No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Republicans melt down over surprise Supreme Court opening

Episode Date: January 30, 2022

Justice Breyer announces his retirement and the right offers swift backlash to Biden’s decision to nominate a Black woman to take his place. Brian interviews Congressman Ruben Gallego from Arizona, who’s widely viewed as Kyrsten Sinema’s primary challenger in 2024, about Sinema's decision to protect the filibuster over voting rights. And the co-founders of Check My Ads, Nandini Jammi and Claire Atkin, join to discuss Dan Bongino getting banned from YouTube and what other efforts are being taken to hold disinformation actors accountable across social media.Support Check My Ads: https://checkmyads.org/Donate to "Don't Be A Mitch" & help support the Wisconsin Democratic Party: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/dontbeamitchShop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to talk about Justice Breyer announcing his retirement and the backlash from the right to Biden's decision to nominate a black woman to take his place. I interview Congressman Ruben Gallego from Arizona, who's widely viewed as Kirsten Sinema's primary challenger in 2024, about Cinema's decision to protect the filibuster over voting rights. And the co-founders of Check My Ads, Nondunny Jammie and Claire Atkin, joined to discuss Dan Bongino getting banned from YouTube and what other efforts are being taken to hold disinformation actors accountable across social media.

I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. Okay, some good news, or at least some news that is not bad news, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has announced that he'll be retiring at the end of this term, and that ends more than a year of this will-he-won-he-speculation and also allows our collective blood pressure to go down for a fleeting moment. Now, I do want to put this into perspective here. Biden naming Breyer's replacement won't do anything to change the ideological makeup of the court, It'll stay a 6-3 court.

But what it will do is prevent the court from shifting to 7-2 if a Republican president took office and something were to happen to Breyer, who also happens to be the oldest justice on the bench. Like, 6-3 is not good, but it is a hell of a lot better than what would be a cataclysmic shift at 7-2. Now, Biden's promise to nominate a black woman to the court

standing by this promise from his campaign. I committed that if I'm elected president have an opportunity to appoint someone to the courts, I'll appoint the first black woman. woman to the courts. It's required that they have representation now. It's long overdue. And yet, even despite promising this on the campaign trail, still the right is having a collective fainting spell at such glaring reverse racism at play here. Like 200 years of plucking snow white justices out of country clubs was fine. But Biden intends to nominate,

it doesn't even nominate, just intends to nominate one black woman and suddenly we're concerned about fair practices when it comes to race. Like, come on now. Jonathan Turley, who was the lawyer who Republicans called to testify during Trump's impeachment trial, claiming that Trump offering up military assistance to Ukraine in exchange for the favor of dirt on Joe Biden somehow wasn't a quid pro quo, he took to Twitter and wrote, quote, Biden is now going to create one of the most jarring and incongruous moments in the history of the Supreme Court, when the justices will hear arguments on the use of race and admissions, one member will have been selected initially through an exclusionary criteria of race and sex.

In other words, he's arguing against the unprecedented, use of certain criteria to select a Supreme Court justice. Unprecedented, except when Donald Trump did the exact same thing in 2020. When Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, Trump vowed to nominate a woman to fill the seat. In fact, this practice goes all the way back to Reagan, who in 1980 pledged to nominate a woman to the Supreme Court. I wonder why these Republicans were okay with this precedent for the last 40 years, but not this time.

Weird, huh? Senator Josh Hawley took Twitter, writing, moment of truth for Joe Biden, will this deeply unpopular and divisive president finally reject the radical elements of his party and nominate someone who loves America and believes in the Constitution, or will he continue to tear apart this country with a woke activist? Like, Haldi's

worried about activists? Brett Kavanaugh literally called the opposition against him, quote, revenge on behalf of the Clintons. Amy Coney-Barrant signed an anti-abortion advertisement in 2006 that said, it's time to put an end to the barbaric legacy of Roevee Wade. And please,

don't get me started on the richness of Josh Hawley, who held his fist in solidarity with the insurrectionist lecturing anybody about belief in the Constitution. And of course, what would be testing the waters of blatant racism without the Grand Wizard himself, Tucker Carlson. I will appoint a black woman to the Supreme Court. That was Biden's promise. All right. But which black woman exactly? Biden didn't tell us. Biden didn't mention the Supreme Court nominee's legal qualifications or judicial philosophy or ability to perform one of the most important jobs in the country. He didn't even tell us she was a nice person. All he said was

