The left goes to war with itself over influencers and "dark money"

Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Find Out podcast.

Happy day after Labor Day.

We're recording on Labor Day.

So hope you all had a wonderful three-day weekend.

Hopefully, ignoring a lot of the news that happened over the weekend And in particular, big thing that blew up online, which was the Taylor Lorenz Wired story about an organization called Chorus, in which she claimed they were

getting

influencers on the left, signing them to contracts that stipulated that they could not talk about Chorus and that they were going and this chorus group was going to

tell them what they can say and what they cannot online and that they were paid for by quote unquote dark money from a group called the 1630 Fund.

So, we're going to talk about this for a little bit.

And I have some insight in this because I'm in chorus

and none of that stuff is true.

But it blew up online this weekend.

If you want to go read it, go ahead on Wired.

I'm a little mystified about what was in this because it was frankly a lot of things that were not true, a lot of half-truths, and a lot of using words like dark money to suggest nefarious, uh, nefarious actions on behalf of Chorus, which is run by an individual named Brian Tyler Cohen, who you may know as one of the biggest lefty, lefty YouTube stars there is, also an incredibly nice person.

And it blew up online all over the place, in particular threads, but it was on TikTok all over the place as well.

All I saw.

It's all

I was sick all weekend.

Every third fucking video was about this.

I know.

It made me want to hit my head on a wall.

So let me, let me, before we, before we get into the whole group, let me just tell you my perspective on what Chorus is because I'm in it.

Chorus is a training program.

The goal of Chorus is something that everybody has been screaming about on the left, in particular since Kamala lost the election in November, which was the left needs to do more with influencers and

they need to do more

with podcasts.

Well, Brian stepped up because nobody else was doing it and created a nonprofit, a 501c4, meaning it is not tax-deductible, but you can talk about political things.

You just can't endorse candidates.

From there, they invited

influencers of all shapes and sizes to join.

And you can be paid up to $8,000 a month in this six-month cohort in which they teach you basically how to become an independent creator on your own so that you can, you know, you don't have to worry about your job.

You can focus on this full-time, which is what the right has been doing for 20 years.

I just want to be very, yeah.

Sorry, did you say you, members of chorus, cannot endorse candidates?

No, no, no.

Chorus,

and you cannot use chorus money to do that.

Right.

So you're saying that chorus is more trustworthy than churches now in America.

Correct.

Yeah.

I mean, actually, they have more restrictions on them than churches.

Just so we have a little perspective here.

Yeah.

And I want to be clear.

I don't make $8,000 a month.

And I said it this weekend.

I wish.

I get $2,000 a month for six months, and it's an incredibly worthwhile program.

No one has ever told me what I could say or what I could not say.

No one has ever said I couldn't talk about chorus.

And really, I think what this all came down to this weekend is that people don't understand what 501c4s are,

which is fair.

All 500Cs.

I am one of those people.

Same with the ball.

501c4s are what they call dark money.

That's what they're calling dark money.

I was going to say, what the fuck is this?

It's just conspiracy shit, dude.

It's just, it's, this is the thing.

Dark money sounds like a fucking thriller thing, like a political intrigue thriller.

I want dark money.

That sounds way cooler, right?

Like, it's like dark matter.

If dark money and regular money collide, do they create an explosion like anti-matter and matter?

Like, this sounds something like, you know, that I want to explore a little bit.

So I

think it does work like that.

It's like,

I think it acts a new bill with Trump's face on it.

Because it's powered by corruption and good things.

Dude, I wrote it in the threads.

I'm reading it word for word.

Whether the money is dark or not, if the goal is to fight MAGA, then it's good money, the end.

I got fucking eviscerated for that take.

Oh, I'm sure you did.

I got fucking throttled for that take.

It's crazy how many comments I got and everything.

Well, Gaza, this guy.

Like, what the fuck does it have to do with anything, dude?

It's such a stupid thing.

Now, look, here's somebody right here that's in chorus that has talked about Gaza at least once a week for the last week.

We had a whole podcast conversation about it for 30 minutes straight.

So for Claire, you talked about how difficult it is for Democrats to talk about Gaza whilst also condemning the genocide in fucking Gaza.

Fuck.

So the Claire, just so

readers who are listeners who do not know anything about this,

that wasn't in the article and Wired, but she and some of her back and forth, because she decided to start fighting with creators, was like, well,

how many people in the chorus cohort have been talking about the genocide in Gaza?

To which I have raised my hand and I said, we did a whole show two weeks ago.

And the title of the episode, first of all, would be Something Democrats Don't Like, which is why Democrats Keep Blowing It.

And then we talked about the genocide in Gaza.

Let me repeat.

We talked about the genocide in Gaza, which actually today there was a story in Reuters, which says all legal experts on this topic

have come to the conclusion that it is legally a genocide.

But that's besides the point.

We have been talking about this for months.

And I think that's been part of the problem, too, is that there's been a lot of assumptions that have been made by people that this is some sort of nefarious DNC group.

Again, no alignment with the DNC.

I've never gotten a DNC dime in my life.

And, you know, it's just simply not true.

But because she used terms like dark money, which I have quotes you can't see, but like it makes it seem bad when it's really how nonprofits have acted forever.

Right.

I think it's just, I mean, this points directly at the thing that makes me the maddest about people, which is

there's this conspiracy, like,

I don't know, gene chromosome in our DNA that cuts across the political spectrum.

And I think it's, it's significantly worse on a broader array of topics on the right.

But if you look at anti-vax people, if you look at like chemtrails and like the Maha people, there's like, I think,

real quick.

I'm convinced on chemtrails, somebody just misheard somebody say contrail and they were like chemtrail, and they just assumed that, and then they just went with it from there.

