Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 8/15/25 Matt Wolfson on the People Funding the Attacks on Thomas Massie

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

Matt Wolfson joins Scott to discuss an article he wrote recently that dove into the specific groups funding the campaign to oust Thomas Massie from Congress. Scott and Wolfson talk about and name the handful of individuals who are funding these groups and discuss the broader network that works to keep Israel’s interests at the heart of US foreign policy.   Discussed on the show: “Who’s Funding the Attacks on Thomas Massie—and What Networks are Backing Them?” (Libertarian Institute) The Controversialist by Martin Peretz One Nation Under Blackmail by Whitney Webb The Lobby — UK The Lobby — USA Matt Wolfson is an investigative journalist whose work has appeared in The American Conservative, The Epoch Times, Restoration of America News, and many others. Follow him on Twitter (X) @Oppo__Research and find his full body of work at oppo-research.comhttps://oppo-research.com/ This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Incorporated; Moon Does Artisan Coffee; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, and author of Provote, how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine. Sign up for the podcast feed at Scotthorton.org or Scott Horton Show.com. I've got more than 6,000 interviews in the archive. for you there going back to 2003 and follow me on all the video sites and X at Scott Horton show all right you guys introducing Matt Wolfson he is an investigative journalist and writer for a lot of places including the libertarian institute and he's got a new one that he wrote

for us in the last week here who's funding the attacks on Thomas Massey and what networks are backing them welcome the show how you doing I'm doing really well and and you're one of the one of the main places I write for the Libertarian Institute is incredible. And thank you, Scott. Thank you for having me and thank you for doing what you do. Yeah, what the hell. Great to have you on the site and on the show here. And everybody can follow Matt on Twitter.

He's ex-left with two underscores. Actually, I'm not. I'm not. I'm Apo underscore underscore research. Oh, okay. At Apollo underscore research, which is also my website, oppo-dash-research.com. Nice.

Well, you got to make sure and get the URL with the two dashes, two, and the underscores, and then have them forward. Got to keep it consistent. All right. That's great. And I think ex-left was apt at some point there, huh? You just decided oppo research is better now? Well, basically what I figured out is that the leftists and I think our world are often more against military corporatism than some of the people who called themselves Republicans. and so I was no longer willing to have a handle

that sort of looked like I was even obliquely, sorry, shitting on people who we may disagree with about some things, but agree with about other things. Sure. No, that's funny. I thought, you know, enough. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so, but now you do have an interesting story.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background? Sure. I was, for many years, I guess, in a loose way, a Zionist, a member of the, I guess, neoliberal establishment. I mean, somebody who leaned a little more populist, I was from the Midwest. But, you know, the beginning of my career, I did literary criticism in New York. And I worked in the circles of prominent Zionists. The recent book from 2023, which I'd urge everybody to read, Martin Peretz's The Controversialist,

which is a memoir of Perrots, one of the, I mean, the Israeli embassy in Washington has, excuse me, he was the editor of the New Republic, right? He was from 1974 to 2012, and the owner of it, and part of the first generation of Zionists, I mean, people I actually write about in this piece who really changed the equation when it came to Zionist dominance in Washington,

in D.C. and in New York and elsewhere. The Israeli embassy in D.C. has called in one of the top 70 most important people. They gave him an award for this, along with 69 other people who strengthened the Zionist American relationships since 1948. I collaborated with him on his memoir for a number of years, and it was sort of a weird transition process. When I started, I was a believer, and by the time I ended, you know, I wasn't. I would urge everyone to read the memoir because of the information.

I mean, the most gratifying thing to me was many of his longtime critics loved the memoir because they said it showed how these networks work. And I really do think there's something to that. I mean, one thing I think is insufficiently appreciated is the way that Zionism, just as earlier networks, I mean, wasp Protestants who were for, you know, big government and corporatism in the 1910s, in 1890s. No, Zionism subsists on a fairly small network

of powerful players. This is not, and I have a stake in this, as someone who's Jewish, this is not Jewish. This is not your average American Jew. This is, you know, 250 people, families, whatever, tied very closely to the military, corporate technological next side of power in this country. So I was about to ask you, actually,

because I always say, we're talking about, I don't know, 100 people, but you'd say 250. I would take your estimate as much more, you know, you're, seriously, like, you're obviously much closer. So you would say it's about 250 people, the neocons, 250 people or families. I mean, you do you have the finance, you have the journalism, you have the politicos. Yeah. And so you're not just talking about the neo-conservatives.

You're talking about the leaders of the Zionist networks, whether they were ever extradts or not. And it also sounds like you're not really ex-left. You're ex-ex-left, right? It's Marty Perretz and his buddies who are the ex-leftists, and you were with the neocons, and now you've become more libertarian or more conservative or more something since then, is what you're saying, I think, right?

I think what I've become, I mean, honestly, I think I chronicled the empire from the point of view of imperialists. And now I'm anti-imperialist. I mean, really like, if you're a, and, you know, I don't want to rub people the wrong way, I have a variety of policy views. I believe in decentralized government. I mean, I love Thomas Massey, right? But that's one of the reasons I like writing the piece. But if you're a

communist, if you're a socialist, if you're a libertarian, if you're Tucker Carlson, if you're against empire, I'm your friend. Because I think that on a pragmatic level, military corporatism at this point is such a disease. And it is by far the most powerful change. agent we face and the worst and it has been since 1945 and so to me no matter what solution you want anybody right now who's I mean we can fight about the solutions after right now there's there's a plague here and the plague is it's across religion I mean Zionism isn't a religion it's a cross party you know it's it's imperial war abroad and government back corporatism at home.

Right. You know, so that's, I would say I was with the empire and now I'm anti-empirate. That's, that's more or less how I describe myself at this. Yeah. Importantly, though, right? Like, unless you're talking about worms or silly pipeline dreams in Iraq or something like that, the pipeline of Haifa and all that, for the most part, when you're talking about these networks, which you had such a front row seat to, to witness how they all

work, this network between the Zionists and the military industrial complex, it's really not Houston, right? This is not kind of overall American energy interests. This is really the Israelis exercising this undue influence to bend the American Empire to serve their will, even at the expense of the empire, much less the country, right? I think that's an extremely apt I hate the empire to begin with. I mean, I'm not a big fan of the wasps who started this thing. You know, the Dulls, brothers, et cetera. But I think within that framework, you're absolutely right.

