June 27, 2025 • 23 mins
In this episode, Karol interviews Matt Palumbo, author of books on the Soros family, discussing the influence of George and Alex Soros on global politics, particularly in Albania. They explore the ideological differences between the two, the complexities of Soros' funding, and the impact on U.S. relations. Palumbo shares insights from his investigative journalism journey and offers life lessons on personal growth and consistency. The Karol Markowicz Show is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Wednesday & Friday.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hi, Welcome back to the Carol Marcowitch Show on iHeartRadio.
My guest today is Matt Plumbo, author of several books,
including The Man Behind the Curtain, Inside the Secret Network
of George Soros, and the upcoming book The Air Inside
the Not So Secret Network of Alex Soros.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
I met, so nice to have you on.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Yeah, thank you so much for having me on.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
So the Soros family up to no good.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
It sounds like a bunch of jerks, those sorrows people,
for sure. Yeah. I've been interested in the father George
since I think I around twenty ten, back when I
was in high school watching Glenn Beck's show and he
would break out all the Soros connections and it was
sort of yeah, you know, on my radar since then.
And then in twenty twenty one, my publisher pitched an
(00:47):
idea of why don't you dive into the Soros sphere
and try to make a book out of it? And
I thought, well, I know that I remember that guy
from like it's eleven or so years prior, so I
you know, started investigating him then, and it became the
only thing I wrote about that anyone really cared about.
So I just decided all right, ex this is you know,
I'll be the Soros guy from now on. But it
(01:07):
culminated it in a book, and that book probably got
me more opportunities than anything else I've ever written. It
really helped me break into Fox and then you know,
other media appearances through you know, other people who had
seen me there. And now a number of years has
gone by. It's been I guess four years since I
started writing that book. And then I decided, all right,
(01:27):
let's look him to Alex do that he's taken over.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
What do people misunderstand about the Sorrows Family.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Well, I don't really think much. Actually, it's one of
those rare cases where you can be in the Internet
comment section and there's something that looks like, you know,
a schizophrenic, conspiratorial comment about Sorrows, and then you look
into it and you're like, it's just ninety five percent accurate.
All right, you know, there's some random capitalization in there.
We could work on it, but besides that, you're totally right. No,
(01:53):
he he really is. You know, the left calls him
a boogeyman and you know, mocking us, but I call
a boogeyman because that's what the evidence suggests he is.
He's given thirty two billion dollars of his own money
to his so called Opens Society Foundation, of which twenty
five billion is being left to Alex. And that doesn't
(02:14):
mean he's only spent the difference obviously, that down what's
growing money and so on and so forth, and sorrows
the father seven billion still in his own name. But yeah,
it's quite the empire. And it's you know, even beyond
the money, he has a return on influence with just
knowing every politician out there. In the book about George,
(02:36):
I went through every person who was either a board
member of a Soros founded or heavily funded organization, and
what news organizations they've also been on the board of.
And it's basically, yeah, basically everything minus Fox Newsmax and
the Carol Mark Winz Show.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
We can assure you of.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
That, yes, guarantee.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Do you find that Alex is an ideologue.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Like his father, Like George Soros really believes in this stuff.
It's not like he just you know, found a way
to be famous, I think, right.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
I mean, you could correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
He really does believe in not penalizing criminals or all
the other kind of leftist causes that he takes up.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Is Alex the same, so he is more I guess pragmatic.
We could say in that there was a recent New
York magazine article about Alex that actually made him look
worse than I was expecting.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
God that was I don't.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Know why they did it dirty. They did it dirty,
but he kind of deserved it. But they were talking
about how, under George Soros's leadership, you know, the sort
of mission statement of the Open Society vision which was
outlined by a philosopher named Carl Popper that George studied
under everything would be viewed in that prism of how
does it conform to this? How does it advance of
(03:54):
this right? Alex is much more general. Does it advance
or interests or not? I don't care if it's through
this prism, you know it would you know, sort of
like how you know, people with more libertarian views might
start with the question of does this fit in the
libertarian framework as opposed to does it help my end goal,
even if the end goal itself is libertarian. Kind Of
(04:14):
in that way, I guess I would say, so Alex
is less constrained by that philosophy than his father, although
he wants to advance the same thing. He's just not
going to handicap himself, you know, in anywhere or box
himself in.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Does that make him more dangerous? It seems like it might.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
So I argue that you know, at the bare minimum,
he's as radical as his father, and that I think
everything in the Open Society Foundation is doing will continue
on autopilot. Although I don't know if he can be
as dangerous because he leaves a paper trail, and I
don't know if it's like that quote from The Big
Short where he says, you know, they're not confessing, they're bragging.
(04:55):
But every single thing he does, he puts there on
social media, where I think that helped so much with
the book, where.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
I just follow the tweets, I just I went through.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
I felt like I almost felt like I was like
a cyberstalker. But I went through every single photo he
had uploaded to his Facebook, and it there was so
much things I would have never looked into, Like I'm like,
all right, he's talking to the former Prime Minister of
North Macedonia, Let's see what happened there, and and I
would just sort of look into what was his father
(05:27):
doing there, And even if there were things that weren't
reported on in our media, I would just google, like
what are the top twenty publications in X, y and
Z foreign country, and I would get the articles translated,
and there was like a wealth of information in foreign
countries that no one had really reported on in America.
