Latest / The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson / The DNC Debt Story That Vanished from Apple News & the Liberal Media

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The DNC Debt Story That Vanished from Apple News & the Liberal Media · The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: There's a question that we've been talking about a lot
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: here on the show, and that is just how much
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: of an impact does big tech have specifically on the
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: elections when it comes to conservative candidates or hiding news
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: that may be damaging to Democrats so voters don't know
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: about it. Now, you put those two things together and, yeah,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: you can have an awful lot of influence on the
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: election if you think about it from that perspective. Well,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: now we've got new information and it all deals with
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: the midterm elections that are happening right now. When you
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  Speaker 1: combine this new info with the research that we've already
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: seen about Republican fundraising emails and how they've been put
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: into spam folders, that is having a massive impact on
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: not raising money. Because think about it. If you get
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: an email asking you to give money to conservative cause
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  Speaker 1: or candidate and it goes into your spam folder, you're
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: way less likely to ever see it, meaning you're way
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: less likely to ever give. Well, big tech quietly is
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  Speaker 1: putting the thumb on the political scales at a level
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: we never could have imagined. The Media Research Center has
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  Speaker 1: just released an analysis. They are now accusing Apple News
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  Speaker 1: of effectively blacking out one of the most damaging stories
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: surrounding the Democratic Party heading into the midterms. The Democratic
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: National Committee's serious financial problems should be a top story.
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  Speaker 1: But it's nowhere to be found. Yeah. Now, the financial
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  Speaker 1: problems are documented in federal campaign finance records. And according
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: to the Federal Election Commission, as of June 30th of
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  Speaker 1: this year, the DNC reported having just 16.3 million in
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  Speaker 1: cash on hand while carrying an 18 and a half
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  Speaker 1: million dollar debt. Now, you compare that to the Republicans.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: The Republican National Committee has 128.5 million in cash and
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  Speaker 1: zero debt. And what does that mean? It means the
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: RNC has nearly eight times as much on hand as
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: the DNC. And we've known this for a while, which
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: is why the story becomes really interesting. This financial situation
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: has become so serious, apparently, that the DNC used its
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  Speaker 1: Washington headquarters as collateral for a $ 15 million loan. The
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  Speaker 1: DNC has pointed out that using its building as collateral
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  Speaker 1: isn't unprecedented, they claim. And Democrats, they go, well, they've
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  Speaker 1: done it before with previous lines of credit, so this
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: is not a big deal. Everybody calm down, right? Well,
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  Speaker 1: it's newsworthy, and the media knows this, and so does
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  Speaker 1: Apple News. In fact, even the liberal Washington Post covered
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  Speaker 1: the story. They understood how significant it was. The New
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: York Times, by the way, also covered the DNC's internal
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  Speaker 1: financial problems. Even ABC News covered the donor frustrations. politico
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: they covered it the guardian they covered it the wall
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  Speaker 1: street journal has a report on major democratic donors pulling
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  Speaker 1: back now this again is a story that even the
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: left is covering in the media so what did apple
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  Speaker 1: news do well according to the media research center you
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  Speaker 1: could apparently consume the most prominent stories apple news was
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  Speaker 1: serving its users day after day and never see this
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  Speaker 1: story break through MRC says its researchers examined the top
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  Speaker 1: 20 stories that were promoted by Apple News at approximately
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: 8.30 every morning from January the 1st through September the 28th.
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  Speaker 1: They searched for coverage involving the DNC, involving their fundraising,
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  Speaker 1: involving their debt, involving the FEC in related terms. Their conclusion?
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  Speaker 1: Not one story about the Democratic National Committee's financial crisis
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  Speaker 1: ever appeared among those top 20 stories during the period
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  Speaker 1: that they monitored from January 1 through September the 28th.
