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Speaker 1: Hmm, what's grifftin my mainstream media infrastructure. I'm Robert Evans

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Speaker 1: hosted Behind the Bastards, the show where we tell you

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Speaker 1: everything you don't know about the very worst people in

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Speaker 1: all of history. And every week I also try an

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Speaker 1: introduction that is, you know, some variant of on topic.

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Speaker 1: This week was more on topic than the others because

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Speaker 1: I'm trying to look extra good in front of my boss, uh,

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Speaker 1: the inimitable Jack O'Brian inimitable, So don't to imitate me. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I only use that phrase to describe you and Jamie,

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Speaker 1: I think. So congratulation that is that is incredibly high praise.

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Speaker 1: I'm thrilled to be back, Robert. I've been listening to

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Speaker 1: your show quite a bit lately. The series that you

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Speaker 1: explained as though it were like you slacking off, where

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Speaker 1: you read your audio book to Katie and Cody was

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Speaker 1: especially good. Thank you, Yeah, good work. Thank you for

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Speaker 1: not firing me for throwing dangerous items around the recording room. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we've abandoned that, but we'll wait until is the talk

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Speaker 1: about how good it is? Yep? Yeah, all right, Well

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Speaker 1: could they be harder and sharper objects? Yes, I've used

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Speaker 1: company funds to buy throwing knives, which which I think

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Speaker 1: I'm going to hybridize with a case of Perier and

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Speaker 1: see how that works. Hey, you're a guy who's into weapons.

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Speaker 1: Are throwing stars a thing that would ever be dangerous?

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Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, there's sharp things that you can throw

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Speaker 1: it people, I would say, in the grand scheme of

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Speaker 1: things that you can buy in America to hurt people

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Speaker 1: with their pretty low on the list, right, that is

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Speaker 1: a very grand scheme. Yeah, alright, well, good to know.

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Speaker 1: I guess the ones that I've used in my life

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Speaker 1: have all been toy through wrong stars and they don't

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Speaker 1: have much weight to them. But I'd imagine the actually

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Speaker 1: weaponized throwing stars have a little bit more heft. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And you know what's even what's scarier than the throwing stars?

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Speaker 1: And I think it's like kind of maybe close. I

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Speaker 1: don't know enough about the history of throwing stars, but

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Speaker 1: like cow trips are what kind of scare me which

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Speaker 1: are essentially like Jack's like the toy but like heavier

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Speaker 1: duty and more dangerous. And there's some people that have

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Speaker 1: built like drone rigs that you can just dump hundreds

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Speaker 1: of these on like a street corner, and just really

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Speaker 1: tear up people's feet or vehicle tires. Oh you put

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Speaker 1: them in explosive No, you don't even have to. You

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Speaker 1: could just drop them on the ground and you have

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Speaker 1: a bunch of Then suddenly people have to clear all

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Speaker 1: of these sharp, dangerous objects off of a street. And

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Speaker 1: it's like you could you know, in like a civil

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Speaker 1: unrest situation and a protest and like war in an

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Speaker 1: urban environment, it's a it's a force multiplier that that

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Speaker 1: concerns me more than throwing stars, which I think should

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Speaker 1: be mandatory. I know in my household they are my

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Speaker 1: three year old and my one year older, both well

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Speaker 1: versed in the throwing star arts. Yeah. We we were

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Speaker 1: talking before this episode about your dislike of eyes, so

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Speaker 1: that that scans Yes, yeah, exactly. Most parents are like

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Speaker 1: watch out or you'll put your eye out, and I'm like, uh,

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Speaker 1: you'll put your eye out, And that's what we're after, son,

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Speaker 1: That's that is the goal. I'm a good I'm a

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Speaker 1: good parent. Speaking of people who are good at things,

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Speaker 1: today we're talking about the patron saint of what I

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Speaker 1: call news grifters. Yeah, a little fella you may have

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Speaker 1: heard of named James O'Keefe. What do you know about Jimmy, Jimmy,

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Speaker 1: Jamie Keith. What was Jimmy saying the other day? Jimmy

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Speaker 1: was saying the funniest thing. Now, James O'Keefe is a

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Speaker 1: he he wants to be a journalist, I think, um,

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Speaker 1: and he's right, and he like does stunts. Um, and

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Speaker 1: he got acorn shutdown for a thing that I don't know.

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Speaker 1: Doesn't seem great, doesn't seem like it was totally fair

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Speaker 1: to me. Um, But I'm sure you'll tell me about

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Speaker 1: that maybe. Yeah, I I suspect like what you've just

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Speaker 1: laid out is kind of what most people going into

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Speaker 1: this are going to know about James O'Keeffe. And that's

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Speaker 1: a fair enough, uh sort of like broad picture of

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Speaker 1: the guy. But today, as we do on this show,

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Speaker 1: we are going to get deep into the nitty gritty.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, let's start at the beginning. James Edward O'Keefe,

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Speaker 1: the third, which is uh uh, speaking of things, you

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Speaker 1: want to throw throwing stars at that name? Would be

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Speaker 1: want to throw that name across the room? Yeah? Uh.

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Speaker 1: He was born in Bergen County in New Jersey on

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Speaker 1: June four. His father James O'Keeffe the second was an engineer,

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Speaker 1: and his mother, Deborah, was a physical therapist. James was

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Speaker 1: oldest of two children. His father had a difficult time

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Speaker 1: getting along in the business world and eventually left corporate

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Speaker 1: life behind to become a landlord. He spent much of

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Speaker 1: his career buying, restoring, and renting out old houses, so O'Keefe's.

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Speaker 1: James O'Keefe's upbringing was described by his father as conservative,

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Speaker 1: but not rigidly so. He helped his dad out rebuilding homes,

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Speaker 1: but during school he leaned distinctly more towards the arts

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Speaker 1: than jockey endeavors. His favorite classes were theater and art,

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Speaker 1: and he loved to write from an early age. He

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Speaker 1: came to hate construction work with his father and frequently

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Speaker 1: day dreamed about performing on Broadway. Oh so he's like

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Speaker 1: a blocked creative. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He once wanted to

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Speaker 1: be an artist and then didn't have the Well yeah,

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Speaker 1: his dad kept yellow. No, you gotta hammer more nails

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Speaker 1: into walls. J O three, Daddy, Yeah, I want yeah.

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Speaker 1: J O three also a contemporary in a number of

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Speaker 1: ways of our mutual friend Daniel O'Brien um, which which

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Speaker 1: we're about to get here. Yeah. I heard that they

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Speaker 1: had a lot of schoolyard battles and they said that

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Speaker 1: this town isn't big enough for two oh last named people.

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Speaker 1: Ye like the rap battles. That was actually all chronicled

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Speaker 1: in the documentary eight Mile, which is about Daniel O'Brien. Yeah. Now,

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Speaker 1: when he entered New Jersey's Westwood High School, James O'Keeffe

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Speaker 1: pursued his passions, starring in musicals and learning modern dance.

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Speaker 1: He was an Avid Boy Scout and eventually reached the

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Speaker 1: rank of Eagle Scout. But in spite of his dreams

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Speaker 1: of success on the stage, James took a different route

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Speaker 1: when it came time for college. He enrolled in Rutgers

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Speaker 1: University as a philosophy major. Uh and I always feel

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Speaker 1: a little, uh, I don't know, bad when philosophy majors

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Speaker 1: end up being shit humans, but it happens. Yeah, It's

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Speaker 1: one of those things. This is one of the first

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Speaker 1: things I don't understand about James O'Keefe. He has these dreams,

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Speaker 1: Like it's not weird for someone to have dreams of

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Speaker 1: like making it in the arts and then picking a

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Speaker 1: more practical you know, what is traditionally considered a practical

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Speaker 1: major in college. It's weird to be like, No, my

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Speaker 1: dreams of theater are silly. I'm going to become a

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Speaker 1: philosophy What was the job he was angling for? I

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Speaker 1: wanted to be a philosophy professor. Maybe. Yeah, if you're

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Speaker 1: gonna go for something where it's you know, clearly more

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Speaker 1: about the learning than about, you know, setting yourself up

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Speaker 1: for a specific career path, why not go into theater.

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Speaker 1: I don't know either way. Philosophy is a fine degree program.

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Speaker 1: You don't see too many great, uh people who I

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Speaker 1: would agree with whose backgrounds are boy Scouts and philosophy major.

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Speaker 1: I bet that's a that's a gruesome twosome. Well what's

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Speaker 1: what's well? Yeah, yeah, you're probably right. Actually I was

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Speaker 1: going to defend the boy Scouts, But then I remember

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Speaker 1: the last ten years, so maybe I won't do that. Um. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: For a time, it seemed that James O'Keefe would be

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Speaker 1: more or less in a political person, or at least

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Speaker 1: that's how most write ups of O'Keefe's biography describe him.

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Speaker 1: Politico long form article about him, which is probably the

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Speaker 1: most detailed biography of James that I've found notes that quote.

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Speaker 1: When he first became eligible to vote in a presidential

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Speaker 1: election in two thousand four as a college sophomore, he

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Speaker 1: stayed home um, which, given the nature of that election,

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Speaker 1: you could have some pretty strong beliefs and still have

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Speaker 1: been like then. I mean, that was w W E.

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Speaker 1: Event man Kerry, what a electric personality. The unstoppable force

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Speaker 1: meets the immovable object was really the most titanic of struggles. Now,

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Speaker 1: O'Keefe's real political convictions do seem to have evolved less

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Speaker 1: out of his childhood upbringing than his status as a

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Speaker 1: habitual contrarian. When he started taking history in policy courses

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Speaker 1: at Rutgers, James O'Keeffe found himself surrounded by professors and

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Speaker 1: students with very liberal political bents. He's claimed in most

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Speaker 1: interviews that he's done since that their bias against conservatives

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Speaker 1: infuriated and radicalized him. He also claims that some of

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Speaker 1: his professors were Marxists and even Stalinists. Judging by the

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Speaker 1: level of truth telling a parent and the rest of

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Speaker 1: his career, I have some doubts that his teachers came

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Speaker 1: out to him as Stalinists with any kind of regularity,

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Speaker 1: but you don't tend to meet too many of them

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Speaker 1: in the wild, although it does happen. So pro murder

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Speaker 1: right in the right circumstances, Well, well we'll support millions

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Speaker 1: and millions of people being murdered. Yep. Um, I mean

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Speaker 1: you run into those people on Twitter. But uh, professors, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: not as often. O'Keefe felt drawn towards journalism while he

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Speaker 1: was new in college, and he applied for and received

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Speaker 1: a bi weekly column at the Daily Targum, a student newspaper,

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Speaker 1: while he was still a freshman. Now, the fact that

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Speaker 1: this young conservative was able to get a column in

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Speaker 1: his student newspaper during his freshman year might be seen

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Speaker 1: as evidence that the campus culture was less biased than

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Speaker 1: he presents it. Either way, here's yeah, like I wrote

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Speaker 1: for a school paper in my freshman year of well,

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Speaker 1: my sophomore year of college, and I didn't get a column,

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Speaker 1: like because they didn't do that for people. They try

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Speaker 1: to teach you how to do actual journalism. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: it seems yeah, so he gets this column a good

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Speaker 1: lesson about the world at large, and that uh, they're like,

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Speaker 1: oh my god, we found a conservative who can write.

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Speaker 1: You guys, everybody over here give him a column. Uh,

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Speaker 1: and he probably learned a valuable lesson that day that

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Speaker 1: he's probably not willing to admit to himself even that

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Speaker 1: he learned. That is the feeling one gets. So I

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Speaker 1: found a New Jersey dot Com article that wrote up

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Speaker 1: about sort of his early political writings for The Daily Targum. Uh.

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Speaker 1: It notes quote his political writings tended to mix two flavors,

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Speaker 1: biting and lofty. One installment of his column, Feathers of Steel,

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Speaker 1: railed against what O'Keeffe perceived as a campus culture stacked

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Speaker 1: against conservatives. Yeah, Feathers of Deal brutal um. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that was his Yeah. So Politico writes that his column

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Speaker 1: started out as benign but grew more aggressively conservative and

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Speaker 1: anti left over the months of his first semester. By

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Speaker 1: the end of that semester, he had been inspired to

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Speaker 1: write a column titled, pompously enough, the Conservative Manifesto. Uh.

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Speaker 1: He argued that Rutgers Yeah wow, I can't believe the

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Speaker 1: entire movement left it up to a college freshman to

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Speaker 1: right their manifesto. But yeah, it's It's worth noting that

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Speaker 1: the only other nineteen year old manifesto writers. I'm aware

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Speaker 1: of shot ups schools and malls. That's uh. In his manifesto,

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Speaker 1: O'Keefe argued that Rutgers promoted an intellectual imbalance by not

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Speaker 1: giving conservatism. It's fair do in lessons quote, as a

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Speaker 1: citizen of this country, it is my right to have

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Speaker 1: a balanced education. Attention is not focused on the imbalance,

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Speaker 1: but rather that it's stubborn for people like me to

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Speaker 1: still remain conservative. Conservative reason is viewed is intrinsically wrong.

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Speaker 1: This logic is beyond flawed. It's pathetic. Students can't defend

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Speaker 1: its reason because their fundamental way of being taught is skewed. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: so that was that was That was That's kind of

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Speaker 1: the tenor of his of his articles. It's unfair that

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Speaker 1: people aren't giving the things I believe equal um weight

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Speaker 1: in all of the classes that I take right because

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Speaker 1: every Yeah, that that's very um that that whole like

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Speaker 1: conservatism should be taught just as much as liberalism is

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Speaker 1: very uh uh. What's it called relativistic? Morally relativistic. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: one of those things they're supposed to be mad at,

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Speaker 1: isn't it. They only support moral relativism when it includes

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Speaker 1: their beliefs, but not things that they do. Yeah, which

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Speaker 1: we'll we'll touch on that a little bit in just

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Speaker 1: a minute here. Um. So Yeah, for reasons that are

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Speaker 1: still not certain, O'Keeffe's column did not return for a

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Speaker 1: second semester. He claimed in a political interview that it

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Speaker 1: was simply not renewed. A Talking Points Memo article I

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Speaker 1: found on him suggest that he was a stead fired,

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Speaker 1: but the link they post his back up for that

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Speaker 1: story does not work. It is unclear exactly what happened.

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Speaker 1: What is clear is that in two thousand four, James

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Speaker 1: O'Keefe founded an alternative newspaper of his own titled or

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Speaker 1: named The Centurion. The political article that i've referenced, which

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Speaker 1: is critical of O'Keeffe, but in many ways presents the

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Speaker 1: sympathetic look at the man, describes the creation of The

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Speaker 1: Centurion as the end result of a long period of

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Speaker 1: intellectual soul searching by O'Keefe after he lost his column. Quote. Dejected,

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Speaker 1: he found refuge in journalism, sitting alone for hours each

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Speaker 1: day in a cafeteria and reading three newspapers, The New

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Speaker 1: York Times, USA Today, and Newark Star Ledger front to back.

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Speaker 1: More consequentially, he discovered Rules for Radicals, the nineteen seventy

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Speaker 1: one book by liberal activists Saul Olynsky, which is required

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Speaker 1: reading for new hires at Project Veritas. O'Keeffe and true

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Speaker 1: Olynskey fashion started his own alternative newspaper, The Centurion. It

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Speaker 1: almost didn't get off the ground. The newspaper needed a

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Speaker 1: faculty visor to receive school funds, and nobody would sponsor O'Keeffe. Finally,

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Speaker 1: a history professor in Free Speed absolutist James Livingston agreed

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Speaker 1: on the condition he'd be given a column. I'm a Marxist,

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Speaker 1: a socialist, a feminist, and a pragmatic postmodernist. Livingston wrote

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Speaker 1: in the November two thousand four debut edition. So that

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Speaker 1: sounds good, right. James O'Keeffe started his own, but he's

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Speaker 1: willing to let this guy we very much disagrees with

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Speaker 1: Wright a column, because like he's an open minded dude.

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Speaker 1: And even though he disagrees with this guy, he appreciates

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Speaker 1: the help he receives and he's just about free speech.

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Speaker 1: That's how Politico presents the start of The Centurion. Talking

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Speaker 1: points memo article I found, which actually interviewed Professor Livingston,

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Speaker 1: paints a very different story. Quote. Oh yeah, after the

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Speaker 1: second column, O'Keefe started running a rejoinder right next to

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Speaker 1: it or below it, he tells us. Unhappy, Livingstone complained,

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Speaker 1: I thought they had violated our contract. So I said, hey,

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Speaker 1: you people are conservatives. You people should believe in contracts.

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Speaker 1: At that point, O'Keefe angrily fired Livingston. By this time,

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Speaker 1: they had begun to receive funding from various right wing organizations.

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Speaker 1: He says, we've reported that the Leadership Institute, which fosters

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Speaker 1: the growth of con servative student media and later employed O'Keefe,

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Speaker 1: awarded the Centurion a five Balance in Media grant. So

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Speaker 1: so he fires to keep it going without Livingstone's patronage. Well,

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Speaker 1: he'd gotten the patronage, which is what he needed to

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Speaker 1: get it off the ground with funding. So he was

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Speaker 1: able to dump Livingston and Renege on the contract that

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Speaker 1: they had made. Uh. And as a reward for kicking

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Speaker 1: off the only dissenting voice on his newspaper, he received

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Speaker 1: a Balance in Media award from this conservative Leadership Institute. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: free speech advocate James O'Keefe. Yeah, So, while he ran

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Speaker 1: his propaganda magazine, O'Keefe began to realize in two thousand

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Speaker 1: five that print media was not the future of journalism,

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Speaker 1: which is a bold stance to have taken. Uh did

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Speaker 1: you get this intel? I don't know, it's a deep

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Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, Uh, you know. I I still I

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Speaker 1: still feel like paper news letters are going to come back.

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Speaker 1: I bought a printing press the other day. I really

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Speaker 1: think once this podcasting game collapses, we've got to get

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Speaker 1: back into the yellow journalism field or transcribing every one

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Speaker 1: of your episodes and putting it on Well. I have

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Speaker 1: some hot takes about the sinking of the U. S S.

