Speaker 1: Also media, Oh what's.
Speaker 2: Getting indicted by the FBI? My several people I don't
Speaker 2: like it could happen here a podcast about things falling apart,
Speaker 2: and today this week, well, for the last couple of weeks,
Speaker 2: the thing that's fallen apart is Tenet Media. This is
Speaker 2: not related to Christopher Nolan, that we can prove at
Speaker 2: this exact moment. It is instead a media adventure starring
Speaker 2: a bunch of assholes that turned out to all be
Speaker 2: an op by the Russian government, and none of said
Speaker 2: assholes claim they knew anything, even though they got paid
Speaker 2: one hundred thousand dollars a video. Anyway, We're going to
Speaker 2: talk about all that and more today, but I'm going
Speaker 2: to bring onto the program now my co hosts, Garrison
Speaker 2: Davis and James Stout.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 4: I'm not getting one hundred k per episode here, but
Speaker 4: if I was, I certainly wouldn't tell the government now
Speaker 4: that it was actually a foreign government, saying me.
Speaker 3: I would keep tweeting about it.
Speaker 2: Fun fact about both of you guys before we get
Speaker 2: into this, if you reverse your last names, you sound
Speaker 2: like Confederate era generals.
Speaker 3: Garrison Stout, James Davis like names. Davis Garrison Stout.
Speaker 5: Yeah, oh yeah, all right, yeah, yeah, that's so that
Speaker 5: is our secret backstory. We had to actually switch them
Speaker 5: when we join cool Zone Media due to a Confederate ties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the fact that you're one hundred and ninety
Speaker 2: years old. So Garrison, you want to take us off here.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So Tene Media was this kind of small right wings
Speaker 4: startup that hired a whole bunch of more well known
Speaker 4: content creators on the right wing sphere, from like Timpoole,
Speaker 4: Dave Rubin, Bennie Johnson, Lauren Southern. Yeah, people who are
Speaker 4: either just like conservative commentators or you know, in someone
Speaker 4: like Lauren Southern's case has been like an alt right
Speaker 4: kind of white supremacist media figure for quite a while.
Speaker 4: And they put together this little collection of people to
Speaker 4: make like content for tenants on YouTube channel as well
Speaker 4: as licensing some of their regular tent And this company
Speaker 4: was ostensibly started by another right wing YouTuber named Lauren
Speaker 4: Chen and her husband Liam Donovan. Chen's been like on
Speaker 4: Fox News News Max, Daily Wire and was employed at
Speaker 4: The Blaze, where she's no longer employed based on the
Speaker 4: allocations inside this DOJ indictment. So yeah, it was a
Speaker 4: small collection not super kind of noteworthy. Honestly, in a
Speaker 4: lot of cases, lots of people weren't super familiar with
Speaker 4: Tenet media. I know they also hired like Taylor Hanson,
Speaker 4: who was kind of one of the first guys to
Speaker 4: report on grooming LGBTQ stuff like a few years ago.
Speaker 2: That's kind of what was immediately weird about them to
Speaker 2: everyone who pays attention to this stuff is that their
Speaker 2: videos did not get a crazy amount of engagement. They
Speaker 2: were clearly not an established like they came out of nowhere,
Speaker 2: but they had the money, the money to pay for
Speaker 2: people who weren't cheap. Timpool, if you don't know, Tim
Speaker 2: is one of the most profitable influencers on the right
Speaker 2: wing chunks of the Internet. He's a guy who kind
Speaker 2: of got his start as a citizen journalist during occupy.
Speaker 3: Really, he's one of these guys.
Speaker 2: All he does is he gets on he reads news articles,
Speaker 2: he reads the headlines of news articles, he talks about
Speaker 2: how we're all doomed to left wing terrorism or whatever,
Speaker 2: and then he makes millions of dollars. He's a frustrating
Speaker 2: individual to say the least, but he doesn't come cheap.
Speaker 2: And Hansen also doesn't come cheap. Dave Rubin is not
Speaker 2: an inexpensive person to bring onto your team. So it
Speaker 2: was kind of clear from the beginning there's a lot
Speaker 2: of money behind this thing that seems to have come
Speaker 2: out of nowhere.
Speaker 3: Whose money is it?
Speaker 4: And that is what the federal government's been trying to
Speaker 4: figure out. And we have now a better indication on
Speaker 4: where all of these kind of right wing content firms,
Speaker 4: or at least this one who is employing some very
Speaker 4: unfortant people, where they are getting some of their money from.
Speaker 4: Because there's a lot of money flying around this space.
Speaker 4: Lots of these guys are obviously filled by like fossil
Speaker 4: fuel billionaires.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: You can look at like the early funding for the
Speaker 4: Daily Wired that has a lot of money, but for this,
Speaker 4: for this smaller, kind of lesser known company, how are
Speaker 4: they paying one hundred thousand dollars per episode to these guys?
Speaker 2: And it's also the Daily Wire definitely started inorganically by
Speaker 2: getting a lot of fossil fuel money pumped into it.
Speaker 2: But one thing you have to hand it to them
Speaker 2: is they built a business that is a functional business, right,
Speaker 2: they are now profitable in their own regard or at
Speaker 2: least were there's some evidence their traffic collapsed recently, but
Speaker 2: you saw you saw them have a growth curve that
Speaker 2: looked pretty organic for a media organization, which you didn't
Speaker 2: see with Tenant.
