PBD Podcast | EP 120 | Project Veritas: James O'Keefe
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PBD Podcast Episode 120. In this episode Patrick Bet-David is joined by Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe
Check out his book here: https://amzn.to/3s4oQC3
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About Guests:
James Edward O'Keefe III is an American political activist and provocateur who founded Project Veritas. Connect with him on instagram here: https://bit.ly/3rUUUIf
Adam “Sos” Sosnick has lived a true rags to riches story. He hasn’t always been an authority on money. Follow Adam on Instagram: https://bit.ly/2PqllTj. You can also check out his weekly SOSCAST here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLw4s_zB_R7I0VW88nOW4PJkyREjT7rJic
Connect with Patrick on social media: https://linktr.ee/patrickbetdavid
About the host:
Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media, the #1 YouTube channel for entrepreneurship with more than 3 million subscribers. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller Your Next Five Moves (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
Bet-David is passionate about shaping the next generation of leaders by teaching the fundamentals of entrepreneurship and personal development while inspiring people to break free from limiting beliefs to achieve their dreams.
Follow the guests in this episode:
James O'Keefe: https://bit.ly/3rUUUIf
Adam Sosnick: https://bit.ly/2PqllTj
To reach the Valuetainment team you can email: info@valuetainment.com
Check out PBD's official website here: https://bit.ly/32tvEjH
00:00 - Start
00:15 - What's It Like To Be Both Loved And Hated?
3:36 - Who is James O'Keefe
8:48 - Is James O'Keefe Still Safe?
12:26 - Why Does James O'Keefe Do What He Does?
23:44 - Why James O'Keefe Has To Think Like The Enemy
29:54 - What Is James O'Keefe Willing To Do To Expose Corruption?
33:59 - Does Project Veritas Go After Both Sides
38:34 - Who Funds Project Veritas?
50:59 - Can You Trust Anonymous Sources?
54:32 - The Future Of America Is Decided By The Independents
1:04:55 - Is Tom Brady Retiring From The NFL?
1:11:42 - Canadian Freedom Convoy
1:21:51 - How Elon Musk Can Radically Change The Political Landscape
1:24:37 - Joe Rogan and Spotify
1:44:42 - James O'Keefe's Long Term Hopes For Project Veritas
So, I asked you when there was no sound, how does it feel knowing you're both loved and admired by your core audience, but you also got a lot of people that hate what you're doing.
How does that feel?
It's humbling.
I don't really focus on the fear.
And I think that then one of the things I write about in this book, American Muckraker, is the sort of characteristics inherent in my colleagues and myself is that we're sort of very tunnel-visioned.
So, we don't really focus on those things.
We know that they're there.
We take rational steps to deal with them, but we're kind of focused on what we do.
Some tells me it doesn't bother you, though.
Some tells me you're comfortable with opposition.
I didn't ask for the opposition.
Sometimes I don't understand the opposition, but it's there, and I don't let it affect our decision-making.
So, would you call yourself a whistleblower or is it a muckraker?
Muckraker is the term I think is best defined, Dust, and some people don't know what that means.
It means someone who publishes information that the powerful people do not want published versus publishing information they give you to publish.
How different is that than a whistleblower?
Or is it muckraker more somebody who goes and recruits other whistleblowers?
Is muckraker somebody that goes against the institution?
How would you explain the difference between the two?
Well, I think a muckraker is a term, you know, historically from 100 years ago, Teddy Roosevelt coined it.
It could be all-encompassing.
The whistleblowers that we work with are not my employees.
I don't pay them salaries.
We have people on full-time staff, but a muckraker is effectively anybody who can expose what's going on, the real truth, the hidden truth.
So, it is an element of being a whistleblower.
It is an element of somebody who wants to expose people who behind closed doors are playing essentially the game of, what do you call it, the puppet masters.
You're trying to expose some of those guys.
Yes, we're trying to expose that with the powerful people in a world where the FBI and the New York Times and pharmaceutical companies and all these, they're just acting in concert.
It takes kind of an independent citizen group of people that are just the ordinary folks to expose it.
Yeah, and the concept of citizen journalism is on fire right now, where people are becoming the journalists due to this one weapon and tool that we all have right here.
I don't know if you saw this guy that plays for Manchester United, the soccer player.
What's the guy's name?
Have you seen the story with this guy?
What's been happening to him?
So, this guy, pull him up, Manchester United soccer player, soccer player.
It should pop up.
There it is, right there.
Go to the second one, Greenwood, Mason Greenwood.
There's a video of him and an audio of his girlfriend recording their conversation having sex.
It's such a weird, and by the way, he got fired, I believe.
They just let him go, and he's being accused for certain things.
She's saying, I don't want to do this, and he's saying, Don't make me do this, and then there's videos of her bleeding with like, you know, he hit her in the face, and next thing you know, they let her go.
Meaning, this thing is probably one of the most scariest or most powerful weapons that we have today.
Folks, if you don't know our guest today, let me kind of give you an idea who he is.
James, I had a chance to read your book yesterday and finish it this morning.
I listened to the audio of it.
New York Times best-selling author, you wrote your book.
I think it was called Breakthrough or Breakthrough.
He's got an organization he leads called Project Veritatz, which I believe you started in 2011 or maybe 2012.
One of those two years is when it kind of started growing.
And he's exposed a lot of different stories.
If you remember the one story with ABC, when ABC News Amy Roeback was caught on hot mic saying network spiked Jeffrey Epstein's bombshell and she was trying to do this story and the story was leaked by you, the video, that was one of the stories that Project Veritas did.
There's another story having to do with, I mean, there's a list of them, Google Executive.
Recently, the one you did with the federal government nurse, I believe, that was talking about vaccines.
And the one video you showed where they're sitting there saying this person took their ninth or eighth shot or seventh shot or whatever it was.
You exposed big pharma.
You did something with the senator, pro-Antifa high school teacher in California, admitting communism indoctrination of students.
And the list goes on and on and on.
Senior Google manager on search engine power said, you are just plain and simple trying to play God, the power in the search.
Trump says something, misinformation, you're going to delete it.
If a Democratic leader says it, then you're going to leave it.
So you've done so many of these things, going after Pfizer, going after all these guys.
And here's what I've learned about whistleblowers.
You know, everybody loves a whistleblower on their side, and everybody loves a whistleblower on the opposing side.
Because, you know, as kids, what are we raised to do?
Hey, don't sound right?
Don't tattletale.
Don't snitch.
But there's a different snitches get stitches.
Snitches get stitches.
But you grow up and you're sitting there.
You're thinking you got to protect the whistleblowers, but are they really doing good?
There is this dispute that goes back and forth with people on both sides when it comes down to whistleblowers.
How do you view the life of a whistleblower, how we view whistleblower?
Should people look at him as a hero?
Should they look at him as divisive?
How do you view whistleblower?
Well, I mean, this book, there's a chapter in this book, American Muck Record, called Insiders.
And to be a whistleblower is to step outside the great chain of being, to join not just another religion, but another world.
And sometimes this other world is called the margins of society, but it feels like outer space.
The metaphor that Ellsberg used, famous 20th century whistleblower, it's like being an astronaut.
You cut your umbilical cord.
You're not part of the institution you worked for.
You're not part of my institution.
You're sort of floating out there.
But I think in this world today, I was just watching Joe Rogan's Instagram video as I was coming into the studio.
What did you think about that, dude?
What was going through my head is this quote from Orwell that freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.
If that is granted, all else follows.
Rogan said in his little Instagram video, he said, you know, six months ago, a year ago, they would have banned you for saying these things.
And now the scientists come out and say it's true.
So it's just, we're living in this bizarre dystopian reality where you can't call this a bottle of water.
And they say, experts say, experts say, who are these experts?
So we have to show people the reality.
We can't tell them what the reality is.
We have to show them.
We have to allow people to trust the evidence of their own eyes and ears.
And that's the sort of journalism that we do.
We don't ask you to trust us by virtue of the fact that I declare myself credible.
That's what they do.
Experts say, experts say.
We don't ask you to trust us or trust the whistleblower.
The whistleblower shows you the evidence, right?
First-person observation journalism, such that you can see it for yourself.
They don't want to trust your eyes and ears.
And we would ask that you do that.
And that's what was going through my head as I watched that Rogan comment he made.
Got it.
Yeah, so by the way, when you mentioned Daniel Ellsberg, he was what?
He was a former government employee.
Pentagon papers, 7,000 papers he turned in.
I think he gave it to the New York Times and 20 other papers.
And he was looked at as a hero.
Three years later, they stopped the Vietnam War.
And then afterwards, Nixon came back with espionage, you know, laws against him.
And I think the same thing Obama tried to use against someone as well, right?
Obama used against during the Obama administration, President Obama was really putting the screws to journalists.
I'm not sure the New York Times would publish the Pentagon Papers these days.
I think things have changed in 50 years.
I mean, we released a story involving literally Pentagon Papers two weeks ago, involving DARPA documents.
And I cannot obviously disclose who the source was.
It was not Major Joe Murphy.
The author of the documents was not our source.
But those people don't, they can't go to the Washington Post or the New York Times anymore.
They don't know who to go to.
There's not many organizations for them to go to except Project Veritas.
Yeah, you know, your opening of the book, you say what?
You say, I get asked two questions the most, right?
And I'll focus on one of the questions.
One of the questions is, how are you not worried for your life?
I don't remember exactly how you posed the question, but the fact.
I fear for your life.
Yeah, do you feel for your life?
You're going everywhere.
You're pushing the envelope.
I mean, Pfizer's a pretty massive organization to go up against, right?
You're going against ABC, mainstream media, the institutions.
You're talking about the swamp, all the politicians, the people of power.
You're essentially calling them out and making them look like fools.
You made Zucker look like a fool when you were on his conference call.
And not Mark Zuckerberg, but I'm talking about Jeff Zucker.
So, you know, how safe do you feel?
