Brian Tyler Cohen RAGES in Response to Demfluencer Dark Money Scandal

Very interesting story here. I am a little bit obsessed with it. So Taylor Lorenz over at Wired Magazine really breaking some significant news here about an incubator program funded by a Dem-aligned dark money super PAC called the 1630 Fund. So let's put her reporting up on the screen, and I want to break down very specifically what she reports out in this piece. So her headline here is, a dark money group is secretly funding high profile Democratic influencers. An initiative aimed at boosting Democrats online offers influencers up to $8,000 a month to push the party line. All they have to do is keep it secret and agree to restrictions on their content.

So the TLDR here is that this incubator named Chorus was set up by Brian Tyler Cohen, who you guys probably know is a big resistance creator on YouTube, giant channel, 4 million subscribers, etc. And a guy who used to be an aide for John Yarmuth, who was a congressman from Kentucky. So they set up this thing.

And the way they fund it is by taking money from this billionaire-backed dark money super PAC called the 1630 Fund. That fund has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to back Democratic candidates and causes. It's very influential. It's very well known. You can read a bunch of reporting about it. But because it is a dark money group, their donors are kept a secret, okay? So 90 plus Democratic Party aligned influencers were selected for this program.

They're paid anywhere from $250 a month, which like, y'all are really selling out for the cheap if you're on that plan, but we'll get back to that, all the way up to $8,000 a month. It has everybody from small creators I certainly had never heard of.

Granted, I'm not on TikTok that much, so I'm not trying to smirch the level of their influence. But all the way up to people like David Pakman, who has a multi-million sub channel, who is already been quite successful and has been around for longer,

actually, than we have. David Pakman's been in this game for a long time. So, it's like everybody from the small and the brand new, all the way up to the David Pakman's of the world. So, specifically Taylor was able to talk to people who were approached about participating in this program, some of whom were put off by the terms of

the contract and said this is not something that I can be a part of. She was given access to some of the group chats that were flying around between some of the people who did end up in the cohort, who were also expressing

concerns about some of the terms of the contract. She also apparently was able to get her hands on the contract themselves. So here's specifically what the contracts that it says, were viewed by Wired, what they indicated in terms of

restrictions on the way these individuals can operate. So according to copies of the contract viewed by Wired, creators in the program must funnel all bookings with lawmakers and political leaders through Chorus. Creators also have to loop Chorus in on any independently organized engagement

with government officials or political leaders. So one of the creators who was approached about participating in Chorus said to Taylor, she said, quote, if I want to work with another politician, I have to fully collaborate with Chorus. If I get Zoran and he wants to do an interview with me, I don't want to give that to them. So that was one of the concerns.

Also it says, creators in the program are not allowed to use any funds or resources that they receive as part of the program to make content that supports or opposes any political candidate or campaign without express authorization from Chorus in advance and in writing per the contract.

So if they want to support a candidate, Graham Platner, let's say, in Maine, they have to get approval from Chriss before they can say anything supportive of any sort of candidate or campaign. In addition, the contracts reviewed by Wired prohibit standard partnership disclosures, declaring that creators will not publicize their relationship with Corriss or tell others

that they're members of the program, quote, without Korus's prior express consent. A screenshot from a slideshow was shared with Wired following this article's publication by Graham Wilson, a lawyer working with Korus that offers several talking points if a member of the cohort wanted to discuss Korus publicly. So they're expressly saying, you can't talk about being in this program and certainly can't disclose the dark money funding of this program.

They also forbid creators from disclosing the identity of any funder and give Khorus the ability to force creators to remove or correct content based solely on the organization's discretion if that content was made at a Khorus organized event. One other piece that I thought was really noteworthy, Sagar, is it also says you are not allowed to criticize any of the other influencers who are part of the chorus program. So for example, if you have a beef over David Pakman either not saying anything about Gaza

or in the early days of the genocide he was actively defending Israel, if you have a problem with that and you're an influencer in this cohort and you want to talk about it, you are banned from doing that. So you have a combination of lot of restrictions on the way that you operate having to run things through this course program.

You have the forced secrecy around it that you're not allowed to disclose course and you're certainly not allowed to disclose the funding source of course. Then you also on top of that, have these requirements that they go to these daily messaging meetings to get the view of course.

