Right-wing media is melting down today over the erroneous idea that Politico is secretly funded by USAID. Here's the backstory:

-Politico missed payroll yesterday because of a tech issue.
-MAGA supporters took that as proof that Politico is secretly bankrolled by USAID, whose programs have been suspended by Trump.
-They seized on USASpending.gov pages showing the entire US gov paid Politico $8.2 million last year, wrongly assuming all that money came from USAID alone.
-That money appears to be for Politico Pro subscriptions, which cost thousands of dollars a year. Nonetheless! Lots of MAGA personalities still mad, now Dana Loesch wants a protest at Politico's office.


The irony here is that Benny Johnson, a key popularizer of this secret Politico funding theory, actually was himself secretly and illegally paid millions of dollars by the Russian government. He claims he didn't know the money was from Russia. washingtonpost.com/style/media/20…

This indictment alleges that right-wing commentators like Dave Rubin, Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, and Lauren Southern — as part of the "Tenet Media" YouTube channel — have been unwittingly working for a Russian influence operation.

https://x.com/TheJusticeDept/status/1831395283806089487

Two people described in the Tenet indictment as unnamed "founders" were very aware their operation was funded by Russians.

Tenn. biz records list Tenet's founders as BlazeTV host and TPUSA contributor Lauren Chen aka "Roaming Millennial," and her husband.

Lots of big revelations coming out tonight in the exhibits to Dominion's lawsuit against Fox News.

Days before Jan. 6, Tucker Carlson wrote in a text message exchange about Trump: "I hate him passionately" and "I truly can't wait" to ignore him. The exhibits include hot new details on the source of the Dominion hoax, a woman who believes herself a ghost who was "internally decapitated" in a car accident.

She claims Scalia was killed during a human hunting expedition, and advises Powell not to join that hunting club

This filing in the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News is one of the most remarkable documents I've ever seen. Filled with private texts between Fox stars like Hannity and Carlson, plus Murdoch, all admitting they knew Fox's stolen election claims were lies. int.nyt.com/data/documentt… The texts show Fox trapped in a dilemma of its own making, afraid to admit the election was honest bc they'll lose viewers to Newsmax. Tucker rages and tries to get Fox reporter @JacquiHeinrich fired after she admits the election wasn't stolen.

We have a big story today on Eliza Bleu, the self-proclaimed trafficking victim who's been embraced by Elon Musk and right-wing stars like Tim Pool.

Now Bleu's own friends say the details of her trafficking stories don't make sense.

Thread:

thedailybeast.com/eliza-bleus-ow… Eliza Bleu has told grim stories of her life, claiming she was addicted to meth and forced to live in a gang-land apartment by a high profile athlete. But Bleu's former friends aren't buying it: “That is so not true. She lived in a really cute apartment." thedailybeast.com/eliza-bleus-ow…

There's a big feud breaking out tonight between two of the biggest names in right-wing media. It pits Steven Crowder against Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire, all over a $50 million offer for Crowder that he found so offensive he leaked the terms of the offer. Yesterday, Crowder—newly independent and trying to build his own media company—released the terms of the deal without naming DW. Crowder made this out to be a big whistleblower moment, urging his fans to fight "Big Con" (and join his email list, ofc).

https://twitter.com/scrowder/status/1615417809529614336

Kanye's InfoWars appearance is starting off great. There's an interesting thing going on with the Kanye saga where these hucksters with big personalities rightly see him as a clout bonanza, but he doesn't let anyone talk — to the extent that he started his InfoWars appearance yelling at people off-camera to stop talking.

QAnon believers say they're fighting a pedophile cabal.

Today, I've got a story on a leading Q promoter whose ill-advised defamation lawsuit against a local paper revealed his own criminal relationship and sexually charged text messages with a teenager.

thedailybeast.com/qanon-leader-p… QAnon conspiracy theorist Phil Godlewski has made a lot of money from QAnon and a related multilevel marketing scheme. Earlier this year, he bought a house worth nearly $2 million. But Godlewski has a secret: a decade-old conviction for corrupting a minor. thedailybeast.com/qanon-leader-p…

Kanye has stormed out of his Tim Pool interview tonight after just 20 minutes, after Pool offered him the slightest pushback to his anti-Semitism. With Nick Fuentes, Milo, and Kanye calling off the interview and leaving the studio, Tim Pool is left to consider the ruins of his much-hyped show tonight: "It was all hype, and then all nothing.”