That it's, and I'm writing something right now where I wrote this, that if you were to apply the situation right now with mainly the Israelis, but also the Saudis and the Emirates, to like, the Roman Empire in 50 CE, it would look insane. It would look like this giant empire was expending a bunch of resources to protect these territories of people, some of whom were citizens, some of whom were not, who were buying up a bunch of land in the middle of Italy

and getting close to the governing councils. And you'd be like, what are these people doing? Like simply pragmatically, what are they doing? You know, and that, I mean, that is what, you know, I've been lucky to write for the Libertarian Institute since February. And that has been the focus of my pieces. You know, how the Israelis and Zionists in America are facilitating Israeli, Saudi, Emirati investments here

and sort of bringing us into more commitments abroad. I mean, Trump may say this is America first. It's not. It's using the Saudis, Emirates, and Israelis as our proxies. to colonize the Middle East through deals, trade deals, underwritten by American Empire. I mean, that's going to continue to involve us in this region. Anybody who wants America to go back more to representative government,

anybody who wants out of there, anybody who doesn't want to read about bombing every year, that's not going to happen under this current dispensation. It just won't. Yeah. So I think your notion of twisting of these very small number of countries using lobbying operations,

which have been there since the 80s, by the way. I mean, I was watching a movie, nobody remembers Sidney Lumet's Power from 1986. It was one of Denzel Washington's really early roles. He was in his 30s. He played the fixer for a Saudi or Emirati sheik trying to get involved in American elections.

And as I've watched this, I thought, oh, my God. I mean, this is... I know that guy. so you know um this is i think your description is absolutely right um and i think the co-option is just stunning by small numbers of people yeah well it's a hell of a lot of money i mean the uh the feature picture on your article here at the institute is a paul singer so um i'm i'm really glad that we went ahead and started with your background and that and your relationship with Martin Perretz and sort of your proximity to all these guys because when I read all your

great articles, I have the answer to what would be the normal rhetorical question, which is, wow, how does this guy know all this stuff? He's got a really great insight into who these people are and what the hell is going on here. So I find your articles very valuable. So let's focus on the subject at hand here. Thomas Massey done stepped out of line And the Israel lobby's mad And so what are they doing

And by they I mean name names Because you got them all here Who are they and what are they doing To try to thwart Thomas Massey Which I might note from the outset here Is a ridiculous fools Aaron And ain't never gonna work Because he was never AstroTurf

He is probably You know at least tied Or you know right there among the most actual grassroots bottom up chosen by his neighbors type representative that we have in the U.S. house. If you know his origin story he was like

filibustering at the town council or whatever and everybody, all his neighbors said, yeah, yeah, I seed my time to him. Let him finish because he was just so dang good at making their case against what the government was trying to do to them. And that was how he moved up very quickly in local politics to then become the

local U.S. House member. So they're You're not going to, you know what I mean? It's like, he's not exactly Ron Paul where he delivered one third of the population of his district or whatever, but he's pretty safe. So it's going to be funny to watch all these people pissing up a rope and getting it all over their own hands and whatever, but like to know more about who they are and what they're doing here.

I think they've been stupid here because if you look at it, and I think there's a reason they've been stupid. The three main actors here are Miriam Adelson, John Paulson, Ann Paul Singer. These are all people who either made money on Wall Street or in, you know, the casino world. So, I mean, this is a Palm Beach Wall Street, Las Vegas crowd. Not coincidentally, there are ties in their general networks to old Jewish mafia, which gave rise to a lot of, you know, sort of Zionist Whitney Webb is very good on this. But these are people who operate at a remove.

from Kentucky's fourth district. Sure. Who's people who, and I say this in the... Well, and when you say mafia, can you say who you mean by that? I mean, I'd actually rather refer the... Refer listeners and watchers to Whitney Webb's One Nation under blackmail. Because she does it much better.

I make certain references in my piece, but I don't want to misstate. I mean, a lot of these go back to Meyer Lansky in the, you know, 1950s. 50s, two of the major people I can talk about in a minute, Michael Steinhart and Charles Bromfman, who in many ways sort of seeded the ground for what we're seeing with Poulson, Adelson, and Singer had connections to these networks.

So basically what you have is you have sort of a Jewish version of the Godfather, but rather than sort of getting respectable and acting as a stabilizing influence in the communities, which is what we could tell on the Mafia did, the sort of children of some of these figures, you know, Steinhardt's father was majorly connected to Meyer-Lansky. And I mean, Steinhart says that. He's in the networks.

And what you have instead is these figures moving into the military corporate complex, using their background, using their money to then move into that complex via Wall Street and then Washington. And that's where a lot of this starts from a sort of earlier generation in the 80s and 90s, people who knew William Casey at the CIA. You know, I mean, people who were very connected to, if the government wanted foreign payoffs, they could rely on this particular small network of, you know, increasingly Zionist, financiers who knew how old. organized crime works.

By this point, and this is sort of a key part of my, of the story I tell, they've gotten, quote, unquote, respectable, which is to say, John Paulson has his name on, who's one of the main three backers against Massey, just to remind everybody, it's John Paulson, Miriam Adelson, and Paul Sayer. These are the main three, and then they operate in this broader network work that I talk about in the piece where people like Charles Brownsman and Michael Steinhart, who are a little older, sort of seeded a lot of the ground for what they're doing. But these people in the 90s and 2000s have gotten respectable.

And they've gotten respectable by donating to respectable institutions. John Paulson has his name on two buildings, one at NYU, one at Harvard, one is engineering. You know, Michael Steinhart has his name on a building at NYU. Paul Singer donates to Harvard. Bernie Marcus, the late Bernard Marcus of Home Depot, who's one of the major donors to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, which I talk about in the piece is a major sort of funneling channel for people like Singer to funnel money into Republican politics to twist it the way they wanted.