We're going to show you some of the responses from the creators themselves about the revelation that they're part of this program. They actually affirm that yes, much of this is in fact true. They show relevant parts of the contract

and then give reasons why it's not such a big deal and it's not really a problem. But they actually confirm Taylor's reporting here, so this seems pretty rock solid at this point.

Okay, so let's put that aside. I think the question is about why is this important. I think it's important not only for the context of what you laid out about specific issues, but it is an incentive and media ecosystem, which is so much worse than allegedly what the Dem and Republican alternative medias

were trying to go after. Like look, we can say a lot of bad things about Jake Tapper, MSNBC, CNN, Fox News. They do not get direct checks cut to them that specifically say you can't criticize X, Y, and Z. They are actually less controlled in this particular way.

And so that's what I think, I wanted to cover this story early, and I want people to grapple with that, is that in this new ecosystem, just like in the original days of the printing press, it's gone wild.

The norms don't exist. Everybody is a creator and a business person. They have not had well-established norms to try and create a firewall, a separation. Probably the most important is nobody is thinking about the downstream consequences of that.

Because originally, you're like, oh, you know, a couple thousand a month, great. I can pay my bills, I can do this. I don't have to have a second job and all that. But you don't ask what comes next. And two people who've been in this industry now for a long time and experienced much of the downside

of what that type of stuff looked like. Now, to be clear, I've never taken a single dollar from a Republican group or any of that type of stuff in the same way, which, again, I don't really know how you ever thought it was cool. Because even when I was absolutely broke, I never would have signed some sort of contract like that. But the point remains that I think most of them

didn't think about it. And now they're retreating to their corners because for them, they have to defend it at this point. But really, you are either controlled, quasi-controlled, or at the very least, you are not truly free to say what you want. Now, the mainstream is controlled in a separate way, right?

As in Fox News guys can't criticize each other. They also know that if they cover X, Y, or Z, that's not going to look so nice to Rupert Murdoch or to Lachlan, who are rabidly pro-Israel and pro-Ukraine. So there's all these separate issues and incentive structures that come with them. So don't get me wrong, that obviously exists with the mainstream media and I still hate them for a variety of reasons. But this is really, really bad. And it is bad because I think that the Democrats

in particular, I know that there are a lot of Dems, they're energized, they're ready, we're gonna talk about Trump health, everybody wants to be online, having fun and resisting. But you're being part of a machine, and that machine is being controlled for very specific purposes and ends, which you may not be aware of.

That's what I think is very important.

Right, and it would be one thing if this was disclosed.

Yeah, that's right.

But, and what they say is, oh, well, here are some videos where people did talk about being in chorus, and here's the chorus website, and it lists some of the creators who are participating in the program. So there was some disclosure. Was there disclosure around a dark money super PAC funding this? No there was not.

And there's, you know, so there's a reason why Taylor had to do an investigative journalism piece in order to reveal the details of this program. It expressly prohibits them in the contract from disclosing their funders, specifically from disclosing their participation in the program. And in terms of the ethics of all of this, that is almost the biggest red line here.

Because listen, it's very complicated, all of the different business structures within quote unquote independent media. Most places are different from us. Most of them will do ad reads, which means they're directly talking to advertisers. It's actually much more direct relationship than like, for example, when I was at MSNBC.

There was a firewall between the host and the people who were selling ads. You had no idea what was on during the commercial break. That wasn't your bit, you know, you were not paying attention to that. That had no bearing on your day to day. So there's that, but at least that's up front.

Everybody knows I'm paid to read this ad for Casper mattresses or whatever the heck it is, Zins or whatever thing that they're selling. So that's up front. And frankly, those corporate interests are going to only collide with your coverage in sort of certain specific instances. Whereas if you are backed by this kind of group where you're going to only collide with your coverage in sort of certain specific instances. Whereas if you are backed by this kind of group where you're going to daily messaging

check-ins, you're having to run by them, you're supposed to run by them, every government official that you interview and you have other restrictions on your content. And they have a specific, they mentioned in one of these contracts that actually in the response video, one of the members of the cohort put up a part of the contract and it referred to Korus's policy platform.

