Dom and Big Josh Firm dissect the rise of AI "slop" and platform saturation before pivoting to a federal indictment alleging the Southern Poverty Law Center laundered over $3 million to neo-Nazi groups via shell companies. They analyze SPLC interim CEO Brian Fair's defense against these fraud charges and contrast them with the Peter Mandelson ambassadorship controversy, where Ollie Robbins claims Number 10 pressured him despite MI6 vetting concerns regarding Epstein ties. Ultimately, the episode exposes how political scandals and digital degradation undermine institutional trust, suggesting that both alleged financial crimes and security lapses reveal deep systemic rot within modern governance and media ecosystems. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Signaling With AI Slop00:14:41
Afternoon, you all right?
I hope so.
You're watching the podcast of the Load Seaters, number 1402.
Quite a remarkable number, really.
I was saying that the other day, I was on 1400, and I was saying it's crazy that we've done that many.
My first podcast, I think, was four or five.
Right, yeah.
Goes quickly, goes quickly.
It's Wednesday, the 22nd of April in the year of our Lord 2026.
I'm joined by Big Josh Firm and Mr. H. Off, Mr. H. Reviews.
Big in height, by the way, not width, just to clear that one up.
Debatable.
Big Josh Firm.
The Firminator.
That was actually my nickname in school from a lot of people.
Or El Firmarino, if you're not into the whole brevity thing.
Good reference there.
Mr. H, of course.
Also of the State of Politics fame.
Hey, politics.
State of politics.
If you don't say it, it's bad luck.
Addictive.
It's addictive.
You say it three times fast.
Also, just to let you know, there's loads of other things the website does.
Least of all, the breakfast show they've got.
Breakfast with Bo.
Bo's Breakfast Club.
Check it out, 8 a.m., British summertime, every weekday morning.
It's the best morning show.
What are you going to do?
Watch Mike Graham, Jeremy Kyle, please.
As if.
As if that would be mad.
All right, let's get straight into it.
So, the first segment.
Over to you then, isn't it, Josh?
It is indeed.
So, back in November of 2024, all that time ago, I declared a total war on slop, also with Lord Miles and Carl on the panel.
And I was talking all about basically this.
It's made the dictionary now, and it's actually the main definition that comes up.
It's number one, a digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence, but not always.
More broadly, as I use it, a product of little or no value, which is how I think most people.
In the political sphere, use it, although it has been picked up in the mainstream, but we'll get to that later.
But what I did want to say is in this original video, I discovered not only that bullying works, but you can bully slop posters online into being better.
So I spent most of this segment talking about Inevitable West and how rubbish and how fake some of his posts used to be.
And then after I put this out, he sent me a message saying, Listen, I've cleaned up my.
Basically, is it better?
And then I had a look and it was.
So I feel like I successfully bullied him because he was posting like fake stories and now he doesn't seem to do that.
So it turns out that not only does calling out slot posters work, but bullying as well.
So you did a public service there.
I did.
And I'm going to do some more today.
Did we ever find out whether he was an Indian or not?
I don't think he is, actually.
Some people knew who he was because he had a previous account that he converted into this one.
And it was an account that was known to people.
But there are many Indian accounts.
So what I wanted to bring up was what I call the slop siren hell.
And you see this quite often online on X, and you might be thinking, well, who really cares about X?
Who really cares about social media?
You know, it's not the real world or anything.
But actually, X is probably the main place where political podcasters and politicians and journalists interface with one another.
And it's where a lot of ideas are created.
We've covered things like the Motability thing that started off on X by Max Tempers and a few other things that have started on there and have bled into mainstream politics.
Actually, turned into real world policy, so it's not just meaningless.
I think that the platform can be used for actual change.
But the problem is, sometimes even international diplomacy, yeah, some level can go on there, does go on there.
So if that's not real life, I don't know what is.
Yeah, it's the means by which you communicate.
So, sure, to say that that's not real life is, I mean, it's just pure nonsense.
And of course, the online world more generally and the health of that ecosystem is very important because it's an important part of life now.
And what I've pulled up here is something that is a personal pet hate of mine.
And that is this slop siren.
And the problem with this is just that it sensationalises everything, not because there's actually a real political goal in mind, otherwise you would pick and choose the importance, right?
Maybe it'd be warranted if there's like a missile strike on a Western country or something that's really important, like wow, this is going to change politics forever.
But most of this is just run of the mill nonsense.
I've only used the siren two, maybe three times ever, and that was in a parody.
Using it ironically.
Right, as ironically.
I'll allow it, all right.
I won't bully you.
Fair enough, good.
But this sort of thing I find is very tiresome.
It's sort of a way of signaling.
It's like the mark of the devil.
You know they're evil, you know they're up to no good if they're using this siren because they're out for themselves.
They're out to maximise engagement.
They don't actually care about politics.
And this is a problem largely because people putting themselves first and not having a duty to the people in their country to do better and do right by them.
It's part of the reason that politics is so bad in the first place.
And so tolerating this sort of thing is actually much more of a problem than it might initially seem, I think.
You think that's fair?
Okay.
So there's also the fact that you just have people posting identical posts, which adds nothing.
People just copy each other.
I call them slop networks, where people just follow each other and copy and post the same thing.
And what it does is it saturates people's social media feeds and pushes out well thought out things that take time for the exact same thing.
And this is obviously not ideal.
And we'll be talking about that.
That's interesting, where they have gone to the trouble of changing the first word.
From like just in to boom, or change it to breaking, but other than that, it's a cut and paste job.
It's sort of like copying someone's homework, isn't it?
You change it a little bit so the teacher can't exactly tell, but it's similar enough that you sort of can.
I do think cutting and pasting someone else's tweet is really quite low.
I've never ever done that.
As I recall, never consciously ever ever done that.
It's one thing to see someone else's tweet and just completely agree with their take, and you write out that take in your own words.
That's more common, and there's in a way nothing wrong with that, I think.
Or, of course, quote tweeting them, that's fine.
But just to take their tweet, highlight it, copy it, put that in as your tweet and paste.
I feel like that's actually like a scumbag move.
Yeah, actually, I called out Basil the Great recently because I posted this and it did quite well.
And he copied my image, copied and pasted it.
It was the exact same dimensions, copied the exact same statistics, and then just rewrote the final line.
And then I called him out just like, listen, you posted this less than an hour after I did.
What the hell's the deal?
I recently went in a Twitter space with him, had a good conversation.
Now he's ripping off my tweets.
And then he had a go at me saying, Well, why couldn't you settle this in DMs?
Why did you have to make it public?
I was like, Well, because you're plagiarizing me.
Who do you think you are?
Things don't have to be done in private at the end of the day.
No.
I think if you're stealing stuff from people, he's just like, Well, it didn't take you very long to write.
And I was like, That's not the point, is it?
It's like a professional courtesy.
It's just like, Well, you know, if I went into your wallet, Bo, and I stole 25p, Like it wouldn't be the fact that it's not very much money to you, it's the principle of the thing, yeah, exactly.
Disrespect, yeah, yeah.
Um, but it's a very lucrative business, um, and that's not meant to be a pun on this guy's name.
Um, but he makes a killing, he makes over fifty thousand dollars a month just reposting other people's stuff, he doesn't actually create anything.
All he's doing is adding the slop siren to videos he's found on other people's channels and online.
He's just scouring the internet and reposting it, which isn't really adding very much.
But people are able to harvest a living, basically just saturating the market with nonsense and sensationalized slop, which adds nothing, in my opinion.
And it's really frustrating.
I worked hard for this.
Shut up, Dom.
Shut up.
Oh, it gets worth it.
Mate, you were.
Oh, I worked hard for this.
Oh, it was really difficult to type out this.
Shut up.
You're right click.
Copy, yeah, it's real really hard.
Yeah, oh, sorry, I had to go into the emojis and find the slop siren.
Shut up, skip over that.
Um, honestly, there's also uh instances of people obviously using AI to write their posts as well.
And uh, this one's very obvious.
You've got the em dashes, you've got um, some short sentences here that is obviously written by Chat GPT.
Um, which that land you broke, uh, bloke, he's all right, he's a good lad, good kiddie, good work, keep it up.
Um, but.
Yeah, this is very frustrating because normally it's low quality.
There's nothing really being added because it's written by a machine to sound like meaningful.
But also, is that person even real?
That's the other thing.
It's entirely possible that they could be not real.
They could be a bot.
Yeah, you delegitimize everything you're actually doing by doing this.
Yeah, and at the end of the day, people would just look at it and go, probably a bot or some Indian bot farm or something like that.
And people are somewhat tolerant to this being on their own side sometimes because they're saying, well, at least it's a voice on our side.
But I'm saying that.
It does delegitimize real people, right?
People who put their head above the parapet and actually speak with their own voice, with their own face, and put their own reputation on the line.
Then you have things like this that are just not very useful.
I've never ever used any sort of AI to generate a piece of text at all, let alone actually then post it.
The only thing I use it for is proofreading for spelling errors and things like that.
But the actual writing style is awful, so why rely on that?
Google Documents or whatever, or Word, has already got that anyway.
I just feel like it's like cheating on a test.
I agree, yeah.
Ultimately, there's no point in that because, like, say it's like chemistry, you want to be good at chemistry or physics or something.
Okay, you could cheat at the exam, but then after that, you're still left devoid of knowing chemistry properly.
So, what was the point of that then?