she's going to be black and she's going to be female, because to him, that's all that mattered. You almost got the impression that Joe Biden believes all black women are the same. They're identical. It was certainly the assumption that Delaware of Joe Biden's youth 60 years ago. Biden doesn't seem to have changed much. You wonder if anyone's sitting there and seeing his audience that night even noticed this. It's possible we've all marinated for so long in the casual racism of affirmative action, that it seems normal now to reduce human beings to their race. Right. The takeaway from Biden nominating the first black woman to the Supreme Court is that he thinks all black women are the same. That checks out. The verbal gymnastics this guy will go

through in service of some pretty overt racism shouldn't surprise me at this point, but it does. It's funny, too, how Tucker's immediate beef is with affirmative action on a court where there are literally zero black women and where there has never been a single black woman. Imagine trying to die on the affirmative action hill while complaining about the prospect of one black woman. Yeah, nothing says the court is just getting crushed by affirmative action, quite like pointing to a bench that's literally never had a black woman on it. If we really want to talk about qualifications, since that's Tucker's front here, he just wants these choices to be based on the merits, that's all nothing whatsoever to do with race, then fine, let's look at the very last

nominee to the court. Amy Coney-Barrant never tried a case to verdict or argued an appeal in any court. She had all of two years experience practicing law when she was confirmed at the Supreme Court. So maybe if you're a Republican who hailed Amy Coney Barrett's nomination, you think twice before denigrating a nominee that Biden hasn't even named yet just because you can't stomach a black woman sitting on the court. A black woman, by the way, who we all know is going to have sterling qualifications because, let's face it, if you're black in the United States, you need to be that much better than everyone else. Obama went to Columbia and then Harvard, president of the Harvard Law Review, got married once and had two beautiful daughters, and still he wasn't good

enough for conservatives, who went on to rally around some con artist with a bunch of bankruptcies and three wives. So let's not pretend there's not a glaring double standard here. I don't know who Biden's going to nominate, but I can promise you one thing. It won't be a beer-obsessed sexual deviant who lies through other confirmation hearing before ultimately crying and lashing out at the Clintons. If that guy was good enough for the right, then I feel pretty damn good about the jurist that's going to get nominated in the coming weeks. And I should finish with this reminder. If Democrats hadn't won both Georgia Senate runoffs,

Mitch McConnell would have unilaterally blocked Biden Supreme Court nominee for three whole years. So I get that, you know, because of a 50-50 Senate, that Billback better is languishing, I get that voting rights are DOA. I get how impossibly hard that is to stomach. But the difference between a 6-3 court and a 7-2 court is still monumental. And because those voters in Georgia showed up, not just during the general, but in record numbers for a runoff, we save this seat. That's a win.

I've said it before, but even when it seems like we're failing because there's not enough forward progress, sometimes just by virtue of being in power, we're able to stave off the worst impulses of the GOP. Next up is my interview with Representative Gallego. Today we have the congressman from Arizona's 7th congressional district, Ruben Gallego. Thanks so much for coming on. Thanks for having me.

So it'd be crazy not to start with this question. Do you have any intention of running for the U.S. Senate in Arizona in 2024? Well, I mean, intention is a very big word. I'm going to get through 2022, make sure the Democrats get elected, make sure we reelect, you know, Sector Kelly. And then we're going to make a decision in 2023 regarding this. Data for progress had tested Senator Sinema against you this past week, and the results came out to 74-16 in your favor.

So really on the knife's edge there. Do those numbers have any impact on your thinking, you know, even as we head into these upcoming cycles? You know, not really. Like, you know, at the end of the day, the determination is going to be by, you know, the voters of Arizona and what they're feeling, what they're thinking. Obviously, polls are important. But, you know, going out into the community, having town halls is the thing that I do. And hearing people at the end of the day is going to make the biggest determination. And obviously, in support of my family is going to be the biggest determination.

You know, great to hear polls about 74-16, but we all know that's not how this ends up. You know, there's a lot of big money that comes in from outside, especially a lot of money that want to keep, you know, certain corporate, you know, very backed, you know, starters around. And, you know, you can't expect that to be the case. But at the end of the day, you know, you have to want the job. You have to want to actually do the work. And you don't look at the polling. You do it the work you're going to be able to do for the citizens of Arizona.