So, like, what is that? You know, and are you having to buy into a certain set of policies? I'm going to guarantee you that based on the lack of coverage of Gaza by Brian Tyler Cohen and sometimes, at times, the incredibly terrible coverage of David Pakman, two of the biggest creators that are associated with this, I'm going to bet that, you know, the fact that, for example, Gaza has been officially deemed a genocide by all of the world's genocide scholars, I'm going to bet

that's not part of the policy platform. I'm going to bet that's not part of the daily messaging guidance. And I want to be clear because some of the way this has been portrayed, especially in the rebuttals, has been very caricature-ish. We're not saying that they're being told, you're going to do a video on this, and if you don't, you're kicked out of the program. And here's your talking points, and you're going to say these freaking talking points

or you're out. It doesn't work like that. It works through several mechanisms. First of all, the choice of who participates. I guarantee you many of these people, they genuinely, their authentic view is that the Democratic Party is like,

you know, vote blue no matter who, they are vastly superior, the focus should all be on Trump. Like for many, if not all of them, that is their genuine view. So number one is the choice of who you even include

in the cohort. But then there's all these sort of like human pressures and incentives. You see who's in the in-group with you. You see the sort of topics that are being pushed. You know where the sensitivities are.

And so if you're weighing, covering, let's say, you know, the Gaza genocide versus another topic that is also very important, that isn't going to create some sort of discomfort with the, you know, with the program that you're in, that you're receiving monthly cash from, maybe you're going to choose the one that's not going to sort of, not going to be uncomfortable for the group, not going to be uncomfortable for your future potential prospects of staying in this program.

And it is you get down the line, if these influencers become financially dependent on getting this monthly stipend, then you have a lot of control over them. So that's the way this thing, these things work. It's far more subtle than just like you're getting your talking points, and you're gonna stick to them, and you're not gonna do videos on this and you are going to do videos on that. It happens in a much more subtle way. And I saw it, I've told this story before, just to give an example from my own personal

life and why the lessons we've had to learn through our careers and how we came to the business model that we have. This was back in 2015 before Hillary, actually I think it was 2014, before Hillary officially got in the race for president. I did a monologue that was like, don't run. Please don't run because you are not the person for the moment. I talked about her, you know, her speeches to banks. I, you know, said this is not the populist champion we need.

It was very critical at a time when nobody on the Democratic side, nobody on MSNBC was being critical of Hillary. They let me do it, but after the fact, I was informed that any future commentary I did on Hillary Clinton had to be run by the president of the network. Okay, that is not a normal thing. Message was sent to me that this was not appreciated, and in the future, I needed to make sure I run it up the flagpole. So can I say for certain that that didn't impact my coverage going forward? That didn't make it so that if I was weighing two different monologue topics, I was like,

well, I could do this one on Hillary again, or I could do this other topic, that I didn't take the easy way out and say, well, they're both important, so let me do this one so I don't have to actually get all of my words approved by the president of the network and piss off everybody involved this day. That's the way these things work, through these subtle influences and pressures that every human is subject to. And so I think a lot of these individuals,

they feel like, well, we're not corrupt. You know, we genuinely believe in the Democratic Party. And, you know, we gotta fight fire with fire. We gotta get in there and we gotta fight against Trump. We gotta build up this greater ecosystem. Like, I think that's the way they're thinking about it. Without realizing the subtle way that

your coverage can be shaped and influenced the minute that you start taking cash. Especially when you have these sorts of very specific restrictions on the way you're supposed to go about your content creation and you're required to go to

a daily messaging check-in every single day. Of course, that's going to impact

the way

that you approach things, not because you're inherently corrupt, because you're a human being and we are all subject to those sorts of incentives and pressures, whether we even realize it or not.

I will just quote the great Noam Chomsky, quote, the smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum, even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on while all the time the presuppositions of the system are reinforced by the limits put upon the range of the debate."

And then similarly when he was asked in that famous BBC interview about whether people self-censor he says, I don't say you're self-censoring. I'm sure you believe everything that you're saying, but what I'm saying is if you believe something different, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting. That's the question around the corner.

So like you said, it's not that these people are, and let's even think about the whole Gaza thing. You think they're doing it because they believe it? I don't think that they are actively covering anything up. You know what it is. It's division for Democrats, right?

That's it. They're like, well, we can't divide the Democratic Party.

And so.

Okay.

Well, Patman at the beginning of the genocide actively backed up Israel.

