If you want to be a flack, it's a free country. That's fine. If you really believe in the Democratic Party or whatever party, go out there and voice your concerns. Work for them. That's all fine. It's the lack of having a label on the food that tells people what the nutritional value is, because if people want to, [00:00:16] you know, eat junk food, that's fine. But they should be able to know or find out, how that is. And that's the that's the real problem here. Some creators in the first 48 hours took the wired story and expanded it with even more outrageous claims, suggesting that it's APAC or APAC. [00:00:36] I don't even know how it's pronounced APAC, APAC that is funding this show or other creators. Of course. Not true that the DNC is involved. - Not true. - That was David Pakman. David Pakman is a longtime left wing content creator, content creator, [00:00:53] and he knows what he knows what AIPAC is. Let me just get that out of the way. But he, put out a video defending himself after Taylor Lorenz. Reporting for wired had uncovered the fact that there was a dark money. Democratic group essentially influencing left wing influencers [00:01:13] by paying them as much as $8,000 a month, in order to, you know, continue doing the content they're doing. But it's important to note that this group would also have some editorial control. So I'm not necessarily against content creators get in the bag, [00:01:30] but I am against, you know, various dark money groups having editorial control. And I want to be clear, we've had sponsors at TYT. We've had certain, you know, advertising deals, whatever. Ain't nobody telling me what I'm going to say on this show. [00:01:46] I'm going to say whatever the hell I want. And that's the important thing that matters here, right? So let me get to the details of the story itself. So this dark money group has been bankrolling left wing influencers to toe the Democratic Party line, specifically While being advised to avoid disclosing [00:02:01] that they were getting paid to do so. That's the other problem. Like the fact that you're not revealing to your audience, disclosing the fact that you are being funded by this group. And so we'll give you some more of the creators, because it wasn't just David Pakman, of course. In just a minute. [00:02:17] So the so-called nonprofit that was paying these influencers is called chorus. They were being offered $8,000 per month to take part in a secretive program aimed at bolstering Democratic messaging on the internet. So the Chorus Creator Incubator program is funded by a powerful liberal dark [00:02:35] money group called the 1630 fund. More than 90 influencers took part in this, and among them were Olivia Giuliana, the centrist Gen Z influencer who spoke at the 2024 Democratic National Convention. You know, at a time when a Palestinian surrogate for Kamala Harris [00:02:53] was not allowed to speak because she happened to be Palestinian and they were terrified about that. You have Lauren Parish, a former Playboy executive turned political influencer who hosts a podcast for Occupy Democrats. You know Suzanne Lambert, who has called herself a Regina George liberal. [00:03:12] Ariel Fodor, who's an education creator with 1.4 million followers on TikTok. Sandra Jennings, a former TLC reality star and older brother of trans influencer Jazz Jennings. David Pakman, of course. And Lee McGowan, who goes by the online moniker Politics Girl. [00:03:31] And dozens of others. Literally 90 people were involved in this. So the deal came with some strings attached, including one that, you know, I would never in a million years agree to. The creators who joined the incubator are expected to attend regular advocacy trainings and daily daily messaging check ins. [00:03:50] The idea that you could pay me to do more meetings, like. Not in a million years. Okay. Those messaging check ins are led by Cohen on rapid response days. The creators also have to attend at least two newsroom events per month, which are [00:04:09] events course plans, often with lawmakers. It mandated extensive secrecy about disclosing their payments, and had restrictions on what sort of political content the creators could produce. And the Dark Money group also wanted editorial control. And that's really like the heart of the issue here. [00:04:25] Okay, so according to copies of the contract with which Taylor Lorenz obtained, she's got the receipts. That's important here. Creators in the program must funnel all bookings with lawmakers and political leaders through course creators also have to loop chorus in on any independently organized engagements with [00:04:45] government officials or political leaders. One creator, who asked not to be named, told wired. The told wired the following. If I want to work with another politician, I have to fully collaborate Elaborate with them. If I get meaning with chorus. [00:05:00] If I want, if I get. Zoran Mamdani and he wants to do an interview with me. I don't want to give them that. And they weren't allowed to disclose that they were being funded. The contract stipulated that they'd be kicked out and essentially cut off financially, if they even so much as acknowledged [00:05:19] that they were part of the program. Some creators also raised concerns about a slew of restrictive clauses