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Speaker 1: Missouri that I really um so yeah. O'Keefe started experimenting

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Speaker 1: with producing video, and the specific kind of video he

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Speaker 1: wanted to produce was one that would let him indulge

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Speaker 1: in his growing ambition as a journalist while also exercising

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Speaker 1: his buried passion for theater. In his junior year, James

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Speaker 1: O'Keeffe organized a meeting with the Rutger's official where he

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Speaker 1: pretended with an accomplice to be an Irish American activist

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Speaker 1: fighting against the stereotyping of his people. O'Keeffe complained that

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Speaker 1: the school selling lucky charms in the cafeteria was offensive.

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Speaker 1: In the end of the serial was not removed from campus,

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Speaker 1: and no effort was undertaken to do so. But the

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Speaker 1: official O'Keefe taped didn't laugh him out of the room,

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Speaker 1: and the fact that he took James seriously rather than

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Speaker 1: mocking him was seen by conservatives as an example of

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Speaker 1: a school official being preposter reously sensitive. Um The video

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Speaker 1: gained tens of thousands of yews on YouTube, back at

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Speaker 1: a time when the site was new enough that those

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Speaker 1: numbers were impressive. O'keep's partner at the time, Ben wetmore,

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Speaker 1: said this of James, his background in theater is a

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Speaker 1: big part of his story. He was fearless. O'Keefe would

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Speaker 1: go on to claim to this day that Rutgers pulled

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Speaker 1: Lucky Charms from the shelves after his stunt, even though

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Speaker 1: that's not true. So that's this is james first undercover

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Speaker 1: deal is like, so this guy doesn't did that mean

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Speaker 1: that he got to go undercover with an Irish accent?

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna guess he really hammed up the Irish accent.

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Speaker 1: I mean the last name O'Keefe provides some back up there,

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Speaker 1: But yeah, this all seems like one long excuse for

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Speaker 1: him to attempt acting in a way that doesn't make

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Speaker 1: his dad uh look askance at him. Yeah, and where

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Speaker 1: he can't be criticized for actually being bad at it

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Speaker 1: because like it didn't. Yeah, whatever happened when he went

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Speaker 1: into that meeting was going to be at work out

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Speaker 1: for O'Keeffe wanted, because like, no school official, even receiving

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Speaker 1: a stupid, like completely inane visit from a student like this,

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Speaker 1: no school official is going to be like, you're a

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Speaker 1: dumb ship, like funk off out of my office, kid, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's just not how it works. They're going to be

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Speaker 1: polite and like listen to your complaints even though they're silly.

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Speaker 1: And like if the guy through some fluke listened to

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Speaker 1: O'Keeffe and pulled lucky charms, then he had a huge story.

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Speaker 1: But if the guy just sat there and took him seriously,

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Speaker 1: he still had a story that would go viral. So,

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Speaker 1: like you see, O'Keefe, like from this early age, clearly

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Speaker 1: understands the kind of developing online right wing media ecosystem

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Speaker 1: at a like a pretty gut level. So after he

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Speaker 1: graduated in two thousand six, James O'Keeffe grew mildly infamous

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Speaker 1: among Rutger students for refusing to leave the school. The

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Speaker 1: year after he graduated. In two thousand seven, he attended

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Speaker 1: a student government meeting when it became time for the

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Speaker 1: members to go into a closed session to elect a

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Speaker 1: new member of the student government. Every other guest in

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Speaker 1: the room left, as was tradition and considered polite and decent.

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Speaker 1: But O'Keefe, who was no longer a student at the school, quote,

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Speaker 1: refused to leave the room and took out a video

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Speaker 1: camera videotaping our attempts to have him leave the room.

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Speaker 1: This person or the person who said this, yeah, claims

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Speaker 1: that James refused to leaven quote. Ultimately campus police had

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Speaker 1: to escort him out of the building. So he's basically

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Speaker 1: trying to like drum up, like, look, I'm being oppressed

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Speaker 1: as a conservative for being kicked out of this meeting.

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Speaker 1: Even I was like, no, dude, you don't go here anymore.

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Speaker 1: That is oh man just refuses to move on. In

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Speaker 1: many ways, I think that's actually sadder than somebody like

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Speaker 1: in their mid twenties who still shows up at frat

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Speaker 1: parties with a case of natty ice, Like at least

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Speaker 1: that guy is trying to get drunk. Uh, and then

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Speaker 1: that guy doesn't when people are like, man, maybe you

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Speaker 1: should move on, take out his camera and be like

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Speaker 1: they're trying to oppress me. Yeah. Yeah, And I mean

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Speaker 1: actually that guy probably does get escorted off campus by

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Speaker 1: security on a number of occasions. It's less sad now. So.

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Speaker 1: By two thousand nine, James O'Keeffe had finally found a

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Speaker 1: target that was not on the Rutgers campus Planned Parenthood.

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Speaker 1: He worked with Lila Rose, a history major from u

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Speaker 1: c l A with a voice that sounded like a

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Speaker 1: much younger woman, a girl. In fact, Lila would call

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Speaker 1: sundry Planned Parenthood offices pretending to be thirteen years old

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Speaker 1: and saying that she had gotten pregnant with her thirty

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Speaker 1: one year old boyfriend. Now, obviously, a sexual relationship between

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Speaker 1: a thirteen year old and thirty one year old is illegal.

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Speaker 1: It's statutory rape on behalf of the thirty one year old,

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Speaker 1: and legally, the person at Planned Parenthood on the phone

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Speaker 1: was required to report this situation to CPS. During the calls,

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Speaker 1: Lyla Rose maid, she would refuse to give her boyfriend's

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Speaker 1: name on the grounds that she thought he would get

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Speaker 1: in trouble. In the videos that like O'Keeffe and Lyla made,

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Speaker 1: the planned parent had representatives would usually like pause for

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Speaker 1: a long time, and in some cases they eventually suggested

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Speaker 1: that like, basically, it seems like the planned parenthood representatives

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Speaker 1: felt sorry for this girl. A few of them would

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Speaker 1: make suggestions like maybe just don't specify the age of

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Speaker 1: the person who got you pregnant so you can get healthcare. Um.

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Speaker 1: But in other cases, like they would tell her things

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Speaker 1: like you know, you you should really tell your mother,

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Speaker 1: or like we have to follow the law, and we

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Speaker 1: actually like we we need to know the name of

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Speaker 1: this person so we can report it. So basically they

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Speaker 1: uncovered a mix of things. A couple of planned parenthood

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Speaker 1: representatives who did not do what they would legally required

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Speaker 1: to do. An other planned parent had representatives who absolutely

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Speaker 1: did UM. In all cases, you know, those people were

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Speaker 1: kind of reacting by the fact that a young girl

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Speaker 1: claiming to be in crisis was coming to them for healthcare. UM.

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Speaker 1: It's like baiting, baiting an animal trap with empathy. It's like, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: these stupid humans in their empathy, let's use that to

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Speaker 1: make them technically violate a law. Yeah, that baiting an

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Speaker 1: animal trap with empathy is a really good way to

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Speaker 1: describe the only thing James O'Keeffe actually knows how to do.

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Speaker 1: Like that's his whole career and we could actually in

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Speaker 1: the episode there, um but there's that. There's a lot

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00:22:00,920 --> 00:22:05,800
Speaker 1: more frustra Yeah yeah, but like that's that's the basic

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00:22:05,880 --> 00:22:10,439
Speaker 1: tactic is like you you bait the trap with with empathy,

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Speaker 1: and like when people show a human reaction that violates

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Speaker 1: the law technically, then you've got them. And you know

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Speaker 1: they had them, and staffers got fired at Planned Parenthood

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Speaker 1: even though no actual services were ever rendered or like

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Speaker 1: like seriously attempted to be rendered. Um, this was pretty

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Speaker 1: damning and like cut about a million dollars in funding

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Speaker 1: out of Planned Parenthood from a couple of different states

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Speaker 1: in total. Um, so they did a significant amount of

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Speaker 1: damage to Planned Parenthood through these videos. Uh yeah yeah,

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Speaker 1: so you know Leilah's partner in this and unserved underserved

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Speaker 1: people seeking here, that's what you get for trying to

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Speaker 1: help a teenager in crisis. Uh and maybe not yet

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Speaker 1: dotting all of the eyes and the tease because you're

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Speaker 1: worried about this person seeking a back Alley abortion. And

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Speaker 1: it also could have been a situation where you are

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Speaker 1: just kind of working with them for now because you

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Speaker 1: know they need the help, and planning on finding a

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00:23:06,200 --> 00:23:09,720
Speaker 1: way to get them help for the fact that they're

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00:23:09,760 --> 00:23:13,399
Speaker 1: being sexually abused later like it doesn't I don't know.

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Speaker 1: And that's definitely how it seems from like the the

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Speaker 1: extended conversations, like there were some of the people were

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Speaker 1: maybe trying to work with her for a little while

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Speaker 1: to build up enough trust to get the information out

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Speaker 1: of her. Um. Yeah, it just seems like one of

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Speaker 1: those things where you can't ever have the complete picture

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Speaker 1: of like what these people were planning on doing, what

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00:23:34,400 --> 00:23:38,440
Speaker 1: was going on behind the scenes of the phone call. Um.

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Speaker 1: So it's just very easy to paint a picture that

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Speaker 1: makes the people look bad. Yeah, especially makes the people

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Speaker 1: look bad to people who already assume these folks are monsters,

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00:23:49,200 --> 00:23:52,320
Speaker 1: like that's a key part of the story. Yeah, they're not. Yeah.

421
00:23:52,440 --> 00:23:57,200
Speaker 1: So anyway, that's James O'Keeffe's first big success. And speaking

422
00:23:57,240 --> 00:24:01,719
Speaker 1: of big successes, Jack, you know what doesn't strip hundreds

423
00:24:01,760 --> 00:24:07,840
Speaker 1: of thousands of dollars in funding from contraceptive care sponsors. Yep,

424
00:24:08,000 --> 00:24:14,400
Speaker 1: The people who sponsor our show. Yeah, unless it's coke Industries,

425
00:24:14,400 --> 00:24:19,200
Speaker 1: in which case they don't think are culpable. Um, yeah,

426
00:24:19,240 --> 00:24:22,600
Speaker 1: maybe Coke Industries they just uh, they're down a man,

427
00:24:22,760 --> 00:24:25,000
Speaker 1: so they may not be putting out ads with as

428
00:24:25,080 --> 00:24:30,480
Speaker 1: much frequencies anymore. Yeah, r I P are our primary

429
00:24:30,520 --> 00:24:42,639
Speaker 1: sponsor products. And we're back, and we're talking about James

430
00:24:42,640 --> 00:24:48,920
Speaker 1: O'Keefe and his crusade to destroy Planned parenthood with Lilo Rose. Um. So,

431
00:24:49,359 --> 00:24:53,240
Speaker 1: as a result of their successful uh grifft con whatever

432
00:24:53,320 --> 00:24:56,720
Speaker 1: you want to call it, investigative journalism, uh Lila secured

433
00:24:56,760 --> 00:25:00,439
Speaker 1: fifty dollars in funding for an anti abortion charity. The

434
00:25:00,480 --> 00:25:03,240
Speaker 1: Los Angeles Times article I found on the matter credits

435
00:25:03,600 --> 00:25:07,840
Speaker 1: this escapade to O'Keeffe's love of Slo Lensky's Rules for Radicals. Quote.

436
00:25:07,920 --> 00:25:10,720
Speaker 1: Among Olynsky's most famous admonitions is one that O'Keeffe said

437
00:25:10,760 --> 00:25:13,000
Speaker 1: he and Rose took to heart. Make the enemy live

438
00:25:13,080 --> 00:25:15,680
Speaker 1: up to its own book of rules. O'Keefe twenty four

439
00:25:15,720 --> 00:25:17,760
Speaker 1: said he and Rose have received criticism from some of

440
00:25:17,760 --> 00:25:21,359
Speaker 1: their associates for using deception. It's a pretty complicated ethical issue,

441
00:25:21,359 --> 00:25:23,439
Speaker 1: he said, but we believe there is a genocide and

442
00:25:23,480 --> 00:25:26,399
Speaker 1: nobody cares, and you can use these tactics and it's justified.

443
00:25:26,960 --> 00:25:29,200
Speaker 1: Rosen O'Keeffe visited their first clinic u c l A.

444
00:25:29,280 --> 00:25:31,480
Speaker 1: S Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center in two

445
00:25:31,520 --> 00:25:34,679
Speaker 1: thousand six. They videotaped an employee telling them some quote

446
00:25:34,680 --> 00:25:37,680
Speaker 1: pretty bad things, said O'Keefe, including that the fetus is

447
00:25:37,680 --> 00:25:40,240
Speaker 1: a collection of cells. That's what set us in motion.

448
00:25:40,680 --> 00:25:43,560
Speaker 1: These videos, O'Keefe added, are not supposed to necessarily show

449
00:25:43,600 --> 00:25:46,440
Speaker 1: people breaking laws. They're supposed to change hearts and minds.

450
00:25:46,920 --> 00:25:52,600
Speaker 1: M hmm yeah, so uh, subscribing a fetus as a

451
00:25:52,640 --> 00:25:57,080
Speaker 1: collection of cells, Yeah, it's the sad thing. Was a

452
00:25:57,320 --> 00:26:02,600
Speaker 1: was a bad thing. Was a genocide. I remember when

453
00:26:02,920 --> 00:26:06,879
Speaker 1: you know Adolf Hitler uh described defetus as a collection

454
00:26:06,920 --> 00:26:09,520
Speaker 1: of cells. How that was the inciting inside of the

455
00:26:09,520 --> 00:26:15,520
Speaker 1: Holocaust or the first sign? Yeah, and how the Bosnian

456
00:26:15,560 --> 00:26:20,240
Speaker 1: genocide launched was launched at a Planned Parenthood in Sarajevo. Yes, uh,

457
00:26:20,359 --> 00:26:23,480
Speaker 1: yeah they didn't the founder of Planned Parenthood have some

458
00:26:23,560 --> 00:26:27,480
Speaker 1: really problematic Oh, absolutely absolutely, I think it was what

459
00:26:27,520 --> 00:26:30,359
Speaker 1: was it was Margaret Margaret Singer. Um, yeah, she was.

460
00:26:30,560 --> 00:26:32,680
Speaker 1: She was not a good person. I mean and it's

461
00:26:32,680 --> 00:26:34,560
Speaker 1: one of those things. Like it's the same thing if

462
00:26:34,560 --> 00:26:36,760
Speaker 1: you look back at a lot of abolitionists, they were

463
00:26:36,880 --> 00:26:40,399
Speaker 1: unbelievably racist and a significant number of them just wanted

464
00:26:40,400 --> 00:26:43,040
Speaker 1: all the black people to go back to Africa. Doesn't

465
00:26:43,080 --> 00:26:45,680
Speaker 1: mean they were wrong in the main thing they were

466
00:26:45,720 --> 00:26:48,359
Speaker 1: crusading for. It just means that like people were worse

467
00:26:48,400 --> 00:26:53,119
Speaker 1: back then, like by and large, which doesn't you know,

468
00:26:53,200 --> 00:26:57,760
Speaker 1: excuse the bad stuff, but play Parenthood is not a

469
00:26:57,840 --> 00:27:03,880
Speaker 1: eugenicist organization in the Year of Our Lord twenty nine now, um,

470
00:27:04,000 --> 00:27:07,160
Speaker 1: this particular scam was not a pure win for James O'Keeffe.

471
00:27:07,320 --> 00:27:09,760
Speaker 1: At the time, he'd been working for the Leadership Institute,

472
00:27:09,800 --> 00:27:12,399
Speaker 1: that conservative organization that had been formed to see the

473
00:27:12,400 --> 00:27:15,840
Speaker 1: world with right ring grifters like James. They invested time

474
00:27:15,840 --> 00:27:17,280
Speaker 1: into him when he was in college, and now he

475
00:27:17,320 --> 00:27:19,760
Speaker 1: was traveling around the country helping them find more recruits.

476
00:27:19,760 --> 00:27:22,400
Speaker 1: That's how he'd met Lila Rose. But there was fallout

477
00:27:22,400 --> 00:27:26,200
Speaker 1: from the planned Parenthood video see California law requires both

478
00:27:26,280 --> 00:27:29,200
Speaker 1: parties to be aware of a recording, and since O'Keefe

479
00:27:29,200 --> 00:27:31,639
Speaker 1: hadn't followed the law during that U c l l

480
00:27:31,720 --> 00:27:34,280
Speaker 1: A caper, he got slapped with a cease and assist

481
00:27:34,280 --> 00:27:36,840
Speaker 1: and the original video was taken down. Now, this didn't

482
00:27:36,840 --> 00:27:39,240
Speaker 1: stop it from spreading or stop the damage that was

483
00:27:39,320 --> 00:27:41,720
Speaker 1: done to Planned Parenthood, but it looked bad enough that

484
00:27:41,760 --> 00:27:46,119
Speaker 1: the Leadership Institute fired James O'Keefe from his cushy gig. Fortunately,

485
00:27:46,200 --> 00:27:48,760
Speaker 1: James quickly found a new focus for his time and attention,

486
00:27:48,840 --> 00:27:52,880
Speaker 1: a journalism student from Florida International University named Hannah Giles.

487
00:27:53,359 --> 00:27:57,160
Speaker 1: Now Politico again paints a pretty sanitized view of Giles.