Bernard Marcus, he's one of the top five donors to Georgia Washington University, but he also donated money for the first master's program in Israel Studies to be offered in the United States, which is offered at GW. But a lot of these donations aren't focused on, I mean, MIT is another very big center of donations. A lot of these donations aren't focused on Israel. A lot of them are focused on engineering or cancer research. So, and there is a reason for this, because if you look at, like, it's really hard to look at a guy like John Paulson, like, oh, yeah, that asshole, he, uh, he donates to engineers so that we can have smarter people in our society. He's an enemy. You know, well, look, that's specific, right? Like, there's a reason that's done. I don't know what these people tell themselves in their heads. I mean, I have some idea. They may say it's for the greater good, but the function of that kind of philanthropy is to say, well, you know, yes, they may be attacking this guy in the 4th District,

but they've done so much good for society. Look at the Singer Fellowship. You know, look at his donations to the Museum of the Bible. You know, look at John Paulson. It's just Rockefeller passing out silver dimes, right? It's just public relations. No, it's as if, you know, Rockefeller and his late old age would pass out money to kids.

It's like these guys have fast forwarded it because they see a political use to it. At least that's what I think. But it might as well be Ivy Lee having them do it for the PR, right? That's what it's all about is the image. I think, I mean, I can't say that 100%. I think so. I know that's the function.

I mean, you know, I think one of their justifications is they see themselves as giving back to society, but they're giving back to perpetuate their own power in the society that they're trying to remake to, you know, focus on their priorities. So it's self-interested from beginning to end. But here's where I think is interesting about Thomas Mass, because not only do these programs at MIT and Harvard and NYU and Cornell and Columbia that are funded by many of these players, not only do they function to give them respectability,

they also function to bring people in. I mean, if you're a smart person, I mean, with a high IQ, I mean smart, all kinds of smart, but if you have a high IQ, and you go to NYU and you go to the Steinhart School, You know, you're going to feel, well, I went to the Steinhardt School. You know, the same thing if you benefit from John Paulson's largesse at Harvard, right, as an engineer. The point of these is to bring people into the power structure. That's one of their points.

It's to say, well, I benefited from this, therefore I am loyal to this system and the priorities of the people who are funding me. You know, it doesn't matter where they got their money, doesn't matter what the geopolitics are. They've helped me along. Thomas Massey, in many ways, was a prototype for this, right? He went to MIT. He and his wife started, well, also went to MIT, start in their own company. They lived in Massachusetts. And I mentioned this at the start of the piece briefly.

Five years in, in his mid-30s, they go back to their homeland of Appalachia, to the fourth district, the one of the more lower-income areas in the nation. I mean, live off the grid. build their own house, powered with all these patents, because Massey's brilliant that he infants. Massey dealt his way out of the system and then enters the system again and says, look, I'm not going to represent you people.

I mean, I don't care that you've given a building, John Paulson. I'm going to represent the people I come from. I mean, that's Massey's deal. As you said, he started at the town council level, right? You know, if Denzel Washington, as I mentioned earlier, is the prototype for a lot of these bad Saudi, Israeli, Zionist operators, Emeraldi operators in D.C., you know, Kevin Klein's date from the 1993 movie, you know, if anybody's ever seen it, you know, he's a guy who helps people in his hometown and then runs for president, right? Like, that's the Massey model.

And I don't actually think it's at all romantic to say that. I mean, as somebody who was part of some of these networks and then left them. I mean, I think it does take real loyalty to where you're from and your roots and your original values. And so now you have this situation where these sort of big philanthropists have decided, we're going to train our money.

In the person of Chris Lissivita, who if you look at Chris Lysivita, I mean, this is the kind of guy who goes bison hunting in Texas and then pays for the bison to be FedExed so it can be served to him in Virginia. Like, this is a fake. This is a faux frontier guy, right?

Like, this is not a real person. He is Paulson's singers and Adelson's put-up guy for this attack that they're making. And this is why I think it's a mistake, because it's not like Massey is on the Foreign Relations Committee in the Senate. It's not like he's a cabinet member. This man represents his district. And they have decided these people who are not from the district, you know, who are are very much invested. I don't happen to. I mean, I'm Jewish. I don't happen to think they're

invested in Judaism. I happen to think they're invested in power. I mean, they're not even invested. They're invested in a powerful country, Israel. These people are training their sites with massive amounts of money on this congressman. And so in many ways, I think it's a very clear story, you know, these networks have operated quietly. They've operated through respectability or through, you know, quiet sort of under-the-table financial plays. When they start to make moves like this, I think it becomes much more obvious who they are. And I think it's a clear case of hero and villain.

Because on one hand, you have Thomas Massey. On the other hand you have, and, you know, now I can just do a quick pyramid because I've mentioned some of these names, just making it clear where they come. from. On the other end, you have a group of people who start basically with Michael Steinhart and Charles Bronfman in the 1990s. Wealthy financiers with criminal connections in their families past or likely criminal connections in their families past who get together and start thinking in the 90s, we want to fund things that perpetuate American Zionists and Israel. I mean, it's a particular, and you can read, I mean, Jewish currents, which is left-wing

and anti-Zionists and quite critical with these guys. I mean, excuse me, Jewish writers have said, like, look, they don't want Jewish continuity. They want the right kind of Jewish continuity. They want Zionists. They want Israel. Steinhart and Brahmsman start this with basically three foundations or three approaches in the late 1990s, early 2000s. And I talk about this in the piece, which is short, by the way. The first one is birthright, which gives any Israeli, any, sorry, American Jew 18 to 26, the opportunity to go free of charge to Israel. Birthright, when I came up, was always presented as this incredibly sort of beneficent gesture. That's not the way the Israelis see it.

You can read an article by Israel's Consul General to New York, the ex-Consul General, who calls birthright that factor, the tablet factor, the most important emotional agent Israel possesses in America. This is meant very clearly to get American Jews loyal to Israel. And by the way, can I ask you real quick, you know, from here I'm very ignorant, but it just seems like from what I've heard of it, it's portrayed to young American Jews that this is inevitable. This is what every young American Jew does.

even though that's really not true, right? But it's more than just an option. It's something that's expected of young Jews or not? I think that's true. I mean, I would, I grew up in a small city in the Midwest. There are people who know more about this, who, I mean, there's a one, I will recommend for your readers if it's all right. Jewish currents has a piece on sexual harassment and birthright.

