Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / PREMIUM: "Russia's Useful Idiots: Dave Rubin, Tim Pool, Uh-Oh" with Ross Anderson

Transcript

PREMIUM: "Russia's Useful Idiots: Dave Rubin, Tim Pool, Uh-Oh" with Ross Anderson · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Good day, humans. Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas. One idea that's particularly
• 0:08
  dangerous at the moment is the idea that much of what we consume in the alternative media
• 0:14
  landscape is actually manipulated and in some cases funded by people who want our countries
• 0:20
  to unravel, who want us to be at each other's throats, who want us to self-destruct, who
• 0:26
  want us to dismantle the institutions and the international agreements that have kept the
• 0:31
  peace since the Second World War. That is the allegation basically that the US Department of
• 0:37
  Justice made when it released information about an investigation that it had into the way that Russia
• 0:44
  was funding certain online commentators and podcasters through pretty shoddly setup shell companies
• 0:53
  in the United States. Ross Anderson is a journalist who has covered many of these individuals for
• 1:00
  quite some time. He's the life editor at the spectators world edition. He's a columnist at the
• 1:05
  New York Sun. He's a young guy, fascinating guy. He's been on the show before. He really has his
• 1:11
  finger on the pulse of the alternative media ecosystem and some of the grifters who you will find
• 1:15
  therein. He had a podcast called arguably that's worth checking out and you can find out more of
• 1:20
  his find more of his work at that Rosschap.com. That's that Rosschap.com. He has a piece coming out
• 1:27
  about this fiasco shortly and you'll be able to find it there. But this is a fascinating dive
• 1:33
  into exactly how this scam worked and what it can tell us about the influence of foreign
• 1:38
  governments and our enemies on the information that we consume. Enjoy as much as I did. One of only
• 1:45
  Ross's innocent. So, Russia is doing things. Surprise, surprise. Who would have thought? I'm not
• 1:52
  surprised that Russia is doing hooks. This is Russia gate part two. What? So most people will have
• 1:59
  heard about the existence of this news story. But can you tell us what is alleged and what we know
• 2:06
  precisely? Yeah, sure. So on September 4th, DOGA basically had an indictment about
• 2:13
  Russian, Russian influence operation. The details were extensive but anonymous and it was pretty
• 2:22
  clear that it was about a ten, it said it was about a Tennessee based company that two Russian
• 2:27
  nationals had been using who were associated with RT had been funding $10 million through as a
• 2:32
  sort of Russian influence operation through the American media. Now, RT was Russia today. But
• 2:37
  Russia today doesn't exist anymore or it does. I thought it went over. Russia today is still
• 2:42
  cheerfully going along. Still, you know, so for a good lesson, I just can get reliable news there.
• 2:48
  No. But that is a, that is a state. I love enough to remember a time when people really genuinely
• 2:54
  believe that Russia today was a legitimate alternative source of news. I mean, I suppose some people
• 2:59
  still do. But like when I worked at Huffpost Live, one of my co-hosts had come from Russia today
• 3:06
  and she has done a really good job of sort of reckoning morally with that and unfortunately,
• 3:12
  has had a personal falling out with her mother who is in Russia still and who is a Putin apologist.
• 3:17
  But like at the time, it was considered to be like, you know, just an alternative source of
• 3:23
  news and information from the corporate captured American mainstream press.
• 3:28
  Yeah, and I mean, I mean, I think Russia today has the unique aspect that it's in natively in
• 3:34
  English. Like I mean, Russians obviously aren't native English speakers but RT broadcast
• 3:39
  primarily their content is primary in English. This is unlike like Al Jazeera, which is also a
• 3:43
  state broadcaster. But it is the version that you're consuming is the tweaked polished
• 3:51
  libbed up version for a Western audience. And if you read the Arabic versions of Al Jazeera,
• 3:58
  they're a lot less politically correct. Let's put it that way. Whereas RT is directly,
• 4:02
  RT is not just made for Russian audience. There's lots of Russian propaganda that is made for
• 4:08
  their own country. RT is pretty intentionally made. They try to persuade people from a broad
• 4:16
  that they're trying to look like a normal, you know, publication. Yeah. And I mean, there is
• 4:22
  BBC in a way. I mean, I haven't as you can tell because I didn't even know that it still existed.
