracts that actually in the
response video, one of the one of the members of
the cohort put up a part of the contract and.

Speaker 3 (41:29):
Referred to COURS as policy platform.

Speaker 2 (41:31):
So like, what is that you know and are you
having to buy into a certain set of policies. I'm
going to guarantee you that based on the lack of
coverage of Gaza by Brian Tyler Cohen and sometimes at
times the incredibly terrible coverage of David Packman, two the
biggest creators that are associated with this, I'm going to bet
that you know the fact that, for example, Gaza has

(41:52):
been officially deemed a genocide by all of the world's
genocide scholars. I'm gonna bet that's not part of the
policy platform. I'm going to bet that's not part of
the daily messaging guidance. And I want to be clear
because some of the way this has been portrayed, especially
in the rebuttals, has been very caricaturish. We're not saying

(42:13):
that they're being told you're going to do a video
on this, and if you don't, you're kicked out of
the program. And here's your talking points. So you're going
to say these freaking talking points are You're out. It
doesn't work like that. It works through several mechanisms. First
of all, the choice of who participates. I guarantee you
many of these people they genuinely their authentic view is

(42:33):
that the Democratic Party is like, you know, vote blue.
No matter who, they are vastly superior. The focus should
all be on Trump like for many, if not all,
of them, that is their genuine view. So number one
is the choice of who you even include in the cohort.
But then there's all these sort of like human pressures
and incentives. You see who's in the in group with

(42:56):
you, You see the sort of topics that are being pushed.
You know where the sensitivity are. And so if you're
weighing covering let's say, you know, the Gaza genocide versus
another topic that is also very important, that isn't going
to create some sort of discomfort with the you know,
with the program that you're in that you're receiving monthly
cash from. Maybe you're going to choose the one that's

(43:18):
not going to sort of not going to be uncomfortable
for the group, not going to be uncomfortable for your
future potential prospects of staying in this program. And is
you get down the line, if these influencers become financially
dependent on getting this monthly stipend, then you have a
lot of control over them. So that's the way this thing,

(43:38):
these things work. It's far more subtle than just like
you're getting your talking points and you're going to stick
to them, and you're not going to do videos on this,
and you are going to do videos on that. It
happens in a much more subtle way. And I saw,
you know, I've told this story before, you know, just
to give an example from my own personal life and
why like the lessons we've had to learn through our
careers and how we came to the business model that

(43:58):
we have. When I was at MSM, this was back
in twenty fifteen, before Hillary actually I think it was
twenty fourteen, before Hillary officially got in the race for president.
I did a monologue that was like, don't run, Please,
don't run, because you are not the person for the moment.
I talked about her, you know, her speeches to Banks,
I said, this is not the populis champion we need.

(44:18):
It was very critical at a time when nobody on
the Democratics I had, nobody on MSNBC was being.

Speaker 3 (44:22):
Critical of Hillary. They let me do it.

Speaker 2 (44:24):
But after the fact I was informed that any future
commentary I did on Hillary Clinton had to be run
by the president of the network. Okay, that is not
a normal thing. Message was sent to me that this
was not appreciated and in the future I needed to
make sure I run it up the flapole. So can
I say for certain that that didn't impact my coverage
going forward, that that didn't make it so that if

(44:47):
I was weighing two different monologue topics, I was like, well,
I could do this one on Hillary again, or I
could do this other topic that I didn't take the
easy way on. Say well, they're both important, so let
me do this one so I don't have to actually
get all of my words approved by the president of
the networ or can piss off everybody involved this day.
That's the way these things work, through these sut of
subtle influences and pressures that every human is subject to.

(45:10):
And so I think a lot of these individuals, they
feel like, well, we're not corrupt. You know, we genuinely
believe in the Democratic Party, and you know, we've got
to fight fire with fire. We got to get in
there and we got to fight against Trump, but we
got to build up this creator ecosystem. Like I think
that's the way they're thinking about it, without realizing the
subtle way that your coverage can be shaped and influenced
the minute that you start taking cash, and especially when

(45:32):
you have these sorts of very specific restrictions on the
way you're supposed to go about your content creation and
you're required to go to a daily messaging check in
every single day. Of course, that's going to impact the
way that you approach things, not because you're like inherently corrupt,
because you're a human being and we are all subject
to those sorts of incentives and pressures, whether we even

(45:53):
realize it or not.