I got almost a twenty thousand word chapter about Albania,
(05:47):
and I'm like, I didn't know this country. I know
it's the country four or five years ago, and now
I'm like, this is bamaranhit Soros guy. But no, he
left a pretty big trail for me. And I do wonder,
you know, is that a hundred percent of who is
meeting or is it fifty? Is a ten percent? I
mean that's the bare minimum.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Right.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
He is a millennial, so it's like he does feel
like he has to tell everybody everything on his social media.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
So it does make sense. So what did go down
in Albania? Give us a preview.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
So it's a lengthy story. Dates back action to the
fall of communism. The dictatorship of Enverhosier fell. A different
socialist communist took his place, but they ended up holding
free elections. So the group that ended up winning the
first elections was the Albanian Democratic Party, which is actually
the right wing party in Albania. They have a a
(06:40):
Republican Party and a Democratic Party, and the Republican Party
is actually a tribute to our GOP and they're both
right wing parties and college yeah, which I just thought
it was like an interesting, you know, historical fact. But
the current party right now is the Socialist Party that
has ruled for the past I think sixteen or so
years that the Socialist Party splintered out of the former
(07:01):
rule in Communist at Party, but it's taken over anyway.
That the guy who leads the country out of socialism
is a guy named Sally Burusha. I had a lot
of access to him, which was pretty cool because of
the first book, and he helped me a lot with
this one, and I kind of got, you know, his
side of the store, and he was saying that, you know,
Sourus came in very early, and you know, we were
the third rich, porest country in the entire world at
(07:23):
the time, you know, more poor than most African countries.
You know, we just you know, what we typically think
of as the poorest, but the third poorest in the
entire world, and this guy has all this money, so yeah,
of course we're going to take the money. You know,
why wouldn't we when we have absolutely nothing. So one
of the biggest things he was funding there though, was schools,
and it got to the point where by the mid
(07:43):
two thousands, and the Education minister at the time told
me there was a joke that George Soros was the
real Ministry of Education because more than half of all
the schools the kids are being educated at were run
by the Open Society Foundation or funded by them. But
going back to the so Borisia tells me, you know,
we're happy with all the money, but then we're realizing
(08:04):
there is a Yeah, the strongs are attached, and they're
pushing like his LGBT ideology in a historically Muslim country
that has no interest in it whatsoever, and just all
these things. So they end up having a falling out
and it was you know, they've kind of traded blows
back and forth in the media. But but anyway, you
(08:26):
fast forward to the Biden administration and one of the
first things that George sort that Anthony Blincoln did was
past sanctions against Baritia and dan him from the country.
And Berisha. Their belief is that Eddie Rama and Soros.
Edie Rama is a Socialist Party leader who is another
rival of Barisia, and he is very close friends with Alex.
(08:49):
They post photos of each other on social media. There
are more photos of them together than any other politician
anywhere on his page. So anyway, so sanctions to get
passed against Buritia, there is no explanation of They just
say collection, but there's no details. Lee Zelden has inquired
written to the State Department, I think four or so
times saying please just send us the file on why
(09:10):
a rub ended up undoing these. By the way, but
Anthony Blincoln himself George Sorow started a colors called Central
European University back in the nineties. There is an archive
like a library type archive near one of the campuses,
and it's named after Anthony Blinkol's Terrence because they were
very heavy donors to it. So there's a clear connection there.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
It just seemed like the out of nowhere they're they're dragged.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Into this, correct. Correct. So one of the effects though
that that had was within the Democratic Party there were
factions for and against Barcia, some saying this is total bs,
it's Soros, it's Rama, this is nonsense, and they were
for him, and maybe like thirty or forty percent said well,
we can't have a leader who's under sanctions, especially with
(09:56):
the US ally, So it's splinter the Democratic Party into
multiple parties. Now there is a parliamentary system in Albania,
meaning you don't vote for people, you vote for parties.
So you know, in theory, if you get five percent
of the vote, your party gets five percent of the seats,
and then you have a party list and you count
down however many seats that is, and they get sad.
(10:17):
So a lot of these very fragments of the Democratic
Party were siphoning off voters share in the last election,
but they weren't getting enough votes to get seats because
it was a minimum threshold of a couple percent. So
there's a lot of these wasted votes that helped boost
the Socialist Party and it, I mean, I think it
was the Democratic Party's worst ever defeat was just last May,
(10:38):
and part of it was because they fractured the party.
