Okay, I need to talk to you about something that's really important today and I need some
time to lay this all out for you, but hope
it'll be productive.
Yesterday I started getting emails and seeing comments saying, David, will you disclose
your funding and will you disclose whether you're getting money from a pro Bashar Al
Assad group that is in existence to prop up the Syrian regime, disclose your funding and
tell us who your funders are.
And it seemed like a weird thing to ask of me.
I didn't understand why are people coming to me and saying, am I getting funding from
a, from a pro Bashar Al Assad group?
So I started researching this and then I saw a couple of reports and posts that there are
several left wing independent media people that have allegedly received money from a
pro Assad group, some under the guise of a journalism award, money that was awarded a
for winning a journalism a prize.
So I want to do this and I'm going to give you the full breakdown of our revenue at the
end of the segment.
But let's go through this and actually try to do it right.
So let's begin with what are the allegations?
The allegations are that several left wing independent media hosts and writers and publications
received money from a group called the association for investment in popular action committees.
It's a very sort of innocuous name, uh, but investigative reporting by Charles David,
uh, claims to demonstrate that this is actually an umbrella organization that is a covering
for and the sort of a, a name place holder for a, uh, groups that are pro Syrian dictator
Bashar Al Assad.
The association for investment in popular action committees has a trademark called the
serious solidarity movement, which again, it sounds pro rights, but it's, it's pro Assad.
And the idea here is that this is an umbrella group for pro Syrian government organizations.
When you look at them on GuideStar, it's very innocuous.
It's a civil rights advocacy group organized in 2007.
There's limited information.
It's headed up by two guys, Paul LA, Rudy and Kemal obeyed.
And when I started looking into this, and this is all new to me, I've, you know, I did,
did the research over the last 24 hours, obeyed has said that he was a member of architects
and engineers for nine 11 truth, which is a nine 11 truther group.
I would call it a conspiracy group.
So it's starting to get a little bit weird.
And the revelations that have come forward for independent media are that this group
has created something called the Serena Shem award for uncompromised integrity in journalism,
which awards money to different media people.
They've paid former Ohio governor, a democratic governor, Dennis QSEN.
It's $20,000 to speak at a proba Shar al-Assad conference in the United Kingdom.
And, um, it's so happened that Cousineau synNotch, uh, opted not to condemn Assad a few years
ago.
And it turns out that some people, including former TYT host Jimmy Dora, Dory, I don't
know how the name is pronounced now, as well as YouTube or Kim Iverson, who I didn't know
much about, and many others have received money from this group through this award.
Now let's go, go through it.
Uh, there are some trends that exist here.
Both DOR and Iverson have done a combination of questioning the known facts about Bashar
Al Assad and have started to dabble in some conspiratorial false flag stuff as well.
Both DOR and Iverson have put out content that is very pro Tulsi Gabbert and Tulsi has
her own sort of history with Assad.
That has been the subject of scrutiny.
There is an IRS filing, which you can easily find online, uh, from the pro Assad group,
which shows that in 2017 DOR receive $2,500 from this group while Kim Iverson previously
posted to Instagram that she received $5,000 from the group.
So the first question is, can we trust the allegation?
In other words, did these people and the others that are listed in the piece that we're linking
to, did they receive this money?
Iverson admits she got the money, she posted about it.
And unless the IRS filings are false, DOR did as well.
There's a longer list of people you can find online, but the part one, did they get the
money?
It appears that they did.
So then we have to ask, well, even if it's a pro Assad group that is funding the award,
uh, are they, is, are they getting money to say certain things or are they merely being
awarded for the things that they're already choosing to say?
And I think that this is an important distinction with a lot.
We've talked about this before.
You know, that it's common that people at Fox news, people at RT, Russian television,
they'll say, nobody ever comes in and tells me exactly what I need to say.
And of course it doesn't work that way.
It's not say this stuff and then we will pay you.
It is often that people are selected for roles on the basis of what they're already likely
to say.
So we really don't know the, the, the reality of this.
That's one thing.
Uh, then there's this issue, you know, it, it correlates with the pro Tulsi stuff and
alternative facts around Syria and related topics.
This is odd, but ultimately it's their business.
Now, if it were me, I would disclose this stuff full-stop.
I mean, I don't, I don't have any other way that I would qualify it.
I would just disclose it.
So then we come to me in the emails I've been getting over the last 14, 16 hours saying,
David, you're part of this, disclose your funding.
We want to know where you get your money.
So I'm going to do that.
First of all, I don't know why anyone would think I'm getting money from a pro Assad group
or pro Assad sources, uh, particularly that are peddling and you know, uh, were their
leaders, uh, the, this obeyed guy pedals in nine 11 truth or stuff or anything?
I don't do any of what they do.
You know, I, I don't do Assad apologetics.
I don't do pro Tulsi apologetics.
I don't do any of this stuff.
But I'll just come clean and tell you our funding.
This is from a normal month.
This is data from August the [inaudible], it's the beginning of October.
So I haven't closed the books on September yet, but this is a typical month.
This is a August.
We got 40% of our revenue for memberships, Patriot and apparel, 32.5% from YouTube ads,
22% from ad sales, three and a half percent from Twitch.
As many of you know, we're new to Twitch.
So that's a pretty small part of our revenue right now.
Facebook ads, we're now monetizing on Facebook, but only about 1% of our revenue and miscellaneous
donations are 0.1%.
Now those miscellaneous donations of course could come from anybody.
Uh, but what I'm talking about is sometimes people don't want a membership.
They'll just send us, you know, a check for a little bit of money.
Uh, and that was 0.1% of our funding back in August.
We don't take money from any groups.
If we have an advertiser, it's marked as an advertisement.
If we do a sponsored video, it's marked as a sponsored video.
That's it.
So I can't speak to the strategy behind other people's actions.
I have no idea what people's financial situations are and what would cause them to accept or
not accept money from an organization like this.
Everybody's financial situations are different.
And also, I don't know if what people are concerned about is that the content of these
programs is influenced by the fact that they've received money from this group or if people
are concerned about the lack of disclosure or something else.
And it would be interesting to clarify that, but T to be very clear, um, people are often
chosen for awards because they're saying the right things.
And of course the award can be a way to funnel money to someone under the guise of we are
rewarding you for good reporting or whatever the case may be.
But typically that's not how it works.
People, people are brought in, uh, or supported because they're already saying the things
that the funder wants them to say.
So that's our funding.
I can't speak for anybody else and I hope that this will sort of put to bed the questions
I've been getting over the last a half day or so.