The data is coming in so hot and fast today that it's all I can do not to fall behind too much, but the numbers all tell the same story: the Mainstream Legacy Media is a bought-and-paid-for arm of the Deep State. So while I was busy researching how more than $8 million in tax money went to Politico...
...you did see that story, didn't you?
If not, here's the gist:
We do indeed appear to be funneling large sums of tax money to @politico so that some bureaucrats can read left-wing journalists complain about Republicans https://t.co/sAhsJcJxoN pic.twitter.com/HDiBfZrj5U
— Sunny (@sunnyright) February 5, 2025
Politico's financials aren't public. I found estimates today that its 2023 revenues were as high as $400-plus million and as low as $7 million. Whatever the case, nobody, and I mean nobody forgets who paid it $8 million in subscription fees.
Anyway, a couple of hours later, Ian Miles Cheong reported, "The US Government gave the New York Times tens of millions of dollars over just the past 5 years despite paying relatively little money to the NYT in the years preceding 2021." We know who came into power in 2021. "For instance, in August 2024, the US government awarded $4.1 million to the NYT."
"The bulk of the funds came from the US Department of Health and Human Services at $26.90m, followed by the National Science Foundation at $19.15m."
Interesting that it was DHHS and the NSF ponying up 50 million American taxpayer dollars to a paper owned by a Mexican billionaire at a time when Washington wanted to silence certain voices on health issues pertaining to the emergence of COVID and the ridiculous government measures taken to "combat" it.
This post from Mike Benz was succinct and mind-blowingly on point:
Just going to keep repeating this until people understand this not a joke, not hyperbole, and not an overstatement. https://t.co/iVs1fxtu4v
— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) February 5, 2025
USAID was ordered into existence by President John F. Kennedy as a cheap and nimble means of countering Soviet aid and influence in the developing world. Even then, he saw the State Department as too hidebound and bureaucratic. But USAID has morphed into a $60 billion — $70 billion? — slush fund for largely domestic causes that are Soviet in their ambitions.
Don't think just because we're learning all of this courtesy of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the DOGE boys that we've won the war. Aesthetica — a reliable X source with Democrat friends in high places — claims that one connection told him that "initial plans by the Democrats is to have their people at USAID hide the partisan funding under 'unimpeachable initiatives.' They will push back really hard on certain line items that on their face look like reasonable USAID expenditures and hide their political spending under these programs.”
That sounds exactly right. There's too much money at stake for anyone to simply roll over.
And what the hell? Look at this: "U.S. Government Caught Funding 'Large Scale Social Deception' Through Thomson Reuters Special Services."
A newly uncovered federal contract shows that Thomson Reuters Special Services LLC (TRSS) was awarded over $9 million for a secretive program labeled “Active Social Engineering Defense (ASED) Large Scale Social Deception (LSD).”
The contract, issued by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), suggests the U.S. government is funding large-scale influence operations designed to shape public narratives.
Thomson Reuters Special Services is owned by the same parent company as the Reuters "news" agency.
The worst of all this influence and grift — and I'll admit up front my bias and vested interest here — is the millions fed to legacy media dinosaurs while we alternative media mammals scurry around, deprived of sunlight.
I relish competing in a free marketplace, particularly the marketplace of ideas. This is America, after all, and I'm a capitalist, and so is my employer.
But it's hardly a free marketplace of ideas — when taxes from my paycheck find themselves in the bank accounts of my commercial and ideological competitors. Sometimes, maybe too often, it feels like I have to remind readers that we need your support as a VIP member. You can do that right now by clicking this link and using my nifty 60% off FIGHT discount.
"You are the media now," Elon Musk told X users last year. Axios CEO Jim VandeHei angrily shot back, "My message to Elon Musk is b*lls**t. You're not the media!"
But the fact is, we are the media. The First Amendment is for everybody, not just for the credentialed "media class" represented by the likes of NPR, Politico, and every other outfit that either takes taxpayer dollars or wields its size like a club against the free speech of others — all to prop up a federal government grown oppressively large.
We are the media.
Recommended: Crazy Talk, Vol. 2: Trump's Radical Plan to Take Over Gaza
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