And actually one of the things I missed and there's
actually I should have led, but this in the middle
was similar to our justice system. The Open Society Foundation
pushed constitutional reform and albeitia under the Socialist government, and
you know, the end effect of it was, actually it
(11:00):
actually should say, this isn't a conspiracy. The OSF has
documents that outline everything they had done and all their
suggestions and all that. So it's a known fact that
the Socialist Party worked with George Soros on this, but
the end of fact was basically ninety percent of all
state institutions are now controlled by the Socialist Party. Then
they started a group called SPACK, which is like an
(11:20):
anti corruption unit and it it does they have made
high profile arrests of Socialist leaders. It's just overwhelmingly disproportionately
goes after opponents of the Socialist government, and it's sort
of like they target their own, but only selectively, so
(11:40):
like there've been people very close to Eddie Rama who
are known to be corrupt and they get looked into
and then nothing happens. But anyway, that was the group
that ended up supplying our State Department with the charges
against Boristia. So that's where they came from, and they
were born out of a George Soros funded organization and
what else, East West Management Institute actually a lot of
(12:01):
people didn't know what that group was, but it made
a lot of headlines that you know, when people say
George Soros got two hundred and seventy million from us AID, right,
almost all of that, like two fifty million plus was
that one group. And they are run by a woman
named Delina Fiso, who is Eddie Rama, the socialist leader's
ex wife. Sore on good terms. Yeah, so they're good,
(12:25):
you know, and I assume they're on good terms. But yeah,
so just a lot of these little connections I kept
finding and I'm like, well, that's interesting and a lot
of weird thing's going on here.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Is it hard to get people to understand all of it?
Because look, you just told us, like one, just one
small bit of the Soros funding and corruption and and
you know, ideology pushing, and it's a lot, I mean,
even just following just this Albania stories a lot.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Is it difficult to get people to see.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Kind of the web that the Soros family has weaved
across the world that really does have them influencing so
many different facets of society, not just in America but
across the world.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Well, I know it has to be because there were
parts of my own book where I was getting confused
at times, or I'm like, wait, was this the guy
who did that? Or the guy who did this? Especially
in a foreign country where it's not like it's not
Joe Smith, it's like Dmitri Ivanovitch, I'm like, is he
the that guy? Yeah? So there are few parts in
the book where I have a float chart annot hated
saying who's who, who did what?
Speaker 1 (13:30):
So, yes, and I wrote the novels all have the
flow so that you can follow it we're talking about here.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Yeah, Yeah, that's why I think the written word is
the best form, just you can reread stuff. But yeah,
there are times where when I'm explaining something on TV
or in a show, like to me, the script is
all played out in my head, but I know it
as someone watching. If you miss a detail here and there,
it probably makes everything very confusing, right, Yes, I totally
(14:00):
get it. But yeah, that's one of the good things.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
But having it root, We're going to take a quick
break and be right back on the Carol Markowitz Show.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Did you always want to be an investigative journalist?
Speaker 3 (14:13):
I wanted to be just a TV pundit for sure.
I kind of knew from age fourteen or fifteen, I
would never be happy in life if that wasn't what
I did really, you know, and I just decided, all right,
well how do I achieve this? And it seemed like
everyone had a book. So when I was sixteen, it's
the first thing I started doing was drafting a book.
The first three went absolutely nowhere. I probably sold I
(14:37):
don't know, five hundred copies are less, which you know,
the return on you know, the amount of hours that
teaks is you know, seemingly depressing. But it got my
foot in the door for a lot bigger opportunities. And
you know, when you go to apply for a writing
job and you have a book, even if no one
read it, still you're at the top of the list. Yeah. Yeah,
So it was one of those things where actually I
(15:00):
heard this saying it was I don't know if it's
like a parable where you know, a guy is talking
to he gets his pictured on by a street artist
in New York City and the guy says, you know,
it's going to be a hundred bucks. And the guy
says one hundred bucks or thirty minutes of your time,
and he goes, no, it was it was ten thousand
hours and thirty minutes of Time's right. That's kind of
the principle is you have to do a lot of
things up front that seem to have no payoff, but
(15:23):
then when it does payoff, you realize, oh, well, I
would have never been here if it wasn't for everything
before it.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
What do you worry about the unknown?
Speaker 3 (15:31):
So I think there are sort of known unknowns, and
those are things that are inevitable in life. Like you know,
on a long enough timeline, everyone is probably going to
be have an unexpected job loss or something at some point,
and I try to hedge against everything like that, and
you know, in whatever realm of life. But the known
unknowns are things like, you know, someone getting into a
(15:53):
car accident or just some low probability event. And you know,
I know you and I I think are both poker players,
and we know that uh five percent are basically in
the same number for some reason. So yeah, just things
like that that you cannot control. It's absolutely not like
things like even if I was the best driver in
the in the world, like I can't control someone else
(16:14):
driving draws or things like that. So just any unknown
unknown really.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Has poker helped you at all in your work, do
you feel like you could read people better?
Speaker 3 (16:23):
I don't know. I'm I'm I don't know if I'm
good or not? Is the thing like whatever, I'm not good?
Speaker 2 (16:28):
I feel like it's helpful. I feel like it's helpful
in my everyday life, Like I feel like I can.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Read people in a way that and I don't know
if I could read people and that's why I was
pretty good at poker or you know, the poker skill
is what I use in life.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
But that definitely has helped.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
It made me realize you have to bluff in life.