And I think they came out of 28. That's Peter Bynard's magazine, right? Yeah, he's right. Yes, Biner writes for them. He, they have a really, they have sort of a really good description of what that's like and what it's like for young Jews and the expectations. You know, I'm, you know, that's less of my focus. I got you.

Yeah, I'm sorry to interrupt on that point. No, I don't think so at all. Because it's sort of the question of like, you know, how quickly an operation, because the way you described it's like this narrow thing, it's this brainchild of these few people to make this deep political influence. But then, so it's kind of fascinating then how quickly that can be spun into the kind of thing where, sure, you go to synagogue and you wear your hat and you go on birthright. And that's all part of, like it, like overnight is just part of being an American Jew.

that's part of the experience as you do this trip, this field trick to Israel. And they made it seem so normal and so expected that you wouldn't have thought it was a public relations exercise at all, right?

You'd have just thought that it was part of everyone's tradition all of a sudden or something like that. I think that's, I think they worked very hard to bury any option. I mean, the Salzburgers at the New York Times, they've always been iffy on Zionism.

They were against Zionism in 1945, right? That's, most American Jews were not Zionists until 1945. Zionism didn't justify itself the way it does now, which is often off

the horror in Europe in the 1940s, until after that horror. I mean, they want to erase all of that history. They want to say, as it was in the beginning, which is the way we say it is, as it will be in the end,

as it will always be, They want to cut off historical options. And as you say, make this inevitable. The way they've been able to do that is not, again, Jewish. It's largely the fault of big government and big corporations and philanthropy, as it developed everywhere in America in the 1980s. Philanthropy became this weapon. And more and more people, more and more government, I mean,

I'll do Murray Rothbard here just because he's so wonderful about the book you recommended to me, where he talks about the way the capital twists itself around the state and then manipulates, you know, in an anti-free market, anti-agalitarian, anti-representative direction. That's what Capital did in the 70s and 80s and 90s. People like Steinhardt, Roth, and others, they wanted to steer favorable tax policy, favorable incentives to philanthropic foundations because they knew that that would make them, at least I think they knew, what do I know? They knew that would make them look beneficent, and it would be a way to push their project fast.

I mean, the reason this got done so fast is the money involved. And you can read, I'll only throw out one more name, Lila Corwin-Burman, who writes about it. But she has a whole book, the American Jewish Philanthropic Complex, where she basically says Zionist took over the Jewish philanthropic complex. in the 1980s and 1990s, and they twisted it into this really weird thing. And that's because they had a lot of money to do it. And if you look at it, their first major prong was Berthra. Their second major prong was, it was originally the Hebrew word for truth.

It was a think tank and a propaganda arm to justify Israel's policies vis-a-vis Palestinians in the 2000s in 2001. But it soon became the much more sort of banal-sounding foundation for defense of democracy. That was also Steinhart funded, Singer funds it, the Adelson's fund it. You know, that was sort of the Washington political muscle. That was the second thing they invested in. And then the third thing was the New Republic, which Steinhart became a part owner of in 2002. and it was this, you know, it was at the time,

the most influential political magazine in America. You know, it had, it was read by everybody in Washington. And let me ask you, it was the New Republic had been founded by like J.P. Morgan, Woodrow Wilsonites back in, you know, the days before World War I. So was, you must know more about this than me. Was this the first time that Zionist really took it over? From the former wasp establishment was when Perretz and his gang that you're describing here got a hold of it? Or was it prior to that?

I mean, not that the wasps were anti-Zionists, but they weren't Zionist the way we're talking about neoconservatives here. In 1974, when Perix brought it, was the year. Oh, okay. So, yeah, that is way back. Okay. That's 50 years ago now. Let me be clear about this since you've asked. the original owners

were the Strait Whitney family and these were wasps and some of them were sort of belligerent colonialists others of them I mean Michael Strait who sold it to Peretz was a communist I mean for a while at least he was now whatever you think of communism

the guy was anti-empirus. I mean he was vociferously anti-American empire so they owned the magazine from 1914 to 1974 and he was he was the major player there in the in the second part now the wittneys they were like a skull and bones family going back to the founding of the country right yeah um they were um these were by the 60s and 70s these were not belligerent operators these were not pro-colonial operators they weren't exactly they weren't shake your fist at the establishment but they were

anti-war in a very respectable kind of way. So, yeah, I mean, when Perix took this over in 74, it was a major shift. But I mean, even in the 80s, we were still in the Cold War. So, I mean, Zionism was important newly because Reagan thought we needed the Zionists after the fall of Iran, but Zionism wasn't a hinge of American policy. That had to wait until the 90s and 2000s,

and it really was with these groups, birthright, foundation for defensive democracies, the new republic in its later years, that pushed it that way. I mean, you really have to wait because, I mean, the Cold War, our focus was on the USSR. I don't think it's a coincidence

that in the 90s and 2000s we entered a new war, the war on terror. And if you look at some of the cartoons that sort of militarist Republicans are putting out about Zeran Mamdani right now, they have, I mean, it's literally, Andy Ogles put this, I was stunned, he said, go back home, little Muhammad,

take your kami ideas with you or something like that, and there's a picture of Mamdani, you know, as a Muslim, holding the hammer and sickle. And to me, that was the perfect synthesis of what was going on, which is after the Cold War, the military corporate complex needed more funding.

It needed to keep its shareholders happen. And here you have these Zionists who come on and say, look, we've got a target. And we have interest groups. We have birthright. We have new. That's so funny. Because I was just going to say,

I was just going to say, man, I kind of agree with that. But then that's the point, right? is the Zionists always rushing to get out ahead of anybody. Whatever it is that you're about, they claim to be about that too. Like, for example, the neo-conservative W. Bush years. Oh, you're sick of that. You're moving right. You're more of a nationalist now.