That's how I think chemtrails became.

They're probably, I mean, I don't look, let's probably do a lot of things.

They're probably going behind it, right?

They're like, did somebody say chemtrails?

And then their imagination spiraled out of a muck.

One thing I did this weekend when I was losing my mind over this, because I've worked in nonprofits forever.

So, I mean, I've known, but I worked in it.

Here is a partial list of dark money organizations according to the definition in the Wired article.

The Oxfam America Advocacy Fund,

which pushes for fair trade policies globally.

Jesus Christ.

That's the super evil.

Here's another one: Planned Parenthood Action Fund.

Baby killers.

Nightmare.

Every town for gun safety.

Gun killers.

League of conservation voters.

Insane.

What's that?

Not conservatives in the name, Tim Poole.

Coal killers.

Coal killers.

You know what's like to me this is like even if someone even if the entire article is true who gives a shit like the right has been doing substantially worse Timpoo got a fucking fact check from Russia for months $400,000 per month $400,000 per month Timpoo

still didn't have the

Paul Manafort was sent to prison for getting paid illegally to influence elections in Ukraine.

And he was getting paid by Russian oligarchs to throw elections in Ukraine so that he could then come over here and do the same thing.

He got charged.

He got convicted and he got thrown in prison.

The only reason he's getting, I think, still paid by Trump today is because Trump pardoned him the day before he left office in his first term.

So money is the means to an end.

And it's like, I, I desperately need people on the left and the right.

I need everybody to understand money is not inherently evil.

It can be used for evil.

It can be used for good.

I think it's the deck is stacked against it in being used for good in our late stage capitalist system.

But that doesn't mean that somebody getting paid to do something automatically makes them bad or wrong.

Sometimes it might just mean that they're fighting.

No,

yeah.

I think the thing that was most disappointing to me was the amount of creators that I liked that sided with Taylor Lorenz on this.

Like there were, I'm not going to name any of them because I don't want to do that, but there were a lot of them where I was like,

whoa,

I know.

I was like, I don't understand it.

And I had to, like,

you know, I did what I usually get mad at people doing, but I unfollowed them because they are part of the biggest problem the left has.

This is the biggest problem the left has.

I don't care anybody.

I saw this today.

Circulating the corrections.

The right looks for converts and the left looks for traitors.

Yes.

No doubt.

Exactly.

Which is exactly it.

You're 100% right.

Like, we and it makes absolutely no sense.

Like, it's, I, I understand the moral and, you know, all the purity stuff, and we want everything to be clean.

But like, the amount of people I saw who I liked in the past who are saying, like, look, I don't think we need to fight dirty because the right fights dirty.

I'm like, yeah, we do.

Like, a hundred thousand percent.

Anybody who's not doing that and thinking the opposite is a actual threat to us.

They are a bigger threat to us than anything MAGA's doing.

They are keeping us down.

100%.

And so let's look at the dark.

I have the 1630 Fund's website up right now.

Let me show you the issue areas of which they focus on.

Paid leave.

Evil.

Working for paid equity, paid family leave, and a fair tax policy across the United States.

They also training and supporting women and people of color to run for office.

Boy, these people are monsters.

It's insane.

Overall victory fund, working with rural communities on resource development, build an organizing building, ensuring voting access and civic participation by supporting election infrastructure.

So it's light money.

It's not dark money.

Working to reverse climate change, healthcare for all Americans.

Rambo money.

Right, right.

It's like it's like the best money I've ever heard in my life.

Gabby.

I mean, that's full love.

That's the loving statement.

It's so stupid that this is what we're getting upset about.

Just also, here's the other part of this that is hilarious.

So, the major donor to the 1630 Fund is also the major donor to something called the

Omidyar Fund, of which there is a journalism cohort in which Taylor Lorenz is a member of.

And she gets paid $8,000.

But she says, well, I don't receive dark money, but like, you're getting, it's coming from this.

It's come from the same fucking funnel.

No, not the same funnel,

but the same person pushing to two funnels.

You're getting the same money,

but it's the different tax structure, but that's what she's hiding behind.

Yes.

And that's people trying to fund good work.

Wired does a lot of good work.

What's the problem?

There could be a nefarious person somewhere at Wired.

I'm not, I have no evidence that there is, but if we were to find out that some employee at Wired were corrupt and that money was ultimately coming to Taylor, would that make the things that she writes about that are true any less true or any less worth knowing?

Absolutely not.

If there's proof of somebody saying something that is wrong or that they are intentionally telling you something that they don't believe, or that they know is not true, or that is against their own values, and they're telling you that because they're getting paid,

then expose it.

Expose that person and call out that fucking lie.

Don't say all people who might look like this, like the illusion of fuck that, dude.

We are so far past the illusion of a conflict of interest.

We are watching Trump.

Like the Trump family's made like $7 billion.

Trump himself has personally increased his net worth by $3 billion

in less than a calendar year.

And we're worrying about somebody getting paid, what, $12,000 in six months, $30,000, $48,000 max and stuff.

Like, fuck off.

Yeah.

And here's the thing that really pisses me off.

The same people whine when they're fucked.

You watch these creators who are in the most uncertain job area there is because like some people's bosses aren't cool with them calling Trump out.

So, they're either keeping it a secret from their boss, and then the second their boss finds out, it's like, either stop posting or you're fired.

So, they're fucked, or they're trying to do it all on the fickleness of an algorithm.

So, like, you ever see your favorite creator where at the end of the month they start pumping videos out because they got to make rent?

Like, you're mad because, oh, somebody's making it so they can do this full time and they can do it safely and like consistently.

Get fucked.

Let's game this out for a second, right?