Speaker 6: No, no.
Speaker 4: And it seems the only way to actually pay these
Speaker 4: millions and millions of dollars to all these people is
Speaker 4: if you are actually the government of Russia who is
Speaker 4: starting covert operations that's their words, not mine, to influence
Speaker 4: the US election by like both talking about like Ukraine,
Speaker 4: using these mouthpieces, but also just kind of so general division,
Speaker 4: which seems to be kind of the main tactic. And
Speaker 4: Robert elected to actually go through some of this GEZ
Speaker 4: twenty three page indictment and kind of hopefully we can
Speaker 4: find some of some of the some of the better
Speaker 4: funnier little tidbits here, because there's a lot of interesting
Speaker 4: information about kind of the inter workings of some of
Speaker 4: these media groups and how exactly Timpoole was convinced by
Speaker 4: a Russian agent.
Speaker 5: Yeah, a Russian agent pretending to be three different people.
Speaker 4: Pretending to be some mysterious European billionaire.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the document starts with some stuff that I had
Speaker 2: been unaware, which is that you know, because Russia Today
Speaker 2: is kind of the first large Russian government affiliated media
Speaker 2: organization that has been like putting up propaganda in the
Speaker 2: United States, and the FBI has been watching them like
Speaker 2: a hawk. And so they quote hear from the editor
Speaker 2: in chief of RT after the expanded Russian invasion in
Speaker 2: February twenty twenty two when he describes Russia Today, which
Speaker 2: has always argued that it's a legitimate news organization, as
Speaker 2: an entire empire of covert projects designed to shape public
Speaker 2: opinion in Western audiences. And one of these covert projects
Speaker 2: it described as the funding of what we now know
Speaker 2: is Tenant Media. Right, it's described in these documents because
Speaker 2: their indictments is a Tennessee based online creation company, but
Speaker 2: it's it can only be referring to Tenant Media.
Speaker 4: As employees have since admitted that yes, it is for
Speaker 4: sure to Tenant Media.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, there's no doubt about this. We're not like
Speaker 2: reading into the what the FED said here at all.
Speaker 2: So they spent over the course of about a year
Speaker 2: ten million dollars I think it's actually was more like
Speaker 2: nine point six, but ten million dollars basically just buying
Speaker 2: these influencers oh my god. First off, things we could
Speaker 2: do with ten million dollars yeah, oh oh, James, we'd
Speaker 2: be sailing to me and Maar and on a pale
Speaker 2: rocket launchers.
Speaker 3: The things that their military could do with ten billion dollars.
Speaker 3: Sending dude to the front with ass off plates. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's anyway. Whatever.
Speaker 2: So the kind of key detail there is how much
Speaker 2: they were making per one of these dog shit videos,
Speaker 2: which is about one hundred thousand dollars per YouTube video.
Speaker 2: That's what Tim was getting. I think Dave Rubin was
Speaker 2: getting close to just half a million a month to
Speaker 2: do like a weekly video. So when that is the
Speaker 2: kind of money we're talking.
Speaker 4: About, and Tim was also being paid one hundred thousand
Speaker 4: dollars per weekly video as well. He was making one
Speaker 4: video a week, that was what he decided on his contract,
Speaker 4: So he was breaking in at least four hundred thousand,
Speaker 4: if not five hundred thousand dollars a month.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and then they had signing and download bonuses on
Speaker 5: top of that.
Speaker 2: Which is like even for them, is more than you
Speaker 2: could get on YouTube for the kind of traffic that
Speaker 2: they get. That is that is like the top one
Speaker 2: percent of the top one percent of YouTube creators are
Speaker 2: making money like that, and certainly no one with the
Speaker 2: kind of views these teniviity is we're getting. So anyway, Garrison,
Speaker 2: you've got a clip to play.
Speaker 4: Yeah, here's a clip that's definitely a totally genuine opinion.
Speaker 4: Not impacted by those one hundred thousand dollars of Tim
Speaker 4: Poole talking about Ukraine.
Speaker 3: Trigger warning, most annoying man on earth.
Speaker 7: This is psychotic. Ukraine is the enemy of this country.
Speaker 7: Ukraine is our enemy being funded by the Democrats. I
Speaker 7: will stress again one of the greatest enemies of our
Speaker 7: nation right now is Ukraine. They are expanding this war now,
Speaker 7: don't get me wrong. I know you've got criminal elements
Speaker 7: of the US government pushing them and guiding them and
Speaker 7: telling them what to do. Ukraine is now accused a
Speaker 7: German warrant issued for blowing up the nord Stream pipeline
Speaker 7: in triggering this conflict. Ukraine is the greatest threat to
Speaker 7: this nation and to the world. We should rescind all
Speaker 7: funding and financing, pull out all military support, and we
Speaker 7: should apologize to Russia.
Speaker 4: Interesting, I wonder what would compel a man to say
Speaker 4: that huis're curious.
Speaker 3: There's no way to know Garrison.