488
00:27:57,160 --> 00:27:59,720
Speaker 1: It describes her as just a simple journalism major who

489
00:27:59,680 --> 00:28:03,320
Speaker 1: spu at an ACORN office during a jog, saw school

490
00:28:03,359 --> 00:28:05,000
Speaker 1: kids waiting for a bus next to a bunch of

491
00:28:05,000 --> 00:28:07,439
Speaker 1: prostitutes that were in front of the office, and became

492
00:28:07,480 --> 00:28:10,800
Speaker 1: disturbed by that. ACORN is, of course, the Association of

493
00:28:10,840 --> 00:28:14,280
Speaker 1: Community Organizations for Reform Now, or at least was, as

494
00:28:14,320 --> 00:28:16,800
Speaker 1: that name would suggest, They were an alliance of grassroots

495
00:28:16,880 --> 00:28:21,440
Speaker 1: organizations working for greater social and economic justice. ACORN became

496
00:28:21,520 --> 00:28:23,840
Speaker 1: something of a conservative bug bear in two thousand eight

497
00:28:24,119 --> 00:28:27,400
Speaker 1: when several employees were caught filing fake voter applications during

498
00:28:27,480 --> 00:28:31,600
Speaker 1: voter registration drives. Now, these employees were caught and fired

499
00:28:31,640 --> 00:28:34,400
Speaker 1: and there's no evidence that any fake people actually voted,

500
00:28:34,680 --> 00:28:37,399
Speaker 1: just that the voters were registered essentially as part of

501
00:28:37,400 --> 00:28:40,719
Speaker 1: a scheme by the workers to make themselves look more effective. Uh,

502
00:28:40,720 --> 00:28:43,280
Speaker 1: the offending employees were again fired, but this didn't stop

503
00:28:43,280 --> 00:28:46,320
Speaker 1: a narrative from developing that Acorn had gotten Obama elected

504
00:28:46,400 --> 00:28:49,520
Speaker 1: via massive voter fraud. Now, in fairness to the right,

505
00:28:49,560 --> 00:28:52,320
Speaker 1: there was also a scandal when the Acorn's founder embezzled

506
00:28:52,320 --> 00:28:55,000
Speaker 1: nearly a million dollars. So I'm not going to pretend

507
00:28:55,000 --> 00:28:58,160
Speaker 1: that the organization was spotless. There were reasons to eye them,

508
00:28:58,520 --> 00:29:00,840
Speaker 1: but in the wake of our first black president's election,

509
00:29:00,880 --> 00:29:03,640
Speaker 1: they became escapegoat for the refusal of certain Republicans to

510
00:29:03,640 --> 00:29:05,920
Speaker 1: believe that most of America did not want to McCain

511
00:29:05,960 --> 00:29:09,560
Speaker 1: Palin presidency. So that's kind of the background here. So

512
00:29:09,600 --> 00:29:12,080
Speaker 1: Hannah Giles is running past the Acorn office and she

513
00:29:12,160 --> 00:29:14,520
Speaker 1: sees all this depravity around and she claims that it

514
00:29:14,600 --> 00:29:17,720
Speaker 1: inspired her to launch a scheme. She decided to dress

515
00:29:17,800 --> 00:29:20,240
Speaker 1: up like a prostitute and ask for help getting public

516
00:29:20,240 --> 00:29:23,440
Speaker 1: housing so she could run a brothel. Public housing assistance

517
00:29:23,520 --> 00:29:25,480
Speaker 1: was another thing that Acorn did, and it's something that

518
00:29:25,600 --> 00:29:28,480
Speaker 1: received federal funds for so if she was able to

519
00:29:28,520 --> 00:29:31,239
Speaker 1: actually capture them helping her to try to do this,

520
00:29:31,280 --> 00:29:33,960
Speaker 1: she'd be able to claim that Acorn was using government

521
00:29:33,960 --> 00:29:37,600
Speaker 1: funds to help and prostitution. But Giles was nervous. She'd

522
00:29:37,640 --> 00:29:39,640
Speaker 1: never done anything like this in her life, and she

523
00:29:39,680 --> 00:29:41,920
Speaker 1: wasn't sure what would happen if she got caught. She

524
00:29:42,040 --> 00:29:44,040
Speaker 1: told some of her friends about her idea, and one

525
00:29:44,040 --> 00:29:46,680
Speaker 1: of them suggested that she reach out to James O'Keefe.

526
00:29:47,160 --> 00:29:50,000
Speaker 1: It should turned out that Giles sort of knew James already.

527
00:29:50,120 --> 00:29:53,120
Speaker 1: A year earlier, he'd sent her an unsolicited Facebook message

528
00:29:53,160 --> 00:29:57,920
Speaker 1: saying you're pretty cute. Too bad you live in Florida. Um. Yeah. Now,

529
00:29:58,040 --> 00:30:00,200
Speaker 1: she hadn't been down to Fox for some reason, but

530
00:30:00,240 --> 00:30:03,520
Speaker 1: she had kept up an occasional it didn't it didn't work,

531
00:30:03,600 --> 00:30:06,840
Speaker 1: yeah that line. She didn't respond, I don't need to

532
00:30:06,840 --> 00:30:10,200
Speaker 1: live in Florida, which would have been probably what he

533
00:30:10,280 --> 00:30:12,480
Speaker 1: was hoping for. Yeah, yeah, I think that's what he

534
00:30:12,560 --> 00:30:15,160
Speaker 1: was hoping for. Um. But she did keep up a

535
00:30:15,160 --> 00:30:19,320
Speaker 1: correspondence with her uh, and so she had his contact

536
00:30:19,360 --> 00:30:21,320
Speaker 1: information and reached out to him in June of two

537
00:30:21,320 --> 00:30:24,080
Speaker 1: thousand nine to pitch him her idea. I'm gonna quote

538
00:30:24,080 --> 00:30:26,760
Speaker 1: now from Politico. When he arrived in Washington a month

539
00:30:26,840 --> 00:30:29,200
Speaker 1: later to pick her up and commence the operation, Giles

540
00:30:29,240 --> 00:30:31,880
Speaker 1: came outside to meet O'Keeffe but found him frazzled unable

541
00:30:31,960 --> 00:30:34,680
Speaker 1: to extract his credit card from a parking meter. He's

542
00:30:34,720 --> 00:30:40,280
Speaker 1: definitely unique. I've not met many people like him. Giles laughs. Yeah,

543
00:30:40,320 --> 00:30:42,680
Speaker 1: this is something you run into a lot with stories

544
00:30:42,680 --> 00:30:45,959
Speaker 1: about O'Keefe from his colleagues and friends that they'll repeatedly

545
00:30:46,000 --> 00:30:48,920
Speaker 1: note that he has a kind of a nearly pathological

546
00:30:48,920 --> 00:30:54,120
Speaker 1: inability to handle normal daily living tasks, like he lived

547
00:30:54,120 --> 00:30:56,320
Speaker 1: with his parents into his late twenties, which I don't

548
00:30:56,320 --> 00:31:00,160
Speaker 1: want to shame, but in this particular case, again sat

549
00:31:00,200 --> 00:31:02,080
Speaker 1: on the things his friends say, it seems like he

550
00:31:02,160 --> 00:31:05,520
Speaker 1: never kind of learned how to be an adult. Yeah,

551
00:31:06,000 --> 00:31:09,480
Speaker 1: he just I'm just figuring him just like being stuck

552
00:31:09,480 --> 00:31:13,160
Speaker 1: on a on a parking meter for just like yanking

553
00:31:13,200 --> 00:31:17,200
Speaker 1: on it. Uh, poor James. Yeah, he figured out how

554
00:31:17,240 --> 00:31:20,120
Speaker 1: to grift early on and uh and never learned how

555
00:31:20,160 --> 00:31:23,360
Speaker 1: to do his laundry. Like that's the kind of guy

556
00:31:23,360 --> 00:31:26,560
Speaker 1: we're talking about. Uh. So we'll talk a little bit

557
00:31:26,560 --> 00:31:29,080
Speaker 1: more about that later. Because it it becomes more relevant.

558
00:31:29,080 --> 00:31:31,840
Speaker 1: In a bit, I'm gonna quote again from Politico's coverage

559
00:31:31,880 --> 00:31:35,600
Speaker 1: of the Acorn caper. Over the next two months, O'Keefe

560
00:31:35,600 --> 00:31:38,640
Speaker 1: and Giles visited Acorn offices in eight cities. The script

561
00:31:38,680 --> 00:31:40,600
Speaker 1: was the same. The pimp and prostitute would ask for

562
00:31:40,640 --> 00:31:42,440
Speaker 1: housing to run a brothel, then push the line of

563
00:31:42,520 --> 00:31:45,240
Speaker 1: questioning into the absurd and blatantly illegal, then wait for

564
00:31:45,280 --> 00:31:48,280
Speaker 1: Acorn officials to take debait. Plenty of them did. O'Keefe's

565
00:31:48,280 --> 00:31:50,800
Speaker 1: most effective gambit, claiming he would be housing under age

566
00:31:50,840 --> 00:31:53,840
Speaker 1: El Salvadoran girls in Baltimore and employees said he could

567
00:31:53,840 --> 00:31:55,760
Speaker 1: claim them as in his dependence and get a child

568
00:31:55,800 --> 00:31:58,760
Speaker 1: tax credit. In San Bernardino, California, and an employee said

569
00:31:58,760 --> 00:32:00,760
Speaker 1: they could categorize the brothel as a group home to

570
00:32:00,800 --> 00:32:03,680
Speaker 1: stay off law enforcements radar. In other offices, Giles was

571
00:32:03,720 --> 00:32:07,480
Speaker 1: instructed on how to falsify tax forms. So O'Keeffe went

572
00:32:07,560 --> 00:32:10,480
Speaker 1: live with highly edited videos showcasing this behavior, and it

573
00:32:10,560 --> 00:32:13,120
Speaker 1: hit Acorn like an atom bomb. Their federal funding was

574
00:32:13,160 --> 00:32:15,920
Speaker 1: cut and the bad publicity effectively killed the organization in

575
00:32:15,960 --> 00:32:20,640
Speaker 1: the United States. Now, this much is beyond arguing O'Keefe

576
00:32:20,720 --> 00:32:23,920
Speaker 1: and Giles absolutely ignited a media firestorm that wiped out

577
00:32:23,920 --> 00:32:26,959
Speaker 1: the organization, but the question of how much malfeasance they

578
00:32:27,000 --> 00:32:30,160
Speaker 1: actually uncovered with an Acorn is very much up for debate.

579
00:32:30,720 --> 00:32:33,680
Speaker 1: Politico's article takes the tax that they were basically correct

580
00:32:33,680 --> 00:32:37,160
Speaker 1: in their claims, although they exaggerated things somewhat. They cite

581
00:32:37,200 --> 00:32:39,520
Speaker 1: Clark Hoite, public editor for the New York Times, who

582
00:32:39,560 --> 00:32:42,720
Speaker 1: viewed the unedited footage. White wrote, quote, the sequence of

583
00:32:42,720 --> 00:32:45,920
Speaker 1: some conversations was changed. Some workers seemed concerned for Giles

584
00:32:45,960 --> 00:32:48,280
Speaker 1: when advising her to get legal help. In two cities,

585
00:32:48,320 --> 00:32:50,960
Speaker 1: Acorn workers called the police. But the most damning words

586
00:32:50,960 --> 00:32:53,120
Speaker 1: matched the transcripts and the audio and do not seem

587
00:32:53,120 --> 00:32:56,880
Speaker 1: out of context now. Politico notes that O'Keeffe and Giles

588
00:32:56,880 --> 00:32:59,280
Speaker 1: were slapped with various lawsuits and that James had to

589
00:32:59,280 --> 00:33:01,640
Speaker 1: settle for a hun a thousand dollars with one San

590
00:33:01,640 --> 00:33:04,480
Speaker 1: Diego employee who was fired for his remarks on camera,

591
00:33:04,520 --> 00:33:06,600
Speaker 1: even though he called the police after the group left

592
00:33:06,680 --> 00:33:10,640
Speaker 1: the office. Um, but yeah. Politico's coverage of the controversy

593
00:33:10,720 --> 00:33:13,640
Speaker 1: basically fits to a trend within centrist and liberal media

594
00:33:13,680 --> 00:33:15,760
Speaker 1: of writing about O'Keeffe, They go out of their way

595
00:33:15,760 --> 00:33:17,920
Speaker 1: to be fair to him and usually wind up deciding

596
00:33:17,920 --> 00:33:22,360
Speaker 1: to validate or at least partly validate what he's reported on. Now,

597
00:33:22,800 --> 00:33:25,120
Speaker 1: that's what I mean, only so we keep coming back

598
00:33:25,160 --> 00:33:29,840
Speaker 1: to Politico describing him, and I feel like Politico explicitly

599
00:33:30,040 --> 00:33:32,840
Speaker 1: like their mission statement as we want to be the

600
00:33:33,120 --> 00:33:36,880
Speaker 1: espn of politics. Right, yeah, I think that's basically the goal.

601
00:33:37,000 --> 00:33:41,880
Speaker 1: And so that that idea, that mission statement is premised

602
00:33:41,960 --> 00:33:47,600
Speaker 1: on the idea that politics is a contest with two

603
00:33:47,640 --> 00:33:52,640
Speaker 1: equal sides and yes, so uh yeah, that I don't

604
00:33:52,640 --> 00:33:56,600
Speaker 1: know that that's just it's that centrist bias that ends

605
00:33:56,680 --> 00:34:00,760
Speaker 1: up having a right wing bias because it forces them

606
00:34:00,800 --> 00:34:04,160
Speaker 1: to give the right the benefit of the doubt in

607
00:34:04,200 --> 00:34:09,040
Speaker 1: all cases, so that like they're seen as a legitimate foil.

608
00:34:09,960 --> 00:34:13,800
Speaker 1: That's exactly what keeps happening, and particularly happened to O'Keeffe

609
00:34:13,840 --> 00:34:16,560
Speaker 1: and his early career and the political article I do

610
00:34:16,640 --> 00:34:18,239
Speaker 1: need to keep quoting because it's got some of the

611
00:34:18,239 --> 00:34:21,279
Speaker 1: best background on O'Keeffe's early life and personality that you're

612
00:34:21,280 --> 00:34:24,160
Speaker 1: going to run into. But it is it's very much

613
00:34:24,400 --> 00:34:26,440
Speaker 1: contains this problem. Now in a little bit of fairness

614
00:34:26,480 --> 00:34:29,160
Speaker 1: to Politico, They're not the only people who report that way.

615
00:34:29,719 --> 00:34:32,080
Speaker 1: The New York Times magazine also published a big piece

616
00:34:32,080 --> 00:34:34,400
Speaker 1: on O'Keefe a few years back, and they all they

617
00:34:34,400 --> 00:34:37,000
Speaker 1: do the same thing Politico did. The writer Zev chaff Its,

618
00:34:37,000 --> 00:34:40,120
Speaker 1: glosses over very important facts. And I'm gonna quote now

619
00:34:40,120 --> 00:34:42,960
Speaker 1: from a write up in The Atlantic that criticizes both pieces.

620
00:34:43,280 --> 00:34:45,960
Speaker 1: Quote the mortal sin that O'Keeffe commits in the Acorn

621
00:34:46,040 --> 00:34:48,759
Speaker 1: videos is misleading the audience. His videos are presented to

622
00:34:48,800 --> 00:34:50,759
Speaker 1: the public in less than honest ways that go beyond

623
00:34:50,840 --> 00:34:54,000
Speaker 1: normal selectivity. Instead of quoting a former New York Times

624
00:34:54,040 --> 00:34:56,920
Speaker 1: public editor who wrote two columns about the Acorn controversy

625
00:34:56,960 --> 00:34:59,640
Speaker 1: as his expert source, chaff Its should have consulted the

626
00:34:59,680 --> 00:35:03,200
Speaker 1: report from the California Attorney General's office. The staffers who

627
00:35:03,239 --> 00:35:06,440
Speaker 1: wrote it, interviewed everyone involved, saw all the raw video footage,

628
00:35:06,480 --> 00:35:09,160
Speaker 1: and issued a lengthy accounting with detailed descriptions of the

629
00:35:09,200 --> 00:35:13,520
Speaker 1: misleading edits O'Keeffe made. Now. One of those misleading edits

630
00:35:13,800 --> 00:35:16,440
Speaker 1: was mentioned briefly in the Political article. It's the story

631
00:35:16,480 --> 00:35:19,440
Speaker 1: of Juan Carlos Vera, an employee at Acorn San Diego,

632
00:35:19,520 --> 00:35:21,759
Speaker 1: office and the guy who successfully sued James for a

633
00:35:21,800 --> 00:35:25,320
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars quote in the Acorn videos that appears

634
00:35:25,320 --> 00:35:26,960
Speaker 1: that Vera is willing to be an accomplice in the

635
00:35:27,000 --> 00:35:29,200
Speaker 1: made up smuggling plot. O'keith may well have thought so

636
00:35:29,239 --> 00:35:32,560
Speaker 1: at the time. According to the California Attorney General's investigation. However,

637
00:35:32,640 --> 00:35:34,520
Speaker 1: Vera did not know what to make of the parrot.

638
00:35:34,520 --> 00:35:37,239
Speaker 1: First tried to elicit as much information as possible from

639
00:35:37,239 --> 00:35:39,839
Speaker 1: them so that he could contact law enforcement, and called

640
00:35:39,880 --> 00:35:42,240
Speaker 1: his cousin, a police officer as soon as they left.

641
00:35:42,400 --> 00:35:44,839
Speaker 1: Phone records confirmed the call to his cousin, and Vera

642
00:35:44,960 --> 00:35:47,200
Speaker 1: was soon directed to a San Diego police officer who

643
00:35:47,200 --> 00:35:50,680
Speaker 1: specializes in human smuggling. He spoke to that police officer too.

644
00:35:50,760 --> 00:35:53,440
Speaker 1: As Vera was cooperating with police, the Acorn sting videos

645
00:35:53,480 --> 00:35:56,440
Speaker 1: began to appear, portraying him as a willing child smuggler.

646
00:35:56,680 --> 00:35:59,319
Speaker 1: He was fired from Acorn during the pr fallout and

647
00:35:59,480 --> 00:36:02,560
Speaker 1: has since lilt a lawsuit against O'Keefe and Giles. And

648
00:36:02,600 --> 00:36:04,680
Speaker 1: this gets to the core of the issues around O'Keefe.

649
00:36:04,719 --> 00:36:07,840
Speaker 1: He absolutely found some evidence of bad behavior in Acorn,

650
00:36:08,040 --> 00:36:10,680
Speaker 1: but it wasn't nearly enough to confirm his preconceived notions

651
00:36:10,719 --> 00:36:13,920
Speaker 1: about systemic abuses in the organization. So he lied to

652
00:36:13,960 --> 00:36:16,520
Speaker 1: present that image. And even when he didn't lie, he

653
00:36:16,560 --> 00:36:20,520
Speaker 1: exhibited terrible journalistic practices when you when you do something

654
00:36:20,560 --> 00:36:22,760
Speaker 1: like this, when you get an undercover recording of someone

655
00:36:22,760 --> 00:36:24,959
Speaker 1: that seems to show them breaking the law in this way.

