Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Underreported Stories where we cover the news that CNN, MSNBC, and even Fox News failed to report on or don't report on enough. And joining me today is none other than mister Ben Swan. Ben is an investigative reporter and he has founded his own media company called is it Truth in Media, Ben? Did I get that right? Yes, that's right. Thanks for having me. Yeah, of course. Well, super happy to have you.
So, when we initially started talking, I heard that we had interest in the exact same character in this campaign cycle and that is mister Tim Walz. He has always struck me as just the weirdest VP pick. When I was strategizing through my mind and which candidate possibly Kamala Harris could pick. This man's was at the bottom of my list.
I really don't understand how he picked him in the first place, but now it's been uncovered that he is actually being investigated by congress for alleged connections to the CCP, and you have been researching this. Could you kind of elaborate on the story for the audience that might not have heard about this?
Yeah. Absolutely. Well, I mean, there's a there's a lot of things I agree with you that are very strange about Tim Walz, including, as you said, that there is this this belief that he has, connections to the CCP, belief that he has received funds that he is not supposed to have received. But I gotta tell you, that's not even the weirdest story that surrounds him, if I can just say.
I mean, the weirdest story that surrounds him are these allegations that are starting to surface that Tim Walz may have, a sexual assault history when he was a coach, and an assistant football coach when he was, in Nebraska. In fact, there there are rumors and now, information being leaked that potentially Tim Walz was forced to leave the state of Nebraska when he was a football coach. Again, not a head football coach. He was like an assistant.
He was kind of misrepresented his role as a football coach. He was forced to leave the state of Nebraska and that's why he ended up moving to Minnesota was because of, sexual assault against, one of his students. Now listen, I don't know if this is true.
I don't have many details on it other than the fact that this is beginning to emerge, and there are reports that in fact, in a 6 to 0 vote, the school board that he worked under did choose to revoke his license and to force him out of the state, and he that's why he left the state. He was forced out of his job, by a unanimous vote by a school board after reportedly allegations arose back then. So it's it's a bizarre story, and I agree with you. Why why would you choose this guy?
All the people that you could have chosen. And then, of course, we have the fact that he has a lot of very strange stories about his past, his claims about having gone to Hong Kong and Tiananmen Square, and then being at Tiananmen Square when he wasn't in Tiananmen Square. Instead, he was in Hong Kong, and now, of course, you mentioned the allegations that he has received funds, and funding from the CCP.
So, the guy is a is a walking disaster, and then likes to make fun of Elon Musk and say Elon Musk is, you know, what did he call him? A dipshit or something the other day. He called him some name, you know. And then there's a lot of memes now that say Tim Wells has no no self awareness, and they show all the videos of how weird he is on stage. So he's a very strange person, I agree with you, to have been chosen as his VP Select.
Yeah. And also to your point, we we really dove in-depth on this channel talking about those allegations made by an individual on x named Black Insurrectionist and those are the allegations that Tim Walz was allegedly grooming a minor while he was a high school football coach.
My audience is very familiar with these claims and if somehow they're not they know they can go to YouTube, Rumble X or Facebook and follow that but I was very much pushing back on this because when I was going through the original sourcing of this, and I know you're an investigative journalist too, you do this. When I was going through the in in the original sourcing, I was very thrown off by it because some of the, I call them isms or in my case I call them tism because I got a little tism.
But, you know, all of our isms that we kind of have in the way we write, the way we speak were present in Black Insurrectionist, which is the x account that was posting this. It was present in the way he articulated his post on face or an x and then it was also present in the allegations and the allegation forms written out by this alleged accuser. And so I had a difficult time believing it. Was there anything that I might have missed? We're very open minded to the story.
I just haven't found complete proof of it in my opinion. No. And I listen. I like a story like this, I don't think you're gonna find complete proof of it. A story like this and and, you know, if you've investigated things like this before, sex assault claims, grooming claims are almost impossible to prove one way or the other.
What's more interesting to me is why was Tim Walz because we do know that he was forced to leave his job, right, in in Nebraska, and we know that the school board had voted 6 to 0 for him to leave his job. Why was that? And I think that would be the the more interesting case because you're again, you're never gonna be able to prove one way or the other, allegations from 20, 30 years ago, you know, he said, she said, you just don't know. But but I would be interested to know.
And I think that in this particular case, the public should know. You know, when you run for any kind of of higher office, especially vice president or president of the United States, All this stuff eventually, comes to the surface. And I think it should come to the surface, and and people should know, some of these things about you. But, again, is there a way to prove it? Absolutely not. I think that's why a lot of media has kind of stayed away from it. But I will tell you this. Let's be fair.
Without any more proof than what's come forward, if those claims were made against Donald Trump or JD Vance Right. They would be on every single newscast in America every single night, and they would be pushing to find people to co to cooperate the story. And so there is a definitely a double standard, I would say, in terms of the way that the story is covered or not covered by media. Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. There are some stories where we are gonna really see that double standard.
So, our first story is about Tim Walz. So let's just hop right into our stories. You guys know the drill. Without further ado, let's get into the 5 underreported stories that you need to know. Today's show is brought to you by Based, my merch line. If you didn't know this already, I'm an independent creator, and the best way to support this show is by purchasing my merch line that represents your views.
