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Speaker 1: Imagine a world where big bags of dirty, anonymous money

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Speaker 1: by elections, politicians, and the laws that govern our whole society.

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Speaker 1: Spoiler alert, it's the current reality in the United States.

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Speaker 1: Hey everyone, it's me David Serota. I'm thrilled to share

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Speaker 1: this clip of the inaugural episode of master Plan, the

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Speaker 1: lever's new investigative podcast series that was recently named a

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Speaker 1: must listen by The Guardian and Apple Podcasts. In each

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Speaker 1: episode of master Plan, we expose the secret scheme first

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Speaker 1: hatched in the nineteen seventies that's been methodically legalizing corruption

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Speaker 1: for the wealthy. With the help of never before reported documents,

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Speaker 1: we'll look back at how it all began, how this

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Speaker 1: plan was executed over decades, how it's still being implemented today,

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Speaker 1: and how we can stop it. You'll learn things you

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Speaker 1: never knew about icons like President Richard Nixon, Senator Mitch McConnell,

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Speaker 1: Fox News founder Roger Ayles, and Supreme Court Justices John

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Speaker 1: Roberts and Samuel Alito. You'll learn how their master plan

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Speaker 1: to legalize corruption affects you and your family and undermines

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Speaker 1: American democracy today. In this special preview, we go back

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Speaker 1: to nineteen seventy one, a time when hot pants were hot,

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Speaker 1: bell bottoms were swinging, and campaign cash flowed like milk

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Speaker 1: without further ado. Here's a short clip from master Plan.

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Speaker 1: This is corruption, this is bribery. Don't let it stand.

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Speaker 2: This corruption is an American issue.

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Speaker 1: We live in a corrupt nation, a nation corrupt to

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Speaker 1: its bones.

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Speaker 2: We have reached a saturation point of corruption at the

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Speaker 2: federal level. It is corrosive on society because nobody has

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Speaker 2: any trust or belief or puts any legitimacy in our

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Speaker 2: institutions anymore.

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Speaker 1: When I say the word corrupt, what jumps into your mind?

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Speaker 1: Maybe you think about a file on your computer hard

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Speaker 1: drive not working, or the blue screen of death. The

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Speaker 1: file has been corrupted, the GX has corrupted my system.

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Speaker 1: Maybe you think of some far away regime on the

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Speaker 1: other side of the world where government officials get rich

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Speaker 1: while everyone else starves. Somalia has held the title of

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Speaker 1: being one of the world's most corrupt countries for the

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Speaker 1: past decade. Maybe you think of something from pop culture,

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Speaker 1: like the Nevada Senator and the Godfather demanding a bribe

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Speaker 1: from the Corleone family. Or maybe you think of the

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Speaker 1: wires walking bribery machine. Clay Davis she if you're a

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Speaker 1: Republican political junkie, this is probably what comes to mind. Barisma,

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Speaker 1: a Ukrainian natural gas company, paid Hunter Biden millions of

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Speaker 1: dollars to serve on its board of directors. And if

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Speaker 1: you're a Democratic political junkie, I'm guessing you think of

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Speaker 1: stuff like this. Trump told the group that they should

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Speaker 1: donate a billion dollars to his presidential campaign because, if elected,

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Speaker 1: he would roll back environmental rules that he said hamper

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Speaker 1: their industry. Corruption in politics is the process of using

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Speaker 1: money to break the machine of government so that the

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Speaker 1: machine no longer benefits the public. It only benefits the

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Speaker 1: wealthy and powerful. Now there's the corruption of say a

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Speaker 1: cop taking a bribe to rip up a speeding ticket,

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Speaker 1: or a government official diverting public highway funds into their

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Speaker 1: own pocket. This kind of petty corruption is bad, but

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Speaker 1: greedy individuals will always exist, which makes this kind of

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Speaker 1: small time graft inevitable even in the best run governments.

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Speaker 1: But then there's systemic corruption, the kind of corruption that's

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Speaker 1: become so pervasive and so common that you start to assume, oh, well,

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Speaker 1: that's not even corruption. That's just how things work. Deep down,

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Speaker 1: you sense that there's a glitch, but it's hard to

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Speaker 1: pinpoint the problem when you see it everywhere. It is

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Speaker 1: all around us.

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Speaker 2: You can feel it when you go work, when you

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Speaker 2: go to church, when you pay you a tax.

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Speaker 1: This is the deep, systemic corruption that now pervades America,

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Speaker 1: and you get a glimpse of it every time you

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Speaker 1: hear about how much money is flooding into politics and elections.

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Speaker 2: Morgan billionaire is spending a record eight hundred and eighty

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Speaker 2: million dollars in the midterms.

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Speaker 1: Spending projected to reach get this, nearly eleven billion dollars.

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Speaker 1: We are seeing a storm of campaigns spending.

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Speaker 2: An ultra secretive Chicago industrial mogul has quietly given one

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Speaker 2: point six billion dollars to the architect of the right

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Speaker 2: wing take over the courts.

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Speaker 1: This kind of all consuming corruption does not occur naturally.

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Speaker 1: It's not inevitable. It is created by people who want

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Speaker 1: to trap us inside a system of bribery, graft, and

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Speaker 1: dishonesty because that serves them. So who exactly designed this

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Speaker 1: dystopia we're now immersed in. The Lever's team of investigative

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Speaker 1: journalists has spend the life last two years digging into

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Speaker 1: archives and lost audio searching for that answer, and we

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Speaker 1: finally found it. I'm David Serota, and this is Masterplan.

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Speaker 1: In this first episode, we'll eventually go back fifty years

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Speaker 1: to start exposing the epic story of how corruption was

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Speaker 1: legalized in America. But first, let me tell you where

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Speaker 1: this story started for me. Can you pinpoint the exact

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Speaker 1: moment when you realized how corrupt and fubar everything was?

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Speaker 1: I can. It was after a pre dawn bus trip

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Speaker 1: to Canada. Sarah Kanji joins US Live now from the

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Speaker 1: US Canadian border in Highgate with Hey everyone, it's Sorota again.

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Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed this preview of the first episode

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Speaker 1: of our new series, master Plan. If you liked what

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Speaker 1: you heard, head over to the Masterplan feed for new

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Speaker 1: episodes every Tuesday. If you want to hear new episodes

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Speaker 1: of master Plans sooner and get exclusive bonus content, go

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Speaker 1: to levernews dot com and become a paying subscriber. That

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Speaker 1: also gives you access to all of the Levers podcasts,

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Speaker 1: all of our live events, and all of our other

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Speaker 1: exclusive content and investigative journalism. Thanks for listening. Rock the boat,