Evicting the Tenets
By 
We have reached the point at which the idiots have ceased to have any use:
A contributor for Tenet Media announced on Twitter Thursday night that the company has abruptly shuttered, one day after the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment that accused it of being covertly funded by employees of a Russian state-controlled media outlet. Tayler Hansen, a self-described “field reporter” for the outlet, wrote that Tenet “has ended after the DOJ indictment.”
Tenet Media’s founders, Canadian conservative YouTuber Lauren Chen and her husband Liam Donovan, have not publicly commented on the allegations against Tenet. Nor has Canadian far-right activist Lauren Southern, a Tenet contributor who appeared in many of their videos. Other prominent contributors to the site, including far-right commentator Tim Pool, described themselves as “victims” in the Tenet scandal, who were unaware that employees of RT, the Russian state media entity, were secretly funding the company. Pool announced on Thursday that he has been contacted by federal investigators, writing, “The FBI believes I have information relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation and have requested a voluntary interview. I will be offering my assistance in this matter.”
The Daily Beast reported that Chen’s contract with Blaze TV, where she also made regular appearances, has been terminated. The company has also deleted her page on their website and wiped episodes of her podcast, “Pseudo-Intellectual,” from Spotify.
YouTube told NBC News’ Brandy Zadrozny that it had deleted Tenet Media’s channel and four others operated by Chen in light of the indictment and “after careful review,” writing the steps were part of “ongoing efforts to combat coordinated influence operations.”
I also enjoy that the latest party line is “they would sound exactly like Russian state propagandists even if they weren’t actually with the Russians too,” which is not really the flex they think it is:
Marco Rubio downplays Russia paying prominent rightwing influencers because "we're talking about preexisting political opinions in the United States … they legitimately believe in the views they're espousing. They were victims." pic.twitter.com/HGgnyJSLmG— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 6, 2024
Podcasting toward the Putin is more efficient than needing to prepare scripts!
This is a good roundup, that among other things makes it clear that if Pool, Rubin et al didn’t know they were paid shills it’s because they willfully refused to find out:
Chen then solicited Commentator-1 — Dave Rubin — and Commentator-2 — Tim Pool— to work for the imaginary Eduard Grigoriann, drawing from a shortlist of candidates sent by one of the Russian personas. However, both Rubin and Pool demanded a lot of money. The indictment alleges Rubin wanted close to $5 million per year to create content for Tenet, and Pool wanted “100k per weekly episode to make it worth his while.” Chen warned the Russian persona that it would not be profitable to employ either of them, but the persona responded that they would love to move forward. In other words, Chen knew full well that their backers were willing to throw large sums at right-wingers with no hope of achieving a profitable return, a move that would be very odd for an actual business.
For a brief moment, it looked like Rubin might have been smart enough not to work for a completely unknown entity with cash to burn. The indictment shows that he inquired more than once about who Eduard Grigoriann was and wanted to know about the company and who he would be working with. However, he did not need much convincing, as there was no particularly robust effort to make Grigoriann’s existence believable.
I’m reminded of this particular comedy classic.