Speaker 2: So since they publicly launched in November of last year,
Speaker 2: Tenant Media posted almost two thousand videos that got about
Speaker 2: sixteen million views. And sixteen million views is a lot
Speaker 2: for a YouTube channel, but not if you've put out
Speaker 2: two thousand videos. So again, that's what I mean when
Speaker 2: I say, like, this is not the kind of audience
Speaker 2: that you would get this kind of money organically for, right,
Speaker 2: Like this is was obviously and I mentioned this because
Speaker 2: this is obviously suspicious to the creators. You cannot be
Speaker 2: Timpoole is not a smart man, but you cannot work
Speaker 2: for YouTube the way that he has and not know
Speaker 2: that something is fucked up with the money, just if.
Speaker 5: You're not a mental arithmetician like myself. That is eight
Speaker 5: thousand views video. I made a video once about how
Speaker 5: to use hiking polls, which has around that many views.
Speaker 2: I have a video that I fucked up when filming
Speaker 2: another video while I was reviewing products fifteen years ago
Speaker 2: before anyone knew who I was that has more than
Speaker 2: eight years Like, where's all money, Vladimir, Yeah, yeah, come on, Vladimir,
Speaker 2: Like I'll there's a lot I'll do for half a
Speaker 2: million dollars well.
Speaker 4: And I think part of this as well is not
Speaker 4: just trying to prop up tenants owned news itself. It's
Speaker 4: making these specific content creators lives more comfortable, because the
Speaker 4: better that these guys do. That's all that Russia is
Speaker 4: like interested in, as alleged in this document, right, It's
Speaker 4: that they just want to make sure that these guys
Speaker 4: can can still talk about Ukraine as certainly as like
Speaker 4: this like evil and how Russia is like the traditionalist
Speaker 4: Christian empire and right wing resistance to globalist domination. But
Speaker 4: in terms of like just wanting to amplify US domestic
Speaker 4: divisions in order to weaken US opposition to core government
Speaker 4: of Russia's interests in the ongoing war in Ukraine. As
Speaker 4: said in the document, all they need to do is
Speaker 4: just make sure these guys are having a lot of money,
Speaker 4: so like their comfortable tenant doesn't need to be like
Speaker 4: a successful media operation where like they're making more money
Speaker 4: on YouTube than they're paying their influences.
Speaker 6: That's not the point.
Speaker 4: The point is just to give these guys a lot
Speaker 4: of money to keep talking the way they're talking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what was also interesting to me, and this comes
Speaker 2: from a wired article wired downloaded as many of these
Speaker 2: videos as they could and then ran them through. This
Speaker 2: is actually one of the journalistic uses for these large
Speaker 2: language models. They ran them through like one of those
Speaker 2: machine learning algorithms to just kind of look at how
Speaker 2: often different subjects are mentioned, because no human being could
Speaker 2: analyze that many videos with any kind of like speed, right,
Speaker 2: And one thing they found is that Ukraine, which you
Speaker 2: would imagine being the focus of a horrific war that
Speaker 2: is bleeding Russia's military was mentioned about like a third
Speaker 2: as often as transgender people. The vast majority of the
Speaker 2: content was US culture war stuff right like woke is
Speaker 2: much more of a focus than anything to do directly
Speaker 2: with Russian military operations or Russian like government, like what
Speaker 2: you would imagine, right, And the reason for that is
Speaker 2: that they see it as number one, building a sense
Speaker 2: of solidarity between American conservative and Russia, which is largely imaginary.
Speaker 2: I'll be talking about this in an episode later, but like,
Speaker 2: Russia is not the country a lot of conservatives in
Speaker 2: the US think it is. But more to the point,
Speaker 2: it's just sort of stoking division, right, rather than actually
Speaker 2: needing to change American minds on Ukraine. In much of
Speaker 2: a concerted way, like if you kind of keep them
Speaker 2: ginned up and angry about everything the quote unquote Left
Speaker 2: is doing, they will be against supporting Ukrainian resistance anyway, right,
Speaker 2: And that's the bet the Russians made, very very astutely,
Speaker 2: and it seems to be paying off for them. One
Speaker 2: of the more interesting facts here is that one of
Speaker 2: the primary contacts, this is one of the people who
Speaker 2: has been indicted, who was working with you know, Pool
Speaker 2: and these other creators, is an employee of Russia today
Speaker 2: with the perfect spy name, Constantine Kalashnikov.
Speaker 3: Just amazing stuff.
Speaker 6: How is that literally their day?
Speaker 3: Yeah? How do they not just change it?
Speaker 2: We call it a Kalashnikov because the guy's name was Kalashnikov.
Speaker 6: It's just lovely. It's just lovely.
Speaker 3: It's beautiful.
Speaker 2: It's breathtaking because if you put a character with that
Speaker 2: name in a Bond film, everyone would be like, come on, man,
Speaker 2: it's not nineteen sixty five anymore, what are we doing here?
Speaker 3: But that that's just the person's actual name. It's beautiful.
