Speaker 1: All right. Let's get into it. Absolute
bombshell shaking the independent media world. DOJ bombshell alleges MAGA media group is backed
by Russian money. There is a fantastic Twitter thread by Pekka Kalia Niemi from that Nick soup
and the Soup Central who follows and is an expert on exactly these types of influence campaign. So
let me explain to you what's going on. And I'm not exaggerating when I say that this is shaking the
independent media world. Russia has been funding a Tennessee based media company called tenet.
Tenet media is most known for promoting pro-Putin, anti Ukraine anti-democratic West narratives
and for. Donald Trump. Now, the money that's in at play here, and I'm going to tell you who
has been receiving the money. The money that's at play here. Originated with Russian state TV
channel R.t. It was funneled through various shell companies in countries like Turkey and
the United Arab Emirates and others. In some cases masked as payments for electronics, and
two individuals involved from R.T. Constantine Kalashnikov and Elena FNC ever have been charged.
There's an indictment to with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate the
Foreign Agents Registration Act. These two also instructed the content creators that were being
funded by this entire project. Now, the reason we're learning about all of this is because of
the indictment. The details in the indictment are stunning, and I encourage you to look at it now.
Interestingly, tenet was founded in 2022 by Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan. Now, you might remember the
name Lauren Chen. I've met Lauren Chen. I was on a panel, whether it politican years ago. And there
there is something in particular about Lauren Chen's content relative to her name recognition.
That is a common thread with a lot of these sort of astroturf content creators, which I'll, I
will get to in a moment. So then we have the list of media people that are involved with tenant
media, and the list includes Tim Pool, who's been a guest on this program, Benny Johnson, with whom
I appeared on the Piers Morgan program recently, Dave Rubin, who he has been on this show before
and I've been on his show a decade ago, before he had this very strange political awakening where
he changed all his political views. And Lauren Southern, so Tim Poole, Benny Johnson, Dave Rubin,
Lauren Southern, probably the biggest names that are involved here. Now, it's really interesting
to go back and reconsider some of the content that these creators have been putting out in light
of these revelations about the funding. Tim Pool, for example, went all in in his videos with
claims like Ukraine is the enemy of this country and suggesting we should apologize to Russia.
Speaker 2: They know it, but I don't know that it matters anymore. This is psychotic. Ukraine
is the enemy of this country and Ukraine is our enemy being funded by the Democrats. I will
stress again, one of the greatest enemies of our nation right now is Ukraine. They are expanding
this war. Now, don't get me wrong. I know you've got criminal elements of the US government pushing
them and guiding them and telling them what to do. Ukraine is now accused a German warrant issued for
blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline. In triggering this conflict. Ukraine is the greatest threat to
this nation and to the world. We should rescind all funding and financing, pull out all military
support, and we should apologize to Russia. Speaker 1: Now he seems to be reading something
in this video. If he's reading a script and who wrote the script? I mean, we just don't know.
But obviously everything is suspect now, given these revelations, also, on on Twitter or X,
as it's now called, Tim has been very vocal about this issue, tweeting at one point, I now hate
and despise Ukraine tweeting at another point, Trump got impeached for freezing military aid to
Ukraine. Biden faces no consequences for freezing military aid to Israel. This proves the Ukrainians
run the U.S.. Now when someone asks who is they, though, you respond the Ukrainians. Tim Pool
posting the people screaming about Trump working for Russia are the same people demanding social
media censor misinformation? Stop listening to these people. So a lot of stuff here that now is
very suspect involving Tim Pool. Then we go to Benny Johnson. Benny Johnson's main talking points
have often focused around he just doesn't want aid going to Ukraine. And, Democrats are causing so
many problems domestically. Why would we send any money to Ukraine? You then have Lauren Southern
and the Russian connection. There is much more plain to see. She's actually visited Moscow and
she met with Alexander Dugin, who's this, guy who provided the blueprint for Russian expansion
and imperialism in his 1997 book, Foundation of Geopolitics. We've talked about that. And then,
of course, you also have, Dave Rubin, Dave Rubin, who has increasingly pushed this pro-Trump, sort
of skeptical of the West kind of narrative. Now, a lot of these guys, people are kind of
panicking. And so they've put out statements that are all very similar in structure. Dave Rubin
is essentially claiming he's just a victim here. He put out a statement where he says, statement on
the DOJ indictment. These allegations clearly show that I and other commentators were the victims
of this scheme. I knew absolutely nothing about any of this fraudulent activity, period. People
of the internet was a silly show covering viral videos which ended four months ago. The DOJ has
never contacted me regarding this matter. I have no intention to comment further. The screenshot
from the indictment speaks for itself. So he's basically saying I was a victim here, I was
victimized. Benny Johnson also referred to himself as a victim, saying, quote, A year ago,
a media startup pitched my company to provide content as an independent contractor. Our lawyers
negotiated a standard arm arm's length deal, which was later terminated. We are disturbed
by the allegations in today's indictment, which make clear that myself and other influencers were
victims in this alleged scheme. My lawyers will handle anyone who states or suggests otherwise,
I guess, threatening lawsuits. So let's talk a little bit about this. To be perfectly clear,
I believe completely that no one was telling these individuals necessarily what they have
to say, but it's sort of like the art thing. I don't know if you guys remember when art
was on the air and, we would often hear from art hosts and whatnot, and they would say, I
have total freedom to say whatever I want. Art never comes in and says, here's what you have to
say about Putin or anything else. What's really critical to understand is that Russian
intelligence prefers, if you don't know, that you're doing their bidding, what they want to
do is amplify voices that are already predisposed to say what's useful to them. And so when it
came to the on air talent at RT, for example, they don't need to hire people and then go,
listen, here's how you have to cover stories. They would say, hey, here's someone whose skepticism of
American institutions is really useful to our goal of destabilizing American democracy. Let's hire
them. Let's give them a bunch of money. We don't have to tell them what to say. So the strategy
here is you amplify voices that are predisposed to say what you want, and then you give them
the money to do as much as possible with a larger reach. The report is that as far as Benny
Johnson goes, it was a deal for $400,000 a month, plus some kind of six figure signing bonus. These
are early reports. It was very obvious in some of these cases, in some of these cases, that the
storylines just didn't really seem to match the natural development of one's kind of political
views. And I want to be careful about what I say so that I don't, you know, necessarily anger
any particular person. But when you look at the trajectories of some of these individuals and
you see the rapid, in some cases, subscriber growth that took place. Without necessarily a
lot of views, sort of a disproportionate amount of public notoriety that didn't seem matched by
the actual interest in the content, because a lot of people aren't necessarily interested in what
these individuals are saying. You start to wonder, is there some artificial mechanism that is signal
boosting the content? I think that's where we leave it for now. What I can tell you is that we
don't get any money from anybody like this. We're on YouTube and we make money from the YouTube
ad program. We have no contact with any of the advertisers. Individual people pay two, three, 4
or 5 bucks a month, or 60 or $70 for the year. Any one of them can cancel at any time. None of them
direct content on the program. I mean, the point I'm trying to make here is not all independent
media is created equal. And sometimes apparently independent media can actually be wrapped up with
some pretty ugly stuff. Let's leave it there.