So, those was that an early teaser of get fucked.

Was that the get fucked segment, or is that that i get to do my ladies and gentlemen um but but let's game this out for a second right like so let's say okay so

are these people who are critical of the 1630 fund worried that i'm gonna fight for climate change more

or am

it's because it's because you're getting money to fight for it that means right but like but like what is how are they influencing me in a negative way is i guess what i'm saying i don't think they're worried about that like the only thing that seems to be making this go is the gaza because like that was in that thread that i talked about that's non-existent It is literal bullshit.

And Lauren's made it up where she's like, well, anybody, you know, essentially.

It's anecdotal at best.

Right.

The narrative is that anybody who's in chorus has been, you know, persuaded not to talk about Gaza publicly, which is bullshit.

But then everybody just aggloms onto that and goes, well, you're anti-Palestinians and you're horrible and you're getting paid to be horrible.

It's like it's just more conspiracy shit.

It's just,

it's, it's seeing a bunch of disconnected facts, connecting them and assuming the worst, which like, maybe we have evidence to do that with MAGA now and with Trump.

Like, it's that is that is actually Occam's razor with MAGA.

It almost always is the worst thing is

the simplest explanation.

Right.

But please don't turn that on people doing good hard work because, like, I got around to thinking about it, like, hey, we all, we always talk about how there's no ethical consumption in capitalism, right?

Like, you can't buy a pair of shoes that isn't ultimately tracked back to something that is fucking terrible.

Right.

Right.

Human suffering, environmental suffering, or both, or maybe just somebody's losing their job or whatever.

Right.

I could also say that there is no ethical income in capitalism.

If you really want to go that direction,

we are all getting paid by somebody, and those people are connected to somebody who makes a lot of money.

And making a ton of money is kind of fucked up when you get to a certain point.

And so, you know, you leave it to the Bill Gates' and the Taylor Swifts to hopefully try to do something good with the crazy amount of excess money they have, but it doesn't wash their hands off of it.

And it just puts you in this gray area.

And it's really, in the end of the day, it's functionally useless to spend our time whining about it because Donald Trump just fucked over another 10 million people.

Of course.

It's a huge waste of time.

And it's like most people work in a job where some form of private equity is funding their income.

Right.

You don't know what they're doing.

And you don't know who the people are if the money got funneled to a, through a shell company at some point.

Like,

we don't know.

Everybody's getting dark money.

Everything is good.

The funny thing about this was that,

first of all, I had to give, I did disclose my income for five straight years when I was in the federal government, including all of my investments that I had.

Jim made $7.25 an hour.

Yep, $7.25 an hour.

Work a second job.

No.

But when I asked people, I was like, well, okay, if you are mad at where I'm getting my money from, what's in your mutual fund?

Which are the what?

Because I guarantee you there's an Well, I don't have anything to do with that.

Right.

I don't have anything to do with that.

Well, I don't have anything to do with the 1630 fund either.

And the other thing I want to point out, because there's obviously four gut dudes yelling about this, the person who did just like tremendous work on this this weekend was Elizabeth Booker Houston,

who is an attorney.

And she's, I think she's also a master's of public health or something like that.

And she just like,

I mean, she was just a rock star and like breaking down the problems with this, where it's wrong, and also just the leading things that are, you know, as a journal, journalists, like you, they sometimes not good journalists will say things that they know they can get away with because people will take it a different way.

And that clearly happened in this piece, no doubt.

Oh, yeah.

And she just like shredded her to pieces.

And look, like, I've been friendly with Taylor in the past.

I've had no issues with her.

She's written some really good pieces, but I just think on this one, she's just flat wrong.

Yep.

Flat wrong.

She did what she's accusing all of the creators of doing, which is she got paid to do work.

Right.

Exactly.

And whether you think the work is good or bad or neither is a matter of debate.

And this is the least of our concerns.

Go watch Fox News and find issues with whether they call themselves fair and balanced and report accurately on the news.

And that's why I'm not even coming after Taylor Lorenz.

I have a journalism degree.

I wrote about this on Substack extensively because I'm caught in the middle.

I don't know her personally.

I'm also not part of chorus.

And so when I look at it, I just see somebody.

doing kind of old school journalism, which is I'm going to call out everything I see indiscriminately.

And if I see something that is a story, you know, it's like if it bleeds, it leads used to be the thing.

If you can, if you can get eyeballs and attention, if you can get readers and subscriptions with

spicy content of any type, you do it.

That kind of spicy content.

I mean, we still haven't seen your feet, Luke, but that's another conversation.

You're in high demand.

I've been sending you DMs under so many different names on Instagram,

and you still won't cave, dude.

The integrity of this guy.

But she, she is just doing old school journalism.

And like, I'm sorry, this is why I'm not a journalist.

Right now is not the time for old school journalism.

Right now is the time for, I'm going to tell you all of the facts that happened in the world, but I'm also going to very carefully package up what I think about those things.

And I'm going to deliver it to you in the most infectious way that sticks in your head.

So you say it to all your friends and family and neighbors and you repost it because I believe that what we are doing together is better than what would happen if we just said, well, I told the truth and we'll see what happens because like we're seeing what happens and it's fucking awful.

Well, I'll tell you one thing that I think there were a couple of good things that came out of this weekend.

First of all, so many more creators learned about chorus and applied and I was encouraging people.

I pushed it, you should apply.

You all should, everybody who does this for a living or a part of a living should do it because there are, I mean, I've been in social digital for 20 years and I still learn a bunch of stuff.

Like I wasn't an expert on YouTube thumbnails and like how actually yellow arrows like actually work to drive views.

And there's all these things, these little things that change every few years because once something becomes the thing, it gets ruined because then everybody does it.