I mean, you got raided by the FBI early in the morning where they come in with 10 people with flashlights in your eyes and they're taking your two iPhones and the journal that you had of Biden's, I believe, what was a daughter's journal that it was.
How do you feel?
Do you wake up in the morning worried about your life?
Well, I'm glad that you read the book, and I appreciate you reading the book because a lot of people don't.
So I respect you for listening to the book and bringing up a lot of these anecdotes, so I know you read it.
The first chapter of this book called Suffering, and you might say, what are you writing about that in a journalism book?
Because it's kind of a premise here that you're going to go through some pain if you speak the truth.
And I think people are so afraid.
I don't understand it.
I never have.
I don't think I'm a sociopath, but I do think that one has to be a little bit of a masochist to do this, if you think about it.
And I really tried to meditate.
And I really, I mean, it took you five years to write this book.
I spent weeks in the mountains, literally in a cabin, a couple weeks last year during the pandemic, trying to answer this question.
You know, the two most common things is, yes, do I fear for my life?
And the second most common question is, what can I do?
You probably hear that a lot.
I don't know what to do.
How do we solve the problems?
And what people mean when they say, what can I do, is I think what Viktor Frankl wrote in Man's Quest for Meaning, Survivor of the Holocaust, which is, how do I find meaning in life?
And I think as we enter this weird dystopian reality where two plus two equals five, where this bottle of water is not water, it's Coca-Cola, I think people are trying to, they're putting more of an emphasis on meaning rather than their own self-preservation.
That's what I see in my life.
In other words, people are less concerned about materialism and money, and they place more of a primary value on their conscience.
And I think we have a choice to make in this life.
And I quote Alexander Soltzenitsyn, who Jordan Peterson introduced me to through his podcast.
I read this Gulag Archipelago carefully and I thought about it.
And there are some comparisons to what he wrote about in the Soviet Union, that you can follow your conscience and give up your livelihood, or you can maintain your livelihood and sacrifice your conscience.
And these are the two choices we have to make.
And I think more people now than ever, right this very moment in time, are willing to follow their conscience into the gates of hell.
Why?
Because we believe.
We believe in the truth and will do anything for it.
And I wrote right about in this chapter, Suffering, that like any survivor of psychological abuse, the American mock breaker starts to realize a new kind of superpower.
Reborn through baptism by fire, he is invigorated by the knowledge that he is no longer a slave to fear.
That's what I went through.
I stopped being a slave to that because I went through these experiences.
To do this, James, there's got to be somebody that pissed you off, right?
I mean, to do this, there's got to be somebody that either offended you or, you know, because I looked at your parents.
They were conservative, but not at the levels that you are.
You know, I kind of saw what their beliefs were.
They were leaning right as well.
But did somebody offend you?
Did somebody upset you?
Used to be a writer at your school, and then you went and decided to start your own paper instead of writing.
I think it was called Centurion.
I don't know what it was.
Maybe it was called Centurion.
So it's not like, you know, what was the one event?
I mean, maybe even we can go back to high school.
If you and I were in 10th grade, 11th grade, who was James O'Keefe?
That's a great question.
I can answer it in two different ways by talking about that.
But I think as a teenager, I remember being young, young man, and certainly in college, I was very fascinated by journalism.
I would read the newspaper every day.
New York Times.
I love, and Star Ledger.
I'm from New Jersey, so I don't even know.
In 10th grade, you were reading the New York Times?
I mean, he went to Rutgers, so this guy's been.
Well, in college particularly, I was obsessed with reading the newspaper.
Now, this is 20 years ago or 19 years ago, and these newspapers have become a shell of themselves.
They're basically like, you know, an exist and they throw AP articles in there.
But they provided a free copy in college at Rutgers, Public University, New Jersey, of the Star Ledger, USA, and New York Times.
I would sit there in the dining hall every morning because I was a shy, introverted kid, and I had no friends my freshman year.
And I would read front to back all those three papers.
And I considered that my education.
I was a philosophy major, but I was religious about reading the news.
And I was fascinated by it.
As a teenager, I don't know, maybe 13, 14 years old, I would watch local news.
So I grew up in the New York City suburbs of New Jersey, and I would watch the broadcast, and I just felt intuitively that how they were portraying things were not as things were.
So things were not portrayed as they were and rarely as they ought to be.
And that's the best way I can describe it.
It's just sort of a and I know everyone knows what I'm talking about because now it's self-evident.
The news is not showing you how things actually are.
They're describing reality and it affected me.
I remember it affecting me and I didn't know I was ever going to do anything about it.
I didn't think that I'm going to be a journalist.
I didn't even know, frankly, what a journalist was or what a journalist did.
And I certainly had no inclination of going to journalism school.
And I was in Boy Scouts.
I was an Eagle Scout, actually.
And when I was about 18 years old, they had this Board of Review conference where you go before your scout master and they asked me, what do you want to do with your life?
And I went on this rant about things because I was trying to look for guidance.
And he said, and I said, things are not what they seem and rarely as they should be.
And he said, have you ever thought about going into journalism?
And that was the first time anybody ever said that to me.
And I thought about that, and I didn't know what it meant to be a journalist.
And then I went to college and I read these papers every day and I was literally reading the New York Times front to back and I got angry at the New York Times.
I said, that's not right.
It doesn't seem, you know, this is right after 9-11 and the world events that were happening and the op-ed pages.
So I decided to write a column for what was the Daily Rutgers newspaper, the Daily Targum, it was called.
And I wrote a column and I started, and then I researched the ratio of Democrats to Republicans of the professors at the university.
And the ratio was 104 to 1, the imbalance of it.
And the imbalance of it affected me too.
And I said, well, that's not right.
There should be more ideological balance among the faculty.
And then we can talk more about what happened next.
But that was the initial origins about.
The reason why I asked that is, you know, Adam, you know, he's been a comedian before, and then from there he went into business and has done well for himself.
You know, when you think about comedians, you'll typically, the DNA of a comedian is a what?
Somebody that maybe lived a rough life.
So humor was a way of, you know, just, what's the word?
Way to cope or way to cope with it.
A lot of comedians have dealt with issues.
Oh, tremendous.
Of course.
Yeah.
So then you think about like UFC fighters, like GSP or some of these other guys.
Their lineage to wanted to become great fighters was what?
They were bullied as a kid.
So there was a form of them being bullied.
Bodybuilders, same thing.
Did somebody piss you up?
Did somebody bully you?
Did somebody, did you live a rough life?
Did you see somebody right in front of your eyes betray somebody and lie and they went to jail or something happened to them?
Where you said, I just don't think this is right.
Good question.
It reminds me of a question, I think it was Candace Owens asked me, what happened to you?
Or maybe it wasn't her, but someone said, something someone did something.
Why does that question keep popping up though?
No, it's actually only the second time I've been asked the question and I'm not a psychologist, but let me attempt to answer it.
The only thing I can say about my childhood before this teenager watching local Fox 5 New York News was my grandfather and father, I was raised, I did have an unusual upbringing in the sense that I was doing property maintenance with my father and grandfather.
I'm the third, James O'Keefe III.
My grandfather would wake me up in the morning and we'd go do work on the houses every morning, paint and landscape and do roofing and plumbing work.
And I guess it was looking back, it's like kind of like a child slave labor.
I don't resent it.
I think it was formative and taught me values and hard work.
But I did not like the work.
I never took to it.
And we would work all weekend and every night during school.
And we, you know, I told a story before, but since you asked, you know, that was very formative for me.
It was this sort of indefatigability that my grandfather and father instilled in me, very tunnel vision.
So we would work on these homes doing everything ourselves.
We didn't hire any labor.
And for years, starting at five years old, I would do manual labor with my father and grandfather every weekend, dirty, disgusting work.
And they didn't make small talk with me.
My father never did.
I wanted to, but we never made small talk.
We just work, And I hated doing the work.
I just detested it.
I'm a very creative person.
I always have felt that.
And I would daydream during the work and I would think about things, but I was forced to do this.
So my only, and I'm not a psychologist, I'm speculating here, but I suppose that they instilled in me something I didn't necessarily have when I was born, which is this tunnel-visioned, almost maniacal drive.
Although they gave me that, but my passion was different than, you know, PVC pipes and roofing.
My passion was exposing and artistic.
So when you combine those two things, but no one ever really pissed me off.
It was more just the hard work that I did that, I guess, instilled in me.
James, Pat asked that question to quite a few people.
Like, who were you in high school?
Because I think what you do is very unique, very unique.
There's not a lot like, who else is like James O'Keeffe?
It's like, I don't know, not that many people.
Well, thank you, I guess.
Well, yeah, I mean, it's very unique what you do, whether people love what you do or ardently oppose what you do.
But I think the reason that he's trying to get to this is like trying to understand who you are.
And you used a couple terms that I want to ask you about.
You said, yeah, I guess I am a masochist?
Masochist.
And then you said something that kind of caught me off guard.
And I don't want to gloss over it.
You said as a freshman, I had no friends.
And I sat there and read the newspaper.
And for me, and even for Pat, that's always been a person that thrives on.
Camaraderie and friendship and banter and joking and half and having fun like that you were.
I don't want to use a loner, but you said you had no friends and your friend was the newspaper and you started to develop these beliefs and these thoughts.
So I think that's ultimately kind of where Pat is going is like, why did you have no friends?
How did having no friends lead to basically where you're at now?
I don't know.
I don't know if i'm qualified to answer that question.
Well, there's nobody else more qualified than you today.
All I can do is give you the facts yeah, give you what, what my life was like, and maybe someone can draw conclusions.
I, I didn't.
I was a sprawling state university with, you know, 50 000 people.
Um, I was in the dining hall every morning reading this newspaper for hours.
Um, and then, but over time I did, I made friends.
Over time I maybe built an organization here with 70 plus employees.
I've i've i've i've, kind of, you know, started with nothing and we've.
