Episode 18 - Dark Money: How the Kochs Reshaped America

This episode follows the money. We dive deep into the Kochs' vast and secretive network of political non-profits and dark money groups, a sprawling web designed to obscure the source of hundreds of millions of dollars in political spending. We expose how groups like Americans for Prosperity and the Cato Institute were used to fuel the rise of the Tea Party movement, fight against the Affordable Care Act, and systematically install conservative judges at every level of the judiciary.

We investigate the Kochs' influential donor summits, secret biannual meetings where they convened hundreds of other conservative billionaires and millionaires to pool their resources and coordinate their political strategy. This network effectively acted as a shadow political party, complete with its own fundraising apparatus, policy goals, and ground game, all operating outside the traditional campaign finance system. Their combined financial firepower allowed them to rival the Republican Party itself in scale and influence. We analyze specific campaigns where their network's spending overwhelmed opponents and shaped electoral outcomes.

This is the story of how two billionaires used their fortunes to successfully execute a hostile takeover of a major political party and pull the center of American politics sharply to the right. The "dark money" they unleashed has fundamentally and perhaps irrevocably changed the relationship between wealth and power in America. Their revolution was a success.