Instead of just asking you guys for donations to fund my independent journalism, my business partner and I created a line of merch called Based Apparel. Based means you are the opposite of woke. It means you're based in logic, you're based in truth, you're based in facts. You gotta head over to based in logic dotcom to check out our latest apparel. My favorite, my personal favorite right now is the conspiracy theorist hat.
And remember, when you buy merch, you are directly supporting me and this show. And when you get your apparel, please be sure to tag me on Instagram so I can repost you. Okay, so our first story is, I'm reading this on The Daily Caller, it says Tim Walz welcomed Chinese Communist Party officials into his Nebraska classroom.
So, Ben, maybe this is the answer as to why the school board voted 6 o to kick this idiot out of the classroom because as The Daily Caller has reported, when he was a teacher in Nebraska in 1996, a delegation of 3 quote educators from Southeast China linked directly to the CCP visited Tim Woll's Alliance High School in his social studies class to study the education system of America.
Now I think this goes really hand in hand with the work that you've already been doing talking about this long standing relationship between China and Tim Walz. But to see it happening in the classroom level, something about that took it to a different level when there were students involved in this. But I'm just curious your initial thoughts on a story like this. Do you think maybe this could possibly be the reason why the school board kicked him out?
It it could possibly be, but I would say this. In 1997, I don't think people were very concerned about the the Chinese Communist Party the way that they are right now. If you go back to 1997, I mean, the idea that a delegation from China would come and and be at a classroom, I don't think would be shocking to a lot of people. And remember, this is something the Chinese have done for a long time. Right?
They've they've established these relationships, and it's not just with with whether they be high schools, but also universities. Massive amounts of money have been spent by the CCP into endowment programs across the country, into major universities. They have a foothold in in, you know, the medical community and educational community everywhere. Right? That this is something they've been very, very successful at.
But they're successful at it today, and we're able to look back on it and see all that influence because of the groundwork that was laid in the late nineties, early 2000, when they first started doing this. So it would surprise me if, a school board forced out a teacher because he allowed someone because remember, even now we will say CCP. In 1997, no one's gonna refer to them as officials connected to the CCP. They're just gonna say a Chinese delegation. Right? Acting like I know.
I was born in 97. Like, I didn't know. But yeah. Sure. Yeah. Tell tell you about old men like me. Yes. They they they back then, they would they wouldn't. Well, I think it would be rare, I should say, for anyone to even comment on the idea of it being, again, the the the communist Chinese Communist Party.
And remember, China at that time, had not had the explosion of growth that we've seen over the last 20, 30 almost 30 years now, in terms of of manufacturing international influence, international control. I mean, China is so much more powerful now than it was then. In 1997, it just it would not have been, in my opinion in my opinion, that shocking of a of a a thing to have happened.
Okay. No. That's really good insight because I'm very happy to admit that's definitely a blind spot for me as I wasn't I was in Canada just being born, so it's a little different. But that context I definitely was on my question sheet because, yes, I don't know if we necessarily viewed China as a threat then, but at the same time I just I question I didn't think that they were some sort of ally in 97. Is that a blind spot for me? Am I wrong about that? No. I would I wouldn't call them an ally.
I would say that in in the late eighties, early nineties, if we're talking about Asian influence, it was the Japanese that everyone talked about. Right? That was the the the Japanese were buying up all of Manhattan in the 19 eighties, and it was a big deal about the the Japanese economy, which by the way is not you might remember this or not being so young. But there was an enormous bubble economic bubble that Japan went through. And the Japanese, that bubble burst finally.
And so, then into the late nineties, early 2000, yeah, China began to emerge, but but China did not really emerge until what happened. You had NAFTA in the early nineties that pushed all these jobs into Mexico and Latin America, and then China began in the early 2000 to undercut the NAFTA agreements of those those factories in Mexico by saying, well, we can make those same goods with even cheaper in China.
So, again, it it just didn't feel like a very it wasn't necessarily an ally, but it wasn't seen as an enemy either. Today, you know, and then, by the way, that's even still fairly new. We're talking about within the last, what, 7, 8 years that anyone's ever even uttered the phrase that China might be a national security threat. The that probably that language is probably only 5 to 7 years old, if even that old. Right. Right.
Well, thank you for the context because it really helps me understand the story, and I think that your analysis of this is right that if this is the case and this is the landscape of America in 97, it is highly unlikely that Tim Walz was terminated or cut from his position in the school board or at the school because of this by the school board. So that I think that just helps piece the the pieces together for the audience and for myself as well because I am very curious.
There has been this, ongoing conspiracy theory. We we always say things are conspiracy theories and till they're proven correct, which has been time and time again, but there has been this ongoing conspiracy theory that this is all actually a psyop. That these conversations about Tim Walz's engagement with the CCP as well as Tim Walz's, allegations of grooming behavior are being put out on the Internet by unreliable, quote, unreliable sources in hopes that people will not believe them.
Have you given any credence to that idea? Oh, listen. I I am a firm believer. Firm believer, in disinformation. Right? And there are and I'm sure your your you and your viewers will totally understand this. And and this is still a fairly new idea for some people that go back 2014, 2015, 2016. Right? And there was a new wave. And even a little bit before that, like, 2010, 2012, there was a new wave of online information that started to come in that was just nutty stuff. Right?