Speaker 1 (45:54):
I will just quote the great Nome Chomsky quote, the
smart way to keep people passive and obedient, it's just
strict limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very
lively debate within that spectrum, even encourage the more critical
and dissonant views. That gives people the sense that there's
free thinking going on while all the time the presuppositions
of the system are reinforced by the limits put upon
the range of the debate. And then similarly, when he

(46:16):
was asked in that famous BBC interview about whether people
self censor, he says, I don't say you're self censoring.
I'm sure you believe everything that you're saying. But what
I'm saying is if you believe something different, you wouldn't
be sitting where you're sitting. That's the question. Yeah, around,
of course. So like you said, it's not that these
people are and let's even think about the whole Gaza thing.
You think they're doing it because they believe it. I don't.

(46:37):
I don't know, Dave. I mean, you know, to talk
to David one time. I have no hate for the
guy Brian. You know, we interviewed him here. He seems nice.
I don't think that they are actively covering anything up.
You know what it is. It's division for Democrats, right,
that's it. They're like, well, we can't divide the Democratic Party.

Speaker 2 (46:54):
And at the beginning of the genocide, Phone actively backed
up as right.

Speaker 1 (46:58):
But BTC, all right, I don't I think for him.
He's like, I don't want to cause problems for Alyssa's luckin.
I don't want to cause problems for Gavin Newsom. We
need to train one hundred percent of our fire on
the right. On the right, by the way, the right
does this all the time too, right, although it's more
complicated more recently, they are willing to go after people
on the issues that they care about immigration in particular,
and Thomas Massey right, they'll go single him out, or

(47:20):
at least some people have. I'm trying to think more establishments,
but Mitch McConnell and others, they'll get their fire whenever
they quote go against the base, and Republican creators generally
are more likely to be able to do that. The Democrats, though,
they all seem to have internalized this thing about Kamala
where protesters and people who spoke out against Kamala and
Biden were nothing but trouble and that that's the reason

(47:40):
that she lost. Folks, It's just not true. It's like
that is What they don't get is that, you know,
Iron Sharpen's Iron going through a deeply competitive, brutal primary
does not weaken the candidate. It actually makes them stronger.
It means that you definitively won the debate. Kamala number one,
literally from the primary to her coronation at the Democratic Party.

(48:05):
Those Gaza people, by the way, get mad at them
all you want. They voted in good faith for Donald
Trump or Jill Stein in the state of Michigan, and
they were the exact margin of victory. Now maybe it
wouldn't have mattered in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin. I know for
a fact one hundred percent, it mattered in the state
of Michigan. So that's on you. That's not on anybody else.
That's not on some protester or anybody else. And that's

(48:28):
where their theory of politics is just dead wrong. I mean,
think about twenty sixteen. For Trump, it was savage and
he won. And not only that he won the election.
Well Obama, Hillary, Yeah, that was true. I mean, the
juggernauts went at each other. Obama got to blow out
victory like.

Speaker 3 (48:44):
That, and he was definitely straight.

Speaker 2 (48:46):
If you watch him the beginning of those debates to
the end, he will strengthened so much by but even
put aside, like the Gaza piece and all of that,
probably the worst mistake that Democrats made.

Speaker 3 (48:57):
Political tactical mistake was circling.