And that's what be the biggest determination of both. what I'm going to do. Yeah. I mean, you mentioned corporate-backed candidates as a possible tipping point, like as a possible benefit for somebody running, but in fact, that's actually seemed to be more of a liability for Senator Cinema as we head into this, you know, as we've, as we've seen this whole process play out. Now, I know it's impossible to ask you to get into her head, but what do you presume is the rationale for basically abandoning the party, constituents, democracy? Like, what is the long game here that I'm missing? Maybe you have a different perspective coming from Arizona.

Well, look, look, I've known, you know, Senator Sinema since we were in our mid-20s. She's a very smart. She's very disciplined person. I think she's doing this because she believes this is her best way for re-election, for all I know. And that's all we're hearing right now. I know there's other crazier rumors. But, you know, what she's doing? She's doing it for clearly political reasons.

it's my opinion that it's a very dangerous game you're playing you know after what we saw january 6 what we saw republicans are willing to do to steal elections uh whether it's passing legislation or whether it's actually trying to literally uh incite coups um the idea that you're going to let an arcane rule that doesn't exist in the constitution to stop voting rights act uh is dangers and so what i do know is what the people of arizona want and what the people want of Arizona want uh is voting rights protections. They want a, you know, politicians and senators that are responsive to the community that, you know, show up, that are, you know, have meetings. If you're more likely to find the opinion of your elected official in a fundraising circle than in a town hall or a coffee shop,

then you might need to change your elected officials. Yeah. And I think it's worth noting, too, that I don't believe that Senator DeCinema has held a town hall in the last three years, if I'm not mistaken. That's correct. And look, some of it is COVID. We understand that. But this was happening before COVID. And even, you know, right now, for example, I'm going to have a town hall next, I think, Saturday. We're going to do it outside. We're going to ask me to wear masks and social distance, but we're still going to be there. And it's our job to be out there and talking. You know, that is the, you know, your rule number one and order number one of any elected official, especially in this, you know, democracy we have right now is to be out there and be present. Now, you'd spoken about

the filibuster, what is your stance on the filibuster with regard to not only voting rights, but also other legislation like codifying row legislation having to do with climate change and so on? So the idea that the filibuster somehow brings comedy and somehow brings a compromise is just not true. And we know that that's not true. Some great pieces of legislation have died because of the filibuster. And if you see the history of the filibuster, it's just a it's largely been used to stop, you know, progress on bills. And it's certainly really picked up, coincidentally, under the Obama administration. And so it's my opinion that, you know, whether it's Roe, whether it's, you know, climate change legislation, or just in general, bills, you should be on the

floor and you should argue for them and you shouldn't need artificial barriers to democracy to stop the movement of bills. People vote. They vote for Congress. They vote for Senate. They want, when they vote, they're voting with their conscious what they want and what they want to see happen. And by the way, we have to take the risk that means sometimes it's the opposite of that, right? If we don't have the filibuster, then some of the things that we cherish may also be up. But I believe, and Democrats should believe, that we don't need to have artificial barriers to stop legislation because we know that our causes, our views are popular with the American public. And it's my contention that the only reason the filbuster is around right now is because Republicans know that that

is probably one of the few ways they can stop, you know, a very popular legislation that is going to be accepted across, you know, across the board across the country. I think something else that you mentioned that's worth noting is, you know, this idea that the filibuster fosters a sense of comedy, of compromise. We have the filibuster intact right now and there's no compromise. I mean, like, everything is passing basically on a party line vote. So if your argument is that we need the filibuster because that's going to foster compromise, how do you explain the situation right in front of us? Right. Yeah. And look, it also, there's a certain element that, you know,

this, you know, the American public, people in general, they, you know, they get involved in politics and they vote and it's because they want something to happen. They want to feel something, right? They either feel that someone is representing them or someone's going to go fight for them, right? And most of the time, they're not asking for miracles, they're just asking for someone to care. Yeah. And a lot of times what happens is they sense somebody over there and the filibuster kills it. And it actually ends up killing that momentum, that energy that happens. I mean, look at the George Floyd Act, right? We had, you know, highest participation from, you know, youth voters, especially voters of color, especially black men

and women. We got sent to Congress. We sent the, because of their participation, their vote, if it wasn't for, you know, the black vote, we would not have a president Biden. We would not have control the Senate and certainly I don't think we would have control of the House. And the, you know, one of the many things they asked, but one of the things they, I think they specifically asked for is the George Floyd Act. Passes the House. Okay, fine, let's go to the Senate. There is no movement in the Senate, right? There's, you know, there's a watered-down version that the Republicans introduced. It really will not do anything in the end. And where's a compromise? What happened to it? Joe Manchin, early on in the year, saying, well, I'm going to try