Yeah, it's also to learn how to post properly.
Sorry.
Yeah, to write something.
No, so similar to what you're saying is also the fact that, you know, say if you were to gain notoriety in whatever space it is that you're posting this kind of junk, I mean, imagine.
The hollow victory that comes from that.
Oh, people really like my takes.
They're not your takes, they're not your wording.
It's all AI sloppathon.
I mean, it's just how sad, how bitterly sad you must be.
I agree.
It reminds me actually of the Chinese getting people to write their essays for them at university.
It used to infuriate me.
They could barely speak English and they were getting like firsts.
It's like, I had to work so hard for that.
And then you're getting the same by cheating, basically.
And there's nothing I could have done about it.
And there are also things like this that are obviously a bit more innocent.
But as you can see by the squirrel's tail, this is not real.
I wish it was, but alas, as the community note says, this is AI slop.
Interesting that they use the word slop there.
But this is a more innocent version of a wider thing.
There's also.
Drama alert posting AI slop?
I know, yeah.
Really?
I was just going to say, I play a little bit of devil's advocate, a tiny bit, in defense of AI slop.
As long as it's up front, yeah.
Yeah, I'm just being honest.
The other week ago or so, I was scrolling through YouTube shorts and there was a whole bunch of just AI slop stuff.
Like, obviously, obvious, like, not in trying to not be AI.
And a few of them I found mildly amusing.
I'm not going to lie to myself.
I did find it mildly amusing.
There was one where the AI, it was skateboarders and they'd swapped out the skateboard for like a dashin.
I've seen that, yeah.
Like, I was like, huh, yeah, that's mildly funny.
I mean, there's a.
I mean, what?
It's a profile on.
Twitter that's just called AI slop that just posts AI slop and you sort of get what it says on the tin and you can enjoy it a bit more then.
There's a difference, isn't there?
Masquerading as something that you're not and just accepting the sort of levity within certain little videos.
I think that's okay.
Some weird sort of trends here of people making videos of characters getting, like children's characters getting cuckolded, I've noticed.
So there's Disney ones, there's some SpongeBob ones.
That's super weird.
What?
There's utensils and as this person points out here, 95% of AI slop, I don't think it's conservatives, making cartoons of inanimate object cuck fantasies.
But this is something that keeps on coming out.
I don't think it's conservative.
I was going to say, how has conservatism got anything to do with this in one way or another?
I think certain parts of the world are making this because it's very emotive.
I've looked at some of the people making these things, and it's Africa and India, basically.
It's very weird.
But I did want to point out that if you've got up Brain, it's like this, right?
You're falling for something that's entirely obvious, as Visegrad points out here.
You shouldn't be able to fall for it, but there will be a point in time whereby it will be indistinguishable from reality.
And so, getting the good policies in place to deal with these sorts of things is very important.
But thankfully, this is actually something that the mainstream is taking quite seriously.
And I, for once in my political career, agree with the mainstream here.
And I was very pleased to see the BBC, of all things, calling out AI slop.
And how it's transforming social media, and it was talking about backlight.
You okay?
What?
You're not going to get those words coming out of my mouth very often.
I'm just going to see where you go with this.
Incentivizing Quality Content00:15:24
But they were calling out AI slop and just low quality things like this, right?
Of people pretending to be people to get.
Like, that almost got a million likes on Facebook.
How?
How that did.
You've got to be.
What?
I know.
It's so obviously fake.
I mean, one, it's raining and there's candles and they're still lit.
It doesn't mean they need some on now.
But, you know, weird things like this, just poor quality rubbish that clogs up the feed.
And I agree with the sort of mainstream line on this that nobody really wants this and it's just for money and there are people pushing back on it.
Here's Forbes talking about it as well AI companies race to clean up AI slop because models' performance depends on it.
And that, of course, is part of the reason why they're concerned about it because it's limiting the expansion of AI.
And so if AI gets AI feeding into its training material, well, it's going to, you know, make it.
It just puts out, degrades its own output, basically.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And, yeah, one thing I read here, which I was very pleased about, is this line here Cleaning up AI slop is one of YouTube's biggest initiatives in 2026, which is actually a good thing that YouTube is doing.
Although, they've recently started to demonetize just actual creators because they believe that the AI is savage.
Yeah, the algorithm is sort of savage.
There's a bitter irony here that their AI algorithm is now sort of overzealous in snapping up genuine creators.
That are putting a lot of time into their videos, which is very frustrating.
But hopefully, this is going to get cleaned up.
I was going to say, there's one other thing, again, there's slop and there's slop.
I saw one AI generator, one out of dozens or maybe even hundreds, where it was, I don't know if you ever saw it, I think it got loads and loads and loads of clicks.
It was like Jeffrey Epstein walking around all different and bumping like one long shot, like it's Goodfellas, shaking hands with all different people, all different dodgy people throughout the last couple of decades.
And it was completely AI generated.
I think stuff like that is actually quite good.
But it made a good point.
It made quite a powerful point, actually.
And you could easily just class that as that's just AI slop.
But there was more to it than that.
And I say it's only one video out of must be dozens that have come across my feed.
But it can be valuable, surely.
Yeah, well, it depends how it's applied.
If it's applied honestly and it's not masquerading, as you said, then that's fine.
And to be honest, when AI is particularly bad and it does a bad job of making something, I find it very funny.
I don't know why.
It's just the absurdity of it.
But there are also.
Hear Forbes saying AI slop produces second order mental health harm due to the therapeutic slop feedback loop.
What on earth is that?
Which is a headline I never expected to read.
The therapeutic slop feedback loop.
Is that where you're just mindlessly scrolling through AI slop now after AI slop?
No, there's people using AI for mental health guidance, but the problem is that AI isn't programmed to deal with this sort of thing.
Yeah.
And so it hallucinates fake information or situations, and it basically gives bad advice, is the short of it.
But there are many, many different areas where this is actually a genuine point of concern.
And I think it's nice to see that there are lots of people opposed to it for a change.
Normally, I'm used to pushing back on the mainstream for pushing all the evil in the world.
But it seems like because they want AI to get better, there are aligned incentives for the time being.
The thing about LLMs is it seems to me that most of the time it's trying to agree with you, it's trying to please you.
It's very important.
So it reflects back what you're beginning to suggest to it.
It's too agreeable, I think.
Yeah.
In many ways.
To the point where sometimes it'll actually lie to you.
Absolutely, yeah.
And as Matt Goodwin, I'm sure, is acquainted with, it'll hallucinate things that you want it to create.
But there is some integration of people not wanting AI into various software.
Such as Firefox, which added a kill switch to its AI features, if you just don't want any AI features at all, which I think is the direction things are going to have to go, that it's just a setting that you can check.
And if you don't want it, then that's fine.
And I think that that's very difficult to argue with, really.
I do find it pretty pathetic on Twitter.
You see it all the time, don't you?
Or someone says, at Grok, is this true?
I know, yeah.
Especially in an argument, you're like, mate, you've run into AI to, no, come on.
Just look it up yourself, yeah.
Have the good sense to know how to verify something.
And there is something actually that is quite an effective AI detector just for text.
So, if you did want to check, I found out about this service while I was not sponsored or anything.
I just thought it was a good thing.
But it boasts a 99.98% accuracy in detecting AI text.
And as compared to other services, it's clearly the best.
This is false positives.
And you can look at it.
We should put a lax book in there, shouldn't we?
We should, yeah.
I'm sure it will probably come back, yes.
But it seems to be quite a good one.
So, if you did want to call out people for using AI, using a relatively reliable service, I very much support that.
I think that people should be socially shamed for using AI, and that's how you disincentivize it.
There should be a stigma attached.
You're not able to think for yourself.
You have to use AI to write your ideas for you.
Well, why should anyone listen to you then if you can't even write properly?
There's no point.
But I also wanted to talk about X because there's been probably the most promising.
Pushback against slop in a more general sense, not just AI, that I've been able to see.
Obviously, they've already introduced regional content filtering, so say you don't want to see Indian content farmers.
I've tried to find that.
Where'd you get that?
It's in the replies, I think, so you can't get people replying to you.
But I think they're going to expand it further just so you don't have to see posts from specific parts of the world.
Because if we could just erase India from the internet, I'd be very happy.
It's the worst thing that's happened to the internet.
I'm happy to stand on that hill.
I'll die on that hill.
I don't think there's going to be much disagreement, though, to be honest.
I mean, so much of the egregious stuff, you look it up, it's like, okay, account based in India, okay.
Which is actually bringing me on to another thing that you can now check where an account is based.
Because beforehand, you had people posing as like Americans and saying, we blah, blah, blah, and it would be like based in Indonesia.
It's like, okay.
Ian Miles Chong did that for a while as well, didn't he?
Yeah.
Talking like.
He's already the most notorious one.
He is, yeah.
And then he was living in Malaysia, I think it was.
Now he lives in Dubai.
Of course he does.
Ran, you missed a trick for us there, but alas.
So, I really liked the fact that the head of X was personally calling out slop.
Here he is saying, I remember when you used to post great content for your Turkish audience.
Now it's all slop and spam.
Did you sell your account for this guy?
I don't know who that is, but I've just seen him recently on a tirade against this sort of thing.
And it's heartening.
It's nice to see someone actually do something good for a change.
Here's one which has a lot of additional information, but I'm going to just read the pertinent parts.
For the creative payout cycle, we're experimenting with a new tool to identify original authors of content and allocating a portion of revenue to them.