On every story, every legitimate story that would come out just had, like, piles and piles of of craziness that surrounded it. And so it really became, like, oh, this online, culture, this online world where everyone talks about these these crazy conspiracy theories. And the truth is you have real legitimate stories.
You had real legitimate, controversies that were taking place or scandals that were taking place, but you couldn't talk about them because you we get this flood of just like madness. Well, the truth is a lot of that is orchestrated disinformation put out either by government sources, their entire departments within the NSA, and the FBI that are a part of this.
There are cybersecurity units that literally create insane stories and put them into the Internet in order to distract people from what is true and what is not true. And it's it's some of it's a test. Some of it is a test to see, like, how they can shift, I think, this is my opinion, how they can shift, the public's thinking. And then some of it is to actually obscure and hide certain information. And so when you get certain stories that come out and they're just I'll give you an example.
A recent example would be Epstein. Right? When everything was going on with Epstein. And and everyone talked about the client list the client list. Right? Well, we still never seen. Right? All of a sudden, online, you get all these client lists that start to emerge, and it's got all these names in them. Well, that's a pretty clever way of creating disinformation. Why? Because if we can basically say everybody's on the client list, then nobody's on the client list. Right?
It's a very effective way of erasing anyone who's actually responsible for being a part of this because well, I've seen everyone's name. I remember my daughter, my oldest daughter had been talking to me at one point, and she said, oh, I saw this person's name and this person's name. Is that true? And I'm like, there's no client list out. If you're seeing names on a client list, it's made up. It's not a real thing. Right?
So she was shocked by the different names she was seeing, but what begins to happen after a certain point is now it just doesn't mean anything anymore, and so people just move on. So there is a lot of disinformation, and and there are certainly, cases where really wild things will be put out to obscure or hide the truth that's in plain sight because you're so distracted by all the all the craziness around you.
Yeah. And I I'm very fearful that that same thing is gonna happen when it comes to the Diddy clientele as well. I feel like people are just tossing names out left and right. And we have some some people with very substantial accusations against them. I would put Usher in that category, but I have a feeling that we're gonna see some sort of similar disinformation when it comes to that.
And I'm actually gonna switch up our stories a little bit if that's okay because what we're talking about right now tees up so well with our next story which is that the former Abercrombie and Fitch CEO, Mike Jeffries, was caught and caught all up in this whole sex trafficking thing.
He was arrested and posted a $10,000,000 bond over allegations that he was essentially taking the male workers outside of Hollister, Abercrombie and Fitch, Gillie Hicks, all of those stores that used to sit there in their washboard abs that were like 17 year old kids that were getting groomed by the CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch and ultimately assaulted by him.
Reading here from the New York Post, it says the 80 year old is accused of wielding, quote, power, wealth, and influence traffic male models for his sexual pleasures across more than a decade while he ran the fashion powerhouse. This is being prosecuted by the US attorney's office, Eastern District of New York. This guy looks like an absolute creep and there are apparently a couple of co conspirators conspirators as well.
Jeffrey had a quote romantic partner, okay, so he's gay as fuck, and he said that he the co conspirator is his boyfriend Matthew Smith who was also put in this whole racketeering of sex trafficking and prostitution raps and he was also detained. There's a third one too. His name is James Jacobson, 71 years old, who was accused of recruiting the men's victims, sexually trying them out beforehand and then handing them over. This sounds like Epstein all over again.
This sounds like Diddy all over again. What do you make of another one of these coming out? Well, first of all, I I would have to say to anybody who's ever walked past the Abercrombie and Fitch store, are you surprised? Is this shocking to anyone? I mean, this is this is the the gay side of Victoria's Secret. Right? It's the exact same scandal.
It's the exact same thing that they were doing for Victoria's Secret, which, by the way, the exact same same setup with Victoria's Secret and the the owner and founder of Victoria's Secret who was deeply connected to Jeffrey Epstein, was his private financier, was his first client that dumped money into his hedge fund. So is it surprising to say, wait a minute. I walked past the store and and when I do or if you walk inside and I, you know, would never really shop there.
They wasn't really my style. But if you walk ever ever walk into a store, it was gigantic black and white photos of naked boys everywhere. Right? And so to say now that we've learned all that we've learned about Epstein and about, excuse me, Victoria's Secret, the way they were run, what we've seen about Balenciaga, what we've seen about, what's happening with Diddy. I mean, really, it shouldn't shock anybody.
What I would say is the reason that some of these empires are finally falling, though, is because of the Epstein thing. I think you can go back to that and say, it became acceptable at a certain point in the public's view to say, these guys are not not too power to full to fill. Lex Westner, the the the guy from, you know, Victoria's Secret, he's not now he's never faced any charges that I know of. Right?
He's managed to to skate by somehow, but I wouldn't be surprised if at some point they did come for him. They should come for him if he's if he's done anything wrong and based on his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, it'd be hard to believe he hasn't done something wrong. But I think that this is not surprising to anyone, and at some point hopefully we begin to say, okay.
You know, this is the stuff I know I know he gets all made fun of a lot on on social media, but guys like Corey Feldman, this is the stuff they've been warning about for decades. Right? Corey Feldman, I feel bad for him. I gotta tell you. This is off your subject, but he gets made fun of so much on social media because his dancing's horrible. His singing's horrible. His it's just awful. It's comical.