656
00:36:25,160 --> 00:36:27,759
Speaker 1: Once you've gotten the recording, the next thing you do,

657
00:36:27,840 --> 00:36:30,239
Speaker 1: if you're a real journalist, is you confront them and

658
00:36:30,280 --> 00:36:33,279
Speaker 1: the organization with the evidence. And if O'Keeffe had done

659
00:36:33,320 --> 00:36:35,480
Speaker 1: that before going public, then they would have been able

660
00:36:35,480 --> 00:36:37,520
Speaker 1: to say, no, actually, he was just trying to get information.

661
00:36:37,600 --> 00:36:39,719
Speaker 1: Here's the evidence that he followed the law and was

662
00:36:39,760 --> 00:36:44,239
Speaker 1: actually trying to stop this um. But James didn't do

663
00:36:44,280 --> 00:36:47,760
Speaker 1: that because he's not a real journalist, because the truth

664
00:36:47,840 --> 00:36:50,600
Speaker 1: isn't on his side as much as he wants it

665
00:36:50,640 --> 00:36:54,799
Speaker 1: to be, and also because he's a a failed actor

666
00:36:55,040 --> 00:36:59,520
Speaker 1: theater kid who he like dressed in a like shitty

667
00:36:59,560 --> 00:37:03,040
Speaker 1: Halloween in pimp costume. No, that's a lie. So he

668
00:37:03,160 --> 00:37:06,360
Speaker 1: dressed when he went to Acorn actually with Hannah jo

669
00:37:06,640 --> 00:37:09,360
Speaker 1: or with Giles, he was dressed in a suit. He

670
00:37:09,400 --> 00:37:11,280
Speaker 1: did pretend to be a pimp, but he was dressed

671
00:37:11,320 --> 00:37:13,719
Speaker 1: in a like a normal person suit. But when he

672
00:37:13,800 --> 00:37:16,600
Speaker 1: showed up in media appearances on Fox News and the like,

673
00:37:16,760 --> 00:37:19,640
Speaker 1: he wore a flamboyant pimp costume. And he claimed that

674
00:37:19,640 --> 00:37:22,360
Speaker 1: that's what he'd been wearing when he walked into Acorn's offices.

675
00:37:22,400 --> 00:37:25,480
Speaker 1: But that was just a lie. Um, Yeah, because he's

676
00:37:25,480 --> 00:37:29,279
Speaker 1: a liar. Yeah, yeah, he's a liar who wishes he

677
00:37:30,080 --> 00:37:33,279
Speaker 1: had been good at theater and could could dress up

678
00:37:33,600 --> 00:37:38,239
Speaker 1: for a living. Yeah. Yeah. Uh so obviously, you know,

679
00:37:38,320 --> 00:37:41,600
Speaker 1: in spite of the rampant journalistic malpractice that this is

680
00:37:41,640 --> 00:37:47,879
Speaker 1: evidence of Uh, this whole scam you know, launched James

681
00:37:47,920 --> 00:37:51,799
Speaker 1: O'Keeffe into the stratosphere of the conservative media. Uh. He

682
00:37:51,880 --> 00:37:55,000
Speaker 1: was suddenly one of the most popular people on the right. Uh,

683
00:37:55,040 --> 00:37:58,680
Speaker 1: and you know it made his career now. O'Keefe told

684
00:37:58,719 --> 00:38:01,480
Speaker 1: Politico that all this attend shin made him deeply uncomfortable

685
00:38:01,520 --> 00:38:05,000
Speaker 1: because he was a quote lifelong introvert. But when Politico

686
00:38:05,040 --> 00:38:08,560
Speaker 1: interviewed Hannah Giles, she had different recollections. Quote he ate

687
00:38:08,560 --> 00:38:11,080
Speaker 1: it up. I actually became pretty repulsed and disgusted by

688
00:38:11,080 --> 00:38:13,880
Speaker 1: the conservative movement. I saw a lot of hypocrisy. They

689
00:38:13,880 --> 00:38:15,920
Speaker 1: thought because I exposed Acorn that I must be some

690
00:38:16,040 --> 00:38:18,479
Speaker 1: right wing fan girl. But I dropped off, I stopped going.

691
00:38:18,640 --> 00:38:23,440
Speaker 1: James couldn't stop. So that makes Hannah seem like maybe

692
00:38:24,360 --> 00:38:26,400
Speaker 1: a decent person who just got caught up in this.

693
00:38:27,080 --> 00:38:30,359
Speaker 1: I should point out that the Politico article uh did

694
00:38:30,400 --> 00:38:33,480
Speaker 1: not go into any detail about who Hannah Giles is.

695
00:38:34,400 --> 00:38:36,920
Speaker 1: But Hannah is a news grifter as well. Up until

696
00:38:36,920 --> 00:38:39,080
Speaker 1: two thousand seventeen, she was the front woman for the

697
00:38:39,120 --> 00:38:42,359
Speaker 1: American Phoenix Foundation, an organization aimed at doing the same

698
00:38:42,360 --> 00:38:45,680
Speaker 1: sort of shady undercover journalism that O'Keeffe engages in. They

699
00:38:45,719 --> 00:38:48,799
Speaker 1: accrued eight hundred hours of recordings of Texas state legislators

700
00:38:48,840 --> 00:38:50,960
Speaker 1: in the hopes of finding some dirt. It failed to

701
00:38:50,960 --> 00:38:53,719
Speaker 1: get anything meaningful. Then they were sued after several of

702
00:38:53,719 --> 00:38:56,520
Speaker 1: their top donors complained that the APF had not informed

703
00:38:56,520 --> 00:38:59,560
Speaker 1: them that its whole purpose was to secretly record lawmakers.

704
00:39:00,360 --> 00:39:02,960
Speaker 1: I should also note that Hannah's dad is Doug Giles,

705
00:39:03,000 --> 00:39:05,839
Speaker 1: a conservative pundit who writes columns for the website town

706
00:39:05,880 --> 00:39:09,120
Speaker 1: Hall with titles like w w j D who would

707
00:39:09,160 --> 00:39:12,520
Speaker 1: Jesus torture? That article takes the angle that actually torture

708
00:39:12,600 --> 00:39:15,279
Speaker 1: is awesome. H He also has a major penchant for

709
00:39:15,320 --> 00:39:19,240
Speaker 1: writing lurid articles about black on white crime. Um. So again,

710
00:39:19,400 --> 00:39:23,319
Speaker 1: Hannah Giles is not as Politico presented her. However, the

711
00:39:23,360 --> 00:39:26,320
Speaker 1: fact that she has dissociated herself from James O'Keeffe and

712
00:39:26,360 --> 00:39:28,359
Speaker 1: the present day ought to be evidence of the fact

713
00:39:28,400 --> 00:39:31,439
Speaker 1: that he has fallen from grace. So let's talk about

714
00:39:31,480 --> 00:39:35,040
Speaker 1: how that happened. UM. In January a few thousand ten,

715
00:39:35,160 --> 00:39:40,080
Speaker 1: James O'Keeffe decided to go after Senator Mary Landrew of Louisiana.

716
00:39:40,520 --> 00:39:43,359
Speaker 1: The apparent larger plan was to stop the Affordable Care

717
00:39:43,360 --> 00:39:46,239
Speaker 1: Act from passing in Congress, and it's unclear how they

718
00:39:46,280 --> 00:39:48,719
Speaker 1: plan to do that, but one of O'Keefe's colleagues at

719
00:39:48,719 --> 00:39:50,560
Speaker 1: the time claims that he made a spur of the

720
00:39:50,600 --> 00:39:54,200
Speaker 1: moment decision to prank Senator Landrew instead. The tea party

721
00:39:54,239 --> 00:39:56,200
Speaker 1: years who lived in her district had complained that she

722
00:39:56,280 --> 00:39:58,840
Speaker 1: was blocking their calls, so O'Keefe hatched a plan to

723
00:39:58,880 --> 00:40:00,839
Speaker 1: see if that was true by having his men dress

724
00:40:00,920 --> 00:40:04,120
Speaker 1: up as telephone repairman. None of them actually brought tools

725
00:40:04,160 --> 00:40:06,960
Speaker 1: to the office, and they were busted immediately O'Keefe and

726
00:40:07,000 --> 00:40:09,319
Speaker 1: his men were charged with entering a federal building under

727
00:40:09,320 --> 00:40:15,600
Speaker 1: false pretenses, jailed and convicted. They spent three years under probation. Yeah,

728
00:40:15,600 --> 00:40:21,000
Speaker 1: he is a convicted criminal. Yes. Uh, here's what Politico

729
00:40:21,040 --> 00:40:23,319
Speaker 1: wrote about this in two thousand eighteen. What O'Keeffe does

730
00:40:23,320 --> 00:40:25,319
Speaker 1: not regret as the sting itself, He says, the entire

731
00:40:25,400 --> 00:40:28,160
Speaker 1: episode being jailed, having a judge discard video footage that

732
00:40:28,160 --> 00:40:31,000
Speaker 1: could have exonerated them in the three years probation enlightened

733
00:40:31,080 --> 00:40:33,799
Speaker 1: him to the corrupt regime we all live under. Yes,

734
00:40:34,719 --> 00:40:37,960
Speaker 1: the colluptor corrupt regime where a humble journalist isn't allowed

735
00:40:38,000 --> 00:40:41,239
Speaker 1: to pretend to be a telephone repair man and enter

736
00:40:41,520 --> 00:40:45,359
Speaker 1: an office under false pretenses. I thought that's how all

737
00:40:45,440 --> 00:40:51,240
Speaker 1: journalism was conducted, isn't that. Yeah, it's it's something addressing

738
00:40:53,160 --> 00:40:56,480
Speaker 1: or something and then yeah, I mean, to be entirely fair,

739
00:40:56,640 --> 00:41:00,359
Speaker 1: some very important undercover journalism has been carry it out

740
00:41:00,360 --> 00:41:03,239
Speaker 1: by journalists who lied about who they were in order

741
00:41:03,280 --> 00:41:06,960
Speaker 1: to enter and be able to record things like factory

742
00:41:07,000 --> 00:41:10,400
Speaker 1: farms and other like like, like criminal endeavors and stuff

743
00:41:10,440 --> 00:41:13,960
Speaker 1: like that. That absolutely good journalism has been done by

744
00:41:14,000 --> 00:41:20,200
Speaker 1: people who have um entered situations under false pretenses. Um, so,

745
00:41:20,239 --> 00:41:22,400
Speaker 1: I don't want to claim that's never been justified in

746
00:41:22,440 --> 00:41:26,239
Speaker 1: the history of journalism, just that O'Keeffe didn't have any

747
00:41:26,320 --> 00:41:31,319
Speaker 1: sort of clear uh, like they see if she was

748
00:41:31,400 --> 00:41:34,040
Speaker 1: blocking his calls, So he wanted to see if she

749
00:41:34,120 --> 00:41:39,040
Speaker 1: was Yeah, if he was blocking tea party years calls. Yeah,

750
00:41:39,080 --> 00:41:44,959
Speaker 1: so he Yeah, it was a dumb scale yeah. Um yeah.

751
00:41:45,040 --> 00:41:48,120
Speaker 1: So it does seem that O'Keeffe didn't learn anything from

752
00:41:48,120 --> 00:41:50,759
Speaker 1: the punishment he received for that. Later in two thousand ten,

753
00:41:50,920 --> 00:41:54,280
Speaker 1: CN and correspondent Abbie Boudreau reached out to James O'Keeffe

754
00:41:54,320 --> 00:41:56,640
Speaker 1: to interview him. Now, by this point, he created the

755
00:41:56,680 --> 00:42:00,759
Speaker 1: nonprofit organization Project Veritas, which is dedicated to carrying out

756
00:42:01,560 --> 00:42:04,440
Speaker 1: more of the kind of skullduggery he had enacted upon Acorn.

757
00:42:04,960 --> 00:42:07,920
Speaker 1: The success of the Acorn project had flushed Project Veritas

758
00:42:08,040 --> 00:42:10,000
Speaker 1: with donor cash, and James and his new team were

759
00:42:10,040 --> 00:42:12,440
Speaker 1: eager to spend it. So, rather than just giving an

760
00:42:12,440 --> 00:42:15,040
Speaker 1: interview like a normal person, he decided to use Abby

761
00:42:15,080 --> 00:42:18,000
Speaker 1: Boudreau's visit as an excuse to take down the fake

762
00:42:18,080 --> 00:42:20,840
Speaker 1: news CNN. He and his team hatched a scheme to

763
00:42:20,960 --> 00:42:23,560
Speaker 1: usher Boudreau onto a boat and into the presence of

764
00:42:23,640 --> 00:42:25,800
Speaker 1: James O'Keeffe, who would be waiting below decks with a

765
00:42:25,840 --> 00:42:29,479
Speaker 1: hidden camera. Planning documents obtained by CNN stated that James

766
00:42:29,480 --> 00:42:32,920
Speaker 1: would be surrounded by quote, a condom, jar, dildo's posters,

767
00:42:33,040 --> 00:42:37,040
Speaker 1: paintings of naked women, and fuzzy handcuffs. That sounds like

768
00:42:37,080 --> 00:42:43,280
Speaker 1: real journalism, yea. His plan was to lure a CNN

769
00:42:43,320 --> 00:42:46,840
Speaker 1: reporter to who just wanted to interview around a bunch

770
00:42:46,880 --> 00:42:49,640
Speaker 1: of like dildos, and yeah, he would. He wanted to

771
00:42:49,680 --> 00:42:51,759
Speaker 1: lure her, want her onto a boat where he would

772
00:42:51,760 --> 00:42:56,080
Speaker 1: be waiting with sex gear, presumably to try and uh

773
00:42:56,160 --> 00:42:58,399
Speaker 1: seduce her or something, or at least just make her

774
00:42:58,480 --> 00:43:01,560
Speaker 1: look awkward and bad in a video. So his his

775
00:43:01,600 --> 00:43:06,560
Speaker 1: plan to uncover the mainstream media's bias was to sexually

776
00:43:06,600 --> 00:43:09,840
Speaker 1: harass somebody who was a member of the mainstream media

777
00:43:10,080 --> 00:43:12,759
Speaker 1: and just yea, and who was trying to do her

778
00:43:12,840 --> 00:43:16,040
Speaker 1: job and let him talk about his beliefs and his activities.

779
00:43:16,320 --> 00:43:22,239
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ. Yeah, it's pretty gross. I've understood what his

780
00:43:22,640 --> 00:43:26,680
Speaker 1: plot was up to this point and all the all

781
00:43:26,760 --> 00:43:30,759
Speaker 1: his grifts, but that that was very confusing. You run

782
00:43:30,760 --> 00:43:33,640
Speaker 1: into this with O'Keefe. His grifts are a mix of like, Okay,

783
00:43:33,680 --> 00:43:36,399
Speaker 1: well maybe I think that's unethical, but I see why

784
00:43:36,440 --> 00:43:39,160
Speaker 1: you went after that person or tried that, and then

785
00:43:39,160 --> 00:43:41,200
Speaker 1: and ship like this where it's like, what the funck

786
00:43:41,440 --> 00:43:45,080
Speaker 1: was the best case scenario here? Right? Yeah, I feel

787
00:43:45,080 --> 00:43:48,399
Speaker 1: like sexually assaulted woman. He's not good at taking down

788
00:43:48,440 --> 00:43:50,880
Speaker 1: the mainstream media. Like that's where he gets in trouble

789
00:43:50,920 --> 00:43:54,359
Speaker 1: because he's like, his his idea of how you do

790
00:43:54,440 --> 00:44:00,000
Speaker 1: journalism is so dumb that he just assumes that those

791
00:44:00,000 --> 00:44:04,840
Speaker 1: of the rules everybody's playing by. And yeah, yeah, he's

792
00:44:04,960 --> 00:44:08,080
Speaker 1: he's actually taken the opposite lesson out of Salo Lensky's

793
00:44:08,160 --> 00:44:11,520
Speaker 1: rules for radicals. You know, Lynsky says, make the make

794
00:44:11,560 --> 00:44:15,080
Speaker 1: the essentially like make the people you're fighting play by

795
00:44:15,120 --> 00:44:19,360
Speaker 1: their own rules. Um, But he assumes the media plays

796
00:44:19,400 --> 00:44:22,160
Speaker 1: by the rules that he plays by. Yeah, it's like, no,

797
00:44:22,400 --> 00:44:26,640
Speaker 1: we're like, that's not how things work. Play by the

798
00:44:26,719 --> 00:44:31,479
Speaker 1: rules of a nineteen thirties Warner Brothers cartoon. I feel

799
00:44:31,520 --> 00:44:34,800
Speaker 1: like that's those are the rules he plays by. Yes, yes,

800
00:44:35,480 --> 00:44:38,200
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk more about this. Uh, this scheme and

801
00:44:38,560 --> 00:44:41,720
Speaker 1: some schemes that make this look downright well planned. But

802
00:44:42,000 --> 00:44:45,000
Speaker 1: you know what is really well planned? Jack, oh man,

803
00:44:45,280 --> 00:44:48,400
Speaker 1: I can't even begin to imagine. It's the products and

804
00:44:48,440 --> 00:44:51,759
Speaker 1: services that support this show. Yeah, they are. They're the

805
00:44:51,960 --> 00:45:05,040
Speaker 1: most well planned. They are very incidable planning products. We're back, Jesus,

806
00:45:05,480 --> 00:45:08,120
Speaker 1: where did we go? We? Uh that we went to

807
00:45:08,120 --> 00:45:11,920
Speaker 1: the place that all podcasters go and during ads at

808
00:45:11,920 --> 00:45:14,399
Speaker 1: the dark Void, where we we spend most of our

809
00:45:14,400 --> 00:45:19,319
Speaker 1: time suspend most animation. Yep, most listeners don't really realize

810
00:45:20,040 --> 00:45:23,640
Speaker 1: the horrible price we pay for the uh, the wonder

811
00:45:23,640 --> 00:45:29,520
Speaker 1: of being able to cast pods. Mhm alright, A question

812
00:45:29,600 --> 00:45:33,799
Speaker 1: for you. So my last name is O'Brien, and that's

813
00:45:33,840 --> 00:45:39,719
Speaker 1: because I am uh that my ancestors were followers of

814
00:45:39,800 --> 00:45:42,920
Speaker 1: a king named Brian Burrew. So we were you know,

815
00:45:43,120 --> 00:45:50,040
Speaker 1: of Brian O'Brien and Keief is uh weed crystals do

816
00:45:50,080 --> 00:45:52,680
Speaker 1: you think? Yeah? So do you think his like his

817
00:45:52,760 --> 00:45:56,360
Speaker 1: ancestors were stoners And if so, shouldn't he be cooler?

