Cheney’s Vote & Russia’s MAGA Ring
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Available for a limited time at participating restaurants. Tax not included. Price may vary. Not valid with any other offer, discount, or combo. Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well-trained, well-equipped, and battle-hardened. There is not a liberal America and a conservative America. The United States of America. Good night and good luck. Hey guys, it's Rick Wilson and welcome to the elephant in the room.

The elephant in the room this week is twofold. One elephant is named Liz Cheney, and the other is named Russian interference. The first is pretty amazing. The second is pretty terrible. So here we go. All right, folks. I'm in Texas. I'm in the city of Austin. I'm at the Texas Tribune Festival. I've got an event I'm speaking at tomorrow. And this...

A piece of news just broke about an hour ago. Liz Cheney, who said two days ago that she'd be voting for Kamala Harris, once again repeated that statement today in front of a huge audience, a huge and wildly enthusiastic audience. Look at what J.D. Vance says on an almost daily basis about women. I mean, that guy's got a real...

Women problem. I don't know what it is and I don't want to psychoanalyze him at the end of the day if you listen to what he says about women You know and you look at Donald Trump and what Donald Trump has done and what he says about women these these are not people that we can entrust with power again, but that means

Women and men, but we've got to get out there and vote. We've got to make sure people are registered. You've got to drive people to the polls. It really, really matters this time. And she also dropped another massive, massive bomb into this election. And that is that her father, representative, then secretary of defense, White House chief of staff, vice president.

Dick Cheney is also voting for Kamala Harris. Dick Cheney, your father, a beloved figure among Democrats for many, many years. Do you if you know who he will be supporting or who he'll be voting for? Do you care to share with us who he might be voting for? Dick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris. Now, look, folks, here's the deal.

I know that there's this belief in the modern conservative movement, the modern MAGA movement, that any name, Bush or Cheney, is anathema because they remind you of things that you claim you used to believe. And they do. They remind you of who you claim you once were. They remind you of the party you once said you were loyal to. And you abandon them. And I get why you did it. You wanted to be with the Orange Con Man. Understood. But here's the deal. None of you can argue.

None of you on the MAGA side can argue, even for a millisecond, that Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney are not conservatives. Dick Cheney was a conservative from the time he was in power in the early 1970s. Liz Cheney, a member of Congress, was one of the most conservative members of that body, not just when she was there, but ever.

They have made the decision that the existential risk of Trump, that the stated and real and actual danger of Donald Trump is so potent and so present that

and so pendant, as they say, that they're going to cross party lines, just like millions of other Republicans. They're going to cross party lines because they understand that Kamala Harris will be a better president for this republic than Donald Trump. They understand that Kamala Harris will ironically be better on the big issues that they care most about than

than Donald Trump. What are those issues? Things like national security, things like preserving our international alliances and relationships, things like keeping this country safe from the dangers that Donald Trump exposed it to by his flirtations and fellations of dictators. They understand

Very, very fundamentally, that Kamala Harris will be in the best tradition of American leadership in the world. She'll value alliances like NATO. She'll improve our status in the world, including in the Pacific, where Donald Trump could be bought off in a hot minute by the North Koreans, as you know, from his love letters to Kim Jong-un.

This is a fundamental, serious, baseline question for many, many, many Republicans. At Lincoln Project, we call a lot of them Red Dawn conservatives. Those Red Dawn conservatives do not want to be in a world where Vladimir Putin is the hero. They do not want to be in a world where Ukraine is cut off and victimized and destroyed by Russia.

That is what Russia will do, and they know it. This is a chance. Kamala Harris is a chance to stop the flood of this country in terms of our loyalties around the world, the people who are loyal to us and vice versa, from running into the arms of the bad guys. They understand that.

fundamentally, that if Trump engages in a massive terror regime, it won't just destroy the American economy, it'll destroy America's ability to influence world events and to protect our interests and values around the world.

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So when you see people who are as conservative as the Cheneys, and Liz Cheney has shown in the entire time that we, you know, she burst onto the scene as a principled opponent of Donald Trump from the right.

She has shown over and over again, she's willing to put country over party, country over her career, country over the comforts of the easy life you can have as a Republican. If you just say, okay, whatever Trump wants, she refused to do that. It is enormously principled and important public stand in this country. I admire her profoundly for the decision she made to come out and say these things. And look, she's not doing it because she's a progressive.

She's not doing it because she's a liberal. She's not doing it because she's a Washington insider. She's doing it because she understands what's at stake. And what's at stake here, folks, is not getting less important. It's getting more important.

As Donald Trump continues to deteriorate and become more insane – sorry, sirens. I cannot get away lately without interruptions on this damn show. But that's because we're traveling and here we are. But the things she is saying are so abundantly clear about the risks of Trump. She knows he will destroy the country. She knows he will wreck us internationally. She knows he will destroy the economy. I mean, guys –

And again, if you are a MAGA, you're going to say something like deep state or warmonger or whatever it is you want to say. It's a lie and you know it's a lie. It is. It's a lie and you know it's a lie. All of you understand you're lying when you try to make the Chinese or other republics or the Kinzinger's or me or anybody else into quote unquote liberals or progressives or Antifa or whatever fantasy weirdness is in your head, communist, Marxist, is in your head that day.