to put a modern day voting rights act that's going to get Republicans on board so we don't have to get rid of the filibuster. What happened? Nothing, right? So clearly, it's there for a reason. It's there to stop a lot of, I would say, good things. And I think it's there to stop it for some, you know, nefarious reasons. Yeah. You know, Arizona is obviously a major swing state as we had into 2022. What's best for your state in terms of staving off a Republican wave that history says is going to happen in a midterm cycle of a Democratic administration? Look, we need to get some form to build back better agenda passed. I don't believe at this point we could be absolutist about that we want everything to pass. But at minimum, you know, we're a very growing and aspirational state. We have

a lot of young families that are moving here. And, you know, we still have, you know, high rates of poverty. So number one, the child tax credit, extremely important. It really helps working class families, especially poor families, you know, get out of poverty. I mean, cut childhood, child poverty, at least among Latinos in Arizona by 60 percent, I think overall by 50 percent across the state. Child care is extremely important. We have a lot of families that want to go back to work, but either can't find good and reliable child care or can't afford it. And that impedes them from even, you know, joining the middle class because instead of having two parents working, one of them is staying at home and not bringing as many wages. And then, you know, I think,

you know, other elements that are going to be extremely important that could really hugely important was prescription drug competition. The fact that these pharmaceutical companies are making outrageous profits for pharmaceuticals that don't cost that much to produce anymore, insulin's a good example. If we are able to bring that in line and put those three in lines, I think we have an opportunity to really hold Arizona. We have a lot of competitive seats in Arizona. We have great candidates. We're used to Arizonans having hard races. We've never really had an easy year. here in Arizona when it comes to politics. But if you give us the right environment, give us the right message, we can definitely deliver in Arizona. Now, speaking of legislation as it relates to Arizona,

there is a new bill coming out of Arizona. That's HB-2596 that was introduced by a Republican lawmaker that would give the state legislature the ability to reject the election results. So what's your response to this? And is this the will of the state? So it doesn't surprise me. I serve the Arizona legislative. for four years. This is the same legislature that asked for President Obama's birth certificate past other crazy, you know, conspiracy theory latent bills. It's not the will of the state. This is, you know, legislature and people in the legislature that are voting for this. Hopefully it doesn't pass, but this is one of those crazy bills. Yeah. And it's anti-democratic.

You should not be able to overturn an election because you as a legislature feel that it did not go your way. And the problem is, given the opportunity, they will do it. The Republican legislature in Arizona will overturn an election. They've basically been pushing back against ballot initiatives that passed trying to overturn those. So if you think that they won't overturn the presidential electors, they won't overturn senator electors, whatever you think, whatever vote, they will take that opportunity because they believe in absolute power. And look, the state is changing. they know it's changing. It's freaking amount that it's changing so fast. When I first got to the state house, there was only 20 Democrats and 40 Republicans. There was a super majority of

Republicans in the House and the Senate. And right now, there's only one vote separating both houses and Senate. So they know that there is time is running out. So instead of trying to win the future through arguments, through debates, through policy ideas, through programs, they're just trying to rob the future and steal the votes. And it's ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's really well said. Now, you know, you, you, you have that shit crazy bills like this. Is it possible that they introduce bills like this so that to look moderate when they pass other crazy shit? Exactly. So that you haven't, you know, you know, you introduce less extreme bills, but still dangerous ones. And like, like banning drop boxes, like shortening voting windows, like eliminating

mail voting. And then by comparison, they won't seem as extreme. No, especially this, this particular state rep is not that bright. So I don't, I wouldn't. not give him that much credit. Yeah. But usually the simplest answer, the shortest distance from A to B is A to B. And no, they want to do this. This is what they want. The end goal is, you know, at least here, and not Republican voters. I'm talking about Republican elected officials in Arizona. They don't believe in democracy. They don't even believe in, you know, a Republican-led form of democracy that, you know, they believe in power. And they will do what whatever it takes to hold power and we have to accept it, you know.

I think Maya Angelou has a great quote. When someone tells you, when someone shows you who they are, believe them, we need to believe them. They're telling us what they want to do. Like, don't deny it. It's real. I think that was perfectly put. We'll leave it there.