But BTC, all right? I think Framie's like, I don't wanna cause problems for Alyssa Slotkin. I don't wanna cause problems for Gavin Newsom. We need to train 100% of our fire on the right. By the way, the right does this all the time too, right? Although it's more complicated. More recently, they are willing to go after people on the issues that they care about,

immigration in particular. Thomas Massey, right, they'll get their fire whenever they quote, go against the base. And Republican creators generally are more likely to be able to do that. The Democrats though, they all seem to have internalized

this thing about Kamala where protesters and people who spoke out against Kamala and Biden were nothing but trouble, and that that's the reason that she lost. Folks, it's just not true. Yeah. that's the reason that she lost. Folks, it's just not true. And it's like, what they don't get is that,

iron sharpens iron. Going through a deeply competitive, brutal primary does not weaken the candidate, it actually makes them stronger. It means that you definitively won the debate. Kamala never won shit, literally,

from the primary to her coronation at the Democratic Party. Those Gaza people, by the way, get mad at them all you want. They voted in good faith for Donald Trump or Jill Stein in the state of Michigan, and they were the exact margin of victory.

Now, maybe it wouldn't have mattered in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, all these other, I know for a fact, 100% it mattered in the state of Michigan. So that's on you. That's not on anybody else. That's not on some protester or anybody else.

And that's where their theory of politics is just dead wrong. I mean, think about 2016 for Trump. It was savage and he won. And not only that, he won the election. Obama, Hillary, that was true.

I mean, the juggernauts went at each other.

Obama got a blowout victory. Like, they just get it. And he was definitely, if you watch him in the beginning of those debates to the end, he was strengthened so much by it. But even put aside like the Gaza piece and all of that, probably the worst mistake that Democrats made, political tactical mistake,

was circling the wagons around Biden.

100%.

And keeping out any sort of actual primary process and dissent where his weakness could have been exposed earlier you could have ended up with a much stronger candidate who actually had won a democratic process and had some sort of democratic mandate behind them. By circling the wagons and keeping all the dissent out they led themselves down this disastrous path where then you have the debate and we all know the rest of how that history unfolds.

So, I think the lesson that Democrats should just shut their mouths and not ever criticize anything that any Democrat has ever done, I think that that lesson has, I think that has been one of the single most devastating

ideas for the Democratic Party, if you just care about Democrats winning. I think that has been an utter and complete disaster. On the piece around the future of the Democratic Party, too, for me, there's a battle right now. And this is why I think that even though it's, whatever, it's one dark money group, let's

all be really clear, there's tons of dark money flowing through Independent Media. There's tons on the right, okay? This is not something that's unique. By the way, a lot of these creators spoke out against the Tenet Media scandal when that happened, which we did too, by the way, because it was gross and it was corrupt. But they can't see the problem when it is on their side.

But to me, there's a battle for the future of the Democratic Party right now. And I don't want to be overly simplistic about it, but it really is a battle between, is this going to be a party that's run by billionaires or run by the grassroots? Is that, you know, is it going to be Zoran or is it going to be Kamala Harris? Is it going to be Gavin Newsom or is it going to be someone like a grand planner who has a true grassroots behind him? him. That's the battle of the Democratic Party right now. And we saw through the Kamala Harris campaign, when she started relying on, you know, the Mark Cubans of the world and this billionaire backed and approved strategy, that's when she truly sort of nixed it. That's

when she truly destroyed her campaign and made it impossible to win. So I also see this as a real struggle, because if you're taking this dark money from a billionaire backed group, you are laying your chips down on the side of basically, we're going to keep doing the same thing we did in the past. Let me tell you something,

if you consider yourself left of center in any way, you are not going to win a contest of who has more billionaires, and for whom, which party is more comfortable for those billionaires. You have to play a different game. And that's why I think that this is really important and very symbolic of the fights that are going on,

the struggles that are going on within the Democratic Party. And of course, Gaza ties in as well, because that's an area where you have a lot of organized money on the side of we're gonna be with Israel no matter what. And so it's not the case that none of these influencers in this cohort have said anything about Gaza.

It's not been a complete prohibition. But if you look at their body of work, there has been notably less, less focus on Gaza than among people who are, you know, much more independent, who really are out there saying what they think about what's going on in the world right now. So let me go ahead and play for you guys. Brian, a couple of the responses here.

Let me go ahead and start with a portion of Brian Tyler Cohen's response, which I also have to say, I found these responses to honestly be kind of shocking in how dishonest they were, how frankly like Trumpian they were in their character.

So let's go ahead and take a listen to Brian Tyler Cohn, who again is one of the co-founders of Quorus, so he is actually like at the head of this thing.

