MAGA influencers paid by Russia, "didn't know"

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.