So there's a lot, there was a lot of interesting stuff.

And also apparently there were some donations to chorus, which is also great because that's the other thing.

They take money from small dollar up to big dollar.

Like they're not just like some like front for some.

Like, well, I guess the billionaire behind this dark money is a, is a very liberal environmentalist, but okay, but whatever.

The other thing, I know, right?

Saving the world.

If you rearrange the letters of chorus, it actually spells out George Soros.

You can do it with a wand like in Harry Potter.

I knew there had to be something behind this.

But seriously, no, the other thing, and this is what I think our listeners will really like.

And I think

this is a bit of a looking into the window of 2026 and 2028.

Corus stayed out of this, except for Brian did a video, which you should go watch.

Brian Taylor Cohen did a video, which he took down every piece.

It's actually, it's fantastic.

This video is is just deadly.

It's really, really, it's flawless.

It's just like mic drop stuff.

And it's long.

It's every detail.

Oh, it's just six, seven.

Yeah.

I mean, let me tell you end-to-end what happened.

I'm not trying to hide anything.

Right.

No,

and it's calm.

And yeah, Brian.

It's real.

Brian is exactly like he is on air.

Like, I've talked to him on the phone.

I've one-on-one.

I've been in meetings with him.

He is a guy that cares about this country and realizes that there is a problem.

And he went about trying to solve it when nobody else would do it.

And so the shit that he's gotten this weekend has been so out of control.

I think it's, we're past it now.

And I think people have realized that, like, oh, this is good.

But the other good thing that I wanted to say about this, which doesn't always happen, is that all of the creators basically got together and said, fuck this.

We are not going to let people talk badly about us.

We are going to fight back, which is something that the left has been asking all of us to do forever.

And so it's not about Taylor and it's not about chorus, but like all of these people are starting to get to know each other.

They're understanding their lanes.

And everybody kind of came together from their own perspective and was like, we're not putting up with this.

And this is what Democrats need to do is fight.

And so this was a good early, we're going to call this spring training game this weekend.

And everybody, everybody got their springs in, got a little jogging, you know, ran to first, second a few times.

I threw up several times.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, like Brian hit a home run, you know, like Brian Taylor Cohen.

I mean, and, you know,

so I think, I think overall, it will be good in the long run, but it was a messy weekend.

So, oh, it was messy.

I think it actually leads us pretty nicely into a statement that maybe Zach wants to share with us.

Where I don't know if it's a hill you'll die on, but I feel like you have a take coming out of this that might be

a temporary take.

Is it a warm take?

Right.

Well, I think for someone,

on Kelvin,

what temperature is it?

Yeah,

Kelvin.

It's like a super hot take.

I think most of our listeners will agree with this, but I think there'll be a segment of them that'll look at it and go, I don't think that's true.

Look, I think this kind of flushed out the fact that there's a lot of like very just like moral purist leftists that don't give a shit about what the main mission is as long as they can get angry about something.

To me, those people are more dangerous to the Democratic Party and this country than MAGA.

MAGA is transparent.

It knows exactly what it is.

It's not shy about telling you what it's trying to do.

It's aggressive in what it tries to put forward, and it's easy to just take it down.

The left has the problem here because they don't know how to tamp these people down.

They don't know how to shut them up.

There is no way to do it.

They just come in and cause chaos non-stop.

And it's extremely counterproductive because it's within our own ranks.

These are people that theoretically should agree on almost everything we, every take we have.

We should be seeing eye to eye on this shit.

Despite all that.

They take a look at these teeny little moments where they go, let me fucking point a finger at you.

And they just point it and they ignore all the work we should be doing.

The chorus on its surface is an amazing idea that Democrats need to get behind.

Getting Democrats to go, all right, we're going to coordinate how we produce content to try to influence people and make them see the truth about what's going on with Donald Trump.

That's a fucking good idea, okay?

And if there are dark money elements or whatever, all these complaints, shut the fuck up.

Focus on the mission.

We're in a game.

We're trying to win it.

Okay.

You are fucking us up.

You're because you're in our locker room.

All right.

MAGA's the other locker room.

You're in our locker room fucking up the vibe.

You got to stop it.

It's just counterproductive.

I understand the moral integrity element of it.

I understand it on the surface, but it's not a winning attitude.

If you want to win, you're not helping.

If you want to make a point and get people to go, oh, look at this guy.

We're morally aligned.

Great.

You're winning.

But you're never going to win a fucking election that way.

And you're going to only going to hold us back.

And the only, the reason I say they're more dangerous than MAGA is because we are the only opposition to MAGA.

And if you're actively taking us down a notch in terms of our ability to fight, you are fucking as hard as MAGA because they're already our opponent.

You're supposed to be our ally.

So hot take, tepid take, warm take, I don't know what it is, but that shit pissed me off a lot because we all have to be on the same page to win this shit.

They are hyper-coordinated over there on MAGA.

And trust me, a lot of the people on the right hate MAGA.

They don't talk about it.

They don't try to infight.

They fucking work together because they have

enough alignment in their vision for America that they stick together and they don't fucking invite.

We need to take that page from them and actually save America from their bullshit agenda, which we're clearly not doing right now.

I think that's a good place to maybe end the episode.

We good?

You guys will be proud of me.

I was going to use the cheering audio, but I held back because they were

sweating.

If people aren't current,

somebody gave Tim one of those DJ, like the synthesizer things, and he found a way to plug it into our recording tool we use.

Right.

And

God damn it.

I'll take a bow.

And now we are a low-level sports radio station from Topeka.

WNBC.

Fuck.

Somebody, those are like radio noises, too.

Yeah.

What's that guy's name?

Oh, sorry.

Go ahead.