So here's what Quorus is. It is a scholarship program to teach creators how to grow their accounts, foster engagement, launch their own shows and become profitable on their own. It's an incubator program to build the pro-democracy ecosystem.

Influencers and creators have never been more important when it comes to how Americans are consuming their news. The right has been doing this for years and the left needs to catch up. That's why we're doing this with Chorus. So let's talk about what Chorus is and what it's not. Chorus does not pay creators for content,

does not tell them what to say, does not control who they talk to or work with, and there is absolutely nothing in the contract that could even be reasonably interpreted to say that we do, period, full stop. I don't know a single creator

who would willfully sign up for a program that would tell them what they can or can't say. That's not what this program is. We pay people to show up to workshops and technical trainings to optimize their content online. For example, we've got trainings on how to package content for YouTube,

trainings on how to optimize audience retention for Instagram and TikTok, trainings on how to form an LLC. There's the implication in the article that this is some arm of the DNC or the Democratic Party. We have literally nothing to do with the DNC.

I spend zero minutes of my day thinking about the DNC. The creators do not tow any party line. How could we? There isn't a party line. Creators are absolutely allowed to speak out against the Democrats and in fact, plenty do.

And frankly, chorus creators should and do criticize Democrats when they suck. And quite often, they do suck. 1630 Fund is our fiscal sponsor. One of the largest documented donors to 1630 Fund is the same person funding a Meteor's reporters and residents program which Taylor Lorenz herself is a part of and guess what her monthly stipend is? $8,000 per month. So she's criticizing an entity that is

funded by someone that she is currently taking money from. I guess it's okay when Taylor Lorenz gets paid, but no one else. There are people like Taylor Lorenz who are desperate to tear the left apart.

And in fact, it becomes clear who her efforts help when you hear stuff like this.

Genuinely, I kind of like Taylor Lorenz

because I know that she actually believes what she says. Do you get what I'm saying? So yeah, I generally don't align myself with friends of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens.

Calling Taylor Lorenz a friend of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens is wild. Wild. And he opens up this thing. It was kind of long, so we like, you know, clipped it up and didn't play the whole thing. We wanted to give you the pieces where he's doing his best defense, whatever, to be fair to him. But he opens up the whole thing by being like, at the risk of giving more attention to an internet troll. You can say a lot of things about Taylor Lorenz,

but this is a fully reported piece in Wired Magazine. He also spends a lot of time doing like, well, this person online said this thing about it, which is totally untrue. It's like, okay, but you don't actually deal with the very specific claims that she makes in her report, about the requirement of non-disclosure, about the fact that they're required,

contractually required to run all of the guests that they book, all of the government official guests that they booked, through you guys in this approved channel that you have to go to daily messaging meetings. You don't deal with any of that. Instead, you shift the focus to these Internet claims that were untrue, rather than the actual

reported out pieces. I want to deal with the piece that he says here about Pierre Omidyar, which I think is important. And listen, I think it would be fair to question whether Taylor should be taking money from Pierre Omidyar. He has this reporter in residence training.

But here's what's different. She was public about that. And we know who's funding her. And it's on the website. And she announced it. That is very different than a program that you're not allowed to say you're part of,

and you're not allowed to disclose the funders, and you're supposed to keep it secret. And by the way, we still don't know who all is funding the 1630 Fund. So I think it's fair, there could be criticism of Taylor there too. But to posture like these are the exact same things,

that is just fundamentally dishonest, and he's smart enough to know that.

Well, look, people have—there's a four-year track record here of criticizing Taylor. I read the story. I don't take her word for it. You know, I read the story. I make sure that it's sourced, and then I see the response. It seems to hold up. Like, I think that's really what it's all about.

So this isn't about Taylor Lorenz, no great big fan you know, that Candace and Tucker say that Taylor believes, I actually agree with that, is one thing, I mean, I don't like most of what Taylor believes, but I do think

she actually believes it.

She genuinely believes it, yeah.

You know, we can talk about that, it's kind of a different story. But the question here, and I think people are like, oh, is this ponderous, why are we spending so much time? A lot of you guys are watching this stuff on the internet and not enough people talk about the behind the scenes. So what you just talked about with MSNBC, talked a lot about here, our experience at the Hill,

multiple phone calls, problems with coverage because it could affect advertising. And it's not, again, it's not in the stuff that people would think. Like people would think it's Gaza sometimes, you know, if it's controversy.