And now I, over the years at in college, I even built a little newspaper there, a magazine, and I built a staff.
But in the beginning there yes, there was.
I guess you could say I was a shy, introverted guy, and were you not looking for friends I?
This is like for me.
I guess what the reason i'm harping on this is, because i've always been a person that I don't collect toys collectibles watches, clothes.
I collect friends and people that I really enjoy spending time with my friend.
Yeah, that's a very good question, because you know how they say, you know, keep your uh circle tight, you know so I.
I have a handful of best friends, but a large network of people I could call at any minute.
You clearly have developed that now, but that wasn't that case.
My grandfather, James O'keefe senior Irish Irishman, by the way, he used to call me Irish.
Funny enough, he'd hear what he called you.
Yes, he called me Irish.
He would drag me out of bed at whatever time ungodly hour and i'd.
Be digging some ditch with my grandfather.
Is that why you tried to cancel the lucky charms?
Leprechaun that was.
I think that was a coincidence.
I mean, I was an Irish-american.
That was good.
Right there, we could talk about that solid respect.
He would.
He would say, you can only count.
You did, we did, we did, went in the dining hall with a box.
Lucky charm said, I don't look like the leprechaun, the front seat.
It was a form of satire satire when you tried to get Rutgers to cancel them or even, you know, give a response as to why they were not going to cancel him.
Irony is now dead, so people don't understand irony and we can get into that.
But it's like I went in there with a, with a box of lucky charms, and I said and and it was very hard to keep his straight face, I really struggled.
I said you know, we're not all short.
We have for differences of height.
I don't look like this.
And they told me they'd remove lucky charms.
I put the bureaucrats in a bind there.
But my grandfather used to tell me, you know, you can, you can only count your friends on one hand.
I've people say that.
So I did that to find friend people in fraternities.
You know, People join fraternities, and that's no criticism, but some people say you buy friends through a fraternity.
And friends, and I've been through so ups and downs in my life, I mean, insane highs, insane lows.
I mean, incarceration, Jon Stewart Daily Show, South Park episode about our journalism.
I've seen such highs and lows that for me, it's like I've seen people come and go, and their loyalties are.
So I don't like phoniness.
I never, I don't, I don't know how to be phony.
I don't, I don't like politics.
I don't like politicians.
So I think that no, I'm definitely no.
Politics is horrible.
Really?
Yeah.
So let's transition.
Let's transition.
So here's my question for you.
So to do what you do, you have to think like whoever the enemy and the opposition is.
Meaning, if I'm going to go out there and go against the dirty, manipulative, deceptive tactics that are out there, I almost have to match them, don't I?
Because, you know, a lot of times you'll talk from, you'll sit down and have conversations with the left or the right, and the right will say, the left is just extremely manipulative in what they do, and they're willing to go and play such dirty tricks.
And look what they did in Chicago with JFK and Dewey and they'll get the votes.
They'll get this.
They'll get that.
And then some people say, well, we have to play their games against them to beat them, right?
And then you'll have faith-based folks who will say, we're just not going to cross the line.
That's not what we're going to do.
going to stick to it but i think there's a part of it where you know the whole saying goes if you want to wrestle if you wrestle with a pig you know you kind of get some mud yeah yeah but But the point is, if you're going to wrestle with a pig, you have to have some kind of pig tendencies.
You have to play their games against them.
Did you ever in your mind say, look, you guys all want to play square and you want to play safe?
I'm going to go against these guys and I'm going to use their strategies against them.
I'm going to piss them off.
Was that kind of a line you had to be willing to cross?
Or this is the line?
You're going to come as close to the line as possible, but not cross it.
I don't know if you understand the question I'm asking.
I understand.
What are your thoughts on that?
Well, there's a professor in college named David Knowlton, and he introduced me to a man named Saul Linsky.
And David Knowlton was, I don't know if he was a professor or an adjunct guy, but he was a businessman lobbyist who taught a class and I took this Rules for Radicals by Saul Linsky.
I don't know if you've heard of this book.
There's a line in this book, which is called Rule Number Four.
Make them live up to their own book of rules.
Now, that sounds sort of Machiavellian and twisted, but it's just a simple, it's really another way of saying it is expose their hypocrisy.
And Alinsky says it, I think he said in this Rules for Radicals book, you know, he was talking about Christians, and it's hard for them to live up to their own standards.
It's hard for them to live up to the Bible, for example.
But you can apply that to anything.
And I read that line in that book, Rules for Radicals, which has now transformed into something just sort of journalistic.
But at the time, there was on campus, they had these speech codes, they call them.
You can't offend anyone for any reason.
You can't say anything that offends anybody.
And for me, that was a slippery slope.
I just viewed it as twisted.
I said, you can't offend anybody.
Well, the whole idea of college is to exchange ideas.
So that's what led to the Lucky Charms thing, where I said, okay, well, if I can't offend anybody, well, then why don't I say this box of Lucky Charms is racist against my Irish heritage?
And it was like a form of satire, I guess, or exposing it.
But now what this is evolved in, and I wanted to draw a boundary, is that absolutely not do we do what they do.
We do not lie to the people.
We do not deceive the audience.
We do not do the things that they do.
We do sometimes use deception in the sense of a pretext with our subject.
In other words, in journalism, circumstances can arise in which deceit towards the subject is less wrong than other possible courses of action, including being so honest with your subject such that you are dishonest with your audience.
In other words, if I come to you, let's say you work for the Pentagon and I say, hi, I'm a journalist.
Tell me all the fraud you're committing.
And you give me some canned line.
And then I publish your line to the millions.
Well, now I'm lying to millions of people.
But if I pretend to be a telephone repairman and I'm in your office and we're talking and I record you, right, and you don't know it.
Well, I've just lied to you about who I am.
But in doing so, I've gotten some truth, which I broadcast to the people.
And they'll attack me.
Oh, Keith's a liar.
He uses deception and undercover.
I see it's a question of relative deception.
And in this business, in journalism, you have a choice to make.
So it wasn't so much that I was obsessed with undercover and wanting to do these things that seemed manipulative.
We wanted to do whatever we needed to do to get to the truth.
We had to dig deep.
We had to learn how to use disguise and pretense and these things that were not comfortable.
These are not comfortable things to do.
You don't like doing them.
In fact, I could tell you in that Lucky Charms video, my heart was beating 160 beats per minute.
I didn't, you know, wasn't comfortable performing in this way to get this information.
Did it make you feel like I feel like I'm being a little bit deceptive and dirty?
Or no, you're kind of like, listen, I'm going to match you.
I'm going to match you at this.
I'm not going to lie.
I'm not going to do this, but I'm going to play all the games necessary to get as close to the line as possible.
No, it felt uncomfortable.
It felt uncomfortable, but the best I can say is it felt uncomfortable but necessary.
I remember confronting the professors.
I had printed out these certificates.
And, you know, this is all irony and satire.
Like, think of it like Borat Meet 60 Minutes.
That's the best way I can describe it.
It was like Borat.
Okay, I'm going to go in there.
I'm going to pretend to be this so I can expose the reaction and expose the speech policies.
I felt so uncomfortable, I forced myself to do it.
I forced myself to do it.
It's like doing something you hate doing, frankly.
Like I had to stick my little child arm down a sewage pipe.
I just forced myself to do it because I said, this must happen.
I must do this.
Do you have a family or no?
No.
Kids.
My parents and my sister.
No, no kids.
No children.
Any plans of ever having kids?
I would love to have kids.
Oh, so you would.
So it's not like you don't want to put them through what you're going through where your kids go to school and maybe you name them after James O'Keefe.
And hey, is your dad James O'Keefe?
He is.
And so you're comfortable having kids and put them through.
I would like to have kids.
Okay, fantastic.
Well, that's good to know.
So going back to that, I asked this question because, okay, so one, you once to prove the point about the border, you dress like Osama bin Laden.
I don't know if you can pull this up.
You dress like Osama bin Laden.
You cross the border to prove a point to say, here's how bad the border is.
If you can go to images and David, if we can show this, this is James O'Keefe, okay, right there to the right.
If he can show that.
Another time, I think you went in acting like you're a pimp with a prostitute, right?
Who was that that you were trying to expose?
That was a group called Acorn.
And you expose them, and this is an organization that had been around since 1971, 500,000-something members that they had.
And right afterwards, six months later, you pretty much shut down the organization.
At the time when you did it, it was 07, which is 15 years ago.
You were, what, 23 years old, 24 years old?
You bet.
Yeah.
So this is what I mean by, like, these strategies and tactics, you got to have a creative mind to say, I'm going to play your game against you.
Yeah, and I think I answered that insofar as that we do whatever we need to do to get the information.
And for the Acorn story, we could spend 30 minutes talking about that story.
But in a minute, it was this young woman who messaged me on Facebook, like I get most of these tips these days from the citizens.
And she said, what if you went in there as a prostitute?
And this is a government.
You're telling her, she's telling her.
And she's giving me this idea on a Facebook message in 2009.
And we get our tips and ideas.
And at the time, I was nothing.
I had no money.
I had no organization.
I was just a filmmaker with these ideas.
And she had seen what I did with Planned Parentage.
She said, why don't you go in there as a prostitute?
And we're having this, I've never met this woman before.
We're just talking over Facebook.
I said, well, there probably should be a pimp.
And what occurred to me is how brilliant it was because this is an organization that was doing illegal things, squatting foreclosed homes.
They were accused of doing corrupt acts.
So if you went in there and said you were a criminal and you had a deviant business, you would get a reaction.
Now, I thought that they would, I assumed, my hypotheses was that they would perhaps tell us to evade the authorities or something mildly fraudulent.
When I went in there in Baltimore with my hidden camera embedded in my satin tie, with Hannah was dressed like a, she was from Miami.
She was from Miami, a 20-year-old dressed like a, she had stilettos and a sarong and a leather halter top.