• 4:26
  I am not across Russia today today. But Russia today in the past did quite a clever thing,
• 4:33
  which was they actually did do good journalism as well. Didn't they? I mean, in my mind,
• 4:38
  it's a little bit like the Wall Street Journal or even Fox News where you have genuine reporting,
• 4:43
  good, well, maybe I'm being unkind to the Wall Street Journal because they do do excellent
• 4:48
  journalism. But, you know, you do have real news sprinkled in through the opinion which makes it
• 4:54
  feel more legit. And I'll just your America as well. I go on. I can see you. I can see the brand
• 5:05
  not far away. As you think, how early in the show is it okay to make Josh look like an idiot
• 5:11
  on his own? Let's get some more coffee. No, I will get.
• 5:18
  No, I mean, I do think there is, but I'm but unlike an organization like Fox News or Fox News
• 5:24
  different publications that have that have areas that we can criticize their coverage, right?
• 5:30
  Jesse Waters is not great news coverage, but it is at Fox, there are opinion people who I have a
• 5:40
  lot of criticism for. There's also some great journalists and there's, you know, even on the,
• 5:45
  you know, broadcast side, they have a mix of stuff. Some of it goes nuts. Some of it's pretty solid.
• 5:49
  Still, they're just straight news coverage is pretty, pretty good. And they exist to provide
• 5:55
  a product to news consumers, you know, the people looking for this. RT is slightly different because
• 6:00
  yeah, there may be some good journalism smuggled in there, same with El Jazeera.
• 6:07
  That is a result of them hiring some good people and wanting to sort of reputation wash.
• 6:16
  But, but the organization making a mistake is a propaganda arm. It's a state broadcaster. It's
• 6:21
  not and state broadcaster, you know, BBC and ABC exist, you know, but, you know, this is pushing
• 6:28
  the Putin agenda. And if there's anything quality smuggled in there, it's exactly basically
• 6:35
  for moments of conversation like this so that you go, oh, well, I saw this very good thing there.
• 6:39
  They can't all be, they can't just be there to full people to trick people and push people to
• 6:43
  I mean, I'll set aside for the moment the fact that a Russian would probably look at Fox News
• 6:46
  and think that it is a propaganda arm of the Republican Party at the United States.
• 6:51
  Sure, but I mean, I think that to be fair though, I think there's a difference between,
• 6:55
  I mean, and we'll get into this with the, the going on with tenant stuff, but there's a
• 7:00
  difference between Dave Rubin saying, enter Ukraine stuff before signing onto tenant. And you just
• 7:10
  go, this is a guy who has opinions independently of being involved with the Russian operation
• 7:15
  and opinions that aren't. So at the same degree, sure, there are people on Fox who end up
• 7:19
  pushing stuff that's very pro-Republic in an way that feels, certainly not, you know, balanced and
• 7:26
  fair. But they're not doing so because they're bought and paid for by an operation to push an
• 7:31
  narrative. They're doing so because they're nuts, but they don't really have self-restraint,
• 7:36
  but I think that's a, I think that's a separate thing. And I think it matters.
• 7:40
  There's a difference. So you think it matters that it matters whether or not a person amends
• 7:45
  their output on the basis of the money they're being paid? I mean, I don't even as cleanly as that.
• 7:54
  No, I don't, I mean, I don't think it's, I don't think it's easy, but I just mean on a,
• 7:57
  on a level, I don't think you can, I don't think you can say something. I don't think
• 8:01
  propaganda is decided by necessarily content and the look, it means some level of payment
• 8:10
  behind it of a motive behind it that doesn't necessarily clear off them to the people who are
• 8:17
  viewing it that they don't know that's what they're getting. Again, RT doesn't want to broadcast,
• 8:22
  it doesn't want to portray itself. They don't have Putin, sure, listen to a whore,
• 8:27
  some of the top of the website and the same, you know, but they, they want you to think that
• 8:31
  it's a legitimate use of work in the nation. No, I understand, but I mean, I guess I'll be paid.