It's really about business. And that's the stuff that people don't get, criticizing or creating problems for potential events with Bank of America or Pharma or TikTok, Chinese advertising, where the actual dollars hit the bank. We were speculating with our staff, what's the stuff that we cover that would be a problem?

I'll give you a perfect example. Gambling. The gambling stuff would be a real issue if you and I were advertising 100% focus. A serious problem because back in 2021, wouldn't have thought much about it. Maybe, oh, DraftKings, Fandu, they're offering goobles of money, right? Or Polymarket, like some people

out there. By the way, Polymarket is now getting into sports betting, as you covered, I think, previously. Robinhood, any of the, so financial services, credit cards. How much do I talk about user's credit card rates and stuff like that on the show? That's not happening if you're taking American Express. American Express is a blue chip, you know, brand.

Great brand. Who has anything bad to say about it? I do. Well, that would be an issue. I could go on forever, man. that we talked about, all of these DTC companies. BetterHelp, I gave that one. How could you be against therapy? James Lee, who does segments for us,

did a segment about BetterHelp. That's not happening if you have a $1.5 million a year contract with BetterHelp. You'd probably sign up for it, and you think, it's therapy, what's so bad about it? Well, maybe something.

There's so many of the examples. Like, yes, cast-ware mattresses and all that stuff probably wouldn't be an issue, but you never know, and that's why we don't do it. And I've left, and I'm not exaggerating, millions of dollars on the table and have created instead an alternative funding structure which enables us to just do what we want to do. But not enough people have thought about that. And I do, broadly, I do think that the reason why these people can't escape criticism is not disclosing who you're getting paid for,

is scum of the earth behavior when you are doing public media consumption for other people, because they have to know. One of the things, again, that the mainstream media and them, is in ways, they're more transparent

who they take their money from. They're public companies. They publish their financials. I know transparent who they take their money from. They're public companies. They publish their financials. I know exactly who CNN gets its money from, and also they'll tell you during the ad breaks. It's presented to you by Pfizer,

presented to you by American Express, or any of these other people. And that has all kinds of pernicious downstream effects in a Noam Chomsky sense. But it's very different than actually getting a direct check wired to you by your bank account. Mainstream media people are just W2 employees. They get cut a check, which they don't really know

how all the sauce gets made. So that's why this is honestly kind of worse.

It absolutely is. It absolutely is. And it is also, so you can think about, first of all, we need to come up with an agreed upon definition of who gets to call themselves independent media.

Because if you're taking dark money from a party-aligned super PAC, sorry, you're not independent media. I mean, you're just like, you could call yourself something else, but it ain't that. The next level, so that's like kind of like the worst level, is you're taking secret party-aligned money from billionaires. That and you're contractually obligated to not disclose that. That is the worst level of potential compromise and puts you the furthest from truly being

able to call yourself independent media. The next tier is like, okay, it's funding from these various corporate entities, but it's disclosed. You're doing the ad read, right? It's up front. That's another level.

You're getting sponsorships from this company or that company and you're disclosing it. I don't take any of these decisions lightly because we're really fortunate. We were able to build a business. You guys signed up right away. We're able to fund it really quickly. We stepped into the breach and you guys were there for us. And I know that that's not gonna be the case forever because Sagar and

I were already established at the Hill. And we had the benefit of establishing ourselves at the Hill when somebody else was paying the overhead before we went out on our own. So I don't judge people who are making somewhat different choices than what we are making. But I think transparency has to be at the core of what you're doing,

at the very least. If you're not in a position to say, listen, we're not gonna talk to any advertisers at all, which is the position that we have taken. To keep from having to ask ourselves questions about, well, what about this sponsor versus that sponsor?