Speaker 2 (48:59):
The wagons around by and keeping out any sort of
actual primary process and descent where his weakness could have
been exposed earlier. You could have ended up with a
much stronger candidate who actually had one a democratic process
and had some sort of democratic mandate behind them. By
circling the wagons and keeping all the descent out, they

(49:20):
led themselves down this disastrous path where them you have
the debate, and we all with the rest of you
know how that history unfolds. So you know, I think
the lesson that Democrats should just shut their mouths and
not ever criticize anything that any Democrat has ever done.
I think that that lesson has I think that has
been one of the single most devastating ideas for the

(49:41):
Democratic Party if you just care about Democrats winning, I
think that has been an utter and complete disaster on
the piece around the future of the Democratic Party too.
For me, there's a battle right now. And this is
why I think that even though you know it's whatever,
it's one dark money group, let's all be really clear.
There's tons of dark money flowing through an ependome. There's

(50:03):
tons on the right Okay, this is not something that's unique.
By the way, a lot of these creators spoke out
against the Tenant media scandal when that happened, which we
did to by the way, because it was gross and
it was corrupt. But you know, they can't see the
problem when it is on their side. But to me,
you know, there's a battle for the future of the
Democratic Party right now. And I don't want to be
overly simplistic about it, but it really is a battle

(50:26):
between is this going to be a party that's run
by billionaires or run by the grassroots?

Speaker 3 (50:30):
Is that you know?

Speaker 2 (50:30):
Is it going to be Zoron or is it going
to be Kamala Harris. Is it going to be Gavin
Newsome or is it going to be someone like a
grand planner who has a true like grassroots behind him.
That's the battle of the Democratic Party right now. And
we saw through the Kamala Harris campaign when she started
relying on you know, the mark Cubans of the world
and this billionaire backed and approved strategy, that's when she

(50:54):
truly sort of nicks it. That's when she truly destroyed
her campaign and made it impossible to win. So I
also see this as a real struggle, because if you're
taking this dark money from a billionaire back to group,
you are laying your chips down on the side. Basically,
we're going to keep doing the same thing we did
in the past. And let me tell you something, if

(51:15):
you consider yourself left of center in any way, you
are not going to win a contest of who has
more billionaires and for whom which party is more comfortable
for those billionaires.

Speaker 3 (51:26):
You have to play a different game.

Speaker 2 (51:28):
And that's why I think that this is really important
and very symbolic of the fights that are going on,
the struggles that are going on within the Democratic Party,
and of course Gaza ties in as well, because that's
an area where you have a lot of organized money
on the side if we're going to be with Israel
no matter what.

Speaker 3 (51:45):
And so it's not the case that none of.

Speaker 2 (51:47):
These influencers in this cohort have said anything about Gaza.
It's not been a complete prohibition, but if you look
at their body of work, there has been notably less
less focus on God than among people who are you know,
much more independent, who really are out there, you know,
saying what they think about what's going.

Speaker 3 (52:07):
On in the world right now.

Speaker 2 (52:11):
Let me go ahead and play for you guys, Brian
a couple of the responses here. Let me go ahead
and start with a portion of Brian Tyler Cohen's response,
which I also have to say, I found these responses
to honestly be kind of shocking in how dishonest they were,
how frankly like Trumpian they were in their character. So

(52:32):
let's go ahead and take a listen to Brian Tyler Cohen,
who again is one of the co founders of course,
so he is actually like at the head of this thing.

Speaker 6 (52:39):
So here's what Chorus is. It is a scholarship program
to teach creators how to grow their accounts, foster engagement,
launch their own shows, and become profitable on their own.
It's an incubator program to build the pro democracy ecosystem.
Influencers and creators have never been more important when it
comes to how Americans are consuming their news. The right
has been doing this for years, and the left needs

(53:00):
to catch up. That's why we're doing this with Chorus.
So let's talk about what Courus is and what it's not.
Chorus does not pay creators for content, does not tell
them what to say, It does not control who they
talk to or work with, And there is absolutely nothing
in the contract that could even be reasonably interpreted to
say that we do period full stop. I don't know
a single creator who would willfully sign up for a

(53:22):
program that would tell them what they can or can't say.
That's not what this program is. We pay people to
show up to workshops and technical trainings to optimize their
content online. For example, we've got trainings on how to
package content for YouTube, trainings on how to optimize audience
retention for Instagram, and TikTok, trainings on how to form
an LLC. There is the implication in the article that

(53:42):
this is some arm of the DNC or the Democratic Party.
We have literally nothing to do with the DNC. I
spend zero minutes of my day thinking about the DNC.
The creators do not toe any party line.