I'm off.

If you want to keep going on the radio bit, that's fine.

I was going to make a stern reference, but keep going.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

I like our stern.

I mean, never mind.

Zap Zach from the record.

I don't want to have that conversation.

So reverse.

He's a little controversial, but everybody is on the radio.

Um, Zach, just a clarifying point: yeah, you said more initially, you said more dangerous to the Democratic Party than MAGA, I think to the country, too.

Do you well, which one, what is your hot take?

Is it to the country or to the Democratic Party?

I think it's to the Democratic Party and by extension to the country.

Like I said, in there, it's like, I don't, I don't think that they're if we fail, then the country exactly.

Like, I think the viewpoint of MAGA is much more dangerous to you know, the

rights away.

Yeah, the leftists don't want to end up doing it.

That's obvious.

But the leftists are the impediment to the opposition getting to the point they need to be at.

I mean, you could even make the argument in 2024 if the Gaza whole, like, I'm not going to vote for Kamala Harris because of Gaza shit didn't happen.

There's a chance she wins at election.

I don't think, I don't think it's enough personally, but there's a chance she gets at least closer.

Maybe Michigan.

Maybe we're on like we're on like nine months of, has anyone seen Jill Stein in nine months?

Who?

Who?

Right.

The fucking machine here.

I don't know about name.

Yeah.

No.

Okay, just checking.

It's an important clarification, though, because I don't want it to come off like, oh, MAGA's perspectives aren't dangerous.

They're extremely dangerous.

But that's why we need to have the best well-oiled machine possible.

But I think you're also, but when you say left, though, like I would say in this group, Luke is the most left.

of the four of us likely but you're not i'm not talking about luke we're not talking about i think we're talking about extreme extreme chronically online chronically online armchair

list

this isn't

not like not like i vote for Bernie Sanders.

That's not

a good idea.

It's the people who made videos going like, if you vote for Kamala Harris, you're a war criminal.

This is it.

This is it.

It's the guy that responded to my video announcing this podcast in fucking March who said that the three of you, well, the four of you were going to fucking groom me into being a Biden lover

and that I was going to end up brainless something.

And then he called me a bunch of slurs and it's like, well, that's like the thing you're not supposed to do.

And then you go look in his fucking bio and it's got a big leftist across it.

That's a wall.

That doesn't make any guy.

We were going to, in March, when Donald Trump was president, we were going to make you a Biden lover.

Groom me into a Biden lover.

Yep.

And then he called Biden a groomer, which is like,

what?

Huh?

Yeah.

It's quite a good thing.

I saved it.

Every once in a while, I go back to watch it because it's like, God damn it.

But that's the technical person you're talking about.

yeah that's the kind of technology

they've got like 400 followers yeah and they but there's a lot of them that's that's the problem there's completely 22 yeah that's why this situation pissed me also because it flushed them all out and they're all like right in the open going hello there's like five to ten percent of your organization is us i'm like fuck

i'm also not entirely because i'm not entirely certain that like a significant portion of the people that were really vocal about this weren't fucking bots.

Yeah, because I saw a lot of people.

There's always that.

Identical.

like well

they proved in the election that was happening there were there were actual hungarian bot farms that were like funded by putin not because they wanted trump to win but because they want america to fail and the best way to make america fail is to pay for that that promotes trump exactly the way i'm thinking about it like how you're describing this it's like

MAGA is like the skin cancer that you know you have

and and and and leftists like destroying us from within is like the fucking pancreatic total you don't know you have.

Exactly.

Until it's too late.

Like, I'll just take care of this little skin cancer.

And they're like, bro, that's the least of your concerns.

100%.

That's dead on.

Well, and I just like, I want people to know they.

This is so useless.

Ross Perot got 19 million votes in 20 in 1992, running as a third party because he believed the system was fucked.

He believed nobody was right.

He was kind of socially liberal.

He was like your old school libertarian.

He was like socially liberal, super economically conservative.

Wanted a balanced budget amendment.

Like he won a lot of people.

He got zero electoral votes.

He changed nothing by being technically correct and getting a shit ton of support.

He got

Bill Clinton elected, right?

He got Bill Clinton elected.

Yeah,

that's one element of it.

But I think

it's really important that we understand, like the reason I don't like those groups is because they don't live in fucking reality.

Like they're like trying to make this big statement.

The statement is not going to change the fucking system.

You need to operate in reality.

Like you want Democrats to go and vote against

arming Israel or whatever.

You think that that's going to actually change Gaza?

It's not going to fucking do that.

So don't die on the hill that's useless.

Die on a hill where you could actually make a difference.

And that's coming together with the Democratic Party, who largely 99% of the time agrees with you and fight side by side and let your little moral misgivings shut the fuck up and put them off to the side.

The reason that I just think that the purity test, I mean, we talked about last week, the purity test, it's a purity test.

And when people are like, well, I'm not going to vote for Kamala Harris on because of Gaza, my answer to her is, what are you saying to the 13-year-old girl who was raped by her uncle and is now pregnant?

Right.

What are you saying to the people who have lived in this country for 40 years and all of a sudden are getting thrown in unmarked vans by guys in masks?

What are you saying to the people who all of a sudden their grocery bills are going up because we have these stupid tariffs?

You know, or what do we say about to the people in DC who now live in a militarized zone because Donald Trump needs to like make his, he make his ego

and now he's going to make Trump Tower of Gaza in four years.

And that is going to change.

Yeah.

So so it's like the world is big and complex.

People are complex.

The fact this four group of us do not agree on every single issue.

It is impossible.