Reposts and commentary will always be a core pillar of X, but our revenue sharing program should incentivize original, high quality content that brings new value to the timeline.
This means rewarding the effort it takes to produce something, not just the poster who helped it travel the furthest, which is great.
If they can do this effectively, that's really going to incentivize people posting actual quality stuff.
So I agree and disagree with this because at the end of the day.
The way X, formerly Twitter, works is it should be sharp, snappy sort of content that you just sort of load up, quickly have a look at, and then you sort of disappear.
This kind of reward system realistically actually only works when you can organize your content so people can recurringly see it.
And so that's why I agree you should be incentivizing original works, but it lives and dies in like 48 hours and then it stops.
And so that's why this doesn't actually work.
In practice, unless you begin changing things.
Like they start talking about wanting people to upload original videos and content.
It's like, okay, then you need to add a playlist function.
You need to create a way where people can organize it into a library functionally where it can be repeatedly watched.
Otherwise.
I think what they're trying to do is get an incentive to create it in the first place before they introduce the infrastructure, which I think is perhaps a little bit backwards.
But I'm interpreting this to mean like original content, meaning you wrote the tweet yourself.
And even if it's like quote tweeting a news article, I think that that sort of thing is something that people want to see because you're reacting to the headline or the story or whatever.
And that's of value.
So hopefully that's what is meant.
But it's not entirely clear.
But the thing that made me very happy was this all aggregators had their payout reduced to 60% this cycle.
We will add another 20% deduction in the next cycle.
Aggregators are the people who are just stealing other people's posts and aggregating them in an account.
It became abundantly clear flooding the timeline with hundreds of stolen reposts and clickbait every day crowded out real creators and hurt new author growth, which I've been saying for years.
The next step is to assign a permanent deduction to habitual bait posters who use breaking on every post.
My goodness.
This is music to my ears.
I've been saying this this whole time.
I hate the slop siren and the breaking thing.
Total vindication.
It is, yes.
So, this is sort of my victory lap.
And it says X will never infringe on speech or reach, but we will not compensate for manipulation of the program or our users.
And I was very pleased to see that this is already having an effect.
Here's Dom Lucra here saying X just emailed me saying my creator monetization is paused and I received.
Now, warning, this is the extent of his grammar, by the way, when he's actually writing in his own voice.
I was the first creator demonetized on this platform.
I doubt it.
And I was, for an entire year, I got it back and just lost it without any insight.
How could this be possible?
I am one of the hardest working creators on X.
I really.
Hardest working creators.
I mean, that's doing heavy lifting there, isn't it?
It is.
Working and creating.
Those two words are doing heavy lifting.
He got called out by Nikita here.
Brilliant.
Who highlighted the fact that users who post AI generated videos of an armed conflict without adding disclosure that was made with AI will be suspended from creator revenue sharing for 90 days?
And he attaches a screenshot of his post where he's claiming that the supreme leader of Iran was walking into an operations room looking at nuclear reactors.
And for some reason, they would just upload this online.
And this definitely isn't AI, it's visibly AI anyway.
But, yeah, this is just muddying the water and creating fake information.
And it should be punished.
I think if you're an idiot reposting AI videos, you shouldn't be rewarded for it.
That's for sure.
Like he has.
So it's nice to see people like him get punished.
And check the ego on this, by the way.
I've been told this app isn't the same already.
I'm done defending myself as I have seen time and God do before.
They will reveal everything.
Every change people begged for to hurt me, hurt the entire app.
Arrogance will be.
All of your downfall, I'm sitting at the top of my tower watching the world burn.
And by the way, arrogance will be your downfall.
I'm sitting at the top of my tower immediately afterwards.
The irony of that.
Yeah.
It's quite ironic.
And as the community note rightfully points out, he's openly defending selling paid comments for $2,500 plus, retweets at nearly $5,000, and quote tweets for $6,600 each.
So he's just selling access to his account.
For money, which is not in the spirit of creating good content.
And there are lots of people pushing back.
It wouldn't even occur to me to do that.
No.
If I had a giant account and someone said, you could do that, you know, I'd be like, well, no.
It seems like.
Yeah, like, why would you do it?
It feels like a scumbag move.
I'll just do.
Anyway, I've gone over time.
So, yes, I basically declared this my victory lap.
This is a success in my book.
So, my call to crusade.
On slop, I feel like it has been a total vindication, total success.
And as long as this carries on as it is, I think it will be a total victory.
That's a great gift as well.
That's Salieri, isn't it, from Amadeus?
That's right, yeah.
Can't believe how beautiful the thing is.
Can't believe it.
Great.
Anyway, I've got a few rumble rants here.
Base Date says I heard that Loaf Seaters have been nominated as the second best political podcast in the country.
Have you seen this?
Have you heard about this?
No.
I don't know where that might be, but I'd be very interested if you could tag me on Twitter.
Aren't they just joking?
Isn't that just a reference to saying the state of politics is better than.
Okay.
Have you seen this?
I think that's what the joke is.
I thought that was it.
The downside to bullying is that you end up with people like Madhead and Sir Queer.
No, they've not been bullied enough.
I agree, yeah.
No, no, no.
Solution is more bullying.
Yeah.
Ochigdor says the BBC has called out AI slop, have to protect their turf.
I mean, a lot of it's not written by AI.
If it were written by AI, it would often be a lot fairer, to be honest.
Sigil Stone says Twitter wants original content but shadow bans foundering, lying a-holes.
Yeah, I think that there's a lot to be changed, to be honest.
I think the shadow banning thing in particular, it's better just have everything out in the open and be transparent.
Although, some of these.
Tell people you've been banned.
Like, just tell people, no, we've.
We've reduced your exposure actually.
Yeah, I also think that some people think they've been shadow banned, but actually they're just not posting very good stuff.
Not saying that's the instance there.
Oshigdor says Should social media for pay bring back agents and editors that if you want paid, you have to send to a person at the company that checks before posting?
I think that would ruin the fun aspect of Twitter in that it's quick and easy.
Yeah, but it also ruins the sort of decentralized.
Grassroots element of social media.
Racism And Political Disagreement00:05:45
You don't want to do that.
It's not a terrible idea, but it would centralise editorial control in too few hands, I think, and would ultimately be worse than the problem it's trying to solve.
Okay, gentlemen, we need to talk about the SPLC, Southern Poverty Law Centre.
We need to talk about that this morning, this afternoon, sorry.
They're in a spot of bother.
Oh, okay.
It looks like.
That's good news.
It's the actual.
One of the most insidious organisations going, really, aren't they?
Have either of you ever noticed that, certainly in the West, in Europe, in America, in Australia, places like that, there's quite a lot of anti fascist, anti racist organisations?
There's quite a lot of them.
People do call me Nate the Noticer.
You've noticed?
I've noticed, yeah.
I've noticed too, actually, yeah.
Quite a lot.
Like in the UK, of course, there's Hope Not Hate, there's like the Runny Me Trust, Show Racism, the Red Card, Stop Hate.
This is just the most simplest Google search.
There's dozens and dozens more.
Stop Hate UK, Liberty, European Network Against Racism, Stand Against Racism and Inequality, The Black Curriculum, Kick It Out.
It just goes on and on and on.
It seems like racism is a very lucrative industry.
There's a lot of money to be made from harvesting outrage.
One would think that we're just inundated with an epidemic of racism.
You would think that, wouldn't you?
In America, the same.
The NAACP, Black Lives Matter, Equal Justice Initiative, Race Forward.
The race justice program, advancement program, showing up for racial justice, colour of change, and on and on and on and on.
There's quite a lot, there's loads of these things.
Our society is flooded with them, actually.
One of the biggest ones, perhaps, arguably, maybe one of the most prestigious ones, is the Southern Poverty Law Centre.
And so their thing is just about racial justice, right?
They say things.
Call it, yeah.
Yeah, right.
They say things like they're all about equal justice, community organising and outreach, policy advocacy, tracking and reporting on hate and extremism, relegating white supremacy out of the mainstream, lifting up community voices, organising for racial equality, shifting power to black and brown people in the South, racial justice and civil rights.
Things like, you know, and in reality, it's just reputation destruction for mainstream right wing voices as well as direct anti white hatred.
Yeah, basically.
I mean, if they want segregation again, just say it.
You don't need all that's basically what it is.
That's all it is.
That's all it is.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, and they try and do the thing for like the people that are credulous.
It's not always your fault if you're, you know, it's called someone ignorant or credulous, it's not always their fault.
You've not spent time researching something, no one's ever told you something.
It's, you know, like I'm ignorant of knitting, for example.
I don't know how to knit.
I've never tried and no one's ever taught me.
So there's no problem with that.
So, on first blush, right, if you were a bit credulous, you might just think that the Southern Poverty Law Centre is sort of a good thing, ultimately.
That's the way they try and.
This is the old president and CEO.
There's someone new now, but this woman, Margaret Huang.
Let's listen to her for a little bit.
It's the mission of SPLC.
It's thinking about how we fight hate in all of its forms.
Just fighting that.
It's thinking about how we bring justice to communities that have faced nothing along those lines.
It's about standing up and making this world a better place.
And the opportunity to do that here is what's so exciting.
Arriving at the Southern Poverty Law Center is a little bit like a dream.
It just goes on and on.
You get the tone and tenor of it from that straight away.
It's about making the world a better place.
It's so thinly veiled propaganda.