Speaker 1 (53:54):
How could we.

Speaker 6 (53:55):
There isn't a party line. Creators are absolutely allowed to
speak out against the dea Democrats, and in fact plenty do,
and frankly, course creators should and do criticize Democrats when
they suck, and quite often they do suck. Sixteen thirty
Fund is our fiscal sponsor, one of the largest documented
donors to sixteen thirty fund is the same person funding

(54:15):
a Meteor's Reporters and Residence program, which Taylor Lorenz herself
is a part of. And guess what her monthly stipend
is eight thousand dollars per month. So she's criticizing an
entity that is funded by someone that she is currently
taking money from. I guess it's okay when Taylor Lorenz
gets paid, but no one else. There are people like
Taylor Lorenz who are desperate to tear the left apart,

(54:37):
and in fact, it becomes clear who her efforts help
when you hear stuff like this.

Speaker 7 (54:41):
Genuinely, I kind of like Taylor Lorenz because I know
that she actually believes what she says.

Speaker 1 (54:46):
You get what I'm saying.

Speaker 6 (54:47):
So yeah, I generally don't align myself with friends of
Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens.

Speaker 2 (54:52):
Calling Taylor Lorenz a friend of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens.

Speaker 3 (54:57):
Is wild wild. And he opens up this thing.

Speaker 2 (55:01):
It was kind of long, so we like, you know,
clipped it up and didn't play the whole thing and
wanted to give you the pieces where he's doing his
best defense whatever to be fair to him. But he
opens up the whole thing by being like, at the
risk of giving more attention to an Internet troll, you
can say a lot of things about Taylor Lorenz, but
this is a fully reported piece in Wired magazine. He
also spends a lot of time doing like, well, this

(55:22):
person online said this thing about it, which is totally untrue,
and it's like, okay, but you don't actually deal with
the very specific claims that she makes in her report
about the requirement of non disclosure, about the fact that
they're required contractually required to run all of the guests
that they book, all of the government official guests that
they booked through you guys in this like approved channel

(55:43):
that you have to go to daily messaging meetings.

Speaker 3 (55:46):
You don't deal with any of that.

Speaker 2 (55:47):
Instead, you you know, shift the focus to these internet
claims that were untrue rather than the actual reported out pieces.
I want to deal with the piece that he says
here about Pierre A. Midyar, which I think is important
and I listen, I think it's it would be fair to,
you know, question whether Taylor should be taking money from

(56:08):
Pierre Ohmadyar. You know that he has this reporter in
residence training. But here's what's different she was public about that,
and we know who's funding her, and it's you know,
it's on the website and she announced it. That is
very different than a program that you're not allowed to
say you're part of, and you're not allowed to disclose
the funders, and.

Speaker 3 (56:27):
You're supposed to keep it secret. And by the way, we.

Speaker 2 (56:29):
Still don't know who all is funding the sixteen thirty fund.
So I think it's fair there could be criticism of
Taylor there too, but to posture like these are the
exact same things, that is just fundamentally dishonest. And he's
smart enough to know that.

Speaker 1 (56:43):
Well, look, people have there's a four year track record
here of criticizing Taylor. I read the story. I don't
take her word for it, you know. I read the story.
I make sure that it's sourced, and then I see
the response it seems to hold up. I think that's
really what it's all about. So this isn't about Taylor
Lorenz and no great big fan or any of that
over here. I do think it was really dishonest to
be like, well, Candace says, you know that Candace and

(57:05):
Tuckers say that Taylor believes what I actually agree with
that is one thing. I mean, I don't like most
of what Taylor believes, but I do think she actually
yeh know, we could talk about that. It's kind of
a different story. But the question here, and I think
people are like, oh, is this ponderous while we're spending
so much time A lot of you guys are watching
this stuff on the internet, and not enough people talk