So, like, this purity stuff, maybe back in the 1700s, when we were all just like riding our

horse into town for the one time of the week, you know, to get our like, like fresh water or whatever, and like used it for like three months, like simpler times, maybe, but like

you just, if we're going to act that way, the this country will and every country will fail.

I think the I think what

gives me a little bit of hope is, I mean, we, we took took a really terrible loss in 2024.

And I watched a lot of people,

in fact, make a lot of good videos.

I saw some that were really funny, but basically I watched a lot of people who maybe two years ago would have like canceled the way you talked about things or like would have corrected you, not even like maliciously, but just would have said like, hey, that's problematic.

And hey, we shouldn't do this.

They're all looking around going, maybe we don't have enough of us to win elections.

And so maybe we need to chill out a little bit.

And they are at least open to the idea of supporting people who are imperfect for the goal of the grand outcome.

And we have an opportunity to stay focused on that.

I think that's what is great about like Zoran.

You know,

Gavin Newsom is a perfect example where everybody can agree in an ideal world, like he's not the best choice.

Like he wasn't my guy like a year ago.

And I even made a video about it.

But

if he's going to win and he's going to go fight, like this is a 20-part curing, healing process, right?

Like if Gavin Newsom is step one and then we get a little bit incrementally better after that, you literally have to help with, help deliver the best good, the greatest good to the most people the most of the time.

It's like the oldest liberal egalitarian principle right now so that we can get to that better place, not say it's all or nothing and, you know, have to earn my vote and all that shit.

100%.

I'll give you an example of the reverse, right?

Because I am a former Republican.

I'm a very moderate Democrat, probably an independent in any other world.

I have publicly endorsed and gotten behind Zohran Mamdani.

I don't agree with any fucking thing he's saying.

I don't give a shit.

He is a winner.

He's got a great platform.

He's got all the people behind him.

I support him, even though I don't agree with the majority of what he has to say in terms of execution.

I don't give a shit.

Let's try it.

You have to have a willingness to look at people you don't agree with and go, well, maybe there's some value to this.

You can't just stay in this fucking steel case of four walls and go, well, this is where I live.

Nothing's coming in or out.

It's like, no, you have to be willing to take on ideas that you don't agree with.

It's got to be somewhere.

Has to.

Well, let's, well, let's look at Gavin Newsome, right?

So right now he's at the top, right?

And like, I don't know.

Yeah, I think without question, like he's.

But he's absolutely at the top, right?

But like, okay, but I've seen so many people online say, absolutely not, because of his position on homelessness and his position on trans.

And I empathize with that because I understand.

Absolutely.

I mean, I know trans people who have just been horrifically like, you know,

beaten down and discriminated against and all of that.

So it's very hard to say this, especially as a white male that's had every privilege on earth.

You know, it's difficult to talk about these things.

Same with the homelessness stuff.

I'm to the left of Newsom on both of those things.

But guys, we have to get out of this nightmare.

out of this like the the country the government is collapsing right like we have to be very clear about this.

This isn't just like first term shit where they like, ha ha ha, they're stupid and like they're fighting because they don't know anything and they didn't get anything done except for tax cut.

They're dismantling shit now.

U.S.A.I.

doesn't

exist.

Right.

They just fired, there's this horrible story in the Washington Post this morning.

Voice of America.

Voice of America is gone.

Fucking CDC.

Like the economist or the statistician for the Department of Education, who had been there for 35 years, gone.

Like they're just like the brain drain, the destruction.

So yes, will I vote for Gavin Newsom, even though I don't agree with him on trans and homeless issues?

Absolutely lootly, I will.

Well, here's the other

thing: Gavin Newsom, that's he's had a couple bad takes on those things from people on the left, but he's also done a lot of good things for the homeless in the trans community.

Like, he's done a ton, like California has some of the best trans protections in the entire country.

So, to look at it and go, well, he said some funny things about trans sports, like, shut the fuck up.

He also protected all trans people in so many different ways.

Please, can we focus on the big also also he's gonna put an hhs secretary that actually believes in science unlike what we have now

that got trans people rfk jr can see mitochondrial dysfunction in his faces he has an esp he's got a sixth sense you're an idiot do you know how like how absolutely like bonkers batshit insane saying something like

mitochondrial challenges mitochondrial challenges what the fuck are you talking about does that even mean

He saw tired kids walking around with a microscope.

I don't know what he's doing.

He saw tired kids at the airport and diagnosed them with inflammation and mitochondria.

They got inflammation.

But I don't know if people have a nap.

The CD looks pretty inflamed, if you ask me.

Well, check his mitochondria.

15 years of shooting heroin has not treated him very well.

15 years?

It was over a decade.

Oh, I got 15 years, right?

Did you guys see the thing?

Sorry, real quick.

It's okay.

Somebody said that, and I posted this on Instagram, but it made me laugh so hard I have to say it here too.

Somebody said that

RFK Jr.

looks like if you microwaved Mel Gibson.

Oh, yeah.

That was so good.

There's so many good comedians doing shit about that.

There's another one who said, like, his throat is literally trying to get him to shut the fuck up.

Like, his voice sounds like his throat is trying to stop talking.

Please.

It's enough.

And look, like, I mean, and for everybody listening, we're laughing because there's nothing else to do at this particular juncture because,

like,

to be perfectly honest, the CDC, I don't know if people saw this, like, the top five people all either quit or were tried, they tried to fire.

And this is political appointees and career staff because

RFK basically tried to say, We're going to get rid of the entire vaccine commission that approves the vaccines every year, the flu vaccines, the COVID vaccines, approves new things that come on.

He's like, No, I don't want to put all the, he's putting in all these absolute batshit nutballs.

And so, any doctor who's in a position is like, I'm that.

I'm out.

But now, but now we're in a situation, and Zach, you had a good

post on it.