Just like, yeah, we're just fighting hate.
And I was like, well, all hate, really?
I don't know about that.
Like, if I get bitten by a mosquito and I slap it and say, oh, I hate mosquitoes, is the Southern Poverty Law Center going to come up and say, no, no, no, we're fighting you now?
Like, no, it's very specifically directed towards people you politically disagree with.
You're not fighting hate as an emotion.
You're not declaring war on a feeling, you're declaring war on right wingers specifically.
And white people specifically.
In the example of the Southern Poverty Law Centre, specifically, taking power away from whites and giving it to black and brown people.
But their own words, I read out before.
No, they nakedly say that.
Shifting power to black and brown people in the South.
I'm sure that would just go stellar.
The outcome of that would just be epic.
I bet you anything.
It works so well in Zimbabwe.
Yeah, just basically trying to make America, particularly the South, but America in general, less white.
You know, the original sin of being white.
I mean, one of their slogans is when we transform the South, we transform the nation.
What?
Sorry, what?
That sounds almost like it's a communist country as well.
When we transform the South, we try.
I mean, you literally don't.
You've just transformed the South, but also what a pathetic.
Sure, whatever.
So it's simply all about trying to make a better world, reduce the amount of hate in the world.
Definitely nothing nefarious.
No, no, no.
Definitely not that.
Funding Leadership Influence00:15:57
Definitely not.
No.
Just a black and brown advocacy movement.
Look, you've got a smiling lady there talking about making the world a better place and reducing hate.
Of course, black and brown advocacy groups, fine.
White advocacy groups.
Evil, there's no doubt white supremacy that is, yeah, they're relegating white supremacy out of the mainstream, so in favor of black supremacy, yeah, yeah, right, exactly, yeah, black supremacy good, any sort of in group preference for whites evil must be stamped out and destroyed, anyway.
They definitely, definitely don't do anything nefarious andor illegal.
Uh, oh, wait, yes, they do.
Let's watch this, and welcome back everyone here to a live now from Fox.
I'm your host, Mike Page.
I want to take you out right now, live news conference just popping up.
On our screens, we have Todd Blanch and the FBI Director, Kash Patel, doing this news conference.
Let's listen in.
In total, according to the indictment, between 2014 and 2023, SPLC paid at least $3 million to eight individuals at least.
These individuals were affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan, United Clans of America, National Socialist Movement, Aryan Nations affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club, the Nationalist Socialist Party of America, Nazis, and the American Front.
Now, as the indictment.
Just to quickly say, if anyone doesn't know, that's the Attorney General of the United States speaking there.
It's not just some random dude.
That's the highest lawman in the United States.
Sorry.
Is this by chance the fact that the need for racism is quite low?
Well, the need for racism outweighs the supply.
Yeah.
Is that what it is?
As far as anti racism organisations go, there's just not enough racists, are there?
There's just not enough of them.
I like the idea that the They want to be angry at something so much that they actively fund it.
It exists.
To the tune of millions of dollars as well.
Three, was it three and a half million to eight people?
Yeah.
That's mental.
And we'll play a bit more of this in a moment, but they're like making like shell companies doing layering, like actual financial crime.
Yeah.
We layer it so it's not really clear where that money went.
Hmm.
So.
I've missed this gravy train, haven't I?
I needed to step up my game, apparently.
Let's listen to the AG and then a bit of Kash Patel.
This gentleman who's about to speak there is the head of.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The indictment lays out after SPLC paid members of these extremist groups, it created work products that reported on these activities that the members participated in or contributed to.
And to that end, it was doing the exact opposite of what it's told its donors it was doing not dismantling extremism, but funding it.
To carry out this scheme, SPLC created bank accounts in the name of at least five completely fictitious organizations.
That had no bona fide employees or legitimate business purpose.
Just to say, of course, that's completely illegal.
So, because one of the questions would be, would be like, well, it's not illegal.
If someone at the SPLC, as weird as it is, counterintuitive as it is, if they want to give money to a neo Nazi organization, what's illegal about that?
Well, exactly what I just said there is that they didn't say they were going to do that.
Their donors didn't know that's what they were giving money to.
And they created false sort of accounts and things.
So, that's the key of it.
That's the actual legal thing.
And they've been indicted by a grand jury.
So it's not just that the AG and Kash Patel are just making a statement that, in general, we don't like the SPLC.
We're going to investigate them.
No, there's been an investigation that's gone on for years, and now they've been indicted by a grand jury.
I would love it if we had Restore Britain gets in power and they look into Hope Not Hate's dirty secrets in their bank accounts.
Because it's absolutely unequivocally happening here.
Oh, almost certainly.
I could just.
How hope not hate hasn't funded us yet, you know?
We're accepting donations, yeah.
Come on, come on, guys.
You didn't even really, you know, make that radical, but they did, though, because they signed up to the website to watch that Liz Trass interview.
That's true, yeah.
They did technically actually fund at one point, and you know, their little dossier on us they're watching hate watching us all the time, aren't they?
So, we get a tiny bit of revenue from that.
So, if you're watching Hope Not Hate, thank you, thank you very much.
You're a very dedicated listener, and we appreciate it.
Yeah, you've got to respect the grind over at Hope Not Hate.
Yeah, so one of the questions, because I won't play all of this, I only want to do the next few minutes of it, but later in the Q&A section after this, someone asks them, like, when did you find out about this?
And the AG says, well, there's been an investigation, we've had this investigation open for years and years and years.
Oh, wow.
And in fact, before the Biden administration.
And he says, but during the Biden administration, it was just turned off.
They just turned someone at the DOJ andor the FBI just turned it off.
Of course they did.
That would have been thought.
Yeah.
And then when Trump got back in, they turned it back on.
And now that works.
So that's interesting, isn't it?
One data point of note.
It might almost be an extension of the Democratic Party, some might say, if that's the case.
Well, another thing muddies the waters a bit.
In the past, the SPLC and the FBI have worked hand in hand, openly, though, as well, both sort of boasting that they're working for a common cause and things.
But now, of course, The FBI are actually truly investigating them.
Let's hear a little bit more of this.
The money was passed from SPLC to one sham account to a second sham account and then loaded onto prepaid cards to give to the members of the extremist groups.
This was designed to shield the source of those funds.
And because of this, SPLC is also charged with one count, as I said earlier, of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
In conclusion, I want to thank the Acting U.S. Attorney in the Middle District of Alabama, Kevin Davidson, who's in his district right now and not able to be with us, for bringing this important case along with the FBI team in Alabama for their hard work during this investigation.
This investigation is ongoing, and I'd like to ask Director Patel to say a few words as well.
So, just to be clear, it's wire fraud and money laundering, is what it is.
Very serious charges, aren't they?
Pretty, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, obviously, they're the actual sort of technical legal crimes, but there's also just acting like scumbags.
If only that's a crime, eh?
Taking money from their donors that think at least that they're fighting sort of right wing extremes, they're fighting racism and hate.
Literally funneling it towards the Ku Klux Klan.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The actual National Socialists of America.
It ends up in their pocket.
And this stuff has a lot of funding as well.
So you can imagine being one of their donors, like watching this going, sorry, what?
To be fair, I saw David Duke on a podcast with a couple of black guys, and he was just like, no, I don't say the N word.
So, you know, maybe that the money has had some influence there.
So I thought the Ku Klux Klan were sort of dedicated racists.
And then I was just like, hang on a minute.
What's going on here?
But anyway, that's besides the point.
Yeah, it's not the 1920s anymore.
We're the good guys now.
Your granddaddy, AKK.
Let's hear from Cash.
Thank you, General Blanche.
What we're here today is to announce what the general just told you.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, in a massive, sweeping indictment, has been charged with allegations of fraud and using the banking system to perpetrate that fraud.
I just want to talk about a couple of brief things here.
The Southern Poverty Law Center themselves advertise to raise money to dismantle violent extremist groups for a period of at least a decade.
They use their donor network to raise money to purportedly dismantle violent extremist groups.
However, the SPLC, the Southern Poverty Law Center, used the money they raised from their donor network to actually pay the leadership of these very groups.
I just want to say that again.
They used the fraudulently raised money by lying to their donor network, thousands of Americans, to go ahead and actually pay the leadership of these supposed violent extremist groups.
The groups, as the general laid out, include the Ku Klux Klan, the United Clans of America, Unite to Right, National Alliance, the National Socialist Movement, the Aryan Nation Motorcycle Club, and the National Socialist Party of America, and also the American Front.
In at least one of these matters, our investigation revealed that funds were used to facilitate the commission of further state and federal offenses, totaling over $3 million.
Furthermore, there is something I want to add here that there is a legitimate purpose here for them to do this sort of thing, in that if they fund the leadership, then they effectively have some control and influence over groups that would otherwise not care about what they would have to say.
And also, it allows them to entrap other.
People within those groups, like people who are legitimate that aren't compromised and have a better bearing of who these people are and how they're connected to things.
And so they are actually legitimately trying to catch people out.
It's not just that they've, you know, all of a sudden decided to switch sides.
Hmm.
Right.
It's that they're using very insidious tactics to do so.
Okay.
You make a fair point, but they've done it in a completely illegal way.
Of course, yes.
So, um, I'm not defending them to be clear.
No, I know.
I'm just explaining the rationale.
Yeah, yeah.