• 8:35
  Yeah, my concern, just to clarify whether or not there's a there there in the distinction between
• 8:41
  various forms of media bias, there's a whole, yes, the Republican Party and the US government
• 8:47
  doesn't fund Fox News to be biased, but there's an entire network of kickbacks, privilege,
• 8:52
  backscratching corporate subsidies, corporate tax cuts that are implicit in the relationship
• 9:00
  between Rupert Murdoch and his empire and Republican politics that are sort of inextricably linked.
• 9:08
  It's not as direct as, yeah, the, you know, the Russian government is funding this media arm,
• 9:15
  but like the Australian government, as you said, funds the ABC and we have a presence across
• 9:20
  the Asia Pacific in broadcast networks that are funded by the Australian government.
• 9:25
  Do they take directives from the governing party in Australia? No, they're editorially independent,
• 9:32
  but of course they're there to promote a view of Western liberal democracy and a view that is
• 9:38
  favorable to Australians across fledgling democracies in the Asia Pacific in just the same way that,
• 9:43
  you know, the US did behind the iron curtain during the Cold War with radio for a Europe and things
• 9:49
  like that. It's not clear, I mean, obviously it's clear to me that handing bucket loads of cash
• 9:57
  to podcasting hacks because you, because they're useful idiots is, you know, so far along the spectrum
• 10:05
  that it's beyond the pale, but to me, it does still seem to be a spectrum rather than an onoff
• 10:12
  switch of bias. Sure. And I mean, and you could see that with stuff like
• 10:16
  mask, for instance, as long as we criticize in this, it is general coverage and his political
• 10:21
  output. How the gentleman's that? I mean, I do think certainly now Elon Musk's political views
• 10:29
  seem like a very, very real thing you believe. The truth is there are very few people who
• 10:34
  are faking what they believe, but a lot of people come to believe what they do out of motivated
• 10:39
  reasoning. That's not really the story with a lot of the people at talent, I think, but with
• 10:44
  Musk, for instance, is he this strong Republican Trump supporting person now out of actual conviction?
• 10:52
  Or is it that SpaceX is a government contractor and highly dependent on getting those contracts,
• 10:59
  the Biden administration is between oddly negative about Musk generally, though not in a way
• 11:05
  that is reflected on SpaceX, they still hire out well. And people have long criticized Musk for
• 11:12
  his strong entanglement with China that Tesla has been struggling to perform there like many
• 11:19
  Western car brands have, but they have had an advantage and he has always put himself out there.
• 11:24
  And the question is like, is his friendliness in that direction towards China? Is that motivated
• 11:31
  by political and financial gains almost certainly? Yeah. So how do we separate that out in his
• 11:36
  view with the American rights? I mean, you're even more cynical than I am. I assume that he
• 11:42
  just has a cultural bias towards, you know, he, he's so hate. I think it's true to my virus.
• 11:47
  And, you know, his daughter and stuff like this. Yeah. I can't remember if I can't
• 11:53
  remember the daughter of Sanaka. He lost his child. How dare you? He has lost his child
• 11:59
  to the work mind virus in the work wars and the war on Christmas. This is what's imperative that
• 12:05
  J.D. Vance be the vice president. Don't you see the connection here, Ross? You're a fool.