818
00:45:56,960 --> 00:46:00,560
Speaker 1: They were followers of Chief Keith? Yeah, that's what I thought. Yeah,

819
00:46:00,719 --> 00:46:05,400
Speaker 1: so shouldn't Key be cooler? You would think so. But

820
00:46:05,440 --> 00:46:09,920
Speaker 1: you know, even stoner king's need a brutal exploitative enforcers,

821
00:46:10,000 --> 00:46:14,879
Speaker 1: and that's what the O'Keeffe clan has historically done. Yeah,

822
00:46:14,880 --> 00:46:17,760
Speaker 1: it's tragic, but if you do, I will tell listeners,

823
00:46:18,080 --> 00:46:20,919
Speaker 1: if you scrape a pipe against his skin, you will

824
00:46:20,960 --> 00:46:25,560
Speaker 1: get a full bowl of dank crystals. So give it

825
00:46:25,600 --> 00:46:28,080
Speaker 1: a shot, if you if you would counter James O'Keeffe

826
00:46:28,080 --> 00:46:33,680
Speaker 1: in the wild, chief that yeah, Chief that keif so. Uh,

827
00:46:33,719 --> 00:46:37,360
Speaker 1: we're talking about James's attempt to lure a female journalist

828
00:46:37,440 --> 00:46:40,840
Speaker 1: into a sex vote for unclear reasons that do not

829
00:46:41,000 --> 00:46:44,560
Speaker 1: seem to meet the definition of journalism. I I you know,

830
00:46:44,600 --> 00:46:46,600
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert on what journey. I never went

831
00:46:46,640 --> 00:46:50,759
Speaker 1: to j school. Um, but I don't think this is journalism. Yeah,

832
00:46:51,280 --> 00:46:55,279
Speaker 1: that's what they teach the Atlantic Further rights of this

833
00:46:55,360 --> 00:46:58,120
Speaker 1: incident quote. O'Keefe later claimed he didn't approve of such

834
00:46:58,120 --> 00:47:00,480
Speaker 1: props in any case. Once he got her down there alone,

835
00:47:00,520 --> 00:47:03,080
Speaker 1: he planned to make her uncomfortable by attempting to seduce her.

836
00:47:03,160 --> 00:47:06,560
Speaker 1: Then he'd somehow humiliate Boudreau and embarrassed CNN by releasing

837
00:47:06,560 --> 00:47:09,120
Speaker 1: footage of the bizarre incident. It was averted at the

838
00:47:09,160 --> 00:47:11,640
Speaker 1: last minute when a female member of O'Keeffe's team became

839
00:47:11,719 --> 00:47:14,000
Speaker 1: uncomfortable with the plan and tipped off the reporter to

840
00:47:14,000 --> 00:47:16,600
Speaker 1: what was intended. So it is nice to note that

841
00:47:16,640 --> 00:47:21,440
Speaker 1: people with souls occasionally do work with James O'Keeffe. But

842
00:47:21,800 --> 00:47:26,279
Speaker 1: I was assuming she like became uncomfortable and raised the

843
00:47:26,760 --> 00:47:30,680
Speaker 1: raised a like logical point of view with him. No,

844
00:47:31,000 --> 00:47:33,200
Speaker 1: she like had to She was like, well, there's no

845
00:47:33,239 --> 00:47:36,880
Speaker 1: way I'm convincing him that this is a just banana

846
00:47:36,960 --> 00:47:40,400
Speaker 1: funck idea, like we should I I have to like

847
00:47:40,520 --> 00:47:44,000
Speaker 1: just blow it up. Yeah, And that that is made

848
00:47:44,120 --> 00:47:46,440
Speaker 1: very clear by later things we're going to talk about.

849
00:47:46,480 --> 00:47:49,319
Speaker 1: You don't question James O'Keeffe when you work for him.

850
00:47:49,360 --> 00:47:52,040
Speaker 1: I really do suspect that this woman's only option to

851
00:47:52,120 --> 00:47:55,040
Speaker 1: stop this horror from happening was to like go to

852
00:47:55,080 --> 00:47:59,400
Speaker 1: the hurtist and say, you're actually in danger. Has he

853
00:47:59,440 --> 00:48:02,279
Speaker 1: ever tried had to seduce Bill Clinton by dressing up

854
00:48:02,320 --> 00:48:06,000
Speaker 1: and like putting lipstick on and like the way bugs Bunny,

855
00:48:06,120 --> 00:48:09,239
Speaker 1: like girl Bugs Bunny is used to seduce. You know,

856
00:48:09,400 --> 00:48:11,680
Speaker 1: I would actually respect him if he tried to do

857
00:48:11,719 --> 00:48:15,040
Speaker 1: that that that would be legitimately funny, wouldn't still would

858
00:48:15,080 --> 00:48:17,560
Speaker 1: not be journalism, but would be very funny, but it

859
00:48:17,600 --> 00:48:20,440
Speaker 1: seems like it's in the same universe, the same logic.

860
00:48:21,360 --> 00:48:24,760
Speaker 1: I think the difference is that Bill Clinton is a

861
00:48:24,800 --> 00:48:29,000
Speaker 1: powerful person who would be able to strike back at him,

862
00:48:29,160 --> 00:48:32,000
Speaker 1: and he thought that Abby wouldn't that like seeing and

863
00:48:32,040 --> 00:48:34,800
Speaker 1: would or under the bus the way everyone throws people

864
00:48:34,840 --> 00:48:38,200
Speaker 1: under the bus. Who O'Keefe goes after. Um, And I

865
00:48:38,239 --> 00:48:44,040
Speaker 1: don't think O'Keefe O'Keefe never punches up really. Um. Yeah,

866
00:48:44,080 --> 00:48:47,320
Speaker 1: he tends to punch people that he knows don't won't

867
00:48:47,320 --> 00:48:50,440
Speaker 1: really be able to defend themselves in a meaningful way.

868
00:48:51,000 --> 00:48:53,480
Speaker 1: So he's a hero. Yeah, so he's a hero. Yeah,

869
00:48:53,680 --> 00:48:57,040
Speaker 1: like all of our heroes. We we remember when Superman

870
00:48:57,120 --> 00:49:01,040
Speaker 1: who was famous for beating up and murder during people

871
00:49:01,080 --> 00:49:04,400
Speaker 1: weaker than him. Um, that's why he's a hero. Batman

872
00:49:04,440 --> 00:49:12,359
Speaker 1: who actually, that is what Batman is, all right, Yeah, yeah,

873
00:49:12,400 --> 00:49:17,120
Speaker 1: he's he's a bit like Batman. Um. By two thousand

874
00:49:17,120 --> 00:49:19,279
Speaker 1: and ten, James O'Keeffe was firmly under the wing of

875
00:49:19,360 --> 00:49:22,400
Speaker 1: a fellow named Andrew Brightbart, who was a right wing

876
00:49:22,520 --> 00:49:25,360
Speaker 1: journalist and founder of brightbart dot com and also a

877
00:49:25,520 --> 00:49:29,239
Speaker 1: massive cocaine addict, which I state because it's funny not

878
00:49:29,320 --> 00:49:31,520
Speaker 1: because it's any mark against him. You know, you're not

879
00:49:31,600 --> 00:49:34,680
Speaker 1: a bad person just because you like cocaine. Um. Although

880
00:49:34,760 --> 00:49:41,320
Speaker 1: Andrew Brightbart was a bad person. Um. Yeah. Now, Andrew

881
00:49:41,440 --> 00:49:44,320
Speaker 1: was a major force in publicizing O'Keeffe's early work and

882
00:49:44,440 --> 00:49:47,640
Speaker 1: legitimizing him in conservative media. But even he had to

883
00:49:47,719 --> 00:49:51,440
Speaker 1: partly disavow James O'Keeffe after this incident, saying, quote from

884
00:49:51,480 --> 00:49:54,040
Speaker 1: what I've read about this script, though not executed, it

885
00:49:54,160 --> 00:49:57,160
Speaker 1: is patently gross and offensive. It's not his detractors to

886
00:49:57,239 --> 00:49:59,520
Speaker 1: whom he owes this public airing, it's to his legion

887
00:49:59,520 --> 00:50:03,560
Speaker 1: of support, which I would argue that maybe the person

888
00:50:03,680 --> 00:50:07,120
Speaker 1: James odin or an apology to the most was Abby Boudreau,

889
00:50:07,880 --> 00:50:12,080
Speaker 1: but just his conservative followers, just just his conservative fuck.

890
00:50:12,200 --> 00:50:15,800
Speaker 1: Fuck Abby Boudreau for her un ethical crime of trying

891
00:50:15,840 --> 00:50:19,279
Speaker 1: to interview him and treat him like a serious person. Um,

892
00:50:19,800 --> 00:50:23,399
Speaker 1: how dare she so? Over the next several years, James

893
00:50:23,400 --> 00:50:26,239
Speaker 1: O'Keefe would carry out numerous other schemes. Most of them

894
00:50:26,280 --> 00:50:29,359
Speaker 1: were complete flops, like his attempt to seduce Boudreaux. Others

895
00:50:29,400 --> 00:50:32,759
Speaker 1: were more successful, like Project Veritas is expose a of

896
00:50:32,840 --> 00:50:35,640
Speaker 1: bias at NPR. The basic story is that in two

897
00:50:35,640 --> 00:50:39,120
Speaker 1: thousand eleven, several Project Veritas employees pretending to be Muslim

898
00:50:39,160 --> 00:50:42,400
Speaker 1: activists managed to wangle a meeting with the CEO of NPR,

899
00:50:42,719 --> 00:50:45,440
Speaker 1: Ron Schiller. The edited version of the video made it

900
00:50:45,480 --> 00:50:48,879
Speaker 1: look as if Schiller was expressing dismissive disgust with conservatives,

901
00:50:49,120 --> 00:50:51,600
Speaker 1: and includes a clip of him saying that liberals might

902
00:50:51,680 --> 00:50:55,080
Speaker 1: be more educated, fair and balanced than conservatives. But like

903
00:50:55,200 --> 00:50:58,759
Speaker 1: every Project Veritas video, it's selectively edited out context and

904
00:50:59,080 --> 00:51:01,840
Speaker 1: the full version of the clip. Immediately after saying that,

905
00:51:02,239 --> 00:51:04,080
Speaker 1: Ron Schiller had added that he used to be a

906
00:51:04,120 --> 00:51:06,920
Speaker 1: Republican and was proud of his past as a Republican.

907
00:51:07,560 --> 00:51:10,080
Speaker 1: The edited video includes clips of Schiller saying that the

908
00:51:10,160 --> 00:51:12,840
Speaker 1: Republican Party has been hijacked by the Tea Party and

909
00:51:12,880 --> 00:51:15,320
Speaker 1: made it look as if he called Tea Party r's racist,

910
00:51:15,600 --> 00:51:17,680
Speaker 1: But the full video makes it clear that Schiller was

911
00:51:17,760 --> 00:51:20,800
Speaker 1: in fact not describing his own views, but talking about

912
00:51:20,800 --> 00:51:23,680
Speaker 1: the way several of his wealthy Republican friends thought about

913
00:51:23,760 --> 00:51:27,640
Speaker 1: the Tea Party. Um so again, it's yeah, completely cutting

914
00:51:27,680 --> 00:51:31,640
Speaker 1: out the context now, despite the things that he's being

915
00:51:31,719 --> 00:51:40,160
Speaker 1: accused of saying are accurate. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah, sure, yeah.

916
00:51:40,320 --> 00:51:43,200
Speaker 1: Despite the deceptive editing, Ron Schiller was forced to resign

917
00:51:43,280 --> 00:51:46,040
Speaker 1: from his post at NPR, but James O'Keeffe suffered some

918
00:51:46,120 --> 00:51:49,000
Speaker 1: blowback to when it was discovered how dishonest the editing

919
00:51:49,040 --> 00:51:52,040
Speaker 1: had been. Glennbeck had been a major backer of James O'Keeffe,

920
00:51:52,320 --> 00:51:54,920
Speaker 1: blew up on him and disavowed him. Over the next

921
00:51:55,040 --> 00:51:58,000
Speaker 1: near decade, most of James O'Keefe's successes have followed this

922
00:51:58,080 --> 00:52:00,799
Speaker 1: basic pattern. He puts out a video purporting to show

923
00:52:00,920 --> 00:52:03,920
Speaker 1: something damning. It provokes a backlash, which brings a conservative

924
00:52:04,000 --> 00:52:06,840
Speaker 1: rage mob down on James's target. Damage is done, and

925
00:52:06,880 --> 00:52:09,440
Speaker 1: then it's later revealed that large portions of what Project

926
00:52:09,560 --> 00:52:13,719
Speaker 1: Veritas claimed were lies or distortions. Um James had a

927
00:52:13,800 --> 00:52:16,400
Speaker 1: string of notable successes. In the two thousand twelve election,

928
00:52:16,640 --> 00:52:19,360
Speaker 1: One of his reporters managed to push Senator Patrick morn

929
00:52:19,520 --> 00:52:22,560
Speaker 1: into joking about forging documents to vote in the name

930
00:52:22,600 --> 00:52:25,560
Speaker 1: of dead people. Moran resigned as a result of Project

931
00:52:25,640 --> 00:52:29,000
Speaker 1: Veritas's coverage. O'Keeffe also caused a sensation in the right

932
00:52:29,040 --> 00:52:31,040
Speaker 1: wing media when he and several of his reporters were

933
00:52:31,080 --> 00:52:33,080
Speaker 1: able to get the ballots of other people in states

934
00:52:33,160 --> 00:52:36,520
Speaker 1: with no voter id laws, no one actually voted with

935
00:52:36,600 --> 00:52:40,000
Speaker 1: fraudulent ballots, but Project Veritas succeeded in getting a couple

936
00:52:40,000 --> 00:52:42,319
Speaker 1: of Democratic staffers to say things that they later had

937
00:52:42,360 --> 00:52:44,879
Speaker 1: to resign. Over All of these schemes had the same

938
00:52:44,920 --> 00:52:48,120
Speaker 1: problem as every James O'Keeffe operation, but they were undoubtedly

939
00:52:48,160 --> 00:52:51,520
Speaker 1: effective at pushing a narrative in the right wing media. Now,

940
00:52:51,640 --> 00:52:53,640
Speaker 1: the fact that so many of his schemes do damage

941
00:52:53,680 --> 00:52:57,320
Speaker 1: has kept Project Veritas and O'Keeffe very well funded. In

942
00:52:57,360 --> 00:52:59,920
Speaker 1: two thousand seventeen, the year before that Politico Are to

943
00:53:00,040 --> 00:53:03,000
Speaker 1: Coal was published, he raised more than seven million dollars.

944
00:53:03,440 --> 00:53:05,960
Speaker 1: In January of two eighteen, he's turned his sights to

945
00:53:06,000 --> 00:53:09,080
Speaker 1: Twitter to release an undercover investigation of the sites purported

946
00:53:09,120 --> 00:53:14,240
Speaker 1: bias against conservatives. According to Politico Quote, the substance was intriguing,

947
00:53:14,280 --> 00:53:17,239
Speaker 1: if not explosive. One former employee touted the practice of

948
00:53:17,280 --> 00:53:20,640
Speaker 1: shadow banning accounts based on ideological content, while a higher

949
00:53:20,719 --> 00:53:23,800
Speaker 1: ranking current official admitted that employees perused the erotic images

950
00:53:23,840 --> 00:53:26,600
Speaker 1: exchanged by users. And yet the mere fact that O'Keeffe's

951
00:53:26,600 --> 00:53:29,520
Speaker 1: outfit had infiltrated the social media giant was caused for

952
00:53:29,600 --> 00:53:33,480
Speaker 1: celebration on the right. So nothing O'Keeffe found was evidence

953
00:53:33,520 --> 00:53:37,120
Speaker 1: of systemic bias against conservatives, but that didn't actually matter.

954
00:53:37,239 --> 00:53:40,600
Speaker 1: Project veritas is reporting fueled the almost religious belief among

955
00:53:40,680 --> 00:53:45,920
Speaker 1: the American right that they're being persecuted by someone. Um. Yeah. Now,

956
00:53:46,000 --> 00:53:48,319
Speaker 1: as you'd expect, James has had more missus than hits

957
00:53:48,400 --> 00:53:51,120
Speaker 1: over the years. Most of these misses disappear quickly and

958
00:53:51,160 --> 00:53:53,920
Speaker 1: without much fanfare, but in the fall of two thousand seventeen,

959
00:53:54,040 --> 00:53:57,520
Speaker 1: he and his team suffered a particularly delightful funk up.