(57:27):
about the behind the scenes. So what you just talked
about with MSNBC talked a lot about here our experience
at the Hill, multiple phone calls, problems with coverage because
they could affect advertising, and it's not again, it's not
in the stuff that people would think, like people would
think it's Gazar's sometimes, you know, if it's controversy, it's
really about business. And like that's the stuff that people

(57:47):
don't get, you know, criticizing or creating problems for potential
events with Bank of America or Pharma or TikTok Chinese
advertising where the actual dollars hit the bank. We were
speculating with our staff, like what's the stuff that we
cover that would be a problem. I'll give you a
perfect example. Gambling. The gambling stuff would be a real issue.
If you and I were advertising one hundred percent focus

(58:10):
a serious problem because back in twenty twenty one wouldn't
tho much about it. Maybe, oh, DraftKings, you know, fandled
are offering googles of money, right or Polymarket like some
people out there. By the way, poly Market is now
getting into sports betting, as you covered I think previously, Robinhood.
Any of the so financial services credit cards? How much
do I talk about users credit card rates and stuff

(58:30):
like that on the show. That's not happening? If you're
taking American Express, American Express, the blue Chips, you know brand,
great brand? Who has anything bad to say about it?
I do? Well, that would be an issue I could
go on forever. Man Like in terms of DTC that
we talked about all of these DTC companies Betterhelp I
gave that one. How could you be against therapy? James Lee,
who does segments for US, did a segment about Better

(58:50):
Help that's not happening. If you have a one point
five million dollars a year contract with Better Help, you
would probably sign up for it. And you think it's therapy.
What's so bad about it? Well, maybe something. There's so
many of the examples, like Yes, cash were mattresses and
all that stuff probably wouldn't be an issue, but you
never know, and that's why we don't do it and
have left and I'm not exaggerating millions of dollars on

(59:13):
the table and have created instead an alternative funding structure
which enables us to just do what we want to do.
But not enough people have thought about that, and I
do broadly. I do think that the reason why these
people can't escape criticism is not disclosing who you're getting
paid for. Is the abs scum of the earth behavior
when you are doing public media consumption for other people,

(59:38):
because they have to know. One of the things again
that the mainstream media in them is in ways they're
more transparent who they could take their money from their
public companies. They publish their financials. I know exactly who
CNN gets this money from. And also they'll tell you
during the ad breaks presented to you by fies, presented
to you by American Express or any of these other people.
And that has all kinds of pernicious downstream EFE in

(01:00:00):
a Nome Chomsky sense, but it's very different than actually
getting a direct check wired to you by your bank account.
Mainstream media people are just w two employees. They get
cut a check, which you know, they don't really know
all the all the saws gets made. Yeah, so that's
why this is honestly kind of worse.

Speaker 2 (01:00:13):
It absolutely is, It absolutely is, and it is also
so like you can think about, first of all, we
need to come up with an agreed upon definition of
who gets to call themselves independent media, because if you're
taking dark money from a party aligned superpack, sorry, you're
not independent media. I mean you're just like you can
call yourself something else, but it ain't that the next level,

(01:00:34):
so that's like kind of like the worst level is
you're taking secret party aligned money from billionaires that and
you know, and you're contractually obligated to not disclose. That
is the worst level of you know, potential compromise puts
you the furthest from truly being able to call yourself
independent media.

Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
The next tier is like, Okay, it's funding from these
various corporate entities, but it's disclosed. You're doing the ad
read right, it's up front. That's another level. You're you know,
you're getting sponsorships from this company or that company, and
you're disclosing it. You know, I don't put take any
of these decisions like lightly, because we're really fortunate we
were able to build a business. You know, you guys

(01:01:14):
signed up right away. We're able to fund it really quickly.
You know, we we were we stepped into the breach,
and you guys were there for us. And I know
that that's not going to be the case forever because
Soger and I were already established at the Hill, and
we had the benefit of establishing ourselves at the Hill
when somebody else was paying the overhead before we went
out on our own. So I don't really like, I
don't judge people who are making somewhat different choices than

(01:01:36):
what we are making, but I think transparency has to
be at the core of what you're doing. At the
very least, if you're not in a position to say, listen,
we're not going to talk to any advertisers at all,
which is the position that we have taken to keep
from having to ask ourselves questions about, well, what about
this sponsor versus that sponsor?

