1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:06,600 The media, who are supposed to be this intermediary layer that's totally objective 2 00:00:07,800 --> 00:00:09,800 between the government and the people, 3 00:00:10,400 --> 00:00:12,400 were not independent at all, 4 00:00:12,720 --> 00:00:18,360 but had all kinds of hidden incentives. Eight million dollars to Politico, several million dollars to the BBC. 5 00:00:18,360 --> 00:00:22,360 I think it's important to ask what's going on. And by the way, that 6 00:00:23,280 --> 00:00:25,280 also has historical context. 7 00:00:25,280 --> 00:00:29,680 This is exactly what happened in the 60s and 70s where it turned out that 8 00:00:30,880 --> 00:00:33,380 record companies were paying DJs to pay songs. 9 00:00:34,040 --> 00:00:39,640 There was a huge set of lawsuits and trial cases and the result was a change in the law. 10 00:00:40,160 --> 00:00:44,560 Right? And we call that piola now, which is you cannot take this money without disclosing it. 11 00:00:44,560 --> 00:00:47,600 And so had this money been absorbed by these entities and 12 00:00:49,120 --> 00:00:53,800 actually disclosed, maybe we'd be okay. But Nick, I sent you a link. Maybe you can throw it on the screen for these guys. 13 00:00:54,040 --> 00:00:56,840 This is a very simple manifestation of this cycle. 14 00:00:57,480 --> 00:00:59,480 We talked about this, guys, and 15 00:01:00,160 --> 00:01:06,480 we didn't realize how connected it all was. But we were asking ourselves during the election cycle last year, 16 00:01:06,480 --> 00:01:08,120 why are all these articles buried? 17 00:01:08,120 --> 00:01:13,640 Why aren't we really getting the truth? And it turns out that the people who were responsible for telling the truth, 18 00:01:14,760 --> 00:01:18,560 somewhere along the chain, were cajoled or just told not to tell the truth, 19 00:01:19,040 --> 00:01:23,960 influenced by all of this back channel money that was going back and forth from the government to these folks. 20 00:01:24,280 --> 00:01:29,240 Okay. Yeah, let me just give some numbers to what you were referencing there. 21 00:01:30,200 --> 00:01:31,480 The 22 00:01:31,480 --> 00:01:37,040 USAID organization has been giving money, as have other agencies, to 23 00:01:37,560 --> 00:01:42,120 journals, databases, and subscriptions. There's probably some amount of that that makes sense. 24 00:01:42,280 --> 00:01:48,760 However, when we look at this, during Trump won, spend on Politico was averaging around $1.3 million a year, 25 00:01:48,760 --> 00:01:54,920 but it suddenly ballooned up to $8 million a year under Biden, and you can see the quarterly payments here on this chart. 26 00:01:55,000 --> 00:01:57,600 So there's some normal amount to spend on 27 00:01:58,440 --> 00:02:04,480 publications or for a library at an organization. And so what we're looking here is all federal agencies, and 28 00:02:05,000 --> 00:02:07,640 suddenly during Biden, there is a very suspicious 29 00:02:08,360 --> 00:02:16,240 ramp up in spend to Politico. All of this is breaking. A lot of this hasn't been verified yet. So we'll put that caveat on it. 30 00:02:17,440 --> 00:02:27,200 And then there is a number of $34 million that's been floating around. That's all years back to 2008, not just 2024, less people have that number 31 00:02:28,280 --> 00:02:29,720 juxtaposed or 32 00:02:30,320 --> 00:02:31,280 misattributed. 33 00:02:32,280 --> 00:02:49,720 When Politico was acquired back in 2021, they were doing about 200 million in revenue. So this would be about 4% of their revenue. It's pretty significant. The BBC also received 2.7 million in funding from USAID in 2023. That was 8% of their annual income. That's a little suspicious. Thompson Reuters, 34 00:02:50,720 --> 00:03:03,280 which is the consulting arm of Reuters, they received $120 million from the federal government since 2011. That's got to be looked at and double clicked on. And half of that came during the Biden administration. New York Times 35 00:03:04,240 --> 00:03:12,720 hasn't actually received all that much. 370k from the federal government last year. Under Biden, it went from 100k a year to like 300. So the New York Times data 36 00:03:13,280 --> 00:03:22,000 has been cleaned up a little bit. All of this is to say there's spending going on with the press that certainly doesn't look good and should be 37 00:03:22,720 --> 00:03:39,440 verified and challenged, obviously, and we are in a breaking news environment. So we'll see how that information shakes out over time, which is one of the great things I think about Doge is they're getting this information out there and citizen journalists are looking at public databases.