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  Speaker 1: MRC says it identified 78 stories elsewhere dealing with the
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  Speaker 1: DNC's financial troubles, including stories from publications Apple News regularly
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  Speaker 1: promotes on their front page. Yet none of those financial
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: stories made the top 20 at all in their snapshots. Now,
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  Speaker 1: MRC also said it also seems to establish that Apple News, well,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: was pretty clear. They're serving up news that they want
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  Speaker 1: you to read and anything that they don't like, like
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: the DNC being out of money. or having real problems,
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  Speaker 1: we'll just move that, well, to the back of the
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  Speaker 1: office and you'll never see it. Now, this does have
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  Speaker 1: a big impact on the 2026 elections because you're dealing
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  Speaker 1: with stories Americans see and they see them almost every
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  Speaker 1: day on their smartphones. That is power. And if you
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: don't tell them about what's happening with the Democratic National Committee,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: you may not realize there is a real problem with
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  Speaker 1: their messaging. or a big civil war going on between
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: the Democratic Socialists of America and the traditional Democratic Party,
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  Speaker 1: and that's what we see right now. Now, researchers also said,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: from not only the University of Iowa and the University
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: of Alabama, they studied what happened when political fundraising emails
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  Speaker 1: are sent through major email providers, and their paper examined
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  Speaker 1: two episodes during 2025, and what they found also deserves
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  Speaker 1: enormous attention. According to research, during one 78-day period, Gmail, Outlook,
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  Speaker 1: and Yahoo routed emails containing WinRed donation links. Now, that's
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  Speaker 1: the Republican fundraising platform to spam folders while otherwise identical
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  Speaker 1: emails containing Democrat Act blue links were reaching your inbox. Now,
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  Speaker 1: what does that mean? Well, Same basic email. Change the
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  Speaker 1: fundraising destination from a conservative to a liberal or a
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  Speaker 1: liberal to conservative. And then what happens? Well, big tech
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  Speaker 1: decided if it's a Republican fundraising email, it goes towards
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  Speaker 1: your spam folder. And if it's a Democratic fundraising email,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: that reaches your inbox right there at the top. The
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  Speaker 1: researchers also said a separate Outlook episode. and attempted to
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  Speaker 1: measure what this actually means in dollars. And their estimates, well,
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  Speaker 1: they were staggering. The New York Post, now reporting on
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  Speaker 1: the research, said that the researchers estimate that Republicans lost
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  Speaker 1: roughly $ 117 million in potential donations during the two periods
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  Speaker 1: they analyzed. They said more than 142,000 estimated first-time donations
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  Speaker 1: were lost. Now, I'm going to say that number again
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  Speaker 1: so you understand just how big of an impact big
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  Speaker 1: tech is having on this election. Big tech was able
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  Speaker 1: to make $ 117 million disappear. Now, this wasn't merely an
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  Speaker 1: academic discussion about whether somebody's email ended up in the
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  Speaker 1: promotions folder. No. political campaigns live on fundraising, they were
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  Speaker 1: getting the raw data. And fundraising pays for television advertising.
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  Speaker 1: By the way, that same fundraising pays for digital advertising.
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  Speaker 1: It pays for staff. It pays for voter registration drives.
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  Speaker 1: It pays for field offices. It pays for get out
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  Speaker 1: the vote operations. It pays for the mail that comes
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  Speaker 1: to your house. It pays for everything required to actually
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: win an election. And what big tech did was they said, hey,
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: if we send out the emails, fine. But do we
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  Speaker 1: have to send their emails? actual email box? Or should
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  Speaker 1: we put all these Republican fundraisers in spam and then
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  Speaker 1: we can watch them underperform by $ 117 million? That is shocking. Now,
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  Speaker 1: the researchers, by the way, looked at just how big
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  Speaker 1: of a disparency there was between the two. And one
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: thing is clear. If you're a radical leftist advocating for
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: the radical left and trying to raise money, your email
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  Speaker 1: is not going to spam. At 2022, by the way,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: North Carolina State University study famously found that Gmail sent 77%
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  Speaker 1: of right-wing candidate emails in its experiment to spam, compared
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: with just 10% of left-wing candidates in the same time period.