They told me how to disguise the underage hookers as dependence on the tax returns.
They brought in the accountant.
This was like something out of an SL skit.
But they actually wanted to help us evade the law.
And it got quite serious.
It got quite serious very fast.
I mean, those videos prompted Congress to defund Acorn, democratically controlled Congress.
So it wasn't me that destroyed or defunded Acorn.
It was the United States Congress.
There we are.
There's Hannah.
That's what she looked like.
She went in there.
Now, I did not wear that fur coat in every office, but she wore that in Baltimore.
And by the way, prostitutes do not look like that in Baltimore, but these workers wanted to help us.
And we did this in Baltimore, D.C., New York, San Bernardino, Los Angeles.
Every office helped us but one.
Now, I got to tell you, sitting here right across the room, you don't look like a pimp.
It'd be very hard for you to pass as a pimp.
But that picture right there, you got very close to looking like a pimp.
That's true.
A low-budget one, but he does look like one pimp for sure.
His pimp hand is strong, regardless.
Well, it was just, it was so low-budget.
People at the time, this was a massive story.
I don't know if people remember it, but it was big.
The late Andrew Breitbart described it like taking the penthouse to the glass elevator all the way to the top with what we did.
And I did not have any money.
So that fur coat, that was my grandmother's coat.
The hat was my grandfather's hat.
Hannah accoutred herself.
And we drove around in my old jalopy grandmarque.
And we just did it.
I mean, we just, two kids from the cast of high school musical three.
Question for you.
So some people will say, look, you know, if you're really going to do the whistleblower stuff, why don't you go after both sides?
Because at least Sasha Baron Cohen will go and expose, you know, maybe 10% of people he exposes is the opposing side.
You know, he did something with Bernie Sanders, his own side.
I think he went after Bernie.
I don't know.
He did something with Bernie.
I mean, he tends to go after, especially with the last time.
There's no question about it.
This is, to those who ask that question, is this a pure crusade you have against the left or is anybody that does uses their power against people to manipulate?
I think we need to define these things.
When we say side, what do we mean?
When we say left, I'm not even sure what that means anymore because I have the FBI working with the New York Times.
Is that left-wing?
Let's define reality.
There's only one reality.
There's only one truth.
Veritas does 24 frames per second, or now on the iPhone with the high definition, it's 64, I don't know what how many frames.
Truth at 24 frames per second.
There's only one reality.
There's only one truth.
Our medium is to film things, film people talking.
And oftentimes we don't feel, you see their lips moving.
So that happened.
It's an event.
Over time, you'll see us do everything.
We just did a video on Alex Stoville, who's a Republican in Arizona.
He's a Republican running for Congress.
And he said one thing in private and another thing in public.
He contradicted himself and we exposed it.
And we were not condemned by the right.
In fact, that reaction to that story, it seemed like people on the right appreciated it even more because they didn't want people on their side, when I say right, Republican Party, if that's even right wing.
This was a guy who said privately that there wasn't enough fraud to overturn the election and publicly that there was.
So I'm not saying he was wrong by saying privately what he said.
It was the fact that he contradicted himself.
But that would still be seen as one side.
I mean, if he's against fraud for election and then he says it, that is against the idea of many people on the right, however many you want to say, that thought the election was a fraud.
So for him to flip that, I don't necessarily think I put him as a person who would essentially be on the right to defend some of the philosophies.
You got to keep in mind, this is a show where we defend capitalism.
This is a show about, you know, a person who escaped Iran to go to Germany.
I lived at a refugee camp.
I'm a kid who grew up in a communist family, in an imperialist family.
Mother said they were all communist.
Dad said we're imperialists.
But it's more strong to say, listen, here's what we're doing.
We're covering up the guys on the opposite side.
I'm not a comedian.
I'm not Sasha Baron Cohen.
Here's what we're doing.
This is what we stand for.
This is where we're going.
But at the same time, there is a big audience out there that will say you target mainly one side.
And you know what?
They're going to say that until they stop saying it because we have people coming to us now, like I say, the DARPA, the Marine Corps major who wrote this.
Which, by the way, there's nothing wrong with that.
I mean, you're going against, if you're going up against the government, that's what we're doing.
But two quick responses.
Here's the irony of them saying I go after the left by exposing CNN.
There's an admission there.
Are you saying that CNN is left?
Are you saying the New York Times is left?
Is the FBI left?
Is our Federal Bureau of Investigation left?
Are our pharmaceutical companies left?
Is this guy left?
So at a certain point, that argument is, what's going to happen, there's an asymptote to borrow a mathematical analogy.
That asymptote will approach zero, and people are going to come to us where they can't go anywhere else.
CNN, the network CNN, gives a deliberate false impression daily.
They say the two plus two equals five.
We got a guy at CNN saying, quote, we're propaganda, the control room director.
He said, we're propaganda.
And he's talking about the death numbers on the screen.
His name is Chester, Charlie Chester, C-H-E-S-T-E-R.
This is probably one of the biggest investigations we ever did.
I was most proud of this one.
And he goes, why can't it be higher?
We need the deaths to be higher.
More people from COVID need to die, so we have higher death numbers, higher death.
This is what this guy is saying.
I didn't say it.
He's saying it.
You can see his lips moving.
He's being secretly recorded at a bar.
So these networks, there it is, quote, if it wasn't for CNN, I don't know Trump would have gotten voted out.
Now, I did not entrap him.
We did not tell him to say these things.
We asked questions.
I did not ask leading questions.
Our undercover people said, tell us about what your network is like.
We're propaganda, we get Trump out.
So if that's, my question is a rhetorical one.
Why won't the people at CNN say that publicly?
Say what?
Say the fact that...
Quote, if it wasn't for CNN, Trump wouldn't have gotten voted out.
Quote, we're propaganda.
Quote, why won't the death numbers be higher?
There's nothing, by the way, I'm not making a moral judgment about that.
Right.
And I won't.
That's something about me that's different than all the other journalists you see on TV.
I'm not making, well, my only judgment is this.
My only rule is this.
Don't say something privately, if you are a powerful man like that, that you're not willing to say publicly.
Okay, so we both know that happens in your organization, that happens in our organization, that happens in every media, every sports team, every business, every company.
There's going to be certain things you're going to talk about aspirational behind closed doors where, for example, Tom Brady, every time they interview him after he wins again, this is what Tom Brady will say.
You know, we have to respect those guys on the other side.
We have tremendous respect for the coaches.
You know, Jimmy G and the kicker for San Francisco.
What's the kicker's name?
Do you know who I'm talking about?
The kickers are big ghoul.
Yeah.
You know, we respect the guys on the other side.
The Green Bay Packers have a world-class organization.
And then you see the clip that they record on the backers.
You just see that one part.
So listen, who doesn't do it?
I think everybody does it partly on the other side because to compete at that level, especially media, you have an enemy.
CNN's enemy is Fox.
Fox's enemy is mainstream media.
MSMNBC has an enemy.
Everybody's got an enemy.
And quite frankly, everybody's mainstream media's enemy right now is Joe Rogan, who is kicking everyone's ass.
So there is an enemy in every place.
So I think there's a part of it.
Okay, I'll give you another question.
So one of the stories that goes talking about you is the fact that James O'Keefe has made $1.9 million since 2011, right?
And they show your income.
And it goes from, which to me, the income is $400,000 your income, whatever it was in 2020 or 2021.
We have the exact numbers based on the article.
And it says, year one, he raised, it was a small thing.
He raised only $400,000.
And he has a job where he was working 60 hours a week or 80 hours a week, making 50K a year before.
I think the article you've read before.
And it goes, he raised $1 million.
He raised $2 million.
He raised $4 million.
Now he's raising $8 million, $12 million.
And eventually it was a $20,000 I think you raised $21 million in 2020.
Whether it's 2020 or 2019, you raised something like $21 million, right?
And then in the book, there's a part where they call you out and they say, well, who are the backers?
Who's given the money to Project Veritas?
There's an article that says Koch Brothers.
There's an article that says names that comes out about you, right?
And then your position was, I think it has been by law to not release the information of the guys, the individuals who give money to our organization.
You said something like that in your book, right?
And I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.
So, you know, again, do you want people to know who gives money to your organization?
Do you want the public to know who you give money to the organization?
No, it's a fundamental right enshrined in the First Amendment freedom of association.
So there's a distinction there in that there's a chapter in this book called Secrecy, and I talk a lot about this.
There's two things, there's three things that we can keep secret, and there's no other secrets.
One of those is the donors to our nonprofit, which, by the way, don't tell us what to do.
It's a freedom of association right enshrined in this case, NAACP versus Alabama, Supreme Court Justice John Marshall, economic reprisals, loss of employment, threat of physical coercion, and manifestations of physical hostilities.
There's a quote from the United States Supreme Court.
You do not want to disclose donor identities to organizations, philanthropic news organizations, precisely because of the fear and the intimidation and the coercion.
Sure.
quite different than Charlie Chester at CNN admitting what his actual and what the actual motives and agenda are.
And if I was doing that, people should expose me because these people have a tremendous power and it's their ability to manufacture the public's consent.
I think that informed consent in this country is critical in the American founding and this sort of Jeffersonian ideal of the public's right to know, which makes us much different than any other country in the history of the world, perhaps, right?
And the American experiment and the American ideal that people have to have access to actual information.
And the only way for them to do it, by the way, I'm a 501c3, the economics of Project Veritas.
You're right.
People talk about the money we raise.
We have 100,000 donors that give us this money.
I started with nothing.
I mean, they were saying I was funded by Right Being Billionaires when I literally was broke and destitute on my credit card.
Who were you?
Did you ever?
I was so broke with that Acorn story.
I took the Chesapeake Bay Bridge because it was $4 less.
People thought I was nuts.
So they project, it's all about- So the story about Koch brothers, that's a lie, that they never participated in helping you out with Project Veritas.
We don't disclose our donors.