And I don't know, it's like you have to realize,
like when does the bluff make sense? Like if you're
gonna make a leg, if you're gonna make a legal threat,
it's like, well, in theory, if you have a legal case,
you just do it anyway, So does it make as
much sense of there? But if I can't think we
know the scenario. But but there are just times where
(17:05):
you strategically you have to kind of bs in life
to get with you to RaSE.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Sometimes you get to fold.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
Sometimes yeah if you know what to fold, yeah, yeah, no,
it definitely is a poker is sort of a metaphor
for life in different ways.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
For sure. I used to keep a running list of
all the ways that it was. But then a professional
poker player set out as a dork and to stop
doing that.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Place it's the only profession where you can lose money
and be a pro.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
What advice would you give your sixteen year old self? Like,
what would Matt Palumbo of sixteen years old need to know?
Speaker 3 (17:41):
I would say that whoever said high school is the
best four years of your life is a total loser.
So it's the worst saying I've ever heard. You know,
whatever you want in life, to start working towards it now.
There is there is no benefit in holding off in anything.
And this could be something like you know, if you think,
oh I should eat better or drink less. You know,
if you're telling yourself I'll do it next week, well
(18:03):
twenty years from now, it's not gonna like what are
you going to think back and be like, thank god
I waited that extra week? No, if you want to,
I don't know. If you want to learn a foreign language,
like just to start now, what's the point in waiting?
I remember it was a story from a friend who's
it was like on the fence about being a doctor.
(18:24):
Like his mother was like, you know, you really should
go for it, and he's like, yeah, but it's gonna
take eight years, and she says, well, eight years is
going to pass anyway, Like you're gonna okay, so eight
years ago not a doctor who you are, Like, the
time doesn't make a difference, it's gonna happen.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
So basically that's very.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Good, so just start everything today. There is And also
whenever you don't feel like doing something for some reason
is when you should do it. Like if you're on
the couch and you're feeling lazy and you're like, the
last thing I want to do is go to the gym.
For some reason, going to the gym feels better when
you do that. And I guess the last thing would
be consistency with anything. And this is more of a
(19:01):
mental thing, but like I'm trying to learn a foreign
language right now, and I'm learning that Albanian. Oh yeah,
that makes my wife is fluent in it, and I'm
learning I'm learning a different dialect though than her, so
we might well both speak it and like barely be
able to talk to each other, but I try to
you know, section off thirty minutes to an hour a day,
(19:22):
and I have an app on my phone that kind
of gamifies it. But even if I can't do that,
if I have, if I'm waiting in line for three
minutes and I know that's all that's free time, I'm
gonna have I bust out the app and just do
it while I'm waiting, like just to have mentally that
I was able to do it every day in a row.
For some reason, when when I reset that timer, the
(19:44):
incentive to then do it, it's as if I'm starting
from zero. That might just be my psychology, but I
don't know. I just feel like repetition and and I
don't know, it's like having a high score in your head.
Sort of Albanian that is, I've been studying it for years,
but I've been only doing.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Not related to the sorrow story.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
We're talking about the book in twenty twenty two. So
I took maybe ten hours of lessons before I went there,
and then after I figured like, I'm not ever going back,
so what's the point. And then I coincidentally met a
woman who's Albanian that you know, so so I kind
of started going hard on it. Again. So I, you know,
(20:23):
met up with my old tutor and she's like, do
you have a thing for a yeah, and I'm like, no,
it's just a coincidence. But you know, I guess we do.
But so I don't. I think I'd probably a lot,
like one hundred hours of online lessons and then a
lot of it. Just like when I'm playing poker, I
just have a lection on in the background, and I
don't know how much of that I pick up, but
(20:44):
better than nothing. I just I kind of learned at
least one word a day basically, you know, if you know,
if I have no time for anything, it's just or all.
Even like when I'm looking around the house, I'm like,
all right, I don't know what paper towel is called.
They'llo get up later. Like I just try to identify
every particle of so little thing I try to look up.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
But why wouldn't you learn the same dialect as your wife?
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Because hers is so she's from Kosovo, which was part
of Serbia for a while but always an autonomous region,
and the dialect that she speaks is more of like
a sort of rural mountain countryside dialect that not very
many people speak. And I speak that's the most common
It's called gag. It's the most commonly dialect, exactly like Shakespeare.
(21:29):
But the biggest city in Kosovo, her home country, speaks
the same. So she told me, and this is her words.
She said, it's like speaking like the Geto version. But
good bye. So I don't know, I guess that's awesome.
It's I don't I'm kind of enjoying it. I don't know.
I just feel like it's I don't know, like more
(21:49):
impressive than learning like a commonly spoken language, even though it's.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
You know, you're still learning one, definitely, And the fact
that you and your wife will speak different dialects of
it is really.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Will speak Yes English and then two different versions.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
For being mean, well, I love this conversation. You are
super interesting. This has been really excellent.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Leave us here with a tip from my listeners on
how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
I mean, I guess, don't get advice when people like
me could be something.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
No, don't learn Albanian in a different dialect from your order.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
I mean, to be honest, it's probably not the best
use of your time. Channel that to self improvement in
another way. I don't know, I think a lot of
the stuff I said earlier probably factors into that. You know,
be consistent, set goals, start everything now. If you don't
feel like doing something, do it anyway. And I mean
that when it's you know, something good, not you know
not not. If you don't feel doing this, if you
(22:42):
don't feel like doing evil, don't do that. Anything that
you know is something you should be doing but don't
feel like, just do it. And yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
And also pre order my book, yes, pre order is
his name is Matt Plumbo is fantastic. The book is
called The Air Inside the Not So Seek Network of
Alex Soros.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Pre Order it now anywhere you buy your books. Thank
you so much for coming on, Matt.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
My pleasure went very fast.