960
00:53:58,040 --> 00:54:01,520
Speaker 1: A Project Veritas undercover report, Jamie Phillips reached out to

961
00:54:01,560 --> 00:54:05,600
Speaker 1: The Washington Post and claimed falsely that Alabama Senate candidate

962
00:54:05,680 --> 00:54:08,440
Speaker 1: Roy Moore had statutorily raped her as a teenager and

963
00:54:08,480 --> 00:54:10,880
Speaker 1: then forced her to have an abortion. The goal of

964
00:54:10,960 --> 00:54:12,839
Speaker 1: this lie was to discredit all the other women who

965
00:54:12,880 --> 00:54:16,120
Speaker 1: had reached out about Moore's tendency to assault teenage girls,

966
00:54:16,600 --> 00:54:19,320
Speaker 1: but Jamie Phillips forgot to clean up her digital footprint

967
00:54:19,360 --> 00:54:21,960
Speaker 1: well enough before going to the Washington Post, and the

968
00:54:22,040 --> 00:54:25,719
Speaker 1: Post reporters, being actual journalists, did some basic googling and

969
00:54:25,800 --> 00:54:27,920
Speaker 1: found a go fund Me campaign she'd set up to

970
00:54:28,000 --> 00:54:29,920
Speaker 1: raise money to help her move to New York and

971
00:54:30,040 --> 00:54:32,880
Speaker 1: quote work in the conservative media movement to combat the

972
00:54:32,960 --> 00:54:36,879
Speaker 1: lies and deceit of the liberal MSN. Ms M. Yeah, yeah,

973
00:54:37,480 --> 00:54:40,920
Speaker 1: they're bad at this. The Post subsequently published several articles

974
00:54:40,960 --> 00:54:43,600
Speaker 1: about what a bunch of bullshitty, bullshitters James O'Keeffe and

975
00:54:43,680 --> 00:54:46,800
Speaker 1: his band of reporters were. O'Keefe lashed back at The

976
00:54:47,040 --> 00:54:50,680
Speaker 1: Washington Post in public publishing a video titled Breaking Undercover

977
00:54:50,840 --> 00:54:54,839
Speaker 1: Video Exposes Washington Posts Hidden Agenda. All they actually had

978
00:54:54,920 --> 00:54:57,360
Speaker 1: was a recording of a Post reporter admitting that articles

979
00:54:57,360 --> 00:54:59,759
Speaker 1: about President Trump got lots of readers, which is not

980
00:55:00,040 --> 00:55:03,839
Speaker 1: exactly damn it. Wow, yeah, it's basically what they get.

981
00:55:04,320 --> 00:55:09,400
Speaker 1: Caught him saying that objectively true thing that is yeah, okay, yes,

982
00:55:09,480 --> 00:55:11,840
Speaker 1: they caught the Post admitting that the president of the

983
00:55:12,000 --> 00:55:15,680
Speaker 1: United States was a popular topic for their political articles.

984
00:55:16,120 --> 00:55:18,040
Speaker 1: Wasn't there also like a thing where they were like

985
00:55:18,320 --> 00:55:22,879
Speaker 1: videotaping each other, like doing a video taping. You want

986
00:55:22,960 --> 00:55:26,200
Speaker 1: videotaping you like a standoff thing. I don't think a

987
00:55:26,320 --> 00:55:29,960
Speaker 1: standoff occurred, but they like they both purported to have

988
00:55:30,120 --> 00:55:32,440
Speaker 1: the goods on the other. Only one of them actually

989
00:55:32,600 --> 00:55:35,759
Speaker 1: got anything, which was the post because again all the posts. Yeah,

990
00:55:35,800 --> 00:55:38,360
Speaker 1: it's it was frustrating. Um, and it looked bad for

991
00:55:38,480 --> 00:55:42,040
Speaker 1: James O'Keefe. It was something he was legitimately unable to spin.

992
00:55:43,040 --> 00:55:46,680
Speaker 1: According to Politico quote, he took it hard. Friends described

993
00:55:46,719 --> 00:55:49,840
Speaker 1: the New Jersey native as manically driven an extremely sensitive

994
00:55:49,880 --> 00:55:52,640
Speaker 1: to criticism, and several said the botched post job was

995
00:55:52,680 --> 00:55:54,719
Speaker 1: the lowest they'd seen him, lower even than his two

996
00:55:54,760 --> 00:55:58,239
Speaker 1: thousand ten incarceration following the failed attempt to discover telephonic

997
00:55:58,320 --> 00:56:02,120
Speaker 1: misdeeds in Louisiana office of then Senator Mary Landrew So

998
00:56:02,840 --> 00:56:06,439
Speaker 1: must being this is the saddest we've ever seen him. Yeah,

999
00:56:06,920 --> 00:56:13,239
Speaker 1: he was down in Yeah, he was. They did I

1000
00:56:13,360 --> 00:56:18,520
Speaker 1: didn't succeed in making women complaining about their sexual assault

1001
00:56:18,560 --> 00:56:20,960
Speaker 1: at the hands of an adult when they were children.

1002
00:56:21,320 --> 00:56:27,520
Speaker 1: Uh look incredible lying. Uh boo hoo, poor me. Yeah,

1003
00:56:27,760 --> 00:56:31,360
Speaker 1: that's that's what his lowest point is is his failure to,

1004
00:56:32,320 --> 00:56:35,759
Speaker 1: uh discredit victims of sexual assault. What do you think

1005
00:56:35,800 --> 00:56:39,560
Speaker 1: are sorry you you mentioned that they make seven million

1006
00:56:39,680 --> 00:56:42,640
Speaker 1: dollars or they get seven million dollars, So their budget

1007
00:56:42,760 --> 00:56:45,279
Speaker 1: is like seven million dollars a year. Yeah, yeah, And

1008
00:56:45,400 --> 00:56:47,640
Speaker 1: O'Keefe reportedly gets somewhere at least at least in two

1009
00:56:47,640 --> 00:56:50,000
Speaker 1: thousand seventeen, he was getting around three hundred thousand dollars

1010
00:56:50,000 --> 00:56:53,399
Speaker 1: a year is a salary. Oh well, that's fair. I mean, yeah,

1011
00:56:53,400 --> 00:56:55,960
Speaker 1: I learned. I mean, look at what he's done. But

1012
00:56:56,560 --> 00:57:00,920
Speaker 1: like we've run editorial institutions before like that, there's no

1013
00:57:01,440 --> 00:57:06,880
Speaker 1: how is he spending that much money on nothing? They

1014
00:57:06,960 --> 00:57:09,120
Speaker 1: have a lot of failures and they have a very

1015
00:57:09,200 --> 00:57:14,080
Speaker 1: expensive office. Wow. I mean, like it is one of

1016
00:57:14,160 --> 00:57:17,200
Speaker 1: those things where it's like if I had uh seventy

1017
00:57:17,280 --> 00:57:22,240
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in funding a year for journalism, like I

1018
00:57:22,320 --> 00:57:25,240
Speaker 1: could do seven or eight trips to places like Syria

1019
00:57:25,320 --> 00:57:27,000
Speaker 1: in a year and put out stuff Like I don't

1020
00:57:27,000 --> 00:57:29,400
Speaker 1: know where they spend this money. But that's my general

1021
00:57:29,520 --> 00:57:32,480
Speaker 1: issue with so much of like these media. It's like

1022
00:57:32,560 --> 00:57:34,480
Speaker 1: what do you do? What do you use that fucking

1023
00:57:34,560 --> 00:57:39,280
Speaker 1: money for? Like they're just trying to hammer the reality

1024
00:57:39,440 --> 00:57:43,080
Speaker 1: into the truth that they want to exist and it's

1025
00:57:43,200 --> 00:57:46,400
Speaker 1: just not working, and they pay themselves like kings to

1026
00:57:46,520 --> 00:57:48,640
Speaker 1: do it. I Mean, the problem is it does work,

1027
00:57:48,840 --> 00:57:53,280
Speaker 1: it just isn't journalism. But it's it's really frustrated to

1028
00:57:53,320 --> 00:57:55,200
Speaker 1: me because like one of the stories that came out

1029
00:57:55,240 --> 00:57:57,600
Speaker 1: this year that like obviously didn't get any play. Is

1030
00:57:57,640 --> 00:58:01,200
Speaker 1: that a great French for and correspondent who'd done a

1031
00:58:01,240 --> 00:58:04,400
Speaker 1: lot of great conflict journalism killed himself this year because

1032
00:58:04,440 --> 00:58:06,760
Speaker 1: he couldn't get work and couldn't do the job that

1033
00:58:06,880 --> 00:58:10,640
Speaker 1: he loved doing anymore. Um, And like across the world,

1034
00:58:10,760 --> 00:58:14,320
Speaker 1: a lot of really good foreign correspondence and conflict journalists

1035
00:58:14,680 --> 00:58:17,760
Speaker 1: have like quit or gone into pr or like moved

1036
00:58:17,880 --> 00:58:19,920
Speaker 1: state side and had to stop doing the job they

1037
00:58:20,000 --> 00:58:23,240
Speaker 1: love to do some sort of you know, essentially less

1038
00:58:23,480 --> 00:58:27,320
Speaker 1: valuable work. Um, because there's just no money in it. Meanwhile,

1039
00:58:27,400 --> 00:58:30,480
Speaker 1: James O'Keeffe has seven million dollars to attempt to sexually

1040
00:58:30,520 --> 00:58:38,040
Speaker 1: assault CNN reporters. Yeah, it's frustrating that. I mean, it's

1041
00:58:38,160 --> 00:58:40,680
Speaker 1: how it seems to be, how how the country works.

1042
00:58:41,320 --> 00:58:45,040
Speaker 1: Yeah uh quote. The Post debacle also might have marked

1043
00:58:45,080 --> 00:58:47,520
Speaker 1: a point of no return and keeps relationship with the media.

1044
00:58:47,640 --> 00:58:50,120
Speaker 1: A self described journalist, O'Keefe looks in the mirror and

1045
00:58:50,160 --> 00:58:52,640
Speaker 1: sees a muckraker in the mold of Upton, Sinclair or

1046
00:58:52,720 --> 00:58:56,200
Speaker 1: Nelly bly taking bold, unconventional steps to expose what no

1047
00:58:56,360 --> 00:59:00,760
Speaker 1: mainstream reporter ever could and he's apparently obsessed with good

1048
00:59:00,880 --> 00:59:04,480
Speaker 1: undercover journalism, like the bathrooms and Project Veritas are covered

1049
00:59:04,520 --> 00:59:08,040
Speaker 1: with like news like headlines and stuff from like a

1050
00:59:08,160 --> 00:59:11,080
Speaker 1: centuries worth of great undercover expose a s of like

1051
00:59:11,240 --> 00:59:14,760
Speaker 1: you know, like Upton Sinclair's work and whatnot. So he

1052
00:59:14,880 --> 00:59:18,560
Speaker 1: really does seem to have a deep love of that

1053
00:59:18,760 --> 00:59:22,120
Speaker 1: kind of journalism, but no idea of what made the

1054
00:59:22,240 --> 00:59:24,959
Speaker 1: people who were actually good at it and actually doing

1055
00:59:25,080 --> 00:59:32,280
Speaker 1: good using those tactics good. Um yeah yeah uh. In

1056
00:59:32,360 --> 00:59:34,720
Speaker 1: a related note, James O'Keeffe is also a big fan

1057
00:59:34,840 --> 00:59:39,800
Speaker 1: of frequent Bastards pod side character Alex Jones. H He's

1058
00:59:39,840 --> 00:59:42,320
Speaker 1: been on Info Wars a number of times, and info

1059
00:59:42,360 --> 00:59:45,880
Speaker 1: Wars regularly has people who have been Project Veritas interview

1060
00:59:45,960 --> 00:59:50,280
Speaker 1: subjects on as guests. When Politico pressed James O'Keeffe about this,

1061
00:59:50,600 --> 00:59:52,919
Speaker 1: he insisted, I'm not going to say a negative word

1062
00:59:52,920 --> 00:59:56,360
Speaker 1: about Alex Jones. This was because, you know o'keep's words,

1063
00:59:56,480 --> 00:59:58,800
Speaker 1: the rules of engagement are different when you're an insurgent.

1064
00:59:58,880 --> 01:00:01,600
Speaker 1: We're insurgents who have an existential threat against us by

1065
01:00:01,640 --> 01:00:03,840
Speaker 1: the government, the system which seeks to shut us down,

1066
01:00:04,160 --> 01:00:06,640
Speaker 1: and a complacent and corrupt media, and that world. We

1067
01:00:06,760 --> 01:00:09,480
Speaker 1: retain the right as Veritas to hold the side accountable

1068
01:00:09,520 --> 01:00:12,560
Speaker 1: that won't hold itself accountable, and we consider Alex Jones

1069
01:00:12,600 --> 01:00:16,680
Speaker 1: an ally in that fight. O'Keefe significant impact on American

1070
01:00:16,720 --> 01:00:19,040
Speaker 1: politics and the millions of dollars he's received to fund

1071
01:00:19,160 --> 01:00:22,600
Speaker 1: his operations have led to a consequent explosion in his ego,

1072
01:00:22,880 --> 01:00:26,320
Speaker 1: and that Politico interview he describes Project Veritas as one

1073
01:00:26,440 --> 01:00:31,720
Speaker 1: third CIA, one third James Bond, and one third Mike Wallace. Yeah,

1074
01:00:31,880 --> 01:00:34,680
Speaker 1: that's that's frustrating to hear. Uh. He goes out of

1075
01:00:34,720 --> 01:00:36,840
Speaker 1: his way to make a good impression on interviewers and

1076
01:00:36,920 --> 01:00:40,160
Speaker 1: in his Fox appearances, but it's also clear to observers,

1077
01:00:40,200 --> 01:00:42,760
Speaker 1: and backed up by former employees, that James O'Keeffe is

1078
01:00:42,800 --> 01:00:45,800
Speaker 1: a monstrous dick and a nightmare to work with. Quote

1079
01:00:45,840 --> 01:00:48,320
Speaker 1: from Politico. During my time with O'Keefe and his fresh

1080
01:00:48,400 --> 01:00:51,320
Speaker 1: faced posse, I never once witnessed any of them challenge him.

1081
01:00:51,480 --> 01:00:53,800
Speaker 1: O'Keefe is known to be brutal on his employees. They

1082
01:00:53,840 --> 01:00:56,800
Speaker 1: are by and large a collection of young yesmen. So

1083
01:00:56,920 --> 01:01:00,560
Speaker 1: that's cool, Yeah, and I think all men. After the

1084
01:01:00,640 --> 01:01:04,840
Speaker 1: one woman he hired, uh exposed his scheme to again

1085
01:01:05,120 --> 01:01:08,920
Speaker 1: sexually harass a journalist. Now, James views himself as a

1086
01:01:08,960 --> 01:01:11,520
Speaker 1: real reporter, a trailblazing muck raker in the mold of

1087
01:01:11,600 --> 01:01:15,000
Speaker 1: Upton Sinclair. He's furious that mainstream reporters have not recognized

1088
01:01:15,080 --> 01:01:18,040
Speaker 1: his brilliance. This desire has been stymied by the fact that,

1089
01:01:18,160 --> 01:01:21,960
Speaker 1: in some ways James O'Keefe is a very, very dumb man.

1090
01:01:22,680 --> 01:01:29,040
Speaker 1: I mentioned, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm glad you just

1091
01:01:29,200 --> 01:01:31,880
Speaker 1: came out and kind of said it. Yeah, we're about

1092
01:01:31,920 --> 01:01:34,200
Speaker 1: to give the best evidence of that, even better evidence

1093
01:01:34,200 --> 01:01:39,720
Speaker 1: than not being able to work a parking meter, Like,

1094
01:01:40,040 --> 01:01:43,560
Speaker 1: because so he was picking her up at the train station,

1095
01:01:44,000 --> 01:01:48,800
Speaker 1: so that suggests that she was, you know, in there

1096
01:01:48,920 --> 01:01:51,600
Speaker 1: waiting for him and then like I had to leave

1097
01:01:51,840 --> 01:01:56,400
Speaker 1: and find him outside, just stuck there and unable to

1098
01:01:56,960 --> 01:02:02,240
Speaker 1: operate the parking meter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she might have

1099
01:02:02,320 --> 01:02:04,680
Speaker 1: gotten where she was going faster if she'd just taken

1100
01:02:04,720 --> 01:02:10,920
Speaker 1: the bus um. So yeah. In two sixteen, James O'Keefe

1101
01:02:10,920 --> 01:02:14,360
Speaker 1: attempted to take down George Soros. On March sixteenth, he

1102
01:02:14,400 --> 01:02:19,040
Speaker 1: and some colleagues placed a call to Yeah, oh, it's

1103
01:02:19,080 --> 01:02:21,880
Speaker 1: even better than you're thinking it's gonna be on March sixteenth,

1104
01:02:21,920 --> 01:02:24,240
Speaker 1: he and some colleagues placed to call to Dana Garratti

1105
01:02:24,400 --> 01:02:27,440
Speaker 1: of the Open Society Foundation. She didn't pick up, so

1106
01:02:27,560 --> 01:02:30,840
Speaker 1: they left her a voicemail, a seven minute voicemail. I'm

1107
01:02:30,840 --> 01:02:35,560
Speaker 1: gonna quote from remember I'm gonna quote from the New

1108
01:02:35,640 --> 01:02:38,760
Speaker 1: Yorker's coverage. Now quote Hey, Dana. A voice began. The

1109
01:02:38,800 --> 01:02:41,280
Speaker 1: color sounded to her like an older American male. My

1110
01:02:41,400 --> 01:02:49,439
Speaker 1: name is Victor Kesh. I'm a Hungarian. I'm a Hungary Victory. Yeah,

1111
01:02:51,480 --> 01:02:55,400
Speaker 1: I'm a Hungarian American who represents a foundation that would

1112
01:02:55,440 --> 01:02:57,160
Speaker 1: like to get involved with you and aid what you

1113
01:02:57,280 --> 01:03:01,200
Speaker 1: do in fighting for um European values. He asked Garates

1114
01:03:01,240 --> 01:03:03,000
Speaker 1: for the name of someone he could talk to about

1115
01:03:03,040 --> 01:03:05,320
Speaker 1: supporting you guys and coordinating with you or on some

1116
01:03:05,440 --> 01:03:08,040
Speaker 1: of your efforts. Requesting a callback, he left a phone

1117
01:03:08,120 --> 01:03:11,320
Speaker 1: number with a nine four area code Westchester County. She

1118
01:03:11,440 --> 01:03:13,880
Speaker 1: heard a click, a pause, and then a second male voice.