Ruben Gallego, thank you so much for taking the time to talk. And, you know, you're welcome back anytime, especially as we continue to head into 2024. Excellent. Thanks for the invite. I appreciate it. Thanks again to Congressman Gallego. Now we have the co-founders of Check My Ads, Nandini Jami, and Claire Adkin. Thank you both for coming on.

Hi, good to be here. Hi, Brian. Thanks for having us on. Of course. So obviously, you know, a major part of what I do is calling out right-wing disinformation, which has kept me plenty busy these last few years. And you both also hold these disinformation artists accountable, but in a different way. So can you tell me what Check My Ads is?

and why you started it? Yes. Check My Ads is the first watchdog for the advertising industry. This is a $400 billion industry that sends ads all over the internet. And it funds a lot of the same people that you call out because they have websites that accept ads onto their websites. And so what we do is we are actually the watchdog for the ad exchanges. The ad exchanges have promised their advertisers that they won't put their ads anywhere. where they would be sponsoring xenophobia or racism or violence, and yet they have working relationships with these publishers. So we uncover, with our newsletter, we uncover these relationships so that advertisers can make

better business decisions. Aren't these tech companies already aware of who these specific disinformation artists are? Like, there are not that many of them that are responsible for the vast majority of this disinformation. So isn't the spotlight already trained on these people? It is. And the ad exchanges, so the level above the advertisers, we need to just, real quick, just differentiate between the ad exchanges and the advertisers. Advertisers rely on ad exchanges to place ads for them across the web programmatically. And they spend billions of dollars every

year. But the problem is that advertisers are not aware that their ads are appearing on these bad actors' websites. And that's where the problem lies. Ad exchanges, are responsible for ensuring that these disinformation mongers never end up in their inventory, but they haven't done that. And the onus always ends up on the advertisers who end up finding out from some Twitter user that their ads were on a Dan Bongino or a Tim Pool. So that's what we're calling attention to. And we're holding not necessarily the advertisers accountable.

We're holding the ad exchanges accountable. How did tech companies moderate or police? dangerous media figures right now, and are they doing enough? So there are a number of different ways they can do this. When it comes to the ad exchanges, if you're a publisher, if you spin up a website, then it's your job then if you want to make money off that website to apply through each of the ad exchanges portal. So you go out to market and you basically fill out a form that says what your stats are, how many readers you have, what kind of content, maybe you give examples. And then the people working at that ad exchange, they will evaluate based on a rubric that they have. And that rubric includes

brand safety standards. So the brand safety standards are things like advertisers don't want to be anywhere close to sponsoring content that promotes drug use or promotes COVID misinformation. COVID misinformation. Health care disinformation. Playwire just put in their terms of service that if you try to overthrow the government, that's not going to be brand, safe for them. Man, a sign of the times that you have to have to have a clause that's against insurrection in your terms of service. Dark brand safety standards. So they will look at the publisher and they will say yes or no, you can be a part of our inventory. And that's important because it's a standard that they set for their advertisers and then they go and they promise to

their advertisers that they only work with the very best of the publishers. But of course, we found over and over again that that's just not true. Ad exchanges are not fulfilling their brand safety standards. And so that's what we're here for. So how do you reconcile your mission with with those who say, you know, what about the First Amendment? Shouldn't you have the right to say what you want in this country without getting attacked or censored or silenced? To that we say, you're free to say what you want, but you're not free to get paid for it. This at the end of the day is advertiser dollars and advertisers have a right to know where their ads are appearing and they have a right to associate, choose to associate with, or choose not to associate with certain content, particularly

content that devalues their own brand. And that's what we found over and over again. I mean, take, for example, Breitbart, 4,000 advertisers, starting in 2016 after the U.S. elections, 4,000 advertisers said, we don't want anything to do with Breitbart's racism, bigotry, or xenophobia. And that movement of 4,000 advertisers and more, leaving Breitbart led to ad exchanges also dropping Breitbart from their inventory and adding these very specific causes around hate speech and disinformation to their terms of service. So now that that precedent has been set, what we're looking to do is keep them consistent across all the other outlets and operations that promote the same exact kind of rhetoric that we saw once on Breitbart. I should know too that this is this is the

free market. This is the free market that conservatives rally around. And yet, you know, when these companies are agreeing to be on these platforms and to sell their ads on these, you know, through these ad exchanges, that they are agreeing to a private company's terms of service. And so when they don't fulfill their end of the deal, that's not just censorship or being canceled. It's just following the rules of private enterprise, which otherwise they're, you know, proud to rally behind. Yeah.