Hi, Welcome back to the Carol Marcowitch Show on iHeartRadio.
My guest today is Matt Plumbo, author of several books,
including The Man Behind the Curtain, Inside the Secret Network
of George Soros, and the upcoming book The Air Inside
the Not So Secret Network of Alex Soros.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
I met, so nice to have you on.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Yeah, thank you so much for having me on.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
So the Soros family up to no good.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
It sounds like a bunch of jerks, those sorrows people,
for sure. Yeah. I've been interested in the father George
since I think I around twenty ten, back when I
was in high school watching Glenn Beck's show and he
would break out all the Soros connections and it was
sort of yeah, you know, on my radar since then.
And then in twenty twenty one, my publisher pitched an
(00:47):
idea of why don't you dive into the Soros sphere
and try to make a book out of it? And
I thought, well, I know that I remember that guy
from like it's eleven or so years prior, so I
you know, started investigating him then, and it became the
only thing I wrote about that anyone really cared about.
So I just decided all right, ex this is you know,
I'll be the Soros guy from now on. But it
(01:07):
culminated it in a book, and that book probably got
me more opportunities than anything else I've ever written. It
really helped me break into Fox and then you know,
other media appearances through you know, other people who had
seen me there. And now a number of years has
gone by. It's been I guess four years since I
started writing that book. And then I decided, all right,
(01:27):
let's look him to Alex do that he's taken over.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
What do people misunderstand about the Sorrows Family.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Well, I don't really think much. Actually, it's one of
those rare cases where you can be in the Internet
comment section and there's something that looks like, you know,
a schizophrenic, conspiratorial comment about Sorrows, and then you look
into it and you're like, it's just ninety five percent accurate.
All right, you know, there's some random capitalization in there.
We could work on it, but besides that, you're totally right. No,
(01:53):
he he really is. You know, the left calls him
a boogeyman and you know, mocking us, but I call
a boogeyman because that's what the evidence suggests he is.
He's given thirty two billion dollars of his own money
to his so called Opens Society Foundation, of which twenty
five billion is being left to Alex. And that doesn't
(02:14):
mean he's only spent the difference obviously, that down what's
growing money and so on and so forth, and sorrows
the father seven billion still in his own name. But yeah,
it's quite the empire. And it's you know, even beyond
the money, he has a return on influence with just
knowing every politician out there. In the book about George,
(02:36):
I went through every person who was either a board
member of a Soros founded or heavily funded organization, and
what news organizations they've also been on the board of.
And it's basically, yeah, basically everything minus Fox Newsmax and
the Carol Mark Winz Show.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
We can assure you of.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
That, yes, guarantee.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Do you find that Alex is an ideologue.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Like his father, Like George Soros really believes in this stuff.
It's not like he just you know, found a way
to be famous, I think, right.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
I mean, you could correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
He really does believe in not penalizing criminals or all
the other kind of leftist causes that he takes up.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Is Alex the same, so he is more I guess pragmatic.
We could say in that there was a recent New
York magazine article about Alex that actually made him look
worse than I was expecting.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
God that was I don't.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Know why they did it dirty. They did it dirty,
but he kind of deserved it. But they were talking
about how, under George Soros's leadership, you know, the sort
of mission statement of the Open Society vision which was
outlined by a philosopher named Carl Popper that George studied
under everything would be viewed in that prism of how
does it conform to this? How does it advance of
(03:54):
this right? Alex is much more general. Does it advance
or interests or not? I don't care if it's through
this prism, you know it would you know, sort of
like how you know, people with more libertarian views might
start with the question of does this fit in the
libertarian framework as opposed to does it help my end goal,
even if the end goal itself is libertarian. Kind Of
(04:14):
in that way, I guess I would say, so Alex
is less constrained by that philosophy than his father, although
he wants to advance the same thing. He's just not
going to handicap himself, you know, in anywhere or box
himself in.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Does that make him more dangerous? It seems like it might.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
So I argue that you know, at the bare minimum,
he's as radical as his father, and that I think
everything in the Open Society Foundation is doing will continue
on autopilot. Although I don't know if he can be
as dangerous because he leaves a paper trail, and I
don't know if it's like that quote from The Big
Short where he says, you know, they're not confessing, they're bragging.
(04:55):
But every single thing he does, he puts there on
social media, where I think that helped so much with
the book, where.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
I just follow the tweets, I just I went through.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
I felt like I almost felt like I was like
a cyberstalker. But I went through every single photo he
had uploaded to his Facebook, and it there was so
much things I would have never looked into, Like I'm like,
all right, he's talking to the former Prime Minister of
North Macedonia, Let's see what happened there, and and I
would just sort of look into what was his father
(05:27):
doing there, And even if there were things that weren't
reported on in our media, I would just google, like
what are the top twenty publications in X, y and
Z foreign country, and I would get the articles translated,
and there was like a wealth of information in foreign
countries that no one had really reported on in America.