1119
01:03:14,080 --> 01:03:16,760
Speaker 1: The person who had introduced himself as Kesh, said, don't

1120
01:03:16,800 --> 01:03:19,400
Speaker 1: say anything before I hang up the phone, and then

1121
01:03:19,440 --> 01:03:23,320
Speaker 1: the voicemail continued for several minutes. Kesh, who was actually O'Keefe,

1122
01:03:23,320 --> 01:03:26,240
Speaker 1: could be clearly heard talking to his subordinates. What needs

1123
01:03:26,320 --> 01:03:28,040
Speaker 1: to happen, he said, is for someone other than me

1124
01:03:28,120 --> 01:03:30,520
Speaker 1: to make a hundred phone calls like that to Sorrows,

1125
01:03:30,600 --> 01:03:32,920
Speaker 1: to his employees, and to the Democracy Alliance, a club

1126
01:03:33,000 --> 01:03:36,400
Speaker 1: of wealthy liberal political donors that Sorrows helped to found,

1127
01:03:36,400 --> 01:03:38,600
Speaker 1: which is expected to play a large role in financing

1128
01:03:38,640 --> 01:03:42,400
Speaker 1: this year's campaigns. Kesh described sending into the Suros office

1129
01:03:42,400 --> 01:03:44,720
Speaker 1: as an undercover agent who could talk the talk with

1130
01:03:44,800 --> 01:03:48,360
Speaker 1: Open Society executives. Kesh's goal wasn't fully spelled out in

1131
01:03:48,400 --> 01:03:50,800
Speaker 1: the recording, but the gist was that an operative posing

1132
01:03:50,840 --> 01:03:54,200
Speaker 1: as a potential donor could penetrate Soros's operation and make

1133
01:03:54,280 --> 01:03:58,560
Speaker 1: secret videos exposing embarrassing activities. Sorrows, he assured the Others

1134
01:03:58,640 --> 01:04:01,160
Speaker 1: has thousands of organizations on the left and league with him.

1135
01:04:01,400 --> 01:04:03,480
Speaker 1: Kesh said that the name of the project was discovered

1136
01:04:03,520 --> 01:04:06,160
Speaker 1: the networks. Again, this is all on the voicemail that

1137
01:04:06,200 --> 01:04:12,560
Speaker 1: he left George Sources employee. Uh yeah, it continues. The

1138
01:04:12,640 --> 01:04:14,920
Speaker 1: money that would be offered, Kesh said, wouldn't couldn't go

1139
01:04:16,400 --> 01:04:19,040
Speaker 1: somebody that tries to interrupt him. He's like, wait, wait, wait,

1140
01:04:19,440 --> 01:04:23,240
Speaker 1: wait wait, don't you dare interrupt me? Ingenious secret plan.

1141
01:04:24,560 --> 01:04:28,000
Speaker 1: It's so dumb. The money that would be offered, Kesh said,

1142
01:04:28,000 --> 01:04:31,840
Speaker 1: couldn't come from offstore British Virgin Island companies because soros

1143
01:04:31,920 --> 01:04:33,640
Speaker 1: Is people don't want to take money from a group

1144
01:04:33,760 --> 01:04:35,960
Speaker 1: like that. He claimed that Bill Clinton would take the

1145
01:04:36,040 --> 01:04:39,439
Speaker 1: suspect cast cash, and Hillary Clinton would and Chelsea would.

1146
01:04:40,240 --> 01:04:42,440
Speaker 1: This all continued for much longer than it should have.

1147
01:04:42,800 --> 01:04:45,200
Speaker 1: At one point, O'Keefe and his reporters tried to find

1148
01:04:45,200 --> 01:04:47,680
Speaker 1: Garat on LinkedIn so they could check her resume and

1149
01:04:47,760 --> 01:04:50,360
Speaker 1: find ways to manipulate her into giving them entry into

1150
01:04:50,440 --> 01:04:53,520
Speaker 1: what he called the Sorrows octopus quote. One member of

1151
01:04:53,560 --> 01:04:55,480
Speaker 1: the team suggested to Kesh that he knew someone who

1152
01:04:55,480 --> 01:04:58,520
Speaker 1: could infiltrate the Sorrows network, an English orthopedic surgeon with

1153
01:04:58,600 --> 01:05:00,800
Speaker 1: a real heavy British accent who was in the US

1154
01:05:00,880 --> 01:05:03,040
Speaker 1: and was more than happy to do anything he can

1155
01:05:03,160 --> 01:05:06,280
Speaker 1: for us. The surgeon was sophisticated about technology and would

1156
01:05:06,320 --> 01:05:09,120
Speaker 1: not have any problem with the cameras. The team members said,

1157
01:05:09,160 --> 01:05:10,920
Speaker 1: he's a very talented guy, so I mean he'll be

1158
01:05:10,960 --> 01:05:13,000
Speaker 1: able to pull it off. As Kesh mapped out the

1159
01:05:13,040 --> 01:05:15,200
Speaker 1: covert attack, however, he had no idea that the only

1160
01:05:15,280 --> 01:05:17,960
Speaker 1: person he was stinging was himself. She's probably going to

1161
01:05:18,040 --> 01:05:19,840
Speaker 1: call me back, and if she doesn't, I can create

1162
01:05:19,880 --> 01:05:22,640
Speaker 1: other points of entry. At that point, he like, while

1163
01:05:22,760 --> 01:05:26,040
Speaker 1: still on the voicemail recording, James O'Keeffe looked up her

1164
01:05:26,080 --> 01:05:28,760
Speaker 1: LinkedIn page and found out that he had revealed himself

1165
01:05:28,840 --> 01:05:30,920
Speaker 1: to her, because when you look at someone on LinkedIn

1166
01:05:31,000 --> 01:05:33,360
Speaker 1: while logged in on LinkedIn, it shows them that you've

1167
01:05:33,400 --> 01:05:36,960
Speaker 1: looked at her profile, which he did, ask James O'Keefe,

1168
01:05:37,280 --> 01:05:41,640
Speaker 1: and also on the fucking voicemail, because he got to

1169
01:05:41,760 --> 01:05:46,240
Speaker 1: hear him realize that he had yoked himself over while

1170
01:05:46,360 --> 01:05:50,960
Speaker 1: fucking himself over himself over. Yeah, and his his subordinates

1171
01:05:51,000 --> 01:05:53,120
Speaker 1: are the one that realized he's done this, and they

1172
01:05:53,240 --> 01:05:55,560
Speaker 1: like warn him of this, and it's recorded him like

1173
01:05:55,680 --> 01:06:02,520
Speaker 1: frantically logging out, oh my god, it's so bad. What

1174
01:06:02,720 --> 01:06:06,600
Speaker 1: a genius. Yeah, And then the next thing I'm assuming

1175
01:06:06,680 --> 01:06:08,640
Speaker 1: you're going to tell me is that he then gets

1176
01:06:08,920 --> 01:06:12,400
Speaker 1: his foot stuck in a bucket and yeah, falls down

1177
01:06:12,440 --> 01:06:16,080
Speaker 1: a bunch of uh steps, and his hand headlands in

1178
01:06:16,160 --> 01:06:18,840
Speaker 1: a trash bag, his headlines in a trash bag, and

1179
01:06:18,920 --> 01:06:20,880
Speaker 1: then he farts for a minute and a half on

1180
01:06:21,120 --> 01:06:27,760
Speaker 1: care right. Uh so, yeah, it's it's embarrassing and James

1181
01:06:27,840 --> 01:06:31,040
Speaker 1: O'Keeffe is dumb, but he's still done a lot of damage.

1182
01:06:31,200 --> 01:06:33,280
Speaker 1: So I don't want that, Like, I don't want his

1183
01:06:33,440 --> 01:06:38,120
Speaker 1: incompetence to overshadow his his danger um. Now, I should

1184
01:06:38,160 --> 01:06:40,440
Speaker 1: note that the only Republican of note that Project Veritas

1185
01:06:40,480 --> 01:06:42,640
Speaker 1: has ever gone after was a guy named Mike Ellis,

1186
01:06:42,920 --> 01:06:46,360
Speaker 1: Wisconsin State Senate president. They caught him on video talking

1187
01:06:46,400 --> 01:06:48,920
Speaker 1: about setting up in a legal pack, something virtually all

1188
01:06:49,000 --> 01:06:51,160
Speaker 1: politicians do, but most are smart enough not to talk

1189
01:06:51,200 --> 01:06:55,000
Speaker 1: about directly. Project Veritas was paid fifty dollars to go

1190
01:06:55,120 --> 01:06:57,400
Speaker 1: after Ellis, or at least it's presumed that he was

1191
01:06:57,440 --> 01:06:59,280
Speaker 1: paid this money to go after Ellis. He was paid

1192
01:06:59,280 --> 01:07:01,680
Speaker 1: by a guy named Erick O'Keeffe who's not related to him,

1193
01:07:02,040 --> 01:07:04,240
Speaker 1: but Eric is the director of the Wisconsin Club for

1194
01:07:04,400 --> 01:07:07,320
Speaker 1: Growth and he hated Ellis, so many people basically suspect

1195
01:07:07,360 --> 01:07:09,960
Speaker 1: that he bribed Project Veritas to go after him. This

1196
01:07:10,120 --> 01:07:13,080
Speaker 1: is again, the only meaningful case of Veritas ever going

1197
01:07:13,120 --> 01:07:16,600
Speaker 1: after a Republican. Most of their money comes from bribes

1198
01:07:16,680 --> 01:07:19,479
Speaker 1: larger than fifty thou dollars. They're major funders are people

1199
01:07:19,520 --> 01:07:22,320
Speaker 1: like Robert Mercer, who also poured money into Bright Barton News,

1200
01:07:22,640 --> 01:07:25,280
Speaker 1: and Charles and David Coke, who are also major Project

1201
01:07:25,440 --> 01:07:28,160
Speaker 1: Veritas donors, although I should say David Coke used to

1202
01:07:28,240 --> 01:07:30,960
Speaker 1: be a major Project Veritas donor. Now he is a

1203
01:07:31,040 --> 01:07:35,600
Speaker 1: noted dead person. The Angels. Yeah, he's he's he's paying

1204
01:07:35,640 --> 01:07:39,600
Speaker 1: the Angels to run undercover camera operations on the other Angels. Now.

1205
01:07:41,680 --> 01:07:44,480
Speaker 1: Another backer of Project Veritas was Donald Trump, who put

1206
01:07:44,520 --> 01:07:46,800
Speaker 1: twenty thousand dollars into the group before the two thousand

1207
01:07:46,880 --> 01:07:51,000
Speaker 1: sixteen election and met with O'Keeffe numerous times. One additional

1208
01:07:51,080 --> 01:07:53,440
Speaker 1: person who helped Project Veritas out in the two thousand

1209
01:07:53,520 --> 01:07:57,720
Speaker 1: sixteen election was Bloodthirsty Mercenary and another frequent Bastard pod

1210
01:07:57,840 --> 01:08:01,960
Speaker 1: side character, Eric Prince. Yeah Echo, Papa gets in on

1211
01:08:02,040 --> 01:08:06,600
Speaker 1: the story. Uh yeah, I'm gonna quote yeah, Echo Papa, Baby,

1212
01:08:07,800 --> 01:08:09,960
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote now from an article in the Intercept

1213
01:08:10,040 --> 01:08:13,000
Speaker 1: on Prince called the Complete Mercenary Quote. In late two

1214
01:08:13,040 --> 01:08:15,680
Speaker 1: thousand fifteen or early two thousand and sixteen, Prince arranged

1215
01:08:15,760 --> 01:08:18,720
Speaker 1: for O'Keefe and Project Veritas received training and intelligence and

1216
01:08:18,800 --> 01:08:23,040
Speaker 1: elicitation techniques from a retired military intelligence operative named Euripides

1217
01:08:23,080 --> 01:08:26,240
Speaker 1: Rubio Jr. According to a former Trump White House official

1218
01:08:26,280 --> 01:08:29,120
Speaker 1: who discussed the Veritas training with Rubio, the former special

1219
01:08:29,200 --> 01:08:31,800
Speaker 1: operative quit after several weeks of training, complaining of the

1220
01:08:31,920 --> 01:08:36,880
Speaker 1: Veritas group wasn't capable of learning. O my god. Yeah,

1221
01:08:36,960 --> 01:08:38,720
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of detail there, but it just

1222
01:08:38,800 --> 01:08:42,200
Speaker 1: sounds should not be allowed to hold loaded weapons. They

1223
01:08:42,280 --> 01:08:45,080
Speaker 1: are very dumb, sir. And I think it was more

1224
01:08:45,240 --> 01:08:48,920
Speaker 1: training on like how to interrogate and like get people

1225
01:08:48,960 --> 01:08:51,560
Speaker 1: to reveal like stuff based on like, you know, his

1226
01:08:51,760 --> 01:08:54,320
Speaker 1: his work is in military intel operative. But they were

1227
01:08:54,360 --> 01:08:56,920
Speaker 1: just dumb. All they know how to do is dress

1228
01:08:57,000 --> 01:08:59,160
Speaker 1: up in stupid costumes and try to carry out bad

1229
01:08:59,240 --> 01:09:03,320
Speaker 1: schemes like they they couldn't win. An actual intelligence operative.

1230
01:09:03,360 --> 01:09:05,000
Speaker 1: Was like, well, let's try to train these guys. He

1231
01:09:05,040 --> 01:09:08,200
Speaker 1: found out that they were essentially untrainable. Just middle school

1232
01:09:08,320 --> 01:09:13,639
Speaker 1: Halloween costume level. Uh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's

1233
01:09:13,760 --> 01:09:18,120
Speaker 1: Project Veritas. Yeah. Now, James O'Keefe O course, went hard

1234
01:09:18,160 --> 01:09:21,120
Speaker 1: after Hillary Clinton during the campaign. Some of his schemes

1235
01:09:21,160 --> 01:09:23,519
Speaker 1: fell flat, like when Project Veritas connived to have an

1236
01:09:23,520 --> 01:09:26,519
Speaker 1: American by a Hillary Clinton shirt from a Democratic staffer

1237
01:09:26,600 --> 01:09:29,360
Speaker 1: for a Canadian Citizen Project Veritas framed, this is the

1238
01:09:29,400 --> 01:09:33,280
Speaker 1: campaign accepting a legal donations from a foreigner. The first question, Yeah.

1239
01:09:34,800 --> 01:09:37,519
Speaker 1: They through a press conference and the first question was basically,

1240
01:09:37,600 --> 01:09:44,200
Speaker 1: are you shipping us like waiting the campaign? Yeah, it's

1241
01:09:44,280 --> 01:09:46,920
Speaker 1: so dumb. The scandals that were coming out of the

1242
01:09:46,960 --> 01:09:50,519
Speaker 1: Trump campaign just like just like falling out of them,

1243
01:09:50,800 --> 01:09:55,760
Speaker 1: like just tondling out by accident. Yeah, it's it's it's sad.

1244
01:09:56,240 --> 01:09:58,200
Speaker 1: I should note though, that later in the campaign they

1245
01:09:58,280 --> 01:10:01,280
Speaker 1: had more significant successes. At one point, they recorded to

1246
01:10:01,400 --> 01:10:04,799
Speaker 1: mid level staffers with the Clinton campaign discussing illegal tactics

1247
01:10:04,880 --> 01:10:08,280
Speaker 1: like vote rigging and provoking fights at rallies. The unedited

1248
01:10:08,360 --> 01:10:10,439
Speaker 1: versions of the videos make it clear that at least

1249
01:10:10,479 --> 01:10:13,599
Speaker 1: in most cases, the men were talking about theoretical ideas

1250
01:10:13,760 --> 01:10:16,360
Speaker 1: schemes for dirty tricks that someone might do, rather than

1251
01:10:16,400 --> 01:10:18,880
Speaker 1: stuff they had actually done. Still, what was in there

1252
01:10:18,920 --> 01:10:22,080
Speaker 1: was damning enough that both men resigned. Now, that's not nothing,

1253
01:10:22,200 --> 01:10:24,479
Speaker 1: but it's not the kind of thing that sways elections either,

1254
01:10:24,680 --> 01:10:27,559
Speaker 1: by the standards of past successful O'Keefe schemes. Two thousand

1255
01:10:27,560 --> 01:10:30,439
Speaker 1: and sixteen was positively sad. That may have had something

1256
01:10:30,479 --> 01:10:32,360
Speaker 1: to do with why in the years Since the election

1257
01:10:32,400 --> 01:10:36,040
Speaker 1: of Project Veritas has switched its intentions almost entirely towards

1258
01:10:36,080 --> 01:10:38,800
Speaker 1: trying to prove the existence of anti conservative bias in

1259
01:10:38,880 --> 01:10:42,439
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley. Most of Veritas's expose a s on this

1260
01:10:42,560 --> 01:10:45,200
Speaker 1: have been the lowest sort of O'Keefe, fair outright lies

1261
01:10:45,280 --> 01:10:47,760
Speaker 1: of editing or exaggerations hyped up to hell and back.

1262
01:10:48,200 --> 01:10:50,360
Speaker 1: At one point, they recorded Jin and I, head of

1263
01:10:50,520 --> 01:10:53,759
Speaker 1: responsible Innovation at Google, talking about Google's attempts to avoid

1264
01:10:53,800 --> 01:10:56,680
Speaker 1: the same kind of foreign interference in the election that

1265
01:10:56,800 --> 01:10:59,840
Speaker 1: had happened in two thousand and sixteen. Veritas edited her

1266
01:11:00,200 --> 01:11:01,840
Speaker 1: to make it look like she was claiming Google plan

1267
01:11:01,960 --> 01:11:05,479
Speaker 1: to influence the election. The video they posted was pulled

1268
01:11:05,520 --> 01:11:07,639
Speaker 1: from YouTube due to a privacy complaint and the fact

1269
01:11:07,680 --> 01:11:11,320
Speaker 1: that Veritas hadn't actually received permission to record. In a

1270
01:11:11,479 --> 01:11:14,400
Speaker 1: medium post, Jing and I wrote about the nightmarish backlash

1271
01:11:14,439 --> 01:11:17,000
Speaker 1: she received after the video went live. She was on

1272
01:11:17,080 --> 01:11:19,000
Speaker 1: a plane when it launched, and when it touched down

1273
01:11:19,160 --> 01:11:21,400
Speaker 1: quote I turned on my phone, I received the shock

1274
01:11:21,479 --> 01:11:23,760
Speaker 1: of my life. I had received an enormous collection of

1275
01:11:23,800 --> 01:11:26,800
Speaker 1: threatening calls, voicemails, text messages and emails from people I've

1276
01:11:26,840 --> 01:11:30,000
Speaker 1: never met. Someone wrote your ideology will be shredded to pieces.