But it's hard for me to laugh at him because, like, the guy was literally just tortured sexually tortured for years years as a child, in in Hollywood. And the stuff that he's warned about, the stuff that that we see happening in the music industry that's finally coming out, It's great that it's coming out. The question is are we actually doing anything to fix any of this? Right. This is actually my big question for you, Ben.
Like, I am very curious whether you think that people are waking up to this and going, wow, like, in the age of social media, I can be a citizen journalist. I can come out here. I can put all this information out and then the feds are kind of like, oh, shit, they're on to us. We gotta pick this up. Or are we at a point where the feds, what they did a crappy job with Epstein, I think we can all agree with that, but at a certain point they have learned kind of a formulaic response to this.
And so now they they see where the formula is and they're picking it up slowly but surely as they see, oh, you know, when you you see pattern a, you follow it and usually it's results in sex trafficking of some sort. Yeah. Where do you think it kinda falls in that in your opinion? Well, I think it's very difficult because how do you actually change the system? Right? So so revealing a guy who's been doing it for 40 or 50 years and saying he's a sex trafficker and you're going after him now.
Okay. Got it. You're going after him now. But how does that resolve any of this situation? So for instance, you say, well, we're gonna stop all the sex trafficking at within Abercrombie. Are you really? Okay. Well, maybe you are by arresting this guy, but then you just, as a federal apparatus, have released 400,000 children into the country, not knowing where any of them are. And you can't track them.
And you're and you're paying out $400,000,000 to relocation agencies to move migrant children around the country. No one can tell you where they are. Where are the kids? So Ben. If it feels Don't even get me started today. On my flight to New York, I was literally one of maybe 5 Americans. It was an entire flight of refugees. I have a whole tweet thread coming out on it soon because it's it's it's freaking nuts. It's freaking nuts what you're but keep going. Sorry to cut you off.
No. It well, it it is nuts. And when you when you experience so I I grew up in El Paso. Right? El Paso, Texas. And so I still go back there, every once in a while. And when you go to El Paso, and you get on the airport there, the entire airport is nothing but migrants. And they're, like, under space blankets, laying on the floors, and waiting to get on Their bags and their tags. They get their open yeah. The salons. Right? They have their own learning through TSA, and it you're right.
They get a clear bag, and it's got a cell phone in it, and they're they're getting on the planes, going everywhere. I saw the cell phones they got today. They're so nice. Are you kidding me? I was like, do you wanna switch? Well, it's already functioning. Here you go. The the problem is when you when you watch this happening, on one hand, it's infuriating. But on the other hand, it's it's it's tragedy unfolding before you in real time, Because this is not a happy ending for these people.
Yeah. They're coming from terrible places. No no question about it. But they're not coming to a better place. They're going to terrible places. Right? You're being relocated around the country, and you see they're being moved into cities where a lot of them are homeless, or then being put up in hotels, but that's not forever. That's only temporary. They're gonna be victimized over and over and over here. Again, you're missing kids everywhere.
So when you watch that happening, and then you say, well, the feds are at least are cracking down on p Diddy because he's been having a bunch of sex parties. Listen, if if p Diddy was having sex parties where he was forcing children to be a part of that, minors to be a part of that, yeah, lock the guy up. But are we being distracted by the fact that p Diddy may have had a whole lot of of adult consensual sex that may have been freaky and using bay too much baby oil? Maybe so.
But, honestly, if that's what he's doing, I don't care. But that becomes, in some ways, a big distraction when you say, well, I'm gonna we're gonna focus on p. Diddy and and the fact that he was having I don't there's a term for a viewpoint on the term. It was, like, long time parties or something. I don't know. It was some term that they had to go parties. White parties, whatever. Yeah. We we got yeah.
Well, the white parties made it another term of, like, where they basically just go for dates. Right? And Kevin Hart was a part of this supposedly. But if those people are all adults and choosing to be a part of this stuff and I know there's people who were they say, well, they were pressured. They they they didn't know what they were getting. I believe that was probably happening. Absolutely. It just feels like some of it's a distraction.
When when you're acting as if we're cracking down on sex trafficking and human trafficking, and you're ignoring the the gigantic one that's in right in front of you, and you won't even acknowledge that that one's happening. Oh, that's so good. Is p d d a psyop? Like, is I think I'm gonna have to title the show that. No. I know. It's just, like, I'm not saying I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but at the same time, I it's it's kinda interesting, like, oh, are we being diverted?
I mean, I don't know if I can a 100% get on board with the whole diddy thing, but I definitely think that about the whole submersible thing. I couldn't take my eyes off of it, and I'm sure there was something going on then 5 years. I'm gonna be like, damn it, Chrissy. Why were you paying attention to the effing submersible? This was happening right in front of you. Oh my gosh.
Speaking of things that are happening right in front of you, there is a woman, a representative from, I believe it was New York, Connecticut, who had disaster right in front of her and she ignored it. So let's move on to our next story. This is from the New York Post. It says that rep Jahanna Hayes splurged nearly $13,000 on oysters, Martha's Vineyard strips, and more as the residents that she was supposed to be taking care of or advising or overseeing were grappling with historic flooding.
So this woman, obviously a Democrat, was slurping down oysters and taking herself to the salon while her residents were suffering. She spent, according to FEC filings, $13,000 in the process of all of this including attending the DNC in Chicago with her swanky hotel rooms, of course.