No, there is a rationale there, but they've done it in an illegal way, not just with the layering, the financial layering of it, which is illegal, but also that as a non profit or an NGO or whatever it is, you can't, if you're going to do that, you have to tell people you're going to do that.
If you're taking money off people, in America anyway, if you take money off people, you have to say that you plan or you might plan to spend it in that way.
But they never said that to anyone.
And that's illegal as well.
It's an assumed rationale, isn't it?
It's nothing which has been explicitly stated.
I mean, if the US is anything like the UK, again, the demand for racism far outweighs the supply.
Well, I also think that these groups are only in existence because they can have exemption from, particularly in the UK, I know, exemption from taxation by having charitable status.
And they can only really exist because of that.
Whereas I don't think any political group should be considered a charity because it's got an agenda that is not charitable in nature.
Yeah.
Plus, the other thing that Mr. Patel just said just then was that some of the organisations that they sent money to then went on to commit crimes.
So then you're sort of an accomplice in some way, on some level.
What's that phrase?
You live long enough to become the thing you hate.
Right.
Yeah.
So I have a few more seconds of cash and then I'll go over to what the SPLC themselves have said because.
Their current president and CEO made a statement, but let's just finish here.
Our investigation revealed that the Southern Poverty Law Center, on top of perpetuating this widespread, decade long, multi million dollar fraud, conducted more criminal activity.
They attempted to hide their criminal activity from our financial banking network.
They set up shell companies and entities around America so that the financial institutions that we rely on as everyday Americans.
We were deceived in believing that money was not coming from the Southern Poverty Law Center in the perpetration of this scheme and fraud, but rather fictitious entities they stood up to perpetuate this ongoing fraud.
This is a serious and egregious violation of a group that purported to dismantle violent extremist groups, but in turn actually only fueled the hatred.
This is an important case brought by President Trump's administration.
We're thankful for the president.
Okay.
So, all right, it's sort of that's happened.
That seems to have happened.
Here's a bit of a breakdown.
On Twitter, some of the monies they gave.
I imagine they were probably their biggest donor by that point with those sums of money.
Right.
Yeah.
Unite the right.
That's interesting.
Okay.
Okay.
So it's a grand jury in Alabama, which I think is where the SPLC's headquarters is.
But obviously, it's much more than just a state thing.
If you've got the AG and the director of the FBI.
It's not just like.
It's all across America, isn't it?
And beyond it, to be honest.
Quite possibly, yeah.
So I thought maybe we could just go straight to themselves.
So this man is called what?
Brian Fair.
And he's the acting or interim president and CEO of the SPLC.
He's come out in the last day and made a short statement about it.
So should we hear from him, give him the right of reply?
Okay.
For 55 years, the Southern Poverty Law Center has stood as a beacon of hope, fighting white supremacy and various forms of injustice to create a multiracial democracy where we can all live and thrive.
We are therefore unsurprised to be the latest organization targeted by this administration.
They're just being unfairly targeted, being unfairly persecuted for just being so good.
Just the evil drump.
Evil, evil Donald Trump is just trying to destroy the worst ones for no reason.
They have made no secret of who they want to protect and who they want to destroy.
For example, in October, FBI Director Kash Patel announced the Bureau would sever its ties with the SPLC.
And in December, House Republicans held a hearing to accuse us of being partisan and profitable.
Well, that was probably a good idea they cut ties with you, as they were investigating you, mate.
Yeah.
So, it's probably a good thing for them.
It's also a weird thing to argue when they were funding actual neo Nazi groups at the same time that the administration that's launched the investigation, well, or has pushed the investigation again into them, is probably at its closest to the nation of Israel.
These two things tend not to be compatible with one another.
Well, that's the other thing, how the.
Just a side note, perhaps, slightly, that the SPLC is obviously about.
Against black people in the South, but it's been highly co opted by sort of the anti Semitism angle.
Informants And Violence Risks00:06:12
Does he address the situation at all?
Yeah, yeah.
So, okay.
I'm listening to this.
I still haven't actually heard a rebuttal yet.
Yeah, okay, let's see.
Latest threat is the most serious a criminal investigation and possible charges against the SPLC or some of our employees.
Although we don't know all the details, The focus appears to be on the SPLC's prior use of paid confidential informants to gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups.
This use of informants was necessary because we are no stranger to threats of violence.
What?
Oh, so you were engaged in a self directed domestic espionage program of using agent provocateurs on the right.
Oh, so you were.
Oh, so you were doing that.
You definitely did actually pay people.
Brilliant.
Because they allegedly got threats of violence, it allows them to break the law.
Financial laws, as well, like the law in a completely different area.
It's not like you know, someone's threatening you with violence, so you assault them, where there's sort of justifiable circumstances around it.
It's we set up a series of shell companies and funneled money to people we allegedly opposed.
Those don't follow from one another, funnily enough.
It doesn't address the shell company side of it, which are the actual charges of like wire fraud and, um, and uh, what's the other one anyway?
Uh, it doesn't address that.
But he does admit there, as far as I can tell, that it was a multi million pound agent provocateur program.
It was okay because they've got threats of violence.
In 1983, our offices were firebombed.
And in the years since, there have been countless credible threats against our staff.
For decades, we engaged in unprecedented litigation to dismantle the Klan and other hate groups.
In light of that work, we sought to protect the safety of our staff and the public.
We frequently shared what we learned from informants with local and federal law enforcement, including the FBI.
We do not, however, share our use of informants broadly with anyone to protect the identity and safety of the informants and their families.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, it was purely altruism that you were doing this for.
Sure.
Of course, if they're already working closely with local law enforcement and the intelligence agencies, surely these threats against them would be dealt with by them.
You know, I think the FBI and local law enforcement is probably better at dealing with a threat than a shell company.
I was going to say, whoever said the SPLC were allowed to engage in what.
It's basically like domestic espionage, isn't it, then?
Like, you're just supposed to be like an anti racism organisation.
You're not like another wing of the intelligence services.
Or you're just acting like another wing of the intelligence services.
Or you're just like another branch of the FBI, effectively, or the police.
No.
No, you're not.
And the fact that they were investigated before the Biden administration seems to suggest as well that it wasn't them that necessarily initiated this.
It may well have come from them themselves.
It's not like they gave them a nudge and said, you know what, you can do.
Obviously, they turned a blind eye to it.
But it seems to be the case that they came up with this themselves from the details that we've got.
Yeah, they took it upon themselves, as I say, sort of self-appointed, self-directed stuff.
You're acting like a law unto yourselves.
Who gave you carte blanche, eh?
Just act in this way.
No one, mate.
What are you doing?
You thought you could go around just breaking laws fraudulently and doing, again, agent provocateur stuff without telling the people that donate to you that that's what you're doing.
Completely outside the law.
And while we no longer work with paid informants, we continue to take their safety seriously.
These individuals risked their lives.
To infiltrate and inform on the activities of our nation's most radical and violent extremist groups.
That's not even how informants work.
Normally, you turn someone within a pre existing organization.
You don't just infiltrate it, you know, your own guy who's there wearing a wire.
That might be how it's shown in film, but the way it actually works, and we've talked about this before, haven't we?
Like the World War II double cross system.
And also Ruby Ridge as well, where they tried to make Randy Weaver an informant.
By trying to leverage petty crime charges against him and fines to make him an informant against the Aryan nation.
That's the same thing here, isn't it?
Yeah, like in World War II, you'll ever get an actual German spy, or in the Cold War, you get a Soviet spy, and then you turn them to your side and send them back.
Yeah, much more common.
But he said they put their lives at risk.
You mean you put their lives at risk?
No one's asking you to have done this infiltration, double agent, whatever.
Like you've Put them at risk.
If it's as he says it is.
Yeah.
Well, you did this, that's your fault then.
Yeah.
Like, why did you do this?
Why did you put their lives at risk?
What?
Yeah.
No one said to do that.
You didn't tell your donors you were going to do that.
When we began working with informants, we were living in the shadow of the height of the civil rights movement, which had seen bombings at churches, state sponsored violence against demonstrators, and the murders of activists that went unanswered by the justice system.
There is no question that what we learned from informants.
Saved lives.
Today, the federal government has been weaponized to dismantle the rights of our nation's most vulnerable people.
Oh, blah, blah, blah.
No, it hasn't.
No, it hasn't.
The rights of the most vulnerable people to create shell companies, yeah.
Pay over $3 million.
Mm hmm.
Yeah, to engage in some shadowy skullduggery.
Some weird multi million dollar skullduggery.
Yeah, right.
Like ours that tries to stand in the breach.
We stood in the vanguard then, and we stand in the vanguard today.
Sure, mate, sure.
We will not be intimidated into silence or contrition.
MI6 Concerns And Red Flags00:15:03
There you go.
There's no contrition.
Right.
Yeah, there you go.
That's it in a nutshell.
So, this PLC is in a spot of bother, at least in Alabama, and the eyes of the AG and the very, very top of the FBI are on them now.
And if they've been indicted by a grand jury, there's almost certainly something there you would have thought.
You don't usually get a press conference with the AG and the FBI director after 11 indictments if they don't think that they'll.
They'll get like successful convictions and things Okay, there you go.
That's that all right.
I've got a few rumble rents All of these okay, should I know we've done that one you heard it straight from the horse's mouth bo hates knitters I don't hate them Oh, State of Politics featuring Josh Firm today.
Fern.
Yeah, Josh Fern.
Fern.
That's not how my name's spelt.
Fern.
That might explain why my middle name's Boston.