• 12:12
  I think, look, I think he's sincere to be clear. Like I'm not, I'm not, I'm not doubting that's
• 12:15
  part of it. But I think that I think that if you had, you know, if it was pretty, if you had,
• 12:24
  Biden hadn't been elected, if they had someone who was marginally younger and had been less
• 12:31
  about marginally younger. Yes. Only three people in the world would not clear this. Only three
• 12:37
  people in the world, younger than J.D. The terracotta, there's there hardly a terracotta army in
• 12:41
  China that aren't as young as young. But if they, if they're chosen someone who is a bit younger,
• 12:48
  who didn't have celebrity issues that didn't exploit Musk from electric vehicle talks at the
• 12:54
  White House. And we're pretty obviously going to win in this upcoming election. I don't think
• 13:02
  Musk would have pivoted as hard and as publicly. Okay. So we've established that that motivated
• 13:07
  reasoning is a spectrum and we're all a little bit biased. Yes. Myself included. You know,
• 13:11
  I have preconceptions. I have, but everyone should visit Australia. We are part of the Australian tourist
• 13:16
  board propaganda. I also, there's an amazing song. I don't know if you've ever listened,
• 13:21
  that I, that we let, I first found grow up in, grow up in Mullen, and it's the Australian
• 13:26
  and tourism board. So Mullen, Benbe, baby, I'm the, I just grew up in Mullen, the most famous person
• 13:33
  from Mullen, Benbe. Yeah. Also, how did you just call Mullen, Benbe, by an abbreviated name that
• 13:38
  even I and native Australian have never heard? I suppose you don't. Mullen, Mullen. Who
• 13:44
  is that? Mullen. Mullen, Benbe is a hippie hillside town, but in the hinterland behind Byron Bay,
• 13:51
  we're a bunch of pot-smoking losers, surf and grow weed, and presumably call it Mullen,
• 13:58
  in this fair time. Exactly. So what do you remember from your time at Grindelwald?
• 14:01
  But there was a, but there was a going to school that there wasn't a song, the Australian tourism
• 14:06
  song. And it's a, I'd recommend people search it up. It's like an Australian comedy,
• 14:10
  I think made it. And it's just a list song of all the various Australian animals that can kill
• 14:16
  you, and then come to Australia, you might actually let them get killed as the chorus. It's
• 14:21
  extremely good. I have not heard this. No, but I can't believe you're teasing me about wanting to
• 14:26
  be a shill for the Australian tourism board, because I, this is actually something that I would
• 14:32
  really like to do, and I've actually, honestly, because they, what they do is they'll sometimes,
• 14:39
  like I have friends who I won't name, who are famous Australians, and you know, you can go and,
• 14:44
  like they'll send you to the most amazing place. You go to the Great Parry, Reef, go to
• 14:48
  islands, and so Mullen, and you can go to, well, who'd want to go to fucking Mullen? I mean, that's
• 14:53
  please. But you know, you can go to the outback, you can go on these like indigenous crocodile
• 15:00
  tours and things that you would ordinarily never be able to do, and the tourism board can get you
• 15:06
  in there. So if I'm going to shill for anyone, screw that. I want to be the Australian tourism
• 15:12
  board. I go to some of the most beautiful places in the world. So yes, there's, there's a spectrum
• 15:18
  and that we're all kind of chilly. But let's talk about the wildness of how, you know, some of these
• 15:28
  complete, I mean, let's just confess upfront, Ross, wasn't there a little bit of shardon for
• 15:35
  it? When you heard this story, just a touch, when you're just like, oh, isn't this sweet? Isn't
• 15:42
  this sweet? Lil Davy and Tim, I mean two people, you know, I got a lot of shit a couple of years
• 15:51
  ago for going on Joe Rogan's show and calling Tim Poole a dumb dumb. And he didn't like that,
• 15:58
  and he sicked his Twitter followers on me, because this was during the whole Australia has fallen
• 16:04
  like Australia. The concentration camp. Yeah, you're in the fatter of that. Yeah, he was tweeting out
• 16:10
  like aerial shots of these like arrival bungalows, which were sort of repurposed mining facilities
• 16:17
  where people with COVID who were arriving, or you know, even people without that. For being
• 16:22
  sent to mines, people, people, people who were arriving in Australia and who had needed to be
• 16:27
  quarantined before being released into the COVID-free community were being housed in these mining
• 16:35
  quarters in the northern, in the top end in the Northern Territory. And he was claiming that these
• 16:39
  were concentration camps, were Australians, witnessed in Australians were being rounded up
• 16:43
  without due process and kept indefinitely. And so I called him a dumb dumb. And I got to say,
• 16:50
  when a couple of years later, I find out that he is literally either a dumb dumb or a corrupt
• 16:58
  Russian propagandist. I was like, okay, I trust my own judgment. I was pressient. Yeah.