She also, I guess, was cut absentee from the fact that there were $206,000,000 in damages to Bridges, Rhodes, Businesses, and Homes during flooding, mudslides, and landslides in her home area where plenty of people were her and yet she was at the salon, of course.
Now I do struggle with these stories, Ben, because it's not like Johanna Haynes or whatever her name is paused the flood so I'm not blaming her for that, but it is the priorities of both politicians on both sides to prioritize stupid meet and greets at the DNC or the RNC instead of doing what they were elected to do which is help people and it freaking irks me, but, like, you said this with Ted Cruz.
Remember when he went to Mexico and he had this pre planned trip and I'm like, I I don't wanna come and attack you for something that you already had good commitments, you have to live up to. Where do you kinda stand on stories like this? Because I they inherently irk me, and I can't disagree with that. Sure. Yeah. I I think the problem is this, I agree with you. So she didn't cause the flooding, nor could the amount she spent on oysters have fixed all the problems with the flooding. Right?
She she didn't it wasn't like she spent all the money on oysters. I think the problem is the reason this rubs people the wrong way is because we are not supposed to have an aristocratic system. And unfortunately, what what public service has become in our country is no longer public service. It's aristocracy.
So now you become an aristocrat and you say, well, I get to live in this this way, and I get to live on the taxpayer dime, and I get to go to these big events and go to big parties, and and that's my priority. Right? I prioritize my comfort. I prioritize rubbing shoulders with other people over serving my constituency. And I think that's that's where it it probably bothers most people. Here's the question. Does it bother people enough to do something about it?
There are ways to resolve it. 1 is obviously you remove the person from office. Right? But you you can vote them out. You can also recall people. That's also possible. But beyond that, what are the standards that we then begin to we begin to push forward to change the way politicians live? It's the same concept of saying, at what point will we change the laws that no longer allow, members of congress to trade stocks, right, on insider information because they're all doing it.
When are we gonna accept the idea that when you go to Congress and you come out a multimillionaire, which everyone does now, that the system is fundamentally broken and we have to fix it? We can't just keep saying, it's fine, or, well, you know how that's that's the way it is. It's like at some point, it has to be it has to be fixed. So there has to be a plan to resolve that and fix it. I agree with you.
It's hard to just sit and criticize, like, well, should you not go on vacation ever if you're a public servant? Well, actually, maybe you shouldn't. Maybe you should say, you know what? During this time, you can trade stocks. You can't take vacations. You can't go to fancy dinners. Like, this is the life of a public servant. And if you don't wanna do that life, then it's not for you.
But it shouldn't be a way of enriching yourself because that's what it's it's morphed into and it's completely the wrong system. I know. I'll never forget. I lived in DC for the 2 years after I graduated college.
So 2019 to 2021, I was in DC and I lived about a mile away from AOC and I'll just never forget when she would bitch and complain about the fact that she was a public servant who had a place in New York, a place in DC and she wasn't getting paid enough, and I was at a dog park right next to her apartment complex and I couldn't even afford a fucking tile square in that apartment complex. Yep. I could see her riding her Peloton bike from the dog park.
I'm like, I'll chill with this idea that you're supposed to get rich off of being a public servant. You're supposed to serve us. I'm not supposed to be paying you a shitload of money. But anyway Let me no. Let me say this too, though. You know, people talk a lot about term limits. How do we get get term limits? If you would just take away the ability for people to become rich in office, term limits would oppose themselves because nobody would wanna stay in it very long.
Even if you got into it for a little while, you said, well, I can't trade stocks, and I can't get rich off of this, and I'm not allowed to to to spend taxpayer money to go into an official event, so I'm gonna go stay in this 5 star hotel. You don't need to do any of that.
If you could take that away, then term limits would impose themselves because people would say, I wanna do my 2 year term, 4 year term, you know, senate 6 year term, and then I'm out because I have to go be able to make a living. Right? And it would fix the problem would fix itself in terms of having these entrenched people who never leave office. You could actually resolve that issue. Today's show is sponsored by Freedom 2 O. What's in your water?
If it's not Freedom 2 O, it might be time to reconsider. Freedom 2 O's award winning water goes beyond the bottle with an 8 step filtration process that includes reverse osmosis, UV light treatment, and an infusion of 432 Hertz, the body's natural healing frequency. It's not just about hydration, it's about providing your body with clean, pure energy, free from the sugars and additives that other brands like to sneak in. Why settle for anything less than the best?
Freedom 2 0 is hydration redefined. Ready to make the switch? Click the link in the show notes and elevate your hydration game today. But with that, I think we should just get into our next story, which is also kind of about this corruption that I see in American government funneling money towards a couple of individuals. So there's this anti Israel professor who blamed Israel for Hamas terrorism, and the Biden Harris administration gave this man $60,000 as part of some sort of book deal.
Now, this man is a professor at University College London, so we're funding quote journalism, biased journalism, for a professor that doesn't even live in this country, and we have seen this time and time again. It's not just this story.
It is the Biden administration routinely through the Department of Education funding professors in the United States that regardless of whether you believe you are team Israel or not, regardless of whether you believe that they are funding professors who are inherently anti Western values. So I if you don't like the idea that, this guy is anti Israel, you're like okay cool I don't really care that much.
