Tim Pool, Dave Rubin and Benny Johnson addressed allegations that a company they were associated with had been paid to publish videos with messages in favour of Russia
A number of high-profile, conservative influencers in the US have said they are “victims” of an alleged Russian disinformation campaign, after the Biden administration accused Moscow of carrying out a sustained campaign to influence the outcome of November’s presidential elections.
Tim Pool, Dave Rubin and Benny Johnson published statements on Wednesday evening addressing allegations that a US content creation company they were associated with had been provided with nearly $10m from Russian state media employees to publish videos with messages in favour of Moscow’s interests and agenda, including over the war in Ukraine.
Things that are objectively true:
They parroted pro-Putin talking points.
They were paid by Russia.
They claim to be victims of a Russian smear campaign.
How does that even work?
I guess according to the allegations only the founders of Tenet Media or whatever it was called knew the money was coming from Russia and they hid it from the talking heads.
But like… How much money do these people have to be getting paid before they have a thought to question where it’s coming from? Dim Tool was apparently getting like $100k a WEEK from them. Like at what point does it start to get suspicious?
Edit: I was misremembering. Apparently it was $100k a week so that’s $400k a month.
100k/month to post pro Russian videos. The company was giving them talking points.
Tim pool weasely claims he has full editorial control, but doesn’t say how much of their editorial direction he “decided” to take, and how often.
It’s better if he just admits to being a Russian shill. He recently called Ukraine an enemy and said that the US should apologize to Russia. If he’s saying that shit of his own accord, that’s WORSE.
100k a month?! God damnit that’s it I’m getting Soros on the phone he owes me way more than the zero he’s paid me this far!
Wasn’t it 100k a week
Oh yeah you’re right. I just looked it back up and this article says one of the commentators was getting $400k a month, a $100k signing bonus, and additional performance based payment in exchange for I guess 4 videos a week.
the grift pays… holy shit.
Well you see they thought they were pushing Russian propaganda out of the goodness of their hearts. Turns out they could have been paid to do so and are now victims because someone else was paid to do it while they did it for free.
I think that they can dispute that unless you add the word “indirectly“ before “paid”?
Obviously it does look slightly worse to actually be paid in rubles, and obviously it’s still bad even if it’s pass-through, but want to be clear when we’re stating objective facts.
Also I may be wrong but that was my impression.
It’ll be indirect due to sanctions regardless. Not like they can do a direct deposit to a US bank.