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  Speaker 1: Outlook and Yahoo showed bias in the opposition direction in
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: that study, they said. And the researchers said in that study,
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: it was very clear that there were efforts by the
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  Speaker 1: companies to influence voters. Google, of course, strongly disputed the
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: methodology and conclusions surrounding that research. And guess who reported
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: on that? You guessed it, The Washington Post. But here's
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: why all the new research matters. We're no longer just
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: talking about theoretical differences in where emails land. Researchers are
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: now trying to quantify the financial consequences and their estimates
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  Speaker 1: are in the nine figures. So put these two stories together.
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  Speaker 1: On one side, you have the Media Research Center saying
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  Speaker 1: Apple News failed to prominently feature stories exposing the Democratic
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: National Committee's major financial problems. On the other side, you
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: have an academic researcher, or I should say researchers, from
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  Speaker 1: two prominent American universities, finding episodes where Republican fundraising emails
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: linked to, again, WinRed, were disproportionately routed to spam, with
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: an estimated loss of $ 117 million in fundraising. $ 117 million
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  Speaker 1: is the difference many times between winning a national election
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  Speaker 1: and losing a national election. Are you connecting the dots?
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  Speaker 1: Listen to what I'm telling you here, because not only
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  Speaker 1: do these two story affect information, it also affects voter turnout.
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  Speaker 1: And this money that they didn't get to raise because
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: the emails are going to spam was money that would
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  Speaker 1: have been used to get out the vote for conservative candidates. Now,
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  Speaker 1: both of these powerful technology companies are clearly standing between
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  Speaker 1: political organizations and and the American citizens. And that's the
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  Speaker 1: bigger story here. Big tech doesn't have to delete a
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  Speaker 1: story to diminish its impact. It now simply can make
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  Speaker 1: the story harder to discover for you to find it.
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  Speaker 1: And an email doesn't have to be banned. It can
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  Speaker 1: simply land somewhere most people never look, their spam folders.
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  Speaker 1: And that's why this story and transparency matters. Because an
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  Speaker 1: Apple editor deciding what appears at the top of Apple
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  Speaker 1: News can literally daily influence millions of people into believing
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  Speaker 1: what is important and what is real and what is
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  Speaker 1: not real or what is happening and what's not happening.
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  Speaker 1: And an email algorithm deciding whether a political fundraising appeal
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  Speaker 1: lands in your inbox or your spam folder can determine, well,
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  Speaker 1: whether you ever see it and the actual outcome of
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  Speaker 1: a future election. And that's why they're doing it. All
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  Speaker 1: of these decisions made by the radical left were done
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  Speaker 1: for one reason, to win an election and to control
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  Speaker 1: the outcome of an election. This is a massive disadvantage
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  Speaker 1: if you're a conservative. It's a massive advantage if you're
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  Speaker 1: on the liberal side of things. And Americans, by the way,
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  Speaker 1: have every right to demand answers about how these decisions
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  Speaker 1: are being made. And with the midterm elections approaching, this
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  Speaker 1: isn't an abstract debate anymore about Silicon Valley. This is
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: about political power. Now, the DNC entered the summer with
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  Speaker 1: 18.5 million in debt, 16.3 million in cash. The RNC
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  Speaker 1: had 128.5 million and no debt. Those are the facts.
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  Speaker 1: Americans deserve to know them. And Americans also deserve to
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  Speaker 1: have confidence that when they voluntarily subscribe to any type
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: of political communication or choose to support a candidate or
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: a technology company that is out there that's trying to
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  Speaker 1: act like their big brother or picking and choosing winners,
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  Speaker 1: they should stay out of it because they shouldn't be
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  Speaker 1: able to stand between you and your choice and who
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  Speaker 1: you support. And by the way, this goes on both
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: sides of the aisle. But then again, this is big tech, right?
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  Speaker 1: This is exactly what they want to do. They want
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  Speaker 1: to tell you who to vote for, and they want
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  Speaker 1: to tell you who's good, and they want to tell
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  Speaker 1: you who's evil, and they want to control your inbox.
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  Speaker 1: And now we know that not only was Apple News
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  Speaker 1: controlling what news stories you saw on your phone, but
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  Speaker 1: they were also, big tech, controlling exactly where your money
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  Speaker 1: may have gone or not gone by making sure that
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  Speaker 1: when conservatives asked you for help, you never knew they asked.