Speaker 3 (01:01:53):
Is this ethical?

Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
Whatever?

Speaker 2 (01:01:54):
Is somebody going to think that we're not covering the
story because we're taking money from this place We've just
decided we're putting all of that off the table if
you aren't in the position to make that choice. I
have some sympathy for that. It's just you have to
be transparent, and if you're not, you cannot call yourself
independent media. Like I hope that we can all agree
that that's the case. And that's if you're on the left,

(01:02:16):
if you're on the right. And maybe it's unfair, but
I do think that the left should hold themselves to
a higher standard because we are supposed to be the
people who oppose billionaire influence, who want campaign finance reform,
who want to represent public interests and not have all
of this nefarious dark money that is controlling so much

(01:02:36):
of our politics. So yes, that is your obligation, if
you're going to call yourself someone who is on the left,
is to be more pure than the the Timpools or
whoever taken the tenant media whatever cash they can grab,
because frankly, that's more consistent with their idea. If you're
Ben Shapiro, you know, and your standard is you can
serve and you don't think there's anything wrong with billionaires
and billionaire influence and politics and whatever, that is actually

(01:02:58):
more consistent with your ideology. So I have scorn for
those funding models as well, but I do think if
you're gonna hold yourself out as being on the left,
you do have to meet a higher bar and a
higher standard. And as I said before, you're not gonna
win playing the game of who can get more billionaire dollars.
You're not gonna win that, and you are certainly not
gonna win a movement that delivers for working class people.

(01:03:22):
If you are relying on billionaire funding to get there,
not gonna happen. So that's why I think this is
so important. I want to play a little bit of
There's at least one person in here who is she's
a TikToker. She has been, you know, critical on Gaza.
She's been critical of Andrew Cuomo, of Corey Booker, so
she's gone after Democrats. And she put together her response.

(01:03:45):
She's a member, of course, she's in the chorus, cohort
or incubator as well. She put together part of her response,
and it was amusing to me because she put up
parts of the contract that she claimed were debunking what
Taylor was saying in the article, but actually just fully
confirmed what Taylor had reported out. And then she does

(01:04:06):
the thing that I found so incredibly gross. And there
have been other instances of this in the defense of courus,
where they're once again using identity politics to protect, you know,
to sort of rebut these claims of you know, potential
like corruption and being compromised by this dark money. So

(01:04:26):
let me go ahead and play this B five. Let
me go ahead and play a little bit of those.

Speaker 7 (01:04:29):
In the contract I signed, there is some language that says, hey, please, like,
before you make a public statement about what courses, just
check with us. The reason for that is that, as
the article states, there's over ninety influencers in the program,
many of whom have very small accounts and joined the
program to get like mentorship and happened to be immigrants
or trans in a red state right and like already
happened to be kind of an extra danger right now.
And so the goal with the like, please check with

(01:04:50):
us clause is to make sure that small creators who
already had targets on their back weren't accidentally like featured
on a huge page and then suddenly had an onslought
of threats from the right ors has never been kept.
Some of the fairy secret Right people have been talking
about it. It was more just, hey, this is already
an unsafe job for some people. Check with us in
advance so you don't accidentally like add to someone's on safety.

Speaker 3 (01:05:08):
That doesn't make any sense. Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:05:11):
She's literally saying that they are keeping their dark money
funding secret in order to protect trans creators in red states.

Speaker 3 (01:05:20):
That is her argument. That makes zero sense.

