The David Pakman Show - 3/16/23: Attacks on free speech explode, MTG blurts out classified info

Episode Date: March 16, 2023

-- On the Show: -- David Sirota, journalist, columnist, and founder of The Lever, joins David to discuss the media landscape, ethical funding of journalism, and much more -- Attacks on free speech are rising dramatically, but their origins are the American right wing, despite claims that it is the left that is attacking free speech -- Radical and repugnant Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene blurts out classified information during a public Congressional hearing -- MyPillow CEO and Founder Mike Lindell announces that MyPillow is going broke -- Failed former President Donald Trump panics, calls Stormy Daniels "Horseface" in the latest unhinged rant exposing his utter fear about being indicted -- Lying Republican Congressman George Anthony Devolder Santos is accused of running a credit card skimming operation -- Lying Republican Congressman George Anthony Devolder Santos brokered a $19 million yacht sale in the latest bizarre revelation about the beleaguered Congressman -- Voicemail caller suffering from MAGA brain worms calls in -- On the Bonus Show: Reporter fired for calling DeSantis press release "propaganda," 99% of borrowers have lower mortgage rates than current market rate, Goldman Sachs boosts recession odds, much more... 🍷 Crunchy Red Fruit: Code PAKMAN saves you $20 at https://crunchyredfruit.com 💻 Stay protected! Try Aura FREE for 2 weeks: https://aura.com/pakman 🌳 Use code PAKMAN for 20% off HoldOn plant-based bags at https://holdonbags.com 💻 Get Private Internet Access for 83% OFF + 3 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/David 👩‍❤️‍👨 Try the Paired App FREE for 7 days and get 25% OFF at https://paired.com/pakman -- Become a Supporter: http://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/thedavidpakmanshow -- Subscribe to Pakman Live: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanlive -- Subscribe to Pakman Finance: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanfinance -- Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidpakmanshow -- Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave us a message at The David Pakman Show Voicemail Line (219)-2DAVIDP

Well, the headline for this first story certainly sounds like I'm jumping on a right wing trope. The headline is the attacks on free speech in this country are rising dramatically. And yeah, I'm saying the same thing that right wingers are saying, except the attacks are being carried out by the American right wing. And it is yet another one of these instances of how projection is the name of the game. The right continuing to accuse the left of that, which they themselves are guilty of. Allegations are confessions over. Democrats are going to try to steal an election in 2020. Democrats didn't. Democrats won. But it was those very Republicans who tried to steal an election that they did not win. They accuse the left, but do it themselves.

And when it comes to attacks on free speech, that is exactly what we are seeing. We are going to link in the description to the YouTube clip for this story to three different associated press articles with numerous examples of chilling free speech suppressing actions carried out or attempted by the right. And the categories are numerous. You have the book banning efforts surging in 2022, according to the Library Association. You have book ban efforts that succeeded at record numbers in 2021. Florida, a Republican led state by Ron DeSantis and a Republican legislature has the third largest number of book ban incidents at schools. You have states proposing restrictions on drag performances. And again, you have to understand that all of these are types of speech, artistic performances, community events, books that have been written.

All of these are forms of speech where either the purveyors of the speech themselves in the case of drag performers or the what would we call it? The conduits to the speech themselves in the case of drag performers or the, uh, what would we call it? The conduits to the speech. So like a school library, for example, are being told you can't decide for yourself what to offer. And also in many cases, parents can't even decide for themselves because remember when you have a drag performance, you are leaving it up to the performers to organize the event. But when it comes to things like drag time story hour or whatever the case may be, you are leaving it up to the parents to decide for themselves without the oppressive hand of government, whether they want to take their kids to such a performance or not. And you see speech

limited or attempted to be limited almost exclusively by Republicans all over the country. We talked a little bit about that Tennessee bill, which is functioning by categorizing drag performances as adult performances equivalent to, for example, a strip club and then banning such performances from any place where there could be minors and from all public property. So if you think, wow, drag time story hour at a park, there could be minors and it's public property. It is banned in Idaho. We saw an art exhibit censored

and teens told they couldn't testify in some legislative hearings back to Florida. There's this proposal we talked about to make bloggers register if they write or plan to write posts, articles criticizing elected officials. Also in Florida, we saw Ron DeSantis pull Hyatt Regency's liquor license. Hyatt Regency is a hotel. The liquor license was pulled right after they did a drag show where there were children there. Nobody coerced parents saying, let's go to this event. These are all efforts by right wingers, not some, but all. Now, can we find equivalent efforts by the left? You know, I looked there. There was a bill proposed in Washington to have like some kind of bias reporting line. And I believe a Democrat co-sponsored it, but it didn't pass. And it seems so

minor compared to what these right wingers are doing. And meanwhile, their strategy of continuing to say the left wants to suppress speech, the left wants to police speech, the left wants to limit this, that and the other thing. It is not happening. Now, when they give examples of when the left does it, it's often things like I said something transphobic on Twitter and people piled on and reported me and maybe Twitter banned me, or maybe I just was attacked on Twitter. That's a violation of my free speech. they like to say. But of course, the answer, the reality is no. That's your free speech coming up against other people's speech, which we call the consequences to your speech. Speech can have consequences. That is dramatically