He inherently holds beliefs that are anti Western and the Biden administration has exemplified yet again in this story that they are awarding people money. That's a lot of money. That's a that's most people's double most people's salary. Salary? Yeah. Yeah. It's wild. And so like I said, take Israel out of it. This is still funding of anti American ideas using taxpayer funded dollars, and I don't know at what point is that, like, treasonous.
So what I would say is I would take it even further step on it, which is, let's say that it was pro western values. Why is the government giving them money for that? Why are federal tax dollars being sent to any professor anywhere? If you're a professor, write your books, teach your classes, get paid by your universities, but but there should be no federal dollars going to anyone's opinion about anything because that is inherently anti free speech.
The moment that government begins to dictate and and reward speech, whether it's pro American, anti American, pro Western, anti Israel, pro Hamas, doesn't matter. Government has no right to use taxpayer dollars to fund any opinion, belief system, anything. That's not what that's not what the federal government is supposed to do.
But what we've turned it into is an apparatus that funds everyone all the time in order to create, you know, climate change belief, in order to to create beliefs regarding, whether it be politics or whether it be, health or whether it be, you know, the the medical community. Everything that we know about about, big pharma and big food, it's all coming out of taxpayer dollars that are funding research that is then filtered and and also coupled with money from big corporations.
And so everything becomes a lie. It's very hard for people to even know what's true and not true, and government's right in the middle of all of it because they have unlimited funds essentially to to fund these kinds of things. So, listen, I agree with you that that this one particular guy, should he be getting this money? No. Absolutely not. But I think he's on a long list of people who should not be getting any federal tax dollars to write books. We shouldn't be paying for that. Oh, I know.
I believe, it was probably, like, my first or second year of journalism, so it would have been 2019 to 21, somewhere in that range. I remember reporting on a story about how the, it would have been the Biden administration at the time, so it must have been post 2020. The Biden administration was doling out money to transgender journalists in India. And I was like, there are homeless people right outside my building. Why the hell are the transgenders of India getting, like, taxpayers dollars?
This is freaking nuts. It's that's the way that they just send money.
I I have this theory in my mind and it's it's just kind of what I fall asleep dreaming about that the government could have an opt out feature that, like, here I'll give you my tax dollars although I do believe taxation is theft but, you know, in this theoretical world I'll give you my tax dollars but I wanna opt out of abortion, opt out of sending my money to transgender journalists in India, like, I need to be able to choose what my money is going towards.
That's how I would I would feel a little bit better about paying my taxes. Yeah. Because you have some control. Yeah. You have some control over it. Does that make me a control freak or does that make me pragmatic? I don't know. You let me know. No. I I I would I would say that, most of us would probably prefer that the ability to do that. If you're gonna have to pay taxes, as you said, you should have some authority and ability to decide where it goes.
And certainly not to these nonsensical things that it goes to. Like, why why do my tax dollars have to fund wars around the world? Like, why am I paying for this when I don't even believe in this? It's insane. I know. No. Preach. Preach. Preach. Alright. Well, I do wanna get on to our 5th and final story because we got a little segment at the end that we gotta get through to, and, of course, time is of the utmost importance.
So this next our 5th and final story, it is really kind of crazy goes to what we were talking about at the top of the show as well, Ben, when we were saying that, oh, you know, the media is incredibly biased against Donald Trump and that if an allegation came out about him they would run with it. Well, run with allegation they did.
In 20 20, Vanessa Gillen was unfortunately murdered, and Trump allegedly made claims that he wasn't gonna pay for this woman's funeral after promising to pay for the funeral, and 4 years later, The Atlantic and the hacks over there decided to publish a piece suggesting that Donald Trump in an Oval Office meeting in in 2020 says, quote, it doesn't cost $60,000 to bury an effin' Mexican, and Trump then ordered chief of staff Mark Meadows not to pay this.
Now what's interesting is that the Atlantic put this out 4 years later. Interesting timing, we can get into that, but even more interesting is that Vanessa's sister, Myra, wrote in response to this Atlantic report in response to the editor in chief of The Atlantic saying, wow. I don't appreciate how you're exploiting my sister's death for politics. It's hurtful and disrespectful to the important change changes she made for service members.
President Donald Trump did nothing but show respect to my family and Vanessa. In fact, I voted for him today. What is your take on this story? It's an all over x. Yeah. I was gonna say this is this is a good story to finish with. It's such a huge story because to your point, first of all, if you go and read that actual article, they do not cite one single name of a person who verifies this. It is supposedly a person in the room who was taking, contemporary contemporaneous notes. Right?
They don't say who it was. They don't say why the person was in the room, what their connection was. There are people who were named that were in the room. Mark Meadows, I believe, is named that he was in the room. 2 or 3 others can't I can't remember their names right now. Every single one of the people who were named in the story says it did not happen. This is a lie. This was never said. There was no discussion of $60,000 being the cost for the funeral. He never said he wouldn't pay for it.
He never called her, you know, an effing Mexican. Like, none of that's true. So here's the problem with what's happened to media is and and why we call it true to media. Right? So the problem of what's happened to media is this, is we have allowed in the last, especially 8 years, since Trump first ran in 2016, to have this system where some story comes out and no name is used. It's some anonymous source, some anonymous person who is allowed to make a claim.