I mean, ironically, the people who have the least or the stakeholder that has the least free speech in this whole situation is advertiser. And it's their money and it's their brand. It's their business. So it doesn't make sense for the advertiser to have no clue where their ads are appearing. That lack of transparency is the most troubling thing to us out of all of this. You look at an outlet like Fox News, which does have very few remaining advertisers, and yet they survive off of carriage fees, which basically render them completely unaccountable to popular pressure. After the January 6th insurrection, Fox cast out on the election results almost 800 times.

Wouldn't it also be aligned with your mission to target these cable providers so that we can level the playing field and reduce the carriage fees so that Fox won't be completely insulated from accountability? So the Fox News question is an interesting one. When I was working on Sleeping Giants, the campaign to defund Breitbart,

we also took on Fox News hosts Bill O'Reilly. We held their, his advertisers accountable in 2017, And then we later took on Tucker Carlson's advertiser. So Tucker Carlson today has one of the most popular shows on cable news on cable networks, but he doesn't make any money. The fact is that advertising is a form of legitimacy. Fox News is still considered a legitimate place to advertise within the advertising universe. It often, you know, what we've seen internally within the industry,

in the minds of advertising executives, it sits right next to CNN. and MSNBC as just another news network. So what we do here is to bring attention to the fact that it is not news and continue to delegitimize Fox News as a news network. And I think that that really paves the way for other campaigns to form. And I think that the campaign around targeting cable providers is a really, really good idea. But it's one step removed from what we need to do first. which is to delegitimize Fox News as a, as just another outlet.

I think they're doing a good job of taking care of that themselves, especially, you know, I think looking back to the beginning of this, where their slogan was fair and balanced, and they're like, yeah, we can't, we can't have that as a slogan anymore to now, where, you know, you had someone like Chris Wallace who did lend a degree of legitimacy to that network and kind of validate their claims that were a real news network and got rid of him and replaced him with like, you know, I don't even remember who exactly has his spot. I think it might be Jesse Waters. So like not even making any effort to present themselves as any type of legitimate news outlet.

And instead, just, you know, an open, flagrant, maga-centric disinformation outlet. That's right. And I just want to add that Fox News is a working member of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which is the biggest, most important advertising trade organization in our country. country. And they regularly participate in roundtables and meetings and organizational initiatives along with legitimate news organizations. So one of the things that we do as well as the ad tech watchdog is hold these other organizations within the industry accountable for their relationship with Fox News and that's something that we're looking to bring attention to. IAB should not be

entertaining Fox News. Fox News should be frankly kicked out of the Interactive Advertising Bureau as far as were concerned. No, check my ads monitors the advertising revenues of Dan Bongino, Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, Glenn Beck, Tim Poole and Charlie Kirk. How is what they do different from people just espousing conservative viewpoints? I think we've gone beyond the pale of conservative viewpoints. The difference is that these men have incited violence at the heart of America. They have made money off of the big lie. They've made money off COVID-19 disinformation. They profited off of the insurrection. That's beyond the terms of service of these ad exchanges companies. It is of course dangerous to society. It is of course dangerous to our communities and

our families. And it's also not where advertisers want to be. So our campaign right now is defund the insurrectionists. And that's exactly what we're bringing to light. Now, Nandini, what is your relationship with Dan Bongino specifically? Oh, I don't like how you said that. Let me rephrase how you've had recent interactions with Dan Bongino. How do those look? Yeah, I have Dan Bonchino and I have been interacting since September of this past year. He, I think, took notice of a tweet that I wrote in September asking Warby Parker to check their ads on Daily Wire, on Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire. And Warby Parker came back super quick and said,

this is not an ad that we placed here intentionally. We are blocking the Daily Wire moving forward. And Bonchino took notice of that and began talking about me on a show the next day and created at first a narrative around me as the crazy cat lady. So he told his audience that I definitely have six or seven cats, which is like patently false. I don't have any pets. And if I had one, I would like to have a dog, please.