Hey, we're nationalists, too. We're just like you. And so who's leading the Trump parade from the beginning of 16? It's a bunch of Zionists. They were one of the only major factions that supported him. Yeah, Bill Crystal was against him, but his brother-in-law, Elliot Abrams, worked for the guy and, you know, a whole bunch of Zionists supported him then, so. I think that's, I think, I actually think that's an amazing example because, you know,

now that Trump is in, Abrams has a position. Had Harris gotten in, Crystal would have had, not a position, but, you know, a line. You know, their loyalty, and I say this at the start of the peace, they look politically promiscuous because they'll back Republicans or Democrats. But it's evidence of an underlying fidelity, which is to the very corporate center and anybody to it. So Kamala Harris or Liz Cheney or now, unfortunately, you know, Donald Trump. I mean, what you've seen is via these foundations that Steinhardt-Bromb from it started and then Singer the Adelson's and Pulsin took over in the 2000s and 2010s. And the fourth, I'll add, birthright, the foundation for defense democracy, the New York,

Republic, and then the Manhattan Institute, which Singer is now funneling money to push Republican priorities towards three things. Free markets, which does not mean free markets, it means financial giveaways. It's George W. Bush all over again. Culture wars. You got to be against communism, pro-Christianity, pro-Zionists, and Israel. Those are what they want to make the Republican base care about. And as you say, they are very, very effective because they'll take things that, like, look, like a lot of people on the right, everybody on the right doesn't like communists, but are communists the biggest threat to America? I think they're definitely not. I think the whole thing's crazy. I think the military corporate complex is the greatest threat to

America. What they do is they say, hey, look, we got to fight the commies. And they do the same thing with most books. I mean, have there been terror attacks carried out by Muslims? Yes. Is that the biggest threat of America faces? I think it's crazy to say so. But these networks, the Manhattan Institute, FD Foundation, you know, they're funneled by

these billionaires. They're saying, you know, if you criticize the military. corporate complex, Thomas Nassie, you are throwing open our borders, not just to illegal immigrants, but to Islamic terrorists and communists. And that's, at the moment, it seems like, an incredibly effective method for shutting down critiques and resistance to what I think, and I think, who am I to say, but I think founders would have said this too. They revolted.

They didn't revolt against communism or Islamism. They revolted against a military corporate empire. I think they would say this is the major threat we face today. Money and war. Hey, y'all, I've been working on the audio book of my new book, Provoked, how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine. I've now finished and posted part three of the audio book to my substack and Patreon at Scott Horton Show.com and patreon.com slash Scott Horton Show.

So that finishes all of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. I know there's still a long way to go, but just these first two chapters are almost 10 hours of audio to get you started. I promise I'm doing the rest as fast as I can. Get the audiobook of Provoked first. Subscribe at Scott Horton Show.com or Patreon.com slash Scott Horton Show. Hey, y'all, here's how you can support those who support this show. And stay awake while you're doing things. Moondose Artisan Coffees, Moondoseartisancoffees.com.

Get it, Starbucks supports the war party. Moondos is with us. And it's really good. Get to Scott Horton's show blend. Just click the link in the right-hand margin at Scott Horton.org. Hey, guys, I had some wasps in my house. So I shot them to death with my trusty bug assault 3.0 model with the improved salt reservoir and bar safety.

I don't have a deal with them, but the show does earn a kickback every time. you get a bug of salt or anything else you buy from Amazon.com by way of the link in the right hand margin on the front page at Scott Horton.org. So keep that in mind. And don't worry about the mess. Your wife will clean it up. Well, folks, sad to say, they lied us into war. All of them. World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq War I, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq War II, Libya, Syria, Yemen, all of them. But now you can get the e-book All the War Lies by me for free.

Just sign up the email list at the bottom of the page at Scott Horton.org or go to Scotthorton.org slash subscribe. Get all the war lies by me for free. And then you'll never have to believe them again. Well, the thing is, it really, Matt, comes down to just how clumsy they are with their accusations,

how obvious it is that they're lying, how flat their punchlines fall, or whether, you know, it works. I mean, I think the most obvious example of what we're talking about that's been so effective is the creation of Ben Shapiro and his voicing on the American right, as somehow the leader of conservatism where, I mean, whatever, this is my point of view, but also I'm right about everything,

that his whole point always is if you agree with me about this, you got to support Israel. And then he says every other right-wing thing that all other right-winger say about everything. And then he says, and you got to support Israel at the end, whether it's guns or property rights or markets. Let me tell you something, guys, you need prices. Prices are things. What are you a communist? What are you stupid or something?

By the way, we got to support Israel. And like, no young lady, you're not really a boy. No young man, you're not really a girl. Support Israel. and then everybody goes, yeah, man, you know who's really good on that trans men or not really women thing, are those Zionists? They're really great on that stuff. And like, and people just line up behind it. But it makes me very curious because when I listen to the guy, he's just so uninspiring. And it's always been that way. He started writing and became a big deal back in

the W. Bush years when his whole reason for being was supporting the war in Iraq and all of that. But I just think he's so unimpressive every time I ever listened to him to say everything. And then so I wonder, well, who bankrolled the daily wire? Like, where's the market demand for this? Something tells me it's the donors more than the consumers that this was the kind of thing that was like a startup business that had a whole hell of a lot of capital behind it and a real reason. There's a link in the piece. It's a Christian Zionist Texan.

I'm forgetting the name. I mean, they were one of his biggest bankrollers. It's a Christian Zionist Texan family. You know, if you look at Barry Weiss, who's sort of like the intellectual, Ben Shapiro, you know, with the free press, these are, you know, Howard Shultz and Megager Silicon Valley Zionists and their allies. I mean, and the amount, I've heard this just on the grapevine, the amount she pays for like 800 words is insane. I just heard. Didn't she just sell the free press for a quarter of a billion dollars when it couldn't possibly be worth? And what they're saying is that she's tied into CBS now. that because of her connections in New York among certain players there,

Zionists and otherwise, she's tied into, you know, advising on their coverage. And so this is absolutely, nobody's impressive here. There's just a lot of capital. Yeah. You know. I mean, that is one thing about it, right?

It's just like with anything, the BS just can't stand the test of time, really. So like, even if you were really excited about Bari Weiss for a minute because she said some things that you liked or something, And like, that's going to wear off pretty quick when you can tell that, like, anything decent about her where she's pretending to be a champion of free speech or something like that, like, eh, she ain't that sincere. And you can definitely find better champions of free speech out there.