different than banning books or limiting drag performances or whatever the case may be. So I'm with the right wingers in the sense that we are seeing a dramatic explosion of these attempts to censor and to control and to decide what others can say and what others can read and what others can do, including parents. They talk about parents rights. Parents rights are being curtailed by right wingers who say we know better than teachers or parents what children should be allowed to read or what sort of performances children should be allowed to go to. They are right that we are seeing a dramatic escalation in these efforts,

but they are the source of these escalations. So this is one of those situations where the left needs to be fighting for parents rights and speech rights and all of these things. But they need to be fighting for it against those who claim that it is the left that is perpetuating these elements. And it makes it very difficult because you get into this thing where the right will say, oh, well, but I thought you said there was no issue. I thought you said there was no issue with. Well, there is no issue from our side the way you claim. And it's similar to the 2020 election stuff. When people on the left say we need to make sure that in 2024 the election's not stolen, the right wingers will say that's what we're saying. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. The right wingers are the ones who are making the attempt to seat a

president in the White House who did not win. It is they who we need to be protected against. So let's not lose sight of the ball. Let's not be bamboozled by this alternate story that is being told by these folks. But let's remember that when they are aggressively saying the left is doing something, we should explore whether it is they that are actually doing that very thing. And in this case, it is exactly that. Marjorie Taylor Greene blurted out classified information at a public hearing, doubled down and said, I don't care. The public deserves to know this is someone who is on the Homeland Security Committee and she doesn't believe in the importance of confidentiality.

Let's take a look at a video clip in which you will see Marge divulging classified information at a hearing about the U.S. Mexico border. And you will see that when she is told this is not really the appropriate place to be talking about that, she says, I don't give a damn. My words, not hers. She uses other language. Take a look. Chief Ortiz, are you aware that there was an explosive device found by Border Patrol agents on January 17th in an area called No Man's Land? And there's surveillance of who put it there. And guess what? It wasn't Americans.

It was cartels. Are you aware of that? Thank you, Congresswoman. And good to see you again. I will tell you that some of this information that I receive, I receive in a confidential skiff, so I'm going to be a little hesitant of briefing what I know and what I don't know with respect to some of those, an event like that. I understand, Chief Ortiz, but I'm not going to be confidential because I think people deserve to know. Our

Border Patrol agents should not be in those type of burger patrol conditions where they are at risk of being blown to pieces by the cartels who, by the way, are criminals. She's not going to be confidential. She has just decided. Now we'll get to whether that's something she's allowed to do as a member of Congress. Seemingly doubling down on this, she then went to Twitter and posted, quote, If the device in question was just filled with sand, then why would Chief Ortiz tell me during his testimony that he was briefed about it in a skiff and couldn't comment on classified information, then turn around afterwards and tweet a picture of it claiming it was filled

with sand with thousands of people and huge amounts of drugs flooding across the border every day. They don't brief the chief of border patrol in a skiff about a ball of sand. They only brief us about dangerous things in classified briefings. So she seems to be acknowledging that it is up to her to decide what gets to stay classified and what doesn't. Now, a reasonable question when we say, how how does government function? And of course, if you want to know how government functions, you don't go to Marjorie Taylor Greene. She doesn't know. Do members of Congress have the you could call it the ability, the right. Are they are they allowed? Whatever term you want to use. Can she decide unilaterally what gets to remain confidential and what should be made public in this way? And the answer is, of course,

as I'm sure many of you suspect with better instincts than Marjorie Taylor Greene, the answer is no. Members of Congress do not have the ability or the authority to declassify classified information on their own during public hearings. It is important for responsible and sensible members of Congress to understand they may be able to discuss certain aspects of classified or confidential information they have seen, but they should be careful not to disclose anything that is still confidential or classified. They can discuss the general nature of classified information, but should not reveal specific details. And Marjorie Taylor Greene did everything in this moment that she is not authorized to do. If a member of the

House of Representatives wants to declassify information because they believe it is of public interest or believe it should be discussed in a public setting. The way Marge seems to believe they have a protocol and a series of procedures within the executive branch. You submit a request to the agency that originally classified the information or you petition the president for declassification. They claim to be about law and order. And then Marjorie Taylor Greene says, ah, I've decided I'm not going to be confidential about this. And she does it brazenly. And the saddest part about all of this is that her followers will defend anything she does in a vacuum. She and her followers are about law and order, and they will

say we're about law and order. That's why we're against Antifa, as they now call it. That's why we're against Hunter Biden. You know, you got to investigate Hunter Biden because of law and order. And they're all about law and order until all of a sudden law and order would say she's not supposed to be talking about this. And it's certainly not within her authority to disclose certain things during a public hearing. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. She's doing the people's work because she's being transparent