Now listen, as a as a journalist and as a reporter, you can have people who come to you, and you gotta protect them as sources, and they give you information. The only thing that person is good for is to give you initial information from which to launch your story. It is not a story in and of itself if you cannot name the person who's providing you this information. Because if you do that, there is no accountability. Who is accountable for the claims that they're making?
Who is accountable saying, I was in this room. I heard this said, and and this is the person. So that it can be verified that number 1, the person making the claim was actually in the room. No one no one's able to verify that because we don't know who this person was taking these notes. How did this person pass this information on? And why is every named person in the story saying it's not true?
And as you said, most importantly, the fact that Vanessa's sister reached out, said she voted for Trump, and the story is a lie. This did not happen. So it is or at least so to the extent that she would believe it because she says the his treatment of her family was not there. It is a desperate attempt. And as we said earlier with the Tim Wall stuff, if this if the Wall stuff was being said about JD Vance, it would be on every newscast, every single night up until election day.
There is no way they would let it slide without covering it. But in this case, it's disgraceful and it's not journalism. It is the these smear attacks, but we're just used to it. People are people are so used to it that this story, while it's all over x, it's going nowhere. No one's going to believe it because these kinds of stories, I think, have run their course. Yeah. Well, just coming from a very common sense point of view too, like, no one believes that Donald Trump hates the military.
That is just it's been a Democrat pop talking point for so long, but there is a certain point where no matter how much the media tells you or, social media tells you or journalists quote unquote tell you, you just feel it in your gut and no one gets that vibe. At a certain point, there's just no other way to say it. I mean, Kamala would probably understand me, vibes and whatnot, but she that's just not what you get from Donald Trump. And I think everyone inherently knows that, even the left.
So the fact that this is what they're going with, I think it really exemplifies their desperation because Well they are losing. Yeah. I I think first of all, I I agree with you. This idea that Donald Trump hates the military, you you know he doesn't hate the military, but he's the only one who shows up for military funerals.
The fact that that on the anniversary of the the the guy the men and women who were killed in Afghanistan, that Harris did not show up for it, they're still trying to make a big deal out of this Arlington Cemetery thing. She wasn't there, and president Biden wasn't there. They didn't go, and Trump did. So that's first. But then also, I agree with you. There's this idea, like, well, Trump hates the military. Well, that's actually not what they're trying to say with the story.
What they're trying to say with the story is Trump hates Mexicans, because they're freaking out about the fact that Harris is losing a any significant portion of the Hispanic vote right now. Polling shows that that Trump is the most popular Republican among Latinos in history. No no Republican has carried Latinos the way he's carrying them right now. He has cut into her league so much. I believe he's carrying about 35% of the Latino vote right now. He's getting close to 40%.
It's it's incredibly high. Oh, it's high. Yeah. Trying to do is say yeah. They're trying to say, listen. He hates he hates Latinos. He hates Mexicans. That's what they're trying to say with the story. It's it's just not gonna go way where. Yeah. Tell that to Jill Biden or Taco Tuesdays. Anyway, I do wanna get to one final story because it's it's really wild. So Chris Cuomo might be voting for Trump, and I think that might be the craziest thing I've ever said on this show.
Chris Cuomo very obviously left the mainstream media when he was called out for his collusion with his brother Andrew Cuomo during COVID and the pandemic and everything. A very dishonesty. Yes. And it's so crazy how when you're not fed a script from mainstream news outlets and you start critically thinking and thinking for yourself, you start becoming a conservative because conservatism is really common sense.
And so on an episode of Chris Cuomo's podcast, he started to criticize the way the left has become almost sycophantic about Kamala Harris comparing her to Obama and how he views them as female black Jesus or something like that. Let's watch this clip. Kamala Harris is not a godsend. Alright? You people didn't even like her 6 months ago. Now all of a sudden, she's black female Jesus. The way Obama was black Jesus.
And let me tell you something, he had a lot more going for him than Kamala Harris does, and not just as firsts go, but his type of campaigning, his type of persuasion, his charisma, Okay? He was imbued with things that she is not. And I don't mean that as a criticism, it's just a point of comparison. And her process fucked her also. There's a convenience in it, but it fucked her also because there are a lot of misgivings about her.
There's an underlying feeling that she didn't get this the right way. She may not have won a primary. She didn't even make it to the 1st round of primaries when she did run. And that is both fair and unfair at the same time. But look, this idea of don't say anything bad about her because Trump, I don't buy that. I don't buy that. And it's not how you get to a better place. It's a relative assessment. She has negatives, so does he. Does he have more?
Yeah. He also also has a way more intense following. That's why this race is so tight. Now explain that to me. Unless you wanna write off half this country as bigots, how do you explain it being so tight? Maybe you're not as right about everything as you think you are. Maybe you should be a little bit more open to the people that you disagree with. Maybe they're not all racists. What did I just witness? Is Chris Cuomo gonna become a Trump voter? What do you take away from this?
What are the key elements for you? Okay. I won't be hard on Chris Cuomo here. Alright. But Chris Cuomo is is a chameleon who will say whatever he needs to say to find an audience. Chris Cuomo is not a Trump fan. Chris Cuomo is a liar in in in that when he was at CNN, he never did one brave thing at CNN.