You don't need her for that. And she comes with all this other baggage about how, like, your son ought to die for Israel and all of this stuff that just nobody believes in anymore. And it's, you know. I think that's an amazing. You are right about everything. No, I mean, I think that's an amazing actually. summary of how of a really sensible way to think about it i mean other people can talk about this

stuff why are you going to her yeah the first amendment we all believe in that except like horrible people and most of us can even explain too like why it's a natural right and why it's a protected right and why it makes sense in a free society to have a system where you can see what you want about things and all of the different things and we don't need barry wise from the a couped party to come and defend our First Amendment for us, please. And it's obviously, again, just like with Ben Shapiro, it's such a front. The whole thing, I don't know if you ever saw this man, this great documentary about the Israel lobby that Al Jazeera did, where part of it is about the UK.

It's just called the Israel Lobby. It's by Al Jazeera. I recommend this to everyone listening so highly. The first part is about the UK, and the second part is about the U.S. And in both cases, I forget if it was the same guy or not. I think it was different guys. In both cases, they sent liberal Jews as undercover investigative journalists deep into the heart of the Israel lobby, and they got really great information, and really exposed a lot about them. But the one thing that always really sticks with me about that just because it's catchy and funny and, like, in my memory, it's bright colors, is kittens and donuts.

It was this huge Facebook page called kittens and donuts, which had whatever. however many hundreds of thousands or millions or whatever followers it was. And it was all just clickbait for housewives that look at this cute little kitten and look at this pretty donut. And look at this kitten trying to figure out how to eat this donut and whatever. And isn't it cute? And they would just whatever. That was their deal.

And then like every six weeks or so, they would put out, stand with Israel. And then so like if you're sophisticated at all, you realize that this was never about the donuts, dude. This was always about Stan with Israel, and this is like as close as they can get to, like, remember the old mythical subliminal messages in the movie screens, go buy a Coke or whatever. This is as close as they can get to that, is making housewives feel that, like, all the other housewives who also like kittens also like Israel. But it's just a thing of it is, though, that, like, boy, that can be pretty transparent. And once it's very transparent, then it seems very cynical. an exploitative and then you might like have cause to resent it you know what i mean i'll buy a coke

on my own i don't need you to subliminally message me and manipulate me and force me to buy your stupid soda now i don't want one you know what i mean same kind of thing here we're like if israel's so great how come you got to try to manipulate my mom and to liking them instead of just making your case you should you should take this on the road i'm serious This is the show, man. I can trace out the networks, but the bottom line bullshit is something I haven't heard it captured this well before. I mean, just on the level of, huh, you know, this isn't practical. This doesn't make sense on the level of how people experience this and how it's working in their daily lives.

But I haven't heard that kind of description. I think everybody should hear of that. So that to me, that's Ben Shapiro and that's Bari Weiss. They are kittens and donuts. That's what they are. They're here to tell you what you want to hear about X, Y, Z all day long, and then support Israel. All people who agree with us about this sensible stuff we just said are,

we're all Zionists around here, aren't you too? Don't you want to be a pepper too? You know, and that's what's all about. It's just trying to like smuggle Zionism in with the rest of this stuff. And in a way, I don't know, someone objected to my analysis. to this one time, he's saying, come on, Zionism's always been part of the right. But my thing is, no it hasn't. And also, there's no reason why it should be other than you just say so. No one can ever articulate what we get out of our relationship with them other than spent

dollars and dead soldiers and dead civilians and revenge terrorists attacks against our people on their behalf. I saw a post, somebody posts about Lindsey Graham the other day. And he says, you know, if we don't defend Israel, we're going to have, you know, the Bible will damn us. And I said, I mean, because it just hit me suddenly, like, how have you managed to misconstrue a state that was founded with Western military financial illegal support by primarily socialist youth? I mean, how have you managed to misconstrue this as a product of Christianity? I mean, it wasn't. Like, the 1980s were when this happened, and it happened. And it happened. for geopolitical reasons.

You know, we'd fucked up in Iran. We needed Israel or we thought we needed Israel. But, I mean, that's when this happened. It didn't, conservatives, I mean, to say just as Zionism is not the only strain in Judaism. And in fact, I think it's a foreign strain. So is, so Zionism is, I think, a foreign strain in conservatism in America. Yeah, absolutely. brought by money power by these networks.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, just look at the way the neocon influence in the media where you had, I still do have, the editorial page of all three major papers before you had the weekly standard, but now you still have the Washington Examiner and whatever else to replace it. And, of course, the National Review is still run by, I don't know if anybody reads them anymore, but they used to matter a lot. Anyway, let's talk all about the foundation for defense and democracies, mainly because I'm embarrassed. When I knew I was debating Mark Dubowitz on the Lex Friedman show, I really should have

read everything that Jim Loeb ever wrote about the FDD. And him and all of his guys have done such great work over the years about all that stuff. And I guess I had forgotten about their blood feud Loebate and Dubowitz. It's so funny. Listen, Mark Dubois, this got cut out of the original debate there. But Dubowitz is sitting here trying to convince me that Jim Loeb is an anti-Semite. And I I'm like, well, first of all, the guy's really Jewish, so that would seem to preclude it. But also, he's such a sweet little guy. Jim Loeb, are you kidding me? He hates anyone.

Like, give me a break, dude. He's, you know, it's not in his constitution to be mean ever, right? He sticks it to old Dubowitz, but that's in self-defense. And on the part of the rest of us, too, dude, that's not aggression. You know, it's just that Dubowitz is evil and deserves it. He also tried to argue that J.J. Goldberg from the Jewish Daily Forward is also a vicious anti-Semite because usually dudes named Goldberg from the Jewish Daily Forward are vicious anti-Semites. But that's what Mordubowitz says. But the thing is, is I did bite him and I did debunk all the things he said, but I was not really prepared to fully character assassinate the guy as bad as I wish I did. And all that got deleted out of the whole last part of the debate got deleted anyway. But we did have a big fight over the FD and how Cliff May and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies played such a huge role in, you know, not just pushing us into Iraq, but like into Iraq, but also ideological enforcement on the right and, you know, kind of internal war against anybody on the right who descended against the war at that time.