and she's informing us. Oh, well, what about her lack of transparency in this other area when it came to campaign finance? No, that's also OK there for her not to be transparent because the campaign finance rules are being weaponized against. They will always have some way to get around the principles that they claim to abide by law and order, fiscal conservatism, personal responsibility, low regulation until it conflict. Well, what about forcing Twitter to publish anti-vax stuff? You want to now get involved and say, Twitter, you must publish that that's against your principle of low regulation. Well, no, that's different because big tech,

free speech, censoring, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, OK. Every time you think you've got them because they violated one of their own stated principles, they just excuse their way out of it. This is the way that they operate. And that's how Marjorie Taylor Greene's followers are reacting to her just blurting out classified information and then saying, damn right I did, because the people deserve to know. If you are listening today and you'd like to see this clip of Marjorie Taylor Greene, I don't know why you would torture yourself like that. But if you did want to, we'll have the clip on our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash the David Pakman show. And we will also have it on the Spanish YouTube channel at David Pakman dot com

slash Spanish. I like wine, but I know very little about it and I am completely clueless when I go to a wine shop. I just don't know what I'm looking for. I don't know what I'm looking at. I couldn't tell you anything about varietals or if there's hints of persimmon or any of it. And so if you're like me wishing you had a seasoned expert by your side when you're choosing wine, crunchy red fruit is the answer. Crunchy red fruit delivers choice, hand handcrafted small production wines right to

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TV show, the radio show, the tick tocks, all of this stuff. We have a team and the primary funding source for all of that is direct member subscriptions. I love that we make all of this stuff available for free. I also love as we will talk about with David Sirota in a little bit, when we talk about how we fund what we do, we are mostly funded directly by the audience. The upside of this is there's no one company or person that can say we're shutting off the faucet unless you do X, Y, Z, because we spread out our support through our audience. No one entity can shut us down effectively.

The counterpoint to this is that sometimes people will email me and they'll say, David, I really didn't like what you said about whatever. I'm canceling my membership. Yes, we do have to deal with that, but we're in a position not to have to change what we do because we've upset anybody in particular leads to some awkward emails. I can tell you, uh, but I believe that it is the best way to fund the work that we do. You can sign up at join pacman.com. You we've got a long list of member benefits that you can read about there and you can use the coupon code 24 starts now to save

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going and make payroll, apparently with his 1500 employees, he had to take out a loan. Look at this about, I guess your loan, the loan you took out at, uh, at my pillow, people, people are all over you about this. Did he say the loan you took out at Mike pillow? Yeah, there last year, it actually was three separate loans and stuff as the machine companies continue to Sue us for, Oh my God, he's sue us for billions of dollars. And we had to borrow almost $10 million at MyPillow. We're a company. We're an employee-owned company.

It just baffles me, Steve. You've got all these companies, these machine companies out there, these voting machine companies that nobody even knew their name before, but everybody protects them. And yet you attack a USA company, my pillow and my employees. And it's just disgusting. Yeah. So apparently he's taking his anger out on the machine. We're doing a class action lawsuit against all machines. So listen, I've interviewed pillow a couple of of times and the last time he was on, I did ask him about the financial impact of this tomfoolery. And he told me I've spent about thirty five

million dollars. So when he told me thirty five million, I think he was talking about in quote, these were it's like, do words have meaning investigating, quote, voter fraud, as well as on lawyers and traveling around and all of this different stuff. He always had the choice to stop or never begin this stuff in the first place. It is totally on him and blaming others. Again, they espouse personal responsibility and then they blame others. In this case, he's blaming inanimate objects. He's blaming the machines. The real tragedy is that as a result of this nonsense, his fifteen hundred employees could end up out of jobs. I'm not gloating here.

It doesn't make me happy. I don't want people to lose their jobs or struggle to pay their bills. But this is the free market that they admire and get on their knees and pray at the altar of don't let them trick you. This had trouble written all over it when Pillow showed up at the White House. This was very early in COVID. I guess it would have been 20, 20, 20. Right. He showed up at the White House and said Trump was a gift from God as president or whatever it was that he said exactly. And we're going to be making masks at some of our pillow factories or whatever the promise was, by the way, did they ever make the masks? I don't know. I never heard about masks coming from pillows factory. And it's been downhill ever since. So it's not about who

fifteen hundred people might lose their jobs. It's about actions have consequences. And apparently the combination of him spending what a couple of months ago was already 35 million on this crusade to try to overturn an election that doesn't need to be overturned, combined with, I would guess, some deleterious impact on sales as a result of the fact that he has alienated at least half the country from ever buying his products. And to be honest, even some Republicans, I think now would say, I'm not that's the crazy pillow guy with the machines. I'm not buying up that pillow. I'll get a different pillow. How good could his pillow really be? And people write to me and say it's not actually that great. That is the impact. Those are the repercussions of what he did. Everyone allowed him to speak however he wanted.