No, it isn't.
It's a terrible joke, I'm sorry.
Awesome stuff, chaps.
I'll have to actually catch this properly later on.
Thank you very much.
They were supposed to be the best of us, not because what they fight.
Not become what they fight.
Oh, not become what they fight.
What's that in reference to?
What's that talking about?
Peace.
All right.
Yeah, they become the thing they.
You had an annual rude.
Sorry, yeah, I'm sorry.
Rude, I was a bit.
Why not?
Okay, sorry.
Sliggestone17.
Sorry.
Sigilstone17 says The anti racists paying the racists can't even have honest extremism these days.
Everything is fake and gay.
And Binary Surfer says Same as Hope Not Hate.
It was clear that SPLC was security services run or supported.
We will doubtless find out in time they enjoyed access to confidential state intel dossiers, etc.
Disgusting creatures.
Yeah, I agree with that.
Okie dokie.
That's right, let's go.
Right.
All right, we need to talk about Queer Stalin's final gasps.
All right.
So, this is just the fallout of the Mandelson affair, basically.
So, Queer Stalin threw under the bus, uh, Andy, uh, Ollie Robbins.
Sorry, not, not, not, not Andy Robbins.
I don't know where I got that name from.
Anyway, Ollie Robbins.
Um, And immediately, Ollie Robbins was like, cool, we're going to give evidence at the Foreign Affairs Committee.
And it's just this sort of backwards and forwards I think we needed to report on and have a bit of a chit chat about because it's funny, basically.
I think what was very funny when he was being questioned about the Mandelson stuff, did you hear him do his best Roadrunner impression from Looney Tunes?
Starmer, yeah.
He went, he went, meep, meep, like that.
Brilliant.
I've got that later on in this, yeah.
You've preempted it.
I know.
It's so.
Where did that noise come from?
So funny.
So, yeah, Ollie Robbins, I just want to outline not that we, strictly speaking, need to, but I don't care about civil servants.
I think they're awful people, generally speaking.
The state is ridiculously too big, it needs to be completely dismantled.
So, I'm not in defense of any civil servant.
They also have lots of undue influence over governance, even though they're not elected, and that's not what they're supposed to do.
And Sir Ollie himself was a massive, massive remainer.
Right, he did everything he could back in the Theresa May years to thwart Brexit, yeah.
So he is a douchebag, yeah.
As well, let's make that against his own country when he was appointed as you know negotiator, yeah.
But however, in this, it is the left eating itself, and it, I'm here for it basically.
So, Politics UK just has a really nice summary, uh, with the slop siren, siren, of the Ollie Robbins evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee.
So, just go through it and you know, just chit chat about it basically.
So, number 10.
Applied constant pressure on the Foreign Office to approve Peter Mandelson's appointment, showing little interest in vetting.
The message was to, get this done before Donald Trump's inauguration.
Or isn't the fuller quote, get this effing done?
Yeah.
Or something to the lines of, like, why hasn't this effing been done?
Or things along those lines.
It's.
From Morgan McSweeney, I think.
It all sounds a bit thick of it, doesn't it?
Yeah, as you say, it's Malcolm Tucker.
Exactly.
Right?
Just the Politicos from number 10, just bullying civil servants.
Again, not that I care about civil servants being bullied, but yeah, just think they're the masters and they're above.
Morgan McSweeney is above MI6 vetting in some way.
What he once done yesterday is more important than the security of our nation.
Yeah, I mean, we're critical of how our intelligence services behave quite often, particularly when applied domestically.
But at the same time, they do dig up things like you've taken money from foreign governments that you shouldn't have.
That sort of thing is genuinely important to that.
Yeah, massively important.
Especially if it's not just.
You're not just going to be the T-boy at the foreign office building.
You're going to have access to the most.
Sensitive information between the UK and the US.
It could be MI6 exchanging information with the CIA or something.
As sensitive as that, as sensitive as it gets.
Well, they call it Strap 3, don't they?
Strap 3 tier, basically.
It's one of the highest of the high.
I mean, it's mad.
And again, remember, throughout all of this, Mandelson was known to be a wrong un.
Everyone knew it.
Even in the days of New Labour, he had.
You know, the nickname of, was it the Dark Lord?
The Prince of Darkness.
He loved it.
And also, he was described as having something of the night about him.
And I remember watching a documentary and he's like, I quite like that actually.
So he's happy with his reputation, which normally is a bit of a giveaway if people are calling you basically evil in a polite way.
Well, he was first disgraced and thrown out of cabinet in like 2001, I think it was.
So it's a long, long time we've known he's sort of not an entirely trustworthy figure.
And queer Stalin wasn't exactly mates with him, they weren't like buddy buddies.
So the whole thing is.
Just weird anyway.
So keep that in mind as we go through this.
Just genuinely, how bizarre the whole situation is.
Like, what sits underneath all of this?
Who was doing what?
Who was pulling what strings?
Because it's inevitable that there definitely was something like that going on.
Yeah, who really is running Mandelson?
Who are his handlers?
Who is it that sits above Starmer and the Foreign Office, someone like Ollie Robbins?
Who sits above them saying, get this done?
We want Mandy's our man.
We want him in that position.
Don't worry about MI6 vetting.
Don't worry about any of that.
Just make it happen now.
Who are they?
You can sort of believe it if Queer Stalin has a long and storied history of being best friends with Mandelson.
But he's now thrown his political career away for someone that he's not even actually matey with.
It's very odd.
The whole thing is super weird.
So the Cabinet Office argued that Mandelson didn't need vetting.
But the Foreign Office was like, well, no, obviously he does.
Obviously he does.
That's weird.
From a few different angles, right?
Not just that he's friends with the convicted pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein, but also his own business.
Taking money from China and Russia, particularly China.
Yeah, not a small amount either.
Is there not?
Good countries.
Not good countries to take money from if you want to be in the British government, really.
Yeah, to have access to the highest intelligence.
Access to the White House as well.
Yeah.
Bit of an odd one.
So there was constant chasing from Queer Stalin's private office during the time Mandelson was being vetted, such as when is this done?
He says it was a matter of when, not if.
So, effectively, the signalling is the messaging was, no, this is happening.
So, just get it done.
Again, that's where that sort of quote was like, you know, get this effing done.
Well, the other thing, even further than that, is not just sort of get it done, not when it's like, no, it has happened.
We've announced him.
Well, yeah, that's the other part of it.
Yeah.
Right.
So, criticising Starmer's judgment and appointing Manderson, saying he regrets that the serious reputational risks identified in the due diligence didn't colour the PM's judgment.
So that's just hilarious.
I pointed out when we talked about this on Monday that it was public knowledge that he was a risky person to appoint.
Everyone knew it.
Even when he was appointed, there were articles written in the mainstream media saying, oh, it's a bit risky, but it could pay up.
People saying that.
I think it was John Sopal saying that.
It's risky, but ultimately it's a good decision.
That is so powerful.
That's mental.
John Sopal is mental.
I did not see that.
John Sopal is a classic, classic, complete and utter traitor.
I never saw that.
That's so funny.
That's a commie traitor, that John Sopel.
But yeah, well, that would make sense.
Trying to run a little bit of interference on behalf of Mandy.
A defense there.
That makes perfect sense from Sopel.
So, Ollie Robbins says he was quite uncomfortable being told by number 10 to find an ambassadorship for the then comms director Matthew Doyle, who was recently suspended from Labour over his links to a paedophile.
A completely different one to Jeff Epstein.
Just a completely different one.
Yeah, and that was without informing the then foreign secretary David Lammy.
Why does.
Why does.
Queer Stalin have so many friends that are chummy with pedos.
Like, what's going on there?
That's a bit weird, isn't it?
That's a bit odd.
I wonder if any of that network will be exposed during the Ukrainian rent boy thing.
Samson, I put that article in the podcast channel for you to pull up if you wanted to.
He raised concerns about Doyle's credentials, and the idea was dropped.
He later revealed number 10 suggested a US post for Doyle, which would have posed a conflict of interest, as Doyle had been the one who was satisfied with Mandelson's vetting answers.
So that's weird and circular.
It's a weird circular thing there, isn't it?
Hmm.
That's very odd.
This is what I was on about here.
My piece for The Independent on Peter Mandelson becoming next ambassador to the US.
Risky, maybe, but a very smart move.
Classic.
Wow.
Classic John Sopel.
That aged brilliantly, didn't it?
Brilliant.
Classic.
Oh my God.
So, a little bit more here.
After Mandelson was sacked as US ambassador, Robbins requested full vetting documents but was denied access following discussions between the Foreign Office and Cabinet Office on national security grounds.
It suggests that senior officials knew Robbins had concerns about the vetting process and why, therefore, the PM's team did not probe more deeply.
That's weird.
That's super weird.
That's weird as hell.
Yeah, it seems to suggest that they're just lying about not knowing anything, which I think is pretty likely, to be honest.
It's an open secret that Mandelson was a dark figure that had lots of shadowy relations with people.
It's been his reputation for about 24 years before he was appointed to this role.
And so it's not like it's something that you're ignorant of.
And in fact, you could probably ask someone on the street and they would know that, oh, he's a bit of a dodgy character, isn't he?
Yeah, probably best not to do that.
Think about what that really is, though.
So Ollie Robbins is like the most senior.
The head of.
Yeah, is he what?
The permanent secretary of the Foreign Office, right?