1277
01:11:30,080 --> 01:11:33,040
Speaker 1: Just moments before you get executed for treason. You were living,

1278
01:11:33,160 --> 01:11:35,960
Speaker 1: lended time and joy till then there were planting more

1279
01:11:36,439 --> 01:11:40,360
Speaker 1: threats like that. I've never been so fearful. Yeah. Yeah,

1280
01:11:40,520 --> 01:11:42,200
Speaker 1: this is a story that will be repeated. This is

1281
01:11:42,280 --> 01:11:44,599
Speaker 1: kind of what happens when that right wing rage machine

1282
01:11:45,080 --> 01:11:49,599
Speaker 1: touches down on people. In August two thousand nineteen, James

1283
01:11:49,640 --> 01:11:52,400
Speaker 1: O'Keeffe published a series of interviews and leaked documents from

1284
01:11:52,439 --> 01:11:56,000
Speaker 1: Google whistleblower Zach Vorhees. Vorhees claimed in the video that

1285
01:11:56,080 --> 01:11:59,560
Speaker 1: Google's algorithm was inherently biased. The tranche of documents he

1286
01:11:59,600 --> 01:12:02,439
Speaker 1: provided backed this up utterly failed to do so. The

1287
01:12:02,520 --> 01:12:05,800
Speaker 1: Daily Beast rights quote before his complains that Google doesn't

1288
01:12:05,800 --> 01:12:08,519
Speaker 1: surface conspiracy theory websites like info wars in one of

1289
01:12:08,600 --> 01:12:11,280
Speaker 1: its new search algorithms. He insists that his information is

1290
01:12:11,320 --> 01:12:13,439
Speaker 1: so valuable that he is a credible fear that Google

1291
01:12:13,479 --> 01:12:16,040
Speaker 1: could be trying to offer me. Some say that you're

1292
01:12:16,040 --> 01:12:17,400
Speaker 1: a hero. Some are going to say that you have

1293
01:12:17,479 --> 01:12:20,200
Speaker 1: extreme moral courage. O'Keeffe told the former Google or in

1294
01:12:20,240 --> 01:12:22,439
Speaker 1: the video. I've always thought that when the time came

1295
01:12:22,479 --> 01:12:23,880
Speaker 1: to do the right thing in a big way. I

1296
01:12:23,920 --> 01:12:25,439
Speaker 1: would always be the one that stood up and did

1297
01:12:25,479 --> 01:12:28,560
Speaker 1: the right thing before. He's replied. O'keeps reporting failed to

1298
01:12:28,640 --> 01:12:31,320
Speaker 1: note that its source, Mr. Vorhees, was somewhat less than credible.

1299
01:12:31,520 --> 01:12:33,560
Speaker 1: On his social media or he spread claims that the

1300
01:12:33,640 --> 01:12:36,720
Speaker 1: US government was controlled by Zionists. He ranted about q

1301
01:12:36,840 --> 01:12:39,280
Speaker 1: and on and Pizza Gate, and repeatedly warned that vaccines

1302
01:12:39,360 --> 01:12:42,680
Speaker 1: cause autism. The most objectionable claims pushed by vorhes were

1303
01:12:42,720 --> 01:12:45,760
Speaker 1: his rampant and repeated anti Semitic statements here's the Daily

1304
01:12:45,800 --> 01:12:48,240
Speaker 1: Beast again. What o'keep's video leaves out, though, is that

1305
01:12:48,360 --> 01:12:50,320
Speaker 1: his much typed insider is not as credible as he

1306
01:12:50,400 --> 01:12:53,160
Speaker 1: claims on social media, for he's as an avid promoter

1307
01:12:53,240 --> 01:12:56,160
Speaker 1: of anti Semitic accusations that banks, the media, and the

1308
01:12:56,240 --> 01:12:59,920
Speaker 1: United States government are controlled by Zionists. He even alleges

1309
01:13:00,000 --> 01:13:03,799
Speaker 1: that zionist killed conservative publisher and O'Keefe mentor Andrew Breitbart,

1310
01:13:03,840 --> 01:13:06,360
Speaker 1: who died of heart failure in two thousand twelve. It's

1311
01:13:06,479 --> 01:13:08,640
Speaker 1: very simple. Either you go along with the Zionists or

1312
01:13:08,680 --> 01:13:11,080
Speaker 1: you end up like Andrew Breitbart, or He's wrote in

1313
01:13:11,200 --> 01:13:14,519
Speaker 1: January in a may tweet or he's accused Israel carrying

1314
01:13:14,560 --> 01:13:17,200
Speaker 1: out the nine eleven attacks, and encourage Twitter users to

1315
01:13:17,240 --> 01:13:20,400
Speaker 1: look up nine eleven related conspiracy theory content providing no

1316
01:13:20,520 --> 01:13:23,839
Speaker 1: evidence of his claims. When this story broke, James O'Keeffe

1317
01:13:23,920 --> 01:13:26,559
Speaker 1: defended his source on Twitter by noting, not every source

1318
01:13:26,640 --> 01:13:32,360
Speaker 1: is a perfect angel. Good journalists know that this is true. Wow, yeah,

1319
01:13:33,160 --> 01:13:37,960
Speaker 1: that's pretty bad. Yeah, it's pretty bad. It's again going

1320
01:13:38,040 --> 01:13:42,120
Speaker 1: back to the thing of just that they expect to

1321
01:13:42,280 --> 01:13:47,080
Speaker 1: be afforded equal footing as The New York Times because

1322
01:13:47,720 --> 01:13:54,559
Speaker 1: they're the other ideological perspective, ignoring the fact that their

1323
01:13:54,960 --> 01:14:00,360
Speaker 1: sources are people who are, you know, men totally not

1324
01:14:00,520 --> 01:14:03,960
Speaker 1: all there. Yeah, well it's not even yeah, it's it's

1325
01:14:04,120 --> 01:14:07,599
Speaker 1: it's in like this case, I don't even I'm gonna

1326
01:14:07,640 --> 01:14:09,760
Speaker 1: say that. Like, the issue isn't that he's mentally not

1327
01:14:09,880 --> 01:14:12,160
Speaker 1: all there. The issue is that this guy is anti Semitic,

1328
01:14:12,320 --> 01:14:14,719
Speaker 1: and like his claims if you look at his other stuff,

1329
01:14:14,760 --> 01:14:18,880
Speaker 1: his claims that about like the Jewish run media, like

1330
01:14:19,320 --> 01:14:22,519
Speaker 1: what he's essentially saying to Project Veritas. He didn't mention

1331
01:14:22,640 --> 01:14:25,439
Speaker 1: his anti Semitic beliefs in that interview, but if you like,

1332
01:14:25,640 --> 01:14:28,080
Speaker 1: look at his whole body of I guess work, so

1333
01:14:28,240 --> 01:14:30,920
Speaker 1: to speak. It's clear that he's alleging Google's part of

1334
01:14:30,960 --> 01:14:35,479
Speaker 1: this Jewish conspiracy. Like, that's important context to evaluate the

1335
01:14:35,560 --> 01:14:40,560
Speaker 1: sources legitimacy. He's doing an evaluation of the media in

1336
01:14:40,680 --> 01:14:44,040
Speaker 1: this case, he is their source on how the media works,

1337
01:14:44,240 --> 01:14:47,920
Speaker 1: and his other prominent theories on how the media works

1338
01:14:48,080 --> 01:14:54,400
Speaker 1: involve the Jews. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure he doesn't pluralize it.

1339
01:14:54,439 --> 01:14:56,840
Speaker 1: I'm sure he just says the Jew. I think he

1340
01:14:56,920 --> 01:15:00,519
Speaker 1: uses Zionist more often. Um, he's he's from the polier

1341
01:15:00,680 --> 01:15:04,920
Speaker 1: end of the anti Semitic spectrum. Yeah. I could go

1342
01:15:05,040 --> 01:15:07,559
Speaker 1: through the documents here and Veritas released one by one

1343
01:15:07,600 --> 01:15:10,040
Speaker 1: and compare them to the claims made by Project Veritas,

1344
01:15:10,120 --> 01:15:12,360
Speaker 1: but that would be a waste of everyone's time. There's

1345
01:15:12,360 --> 01:15:15,200
Speaker 1: a good article on the next Web titled Project Veritas

1346
01:15:15,240 --> 01:15:18,600
Speaker 1: and Whistleblower published bullshit data leak to docs Google employees,

1347
01:15:18,920 --> 01:15:21,680
Speaker 1: but tears the whole pile of nonsense apart very authoritatively

1348
01:15:22,080 --> 01:15:24,040
Speaker 1: from now, I'm just going to quote from their analysis

1349
01:15:24,080 --> 01:15:27,599
Speaker 1: of the documents Veritas claimed were evidence of censorship. Quote

1350
01:15:27,720 --> 01:15:29,960
Speaker 1: here's the t ld R. It's almost certain that This

1351
01:15:30,120 --> 01:15:32,200
Speaker 1: is just everything the whistle blower could find by doing

1352
01:15:32,240 --> 01:15:35,599
Speaker 1: a quick search on the employee share drive for inclusion, diversity,

1353
01:15:35,720 --> 01:15:38,719
Speaker 1: and bias. It's almost all just PowerPoint slides and papers

1354
01:15:38,760 --> 01:15:40,880
Speaker 1: the kind you see it your own weekly corporate meetings.

1355
01:15:41,120 --> 01:15:43,640
Speaker 1: You'll find more shocking information on Google by visiting its

1356
01:15:43,680 --> 01:15:46,280
Speaker 1: official blog. This, in my opinion, is nothing more than

1357
01:15:46,320 --> 01:15:49,559
Speaker 1: Project Veritas disguising an attempt to docs Google employees as

1358
01:15:49,640 --> 01:15:52,320
Speaker 1: a leak. There are fifteen documents here. They appear to

1359
01:15:52,360 --> 01:15:55,560
Speaker 1: be randomly selected from an email chain discussing deep prioritizing

1360
01:15:55,600 --> 01:15:58,839
Speaker 1: bright Bart because it spreads hate speech. Interestingly, the documents

1361
01:15:58,920 --> 01:16:01,599
Speaker 1: clearly show that Google is concerned about fake news. There's

1362
01:16:01,640 --> 01:16:03,800
Speaker 1: even a chart saying the company trusts the Wall Street

1363
01:16:03,840 --> 01:16:06,439
Speaker 1: journal the most, CNN and Fox News about the same,

1364
01:16:06,720 --> 01:16:10,080
Speaker 1: and the Young Turk's only slightly more than Info Wars. Ironically,

1365
01:16:10,120 --> 01:16:12,360
Speaker 1: there is nothing in the censorship folder that pertains to

1366
01:16:12,479 --> 01:16:16,760
Speaker 1: censorship in any way, shape or form. Yeah, but of

1367
01:16:16,840 --> 01:16:20,840
Speaker 1: course got him. Yeah nailed Google to the Wall there,

1368
01:16:21,400 --> 01:16:25,840
Speaker 1: uh by Google for supporting famously left leaning news source

1369
01:16:26,000 --> 01:16:29,519
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journalists. Now, of course, none of this

1370
01:16:29,640 --> 01:16:32,840
Speaker 1: stopped President Donald Trump from retweeting the story, or using

1371
01:16:32,880 --> 01:16:35,479
Speaker 1: it as further evidence for his claims that conservatives are

1372
01:16:35,520 --> 01:16:38,920
Speaker 1: being silenced on social media. A few media organizations are

1373
01:16:38,960 --> 01:16:41,839
Speaker 1: better positioned for the post truth era than Project Veritas,

1374
01:16:42,080 --> 01:16:44,400
Speaker 1: But it is also true that Veritas and O'Keeffe are

1375
01:16:44,439 --> 01:16:47,719
Speaker 1: well passed their high water mark of influence. O'Keefe success

1376
01:16:47,760 --> 01:16:49,560
Speaker 1: and the huge amount of money he's made pretending to

1377
01:16:49,600 --> 01:16:52,800
Speaker 1: be an undercover reporter have provided inspiration for a whole

1378
01:16:52,840 --> 01:16:55,320
Speaker 1: generation of news grifters. Most of them are not as

1379
01:16:55,360 --> 01:16:58,240
Speaker 1: good or as influential as he was. We might include

1380
01:16:58,280 --> 01:17:01,439
Speaker 1: Hannah Giles, his old partner, in that category. Another intrigue

1381
01:17:01,439 --> 01:17:04,000
Speaker 1: could be Caitlin Bennett, the Kent State gun girl, who

1382
01:17:04,040 --> 01:17:07,240
Speaker 1: has repeatedly failed together any worthwhile news by going undercover

1383
01:17:07,320 --> 01:17:10,680
Speaker 1: among left wing activists at protests. But there is one man,

1384
01:17:10,960 --> 01:17:13,200
Speaker 1: a native of Portland, Oregon, who seems like he might

1385
01:17:13,240 --> 01:17:16,880
Speaker 1: truly be a worthwhile successor to James O'Keeffe. I'm talking

1386
01:17:16,960 --> 01:17:20,599
Speaker 1: about Andy no, the man crusading to have Antifa declared

1387
01:17:20,600 --> 01:17:23,680
Speaker 1: a domestic terrorist group, and Jack. In part two we're

1388
01:17:23,680 --> 01:17:26,840
Speaker 1: going to talk about his story. But that's that's the episode.

1389
01:17:26,960 --> 01:17:34,439
Speaker 1: We're done, all right, yep, yea yea, y'all O'Keefe's side. Now,

1390
01:17:34,600 --> 01:17:39,800
Speaker 1: how do you feel? I feel uh inspired the fact

1391
01:17:39,920 --> 01:17:43,920
Speaker 1: that he could get that much accomplished with merely seven

1392
01:17:44,000 --> 01:17:48,800
Speaker 1: million dollars and military backing, uh and not knowing how

1393
01:17:48,840 --> 01:17:54,040
Speaker 1: to use a credit card. But oh, what's the real

1394
01:17:54,240 --> 01:17:57,960
Speaker 1: story of an underdog? Yeah? He I don't know how

1395
01:17:58,040 --> 01:18:01,160
Speaker 1: he does it? You know. Yeah, he's he's a hero.

1396
01:18:02,400 --> 01:18:05,519
Speaker 1: So are we doing part two now? Yeah, we're gonna

1397
01:18:05,520 --> 01:18:07,120
Speaker 1: do part two now, but you gotta plug your plug

1398
01:18:07,160 --> 01:18:10,559
Speaker 1: doubles first. I understand you. You cast a pod yourself, sir.

1399
01:18:10,800 --> 01:18:13,800
Speaker 1: I do. I cast a pod daily, week daily. It's

1400
01:18:13,840 --> 01:18:16,880
Speaker 1: called the Daily Zeitgeist. I do it with one Mr

1401
01:18:17,000 --> 01:18:21,200
Speaker 1: Miles Gray. You can hear me there every day of

1402
01:18:21,720 --> 01:18:24,880
Speaker 1: the week, and you can follow me on Twitter at

1403
01:18:24,960 --> 01:18:30,679
Speaker 1: Jack Underscore O'Brien. Now. Now, fun bit of German language

1404
01:18:30,760 --> 01:18:36,599
Speaker 1: trivia for the listeners. Zite means news and geist means ghost. So, um,

1405
01:18:36,920 --> 01:18:41,360
Speaker 1: you you are the host of the Daily News Ghost. Yeah, yeah, ship,

1406
01:18:41,600 --> 01:18:46,240
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool. Yeah. Had I known that, I would

1407
01:18:46,280 --> 01:18:49,599
Speaker 1: have named our show the Daily News Ghost. There's still time, Jack,

1408
01:18:49,640 --> 01:18:53,439
Speaker 1: There's still time. Yeah, alright, Well, Uh, I also host

1409
01:18:53,520 --> 01:18:56,000
Speaker 1: a podcast. I have forgotten its name, but I'm sure

1410
01:18:56,360 --> 01:19:01,280
Speaker 1: listeners are aware of it. Sophie, Come on on, Sophie

1411
01:19:01,439 --> 01:19:05,920
Speaker 1: just seems like she's, you know, really overwhelmed by your

1412
01:19:05,960 --> 01:19:09,519
Speaker 1: ability inability to remember the name of that podcast. She

1413
01:19:09,720 --> 01:19:12,040
Speaker 1: has been over my ship for a very long time,

1414
01:19:12,640 --> 01:19:17,560
Speaker 1: and that's that's why our relationship works. Yeah. Uh. You

1415
01:19:17,640 --> 01:19:20,560
Speaker 1: can find this podcast online along with the sources for

1416
01:19:20,600 --> 01:19:23,800
Speaker 1: this episode on Behind the Bastards dot com. You can

1417
01:19:23,840 --> 01:19:26,000
Speaker 1: find us on Twitter and Instagram and at Bastards pod.

1418
01:19:26,160 --> 01:19:28,360
Speaker 1: You can buy a T shirt at Tea Public by

1419
01:19:28,400 --> 01:19:31,679
Speaker 1: looking up Behind the Bastards, and you can buy boat

1420
01:19:31,720 --> 01:19:35,800
Speaker 1: cutters from a variety of stores. Uh, just make sure

1421
01:19:35,920 --> 01:19:38,240
Speaker 1: you get good quality once the harbor freight ones tend

1422
01:19:38,320 --> 01:19:41,360
Speaker 1: to break pretty easily, you know. Super cheap boat cutters

1423
01:19:41,400 --> 01:19:43,320
Speaker 1: usually aren't worth it. You're you're wanting to spend you know,

1424
01:19:43,479 --> 01:19:46,400
Speaker 1: in the range kind of minimum if you want something

1425
01:19:46,479 --> 01:19:49,439
Speaker 1: that's gonna last. You've always said that, and I've always

1426
01:19:49,479 --> 01:19:53,120
Speaker 1: said that. When we were interviewing you for the intern job,

1427
01:19:53,400 --> 01:19:58,120
Speaker 1: you said that same thing. M I mean, interview is

1428
01:19:58,160 --> 01:20:01,800
Speaker 1: a really charitable way to describe you breaking into your backyard. Uh,

1429
01:20:01,960 --> 01:20:04,280
Speaker 1: so thank you for that, Jack, What are you having

1430
01:20:04,320 --> 01:20:07,639
Speaker 1: your hands these These are heavy duty bolt cutters. Yeah,

1431
01:20:09,080 --> 01:20:12,120
Speaker 1: all right, that's the episode. Go fucking hug a cat

1432
01:20:13,960 --> 01:20:14,000
Speaker 1: h