And his speech included going on TV, making wild claims about the election, hiring lawyers, getting cyber guys, having his symposium, as he would call it. And now that had an impact in other people. They're speaking. And the way that some businesses have spoken, I forget which ones, but a bunch of retail stores said we don't want the pillows anymore. They spoke by saying we don't want to do business with you anymore. Everybody gets to speak. It's a beautiful thing. And the speech that you choose to engage in can have consequences. It's a sad thing, but it looks like my pillow may be going broke. Donald Trump is panicking and switching into horse face mode, referring to Stormy Daniels now exclusively as horse face. He used to first it was Stormy Daniels. Then it was Stormy horse face Daniels.

And now it is just horse face in a global humiliation of Trump panicking. I would say he's red in the face, but because he's so orange, you can't tell about the possibility that he may be indicted in connection with the entire Stormy Daniels affair. And it's it's an affair both in the sense that it is an incident and it is a it is an affair also in the sense that Trump had an affair with Stormy Daniels. Look at this insanity that happened this morning and over the last 24 hours with Donald Trump. This is a man who is not well, and he's arguably on the edge not only of major legal trouble, but he seems to be close to

a complete and total mental breakdown, panicking and furious about everything, even things he has misunderstood, which is really the summary of modern republicanism. We are furious about everything, even things he has misunderstood, which is really the summary of modern republicanism. We are furious about things we either misheard, misinterpreted or flat out don't understand. Take a look at this. Trump posting to Truth Social Central, quote, I did nothing wrong in the horse face. This is a former president. I did nothing wrong in the horseface case. This is a former president. I did nothing wrong in the horseface case. I see she showed up in New York today trying to drum up some publicity for herself. I haven't seen or spoken to her since I took a picture with her on a golf course in full golf gear, including a hat close to 18 years ago. I guess he's saying if he was wearing golf gear, including a hat close to 18 years ago.

I guess he's saying if he was wearing golf gear, they couldn't possibly have engaged in sexual intercourse. She knows nothing about me. Well, she actually seems to know some intimate things about Trump. She knows nothing about me other than her con man lawyer, Avanadi, misspelled and convicted liar and felon jailbird Michael Cohen may have schemed up, never had an affair with her. Just another false acquisition by a capital S sleazebag witch hunt. I assume Trump means a false accusation, but he called it an acquisition.

Can you imagine a guiltier sounding statement than this? I was wearing so many clothes around her that there's no way anything happened. And also her face is a horse face. So she's not attractive enough, I guess, for Trump to have had an affair with her. Now, the other thing a couple of people emailed me about is to what degree is Trump focusing on this term affair? Like in Trump's mind, maybe a fair means something different than an isolated sexual encounter. I don't know. I don't know whether there's some kind of technicality there. Trump continuing and then switching over to his other obsession, Ron DeSantis, saying, quote, In addition to wanting to cut Social Security and raise the minimum age to at least 70 and Medicare, Rhino Ron DeSantis is delivering the biggest insurance company bailout to globalist insurance companies

in history. He's also crushed Florida homeowners whose houses were destroyed in the capital H hurricane. They're getting pennies on the dollar. His insurance commissioner does nothing while Florida's lives are ruined. This is the worst capital I insurance, capital S scam in the entire capital C country. And then lastly, just hours ago, turning caps lock on and completely off the wall, posting, quote, the fake investigations by radical left Democrat prosecutors are nothing other than election interference into the politics of a failing nation. MAGA. Now, I want to try to be really crystal clear here. It is OK to acknowledge that there is a comedic element here. When you hear Trump, Trump, a trunk, when you hear Trump talk about Ron DeSantis and use the term horse face in a serious manner and all these things there, I understand that

there's a 76 year old man sort of like screaming at clouds with nicknames and insults. And he's he's dark orange and he's sweating and he's mistaking words and furious at whoever's running the teleprompter. Like I get there's a hugely comedic element here. But we also need to not allow the cartoonish comedy of it to get in the way of remembering that this man was president for four years. He had access to the most sensitive information. He had access, at least theoretically, to the nuclear nuclear codes and could have launched nuclear weapons. He was the head of state in the sense of running foreign policy for

a while, even though he understood nothing. That's not funny. And we don't want to let the humor of it. And I agree there's humor. It's OK to recognize the humor of it. And sometimes we recognize the humor so that we laugh instead of cry. I get it. We don't want to let that. Minimize the danger of this man in our minds. And Sam Harris recently spoke about this and whatever you think about Sam Harris, every once in a while, Sam Harris has extraordinarily prescient points. Sam Harris spoke about this recently. We can't let the humor get in the way of the fact that this is crazy and dangerous. All caps, horse face, the sanctus, all this difference. Yeah, OK, I get it. But this is a very dangerous person. And if he were to become president again, it would potentially be disastrous for the United States and for the

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It's great to welcome back to the program today, David Sirota, who is a journalist, columnist and founder and editor of the lever, which you can find at lever news dot com. It's been a little while since since we had you on and you've been busy, but it's really great to have you on. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks so much for having me. So, I mean, let's just kind of start start at the top here.