Speaker 2 (01:05:22):
Okay, Now maybe it would make sense to say, hey,
don't talk about the other people who are in the cohort,
but for you yourself, like, how is it protecting a trans
creator or an immigrant in a red state for you
to not talk about your dark money? Funny, I'm having serious,
Hillary twenty sixteen. Yes, identity politics weaponis against the left
flashbacks with all of this, there were other allegations that

(01:05:44):
Taylor was like anti black woman for publishing this, when
they're all, I mean, I'm sure there are black women
in the.

Speaker 3 (01:05:50):
Color there's this lady's appears to be white, Like, there's
all kinds of people. It's just it reminded me of
why it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:57):
Became such a vociferous critic of this type of ideas
of deep politics, because you see the way it is
being weaponized here when you genuinely have these communities that
are under threat, and they're cynically using this to protect
their dark money funding source.

Speaker 3 (01:06:11):
That is disgusting.

Speaker 2 (01:06:12):
And one more thing I'll say about these responses is, again,
if you are on the left, look, I get that
there are I think the best case you can make
for them is basically like, look, the right is doing
this and we just got it. We got to throw
on through. We're dealing with fascism. We've got to throw
off the playbook. And I get it's not ideal, but
we got to fight against fascism in whatever way we can,
and so that's why we're taking the money. None of

(01:06:35):
them even really acknowledge that there's an ethical question here,
and that to me is a real bread But how
can you be call yourself on the left and you're
not even contemplating the ethical dilemmas that are involved here
and explaining, well, I get why it's a problem. Maybe
in another time, but here's why I came down on
the side. No, it just was like all out attacking

(01:06:57):
Taylor Lorenzo's credibility, throwing up she's friends with Candice Owens,
this very aggressive response, there's nothing wrong, we celebrate what
we're doing. We did nothing wrong. There was no moral
ethical dilemma here. We do it again ten times over.
And I find that to be a real red flag
that there wasn't even a willingness to grapple with the

(01:07:17):
clear ethical issues that are involved in taking this type
of secret dark money totally.

Speaker 1 (01:07:23):
And I know you're looking at for the left thing,
but I actually think this is much bigger than you
may even realize, because this is all industry for all
quote unquote independent. If you look in the world of sports,
gambling runs sports. Now, I listen to a really interesting
critique of sports journalism which is actually very similar to
where we are right now. It's not only that gambling

(01:07:46):
sponsors all of the podcasts, it's also that the people
who succeed and the most famous sports journalists are basically
people who tweet whether someone has signed a contract or not,
and they just get the first scoop. In terms of
people who actually uncover information that makes people in power
like very uncomfortable, they are very few and far between.
What is basically being consolidated is that industry and like

(01:08:10):
money and influence, is running the general ecosystem to make
sure that things are positive in almost all cultural areas,
from sports to I mean, here's politics, that's number one.
Finance is another one, by the way, like some of
the biggest finance podcast all in is literally one of
the biggest finance podcasts. I mean, think about that. What
Chamath has like like complex of interest coming out of

(01:08:31):
his eyeballs, Like it's like every single one of these
is ridiculous or Bloomberg or any of these places. I
mean it was like it says in the name Bloomberg,
you think you don't you think you're getting like completely
unfetched CNBC. I think this is actually a funding model
question for quote unquote independent media, where when they're rolled
up basically into the ecosystem, I think they broadly become

(01:08:54):
more corrupt than a lot of the mainstream media, and
trying to make yourself like a separate part of out
of that is just very very few and far between.
The money is hard to say no too, all right.
I mean I'll lay it out for you, and that's
just our show. Think about you know, even the biggest shows.
That's probably tens of millions of dollars. And so for
people to say no to that, you got to have
some real stomach to actually be able to do it

(01:09:16):
or bet on yourself in a different way and be
true to some different values. So yeah, I think that's
why it's important, because that's a view into how it
works for everything. I really do think it's everything.

Speaker 2 (01:09:26):
Yeah, And I just got to say for the people
who sold out for this ship for two hundred and
fifty dollars a month, like, no, that's what are you
doing with your life?

Speaker 1 (01:09:32):
That's actually if.