And also it's okay to have to have. cats. That is a disinformation campaign in and of itself. No, but cats are fine, you guys. I took it sort of, you know, I've been doing this work for so long. I can't be bothered by something like that. But, you know, the attacks then became increasingly serious. It was sort of like a coordinated campaign between Bongino as well as the post-millennial, which employs the likes of Andy Nguyen and Liby Evans and so on. And so they all started to sort of team up and write a series of narratives initially around me.

They whipped up stories calling me anti-Semitic. They called me, they said we're lying to our donors, like just all kinds of, all kinds of stories. And then they started to take a really, really dark turn.

And that was when they started calling Claire and me child predators. And I mean, it was so weak that even their own followers were like, guys, this is embarrassing. So last week, they, Bongino published an article saying that hours after I had criticized Tim Poole on Twitter,

he was swatted. And that was the first time I was really shook because that is a very, very serious allegation. And it's the type of allegation that is designed to rile up someone who's not particularly stable to maybe come to come find me or to try and enact some kind of violence towards me as well in retaliation. So that, that's where the story is. been going to a very, very dark and scary place. Well, all of that, by the way, kind of validates the exact claims that you're making in that these are disinformation actors, that these people are keen to put out this type of disinformation that would then, you know, incite violence and proving that that's exactly what he is.

You know, recently, obviously, some big news is that YouTube banned Dan Bongino from the platform. Can we have your reaction to that? Yes. YouTube suspended. Dan Bongino for one week, and then Dan Bongino returned fire and called them communists. So among other reasons, they have now permanently banned Dan Bongino from YouTube. And then yesterday, Nandini and I contacted Google ads and asked, why the inconsistency? Why are they dropping Dan Bonino from YouTube, but maintaining Dan Bonino's largest source of ad revenue, which is Google ads? and then today we woke up to the news that Google ads as well dropped Dan Bongino,

which is a huge piece of news for us. And so that's on his personal website aside from the YouTube platform, obviously, correct? It's for Bongino.com, which looks like it's scrambling today. They have updated their banners and they had to fill a bunch of space where the ads no longer go. Yeah, and it's really important that we talk about that inconsistency because that content that Bonjino put on his on his YouTube channel is embedded into his website, which is again monetized by Google ads. So this happens really, really frequently. And you've also seen this probably on this kind of inconsistency across social media platforms where they'll, you know,

they'll ban them from Facebook, but not on Instagram or from one Google product, but not the other, or, you know, all kinds of like little inconsistencies that they're trying to get away with. And we, what we wanted to see and what we argue for at CheckMy Ads is that when there is a bad actor, that entire account needs to be blocked, not partially, but the entire account, because what we find is that often when there is a, you know, a bad actor like a Bongino, they will just go ahead and spin up another website. And that's what Steve Bannon did. He left Breitbart and started up populist press and war room. And now he works through all kinds of middlemen and all, you know, all kinds of. of shady little tactics to get back into the advertising supply chain. So we're advocating for the account to be blocked while Google still tends to move at this pace of, oh, we're going to block page by page or we'll do like a partial suspension and this and that. No, the whole thing, please. So now moving forward, how can we help? Thank you for asking. We are at checkmyads.org. And if you

go to checkmyads.org slash J6, that is a place where you can sign up for email updates and what those email updates do is they provide you templates that you can then use to email the ad exchanges to ask why their behavior is inconsistent with their brand guidelines. That is the biggest thing. We are also accepting donations. And with that money, we're going to expand, check my ads' ability to research these kind of relationships, publish these kind of stories, create videos that help explain the problem. And so we are going to be using that money to just build momentum. And so far, over 500 people have signed up to send emails, and that is just so huge. And we welcome everyone on board. This is a group effort. It's a group effort. And I just want to emphasize how important it is that,

you know, you participate in these actions with us. It turns out that one of our supporters who sent these emails and wrote to a company on LinkedIn has inspired our next story for our newsletter. And so even if you if you can't donate, that's not what the most important thing. The most important thing is that you join us, help us hold these companies accountable with us and send these emails. Excellent. Well, I'll put that link in the episode notes of this episode. Nandini and Claire, thank you so much for both the work you're doing and for taking the time to talk today. Thanks, Brian. Thanks so much, Brian. Thanks again to Nondini and Claire. That's it for this episode. Talk to you next week. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian

Tyler Cohen, produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, Reviews captured and edited for YouTube and Facebook by Nicholas Nicotera and recorded in Los Angeles, California. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app. Feel free to leave a five-star rating and a review, and check out Brian Tyler Cohen.com for links to all of my other channels.