• 17:05
  Yeah, it's, yeah, I, to be honest with you, I mean, I wrote for those who aren't familiar. I wrote
• 17:13
  a short piece on Dave in 2022 that added up and collared. It was about seven and a half thousand
• 17:19
  words. And it was just sort of this extensive process. This is where we first met. I should say,
• 17:24
  you hit me up and you asked me for an interview. And so I appeared in that piece being quoted
• 17:29
  about Dave and that's the thus. And Josh relates to the day. No, no, it was a great piece.
• 17:34
  It was very comprehensive. I'm actually very even-handed and not not a hit piece in the way that,
• 17:39
  I mean, I'm sure Dave thinks it's a hit piece, but I think it was actually pretty.
• 17:42
  Yeah, he's not pleased. He wasn't pleased with it, but he has the skin of a thin egg shell
• 17:49
  poor idea. But it was, once I wrote that, it was very easy. I try not to use Twitter as much as
• 17:58
  I did. And I still, I didn't try to use it much then. And there are a bunch of people asking me
• 18:03
  to basically write, do that for Peterson, do that for Crowder, do that for a bunch of people.
• 18:09
  And I have resisted that quite a lot. In journalism, a lot of people have beats. You can
• 18:15
  just can be your thing. I really did not want to do that and I haven't. I wrote a quick piece
• 18:22
  for Tablet about when Candace Owens was trying to blackmail Stephen Crowder because I was just too
• 18:28
  good. And I'm coming back for this with Dave, but I never intended to write about him again,
• 18:33
  but yeah, even this was so bad. It dragged me back, laughing and screaming.
• 18:40
  So let's just loop back then. So the Department of Justice is not investigating
• 18:47
  the podcasters and internet creators who were being paid millions of dollars by the Kremlin.
• 18:52
  They were announcing that they are seeking what, the arrest of Russians who are in Russia,
• 18:59
  who were paying for this, who commissioned that. Yeah, technically so it's all for shows or what?
• 19:06
  Yeah, basically. So it's an indictment of these two Russian nationals who I'm not
• 19:11
  going to even try. One of their names is like Kalashnikov. I'm not going to try and pronounce
• 19:14
  her names, but it's like comic. This is this whole story is stupid. They're the most
• 19:19
  two Russian names in the rest of the world. Of course they are. Just a long string of consonants
• 19:24
  with basically, it's basically scrabble contestants. Very high. My mom education did not
• 19:30
  equip me to say those names. All Zem and Jason. But yeah, and they put this indictment out.
• 19:38
  Now they could also be pursuing the founders of this publication, which is a woman named Lauren
• 19:42
  Chen, who started a YouTube channel called Roaming Millennium 2016 and was her own sort of thing.
• 19:47
  She's been turning what USA, the blaze, sort of a lower tier figure in sort of anti-feminist
• 19:53
  YouTube in the 2016 era and then pivot that's a sin to a sort of tradwife commentary world.
• 20:00
  And in 2021 to 2022, she had an opinion column in RT. And then at the beginning of 2022,
• 20:09
  writes around the time that she stops writing her column. She starts a media organization in
• 20:15
  a Tennessee called Tenets. Founded turns out by very generous donors, these two Russian guys.
• 20:22
  Now the DHA probably could go after, because it got off to breaking Farah, which is the Farah
• 20:29
  and Agent Registration Act, which is basically saying that you're working for another
• 20:32
  company, the government and your representing, you're pushing that interest and that you need
• 20:37
  to register that formally and money laundering to that end as a Russian propaganda operation.
• 20:42
  Technically, if they had registered with Farah, there probably wasn't anything illegal here,
• 20:47
  but that can't make a publication look a lot worse. If it explicitly says,
• 20:53
  we are registered as a foreign affiliate in the modern day and age.
• 20:59
  This is like, you know, all using SB&R rules that were written for World War One in the age of
• 21:06
  the internet. Like, should I, so my income comes through an American-based company because the internet,
• 21:16
  right? And I presumably, I mean, I'm not funded by a government, I suppose, so that makes it
• 21:23
  different. But like, if I was still drawing a salary from the public broadcaster, then would I have
• 21:28
  to register? Like, I mean, it's so fuzzy with the government. Yeah, that doesn't change the
• 21:35
  incredible unethical and idiotic and corrupt nature of what was being done. So just setting the
• 21:43
  law aside, presumably, the reason why the Department of Justice is doing this is in order to raise
• 21:48
  awareness about this phenomenon rather than any realistic expectation that it's going to
• 21:53
  lock people up for it. Exactly. I mean, they could, as I said, they could probably go off to
• 21:58
  Chen and her husband, Donovan, who founded this. They probably won't, though, it's in the run-up
• 22:02
  to the election and they don't want to look politically biased as the explanation I've heard.