Speaker 2 (01:09:33):
You're not in the eight thousand dollars a month cohort.
I really don't like the two hundred and fifty dollars
a month.

Speaker 3 (01:09:38):
People like, what is that?

Speaker 1 (01:09:40):
It wasn't Pat? Correct me if I'm wrong. Patman was
taking eight thousand a month? Is that true?

Speaker 2 (01:09:43):
That's the assumption because that's the highest band that you
can be two millies millions.

Speaker 3 (01:09:48):
I mean, that's the thing.

Speaker 1 (01:09:49):
Is just some back of the math math on the
YouTube revenue, right, and we do.

Speaker 2 (01:09:52):
That's what I want people to understand too, is like
we have left There's no doubt we've left millions on
the tape by not doing aurae. There's no doubt about it.
But guess what, guys, we're doing fine. We are doing fine,
Like we are able to like have a good life.
We pay a paper well, you know, when they answer
a raise, we're like giving them more of that. We're
doing you know, we're doing just fine over here. We're
able to build this new set all of that, so

(01:10:15):
it doesn't require selling out to some dark money superpack
to be able to make it.

Speaker 3 (01:10:20):
And again, look, I get it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:21):
Sager and I were both established before we had the
Hill all of that, so we did have some advantages.
I don't want to deny that, but.

Speaker 3 (01:10:27):
You know Kyle didn't and he's he's doing good too. Right,
it's you.

Speaker 2 (01:10:30):
Don't have to take this money, and if there is money,
you have to disclose it. That's my that's really to me.
The most key piece is Soger and I. As much
as we've set our business up to insulate ourselves from
any sort of corporate or political pressures, we still are
human beings that are going to run into biases. Sager
is friends with Jadie Vance, right, I'm friends with Kyle,

(01:10:53):
So I'm not going to be criticizing him.

Speaker 3 (01:10:54):
You know, he's my husband.

Speaker 2 (01:10:56):
I'm not gonna be criticizing him as another creator if
he does something you disagree with. But when people know
these instances, people know that worst front about it. And
that's the thing is, Look, we're all human beings. None
of us are going to be able to exist in
the world fully and completely free of bias. But when
you run into something that is a clear conflict of

(01:11:17):
interest and clear bias, or there is money that is
being paid to you that could potentially impact your views
and your coverage, you have to disclose it. That to
me is like the most central piece, and then you
know other decisions that are made around that. I think
there are better and worse decisions that can be made there.
But if you aren't being upfront about where your funding

(01:11:38):
is coming from, I think that is I think that
is a real mistake, and I think it's a real
ethical redline.

Speaker 1 (01:11:43):
You know, by the way, it's not just you know,
anytime we cover somebody or where I'll be like, look,
full disclosure, met them for dinner friends, You know what
I'm saying. You think I enjoy doing that. It's embarrassing sometimes,
but you got to do it, I mean, because otherwise,
how much worse would it look to do the coverage
to say something favorable and then some photo or whatever
comes out of the two eight. It looks horrible, so

(01:12:05):
like that's what these people are in that position. So anyway,
you got to try and hold yourself up to an
ethical standard. That's why we spend a lot of time
on it because again, I know a lot of people
watch the show, consume a lot of stuff, you know,
on the internet, and I do think people should ask
bigger questions. And this isn't just politics, it's it genuinely
is all industries. And I'm assuming that a lot. I
really think it has never been worse than I don't

(01:12:27):
think it's ever actually been worse as bad as the
mainstream media was, because they still have a lot of
power and a lot of the grifters are the ones
who are succeeding the most, which means that both sides
of this, of the spectrum of like what you're consuming
is more than likely like bought, paid for, shaped or
whatever in some way. And that's that's the real.

Speaker 2 (01:12:45):
We need you guys to be discerning consumers and who
you're you know, if you want to support independent media,
truly support places that are actually independent media, because yeah,
we're headed towards a worse cesspool than with mainstream media,
and that was already a pretty low bar.

Speaker 7 (01:13:00):
The PA

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