Is this ethical? Whatever, is somebody gonna think that we're not covering the story cuz we're taking money from this place? We've just decided we're putting all of that off the table. choice. I have some sympathy for that. It's just you have to be transparent. And if you're not, you cannot call yourself independent media. Like, I hope that we can all agree that that's the case. And that's if you're on the left, if you're on the right. And maybe

it's unfair, but I do think that the left should hold themselves to a higher standard because we are supposed to be the people who oppose billionaire influence, who want campaign finance reform, who want to represent public interest and not have all of this nefarious dark money that is controlling so much of our politics. So yes, that is your obligation if you're going to call yourself someone who is on the left, is to be more pure than the Tim Poolesles or whoever taking the tenant media, whatever

cash they can grab. Because frankly, that's more consistent with their idea. If you're Ben Shapiro and you're a standard issue conservative and you don't think there's anything wrong with billionaires and billionaire influence in politics and whatever, that is actually more consistent with your ideology. So I have scorn for those funding models as well. But I do think if you're going to hold yourself out as being on the left, you do have to meet a higher bar

and a higher standard. And as I said before, you're not going to win playing the game of who can get more billionaire dollars. You're not going to win that. And you are certainly not going to win a movement that delivers for working class people

if you are relying on billionaire funding to get there. Not going gonna happen. So that's why I think this is so important. I wanna play a little bit of, there's at least one person in here who is, she's a TikToker. She has been critical on Gaza.

She's been critical of Andrew Cuomo, of Cory Booker. So she's gone after Democrats. And she put together her response. She's a member of Cora. She's in the Cora's cohort or incubator as well. She put together part of her response. And it was amusing to me because she put up parts of the contract that she claimed were

debunking what Taylor was saying in the article, but actually just fully confirmed what Taylor had reported out. And then she does the thing that I found so incredibly gross. And there have been other instances of this in the defense of Corris, where they're once again using identity politics to protect, you know, to sort of rebut these claims of, you know, potential, like, corruption and being compromised by this dark money.

So let me go ahead and play this B5. Let me go ahead and play a little bit of this.

In the contract I signed, there is some language that says, hey, please, like before you make a public statement about what course is, just check with us. The reason for that is that as the article states, there's over 90 influencers in the program, many of whom have very small accounts

and joined the program to get like mentorship and happen to be immigrants or trans in a red state, right? And like already happened to be kind of in extra danger right now. And so the goal with the like, please check with us clause is to make sure that small creators who already had targets on their back weren't accidentally like featured on a huge page and then suddenly have an onslaught

of threats from the right. Of course, has never been kept some nefarious secret, right? People have been talking about it. hey, this is already an unsafe job for some people, check with us in advance so you don't accidentally like add to someone's unsafety.

That doesn't make any sense, okay? She's literally saying that they are keeping their dark money funding secret in order to protect trans creators in red states. That is her argument. That makes zero sense, okay?

Now, maybe it would make sense to say, hey, don't talk about the other people who are in the cohort. But for you yourself, how is it protecting a trans creator or an immigrant in a red state for you to not talk about your dark money funny? I'm having serious Hillary 2016 identity politics, weaponized against the left flashbacks with all of this.

There were other allegations that Taylor was like anti-black woman for publishing this when they're all, I mean, I'm sure there are black women in the cohort. This lady appears to be white, like there's all kinds of people. It's just, it reminded me of why I became such a vociferous critic of this type of identity politics because you see the way it is being weaponized here when you genuinely have these communities that are under threat and they're cynically using this to protect their dark money funding source.

That is disgusting. And one more thing I'll say about these responses is, again, if you are on the left, look, I get that there are, I think the best case you can make for them is basically like, look, the right is doing this and we just gotta, we we got to throw on through, we're dealing with fascism, we got to throw on the playbook and I get it's not ideal, but we got to fight against fascism in whatever way we can and so that's why we're taking the money.

None of them even really acknowledge that there's an ethical question here. And that to me is a real red, how can you be, call yourself on the left and you're not even contemplating the ethical dilemmas that are involved here and explaining, well, I get why it's a problem maybe in another time, but here's why I came down on the side. No, it just was like all out, attacking Taylor Lorenz's credibility,

throwing up, you know, she's friends with Candace Owens, this very aggressive response of there was nothing wrong, we celebrate what we're doing, we did nothing wrong, there was no moral or ethical dilemma here, we'd do it again ten times over. And I find that to be a real red flag that there wasn't even a willingness to grapple with the clear, like, ethical issues that are involved in taking this type of secret

dark money.

Totally. And I know you're looking at it for a left thing, but I actually think this is much bigger than you may even realize because this is all industry for all quote unquote independent. If you look in the world of sports, gambling runs sports now. I listened to a really interesting critique of sports journalism, which is actually very similar to where we are right now.

It's not only that gambling sponsors all of the podcasts, it's also that the people who succeed and the most famous sports journalists are basically people who tweet whether someone has signed a contract or not and they just get the first scoop.