The idea that you have people like that out there who are trying to retcon history or trying to rewrite history and turn Trump into a conservative like a Ronald Reagan figure, Ronald Reagan would kick the shit out of Donald Trump. Ronald Reagan understood what the right side of history was. Ronald Reagan understood the side of good and the side of evil in this fight.

And Dick Cheney, understand the side of good and the side of evil in this fight. The fight today isn't the fight of 10 years ago or 25 years ago or 35 years ago. The fight right now is whether or not you side with Russia and its alliance, which is Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea.

And Donald Trump does. He may talk shit about Iran, but he loves Russia. He loves North Korea. He actually loves China as well because he wants to build golf courses there. He wants to build resorts there. He wants to build towers there. This is never not about Trump's interests. Remember, Eric Trump once said, we get most of our money out of Russia. These people are transparent as can be. So you've got a choice here on the big picture as Republicans.

You know, I know the Republican tribal gravity is strong. I know, guys, I get it. I feel it all the time. I feel my old friends say, why can't you just get along? Why can't you just say yes? Why can't you? Because I know and they know and millions of you know.

that Donald Trump isn't a conservative. Donald Trump isn't even a Republican. He's about Donald Trump. The only thing he cares about is holding onto power so he does not go to jail. The only thing he cares about is holding onto power so that his life remains protected by the Secret Service and protected by the immunity that a presidency would confer upon him. That's another problem for another day, but we'll talk about that another time.

Folks, Liz Cheney doing this is going to blow a big hole in Donald Trump's brain. It's going to cause a lot of people to reconsider the bona fides that they've always ascribed to him, which do not exist. And

The fact of the matter is we are going to be in a position to see more Republicans do this. I think even some more significant Republicans in the historical food chain may come out very soon. The Republican coalition is breaking apart right now. Jonathan Martin wrote a great piece about it in Politico earlier this week, and it's about Republicans who are realizing, better late than never, that they'd be better off if Trump lost.

Believe me, since that article, my phone's been burning up, my emails have been burning up from people I haven't talked to for years and years, all saying, "Yeah, he's right. We've got to do this. We can't keep this up. It's not going to work anymore." The other side of this I want to talk about, the other elephant in the room this week is Russian interference in the American elections. It happened in 2016. It happened in 2020. No matter how many times you say, "Russia, Russia, Russia hoax," you're lying to yourselves, folks.

No matter how many times you think that is an effective trope or line, no matter how many times Donald Trump says it, think it's an effective trope or line, you're mistaken. So what did we learn this week? Four of the biggest influencers in the MAGA universe, not the biggest, they're below the sort of Ben Shapiro, Joe Rogan tier.

But four influencers, a guy named Benny Johnson, who's a serial plagiarist and a liar who's been fired from many, many places that he's worked because he's a plagiarist. Tim Pool, odd, strange, behafted, wears a toque all the time. Lauren Southern and a guy named Dave Rubin. All these guys are very big influencers in the modosphere. They have big audiences. They do a lot of videos. Well, it turns out this company called Tenet can...

came together last year, and Tenet was offering to pay them enormous sums of money. They were making, Tim Pool and Benny at least were making $400,000 a month. That's $100,000 a week for you non-math people like me. That money was paid to them so they would produce content. That content was pro-Putin, pro-Russia, anti-America, and anti-Ukraine.

They were reading essentially the talking points from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs that came out every week. They were making videos that were constantly on the attack about our NATO alliance, about the aid we and NATO were providing to Ukraine. These people have no knowledge, background, or history with any of these topics, by the way. They would be like me trying to lecture you on quantum physics. They know nothing about this. And I actually understand quantum physics a little tiny bit. They understand nothing about

about history, about Ukraine. They're not Russia experts. They're not NATO experts. They're not military experts. They're not European experts. But they were producing unbelievably vile content where you've got Tim Pool looking at the camera, literally reading off the same talking points the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was putting out after the Ukrainians seized Kursk.

Word for word. They weren't even bothering. They weren't even pretending. So these guys were making $100,000 a week to produce four little videos each week. They were all pro-Russian, pro-Putin, anti-America, anti-Biden, anti-NATO, anti-Ukraine. This week, the Department of Justice, Merrick Garland apparently woke up on the wrong side of the bed one day and said, let's go get these bad guys. So the people that were running the tenant company had been indicted.