Other than the ministers themselves, the most powerful, important person, the head of it, to all intents and purposes, right?
And so MI6 comes under the purview of the FO.
They did the vetting.
Ollie Robbins is made the head of the FO and he says, Oh, I just want to see the vetting documents, our own vetting documents for Mandy.
And the cabinet office say, No, you can't.
You can't see them on national security grounds.
Bit of a red flag, a massive red flag.
Like, wait, what on earth is going on here?
What on earth are you talking about?
What national security grounds?
Why not?
Yeah, why are you saying that?
What's going on here?
Have a due process to follow, don't they?
And he was.
A process that is directly.
Directly the result of Queer Stalin's processing.
Like he blames the process, but he could change the process.
It's his process.
Yep.
Mental.
The whole thing is the whole thing, the whole thing is insane.
So the vetting team reportedly ticked the red box, which was an explicit recommendation not to approve Mandelson.
But Robbins says he was not shown that conclusion and recalls being told it was borderline and leaning towards recommending against.
Whilst being advised the risks could be mitigated, all very weird.
That just does sound like such classic Whitehall stuff.
MI6 said no, it's a no, and someone else somewhere along the line says, Well, it's actually a yes.
Borderline.
It's very interesting as well how this plugs into the fact that the Trump administration dragged its feet over releasing those Epstein emails in the first place because, of course, Trump was saying, It's fake news and there's nothing there, it's a Democrat hoax.
And all of this comes out, which is very much being treated not as fake news or a democratic hoax.
Yeah.
Robbins contradicted Starmer's claim that he would have blocked the appointment if aware of vetting concerns, saying it would have been very difficult given the role had already been announced and agreed with the US.
He also revealed US approval for Mandelson as ambassador came before security clearance and, quote, was delivered technically just by one working day by the Biden administration.
That's weird as well.
Again, take stock of that.
MI6 are saying, we haven't finished, and it's almost certainly going to be a no.
Ultimately, they said it's a no.
And everyone from number 10 to the Biden White House just say, it's fine, just do it.
Denying Vetting Files00:12:33
It's fine, it's fine, it's fine.
Just push it through.
Just push it through and be quiet.
And if and when you get the negative back from MI6, just shut up and sit on that because it's happening.
It's happened.
Why?
Why?
Again, remember.
Why is that?
Sorry, I've got a tickle in my throat.
Again, the whole thing.
Why throw away all of these people's careers for this one guy who is already like, yeah, obvious stuff's going on, obviously.
So he added that blocking Mandelson at that stage could have damaged US UK relations and caused issues with Donald Trump's admin.
He concluded that he doesn't fully understand why he was sacked by queer Stalin and suggested he would sue the government as part of a separate process he couldn't go into.
I'm here for that part.
Yeah.
I'm definitely here for that part.
So that's all weird.
Like, obviously, super, super weird.
Very bizarre.
But anyway, number 10 hit back at this nonsense, or they claim it to be nonsense, but they didn't actually hit back because if you look at it, there's no actual rebuttals.
So they deny applying constant pressure, saying, There is a difference between asking for updates constantly on an appointment process and the idea of being dismissive about vetting.
That's not a rebuttal.
Also, it's something that is so vague that were it to come to a court case, they're not actively seen as trying to cover things up, right?
Yeah.
But that, I mean, that's not a rebuttal, is it really?
No.
At all.
On the claim that the Cabinet Office didn't think any vetting was needed, number 10 says there were discussions.
This is the best one.
There were discussions at the time with Cabinet Office and Foreign Office officials around security clearance for members of the House of Lords, but these talks concluded.
There did need to be vetting.
So, sorry.
That doesn't say that the Cabinet Office.
That doesn't deny that the Cabinet Office didn't think vetting was needed.
It's just trying to pass the buck and say, listen, we did our thing.
We said there should be vetting.
It was someone else's fault.
But then they've also got paper trails in the Foreign Office to show that they did.
Yeah.
You wouldn't, you know, Ollie Robbins wouldn't be claiming that he tried to access these things without written records.
And I imagine that the system works as many government systems where there's.
It records when someone tries to access specific files and it will log it.
There will be a pretty sizable paper trail there that can be called upon in court.
Also, that's just simply not actually denying it.
That does indicate that the cabinet officials genuinely thought that they didn't need any vetting.
And due to a conversation with the Foreign Office, they then concluded, no, we probably should.
That's all that says, which actually aligns with what Ollie said.
The best case scenario is they're incredibly incompetent.
Like, that's the most charitable interpretation is that they can't communicate between departments whatsoever, and lots of things are getting lost in translation.
But I don't think that's happening here.
No.
Number 10 deny that the UKSV were only leaning against clearance for Mandelson, saying that the vetting body clearly recommended against and that this should have been communicated to the PM.
I just don't believe that that wasn't communicated to the PM.
I just don't believe that is the case.
And if that is the case, the whole thing needs to be dismantled.
Right?
Like none of this looks good regardless.
They refuse to deny that Robin's claim that he was told to find an ambassadorship.
For Starmer's then comms director Matthew Doyle simply saying he left his role at number 10, he didn't take up a role at the Foreign Office.
We know that.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, that's.
So you haven't denied that.
Again, brilliant.
All of that is pretty weak source, isn't it?
Yeah.
Like quibbling over it.
You might characterise it as constant pressure.
We wouldn't characterise it in exactly those words.
We did have a meeting or something or other, and, well, Matthew Doyle wasn't.
Given a role in the foreign office, come on, it's a super weak source.
It's the language of a guilty person, isn't it?
If it's trying to cover their tracks, yeah.
I do, I just want to, I do love this picture.
What the Lion King that's horrifying, my buddy.
No, but it is, yeah.
All right, anyway, okay.
Um, so it, um, yeah, it pleases the juvenile in me.
Um, so Matthew Doyle says he never asked for a job in the foreign office.
Okay, but that's not the point.
The statement was queer Stalin asked, actually.
It wasn't that you asked, it was the queer Stalin asked.
So that doesn't really deny it.
Classic thing of answering a different question.
Yeah.
So answering a different question.
Did queer Stalin ask for an ambassadorship?
I didn't ask for one.
Yeah.
It's just admission by admission, isn't it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know that classic clip of Paxman trying to grill that ex Tory leader?
Did you threaten to overrule?
Yeah.
He's asking him, Did you threaten to overrule somebody?
And he said, I didn't overrule him.
And Pax was like, No, I know, we know you didn't.
I'm asking, did you threaten?
I've got something like that coming up, Max.
And they just do that like eight, 10 times?
I've got something like that coming up.
So the next set of Peter Mandelson's vetting files will not be released until after the King's speech on May 13th.
And I put this in there because I was like, Okay, what's going to be in the King's speech then?
Like, that's weird.
Why aren't you releasing these files?
Why are you waiting until?
I mean, May 13th, that's quite a long way away.
So to me, it's just a weird thing.
That I noted, and I was like, that's bizarre.
The only thing I could think of that's actually legitimate is that obviously the King's speech is talking about the direction of the government, and so they're writing up what they're up to, and that they've got a bandwidth problem.
But at the same time, you'd think that something as important as this was part of the people, you know, working on it, right?
It's odd.
The whole thing is odd.
That to me, I'm just like, okay, that, but just something to note.
So just pocket that for future, because something may come up from that.
And then there was just this as well.
So the last release of Peter Mandelson's vetting files.
The then permanent secretary of the Foreign Office said queer Stalin wants to appoint a small number of political ambassadors.
And it would obviously support Olive Robbins' claim that he was asked to find one for the chummy chum who's Macy's with a paedophile.
So there's that.
See, all this could have been, not all of it, but the fallout from it politically for Starmer himself could have all been avoided if just right at the beginning, at the very beginning of it all, he just ripped the band aid off, so to speak, and just admitted it and just said, Look, for political reasons, I wanted Mandy in that job.
And yeah, we cut a load of corners in terms of vetting, whatever.
Sorry, shouldn't have done it.
But there it is.
That's the honest truth.
There you go.
Take it or leave it.
I am sorry.
I completely, me, I can't put it completely on me.
He could have well got away with it.
It would be another sort of scandal, but not a giant, giant, giant one.
But now, this lying about it again and again, doubling down on the lies again and again and again.
Just like Nixon and the Wolfskate scandal.
No, I didn't do anything wrong.
You've got to be fired now.
You've got to be fired.
I didn't do anything wrong.
You've got to be fired.
And on and on and on and on.
Until your government collapses.
Yeah.
Again, all for someone that was known to be a wrong un that he's not even matey with.
So weird.
I think.
So weird.
As Beau said, like, if you were politically savvy, which obviously Starmer isn't, but even so.
I don't like that update yet.
Yeah, there would have been people saying maybe you just say, listen, with his experience, with his name and prestige, he's the best person for the job, but we cut some corners with the vetting, and that, in hindsight, was a mistake.
You could sort of move on from that.
So the fact that he's dragging his heels and trying to reveal as little as possible about the process seems to indicate that there's more.
Shadowy things going on in the process in the first place.
Well, without the humble address, we wouldn't have had any of this.
Remember that.
Like that humble address thing, because they were like, no, no, yeah, we'll release stuff.
And no, the humble address has forced them to release everything.
So again, like, I mean, well done from.
Because that was Ange Fridge Rainer that did that, I think, wasn't it?
It was she that did the humble address.
Oh, was it?
I thought it was Oluke Mebede.