In terms of people who actually uncover information that makes people in power very uncomfortable, they are very few and far between. What is basically being consolidated is that industry and money and influence is running the general ecosystem

to make sure that things are positive in almost all cultural areas, from sports to, I mean, here's politics, that's number one. Finance is another one, by the way. Some of the biggest finance podcasts,

All In is literally one of the biggest finance podcasts. I mean, think about that. Chamath has conflicts of interest coming out of his eyeballs. It's true. It's like every single one of these places is ridiculous.

Or Bloomberg or any of these places. I mean, it says it in the name, Bloomberg. You think you're getting completely unfettered? CNBC. I think this is actually a funding model question for quote unquote independent media

where when they're rolled up basically into the ecosystem, I think they broadly become more corrupt than a lot of the mainstream media and trying to make yourself like a separate part out of that is just very, very few and far between. The money is hard to say no to, all right?

I mean, I laid it out for you, and that's just our show. Think about, you know, even the biggest shows. That's probably tens of millions of dollars. And so for people to say no to that, you gotta have some real stomach to actually be able to do it, or bet on yourself in a different way

and be true to some different values.

So, I think that do think it's everything. Yeah, and I just gotta say, for the people who sold out for this shit for $250 a month, what are you doing with your life?

That's actually a good point.

If you're not in the $8,000 a month cohort, I really don't, the $250 a month people, what is that? Well, correct me if I'm wrong, $28,000 a month, is that true? That's the assumption, because that's the highest band that you can be. He's got like $2 million.

He makes millions.

I mean, that's the thing is that guys.

Do some back of the map math on the YouTube revenue.

Right.

What are we doing here? That's what I want people to understand too, is like, we have left, there's no doubt, we've left millions on the table. Like, we are able to have a good life, we pay our people well. We pay our employees, yeah, exactly. You know, when they ask for a raise, we're like giving them more of that. We're doing just fine over here.

We're able to build this new set, all of that. So it doesn't require selling out to some dark money super PAC to be able to make it. And again, look, I get it. Saga and I were both established before. before we had the Hill, all of that. So we did have some advantages, I don't wanna deny that. But Kyle didn't, and he's doing good too, right? You don't have to take this money.

And if there is money, you have to disclose it. That's really, to me, the most key piece, is Sager and I, as much as we've set our business up to insulate ourselves from any sort of corporate or political pressures, We still are human beings that are going to run into biases. Sagar is friends with J.D. Vance, right?

I'm friends with Kyle, so I'm not gonna be criticizing him. You know, he's my husband. So I'm not gonna be criticizing him as another creator if he does something you disagree with. But when there are those instances, we're up front about it and that's the thing is look we're

all human beings. None of us are going to be able to exist in the world fully and completely free of bias. But when you run into something that is a clear conflict of interest and clear bias or there is money that is being paid to you that could potentially impact your views and your coverage, you have to disclose it. That to me is like the most central piece. Then other decisions that are made around that,

I think there are better and worse decisions that can be made there. But if you aren't being upfront about where your funding is coming from, I think that is a real mistake and I think it's a real ethical red line.

A hundred percent. By the way, it's not just him. You know, anytime we cover somebody where I'll be like, look, full disclosure, met them for dinner, friends. You know what I'm saying? You think I enjoy doing that? It's embarrassing sometimes, but you gotta do it. I mean, because otherwise, how much worse would it look to do the coverage, to say something favorable,

and then some photo or whatever comes out of the tube. It looks horrible. So that's what these people are in that position. So anyway, you gotta try and hold yourself up to an ethical standard. That's why we spend a lot of time on it. Because again, I know a lot of people who watch this show consume a lot of stuff on the internet. And I do think people should ask bigger questions.

And this isn't just politics. It genuinely is all industries, get a lot worse. I really think it has never been worse than, I don't think it's ever actually been worse, as bad as the mainstream media was, because they still have a lot of power, and a lot of the grifters are the ones who are succeeding the most,

which means that both sides of the spectrum of what you're consuming is more than likely bought, paid for, shaped, or whatever, in some way,

and that's the real. We need you guys to be discerning consumers. And know who you're, you know, if you wanna support independent media, truly support places that are actually independent media, because yeah, we're headed towards a worse cesspool than with mainstream media, and that was already a pretty low bar.

All right, let's get to Trump's help. Hey, if you liked that video,

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