Because they were taking money from RT. What is RT? It used to be called Russia Today. Russia Today is, according to the Department of Justice and according to the Central Intelligence Agency and according to the National Security Council, RT is...

is the Russian government's propaganda channel. It is owned and controlled by the Russian government and directed by Vladimir Putin. If you work for RT, you're working for Putin. RT was funding this entire operation through these series of covert channels, cutouts, fake people, ludicrously fake characters, by the way. And all these people that were hired by Tenet Media, which is being funded by RT,

are now saying, oh, we had no idea. We could never have figured it out. It was such a mystery who was funding and paying us $400,000 a month. $400,000 a month is Kim Kardashian influencer money. It's Mr. Beast influencer money. It's not mid-tier MAGA weirdo money.

And the fact that they started getting this money and being demanded and told, you must produce this pro-Russia, anti-America, anti-Ukraine, pro-Putin content. The fact that they got this money to do that, they now claim, oh, we didn't know. We had no idea where the money came from. We couldn't figure it out. It's a mystery to us. I promise you, not one of these people has ever made $400,000 in a year before, much less a month.

So you see these people making this enormous amount of money. The Department of Justice rolls this company up this week. They also start bagging some other people who are on Russia's payroll. Dmitry Saenz, who is a Rand Paul world guy. They start bagging these other people, and there are more to come, by the way. There are more to come.

And as this is happening, these MAGA influencers who have been pumping out Russian propaganda are pretending they knew nothing. They're pretending, oh, we didn't know anything. We're innocent. You know, Michael Weiss had a funny line. He says, you know, they don't call them useful geniuses. They call them useful idiots. Now, even if you accept that these people are not the brightest, they're a pretty anti-intellectual bunch, and they are, there is no universe, none whatsoever, in any circumstance, that

where if you're making content saying Zelensky's a criminal, Russia and Ukraine are one and peaceful together, if you're making content that is blasting away at the United States and our alliance with Ukraine and our alliance with NATO,

You know who you're working for. There is no way. Occam's razor is pretty freaking straight. It pretty much holds up. The simplest explanation obtains. So either it was a random Belgian billionaire interested in balanced coverage of Europe, or it was Russia. Who do you think makes more sense? They're claiming they never Googled who this guy was. They never tried to figure out where the money was coming from. But here's the thing, folks. If you are shoveling shit, you know what it smells like.

You know where it came from. It came from the back end of the farm animal. These people were shoveling out Russian shit. They knew it. They understood it. They were Putin's whores. They were working for Putin for money. They knew they were. You can't make a case to me they didn't know. I'm sorry. There's no case they didn't know. Now, the indictment says they may have been unwitting. Well, you know what? If they were unwitting...

Then I am seven feet tall and I've got a beautiful six pack because this is a ludicrous assertion. This is a ludicrous, unbelievably ridiculous assertion. No one in the universe would believe that. No one with a brain or a heartbeat, no higher order mammal would believe that.

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You have to just go so far into the content they made. And YouTube did take down the propaganda content today, to their credit. But I did drill through some of it, especially Tim Pool and Benny Johnson. These guys, they're not innocent victims. They weren't tricked or fooled. They're collaborators.

Now, I also believe, and I'm not a lawyer, but when I've done overseas work that was appropriately disclosable, I disclosed it. If I had a client who came to me and said, hey, I need you to represent me on X or Y, that client would be represented. We'd say who the client was. That's how it works in an ethical environment. The fact that they knew what they were doing, and I will go to my grave insisting they knew what they were doing.

Those people have told us what they are. They're anti-American, they're pro-Putin, they're anti-Ukraine, they're anti-NATO. They're not patriotic at all. If you thought for a moment you were working for one of the greatest enemies of the West...

If you thought for a moment that if I was taking money from the Chinese Communist Party or whatever to do PR for them or to do videos for them, what do you think MAGA would do? How do you think they'd react to that? And yet, you've got this shield wall going up because there's a lot of folks on that MAGA world who are on a list. There's a list of 600 influencers maintained by the Russian Propaganda Bureau.

These were only four of them. If you think they were the only four, you're mistaken. I think there's a lot of nervousness out there. I think there are a lot of people out there on the model right who are very, very scared

I think Tucker is on this list. I think Scott Ritter is on this list. I think Douglas MacGregor is on this list. We're going to see, because I don't think these indictments are through yet. I don't think they're done yet. Let me tell you how stinky this deal was. Even Seb Gorka, a man who makes his living peddling fish oil. I'm out of pain.

And chances are you can be in less or no pain too by ordering the three-week quick start. Pete and Seth Talbot have discounted it to only $19.95. Seth, no, this deal's too creepy for me. It's too shady for me. Think that through for a second.

There are a lot of people out there being paid this money. Russia has a lot of money to spend and they're spending it. And the alt-right and the right-wing influencer world has been spending a long time trying to break away America from its best values. And break away Americans say that Russia's the model, not the US. That Russia's the good guy, not us. These people weren't just unpatriotic. These people weren't just taking Putin's money. These people weren't just betraying the values of the country.

They were doing it for cash. And that makes them Vladimir Putin's whores. Thanks, folks. We'll see you again next time. Good night and good luck.