They're a huge player. And Dubowitz claimed to me, I don't know if this made the cut or not, but he claimed to me, they're like, well, I was against Iraq war. That was Cliff's thing. I was always in Iran Hawk. You know, like Cliff May is Netanyahu and Dubowitz is Sharon. And this is a big part of his argument that Sharon didn't even support the war in Iraq at all, which is totally a lie. His government got on board, even though, yes, he would have preferred we went to Iran first.

But he absolutely supported the war and helped lie us into war, manufactured fake intelligence in English to stove pipe up into the chain to help lie us into the damn thing. So don't give me that. But anyway, man, you have such a deep take on the FD, and their background and all the money and their agenda and just how much influence they have. And it's so funny that I don't know why this is. I really have to fix this.

Whenever I'd like rattle off all the neocom think tanks of that era, you know, Winep and Jinsa and PNAC and CSP and whatever, I always leave out the FD. Like somehow in my head, they're just a different clump of neurons. They're like a different category of think tank for no good reason that I could explain. I just somehow accidentally have them in a different category or something in my head.

And I got to figure that out because they're such an important part of it all. I have to think about that because I'm going through now in my head why that might be. And one reason for me, I mean, until I looked into this, I hadn't recognized the depth of their involvement, particularly in the 2010s with Iran. I knew they were involved. But, you know, the, I think it's funded by a kind of odd group of people. I mean, it's, it's, you know, Steinhart, who started it was the biggest backer to the Democratic Leadership Council, which put Bill Clinton in the White House.

By the way, was Cliff May ever a leftist, or he's not actually a neocon, right? I don't think so. Right. He's just very, he's like, maybe comparable to Bolton in that way, just very close to the neocons, but not an actual card carry number. And I'm going to get the mixed up. I think it's May. I think May was a Republican Party guy.

I think he was from 97 to 2001, the head of the Jewish Republican Committee, if that's the name for it. Maybe it was Dubu, no, I don't think it was Dubowitz. I think it was May. The way I, my take on this, and I am not an FDD expert, I knew somebody there who was sort of an odd person, but I'm not an expert on it. My take is that it was garden variety Republicans married to financial Zionists via sort of interconnected people like May and Dubowitz.

You know, I think it was May who was, you know, he was definitely at the RNC, and I know his focus was Jewish or Zionism. You know, and then he went on to do this thing. As you said, it's kind of stunning how sort of obvious some of what they've done is. And I think they've gotten away with these connected Zionists because people weren't paying attention. I mean, the FPV was literally founded first under the word for in Hebrew that means truth. And then they changed it. So, I mean, this was a recognizably Zionist project by Bromfin and Steinhardt and others straight out of birthright. They then changed it to foundation for defensive democracies and brought in, you know, Republican hauntas.

Although, you know, in their founding corporate charter, I think someone just published this recently, right, that their corporate charter says their purpose is to explain Israel to, you know, public relations on behalf of Israel, like right there in there. They think it's enough. They think it's enough to change the name. I mean, these are not, these are people who much like sort of the 1980s and 1990s Democratic Party, which they had a great hand in creating. I mean, Steinhardt, the New Republic others, these were Clinton's big backers. And of course, Clinton was the most friendly Democratic president to Israel. Both before, and I mean, I suppose until Biden, and I don't think that's a coincidence.

these, they put a great deal of focus on focused groups, on media blitzes, on, I mean, a lot of the stuff that people hate about centrist Democrats besides their policies are, they don't have any respect for voters. They think that if you put a new name on it, you know, everything's okay. And that's that's not, right? I mean, that, that's infantilizing. It's anti-democratic. It's anti-liberty. But that's what they do. And I mean, I think the FPDs, a perfect example, because as you say, if you scratch it, just under the surface, it's like, oh, yeah, this is clearly a pro-Israel deal. But, you know, they changed the name. They've got a Republican guy in there to run it, you know. So it's supposed to have sort of like an idea of

universality to it. And, you know, then they have, you know, what you described, the Dubowitz May sort of panned off the hot potato. You know, I was for Iran. He was for Iran. He was for Iraq, well, either way. I mean, you are, whichever you wanted to do first, you're advancing, I mean, that's trees for the forest kind of bullshit. You're advancing an interventionist foreign policy prescription in the Middle East. You know, so yeah, you can like, just as you can sort of call it foundation for defensive democracies and say, oh, we're not about Israel. And, you know, you can also say, oh, well, I was for Iraq, but not Iran, and he was for Iran, but not Iraq.

So we're not about regime change in the Middle East for Israel, but it's not true. I mean, it's, and it's, it's patently not true if you look at the networks that fund them and the networks they're connected to and the policies that they're foreign against. Yeah. Well, look, I'm bored. And I think there's, things are just becoming so crystallized now. People are turning off the TV more and more.

they're listening to longer form investigations and their scope of the kind of questions and ideas that are allowed to be questioned and discussed or whatever is widening and people are realizing. They're like, oh, yeah, you don't have to pretend to believe in this crap anymore, you know? And things that, you know, like in the days of Iraq War II,

it was pretty specialized knowledge who the neocons were and why they were so close to Lakud and why they, you know, why they, you know, had this interest in going to war with Iraq and all this complicated, clean break stuff, where as now all of this is just as blatant as it could possibly be, the cruelty of the campaign against the people of Gaza is just right in everybody's face, all the lies they tell about everything, the way that they think, the widow of a Chinese gambling tycoon thinks that she can just target and destroy a congressman from Kentucky where she's never been in her life,

like at some point it becomes just so clumsy and ham-handed and screwed up that it's simply going to backfire in their face. It is already, I think, in a Wiley Coyote sense. You know what I mean? It's just, it makes them look worse and worse all the time. And they don't know anything else except to scream anti-Semite louder, right? Try to crack down against dissenters more. But all that is just a fool's.