And I can say that because as a journalist, I've lost a lot of jobs over the years because I was willing to do things that other people wouldn't do and say things other people weren't weren't willing to say. Chris Cuomo was never that guy. He was not a guy who was ever willing to stand up to anything. This is the guy who claimed that Joe Rogan had injected himself with horse dewormer.
And then when Dave Smith called him out on the p b g p p b j podcast about it, not LiveTown, all they did, he still wouldn't acknowledge that, yeah, you know what? He got it wrong, and he owed Joe Rogan an apology for claiming that Joe Rogan had injected himself with horse dewormer. And he said, well, guys, it's complicated. It's it's not complicated. You were wrong, and you towed the line that CNN wanted you to tow.
And you towed the line CNN wanted you to tow about Donald Trump for years until CNN threw you out. Right? And then you went to NewsNation. And when he got to NewsNation, he looked around and you know what he realized? The reason that CNN had no ratings including when Chris Cuomo was there is because no one's buying what they're selling. And so I think Chris is at least smart enough to say, you know what? There's a pretty big audience out there that supports Trump.
And there's an even bigger audience because what Trump is doing right now is the most important thing that has happened in politics in our lifetimes. And your lifetime shorter than mine, but in decades. Let me put it this way. It is so important, and here's what he's doing. I am so grateful that Donald Trump was not reelected in 2020. Because when he was elected in 2016, he made a lot of promises about the things that he was going to do.
And then he surrounded himself with a lot of Washington insiders, and neocons, and neoliberals who absolutely ran amok, and undermined him and destroyed what he actually wanted to accomplish. Had Trump been reelected in 2020, most of those same people would have stayed around him.
But they didn't, because when Trump did not win in 2020 and spent 4 years out, they all abandoned ship, stabbed him in the back like Caesar in the senate, and then ultimately attempted to have him bankrupted, thrown into prison, killed even. They they want him destroyed. So here's the beauty of what's just happened, is that Donald Trump is now, in 2024, not surrounded by NeoCons and Neo Liberals.
In fact, what he's done is he's created the most exciting, interesting coalition of people that we have ever seen in politics. The fact that he has Bobby Kennedy junior, Tulsi Gabbard, Elon Musk, Vivek Raulaswamy surrounding him. JD Vance as a vice president who's only been in the senate for 2 years, right, and had no experience before that. The people around him are actually dynamic, fascinating, interesting people. And what he's and he's promised to put a libertarian inside of his cabinet.
Right? So he's pulling a lot of libertarians from that. He is surrounding himself with people who actually have ideas, good ideas about how to how to turn the system around, how to stop the disaster that we're facing right now. Trump is creating something truly magnificent. If he's able to be elected and act and I believe he will because of the coalition. I had a conversation today on my show with, the head of the Libertarian party. And the question I asked was was, about this coalition.
And one thing I told her, and I'll tell it to your audience as well, The only way Trump can truly be accountable to the things he's promised to do, which is some radical things, is to surround himself with a coalition of people who are not, monolithic. Who are are dive as diverse as the group he's put together because diversity, true diverse, not the b s diversity that Democrats talk about. Right? True diversity of opinion, thought, and political view creates accountability.
When everyone's on the same in the coming from the same page, there's no accountability. So having said all that, coming back to Chris Cuomo. So Chris Cuomo realizes, wait a minute. There's this enormous coalition of people that are surrounding Trump from from black men, Hispanic men, Latinos in general who were voting for him, to to traditionally independent voters, to libertarians, to, people I would call classical liberals, former liberals, not progressives. Right?
The people around Trump that now surround him, Chris Cuomo is looking at that and say, that's a big audience. I need to get in on that trade. So that's all I think that he's doing. I don't believe he's had any kind of come to Jesus moment. I think he's just trying to find a space for himself in in in the media outside of what he did at CNN. Because if CNN had never fired him, he'd be sitting there right now talking about how Trump is a threat to democracy. I'm I couldn't agree more.
I think that I don't necessarily agree that, Chris Cuomo is gonna be voting for Trump. I'm definitely not on that train, but I do think that maybe he is waking up without realizing it and the fact that he sees the success of Tucker Carlson, and I can see in the way that he sets up his show and the way that he's trying to ponder these theoretical questions that he is trying to take a just a little bit of maybe simple, just call it notes.
Take some notes from Tucker Carlson and try to emulate that in his own performance. And I think what is gonna happen is that inevitably when you start to question things you start to come to common sense and like I always say common sense is conservatism. So I wouldn't be I wouldn't be surprised if down the road we saw that because that really that's that's just the direction I see. But anyway, Ben, thank you so much for coming on the program.
If people are interested in following your work, where can they do so? So you can find me on x@truth_inmediaorbenswannbenswann_, and also at truegoodmedia.com. Awesome. Thank you so much for being here. I'll put all of those in the show notes, guys. Thanks so much for watching underreported stories. I'll see you here next time. Love you. Bye. Thanks so much for watching.
If you liked what you heard, please be sure to give this video a thumbs up, and leave a comment about how beautiful, stunning, and funny I am. And if you want more content based on logic, be sure to click over here for more videos and clips of my show. If you have the means to financially support the show, consider purchasing from my merch line, Based Apparel, linked right below. I really appreciate it, and I'll see you back here next time. Bye, friends.