Speaker 2: So they had a couple of fake personas within the company,
Speaker 2: but this was a person who like directly talked to
Speaker 2: the employees of people like Pool, the editors and whatnot
Speaker 2: without disclosing that he worked at Russia. Today now there's
Speaker 2: evidence that people who worked for some of these creators
Speaker 2: in their discords, like Editors and whatnot, saw this as
Speaker 2: deeply suspicious. Probably the most interesting came from when we
Speaker 2: now know it was Tucker Carlson posted a video during
Speaker 2: his trip in Moscow like where he was going to
Speaker 2: a Russian grocery store to be like, look, Russia has
Speaker 2: grocery stores. Everything's fine here. His editor in the discord
Speaker 2: was like, this seems like a little much. What are
Speaker 2: we doing here? Basically, and the statement made was along
Speaker 2: the lines of like, you know, this is what the
Speaker 2: people paying us want us to get out right, which
Speaker 2: is clear evidence that people were aware of what they
Speaker 2: were doing to some extent.
Speaker 4: At least among like the tenant media producers, there was
Speaker 4: a growing awareness of what was actually going on. Obviously,
Speaker 4: all of the on air talent still maintains that they
Speaker 4: are the victims of an international conspiracy.
Speaker 3: In a victim pays I guess.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, and no, I think one of the
Speaker 4: funniest parts is definitely this fake European businessman I believe
Speaker 4: he's referred to as Edward Grengorian.
Speaker 3: Yes, it was very funny, but we'll talk about Edward.
Speaker 2: Let's throw to ads first and then we'll get back
Speaker 2: to this, and we're back Garrison. Let's talk about Edward.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So in the document they talked about how Klashnikov, this
Speaker 4: other RT person, as well as Tenants founders worked together
Speaker 4: to deceive commentators wanted to who we believe are our
Speaker 4: Timpool and Dave Rubin. The point was to let leverage
Speaker 4: their existing audiences and license their videos they were already making.
Speaker 4: So together the RT people and the Tenant founders tried
Speaker 4: to trick Pool and who we believe is Ruben into
Speaker 4: thinking that the person providing these one hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 4: per episodes was a European businessman and private investor named
Speaker 4: Edward Gregorian, which is a wonderful a wonderful fake name.
Speaker 4: And this was not real person. This was a completely
Speaker 4: fake person. At some point, I believe Dave Ruben or
Speaker 4: commentator number one, requested that the founder provide like a
Speaker 4: profile or an article.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it was commentator too that wanted to know
Speaker 2: more about quote, would like to know more about the company.
Speaker 2: And who he will be working with.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so they asked for like this, like one page
Speaker 4: profile on like who this guy was, and this was
Speaker 4: provided and he was described as an accomplished finance professional
Speaker 4: who had various positions in Brussels and France at a
Speaker 4: multinational bank, including the director of private banking division and
Speaker 4: wealth management.
Speaker 2: The one page on this guy, who is supposedly their investor,
Speaker 2: shows an obvious stock photo of a man on a
Speaker 2: private jet with his face blurred out face bloods. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's what that looks real. Yeah, not sketchy at all.
Speaker 2: This is this is an actual guy quote. Founder one
Speaker 2: transmitted the Edward Gregorian profile to Commentator one, who is
Speaker 2: either Pool or Ruben.
Speaker 6: We believe it's Reuben.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think that one's Ruben because Tim wouldn't have asked
Speaker 2: for more details, Honor. About May twelfth, twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: Founder one reported to Persona one that Commentator one had
Speaker 2: a problem with the profile we sent over, specifically the
Speaker 2: reference to social justice. I think it may be because
Speaker 2: that's usually a term used by liberals, but we're trying
Speaker 2: to create a conservative network. Founder one suggested that Commentator
Speaker 2: one and Edward could simply speak together to clarify the profile.
Speaker 4: Yes, and I know there was a secure call between
Speaker 4: a Russian atent pretending to be mister Gregorian to Tempoole,
Speaker 4: and allegedly this other call with commentator one, who we
Speaker 4: think is Ruben. So there was like conversations between like
Speaker 4: Rubin and Pool with people like further involved in the
Speaker 4: actual like espionage parts of this and the actual like
Speaker 4: you're talking to people affiliated with like Russian spies in
Speaker 4: order to like sell this lie.
Speaker 3: I did find it very funny.
Speaker 5: Where did you read the section where they sort of
Speaker 5: did a forensic analysis of the three persona's email accounts. Yeah, no,
Speaker 5: I'm not far up in doing it yet. So they
Speaker 5: had three different personas, so all access from the same
Speaker 5: I P address and had different presenting a three different individuals, right,
Speaker 5: with three different email accounts. Obviously the DOJ has been
Speaker 5: able to get access to those EMAT accounts, and they
Speaker 5: found that the people using those email accounts made mistakes
Speaker 5: in signing them. So one was supposed to come from
Speaker 5: PERSONA three that they mistakenly signed to Edward Gregorian, and
Speaker 5: another time PERSONA one sent a draft of an email
Speaker 5: to PERSONA to two, which PERSONA two then copied and
Speaker 5: pasted into an email like the object was extremely poor,
Speaker 5: it would seem, and it didn't set anyone off to
Speaker 5: kind of.
Speaker 2: Make that point in terms of, like what's happening to
Speaker 2: these guys right now? What they've been indicted for is
Speaker 2: violations of the Foreign Agent Registration Act. Like, if you
Speaker 2: are acting as the agent of a foreign government, you
Speaker 2: have to register in the United States. You have a
Speaker 2: freedom of speech, but you don't have freedom to create
Speaker 2: propaganda for another government and pretend.