Aaron at this point, right? These are the last of the dead enders of the Zionist movement in America now. I was so bold. I hope this is really true. I said Donald Trump might be the most Zionist president in American history, but he might be the last one. People are really getting sick and tired of this. And really, he's helping seal the deal.

They're like, yeah, boy, why are we doing all these things against our interest? and against what we want to do. Oh, Israel somehow is making our president do what they want, right? Like anybody at any kitchen table in America could tell you that's what's happening right now. There's just no way to deny it. I think that's absolutely right. I mean, I think my view is that there's, I mean, thanks in large part to people like you, I mean, and you specifically, I mean, these names are becoming known.

The networks are becoming known. I mean, in the revolutionary period, everybody knew who Thomas Hutchinson was and, you know, Andrew Oliver and, you know, the British agents in America. You know, people should know that now, too, about Zionists, safety. They should know if those people are. I also think younger Jews really don't want any part of this. They hate the philanthropic complex. They, you know, they feel Zionism, many of them, was foisted upon them.

They don't think it represents their religion. I mean, it doesn't. I think it has nothing to actually. to do with Judaism. But, you know, I mean, I think that's happening. The one, the one flag I'd raised, and this is based on, for whatever, it's worth, based on experience, but also what I've seen in the last couple years, these people have a lot of money and they have a lot of connections and they are tenacious about what they believe. I mean, when you look at, I mean, Ben Shapiro, I think is pretty much a fool. I think Barry Weiss is a fairly, at least as a fairly clever

operator. I mean, she made her bones at Tablet Magazine, which just had, you know, a redo where it's now publishing a magazine. You know, there's Brett Stevens at Sapper. I mean, there are, there is a younger generation of Zionists

who are very committed who take pride in their minority status and who are ready to take this over. So I would, I'm, I think public opinion has shifted. I think the levers of power

are very much in these people's hands. Because I don't want to act like this as, oh, it's some Zionist, whatever. The military corporate complex wants an excuse to make war. Here are people who are well-connected giving them the excuse. At this point, we have two Congresspeople,

Marjorie Taylor Green, and even more so, Thomas Matthew, standing against it. I mean, that's pretty much, oh, we have Zoran Mobdani, sort of. But I mean, you know, that... right now there's a major disjuncture in the cultural, social, and public opinion aspect of things, which is how revolutionary movements start always.

But when it comes to the politics, it's yet to make the kind of dent that I think it needs to. And they do have people waiting in the ways. Yeah. But no, I mean, that's exactly it, right? Is it's this contrast where more and more, I mean, certainly on the Democratic side, but also more and more on the Republican side where the contrast between the donors and the owners of the party and the think tanks

and the ruling the lead and the voters is just so great that it's undeniable that people, they start out confused and then they turn angry. Why is it we can't have our way? Because these very few people who aren't even from here

and don't even care about us at all insist that it's so. I mean, you know what I mean? Like if you have consent, on the right for like yeah of course whatever israel wants fine if you don't anymore but still the leaders demand it then people are going to get pissed off real quick like actually we quit believing in that already you know what i mean like no we're not doing that anymore you know people really get pissed off and dig their heels in over stuff like that and already it's 50-50 on the

republican side with a republican president leading the charge so how do you like that and you know if it was still, if it was Kamala Harris leading the war in Gaza right now, the opposite, well, I don't know, because Republicans might demand more. I mean, but still again, that's the leaders. I think the dissent would be even harsher against what Israel's doing and what the Democrats are helping Israel do. But with Donald Trump in there saying it's all okay, and 50% favor the Palestinians over the Israelis right now on the right, not the left at all, on the right half of America. Half don't want this anymore. And that's, to me, just huge, dude. That is an earthquake. Just absolutely massive. And there's going to be hell to pay one way or the other.

I'm not saying that the non-interventionists are going to get their way soon, but I'm saying they're going to be really pissed when they don't. And there's going to be, you know, more of a reckoning, a worse reckoning down the line, you know? Oh, I think this is another. movement, and I think, I mean, I think you're, for whatever it's worth, you don't need to hear this, but I mean, you're one of the founders of this. And for those of people like me who came to this later, I mean, in the last couple of years, the amount of not just gratitude, but leadership that I look to you for, because you've made your bones in these fights. You've spent kind in these fights. I mean, you've compiled encyclopedic works on end up. I mean, you've compiled encyclopedic

worth on endless war. So I mean, you're creating the framework and the structure for those of us who are coming, I mean, where we can do this together. But I'm not only hugely grateful, but I mean, I look to you all the time, what's Scott doing? You know, I mean, what's the next move here, right? Because you've been at this and you've been in the fight. And for those of us who have something to contribute because of our experiences and because of what we've learned, it's, it's incredibly, it's both vital and encouraging that there's somebody like you and maybe a couple of others to look to. So, well, I don't know what the next move is. I wish I did. Well, thank you for all that stuff. You don't know. That's true, right? Like, I mean, thank you.

We're going to, well, I appreciate that and you're welcome and all that. But I don't know what the next move is other than just keep building this consensus because I think, you know, I'm a Ron Paulian on that. That education is the key. You get enough people to agree. And then even in the Soviet Union, ultimately the people get what they want, you know? Yeah, dude. So that's what's all about is, you know, the Libertarian Institute is not dedicated toward educating Washington,

although we're very happy to know that there are people in Washington paying attention to what we're saying. But our audience is the people of this country that we shouldn't take this as from Washington anymore is what we're working. towards that's the consensus we're trying to build and who could argue with that right like yeah we're on to something here so um and look i'm really happy to have you on board here um i don't know where the hell hunter dug you up from but um i'm so great to have you uh grateful to have you on board at the institute and you got a really great archive already building here uh and it's such a great inside view of these these neocon and Zionist networks there on the east coast thankfully so far from here um but

Thank you, Matt. Appreciate you coming on. Thank you, Scott. Really appreciate it. All right, you guys. That is Matt Wolfson. He is at the Libertarian Institute, Libertarian Institute.org, and the latest is who's funding the attacks on Thomas Massey and what networks are backing them. Thanks for listening to Scott Horton Show, which can be heard on APS Radio News at Scott Horton.org, Scott Horton Show.com, and the Libertarian Institute at Libertarian Institute.org.