I mean, for all you know, Hillary Clinton is funding us.
It doesn't matter.
Well, that would change the story.
Now you got Babylon B's got a story to it.
But it wouldn't you.
But it wouldn't change the story because the things that we're presenting are real.
And Upton Sinclair, you know, people forget that like, you know, Nellie Bly and Sinclair and Lincoln Stevens, they're all socialists.
And you know what?
More power to them.
If you have an agenda like this, but what you shouldn't do is you shouldn't deliberately mislead and give a false impression to your viewers.
It's not as much the motive or your political agenda.
It's that you tell a deliberate untruth to people.
It doesn't matter who's funding you.
It matters whether you're deliberately telling an untruth.
Yeah, so for example, like this story, the Forbes story that was written November 11, 2011, which was a couple months ago.
You've read this article.
You're a guy that follows this stuff.
$1.9 million since 2011.
Okay, that's what?
That's 10 years, 11 years.
I don't care how much money you're getting paid for that.
So you made $400,000 last year.
You live in what state, by the way?
You live Westchester, New York.
Okay, so you're broke is what it is.
I mean, seriously, if you're making $400,000 a year in New York, 50%, you've got $200,000 left to yourself.
Well, here's an interesting thing about economics, because I think it's a fascinating question.
We're a full and philanthropic news organization.
Now, you know, there are billionaire, chairman of media companies, which settle lawsuits.
We've never settled the lawsuits.
It'll cost me $2 million to get the jury verdict in the court case.
$2 million.
We could have given someone $50,000 and settled the lawsuit.
Why would we not do that?
Well, if you're a businessman, if your imperative is cash, money, if you want to keep money in your pocket, you're a masochist.
If you look at this and say, I could spend $50,000 to make the lawsuit go away, or I could spend $2 million, go through discovery, go to trial, and I might lose.
And we've never settled a case.
And that's why our legal bills at Veritas are some years $5 million a year.
$5 million.
And all proceeds from this book goes to our organization to pay our reporters' salaries.
But the economics of journalism, there's no business model for investigative reporting.
It's self-evident.
All of the corporations have slashed their investigative bureaus because it's too expensive.
It's too painful.
And that's why our model is the 501c3, the non-profit philanthropic model.
I mean, the story continues to say, well, Mother Jones, Liberal Magazines, pays its president only $225,000, and they generated $16.6 million.
The Daily Caller News Foundation, which publishes conservative content online, pays their chief development officer $138.
And they keep going with all these other stories.
Judicial Watch, another right-leaning group, pays its treasurer $395,000, and they go pro-built.
Anyways, they're telling all these stories.
Here's kind of where I'm going with this part here.
So if somebody from your own organization went out there and said, listen, I worked for James.
The other day he offended me because he made a joke that really upset me.
He made a comment about the Chiefs losing and how excited he was and how dare you say anything about Pat Mahomes, right?
I have access to all the people that give.
Here's the list I give it out.
You wouldn't care.
You'd be like, okay, that's part of the whistleblower game.
Which list?
Whoever the donors are to you.
That would be part of that.
I wrote a whole chapter in this book about this.
And I'm writing a book about journalism ethics.
I'm writing a manual because no one has really ever done this before.
So I'm trying to define the boundaries.
And this is a very critical point.
There are only two things we keep secret.
Because really underlying your line of questioning here is this notion of hypocrisy.
Like James O'Keefe, you probably, is your cross to bear.
You probably do things in private.
And my answer is: listen, we all make mistakes.
We're all human.
But there are two things that, so help me, God, I will not disclose because it is enshrined in the fundamental values that we hold as Americans, which is number one, the rights to protect our sources and the right to protect our donors.
By the way, if the United States Supreme Court were to order me to reveal who released that document from the Pentagon, I would be held in contempt of court and go to jail to protect my source.
I would, like Jenk Anderson, the legendary muckraker from the 1970s, I would submit to Your Honor that you're in error.
And I would not oblige with that.
And I would have to face incarceration in perpetuity rather than disclose my source.
This is enshrined in the DNA of the First Amendment.
You don't disclose your source and you don't disclose.
If the NAACP, to borrow an analogy, in 1958, were ordered by the Supreme Court to disclose who donates to an organization that protects the rights of African Americans, that's what that case was about.
So when you ask me, well, what if they published your information?
I'm sorry, but so help me God.
There are two things I will never disclose and I cannot disclose.
Oh, by the way.
Because to do so would be anathema to the very things that give us the First Amendment in the first place.
Okay?
So no, no, no donor has ever been.
Of course, the people that are trying to disclose these donors don't share a faith in these principles.
They don't like the First Amendment.
And that's the only public policy issue that I take a stance on.
Anything else, I don't really have political views.
But on this, on this, here I stand.
I can do no other.
And that's why I wrote that chapter called Secrecy, because I meditated on this, and I realized everything else I have to have disclosure on.
And by the way, we do file a tax return and we put it on our website.
Do you know any other news organization that does that?
No.
We do.
We publish that 990.
We disclose everything.
We go through discovery and litigation.
I've been deposed more times than I can count.
By the way, I like depositions.
I have a good time being deposed.
You know why?
Because I got nothing to hide.
You know who doesn't like being deposed?
The New York Times.
They're scared of that.
You know why?
Because they have everything to hide.
And that's the difference, really.
That's the difference between Project Veritas and anyone else.
So on those two things, I would never want to disclose them, and I will fight to the death to not disclose them.
So I support your decision for doing that.
And I'm part of that understanding that, like, for example, the other day somebody messaged and said, hey, did you know Patrick Bay David gave to the following organizations?
And he gave money to this and this, and he was at this event.
I'm like, I was.
What do you want me to do?
Where did you get this information from?
Well, this person told me that you did this.
Okay.
So on one end, if somebody wants to release it, they release it.
On the other end, this is privacy for who I want to give to.
And that part of it has been compromised a little bit right now.
But you said something.
You said, you know, never disclose the source, right?
The word, never disclose the source.
If you've, if, comma, if, you've promised confidentiality to the source of the information.
But don't you think that can be abused by both sides?
Meaning, hey, yeah, I think is that yours or mine?
Something's happened.
Okay.
All right.
So like the, hey, this dossier we got on Trump's meddling in the elections with Russia, but it's a source.
We cannot tell you who the source is because we have to protect the source, right?
Isn't that something that's abused to constantly say we cannot disclose the source?
So both sides come out and Trump will come out and say, we have to find out who the whistleblower is.
You know, when that took place, when he was coming out.
And then Schiff will come out and say, you know, the history of protecting whistleblowers in America, we have to protect these whistleblowers.
It's always protect the whistleblower when it's on their side, and it's always expose the whistleblower and the source when it's on your side.
Again, I hear what you're saying.
I know you don't like identity politics.
I don't like identity politics.
I hate identity politics.
I do too.
My whole mission is to fight against that.
But for people, well, I hear what you're saying, but I'm living in a normative world.
I understand that that is the current status quo.
When I was raided by the FBI, the ACLU defended me, which was so shocking to right-wingers, it almost made their heads explode.
They couldn't fathom this.
Like, oh, what party appointed the judge that ordered the FBI to stop?
Well, it was an Obama-appointed federal judge.
And I reject the premise that we have to live in this world of sides because there is only one truth.
Now, you're right.
I'm not saying you're wrong.
You're actually describing the current series of events where, well, when the whistleblower comes out against Trump, we want to know who it is.
But yes and no.
I think there are some people that are so political that they let their politics get in the way of these values, these primary values.
Barton Nicky V. Vauber, a Supreme Court case from 2001, when you want to live in a society which places a primary value on freedom of the press, it's a concomitant of life.
You have to live with this notion that if a source gives you a document from inside the Pentagon or wherever, the White House, it could be the cleaning lady, whoever, you protect the identity of that person.
And the reason some have said the reason why the ACLU defended me after the feds raided my home in November was because they didn't want it to happen to them.
Sure.
Under a DeSantis administration.
So there still is in the Venn diagram of the, you say sides.
Integrity.
A little bit of integrity.
There's an overlap between the left and right in this country.
And it's that overlap, that little overlap that gives me hope.
In fact, I want to expand the overlap.
When the ACLU defended this, there you have it.
When the ACE defended, that was a beautiful moment.
That was probably one of the most beautiful moments of my life because I said to myself, we are finally talking about principles.
We are talking about the things that, and I'm going to sound like a hippie here, so forgive me, but I actually believe this.
The things that unite us are so much more powerful than what divides us.
They ask us to focus on our divisions.
But that right there is beautiful.
That's an incredible moment.
And then you have to say, why is the ACLU defending James O'Keefe?
And that's the real conversation.
That's the beautiful conversation that makes us American, that makes this country wonderful, because we give people information and we don't disrupt the right of people to get the information.
So this is where Bill Maher wins, because Bill Maher says, be very careful with the censorship game you're playing, because it can come back and bite you in the butt when the administration changes, right?
So you see Bill Maher coming out and some people are saying, well, Bill Maher is becoming too conservative.
You know, Bill Maher is becoming way too conservative.
He went out there one time.
He said, look, I took the vaccines.
I took it and I got COVID.
I don't know what to tell you.
I did what I was told to do, and I still got it.
So you kind of start to see some of that stuff taking place.
He's starting to call out the people on the left just as much as you would typically call out the people on the right.
Yeah, he said a thing about that this past week.
He says 30 years ago, the reason why comedians do well making fun of the right is because that was funny.
He says, try making fun of Pelosi.
What the hell are you going to say about Pelosi?
He says, but today's left is making it easy for the right to make fun of the left.
He specifically said, I haven't changed.
I'm still the pot smoking, non-married, making fun of everybody.
You've changed.
Exactly.
So the only thing I'm saying that my point only, the only point I'm making to you is, you know, again, going back to the fact that the whistleblower who comes, like Snowden, remember when he came out with the 30,000 emails and people are like, well, this is not, Cuomo said, this is not the right thing to do.