• 22:05
  Sorry, Ross, is the claim also still do so? Is the claim that Lauren knew that this was a Russian,
• 22:10
  so we're just not completely new. So stop. The DOJ are clear, the co-founders they knew. So,
• 22:17
  for instance, they would try to get calls with their investor, who they made this fake name when
• 22:23
  Ruben and Paul asked about Gregorian, something Gregorian, this fake Belgium. Yeah, it was a
• 22:30
  comical name, wasn't it? It was a comical name, and it was a name that they misspelled and
• 22:35
  spelled differently, depending on which document it was there were people are looking at, and
• 22:39
  obviously you can search for this person online and so not a very good fake cover, but
• 22:44
  when you did search for this person online, nothing came up. Nothing. So they didn't even bother,
• 22:50
  in other words, when we'll get to precisely what the claim is that these podcasts
• 22:56
  did in a moment, but their protestations are that they are victims of this scam. Victims
• 23:02
  who made millions of dollars that they're not going to have to do. Yeah, I want to be victimized.
• 23:05
  I want to be damned. I want to be in tourist board. Victimized me please. I want to be raped.
• 23:10
  I mean, if that's what victimization looks like, give it to me, baby. I want some of that Kremlin
• 23:16
  cash. And their claim is that they couldn't possibly have known that there was anything suspicious
• 23:23
  about these incredible sums of money that they were getting paid. I don't think even they don't
• 23:28
  have the audacity to say, we couldn't know there's like suspicious. They've said that they were,
• 23:32
  they've got as far to say they were fooled and they didn't know. And to be fair, the DOJ
• 23:36
  initial indictment and Merrick Holland has followed us up by saying none of the influencers knew
• 23:41
  this was a rational explanation. No, of course you don't know if you don't ask, but the point is
• 23:46
  did none of them open up a little piece of technology I call Google and type in the name of the
• 23:52
  person who they who supposedly is paying them and fortune and then see that nothing came up.
• 23:59
  So apparently they did. Dave apparently searched that they had somebody, I don't know if a voice
• 24:04
  sector or someone to a voice for them. The details there are still a little fuzzy. But wait,
• 24:08
  he says they do for them but nothing comes up with you. Nothing cares. And Dave's exploration,
• 24:13
  he did a interview with Megan Kelly yesterday where he finally talks about it in more depth.
• 24:19
  I had asked him for comments for an article of mine that's coming up on this. He finally
• 24:24
  blocked me, which I felt heartbroken about. So he's not talking to me, which I found shocking.
• 24:31
  But yeah, he basically said that, oh, you know, there were private people out there,
• 24:38
  which I mean, come on. I mean, there are private people out there, but they generally
• 24:44
  they generally aren't private people out there who want to funnel enormous amounts of money to you.
• 24:52
  Yeah, and they're startups. Yeah, you should probably be cautious about.
• 24:58
  And usually like even private investors, they have some presence in some world that you're
• 25:04
  familiar with. Yeah. Like if he was legitimately a Belgian investment banker or Belgian investor
• 25:09
  who is a banker again, not clear, you should have been able to find something.
• 25:14
  For instance, on the bank, he supposedly worked out when he wasn't listed anywhere to do with it.
• 25:20
  That's a red flag, I think. Also, is the is the is the claim that there was never any indication
• 25:27
  about what the money was for or any indication of what kind of content this beneficiary.
• 25:34
  So that's I mean, that's very complex. That's where it gets complex. I will, I will. I'll just say
• 25:40
  that Dave on his question, on his search to find the truth of this person, a short and shallow
• 25:48
  search one must say, he asked for a one page profile of this guy, sort of CV of who is this guy.