Speaker 3: That you're not right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so you know, obviously one of the things
Speaker 2: the Feds needed to indict them is evidence that they knew,
Speaker 2: specifically they were being employed by the Russian government, Right
Speaker 2: that like the Russians hadn't somehow snuck money to the
Speaker 2: people who founded Tenant Media.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: And so at one point Founder two gets on the
Speaker 2: Investor Discord channel to submit one of the influencers, I
Speaker 2: think it's Rubens invoices to PERSONA one and press for
Speaker 2: payment of those invoices. On September eleventh, twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: never forget, at approximately eight oh seven pm Central Time,
Speaker 2: Founder two wrote in that discord channel. Today marks two
Speaker 2: weeks since I submitted the invoice for August. Any idea
Speaker 2: for the delay. We are signing the large contracts. We
Speaker 2: need to be certain we will get the funding to
Speaker 2: pay these people. While waiting for a response, they searched
Speaker 2: for the current time in Moscow. So jess unbelievable opsec
Speaker 2: like giving the government absolute knowledge of intent.
Speaker 4: I mean similarly, earlier on in the document quote in
Speaker 4: their private respondence while working directly for URT pursue into
Speaker 4: Founder one's written contract, Founder one and Founder two regularly
Speaker 4: referred to their sponsor as the Russians and for exact honor.
Speaker 4: About May twelfth, twenty twenty one, Founder two message Founder
Speaker 4: one on discord, quote, so we're billing the Russians from
Speaker 4: the corporation, right honor. About May twenty second, Founder one
Speaker 4: message Founder two on discord. Also, the Russians paid, so
Speaker 4: we're good to build them for the second month. I
Speaker 4: guess nailed it on her. About June second, Founder one
Speaker 4: message Founder two on Discord, Also, I say we build
Speaker 4: the Russians for the last month, once we're done.
Speaker 3: The extra offense. I wonder if they knew they were
Speaker 3: working for the Russian government.
Speaker 6: There's a lot more that's just like this.
Speaker 4: They constantly referred to the source of their income, at
Speaker 4: least to each other as quote unquote the Russians. And
Speaker 4: then in like outreach to like talent, which is, you know,
Speaker 4: a generous word to refer to Timpoole and others, they
Speaker 4: were a little bit more vague, but they certainly made
Speaker 4: kind of coy references to it in their producer discord beautiful.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, so, I mean the big question here with
Speaker 2: all of this is, like, did any of these major
Speaker 2: right wing media figures who have like they got hired
Speaker 2: in part because they were already doing the job the
Speaker 2: Russians wanted them doing, you know, building up this kind
Speaker 2: of hatred that exists on the right over the idea
Speaker 2: of funding Ukraine and Ukrainian resistance to the Russian war machine.
Speaker 2: Like all of that kind of stuff is like why
Speaker 2: these people got brought on anyway. Tim Poole has just
Speaker 2: kind of been one of the most reflexively anti Ukraine
Speaker 2: voices in conservative media, and Ruben is very effective at
Speaker 2: getting Americans to hate other Americans, Like he's one of
Speaker 2: the big kind of anti trans culture warriors out there.
Speaker 2: Did O Hansen Like that's why they wanted these guys
Speaker 2: like they wanted to encourage them basically to keep it up.
Speaker 2: And you know, the question then is what did these
Speaker 2: guys know and when did they know it? And the
Speaker 2: bigger question because I have my suspicions, and my suspicions
Speaker 2: are a lot and immediately, but none of that is
Speaker 2: in this indictment obviously. And the big question then is
Speaker 2: is the federal government going to attempt to prove anything
Speaker 2: like do they want to actually go after these guys?
Speaker 3: And I don't know.
Speaker 2: My guess is not, because there very rarely are consequences
Speaker 2: for these people. But I'm curious to what y'all think.
Speaker 6: No, it's it's it seems not.
Speaker 4: I'm both both Pool and I think three others have
Speaker 4: made statements saying that they've been contacted by the FBI
Speaker 4: as a potential victim of a crime and that they
Speaker 4: will be happy to assist the FBI investigating this matter.
Speaker 2: Now, that doesn't mean the FBI isn't necessarily looking into them,
Speaker 2: because that's all which the FBI would use if they
Speaker 2: suspected them. But yeah, my guess is that they lawyered up.
Speaker 4: Absolutely. It was funny both in there in Betty Johnson's
Speaker 4: and Timpole's immediate statements. They called this elk DOJ indictment,
Speaker 4: which is not true. It was not leaked, it was
Speaker 4: just unsealed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they just arrested people. Yeah, I'm very sure there's
Speaker 3: a press release.
Speaker 4: Like Also, one of the final posts from Tenant Media,
Speaker 4: I was talking about how this woman named Lauren's son
Speaker 4: was charged with acting as an agent of the Chinese
Speaker 4: Communist Party. Quote he or she is talking about DEI?
Speaker 4: Why would the Chinese government want to push a DEI
Speaker 4: in America?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is This is I think one of one
Speaker 4: of the final Twitter posts before their account got taken down.
Speaker 3: Yeah, beautiful. Their Rumble account is still live and kicking. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh thank goodness that out.