You know, this is just not right.
You don't do that kind of stuff.
Some of this information doesn't protect the level of hypocrisy on both sides against each other.
When they use the tactics against each other, that's when the American voter who I believe, James, America's run by the 12% of voters.
Not the ones that, you know, they're going to, when you're saying identity politics, those on one side that no matter what you tell them, they're going to vote left.
Those on one side that no matter what you tell them, they're going to vote right.
I think America's run by 12%.
I think you're right.
That 12% is who we have to win.
If we win the 12% over and they sit there and say, you know what, I don't know if I like those two stories, James did, but this one, I kind of have to agree with them.
Well, your point about leaks, there's a part of this book, American Muckler, where I talk about this, this idea of leaks, whistleblowers, and I think the distinction, the qualifiers, if you can see the information yourself.
So Snowden, when he brought those documents, you could see the documents, right?
You weren't really relying upon Ed Snowden's credibility as a witness.
The documents were self-evident.
My problem is when the anonymous sources say, people familiar with the matter.
I think you have a point.
Sources familiar with the matter.
We don't have any reason to trust the Washington Post when they tell us that.
We don't know who these people are.
So I agree with you if they don't show us the evidence.
And an analogy I would draw is when you use an anonymous source, which Veritas doesn't really, I don't think I've ever reported something without showing you the evidence.
I don't say, well, you have to believe me because I say so.
As a journalist, when you say you have to believe me because I say so, you're withdrawing from the ATM of your credibility.
But you've got to make deposits sometimes in the ATM.
Deposits, evidence.
But the New York Times and Washington Most don't actually give you any evidence.
Here's an example.
The Trump tax return story.
This was a story about a year and a half ago that was concurrent to one of our stories that we did.
The New York Times published a story about it, but they didn't print one document.
They didn't show you any pictures.
They didn't show you any evidence.
They asked you to believe them because they are the New York Times.
When I sued the New York Times for defamation, it came out in court in court documents, in the deposit, in the discovery, rather, in the answer to our defamation lawsuit.
It came came out that they admitted they got the facts wrong in the article and they refused to update their article.
That means that right now on the internet, there's an article.
It's on Wikipedia.
Facebook uses it as the fact check that's wrong and they admitted in court it's wrong, but it has not been updated.
Now, what is that if not disinformation?
So when they accuse Joe Rogan of disinformation, the New York Times in court saying we got it all wrong and they haven't fixed the article which remains on the internet.
It's literally an Orwellian dystopia.
So when they say believe us, because people are familiar with the matter tell us that this is so, there's no reason for you to believe them unless you can see it for yourself.
So again, the rule is, and I write about this book, this is I'm creating a rules for journalism.
Don't trust the anonymous sources unless they show you, unless they've given you the actual raw evidence and have a track record of showing you raw evidence every once in a while.
Yeah, there's a rule when you go to a journalism school, whatever school may be.
I mean, obviously Columbia is one of the biggest ones, but they're pretty much politically on one side.
What is the level of accountability that journalists have?
None.
None.
But there is, though.
There used to be.
I mean, if you go back years ago, they were held accountable for certain things that they were supposed to investigate the truth.
Then you're supposed to tell both sides, here's what this side is doing.
Here's what this side is doing.
And if you're wrong, you come out and apologize.
There was four things journalists were held accountable to according to the, what is the journalists organization out there?
Do you remember when we talked about this like a year and a half ago?
Anyways, I don't remember.
It's kind of like the Hippocratic Oath for journalists.
Yeah, they have something.
Society of Professional Journalists has a code.
I can't recall the rules of this code.
But I think the press has an important obligation to police itself.
The media has no self-policing mechanism.
So the press, you know, there's a need for self-examination and a degree of open-mindedness to the criticisms that are leveled against it.
But what's happened, I think, it's about integrity.
And there used to be a lot of libels lawsuits, actually.
People forget in the 1980s, 60 Minutes was sued many times, many times.
Now the rub on me is that they attack me for being sued.
Well, I've won every lawsuit, so we can talk about it.
You've won every lawsuit.
Every single one.
You have never settled a lawsuit.
Personally, myself, James O'Keefe, not Project Veritas, I settled a lawsuit before Project Veritas was created.
I never settled a lawsuit again.
We won every case.
But media settle lawsuits all the time.
I mean, CNN or Washington Post settled with Nick Sandman.
That was the young man with the Native American in Washington, D.C.
And they're not attacked for it.
They get away with it.
Well, they were called out for that, though.
They were definitely wrong, and they were held to the fire on that.
Do you consider yourself a journalist?
Yes.
I mean, more specifically, American muckraker.
Again, depends upon what your definitions of these things are.
Would you say that you're a supporter of Donald Trump?
Am I a supporter of Trump?
I support maybe some of the things that he said are done, but I have to remain independent and nonpartisan.
Well, the reason I ask is because you've been an advocate for journalists.
When you got raided by the FBI, you basically, in so many words, said this is ridiculous.
Journalists should not be treated like this.
But I saw a clip of you speaking on a podium with a big banner, Trump in the back.
It was a Trump event, a dinner of some sort.
And you said, we must go after the media.
Yes, absolutely.
So I'm just trying to understand.
Okay, so you're at a Trump event.
You're speaking.
You're the speaker.
I suppose it's a Trump event.
You're saying going after the media.
So I know you've been pretty bold on saying, look, left, right, I mean, who even knows at this point?
You know, you brought the example of 104 professors are liberal, you know, Out of balance.
But ultimately, I think what Pat was asking, it was like, if you do 100 stories, kind of 99 of them are against the quote-unquote left.
You could easily find Trump's tax return stories.
You could easily go against Steve Bannon.
He's been held.
Sure.
So I guess my question is like, you know, I don't know if you can.
There's an answer to your question.
You may not like it.
I don't have an agenda here.
I'm asking a question.
It's self-evident.
The First Amendment does not protect defamation.
The New York Times versus Sullivan case establishes the actual malice for defamation.
You can't lie about a public figure.
So when I say go after the media, it is consistent with First Amendment principles to expose what the media is doing wrongly.
That's consistent with the First Amendment.
The First Amendment does not cover intentionally lying to people.
So when we say go, I mean, I think one of Trump's virtues, something I did like about the president, was his highlighting the fact that we shouldn't necessarily trust everything we're told by these media.
And by the way, don't take my word for it.
You can look at our stories on CNN and the New York Times.
Well, we've exposed these people that have admitted they're lying to people.
And that's not what the First Amendment was designed to do when Jefferson talked about we need newspapers more than we need government.
It goes back to this ideal.
And by the way, I've also spoken at Duquesne University.
I've spoken to groups that are hostile to me.
And behind me was Duquesne University and Marty Baron and Dean Backay.
And if the ACLU wants to have me speak, I'd love to speak there.
I'll speak anywhere.
I will speak, as my mother and sister once said to me, if there's only one person who's willing to listen to the truth that you need to speak, you speak it.
So if a Key West Republican group wants to have me, or if Duquesne wants to have me, or I don't know what you're referencing there, but any place with a banner behind me, PBD podcast, if I can speak these principles, I will speak them.
And I agree with certainly some of the things that Trump has said about the media.
Yes.
Okay, so how about we, now that we've done a lot with you, let's go into some current events, if you're okay with that.
I don't know what the protocol is, but would you mind if I take a bathroom program?
Oh, go for it.
You go ahead.
60 seconds?
You'll be the third person in the history of Key.
You just ended up on the soy boy list.
I'm sorry.
I know.
Go for it.
Go for it.
Maybe this is a moment.
Maybe I'm being exposed on the record here.
I say we follow him to the bathroom, make sure he's not checking anything.
No, no, no.
I'm trying to hydrate it after my Project Veritas musical.
I'll be right back.
Do you know where the bathroom is?
I do, sir.
Okay.
All right.
Sounds good.
While you're doing this.
He's the third member now.
You were the first.
Tom was the second.
He's the third.
Yes.
Have you done it twice or have you done it once?
Just once.
Okay, folks.
So here's what we're going to do when he comes back.
We're going to cover the Joe Rogan, Spotify, Neil Young story, as well as Harry and Megan, who urged Spotify to stop COVID-19 misinformation.
We'll cover that.
We'll cover all the different names that came up with Willie Nelson, Bruce Springston, Barbara Streisand, Queen, Paul McCartney, Rolling Stone, David Groh, a bunch of guys that are going against Spotify.
We'll also talk about Canadian truckers.
But meanwhile, you and I, why don't we talk about Brady's retirement?
He came out and just said, you know, he hasn't said it yet.
Even his father contacted, David, if we can close that door, even his father contacted ESPN TMZ reported saying, look, this guy hasn't announced retirement.
He contacted the chief saying, listen, not the chiefs, but the Bucs saying, look.
Look, I haven't made my decision yet.
Where do you stand?
Do you think he is retiring, but he's upset that story leaked?
Yeah, well, how could you think he's not retiring at this point?
Why would that even come into the atmosphere and people talk about it?
Could you imagine if that's actually not true?
And he's like, I'm actually coming back.
Nonsensical.
Brady is so maniacal that I think Brady may have had a conversation with a few people thinking about he's retiring and that, hey, here's kind of the direction I'm going.
Somebody leaked it.
Brady behind closed doors is so pissed off that they leaked it because he's always wanted to control the narrative.
He wants to come out and say, I'm retiring with a video or a message.
You know how he typically does it with a video that comes out.
And imagine if he flips and he says, you know what?
The hell with you guys.
You did that?
I'm going to go one more year.
Well, if there's anybody that can basically flip it on us, it's someone that's basically saying, you think you're going to control the narrative about me and my life?
No, I'm coming back.
We're going to run it back.
Yeah, Edelman came out and he said, I'm going to miss you, Babe, or something like that, you know, on Twitter.
Who said that?