I got almost a twenty thousand word chapter about Albania,
(05:47):
and I'm like, I didn't know this country. I know
it's the country four or five years ago, and now
I'm like, this is bamaranhit Soros guy. But no, he
left a pretty big trail for me. And I do wonder,
you know, is that a hundred percent of who is
meeting or is it fifty? Is a ten percent? I
mean that's the bare minimum.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Right.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
He is a millennial, so it's like he does feel
like he has to tell everybody everything on his social media.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
So it does make sense. So what did go down
in Albania? Give us a preview.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
So it's a lengthy story. Dates back action to the
fall of communism. The dictatorship of Enverhosier fell. A different
socialist communist took his place, but they ended up holding
free elections. So the group that ended up winning the
first elections was the Albanian Democratic Party, which is actually
the right wing party in Albania. They have a a
(06:40):
Republican Party and a Democratic Party, and the Republican Party
is actually a tribute to our GOP and they're both
right wing parties and college yeah, which I just thought
it was like an interesting, you know, historical fact. But
the current party right now is the Socialist Party that
has ruled for the past I think sixteen or so
years that the Socialist Party splintered out of the former
(07:01):
rule in Communist at Party, but it's taken over anyway.
That the guy who leads the country out of socialism
is a guy named Sally Burusha. I had a lot
of access to him, which was pretty cool because of
the first book, and he helped me a lot with
this one, and I kind of got, you know, his
side of the store, and he was saying that, you know,
Sourus came in very early, and you know, we were
the third rich, porest country in the entire world at
(07:23):
the time, you know, more poor than most African countries.
You know, we just you know, what we typically think
of as the poorest, but the third poorest in the
entire world, and this guy has all this money, so yeah,
of course we're going to take the money. You know,
why wouldn't we when we have absolutely nothing. So one
of the biggest things he was funding there though, was schools,
and it got to the point where by the mid
(07:43):
two thousands, and the Education minister at the time told
me there was a joke that George Soros was the
real Ministry of Education because more than half of all
the schools the kids are being educated at were run
by the Open Society Foundation or funded by them. But
going back to the so Borisia tells me, you know,
we're happy with all the money, but then we're realizing
(08:04):
there is a Yeah, the strongs are attached, and they're
pushing like his LGBT ideology in a historically Muslim country
that has no interest in it whatsoever, and just all
these things. So they end up having a falling out
and it was you know, they've kind of traded blows
back and forth in the media. But but anyway, you
(08:26):
fast forward to the Biden administration and one of the
first things that George sort that Anthony Blincoln did was
past sanctions against Baritia and dan him from the country.
And Berisha. Their belief is that Eddie Rama and Soros.
Edie Rama is a Socialist Party leader who is another
rival of Barisia, and he is very close friends with Alex.
(08:49):
They post photos of each other on social media. There
are more photos of them together than any other politician
anywhere on his page. So anyway, so sanctions to get
passed against Buritia, there is no explanation of They just
say collection, but there's no details. Lee Zelden has inquired
written to the State Department, I think four or so
times saying please just send us the file on why
(09:10):
a rub ended up undoing these. By the way, but
Anthony Blincoln himself George Sorow started a colors called Central
European University back in the nineties. There is an archive
like a library type archive near one of the campuses,
and it's named after Anthony Blinkol's Terrence because they were
very heavy donors to it. So there's a clear connection there.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
It just seemed like the out of nowhere they're they're dragged.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Into this, correct. Correct. So one of the effects though
that that had was within the Democratic Party there were
factions for and against Barcia, some saying this is total bs,
it's Soros, it's Rama, this is nonsense, and they were
for him, and maybe like thirty or forty percent said well,
we can't have a leader who's under sanctions, especially with
(09:56):
the US ally, So it's splinter the Democratic Party into
multiple parties. Now there is a parliamentary system in Albania,
meaning you don't vote for people, you vote for parties.
So you know, in theory, if you get five percent
of the vote, your party gets five percent of the seats,
and then you have a party list and you count
down however many seats that is, and they get sad.
(10:17):
So a lot of these very fragments of the Democratic
Party were siphoning off voters share in the last election,
but they weren't getting enough votes to get seats because
it was a minimum threshold of a couple percent. So
there's a lot of these wasted votes that helped boost
the Socialist Party and it, I mean, I think it
was the Democratic Party's worst ever defeat was just last May,
(10:38):
and part of it was because they fractured the party.
And actually one of the things I missed and there's
actually I should have led, but this in the middle
was similar to our justice system. The Open Society Foundation
pushed constitutional reform and albeitia under the Socialist government, and
you know, the end effect of it was, actually it
(11:00):
actually should say, this isn't a conspiracy. The OSF has
documents that outline everything they had done and all their
suggestions and all that. So it's a known fact that
the Socialist Party worked with George Soros on this, but
the end of fact was basically ninety percent of all
state institutions are now controlled by the Socialist Party. Then
they started a group called SPACK, which is like an
(11:20):
anti corruption unit and it it does they have made
high profile arrests of Socialist leaders. It's just overwhelmingly disproportionately
goes after opponents of the Socialist government, and it's sort
of like they target their own, but only selectively, so
(11:40):
like there've been people very close to Eddie Rama who
are known to be corrupt and they get looked into
and then nothing happens. But anyway, that was the group
that ended up supplying our State Department with the charges
against Boristia. So that's where they came from, and they
were born out of a George Soros funded organization and
what else, East West Management Institute actually a lot of
(12:01):
people didn't know what that group was, but it made
a lot of headlines that you know, when people say
George Soros got two hundred and seventy million from us AID, right,
almost all of that, like two fifty million plus was
that one group. And they are run by a woman
named Delina Fiso, who is Eddie Rama, the socialist leader's
ex wife. Sore on good terms. Yeah, so they're good,
(12:25):
you know, and I assume they're on good terms. But yeah,
so just a lot of these little connections I kept
finding and I'm like, well, that's interesting and a lot
of weird thing's going on here.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Is it hard to get people to understand all of it?