Speaker 5: Also, can we talk about their graphic design just for
Speaker 5: a moment, because it is dog shit? Yeah, Tenant Mediums,
Speaker 5: Tenant Yeah, like, have you I don't know, have you?
Speaker 5: Have you been on their Rumble account? Garrison, you know,
Speaker 5: I can't.
Speaker 4: I can't say I have been on their Rumble account
Speaker 4: as of as of recent.
Speaker 3: The last time I looked at Rumble it was their
Speaker 3: booth at the rnc OW.
Speaker 5: Let me tell you they're back and genuinely some of
Speaker 5: the most like deranged. It's just it's extremely busy, it's
Speaker 5: very nineties like, it's a lot of bright colors.
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 4: The clearest indication to me that this was absolutely a
Speaker 4: Russian op is that the company described itself as quote
Speaker 4: a network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political
Speaker 4: and cultural issues.
Speaker 2: Definitely Russians. Definitely Russians.
Speaker 6: You're like, oh, I wonder who wrote that? Who whatever?
Speaker 3: Describe themselves.
Speaker 2: Tim Poole had never even seen the word head of
Speaker 2: Redox before.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's crazy, it's wild.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they put multipolar into a theosaurus and that's what
Speaker 5: they came up with.
Speaker 6: It's crazy.
Speaker 3: It is interesting.
Speaker 2: One of the things in this indictment that I did
Speaker 2: find kind of worth talking about is that it specifically
Speaker 2: notes that folks at Russia Today when they were because
Speaker 2: they were largely deplatformed after the expanded Russian invasion in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two early twenty twenty two, and the indictment
Speaker 2: quotes the editor in chief of Russia Today being like,
Speaker 2: but it's fine because we were able to rebuild our
Speaker 2: following on Twitter. So I don't know if you, just
Speaker 2: in case you had any questions about like what Elon
Speaker 2: Musk's reforms at Twitter have accomplished. One of them is
Speaker 2: that we should probably roll to ads again. And then, Garrison,
Speaker 2: you had a very fun document you wanted to take.
Speaker 4: Us through, yes to kind of talk about why they
Speaker 4: might be doing some of this. There was one other
Speaker 4: document that was unsealed that kind of kind of sheds
Speaker 4: a light on Russia's exact focus on influencing US politics.
Speaker 2: Well, that's great, speaking of influencing US politics. Our advertisers
Speaker 2: probably don't.
Speaker 3: And we're back.
Speaker 4: There's another document called Exhibit nine to A, which is
Speaker 4: originally in Russian and this translated Coffee is provided in
Speaker 4: this PDF, and this appears to be some kind of
Speaker 4: instructional manual for why exactly people are going about this,
Speaker 4: why exactly is Tim Poole and all these others getting
Speaker 4: paid to talk about what they talk about, And then
Speaker 4: it also kind of explains like tactics and like how
Speaker 4: to actually go about it. So the first bit of
Speaker 4: this of this document, they just start talking about like
Speaker 4: the US two party system, which is really funny, and
Speaker 4: they primarily explain the two party systems differences as being
Speaker 4: like the way that they affect that the US political
Speaker 4: party B or Democratic Party includes people of color and
Speaker 4: quote unquote supporters of affirmative action and reverse discrimination, i e.
Speaker 4: Infringement on the rights of the white population of the
Speaker 4: United States. And then meanwhile, the Republican Party are victims
Speaker 4: of discrimination by people of color unquote. So that's how
Speaker 4: they kind of frame the US two party system is
Speaker 4: that there's these poor white people being oppressed by wokeism.
Speaker 4: They end this little introduction on the two party system
Speaker 4: by saying, quote, a key characteristic of the American media
Speaker 4: is it skew towards the Democratic Party's influence. While society
Speaker 4: is split between supporters of the new globalist socialism and
Speaker 4: traditional values, the media is democrat by over seventy five percent.
Speaker 4: Situation for the Republicans is made complicated by the censorship
Speaker 4: on social media and Democrats oriented new media. So some
Speaker 4: kind of weird phrasing there because it is being translated
Speaker 4: from Russian. But they're talking about how liberalism is inherently
Speaker 4: biased in media and that's something that promoted while being
Speaker 4: racist and being a Republican is something that is harder
Speaker 4: to get paid for by big media to talk about.
Speaker 4: And that's why they have this campaign, which they title
Speaker 4: Gorilla media campaign in the United States. They justify this
Speaker 4: by saying that there is no pro Russian and or
Speaker 4: putin mainstream politicians or succinctly large numbers of influencers and voters,
Speaker 4: and this is one of the things they're trying to do.
Speaker 4: Another quote is that Americans are quote dissatisfied by the
Speaker 4: dramatic decline and center of living and large expenditures of
Speaker 4: offensive policy in the United States, in Europe and Ukraine.
Speaker 4: They are afraid of losing the American way of life
Speaker 4: in the American dream. It is these sentiments that should
Speaker 4: be exploited in the course of an information campaign in
Speaker 4: the United States. Smart The campaign topics used in their
Speaker 4: Gorilla Media campaign are included here. The first ones encroaching
Speaker 4: universal poverty. Number two is the risk of job loss
Speaker 4: for white Americans, for people of color, perverts and disabled,
Speaker 4: constant lies of the Democratic Party administration, the threat of
Speaker 4: crime coming from people of color and immigrants, including new
Speaker 4: immigrants from Ukraine. Overspending on foreign policy at the expense
Speaker 4: of interests of white US citizens. Constant lies to the
Speaker 4: voters by the Democrats in power. Last, but not least
Speaker 4: America is suffering a defeat despite liberals' efforts. We are
Speaker 4: being drawn into the water. Our guys will die in Ukraine.