Edelman.
Oh, Julian.
I'm going to miss you, babe.
Specifically, Babe.
You know, they got a little bromance going on over there with those two.
But could you imagine if this is a quote-unquote fake news story, James O'Keefe type vibe, where we can expose the media for getting it wrong?
Yeah.
And next thing, you know, he's coming back.
So ultimately, the question is: do you think he is, in fact, retiring?
I have to tell you, I think the conversations took place.
I think he is so pissed off right now.
I think he's so furious right now that it leaked to anybody else.
I don't think he's the type of guy that would want the story to leak.
I think he's lost his mind with being furious.
He wanted to do it his way.
And it kind of changed it up.
But, you know, there's some people that are upset saying, listen, there's one because we were at the birthday party.
It was Tico's birthday party when we heard the announcement.
Okay.
10 years old.
10 years old.
He'll turn 10 tomorrow.
And people are like, no, he didn't.
He didn't retire.
Yeah, he did.
No, he didn't.
Yes, he did.
TMZ saying he didn't.
So I don't know.
Do I think he's going to go?
I think he can play one more year.
I think he can play one more year.
He led the league in yards, touchdowns.
Yeah, but did you see the completion?
Did you see his last game when he lost?
He was not going out without a fight.
No, no, but did you see it?
It almost was, you know, you looked at his face at certain moments.
It was kind of like, do I, like afterward, especially, do I really want to go through this one more time?
Because think about it.
If you're him right now, here's what you're thinking about.
Who are you going to put around me?
Okay.
I need a little bit more help.
I got hit a little bit too much.
Okay.
Maybe I'm.
Antonio Brown nonsense.
His best receiver went out for the season.
He had a couple other injuries.
Like, maybe he's sitting there saying, Can I do this one more time?
What other record is there left for him to break?
But you actually, a week ago, were saying, There's something about the way he did the press conference.
You were actually the one saying that he was writing on the wall.
Yeah.
No, I think I've never heard him speak that language.
You'll know when somebody speaks a language.
Like, for example, you're sitting with your buddies and somebody says, I'm not going to lie to you, man.
You know, I'm just sick and tired of being married.
This is like freaking very hard.
Or I'm sick and tired of being single.
You're like, this guy's never talked like this before.
There's something going on there.
There's something going on there.
Okay, folks, we got James back here.
Oh, Keith, are you an NFL fan, Tom Brady fan?
Do you want to weigh in on this?
Retirement.
I used to be a Bills fan when I was growing up.
I loved the Bills La Bills.
A lot of L's in that Bills.
That was eight, nine years old, and they lost their fourth straight Super Bowl.
I cried, and my dad had to say it's just a game sign.
1994, they lost four.
Scott Norwood, man.
Scott Norwood, Doug Flutie.
Remember Doug Floody?
Of course.
He was my hero in the high school.
I loved Boston College.
Came out of CFL.
No, didn't he start off with CFL?
I went to Giant Stadium, then Giant Stadium in the Doug Fluty jersey.
Jets fans, worst fans.
I'm dressed as a Bills fan at Giant Stadium, and they're like throwing flutie flakes at me.
But I love Doug Floody.
He was my favorite growing up.
And I'm sad to see Brady retired.
So when I came to the States in 1990, November 28, the football teams you had was Cowboys.
You had a few different teams.
I was a die-hard Bills fan, Thurman Tyron.
Really?
Oh, BB, Bryce Paul.
Wow.
Andre Reed, Bruce, Andre Reed, Thurman.
Kelly, the coach.
Of course.
There was something unique about these guys.
Marv Levy.
I was a Bills fan when I came to the States, and I was a Lakers fan.
So for the first six years, I was in bad shape.
As a 13-year-old kid, I had therapy sessions twice a week, you know, going through.
Do you remember the game in 1999 with the Music City Miracle with the Titans and the Bills?
Yeah, there was a crush.
Of course.
That quite rushed me.
I don't know if, and I think it crushed a lot of people.
Kevin Dyson.
Yes.
They benched Doug Floody and put in Rob Johnson.
He lost his shoe.
Remember that game?
That was my moment.
I never, I used to love it.
We just figured out the Oilers game.
Do you remember the Oilers game?
I was coming.
Or Frank Reich or something.
33-3.
My dad was at the bar.
But they won that game.
Yeah, of course they did.
They won that game.
Listen, my dad was taking me up to San Francisco.
We're driving up there.
We're listening to the radio.
I'm like, I'm devastated there, Dan.
I'm like, turn off the radio.
I don't want to listen to it.
We get to San Francisco.
We get to a restaurant to eat.
We look at the screen.
It says, the greatest comeback of all.
I'm like, your Buffett Bills.
It was the comeback.
1994.
Yeah, something like that.
Maybe this is the Safreudian moment you want to know.
This 1999, I remember this game.
I was obsessed with the Buffalo Bills in the 90s.
After this game, it crushed me.
And I know it crushed a lot of people.
They benched my hero, Doug Fluty, and they put in Rob Johnson.
Anyway, so I think we figured out a few things here.
The truth has been revealed.
We've been trying to figure out.
You've elicited the truth.
Exactly.
We've been trying to make out what makes O'Keeffe take.
That's what pissed us off.
The Buffalo Bills spelt B-I-L-L-L-L-L-L-L.
You got a signed jersey.
Do you have a Fluty signed jersey or no?
I had a Fluty jersey.
Yeah, I did.
I used to wear it to the Jets and the Bills were in the same conference.
And once a year in New Jersey in Meadowlands, I used to go with my dad to see him.
Awesome.
Well, you know, the one thing about sports is it typically takes you back to a moment with your mom or your dad or your brother or your sibling.
Do we want to tell O'Keeffe the truth?
Doug Fluty, come on, and we brought Doug Fluty.
If you're watching, Doug.
All right, so let's talk about what's going on with the Freedom Convoy in Canada, which is going viral.
It's being talked about everywhere except for mainstream media.
I don't know if you've been following this story or not.
Let's kind of go through a couple things that's going on there, folks.
Hundreds of truckers block Ottawa in Freedom Convoy to protest vaccine mandates.
It's a France 24 story.
Hundreds of truckers have blocked the streets of central Ottawa on Saturday as part of the self-titled Freedom Convoy to protest vaccine mandates required to cross the U.S. border, flying the Canadian flag, waving banners, demanding freedom and chanting slogans, slogans against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The truckers were joined by thousands of other protesters, angered not only by the COVID-19 restrictions, but by broader discontent with the government.
An enormous clamor ranged out of hundreds of big trucks, their engines rumbling, sound at their horns.
Anyways, I'm going to tell you this other story from Al Jazeera.
Why are anti-vaccine Canadian truckers covering or converging in Ottawa?
I like that title right there.
Anti-vaccine Canadian truckers.
So a convoy of anti-vaccine Canadian truckers and their supporters making its way to the country's capital, Ottawa.
Starting on January 15, Canada has required essential service providers previously exempt from vaccination requirements, including truck drivers to be fully vaccinated across the land brought from the U.S. Unvaccinated Canadian truck drivers entering to Canada, entering Canada will need to meet requirements for pre-entry arrival and day ate testing as well as quarantine requirement.
Now, keep in mind, 90% of these truckers are vaccinated.
77% of the country is vaccinated.
And this Freedom Convoy, Co-FundMe, if you can go to it, as of last night, it was at $8.7, $8.8 million.
If you just type in Freedom Convoy, GoFundMe, they may be over $9 million.
James, I'm assuming you're following the story.
What are your thoughts on what's going on right now with these truckers?
You know, $9.2 million.
$9.2 million people?
$9.2 million.
They haven't taken it down yet?
Have they taken it down?
No, they haven't.
$113,000.
My first surprise is that GoFundMe has not taken this down.
But I guess that it goes to show you the difference between how the media portrays things and how things actually are, because so many of these people in Canada believe in this, and it's self-evident in the pictures you're seeing.
Like I said, pictures, evidence.
You can see the trucks.
So they say it's fringe, but that's a characterization that doesn't seem accurate.
That doesn't seem based upon reality.
It does not seem fringe.
It seems mainstream.
It seems that there's a substantial minority, if not majority, of people that agree with these people.
So what I draw from this, you know, this sort of the Orwell 2 plus Duke was four quote is that how things are portrayed by the Canadian leadership and the media are not as they actually are in terms of the grassroots support for this.
Adam, do you have thoughts on this?
Well, what's the ultimate story here?
They're protesting mandates.
They're protesting mandates.
That's what it comes down to.
Some people that are protesting against the mandates are fully vaccinated and took the boosters.
And they're saying, I'm fully vaccinated.
I just don't want mandates.
Okay, so we're going to throw that mindset.
They're basically saying, look, I did it.
I support it.
I mean, Dr. Robert Malone, who you interviewed, is vaccinated.
He basically said, I almost got crushed by COVID.
Yeah, if you can show that video, David, if you can pull up that video so people can see it.
But however, I don't believe in the mandate.
Ultimately, isn't that?
What is this picture of here?
This is Ottawa, Canada.
Those are the trucks that currently have a day ago.
Day ago, Ottawa.
Are they wearing masks?
I don't mean as a judgmental question.
Are they wearing masks or are they willing to violate the city protocols?
I don't know if you're not crazy.
It's a mandate.
So, guys, the border is 5,500 miles long, Canada and U.S. border.
It's 5,500 miles long.
You got these truck drivers, which the strangest thing is, if anybody their job is to quarantine, it's truck drivers.
They're by themselves driving.
It's not like they're around anybody else.
They're driving.
Unless there's two drivers.
99% of the time, unless if you've got another person with you, but you're driving by yourself, maybe with another person to do your job generally, it's by yourself.
And they're saying, if you don't do this by the 15th, to cross the border to you, this is not just the Canada thing.
Exactly.
That's crossing the border.
So that's another Canada, Canada to U.S. You're crossing the international borders.