What was the goal with creating the lever? What are the issues in the media landscape that you're hoping to solve or improve upon or address? Sure. I mean, I had been working for Bernie Sanders as his speechwriter on the 2020 presidential campaign. But before that, I spent many years as a journalist. And after the campaign, I decided to do some writing. And, you know, I'd actually started out as a as just a small substack. But there was a lot of reader support for it. Uh, and so I teamed up with,

uh, a former, uh, a reporter that I had formerly worked with Andrew Perez, uh, to start doing some actual reporting. Uh, and from there it kind of grew, uh, and, and look, I think that what, what our focus is, what a lever story is, is a story that's about it's about following the money. It's about following the power. Our our mission is to actually change the conversation and change the policies in this country. So we don't pretend to just be, you know, reporting whatever is going on. Our reporting is accountability journalism

designed to hold politicians accountable when it comes to issues that deal with money and power. So, for instance, in the last month or so, we broke open the story of the deregulatory decisions that were made on rail safety in the lead up to the East Palestine, Ohio derailment. This week, we spent a lot of time breaking open stories about the regulatory decisions that were made to deregulate Silicon Valley Bank, what were the decisions made by politicians for which donors. So we are constantly asking the question, who are public officials actually serving? We are constantly spotlighting that. So with the idea that the more that the readership knows, the more that the readership can be engaged to actually pressure their lawmakers to do to make

better decisions. So how is this funded? Because one of the interesting things is particularly when the focus is to follow the money and to have accountability. My guess is you have to be particularly careful about following the money when it comes to your organization as well. Yeah, I mean, we're look, we're reader supported. We work with other media outlets like Jacobin, as an example, syndicates our work. Some of our work appears in The Guardian. So we have a kind of, I mean, we're small, right? So we're trying to build out, but we are a reader-supported news organization that holds them accountable, holds them being the proverbial them, meaning corporations, politicians and the like. And I think that what you'll see is, is that on our stories, one thing that I'm really proud of on our stories is I think when you read our stories, you don't have to trust us, right? Because what we do in every story, and we take a lot of time to do this, is to link to all of the primary sources in which we are referring

to. So I say this all the time. If you read one of our stories, oh, you know, Sirota's this, Sirota's that. Hey, listen, that's fine. You can believe whatever you want about me. The links to the source materials are all there for you to evaluate. I fully believe in, in, I don't even believe in trust, but verify. I believe first and foremost in verify. So when you read one of our stories, when you see it linked to all the, that source material, that's because we're trying to show the reader, Hey, listen, if you don't trust us about a statement, an assertion that we make here, a statement of fact that we make here, go make, you can go fact check us. I mean, we have a vigorous fact checking process in what we do. But that's the point here is that I think that we, in a lot of ways, in media, the media ecosystem

has gotten away from that, which has created an environment in which people can say, oh, that's, you know, quote unquote, fake news. So the way we combat that is to try to present all of our facts and be very open and transparent about that. So you can debate, you know, this or that about the writer or about the publication, but you can't debate the documents and facts. What are your thoughts on whether there can be other funding methods for organizations like yours or mine or larger media or whatever that you find journalistically ethical or kosher

or whatever word you might want to apply to it in the sense of if there's any kind of advertising, is that necessarily a problem or does it depend on the subject matter that is being covered and the types of products and services being advertised or like what other models are OK in your mind? It's a great question. I mean, to my mind, I am. Look, I am. We don't have corporate ads and the like, but I'm not a purist when it comes to this. I'm not a purist when it comes to foundation funding. I'm not a purist when it comes uh, getting, uh, resources to do public interest journalism, there is no public funding for that, uh, in any kind of institutional level. There is in a sense of crowdsourcing it, but that is a very, very tough, uh, tough road.

It's a worthwhile road. We, we are on that road as, as an, as an entity. So it's hard for me to create hard and fast rules other than to say this. I think being reader supported at some capacity is important. And having that be a major pillar of a media organization is extremely important for many reasons. One of which is you want to be serving a readership, uh, and at least have that be a, a, a huge pillar of what you are, who you are answering to for the resources to do journalism. I also think, uh, that, that, that having reader support, uh, is actually over the long haul, if you can do it, is actually more stable in the sense of a lot of small, comparatively small contributors becomes a more stable funding base than one or two or three huge funders or huge corporations that can wake up on a given day and just pull funding. Right. So I think there's a stability issue there. Yeah. One of the things about that that's interesting, which I've talked with my audience about, and I think most recently somewhere between

38 and 40 percent of our total revenue comes from direct subscriptions from people in the sort of style you're talking about is it's on the one hand of it, Bob and Brenda can directly support the work I'm doing rather than whoever else, corporate entity or whatever. On the other side of it, because Bob and Brenda are just two people who I love, Bob and Brenda are great. They're also not going to be able to get me to change what I'm doing with the threat that they will pull their five bucks a month. That's that's absolutely right. I mean, it's a kind of diversified portfolio model, which is which is what I like. And maybe the hard and fast rule is kind of this is that if you have a diversified funding base resource base that is not singularly reliant on any of the categories, that is, I think, the ideal.