No, I think that humble address actually came from Big Ange.
Big Bird.
Yeah.
Um,.
And then now, basically, people are turning on queer Stalin.
So, Labour MP Dan Carden says it was plain wrong for queer Stalin to fire Ollie Robbins.
Carden sits on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee.
So, that's interesting.
This also, there was another individual, I can't remember his name, Glassman.
He came out and was like, yeah, no, queer Stalin's basically done.
This is an untenable position now.
So, there's this sort of thing happening where people are sort of going around and around.
Anyway, so this happened.
Just promote myself there a little bit, but it was a banger tweet.
Pingu.
Doing his best Pingu impression.
See that?
Yeah.
Meep, meep.
I just thought it was funny.
But you can see the.
You can see he's rattled 10 times.
It's so funny, is it?
Meep, meep.
What is that?
I saw a great tweet which was just like the noise I make when the coyote stands on its own dynamite track.
Instantly, I was reminded by Pingu on this one.
But you can see he's not dealing with this well.
He's not handling this well.
And he shouldn't be.
You know, this is a man that's definitely under pressure and it's.
It's very interesting to see the sort of collapse in his composure.
And then this, to close it off with this, you can see, and subsequently since this, there's been a few more interviews that came out.
Ed Miliband simply just, again, actually just gave up defending queer Stalin at one point as well.
So there's a lot of people now just going, yeah, no, he's wrong.
Yeah, he was wrong.
Yeah, yeah, he was wrong.
They've actually begun to quit defending him.
But this was very frustrating.
So we'll have a watch of this.
But I just wanted to start with something that we learned.
Yesterday.
Ollie Robbins claimed that Number 10 pushed for an ambassadorship for Matthew Doyle, former Director of Communications, now suspended Labour peer.
Is that true?
It's the first I'd heard of it yesterday.
I don't know what conversations took place between Number 10 and the Foreign Office about that, but it didn't come to anything, and I don't think Matthew had the experience to become an ambassador.
So I don't know what.
You know, if he was about to leave number 10, what conversations were taken?
I mean, you know, doing the interview today, you must have asked them.
Did it happen?
Well, I don't know.
Because the implication is that it was Keir Starmer, right?
That he asked, he was like, right, let's get this guy and I supposed to.
Look, it's not.
Did that happen?
It's not unusual if someone's leaving to say, what do you want to do next?
Quite what he was asked, what he wanted to do next, I don't know.
I'm really sorry.
Can I just.
Normally, I'm quite forgiving when people say, I don't know.
In this situation, When it was this time yesterday morning, you must have asked the question.
Or if you didn't ask the question, it's because you wanted to come in here and say, I'm really sorry, I don't know.
I don't accept that.
No, I always try to prepare.
So, what did you do?
Did you ask number 10 what happened?
The important point for me is.
No, sorry, this is an important point for me.
Did you ask number 10 what happened?
So, I'm told no appointment was made.
But did you ask number 10?
We know no appointment was made.
Did you ask number 10 if it is true that Keir Starmer asked for an ambassadorship from Matthew Doyle?
Did you ask the question?
I don't think.
He would have been right for such a post.
I think the right decision was made.
Did you ask the question?
I don't know what conversations were held with him.
Did you ask the question?
What question?
Did you ask number 10 if it's true Keir Starmer asked for an ambassadorship for Matthew Doyle?
Did you ask that question?
I don't think Keir Starmer would have asked for this.
I don't know what conversation he would have asked for.
Did you ask the question?
It's a really simple question.
You know the answer to that question.
Did you ask the question?
I have not asked if Keir Starmer asked this.
The Matthew Doyle Appointment00:03:23
Okay.
And why did you not ask that?
Because you wanted to come on here and say you didn't know anything about it.
No, because I don't think the Prime Minister would.
Be in the position of picking up a phone on a personnel matter like that.
He's not an appropriate choice for that, is it?
And I guess part of the reason I think that people feel frustrated about this.
Anyway, I just wanted to end on that.
That's comedy gold, isn't it?
That's like a sketch.
So there you go.
There's the fallout from the Mandy affair and Ollie Robbins.
An ongoing saga, no doubt.
That's not the end of the story.
Oh, God, no.
It will end in the demise of Stalmer's government, won't it?
I would have thought.
After the May elections.
After the May elections.
Play a big role in it, one way or another.
Okay, so we've got some soup.
Have we got any videos today, Samson?
Are there videos today?
I think so.
He's pulling them up.
Okay.
We do have one rumble rant, actually.
Oh, two now.
Shall I read them?
I was led to believe Peter Mendelssohn, don't know whether that's what the composer was, was an alright guy when I met him at his previous job of whispering into the ear of the King of Rohan.
And then Binary Surfer says there's no way he'd have legitimately gained even a basic clearance, let alone strap.
Being mates with a pedo, Intel asset for years, this reeks of I know where political bodies are buried.
Yeah.
Of course.
Of course it's that.
He put many there himself, I don't doubt.
It's a cat.
Yeah, it's a cat.
Cat video.
As the Lib Dem leader, Peter Purrer, the famous banana cat, is quite famous for his monetary policy.
His is a resounding and quite restrained.
What?
10% on everyone.
Everyone will pay their fair share.
This is a merchant fully approved by Peter Purr, the Lib Dem leader.
That cat for Prime Minister, I would say.
Yeah.
Sounds monetary policy to me.
When he eats a banana, an amazing transformation occurs.
He is a banana cat.
Does he transform into a banana?
Just a perfectly ordinary banana.
Completely indistinguishable from any other banana.
Do you remember, you might remember the cartoon, Banana Man?
Banana Man, yeah.
It's from the Beano, wasn't it?
Before my time, I think.
Very certain it was from the Beano.
That was a desperate.
Desperate Dan and Dennis the Menace.
Dennis the Menace and Nasha.
Dennis the Menace.
With Nasha.
Yeah, anyway.
John Sampson?
Is he not playing?
So I've been seeing a lot of posts on Twitter about Brian Jocks recently and his opinions on writing.
It's important to keep in mind that he actually had no formal education when he wrote his books and wrote them when he was in his 40s.
What got him to start writing was that he was working at a school for the blind and he would read books to the blind children.
He was noting that all the books that they gave him were about teen pregnancies and abusive drunk parents.
He's like, These all suck.
Robin Hood And Average Speed00:03:55
I'm going to write my own book.
There's going to be rodents, there's going to be food, there's going to be puzzles, and a whole lot of righteous killing.
Nice.
Sounds good.
I don't know those.
No, I've never heard of them.
No, I've never heard of them.
No, they sound all right, though.
They sound pretty good.
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers, for he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother, be he ne'er so vile.
This day shall be gentle his condition, and gentle men in England now abed shall think themselves accursed they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap, whilst any speaks that fought with us upon St. Crispin's Day.
Oh, brilliant.
For a second, I thought that was Robin Hood, and I was going to say that's putting the robbing in Robin Hood, but it's Henry V. Yeah.
Alas.
There's no Larry, is he?
There's no Laurence Olivier.
There's no Kenneth Branner.
Brilliant.
That was a bit of a weak delivery, if you ask me.
Okay, I think it's written comments now.
Blimey, Sophie's written a long comment.
I'll quickly read through it.
The terrible thing about AI, really, is how it takes away incentives to learn skills and actually do things to be smarter, more self reliant.
That's a very good point.
It really is making people dumber because it's easier to just rely on AI failing to realize this may not always be an option.
Already AI is highly unreliable.
Well, the thing is, AI basically gets you to a midwit level at best.
You can't really exceed an average.
And of course, that's sort of how it works, right?
It looks at the average of what people put out and imitates it.
And so it will never be exceptional for pretty much our entire lifetimes if it carries on improving at the rate it is.
Because you can get to 95% accuracy, but never that it increasingly gets more and more difficult.
That remaining 5%.
Omar Awad, I'll read just one more.
I know we're over time.
Says, honestly, account selling is worse than slop or AI since it's conning an audience built on authenticity and selling their trust.
That is very true, yeah.
I have never ever accepted a penny for anything I've posted ever in my entire life.
Me neither.
Right, a couple for mine.
Russian Garbage Human says the SPLC literally has a chart in their office proudly tracking the decline of the white population in America and the change of foreign born percentage in Europe.
Yeah, it sounds about their speed, doesn't it?
Sounds about right.
Yeah, it's completely insane.
Quick rumble rant to read.
Fictagia says I've used AI to help me generate images and clips to help towards a movie pitch, so I don't think it's slop as it's.
Helping to bolster my concept, but that's a good use of it.
I'm not against AI, full stop.
It's more just the low quality nonsense to generate clicks.
So, no, I'm not some sort of Luddite.
Okay.
Do you want to do one or two, Nate?
Yeah, yeah.
Bo and Nate whispering into the microphone.
It's their politics.
While you fellas were live, Labour MP Jonathan Brash called on GB News for Starmer to resign.
Wow.
Okay.
Okay.
Nice.
State of politics.
State of politics.
And just lastly, that's a random name.
Says whenever Starmer speaks, he sounds like he's trying his best to keep his back door shut after all those rent boys passed through.
Blimey.
Wait a little bit for the tone at the end.
And on that bombshell, bringing up the rear there, that's a random name.
Okay, that's the podcast, guys.
Thanks for watching.
Tune in, well, 8 a.m. tomorrow morning for Breakfast with Bo and the podcast again at 1 p.m.