• 25:55
  And at one point, it said that Gregorian was interested in social justice. And it seems to have
• 25:59
  been a language slip up with the Russians writing this thing. And he was quite concerned by that.
• 26:05
  He didn't want to be taken woke money. I wouldn't take it no woke money around here.
• 26:10
  No. And they assured him no, no, Mr. Rubin. He is not at woke.
• 26:15
  And taking the number of comments, kind of a big authoritarian dictatorship. Yeah, but he's
• 26:21
  busy hungry. He's fine on that. Yeah. Right. He's fine. But don't take money from social justice
• 26:26
  worksters. I mean, what's interesting here is that the talking points of these guys have
• 26:34
  aligned for quite some time with the talking points of the Kremlin in a way that defires
• 26:39
  explanation from just absorbing it. I mean, it's not, you know, they're not coming up with this
• 26:44
  stuff. Like after, have you heard the clips of what they were saying? I don't know if Dave was
• 26:50
  included in this, but what some of them were saying after the terrorist attack in Moscow.
• 26:55
  Remember the. Yeah. So Betty Johnson said this. Yeah, 144 people died in. Yeah. So it was,
• 27:01
  it was a March terrorist attack of a concert in Russia. It's the one of the biggest
• 27:05
  terrorist attacks in Russian history. 140 people, 144 people died at this concert when just
• 27:11
  people, Godman just came in and just tore into the place. It's just horrific. And this was a
• 27:18
  G had us. This was an ISIS. This was ISIS. ISIS claimed it about a day off towards the US
• 27:25
  government. I think put out like it said that there was strong and instantly reporting was this
• 27:29
  seems like it's ISIS. Yeah. It's interesting about that. I think was that the US intelligence
• 27:37
  and Western intelligence debated with themselves about whether or not to give Russia a heads up
• 27:41
  that this thing was coming because they heard chatter about it. And they had intel and they
• 27:46
  they set aside their differences with with Putin and with Moscow over Ukraine. And they gave
• 27:51
  Russian intelligence. So heads up and said, listen, we're hearing ISIS talk about something big
• 27:56
  going down in Moscow. So here's what we know. You're just from a humanitarian point of view,
• 28:01
  even though we're, we're enemies at the moment. So the anyway, that assisted to some extent.
• 28:06
  And then the Russian response. And then exactly. And the people fled that these terrorist that my
• 28:12
  understanding is they fled in the direction of the Ukrainian border. That's the only factual
• 28:20
  anything that comes close to the then widely circulated claim that was pushed by Putin that
• 28:27
  ended up with some online right wing people, including Benny Johnson, who also got paid as part
• 28:32
  of talent. That Ukraine was actually behind this. That this was some guerrilla warfare strategy to
• 28:39
  cause terror in the heart of Moscow again. And so some of these Americans, YouTube,
• 28:43
  and the broadcasters were talking about how, you know, this is, there's something very fishy
• 28:49
  about this supposed ISIS terror attack in Moscow. This is probably a Ukrainian operation and so on.
• 28:55
  And these were talking points that were coming directly out of Russia that it's unlikely you
• 28:59
  would just automatically think of if you were just an impartial skeptical American journalist
• 29:06
  with no ties. So I mean, misinformation. I am a bit split in that because I think people
• 29:12
  underestimate how much brain rot and conspiracy theorism there is in this space that there's the
• 29:17
  dumbest fucking ideas that you've ever heard in your life. And they get bandied around and people
• 29:21
  just go, well, maybe it is, you know, I remember when I was writing my big room piece, there was a
• 29:27
  moment where he was doing a, you know, Q&A basically his audience, whether his paying audience
• 29:32
  members asked him a question. And somebody said, you know, is, is the supporter to create?
• 29:37
  Do you hear the rest of this conversation? Go to uncomfortableconversations.substac.com slash
• 29:42
  listen and you will get your own personal premium podcast feed with at least three extra episodes
• 29:49
  of the podcast every month and heaps of extra stuff, including the remainder right now of the
• 29:54
  fabulous conversation you've just been hearing. If it was worth listening to this much of, don't
• 29:59
  rob yourself of the rest. Pull out your phone right now. And search for uncomfortable conversations
• 30:04
  and we'll talk about it.