I mean, the ideal ideal is to have it be purely individual, small subscription based to fund a giant newsroom. I don't think anybody has been able to do that yet. And maybe we're on our way to that. Who knows? But no one has, to my mind, has really been on our way to that. Who knows? But no one has has realized, to my mind, has really been able to do exactly that. So one level down from that is, OK, how can I put together some major donors, foundations, not nonprofit foundations, a subscription base so that so that the publication doesn't have to singularly answer to any one of those entities. That's about as

independent. I think that, I mean, that's pretty good. And again, I'm not, I'm not a purist on this. What, what I want to see, I mean, right now we live in a world of course, that's so far from pure. We live in a world where, where media is, is dominated by huge corporate entities with either, you know, uh, singular billionaires at the top of them, Bloomberg News and the like, or massive corporations that are making the decisions. Those aren't really diversified at all. It's very clear who they answer to. In fact, some of these publications put right underneath the top of their articles presented by Chevron. Right now, there's, you

know, I guess in some ways, kudos to them for at least being transparent about that. But they're also being explicit about who they actually serve. And I think ultimately you can see the independence of media by the content that the media is producing. I go back to what we produce. I don't think anybody could read what we do and say, oh, we go easy on this or that entity or this or that faction for this or that reason. I mean, we are trying to follow the money no matter where it goes. I mean, we have been critical of the Progressive Caucus at times. We have obviously been critical of the Republicans at times. We've been critical of, of, uh, corporate Democrats at times. And when I say we've been critical, what I mean is our

reporting is holding them accountable. It's not just us going out and saying, you know, they're jerks or whatever. It's us actually holding them accountable. And last thing on this, I think even though we have a lack of media literacy in in some senses in this country, a lot of media consumers intuitively can tell the difference between when Deepwater Horizon is going on. Anderson Cooper goes to a break and there's a BP ad right on the one hand. And then on the other hand, in an article that you do about the derailment, there might be you recommending a shaving razor or something like that. I think people would be able to distinguish which one is potentially directly

related to the stories that are being reported and how versus things that are not. That, that, that look, that, that's absolutely right. So, so when people ask me, you know, would you ever take, you know, advertising, whichever, you know, I'm like, well, would I ever take advertising from Chevron? No. Right. Like like that's problematic. So but but I think there's there's huge gradations. And I and I really I want to reiterate this. I, I, I, I truly don't think purity and I'm putting that in quotes is a way to look at this. If we want to build a, a healthy independent media in a country that does not offer institutional public funding for media, right? Uh, we're going to have to try to find models and formulas that allow us to do that. And that, and where it doesn't take 15 or 20 years

to build out fully a, a, an individual subscriber base that can support a 100, 200, 300 person newsroom like like climate change is not waiting for us to to do that. And and look, I'm really proud of the of the reader support that we have. I'm really encouraged by the grassroots reader support that other, uh, independent media like, like your show, like, uh, like other shows have been able to generate in recent years. It is a long, hard slog. It is inherently a long, hard slog. Uh, and, and we don't have time to wait. I was going to talk a little bit about sourcing, but I think it might be more interesting instead to get your thoughts about nuance maybe is the way I would put it. You know, one of the things that's really tough with stories

that are more complicated than the simplest of simplest stories, which is really most of them, is that oftentimes when you introduce nuance or you revise your views, you are potentially accused of either flip-flopping or you were originally lying or you're backpedaling or whatever the case may be. This comes up a lot of times with messages I get about COVID vaccines about, but David, you said one thing in 2021 and now you're saying something else and you have to sort of explain, well, listen, the vaccine in 2021, based on the variant that was out there, was very effective at preventing transmission and infection. The virus that is out there has changed. The vaccines have been updated and it is now more a tool for preventing death and hospitalization and not really a tool for preventing. Oh, so you're backpedaling.

What's the best way for people in my position or in your position to deal with this, bearing in mind that we always want to be communicating the best information we have at the time. And we want to be completely honest. But we also know that the appetite for nuance is maybe more limited than we would like it to be. That's a great that's a really, really great question. Well, first and foremost, I think we have to understand that there is a learning process, uh, that as we learn new information, uh, conclusions will change. I mean, that's, that, that, that's part of the human experience. Uh, anybody who, who doesn't want to learn new information and thus change conclusions is, I mean, you're, you're heading straight into denialism, right. So I don't think it's I don't think media should

participate in any kind of denialism at all. I think I think the other point about this is to is actually to what we try to do in our reporting. I always say this to my reporters is to state what we know as a fact right now. Don't foreclose on the idea that the facts in the future can change, but also don't say things that are not grounded in facts that can't be verified. So, you know, did X lead to Y? Did this deregulation lead to this disaster? You can only really say that if you can prove it. But you can say these senators or these lawmakers ignored warnings

about this outcome to cast votes for that kind of deregulation. And then this happened right now. So my point is, is that that's a nuance, but it's, it's an important point. As long as you're saying what can be factually verified, I think that's the obligation. And the, I mean, that is the job of journalism is to say what we know to be true without speculating or extrapolating. It's when you get into extrapolating ahead in the future, uh, that it becomes problematic. Then it can become, I mean, I hate this term, but then it can become successful, susceptible to the charge of quote unquote fake news. Nothing is fake news.