Because look, you just told us, like one, just one
small bit of the Soros funding and corruption and and
you know, ideology pushing, and it's a lot, I mean,
even just following just this Albania stories a lot.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Is it difficult to get people to see.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Kind of the web that the Soros family has weaved
across the world that really does have them influencing so
many different facets of society, not just in America but
across the world.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Well, I know it has to be because there were
parts of my own book where I was getting confused
at times, or I'm like, wait, was this the guy
who did that? Or the guy who did this? Especially
in a foreign country where it's not like it's not
Joe Smith, it's like Dmitri Ivanovitch, I'm like, is he
the that guy? Yeah? So there are few parts in
the book where I have a float chart annot hated
saying who's who, who did what?
Speaker 1 (13:30):
So, yes, and I wrote the novels all have the
flow so that you can follow it we're talking about here.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Yeah, Yeah, that's why I think the written word is
the best form, just you can reread stuff. But yeah,
there are times where when I'm explaining something on TV
or in a show, like to me, the script is
all played out in my head, but I know it
as someone watching. If you miss a detail here and there,
it probably makes everything very confusing, right, Yes, I totally
(14:00):
get it. But yeah, that's one of the good things.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
But having it root, We're going to take a quick
break and be right back on the Carol Markowitz Show.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Did you always want to be an investigative journalist?
Speaker 3 (14:13):
I wanted to be just a TV pundit for sure.
I kind of knew from age fourteen or fifteen, I
would never be happy in life if that wasn't what
I did really, you know, and I just decided, all right,
well how do I achieve this? And it seemed like
everyone had a book. So when I was sixteen, it's
the first thing I started doing was drafting a book.
The first three went absolutely nowhere. I probably sold I
(14:37):
don't know, five hundred copies are less, which you know,
the return on you know, the amount of hours that
teaks is you know, seemingly depressing. But it got my
foot in the door for a lot bigger opportunities. And
you know, when you go to apply for a writing
job and you have a book, even if no one
read it, still you're at the top of the list. Yeah. Yeah,
So it was one of those things where actually I
(15:00):
heard this saying it was I don't know if it's
like a parable where you know, a guy is talking
to he gets his pictured on by a street artist
in New York City and the guy says, you know,
it's going to be a hundred bucks. And the guy
says one hundred bucks or thirty minutes of your time,
and he goes, no, it was it was ten thousand
hours and thirty minutes of Time's right. That's kind of
the principle is you have to do a lot of
things up front that seem to have no payoff, but
(15:23):
then when it does payoff, you realize, oh, well, I
would have never been here if it wasn't for everything
before it.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
What do you worry about the unknown?
Speaker 3 (15:31):
So I think there are sort of known unknowns, and
those are things that are inevitable in life. Like you know,
on a long enough timeline, everyone is probably going to
be have an unexpected job loss or something at some point,
and I try to hedge against everything like that, and
you know, in whatever realm of life. But the known
unknowns are things like, you know, someone getting into a
(15:53):
car accident or just some low probability event. And you know,
I know you and I I think are both poker players,
and we know that uh five percent are basically in
the same number for some reason. So yeah, just things
like that that you cannot control. It's absolutely not like
things like even if I was the best driver in
the in the world, like I can't control someone else
(16:14):
driving draws or things like that. So just any unknown
unknown really.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Has poker helped you at all in your work, do
you feel like you could read people better?
Speaker 3 (16:23):
I don't know. I'm I'm I don't know if I'm
good or not? Is the thing like whatever, I'm not good?
Speaker 2 (16:28):
I feel like it's helpful. I feel like it's helpful
in my everyday life, Like I feel like I can.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Read people in a way that and I don't know
if I could read people and that's why I was
pretty good at poker or you know, the poker skill
is what I use in life.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
But that definitely has helped.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
It made me realize you have to bluff in life.
And I don't know, it's like you have to realize,
like when does the bluff make sense? Like if you're
gonna make a leg, if you're gonna make a legal threat,
it's like, well, in theory, if you have a legal case,
you just do it anyway, So does it make as
much sense of there? But if I can't think we
know the scenario. But but there are just times where
(17:05):
you strategically you have to kind of bs in life
to get with you to RaSE.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Sometimes you get to fold.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
Sometimes yeah if you know what to fold, yeah, yeah, no,
it definitely is a poker is sort of a metaphor
for life in different ways.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
For sure. I used to keep a running list of
all the ways that it was. But then a professional
poker player set out as a dork and to stop
doing that.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Place it's the only profession where you can lose money
and be a pro.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
What advice would you give your sixteen year old self? Like,
what would Matt Palumbo of sixteen years old need to know?