Speaker 4: The target audience of their campaign is listed as Republican voters,
Speaker 4: Donald Trump supporters, supporters of quote traditional family values, white
Speaker 4: Americans representing the lower and middle class.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things. It's frustrating
Speaker 2: that it is working. Yeah, to be quite frank, it's
Speaker 2: exactly what the Russiagate conspiracy theorists have been saying for years. Unfortunately, Yeah, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: and like a shitload of people on the left have
Speaker 2: just been mocking them endlessly, in part because they've bought
Speaker 2: a lot of this propaganda.
Speaker 4: And this is certainly different from the way they were
Speaker 4: going about it in twenty sixteen, right, And this isn't
Speaker 4: absolutely yeah, like this, this isn't the same like Facebook
Speaker 4: stuff they're doing, although Tenant did did have Facebook accounts.
Speaker 4: These are like weaponizing these people that have gotten big
Speaker 4: on YouTube and other platforms for talking about the same
Speaker 4: type of things that Russia kind of wants them to
Speaker 4: talk about, and it's just making sure that they have
Speaker 4: the ability to do so. Kind of Lastly, in this
Speaker 4: information doc They talk about kind of like where you
Speaker 4: can spread this disinformation, It says here quote on Facebook, Twitter,
Speaker 4: and YouTube. We need to create multiple perishable accounts, primarily
Speaker 4: for the work with comments. Websites should serve as the
Speaker 4: sources of information for dissemination and for video content YouTube
Speaker 4: accounts with a relatively small number of subscribers and commentators unquote.
Speaker 4: The list of information products can be disseminated includes texts
Speaker 4: of posts, comments on social media, memes including cariactures and collages,
Speaker 4: and video content including news stories in the Fox News style.
Speaker 4: They then propose creating a quote unquote project office to
Speaker 4: run this style of like media campaign. This consists of
Speaker 4: three segments monitoring US media and social media accounts of
Speaker 4: Republican politicians, a text factor with a minimum of five
Speaker 4: to four main topic based recommendations including about ten basic
Speaker 4: posts on social media and forty to sixty comments, and
Speaker 4: then managing an editorial office with a daily output of
Speaker 4: three to four pictures and memes, and a video editorial
Speaker 4: office with a daily output of three to four videos
Speaker 4: per day.
Speaker 6: Quote.
Speaker 4: In order for this work to be effective, you need
Speaker 4: to use a minimum of fake news and a maximum
Speaker 4: of realistic information. At the same time, you should continuously
Speaker 4: repeat that this is what's really happening, but the official
Speaker 4: media will never tell you about it or show it
Speaker 4: to you.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 2: So, I mean, like part of what's frustrating about this
Speaker 2: number one is just like they clearly have watched Alex Jones,
Speaker 2: and like, I've learned a great deal from how he's
Speaker 2: done this, which, unfortunately something Alex used to claim about putin.
Speaker 3: That fuck maybe he was right.
Speaker 2: But the bigger, more frustrating point to me is that like, oh,
Speaker 2: they didn't need to do any of this at all,
Speaker 2: Like this was all working just fine without them directly
Speaker 2: getting involved.
Speaker 3: This way, I kind of am intro.
Speaker 2: I think it's probably just a reaction to the fact
Speaker 2: that they had a lot of their more traditional stuff
Speaker 2: get deplatformed after February twenty twenty two. Yeah, but like
Speaker 2: this was all stuff the right was doing organically in
Speaker 2: their media without Russian money.
Speaker 3: They didn't need this.
Speaker 4: They certainly are trying to kind of rebuild some of
Speaker 4: their like directabilities influence after like RT got deplatformed. The
Speaker 4: other part that's interesting to me is because like this
Speaker 4: indictment focuses on like Tenet media as being kind of
Speaker 4: one of these video editorial offices that with a daily
Speaker 4: output of three to four videos a day. Like that
Speaker 4: that's what this that's what this kind of guy to describes,
Speaker 4: That's what tenant is this evidence. Stock also talks about
Speaker 4: how like they're also just like faking engagement, getting like
Speaker 4: sixty comments per day on various social media posts on
Speaker 4: political topics. So that also like points towards like a
Speaker 4: lot of people like driving like discussions and trying to
Speaker 4: like increase the actual like visibility and engagement is being
Speaker 4: boosted by this like non authentic interference. A lot of
Speaker 4: videos will go viral not just because they had a
Speaker 4: lot of people watch them initially, it's because they have
Speaker 4: a lot of engagement in like the comments, and that's
Speaker 4: what's going to push something to actually show up more
Speaker 4: people's feats. Like that is how Twitter currently works. There's
Speaker 4: a degree to which that's how things work on YouTube.