If you're stating in this document or on this day, this thing happened and you can pretend it didn't happen. But that's like pretending the sky isn't blue. That's to me the the role of the journalist. Yeah. And to stick with the covid examples, that was frequently it came up when people would call me about hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin or whatever. And it's I'm not going to say this does not work. What I can tell you is we don't have the type of evidence now that medical science requires to say that it works. Could that evidence be presented in the future from a study that hasn't yet been done? Sure. But of course, again, it's all about whether the audience you have is receptive to that. And I think part of hopefully

what we are doing is cultivating such an audience that understands those those nuances. Absolutely. And I think I think that's actually part of I mean, there's kind of like what we're doing on a day to day basis, reporting a story on Silicon Valley Bank, reporting a story on the decisions in the lead up to the East Palestine disaster. But I think over the long haul, what we're also doing, what independent media is doing, is saying that media needs to go back. Not that everything was better before, but there needs to be a reconnection with the idea that media's job is to hold accountable those of all parties without regard to party, without regard to kind of tribal politics.

We're going to hold people accountable to the facts as we know them now. And if the facts change in the future or there's new facts that arise, we're going to report on those two. We've been speaking with David Sirota, who's founder and editor of the lever. You can find more at Lever News dot com. Always appreciate your time and insights. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.

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considered more of a technical thing than any real desire to actually run in 2024 in order to keep his I believe it's his campaign fund going or there was some sort of technical finance reason why he did that. Let's start with the first story. George Santos is now accused of orchestrating a credit card skimming operation, credit card skimming operation, which schemed to steal information from ATM and credit cards. This is according to a sworn statement from a former roommate of his obtained by Politico. The declaration from this man who said he met Santos when he rented a room in Florida from the now congressman states he was accused of a federal

crime of credit card fraud in 2017 and pleaded guilty. The man Trela, who's from Brazil, served seven months in prison and was then deported. His attorney sent the letter to the FBI U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York and Secret Service in New York on Wednesday. Trella said Santos was known to him as Anthony DeVolder, another name tied to Santos. He added that he learned from Santos how to clone ATM and credit cards after he started renting the room from him. Quote, Santos taught me how to skim card information and how to clone cards. He gave me all the material and taught me how to put skimming devices and cameras on ATM machines. He said

Santos had a warehouse in Orlando, Florida. This is if this is true, this is a professional criminal. I really want people to understand that this is a professional criminal. If this is true, Santos had a warehouse in Orlando that housed materials such as printers, blank ATM and credit cards that could be painted and engraved with stolen account and personal information. The way this kind of works and sometimes you hear there's these like scarce things about this, but this stuff does exist. You can put a device on top of an ATM. This rarely would happen if you go to like a Wells Fargo ATM inside. You know, you have to swipe your use your ATM card just to even get in and all that. It's unlikely this would happen there. But I'm sure many of you are familiar with these kind of

like lower end ATMs where you might go to like a cash only dive bar and they go cash only. And you're like, I don't have any cash. And they go ATM right there. Those types of ATMs in the corner of a bar, for example, and others are the more likely ATMs to be targeted by this sort of thing. And sometimes what happens is they put a device on top of where you would insert or swipe your card. And when you do that, it gathers the information and then you type in your pin and there might be a camera where they take up. They see you typing the pin or maybe the device itself. There's different versions of this, but it's usually those types of independent ATMs in general at a mall, potentially, et cetera. I've at least not

heard of it happening like at a bank ATM. Anyway, the idea here is that he was installing these things. Trellis said he went to Seattle, began to steal credit card information from ATM terminals with the deal that the profits would be split between he and Santos. He decried that Santos threatened his friends after he was arrested to not tell authorities that Santos was actually the one in charge. Trella claimed Santos stole the money he collected for his bail. He said he has other witnesses who can back it all up. This is a sworn statement, a sworn statement. So this is the latest scandal involving George Anthony Devolder Santos.

