I'm coming clean about Russian influencer money scandal

Speaker 1: All right, listen. I'm going to do  this because so many of you wrote to me over   the weekend, I'm going to come clean and give you  the full story of my involvement with the Russian   influencer money scandal, which I hope will put to  bed. Any concerns that we are wrapped up in this   thing? A bunch of articles like this one were  published over the last few days. Unsealed FBI   document exposes the terrifying depth of Russian  disinformation scheme. This is an article from   The New Republic, and it correctly points out that  it's not just Tim Poole, Dave Rubin, Lauren Chen,   Lauren Southern, Benny Johnson, whoever else  was named in this Russian influencer cash   scandal that there is a very, very long list of  influencers. And it goes well beyond just the ones   that made headlines last week. So naturally, I  received, I don't know, but naturally, naturally,   because the world is so crazy. I received a ton of  emails over the weekend pointing to this article   and others like it, saying, David, are you on this  list? A lot of these people, don't necessarily   know that the company they work for is actually  funded by Russia. If we believe what Tim Poole and   Dave Rubin say, they had no idea that they were  getting Russian money and all of this different   stuff. So I want to be super crystal clear here on  a number of things. Primary question am I one of   these influencers in some indirect way? The answer  is no. Now how do I know that? Well, it's because   I know every one of our revenue sources. There is  no weird company, with people attached to it whose   names we don't know, that could be connected to  this thing. You know, we talk about we get money   from being part of YouTube's partner program.  Now, could there be an advertiser on YouTube that   is somehow funded by Russia? This, that and they  maybe an ad appears on our channel. Who the hell   knows? But then that means every single everybody  could be on that list. And of course we have no   contact with any YouTube advertisers or anything  like it. Similarly, we are part of revenue   programs on TikTok. Snapchat, Facebook, we're part  of the Amazon affiliate program. If you, buy the   books I recommend on my website, we may get $0.50.  Or if you buy one of my children's books like   this one that I'm holding up on Amazon, Amazon,  Prince, it they get some money, we get some money.   And then this is why I always say, you know,  when I say, one of the great things about having   our biggest revenue source be the membership  program is there's no one there who can say,   David, you've got to say this, or you'd better say  that, or we will pull funding when we distribute   our support across our viewers and listeners.  And everybody's giving two, three, four, seven,   20, 30 bucks a month. There's no one person,  even though they try. I get emails like this   all the time. There's no one person who's going to  shift the positions of the show by writing in and   saying, David, I don't like what you said about  X. I'm going to cancel my seven bucks a month. If   you say it again, we just ignore those messages.  We are not controlled in that way. I decide and   I talk about whatever I want and I'm completely  transparent in the revenue sources. So I am not   one of these influencers in any way. Now, there's  one other thing I want to say, because this has   come up a lot. Tim Poole and others have said when  we were offered what is reportedly $100,000 a week   to do some videos for a YouTube channel that gets  no views, right? I mean, this this Tenet Media   YouTube channel was getting statistically close to  zero views. We got 110 million views in the last   month. Okay. The Tenant Media YouTube channel  was there in the thousands, tens of thousands,   maybe a few hundred thousand. Tim Pool and others  have used the term market value. They've said when   we were offered 100 grand a week, there was no  red flag because it was market value. People   don't know how much money you can make doing stuff  like this. It is not market value. And I'm going   to offer to you how to figure it out for yourself.  It is open source. How many views Dave Rubin's   channel gets? Tim Pool's channel gets. And all of  these channels. You go on a website called Social   Blade. Okay. The David Pakman Show YouTube channel  currently gets more views than Ben Shapiro's   YouTube channel. But forget about subscribers  because what matters is views. We right now get   more daily views than Ben Shapiro. He's doing like  2.6 million. We're doing like 3.4 million. Okay,   go look at Dave Rubin's channel's daily views. Go  look at Tim Poole's channels. Even if you look at   his multiple channels combined daily views,  they are a fraction of what we are doing.   I've been in many negotiations with these  different. Let's license some content from you,   partners. $100,000 a week for channels  of my size is not market value. There   is no way in hell that it is an amount.  That totally normal amount. Of course,   that's what they'd be willing to pay. I don't  believe that part of it. And you won't believe   it when you see that Rubin and Benny Johnson  and Tim Pool, they all have dramatically lower   views than my YouTube channel. So fact check  that yourself. Last thing I'll say. I am so   grateful that we don't need to even think about  getting involved in any of that stuff, because we   are supported directly by our audience. So if you  value that independence, I would again, just say   consider getting a membership at Join packman.com.  You'll know where the money's coming from because   it'll be coming from you. Period. And really  appreciate all of our new and existing members.