Speaker 3 (17:41):
I would say that whoever said high school is the
best four years of your life is a total loser.
So it's the worst saying I've ever heard. You know,
whatever you want in life, to start working towards it now.
There is there is no benefit in holding off in anything.
And this could be something like you know, if you think,
oh I should eat better or drink less. You know,
if you're telling yourself I'll do it next week, well
(18:03):
twenty years from now, it's not gonna like what are
you going to think back and be like, thank god
I waited that extra week? No, if you want to,
I don't know. If you want to learn a foreign language,
like just to start now, what's the point in waiting?
I remember it was a story from a friend who's
it was like on the fence about being a doctor.
(18:24):
Like his mother was like, you know, you really should
go for it, and he's like, yeah, but it's gonna
take eight years, and she says, well, eight years is
going to pass anyway, Like you're gonna okay, so eight
years ago not a doctor who you are, Like, the
time doesn't make a difference, it's gonna happen.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
So basically that's very.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Good, so just start everything today. There is And also
whenever you don't feel like doing something for some reason
is when you should do it. Like if you're on
the couch and you're feeling lazy and you're like, the
last thing I want to do is go to the gym.
For some reason, going to the gym feels better when
you do that. And I guess the last thing would
be consistency with anything. And this is more of a
(19:01):
mental thing, but like I'm trying to learn a foreign
language right now, and I'm learning that Albanian. Oh yeah,
that makes my wife is fluent in it, and I'm
learning I'm learning a different dialect though than her, so
we might well both speak it and like barely be
able to talk to each other, but I try to
you know, section off thirty minutes to an hour a day,
(19:22):
and I have an app on my phone that kind
of gamifies it. But even if I can't do that,
if I have, if I'm waiting in line for three
minutes and I know that's all that's free time, I'm
gonna have I bust out the app and just do
it while I'm waiting, like just to have mentally that
I was able to do it every day in a row.
For some reason, when when I reset that timer, the
(19:44):
incentive to then do it, it's as if I'm starting
from zero. That might just be my psychology, but I
don't know. I just feel like repetition and and I
don't know, it's like having a high score in your head.
Sort of Albanian that is, I've been studying it for years,
but I've been only doing.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Not related to the sorrow story.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
We're talking about the book in twenty twenty two. So
I took maybe ten hours of lessons before I went there,
and then after I figured like, I'm not ever going back,
so what's the point. And then I coincidentally met a
woman who's Albanian that you know, so so I kind
of started going hard on it. Again. So I, you know,
(20:23):
met up with my old tutor and she's like, do
you have a thing for a yeah, and I'm like, no,
it's just a coincidence. But you know, I guess we do.
But so I don't. I think I'd probably a lot,
like one hundred hours of online lessons and then a
lot of it. Just like when I'm playing poker, I
just have a lection on in the background, and I
don't know how much of that I pick up, but
(20:44):
better than nothing. I just I kind of learned at
least one word a day basically, you know, if you know,
if I have no time for anything, it's just or all.
Even like when I'm looking around the house, I'm like,
all right, I don't know what paper towel is called.
They'llo get up later. Like I just try to identify
every particle of so little thing I try to look up.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
But why wouldn't you learn the same dialect as your wife?
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Because hers is so she's from Kosovo, which was part
of Serbia for a while but always an autonomous region,
and the dialect that she speaks is more of like
a sort of rural mountain countryside dialect that not very
many people speak. And I speak that's the most common
It's called gag. It's the most commonly dialect, exactly like Shakespeare.
(21:29):
But the biggest city in Kosovo, her home country, speaks
the same. So she told me, and this is her words.
She said, it's like speaking like the Geto version. But
good bye. So I don't know, I guess that's awesome.
It's I don't I'm kind of enjoying it. I don't know.
I just feel like it's I don't know, like more
(21:49):
impressive than learning like a commonly spoken language, even though it's.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
You know, you're still learning one, definitely, And the fact
that you and your wife will speak different dialects of
it is really.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Will speak Yes English and then two different versions.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
For being mean, well, I love this conversation. You are
super interesting. This has been really excellent.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Leave us here with a tip from my listeners on
how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
I mean, I guess, don't get advice when people like
me could be something.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
No, don't learn Albanian in a different dialect from your order.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
I mean, to be honest, it's probably not the best
use of your time. Channel that to self improvement in
another way. I don't know, I think a lot of
the stuff I said earlier probably factors into that. You know,
be consistent, set goals, start everything now. If you don't
feel like doing something, do it anyway. And I mean
that when it's you know, something good, not you know
not not. If you don't feel doing this, if you
(22:42):
don't feel like doing evil, don't do that. Anything that
you know is something you should be doing but don't
feel like, just do it. And yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
And also pre order my book, yes, pre order is
his name is Matt Plumbo is fantastic. The book is
called The Air Inside the Not So Seek Network of
Alex Soros.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Pre Order it now anywhere you buy your books. Thank
you so much for coming on, Matt.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
My pleasure went very fast.
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