in the contract. So I could go on and on. Please read the original reporting by Taylor Lorenz. Whatever you might think about her, put that aside. She did a really good job in uncovering what was going on [00:05:37] with this dark money liberal group and the influence they had over content creators, and the fact that it wasn't even being disclosed to audiences. So, Ken, you know, our audience might not know about your thoughts on this. You've been vocal about it on X and other platforms, but what are your thoughts? [00:05:54] Yeah, I think the major issue here is the lack of transparency around the money. If you want to be a flack, it's a free country. That's fine. If you really believe in the Democratic Party or whatever party, go out there and voice your concerns, work for them. That's all fine. It's the lack of having a label on the food that tells people [00:06:13] what the nutritional value is, because if people want to, you know, eat junk food, that's fine. But they should be able to know or find out, how that is. And that's the that's the real problem here. I don't care about the creators. I'm not gonna profess to know what their intentions are. [00:06:28] Some of them are pretty young. I'm guessing some of them maybe didn't realize some of the stuff I'm talking about here. I'm concerned about the public and the news consumers who are watching this stuff, not realizing that they're getting paid by this group that is aligned with the Democratic Party on a number of different issues. [00:06:45] I've been paying very close attention to the Democratic Party, particularly leadership since Trump's reelection, to get a sense of how they're trying to push back with their own messaging is. And one of the things I was most surprised by was not just the lack of very much of it, but to the extent that there were these interviews, [00:07:00] it was with all of these astroturf groups that at the time, I didn't really realize. I mean, you can sort of tell by watching it like, you know, it's like the old Simpsons joke. Sir, what do you have to say about the your campaign has the has the momentum of a runaway freight train? That's kind of the vibe of a lot of these, right, right. [00:07:17] AstroTurf shows. And so, after reading this story, I'm not saying that they're getting money from this group in particular, but they're clearly there's clearly some kind of a relationship. And so Schumer and Jeffries are happy to go on. You can go on YouTube now and find these shows with kind of fake questions. Never have a difficult question. [00:07:33] I hate scams, especially the ones that target seniors, and Medicare is chock full of them. Between commission hungry brokers and thousands of confusing plan options, most seniors aren't on the best plan for them. That's why a partner with chapter, they're fully independent and they work for you, not the insurance companies. [00:07:48] That's really important. They can review all your options in under 20 minutes, and the average senior they help saves over $1,100 a year. And the best part of it is it doesn't cost you a thing. So if you're turning 65, call the number on the screen to connect with a chapter advisor today. And the people that are hurt by that is anybody that happens to see that [00:08:06] and thinks, oh, this looks like a pod, you know, has the microphone set up. It's kind of high, high def and looks fancy. Maybe. I don't think ordinary people have the media literacy or time to figure out, oh this is actually paid programing that. So to me that's the major issue here. And not just that when the Democratic Party ends up talking to itself [00:08:24] in an echo chamber of someone who they paid essentially, maybe not directly from the party, but from a group that's aligned with the party to to solve all these questions. That's how you end up getting Hakeem Jeffries having to actually go and give a press conference and looking like, wait, you're going to ask me these questions about Madonna? [00:08:39] That's this is what I'm used to. They've had no practice in a hostel. In a hostel. I mean, you go on interviews where you strongly disagree with people and that helps to strengthen your arguments. Right? And makes you a better it helps you to make a better case for things. So not only is it bad for the public, I think it's bad for the party too. [00:08:55] - I don't understand why it's tolerated. - Yes, 100%. Because rather than understanding like why they lost the last presidential election, what they could do differently, how they can be a stronger party that represents the average Democratic voter. They're essentially manufacturing like a, you know, like supportive insulation, [00:09:15] like to insulate them from, you know, bad negative coverage about what they're up to. And Hakeem Jeffries is a complete and utter disaster for the Democratic Party. He's he's trying to be if the Democrats manage to get a majority in the House, he'd be the speaker of the House. [00:09:32] Has anyone seen him in an interview? He's like the least charismatic politician I have ever seen in my life. And it's just it's mind boggling to me. It's some of the most predictable questions. They don't have a line for it yet. It's like, dude, you didn't game this out, that someone's going to be curious [00:09:48] about your view on Mamdani