Speaker 4: So it's also just trying to to try to like
Speaker 4: engineer virality by faking a certain amount of engagement. Yeah,
Speaker 4: there's also like that that degree of like interference beyond
Speaker 4: just actually you know, paying for Tim Poole to talk
Speaker 4: about Ukraine and talk about how gay people are evil
Speaker 4: once a week.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think that's probably all we've got to say about
Speaker 2: this for right now. This is not the most surprising
Speaker 2: news in the world. It is good that it's embarrassing
Speaker 2: some of these guys.
Speaker 3: I don't know that.
Speaker 2: I think it's actually going to hurt their listenership at all.
Speaker 2: The people who listen to them don't really care.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they'll lie out of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they'll find some way to bit and to make
Speaker 4: themselves the victim out of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: They will not have any reflection that there was a
Speaker 4: whole Russian operation to identify like influencers to scout for
Speaker 4: that would serve Russia's purposes. That they will never reflect
Speaker 4: on why they specifically were scouted for. No, Yeah, they
Speaker 4: will never reflect that. The only bit of like, the
Speaker 4: only bit of hesitation that they had to take this
Speaker 4: money was that the profile for the think businessman mentioned
Speaker 4: to social justice. That was the only thing that they
Speaker 4: like protested. That's the only thing that they actually wanted
Speaker 4: to look further into was the fact that he listed
Speaker 4: social justice is something he cares about, and not the
Speaker 4: fact that he just doesn't exist at all.
Speaker 6: This is a completely fake person.
Speaker 4: They were able to flag social justice but not flag
Speaker 4: that he just did not exist.
Speaker 5: It.
Speaker 4: None of this will cause any kind of recollection because
Speaker 4: these guys don't care. Like the reason why they say
Speaker 4: what they say is because they can make five hundred
Speaker 4: thousand dollar a month extra saying it. So imagine how
Speaker 4: much money they're already making. Yeah, Like that explains why
Speaker 4: they're doing what they're doing. Like they don't care what
Speaker 4: they say anymore. They make such a ridiculous amount of
Speaker 4: money that it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's what it's always been about. Like they
Speaker 2: have never believed in anything.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they don't need to like reflect on any of
Speaker 4: this because they're still making tons of money. They're making
Speaker 4: slightly less than they used to now that Russia's not
Speaker 4: paying them, but they are still making tons especially like
Speaker 4: if this is what they thought like the going price was,
Speaker 4: like they suggested these amounts, like they this is like
Speaker 4: the regular price for them, and that kind of points
Speaker 4: towards how much money is flying around this right wing
Speaker 4: medio ecosystem.
Speaker 3: Yep, great good stuff.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the last couple of videos were focusing on this
Speaker 5: ridiculous lie that migrant's taken over an apartment complex in Colorado,
Speaker 5: Like all this shit that just isn't true that they've
Speaker 5: been able to make true. I don't know, it's so frustrating.
Speaker 5: I find it's so frustrating. Also, how like Pool has
Speaker 5: been able to run this line, Like the media won't
Speaker 5: tell you this because there are things that legitimately our
Speaker 5: neoliberal establishment media completely ignores, and like that leaves the
Speaker 5: door open for this kind of shit, and as a result,
Speaker 5: people can fill that space with lies, as we're seeing here.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, so the next time you get contacted by a
Speaker 4: shady man on WhatsApp to pay you five hundred thousand
Speaker 4: dollars about talking about how gay people are evil, you
Speaker 4: might want to check to see if he's actually a
Speaker 4: Russian agent first. You just you might want to do
Speaker 4: a little a little bit of work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they have to tell you. It's like cops. You
Speaker 3: just ask him that they have to tell you, you
Speaker 3: know what, Just send him my way. That's exciting new
Speaker 3: content news for you, guys.
Speaker 4: I will not get paid by Russia to lie. I
Speaker 4: might get paid by like Sweden, you know, to like
Speaker 4: advance Swedish interests.
Speaker 2: Maybe there's a number of most countries I would lie for.
Speaker 2: Besides that aren't Russia. Yeah, would I would lie for
Speaker 2: like Japan? Probably No, that could get dark.
Speaker 3: Actually yeah, yeah, I leave that one out.
Speaker 6: Bro Sweden, Sweden's perfect, No, it's scarce.
Speaker 2: I think you're underestimating the kind of shit Sweden gets
Speaker 2: up to.
Speaker 6: Oh no, they're certainly evil. They're certainly evil.
Speaker 4: But in terms of like a very like milk toast
Speaker 4: country to get paid to increase their foreign interest, then
Speaker 4: I think Sweden's about as good as you're gonna get.
Speaker 6: Like, come on, like hungry, come on, come.
Speaker 3: On, Switzerland.
Speaker 2: You know all the Switzerland you would you would quickly
Speaker 2: get implicated, but they could pay.
Speaker 6: All the financial all the financial price.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Robert and I received material benefits from the Burmese PDF.
Speaker 5: We both had a nice lunch from them, and that
Speaker 5: has been what we've done all our coverage. It's time
Speaker 5: for us to come clean now.
Speaker 2: We did, although you did get very sick afterwards, sonvably sick,
Speaker 2: and you lucked me out of the toilet, So yeah,
Speaker 2: that was pretty funny.
Speaker 4: What it's time anyway, Rip Tenant Media, you were a
Speaker 4: big one.
Speaker 3: We'll be back tomorrow.
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Speaker 6: Thanks for listening.