And I did a video too.

Like, we don't know if our kids are going to be able to get vaccinated this

winter.

I literally got a message from our pediatrician going, well, we don't know.

And you probably, unless your kid's over five, you probably can't get the COVID vaccine.

I'm like, oh, great.

But

think of how strong their mitochondria will be.

Yeah.

They're going to have superpowered mitochondria.

They're going to be.

That's awesome.

I can't do it.

They'll have so much energy right until pneumonia kills them.

Yeah.

This, this is another example of where when someone tells me, if you're not 100% correct on Gaza, I'm not voting for you.

It's like our nation's health, we don't, we now have to rely on outside experts.

I talked to somebody, I don't want to say their name, but very high up in a certain university

about what happened at the CDC.

And they referred to it as the Saturday Night Massacre.

Yeah.

Which is the,

that was the Nixon thing, right?

Where he fired a bunch of people that were trying to get him to resign and all this stuff.

and then ended up having to do it anyways when they found out about the tapes and he very clearly broke the law.

But in this case, it's the opposite where you've got, well, no, actually, it's the same because it's the president trying to get rid of people who are just trying to give the American public factual information that will keep their families safe, but maha, make America quote-unquote healthy again.

Again, this batch again.

So when

we met

before the polio vaccine, probably, right?

We're going back to the 40s.

It's like that great, great again bullshit.

It's fucking.

I fucking hate it, dude.

Religious history branded with horse shit and sold to people who have been de-educated to such a degree that they don't know the difference.

Also, but also it is, I mean, let's be perfectly honest.

A lot of this is like back when white people had all the power and all of the minorities were shoved in a corner.

Because they're talking about going back, going back to the 40s and 50s, right?

Like, this is one of the greatest, which, of course, the highest tax rate.

I was going to say, go back to 100%.

I don't think they're like that.

Some of the Maha shit is from, like, the 1800s.

It's crazy.

They're like,

no vaccines.

Raw milk.

Yeah, raw milk.

Why?

I don't understand why.

They all drink it every day, and then we'll just be rid of them.

And they can have no vaccine.

They'll just get listeria or whatever the fucking disease.

I'll get your really bad diseases, and I'll say cyanara.

Yeah.

It's fucking.

Well, that's like people in the, like, at their 30s or 40s, they're like, I drink it and I'm fine.

I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But if you give that to children or elderly people, it can

kill them.

Oh, 100%.

It's just this crazy.

But I think it goes to another thing that nobody believes in any institutions anymore because

there is so much misinformation out there.

I mean, we've always had batshit, crazy anti-vaxxers, but they've usually been shoved in a corner and people laugh at them.

Oh, the COVID shit.

Like Jenny McCarthy, who should be scorned.

It should not be on that stupid ass show, who's the person that made anti-vax pulled it into the mainstream.

Her and RK, RFK Jr.

actually are the two.

And now we all have to suffer from it.

And it's going to mean people die.

You know, I think that's it did it did get Trump one point a boost in the in the polls last year

so that he could get RFK's endorsement.

So it's it's the

50-50 both sides.

It's the TV research crowd I fucking can't stand.

Like that's it's like because I used to work in pharmaceutical advertising and I would have to read clinical studies all the time.

And that's not easy to read them.

Like they're very challenging.

There's a real rhythm to figuring out what the fuck they mean.

There is no chance in fuck that the majority of these people could even read one page of this and recite back what it actually says it's like they don't know

50 of the u.s reads below at or below a sixth grade level yeah it's they're not reading any of that

because they're called republicans but guys correct rfk jr has discovered the cause of autism of course now he hasn't told us yet it's coming in a month hasn't told us yet yeah mitochondrial challenges they have they have figured it out that you can see and they are going to announce studies to prove it That's right.

At a later date,

I don't, I'm just actually curious what they're going to say.

Vaccines.

That's why I'm putting my money on it right now.

Vaccines.

Vaccines.

And my favorite thing about the COVID vaccine is like, oh, we didn't study it enough.

It's the most studied drug in the history of mankind.

Not in like American history or in the last few years, ever.

Yeah, but

they, but the mRNA vaccine has never been used before.

And it's like, you have you not any heard of any vaccine injuries, you idiots?

Well, first of all, take that.

I mean, that's bullshit too, right?

But like, we have

to do that.

This is why, like, these people have been studying mRNA vaccines since the fucking 80s.

Forever.

Forever.

And, like, all the shit they base it off of is VARES.

And VARES is the, like, everybody goes, like, all the anti-vaxxer shit is VARES.

Do you know what VARES VARES data is people self-reporting?

So if you go, I got 17 new test rooms because of the vaccines.

It's in VARS.

I got 17 new tests.

It causes testicular growth, guys.

Get the fuck out of here.

It's now in a unicorn.

Wait, I can get testicular growth.

Yeah, yeah.

Did you say I can take the COVID shot and get it?

Now MAGA's interested.

I just hate it.

It's just

like,

check out the VAR system.

I'm like, I could literally go and say that I have a unicorn for horn now.

Absolutely.

It's so stupid.

And of course those guys all go do that.

Right?

Like, of course they do.

But like, and like,

but the thing about vaccine, I know we've gone way off topic now, but like the thing that kills me is that in order for them them to be right,

the entire medical community, doctors, researchers, nurses, nurse practitioners,

all across the world, millions of people have been keeping a secret.

Right.

It's the dark money.

It's our dark money.

It's dark money.

It all comes back in a circle.

The 1630 Fund is the one that put all of the money into the vaccine researchers.

Put the chimps in there too that control you.

When have a million people, not even millions, when have a million people ever been able to keep their mouths shut?

What have 10 people been able to keep their mouth shut?

