Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, Lauren Southern, and Benny Johnson were useful idiots for Russia in their work for Tenet Media.
Other Resources
- Indictment
- NBC coverage
- Dave Rubin saying Victimhood is unattractive
- Lauren Southern on wage gap
- Right wing book buying operation
- Tim Pool’s failed skate park
Credits
“Circus of Freaks” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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Transcript:
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:26:05
Bennett Tomlin
So Tim Pool, besides being a bit of a fool, is a right wing podcaster who got in bed with Russia, apparently without knowing it. Now I'm super late to this story because I haven't felt like recording this video. And I have a script here, but we're going to go off it a lot because I kind of just want to talk about this indictment and the allegations, because I think they are deeply interesting.
00:00:26:05 - 00:00:55:11
Bennett Tomlin
So for those who don't know, there was a recent indictment against and I'm deeply sorry for these pronunciations. Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, which alleges that RT, formerly Russia Today, a state owned media outlet funded a US based media company to amplify its messages after it had to close RT US, which happened because of sanctions related to Russia.
00:00:55:11 - 00:00:56:13
Bennett Tomlin
Ukraine,
00:00:56:13 - 00:01:23:12
Bennett Tomlin
the US based media company it funded, turned out to be Tenet Media, a firm which paid Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, Lauren Southern and Benny Johnson to make videos which only get slightly more views than I do not very many. In total, RT paid almost $10 million into Tenet media, and this represented nearly 90% of the total incoming deposits for Tenet.
00:01:23:14 - 00:01:36:23
Bennett Tomlin
These funds were passed through shell entities in Turkey, the Czech Republic, Mauritius, and the United Arab Emirates. Let's get into that indictment and the rest of the documents just to try to make sense of it.
00:01:41:04 - 00:02:11:17
Bennett Tomlin
The indictment alleges Kostia and Lena deployed nearly $10 million to fund these right wing influencers through Tenet media. It mentions the founders of Tenet media frequently, which is Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan. Lauren Chen is almost certainly founder one and founder one was described as having a contract between their Canadian company and Russia Today involving founder one more in Chen, producing a total of 217 videos for RT,
00:02:11:19 - 00:02:46:15
Bennett Tomlin
Russia Today, most of which were shared on Founder-1’s, Lauren Chen's YouTube channel. Interestingly, this Canadian company, which directly and knowingly had a contract with Russia Today, was described as the parent company of Tenet Media. Founder two, presumably, Liam also had a contract with Russia Today's German subsidiary, that involved writing English language descriptions of news events. The communications between these founders and the Russians were occasionally funny.
00:02:46:17 - 00:03:18:16
Bennett Tomlin
In one case, the invoice for August 2023 had not been paid for two weeks, and after reaching out to ask about the delay, Lauren Chen apparently googled time in Moscow to figure out why they were not responding. Tenet media was able to approach commentator one and commentator two to license new media for Tenet media. Commentator one seems likely to be Dave Rubin, and commentator two seems likely to be Tim Pool, based on the number of subscribers they have.
00:03:18:16 - 00:03:35:04
Bennett Tomlin
I will refer to them by their actual names from now on. But if you think its other commentators, the other ones hired by Tenet were Lauren Southern, Taylor Hanson, Matt Christensen and Benny Johnson, according to the indictment Lauren Chen, Liam Donovan, Kalashnikov and
00:03:35:04 - 00:03:42:10
Bennett Tomlin
Afanasyeva tried to hide the true source of the funding Russia, from the various commentators inventing a persona.
00:03:42:12 - 00:04:11:19
Bennett Tomlin
Eduard Grigoriann who is supposedly an investor behind the effort. Commentator two who we assume is Tim Pool, apparently insisted that he would need $100,000 per weekly episode to make it worth his while. And commentator one who we are assuming is Dave Rubin would need closer to 5 million per year. Something Tenet knew would almost definitely not be profitable. Despite this lack of profit
00:04:11:19 - 00:04:29:09
Bennett Tomlin
Russia was a go on Tim Pool and Dave Rubin well, almost a go. Tim Pool and Dave Rubin wanted details of who was funding this and who would they be working with. Smart questions for Tim Paul and Dave Rubin to ask. Dave Rubin would eventually be convinced by this profile.
00:04:29:09 - 00:04:53:22
Bennett Tomlin
Eventually, Dave Rubin agreed to a contract for four weekly videos for which he would be paid 400 K per month, as well as a 100 K signing bonus and performance bonuses that I have to imagine they never hit. Tim Pool agreed to a contract for 100 K per video, which means that if Tim Pool made as many videos as Dave Rubin, he would be making more money.
00:04:54:00 - 00:05:21:23
Bennett Tomlin
Kostya, one of the Russians, was not just a conduit for money, which you may be thinking, but also edited content and participated in internal messaging groups with Lauren and Liam. In that chat, they discussed contract negotiations with these commentators. The editing efforts were also presented to commentators as an outside editing firm that tenet had hired to help with content, and this team included Lena.