or your view on Gaza or whatever it is. That's really troubling that they they clearly haven't considered what I mean. They must be in a bubble where, you know, it's all these paid guys. And in my experience, they end up thinking, well, this is really [00:10:03] how the world is because they don't have any experience outside of it. I mean, DC is already such a bubble, definitely. So I want to go to some of the, you know, some of the content creators who were named in the piece and how they've been kind of like at least attempting to defend themselves. For instance, Olivia Juliana stated that the basic premise of the report is false. [00:10:23] Here she is claiming that chorus had no control over her work whatsoever, even though she signed a contract that claimed that chorus is going to have editorial control over her work. Let's take a look. We are not paid to make content. We are not paid by the Democratic Party. Chorus does not have any creative control over any of the content that I make [00:10:41] over any of the people that I talk to, and they have never and will never tell me what I can or cannot say. The contract that we signed does not pay us for content. It is the same as somebody giving seed money to a small business to build their [00:10:56] infrastructure, so that that business can go on to be self-sustaining in the future. I have absolutely no shame about being part. Of course, I am someone who has been on my own working and busting my ass since I was 19 years old. To be able to build a better life for my children and give them the safety [00:11:14] and security I never had. And next year, when I go back to college and I'm able to finish and become the first person in my family to graduate from college, I will have absolutely no guilt in accepting money to make myself [00:11:30] more independent in the future. I want to go to graphic eight here. It's an excerpt from Taylor Lorenz's reporting. And again, she has the receipts. She has the contract that these creators signed. And part of it, this is what it stipulates. [00:11:47] They also forbid creators from disclosing the identity of any funder, and give chorus the ability to force creators to remove or correct content based solely on the organization's discretion. If that content was made at a chorus organized event, [00:12:04] that sounds like editorial control to me, but I could be mistaken. What are your thoughts, Ken? Yeah, I'm actually more concerned about the soft forms of influence that exist that, you know, in complete candor, when I was younger, [00:12:20] I didn't fully understand because you don't quite understand how power flows and why people are motivated to do certain things. And just, you know, I lived in Washington for several years, which is where many of these creators are in Northern Virginia, that kind of area. And, when you're getting checks from a group and you're socializing [00:12:37] with other creators in that group and everyone you know is in that world, it's, the the influence that I see exercise over people isn't often overt where it's like, well, on page 12. I agree to this. It's more. Well, everybody else is doing this, so this must be how it's done. [00:12:54] And so and and the way in which, a lot of the creators mentioned are pretty young and probably pretty green behind the ears and probably still learning how things work. If you can keep their world contained in this little bubble of other creators like that, [00:13:10] you could give the the impression that, doing stuff that I think, from the outside, a lot of people would see as icky. You give the sense that, well, this is how it's done. This is how the this is how this is how things work. And there's a lot of justifications given for that. Oh, you know, we're facing this unprecedented fascist takeover. [00:13:27] So unprecedented measures have to be taken. That's one of the most common responses I've gotten when I've, just posted on social about this stuff is, well, they're up against this unprecedented enemy. So therefore we have to be as ruthless as they are. And that's completely true, that there are, right wing groups, including ones [00:13:44] that are taken from foreign governments. So there's no question that the same is happening on the right and in some cases worse, at least than we know. But to me, do you want to participate in this race to the bottom, where everyone is worse off because you've decided that this is what must be done because the other side is doing it? [00:13:59] To me, this is not being ruthless, okay? To me, and to your point earlier, this weakens the Democratic Party because the power players aren't interested in constructive criticism. They're not interested in improving. They're not interested in doing what's necessary to appeal to voters, certainly [00:14:18] independent voters that they lost. Even some Democratic voters that they lost in the last election, they switched sides and voted for Trump. They need to try to figure out why that is and what they can do to improve. And instead, they're doubling down and wrapping themselves in bubble wrap by essentially shelling out a ton of [00:14:35] money to content creators to give people the illusion that there's popularity with the Democratic Party. There isn't. 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