This is not surprising. Like he's a lying fraudster in many ways. And so committing actual criminal fraud would not come as a surprise to me at all. There seems to be something kind of compulsive about it. Compulsive lying is when you just you you just make up lies on the spot. It's not even clear why you're lying about this stuff. And it seems as though he may have some kind of compulsion to fraud and criminality of different kinds. He's really the epitome of the MAGA candidate, right? Make America grift again, just a liar and a fraudster all the way through. As a reminder,

how can a sitting member of the House be removed? There aren't too many ways. Either the House of Representative votes to expel him with a two thirds vote. Very, very rare, usually only when there is like conviction on criminal activity and then failure to be reelected, which you can't really take action on until 2024. So that's where we are right now on Santos. And it doesn't end there. I'm going to be honest with you. I don't even totally understand this story fully yet. It appears as though George Anthony Devolder Santos, lying Republican congressman, brokered the sale of a 19 million dollar yacht. What I know it just it doesn't make any sense. But this is now the latest bizarre thing involving this guy. The New York Times reports that just before his House election, Santos helped two of his largest donors reach

a private deal on a 19 million dollar luxury yacht. This has captured the attention of federal and state authorities that are investigating Santos. The sale was not previously reported is one of about a dozen different leads being pursued by the FBI, the US Attorney's Office in Brooklyn and the Nassau County District Attorney's Office. Prosecutors and FBI agents have sought in recent weeks to question the new new owner of the 141 foot superyacht, Raymond Tantillo, a Long Island auto dealer, about the boat and his dealings with Santos and his fundraising efforts.

Tantillo bought the boat from Myra Ruiz, a Republican donor in Miami. Santos negotiated the payment. What the hell is going on? The payment was twelve and a quarter million up front and six and a half million more in installments and advised the two of the logistics of turning over the yacht. This took place just a few weeks before the election. What? It's not clear what laws, if any, were broken. Several election law experts say that if the sale was designed to inject money into Santos's campaign, it may violate federal law governing caps on campaign contributions. It would also could be illegal if Santos tied any commission he received on the sale to previous or future donations.

Even if no laws were broken, it is more evidence of an emerging narrative of people in his orbit that Santos used his campaign not only to win, but also as a networking exercise to ingratiate himself with rich donors and to enrich himself himself through a lawyer representing him in potential criminal matters. Santos has declined to comment, but denied wrongdoing. This is crazy. And of course, the biggest story is this paragraph right here, a central mystery. Like there's a bigger story here about the money with Santos. A central mystery, writes The New York Times, is Santos's sudden unexplained jump in income and where he got the money to loan him loan himself about seven hundred thousand dollars

for the 2022 campaign. In 2020, he reported an income of fifty five thousand. Two years later, he reported a salary of three quarters of a million and over a million in dividends from his company, the Florida based Devolder organization. DeSanto, DeSantos. Santos described it as a capital introduction into the business. This is this is really crazy. Oh, one other element here. Santos said publicly that his company brokered deals between high net worth clients in an interview with Semaphore in December. He explained his work saying if a client wants to sell a plane or boat, he puts a feeler out there,

adding that he's landed some million dollar contracts. If you're looking at a 20 million dollar yacht, my referral fee there can be anywhere between 200 and 400 thousand dollars. It turns out that he did deal in a yacht worth almost 20 million dollars. This is just a really sketchy guy, compulsive liar, drawn to behavior that is at minimum on the edges of legal. And we'll find out potentially actually against the law. I told you weeks ago, we are not at the end of the George Santos stories. And clearly we are not at the end of the George Santos stories. And clearly we are not at the end of the

George Santos stories. You want to see what happens when your brain gets infected by MAGA brain worms. Well, I have a voicemail for you today. It's been a while since we did one like this. We have a voicemail number. That number is two one nine two David P. Here is a caller suffering from very severe MAGA brain worms, a sad condition. I don't think ivermectin or hydroxy will cure it. Hey, Mr. David White, Gil's Pac-Man libtard. So that's Mr. David White, guilt Pac-Man libtard. I know it was hard to hear. It sounded like white Gert, but that's what he said. I can't wait till we get a tax in California or New York or Florida. So you can. So all the men can say that they're all females. As soon as we get

attacked. Right. And then no, all the men will say they are females when they get attacked so they don't have to serve in the military. But as far as I knew, women did serve in the military. You're going to be able to fight because everyone's a female using your logic because you're a white guilt. Libtard. So interestingly, a lot of my haters say I'm not white because I'm Jewish. This is a really interesting thing, actually. There is disagreement on whether Jews are white because the right wing neo-Nazis love to say no, no, no, no, no. Jews are not white.

But the right wingers who don't like Jews because Jews generally are quite progressive, one of the most progressive voting blocs, love to say Jews are just privileged white guilt, white people. I don't understand. Oh, I can't wait. Yeah, that's what it's going to take for libtards like you. You guys are going to. Oh, it's going to take a attack on the homeland for you guys to realize that the genders are going to go into their actual roles. Men are going to be men. Women are going to be women. It's going to take that only for you white, you know, libtards that are ruining the world. I try to socially engineer everyone. Oh God, it's going to be, Oh, it's going to be next level. All right. So this guy seems very excited about an attack on the homeland that he believes is coming. I don't know how you cure that. I'm not even going to weigh in.

I don't know how you cure that. We have a great bonus show today. I won't even tell you what's on it because it's so explosive, but I hope you'll join me. You can sign up at join pacman.com and you will instantly, instantly get access to the bonus show.