00:05:22:01 - 00:05:59:12
Bennett Tomlin
Lena was identified on her social media as a producer dirty, and was introduced to Tenet as part of Kostya's editing team. In that capacity, these Russians were able to help guide parts of Tenet's work, allegedly, of course, to pull this off. They used fake identities, including Helena Shudra and Victoria Pesti. Helena Shurdra and Victoria Pesti were really interested in getting commentators to share the videos they produced with their other audience, complaining directly to Lauren Chen that they were not doing enough of that.
00:05:59:14 - 00:06:18:20
Bennett Tomlin
Eventually, this editing team, the Russians, would be allowed to create videos which were shared directly to Tenet Media's socials. Sometimes producers would object to this, like when they were asked to post Tucker Carlson enjoying a Russian grocery store, but they tended to eventually agree.
00:06:18:20 - 00:06:50:10
Bennett Tomlin
Their influence over editorial went deep too, with Helena Shudra, a fake persona remember, telling the founders that someone should post about specific issues, including insisting they share disinformation about an attack in Moscow, something which the founder was able to get one of the commentators to cover. Would you believe me if I went even further and said that the Russians were eventually given the ability to post and Tenet media socials because they were?
00:06:50:12 - 00:07:01:15
Bennett Tomlin
Tenet media handed over an absurd amount of influence over their business decisions to Russia today, which I think leads us in to the responses.
00:07:05:20 - 00:07:18:21
Bennett Tomlin
Russia, Russia, Russia all these damn liberals ever want to talk about is how Russia wants to support Trump, and Trump wants to support Russia. And Trump loves Russia and Russia loves Trump. Why do they never want to talk about failed skateparks?
00:07:19:02 - 00:07:41:19
Bennett Tomlin
Anyways, Tim Pool has commanded folks who have called him out to eat his Irish ass after the indictment was dropped. He added Russia sucks donkey balls, something I'm sure he believes Benny Johnson has gotten in on this whole responding to the indictment thing by stating he was disturbed and threatening to sic his lawyers on anyone who says he is not disturbed.
00:07:41:22 - 00:07:53:12
Bennett Tomlin
So I went to make sure you were all very clear. The guy who said this is very disturbed. He also wants to make sure you know that the misinformation he spread had nothing to do with our tea.
00:07:53:12 - 00:08:01:14
Bennett Tomlin
Benny Johnson is in the misinformation spreading game for love of the game, not for Russian money. And that is what we're making clear here.
00:08:01:14 - 00:08:11:19
Bennett Tomlin
So he doesn't sue us. Dave Rubin wants to make sure that you know he is a victim, which frankly sounds like that victim mentality that is destroying America, Mr. Rubin.
00:08:11:19 - 00:08:15:00
Dave Rubin
on why victimhood mentality is not attractive.
00:08:15:00 - 00:08:30:02
Bennett Tomlin
Lauren Southern wants to make clear that she got paid way less than the other folks, and further claimed she had complete editorial control. Tenet media needs to do something about the gender pay gap, I think, even though Lauren Southern has claimed that's not due to sexism.
00:08:30:02 - 00:08:54:05
Bennett Tomlin
All in all, we need to make very clear before any of these useful idiots have their lawyers send strongly worded letters. It is important to remember that there is not evidence these folks knew they were helping Russia. It just happened that they had opinions they were willing to express loudly. That agreed so well with Russian interest that Russia was willing to spend millions of dollars to help promote them.
00:08:54:06 - 00:09:15:13
Bennett Tomlin
So Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, Benny Johnson and Lauren Southern do not seem, at least yet to be agents of Russia, at least based on this indictment. Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan, maybe. Tim Pool and Dave Rubin and Benny Johnson and Lauren Southern are useful idiots to Russia who promote Russia's worldview and who would probably do it even if they were not getting paid all this money.
00:09:15:17 - 00:09:43:18
Bennett Tomlin
But also, let's be clear, they are getting paid. And this is an important thing to remember about the right wing media ecosystem. If you align your worldview with certain groups who are evil or hateful or just massively wealthy, you can make massive amounts of money 100 K per video, maybe, and maintain an air of plausible deniability about how you were able to buy so many skateparks.
00:09:43:20 - 00:10:08:06
Bennett Tomlin
You wonder why so many right wing books, which are borderline unreadable, end up as New York Times bestsellers? Well, I think you can put it together. This money keeps the ground full of nonsense. And most of this money isn't coming from Russia. It's coming from just massive right wing donors and this nonsense they fund makes understanding things harder for people who are not necessarily deep into this media ecosystem.
00:10:08:07 - 00:10:27:04
Bennett Tomlin
So remember, these folks, Tim Pool especially, are useful idiots cashing checks you could only dream of. Probably not agents of Russia, just useful idiots who get paid massive amounts of money to spread opinions that advance Russian interests, not Russian agents. Let's be clear.