Remember the doctor's group pushing ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as Covid cures?

I've got a story today on where the money they earned — at least $10 million — went. It involves a mansion, a $100K private jet trip, and an underwear model. thedailybeast.com/covid-misinfor… The group, America's Frontline Doctors, and its founder Dr. Simone Gold shot onto the scene in mid 2020 after they endorsed HCQ for Covid. They met with Mike Pence and had a big event in DC — you might remember it because the "demon sperm" doctor was part of their group.

The Sandy Hook jury verdict is in for the Alex Jones - InfoWars trial in Connecticut, and it's looking enormous. One plaintiff alone is getting $120 million. The massive judgments in the Sandy Hook case against Alex Jones coming in. We're several plaintiffs in, and by my count we're at roughly $761 million in damages demanded from Jones and InfoWars.

Trump is really stepping his QAnon outreach — last night he posted a video filled with overt QAnon memes on TruthSocial. This new video might be the most red-pilled QAnon content Trump has ever posted, which is saying something. Filled with references to military tribunals, pedophiles, Satanists, and Punisher skulls.

Could be a big night for far right activist Laura Loomer. With 36 percent of votes cast, she’s ahead in a House primary by 2.5 percent over the longtime incumbent. If she wins she’ll almost certainly win in the general — meaning America gets Rep. Loomer. It's hard to stress how disruptive Laura Loomer would be in Congress, both to the body and the GOP caucus. She would make Marjorie Taylor Greene look like a team player. She recently said Guantanamo Bay was "too good" for Kevin McCarthy.

These text messages between Ginni Thomas, the wife of Clarence Thomas, and Mark Meadows are truly revealed. They reveal that Ginni Thomas is into some heavy-duty QAnon stuff! washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/… Here are some of the QAnon references Ginni Thomas was making. This idea of watermarked ballots being used to catch Democratic voter fraud is big in QAnon, but I'm especially interested in her idea of military "white hats" (in other words, good guys). That's a key QAnon phrase.

The world of QAnon has erupted in civil war after QAnon hero Michael Flynn was caught on tape calling QAnon "nonsense." thedailybeast.com/qanon-hero-mic… As proof that QAnon failed, Michael Flynn has been passing around a blog post from a white supremacist radio host that calls for "mass slaughter." thedailybeast.com/qanon-hero-mic…

Quick thread about this video I took shortly before the Capitol riot, since Proud Boys leaders like Gavin McInnes are now claiming the guys in orange hats aren't Proud Boys.

https://twitter.com/willsommer/status/1346861594559582210

Whether the guys in orange are Proud Boys has suddenly become a very relevant issue to PB leadership after the WSJ reported that a group of people in orange hats — whether the same people or not — helped set off the first attacks on the capitol.

I’m covering today’s Trump protests in DC, where thousands are already in the streets. Many protesters today see today as a kind of climactic battle for America, and there has been a lot of talk about bringing guns or attacking police. My first dispatch from today’s Trump protests is live. So far, every protester I’ve talked to has raised the prospect of violence / another civil war if Trump doesn’t win today. thedailybeast.com/desperate-maga…

Today’s pro-Trump rally in DC has kicked off with a guy who rewrote Folsom Prison Blues to be about Parler. Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio appears to have been invited to the White House. Pic from his Parler account this morning.

Pro-Trump lawyer Lin Wood kicks off his latest "voter fraud" press conference by attacking George Soros: "Get out of country, George Soros!" Now Lin Wood saw a guy wearing a coonskin cap in the crowd. Wood picked it up and waved it, to the crowd's great delight.

I'm reading Sidney Powell's much-hyped "kraken" legal filing. So far, she misspells her key expert's name twice — his name is William Briggs, she calls him "Williams Briggs" and "William Higgs." These are the first lines of Sidney Powell's "kraken" lawsuit that Trump supporters have been claiming would save his presidency, not looking great. The rest is just rehashed witness affidavits, including one that claims the ballot paper was suspiciously clean.

Thousands of Trump supporters are here in DC for the “Million MAGA March.” So far I’ve seen plenty of Proud Boys, QAnon supporters, and admiring references to Kyle Rittenhouse. The Million MAGA March speakers got a little boring, so Alex Jones and a phalanx of Proud Boys kicked off the march to the Supreme Court early.