Exactly.

They can't.

It's just completely different.

Well, we've kept the moonlight

a secret for a long time.

By the way,

there's no vaccine.

No, you can't.

I mean, people believe crazy shit.

The earth is flat.

There's vaccine, no vaccines.

I've met him.

I do like the guy who tried to prove the earth was flat and blew himself up trying to fly a rocket that he burst to prove that the earth was flat.

We need to bring back, back, make Darwin Awards great again.

Where should Darwin awards go?

Isn't that what Florida Man is?

Maybe it just pivoted to Florida Man.

I think it's just, yeah, I think that's like, there's so much overlap between Darwin Awards and Florida.

It's just like, it's just Florida, man.

Now, yeah.

Yeah.

Zach, so, so hang on.

So I want to close off the hot take.

We did this last week.

God damn, I got a lot of fun.

We were like, it's a 10-minute hot take.

We're like, it's a 10-minute

episode.

Before the episode, we're like, we're going to time box this at 10 minutes so we can have a spicy discussion about Taylor Swift.

And then we spend like 4,000 years talking in circles.

Anyway, we're going to do it again today.

But to tie that off, I think I always like to end everything on an upbeat note.

I think that the idea of gatekeepers has become more of a thing.

And people are talking about gatekeeping, the Democratic Party gatekeeping language.

Like, well, maybe don't tell people to not swear because they hurt your feelings.

Or if like they come at religion, maybe just like let that happen, even if you're religious.

Maybe, maybe we need to protect diversity of opinion rather than trying to make everybody the same.

And this is a new thing because there are things I'm comfortable saying now again, where I always felt them and I would have defended them, but like I wouldn't have had a hot take on it maybe, you know, five years ago that now I feel like we can just talk about more openly because we're in this like place where everything's fucking terrible and we all agree that we lost and whether it was like a good loss or a bad loss doesn't really matter.

We all lost.

And so we we need to rebuild and so it's like okay we're in maybe a little more constructive state of mind and I think this is the opportunity to have that conversation of when you tell a person that there is a correct or an incorrect way of being a Democrat or of supporting a Democratic politician

that person always has the choice to just go vote for the other fucking person right or just say they don't vote at all they're not right or just not vote they or just tune out or be like well i agree with all of their economic positions but like they seem fucking crazy or they annoyed me to death and i don't want to be in a room with them like those are real things and if if we do that too much to people i think it was mark marin who said we annoyed people into supporting fascism

in a stand-up recently and we can't do that oh i love mark and mark is so good right i want to get him on the podcast and and And we're in this state of awareness right now where we understand that if we do that, we are going to ruin it again for ourselves.

And so, please, everybody, like we all support 99.9% of the same outcomes.

How we get there looks different, and how we talk about it looks sounds different, but we're all trying to get to the same outcome.

So, whether it's Gavin Newsom or whether it's AOC or anybody in between,

support the person who ultimately the party picks to go and beat JD fucking Vance because that guy is a psychopath who should never be in power again.

It was in Peter Kill's pocket.

That's true.

do you know what we never heard of talk enough about him guys what

our new merch they are it is pretty sweet it is we i just wanted to say i've got the faces by the way we all made fun of my face i think that looks pretty good looks pretty good pretty funny that was pretty good you look like you're afraid of something

maybe getting caught

afraid of talking to you guys

and getting harassed for my slightly off-kilter face on the uh shirt but anyways, so these shirts just came in, guys, and they have been selling like crazy, which is great.

But I'm actually happy that the tree, the tree shirt, I think, is selling a little bit better than the face shirt.

The tree shirt's pretty sick.

But the tree one's pretty awesome.

Yeah, I was wearing that the other day.

And I will be wearing this, guys, in front of 80,000 people at the Oasis Show, which otherwise is known as the 40- and 50-year-old version of the Eras tour.

So I will probably be

the 80-year-old version of the Beatles tour.

Oh, my God.

That's see.

But we have other shirts too, guys.

They're made in America.

They're union-made.

Live in our values.

We actually dropped the prices a little bit.

You can go to findoutpodcast.com and then there's a button on the homepage for merch.

Click on that.

And there's all kinds of stuff.

Sweatshirts, t-shirts.

I think that's actually all we have.

Oh, stickers and tote bags.

Mugs.

What I hear you saying is that if on this beautiful Labor Day,

you want to support American labor, unlike our piece of shit, labor-hating, union-busting president.

Buy our piece of shit.

Piece of shit.

Fuck that guy.

Buy our American-made Find Out podcast merch.

Give us some amazing.

And you'll be a better person.

Yes.

Yes.

And it is dark because

no one knows that you bought it.

So I guess that's dark too.

Dark money.

If you buy the black shirts, they're dark money.

Exactly.

Yes.

So please go to findoutpodcast.com to buy that merchandise and show your support.

And also you can support the show by going to findoutpodcast.substack.com and becoming a member, telling your friends and family, because we are making this a job, guys.

And, you know, like we would prefer to...

I'm the only one who gets any dark money.

It's true.

I need my dark money.

I'm the only one.

Like I said, I changed my title or my bio on threads to say paid, you know, receives dark money from course.

So everybody knows that everybody can calm down.

That's good.

I like that.

So yeah, so that is all of it.

I think because it's Labor Day, we can be a few minutes short today.

So,

thank you, everybody.

I hope you all had a wonderful Labor Day weekend.

We are so glad to have your support and have you with us.

You know, I think once you start reading this, Tuesday will be a little slow, and then I think we're going to have a mad dash to next year.

So, things are going to about to get crazy.

But if we all stick together, we're going to have some good stuff happen.

So, until next time, folks, have a wonderful day.