Just to make a populist comment, too.
Something my friend Laura Logan always says to me, which I think is very poignant, and this is a visualization of this.
It's really amazing.
Visuals we're looking here, Instagram videos, is that they have tremendous power, and we're nothing.
That's the comment I see people say, we're nothing.
We're insignificant.
We're nothing.
But Lara says to me, we're not alone.
She says, we're not alone.
And we, the people, it's a cliche.
It's a tale as old as time.
But we are so insignificant compared to the powers that be, that have the power of coercion and the power of the legislatures.
But this is a very amazing moment that we the people, and even Canadians, we the people.
By the way, go to Elon Musk's tweet because Elon Musk tweeted about the truckers and what he said.
Canadian truckers rule.
Yeah, Canadian truckers rule is what he said.
Yeah, something like that.
So think about it this way.
Who would have thought Kyrie Irving, okay, truck drivers in Canada?
You got Elon Musk, you got Joe Rogan, you got the strangest camps that are sitting there saying, dude, can we just not be forced to do what you're telling us to do?
I'll take the vaccine.
I just don't want to be forced.
So I had a couple people over at the house for the birthday party.
And, you know, some of the guys from the community, very successful business people, and the conversation about vaccine came up from them.
And I said, did you hear about Tom Brady?
What, Tom Brady?
I'm like, did you hear about truckers?
What truckers?
I'm like, you're not following the story?
No, I'm not following.
I read New York Times and Wall Street Journal every day, and I've seen nothing about truck drivers.
I'm like, you got to be kidding me.
Zero.
So they're in front of me kind of going through it.
These are two professionals.
Both of them are C-suite executives running their companies, living in beautiful property, legit, legit people.
They know nothing about what's going on.
And so, so tell me about what are your thoughts on vaccinations?
What are your thoughts on this?
I said, listen, I think to each a zone, I think it's something that probably helps minimize for certain people.
My dad had COVID and he had pneumonia simultaneously, and he had the COVID shot, and he was able to go through it at the age of 79.
And he just took the booster and he's glad to have it, right?
And then he says, how about yourself?
How about your employees?
How about this?
What percentage of your home office is vaccinated?
They're in the health industry.
I have to get everybody vaccinated.
One of my friends got all their doctors and nurses in LA to get them vaccinated.
20 of their employees and doctors just resigned.
They said, you can't force us to do this.
So there is a community out there.
And they're finding each other.
And they're sitting there saying, look, man, I just want you to leave me alone.
Don't bother me.
Let me do this.
By the way, in Canada, things are so strange in Canada because one of the reporters, I don't know if you saw that, James, he said, look, if we have to choose between keeping you alive and feeding you, we're going to lean towards keeping you alive.
Like, what did he just say?
You know what he just said?
If we have to choose between us not letting these truck drivers do their job, so food is not being delivered to you.
These are thousands, these are 15,000 truck drivers, so food doesn't come and you don't have enough food for a week or two or three weeks.
For us, it's more important to keep you alive from the from COVID than feed you.
And and we have to kind of go through that.
And Quebec is saying they're gonna start opening up movie theaters with one rule, you can't sell popcorn because they don't want you to go in without a mask on, because they want nobody eating popcorn in movie theaters.
Yeah, yeah.
So it's a very strange dynamic.
This is what we talked about last time.
This is more than just a health problem.
There's an economic problem.
There's a uh social, societal problem.
You're staying at home.
You have the depression problem.
How many people are not getting out of the house being able to exercise?
You know we we we, uh.
The quote.
I mean James has been busting out quotes all day.
I don't know who said this, but he said war is too important to be left to just the generals, just like a pandemic is too important to be left to just the scientists.
There's a lot of business people.
There's a lot of um, just regular people who have a voice and have a say, and it's not just one, you know, one size fits all type.
Cure to this.
And look what's happening in Canada.
Quote, the CB radios are.
Those are the radios they use for the trucks are free from censorship control.
Zoom, zoom in so we can, the audience can see what's CC.
Go to the tweets.
CB radios are free.
Reply Elon Musk there.
CB radios the truck radios are free from media control.
Those are the old radios we grew up in as kids.
You know, even on it's.
It's a very amazing for me this is all about.
I go back to the power of the image.
I'm going to speak from a journalistic perspective on this matter, not as a public policy health issue.
It's the idea.
It's the idea that those are profoundly moving images of a convoy of trucks and thousands, hundreds of thousands of people.
There are tens of thousands of people.
And then the WALL Street Journal, NEW YORK Times.
You wouldn't even know about it if you lived in Manhattan.
That's wild.
If you only read the NEW YORK Times yeah, if you only, you would not see it.
That's actually a really amazing observation there.
You wouldn't even know about it if you only read certain publications, and that's not right.
They don't want you to see.
Why don't they want you to see the images?
Because they want a specialized class of men.
As Edward Bernays said and Dean Lippmann said, we need to interpret the data.
We don't want you to have the images because you might draw wrong conclusions from the images that you see.
Well, that's not right, James.
Other than Project Veritas, obviously.
What news sources do you trust any?
Any source that I can see the evidence myself?
If it's No, because it's like because a broken clock is right twice a day?
I mean, anyone can do this.
The New York Times can and has done good journalism.
But you got to be able to see it, like we're doing right now.
Like we're looking at the images, assuming those images are not doctored.
Right there.
Go to what Dinesh said.
When Dinesh was on with us and I did the interview, this is exactly what I said.
I don't know why the right isn't doing this.
We talked about this on our interview maybe a year and a half ago.
He says, tweets are fine, Elon Musk, but you can dramatically change political and cultural landscapes this way.
Buy and take over a major social media platform, acquire or create a TV network like ABC, NBC, or CBS, create a world-class online university and offer degrees for free.
That's exactly what we talked about in the interview.
Can I pull up that short clip?
Tell Kai to pull up that short clue with Dinesh and I, because I fully agree with that.
I would like to reply to that tweet.
I'm banned on Twitter, so I cannot do so, but I can make a comment right now.
Go for it.
My comment is if you're a businessman, you'd have to do it as a philanthropic thing.
If your job is to generate a profit, it will not help.
If you want to tell the truth, if you want to be a news organization, the commercial imperative, if Elon Musk is listening, the commercial imperative, that is to say, poor for-profit capitalism, is incompatible with investigative journalism.
You have to be philanthropic.
And by the way, this is the way it used to be.
You talked about journalism in the 70s and 80s.
From what I've read, those organizations, it was a lost leader on the company's balance sheet.
So ABC News would do these things.
It says buy ABC and all these.
They would do it, but they would do it as a lost leader.
They would almost donate money on their balance sheet, profit and loss, to do the work.
It didn't generate a profit per se, but they donated it.
And if you're going to buy these companies, it's not going to help unless the person is willing to be philanthropic.
The billionaire would have to be a lot of people.
You don't think so.
You don't think so.
I believe this.
Yes, I know so.
I don't think, and it's self-evident.
I mean, these billionaires settle losses.
I don't know if I agree with that.
Because then you're saying then what you just said is that the current mainstream media has zero influence, and they do.
Mark Bennihoff bought Time magazine.
That's a pretty legit one to buy.
Well, you know, you got the Peter guy bought LA Times.
You got Amazon Jeff Bezos bought WAPO.
If it doesn't work, why are they buying it?
Well, maybe we're talking about two different things.
I mean to say, if you want to do investigative journalism, if you just want to people opine and speak opinion and project their political, I don't know if that's what Dinesh D'Souza means.
I don't want to put words in his mouth.
But if the idea is you just want to buy a network so that you can project your political views onto your audience, that's not what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about doing real information finding and truth gathering, investigative reporting.
Do those networks even do investigative reporting anymore?
I guess maybe NBC catches the predators or does what would you do?
I don't know.
But I mean, really, real journalism requires philanthropy is what I'm talking about.
Let's transition into the next story.
So Spotify in the last 12 months, they've lost 25% of its value, okay, in the last 12 months.
Spotify stock has lost.
Can you go to that?
Okay, right there.
Spotify stock has lost nearly 25% of its value in 2022.
And 40%, I was wrong, 45% over the past year.
What's going on?
So what's the date you see right there?
From 2021 to today, it went from being $240, $250 a share to now being what?
$190 a share, $184 a share as of, can you go to what it is today?
Just go to what the stock is today so we can find out.
And during this time, can we find out when they signed Joe Rogan?
Put down when they signed Joe Rogan.
Spotify signed Joe Rogan on what?
That was May of 2020, I want to say.
So it's been a year and a half.
June of 2020.
June of 2020 because December 7th was when he was leaving YouTube, something like that, when he said he's leaving YouTube.
What's the date?
May 2020.
You're right.
Okay, May of 2020.
They sound good memory, Adam.
I'm very proud of the memory of you.
So then here's what happens.
Joe responds yesterday.
Did you see what Joe did?
And I'm assuming you also saw what he said.
I just watched it as I was coming up.
Yeah, you were commenting on it.
So let me kind of read a few of these things on what's going on, and then we'll get into it.
So Spotify, Joe Rogan and Spotify.
Let me see if it's this one.
Yep, Joe Rogan and Spotify.
Spotify removes Neil Young's music over Rogan's dispute.
This is an NBC news story.
Spotify said it has agreed to remove Neil Young's music after the famed singer writer said he wouldn't share the platform with podcaster Joe Rogan, who has been criticized for spreading vaccine misinformation.
They can have Rogan or Young, not both.
Young76 said the heart of gold singer's solo catalog spanned more than five decades from his 1969 self-titled album to his most recent record, 2021, Barn.
Young called out the Rogan experience in his letter, the danger of Spotify enabling the distribution of potentially fatal misinformation with an estimated 11 million listeners per episode.
JRE, which is hosted exclusively on Spotify, has tremendous influence.
Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform.
And then Harry and Megan, Merkel, decided to comment as well.
They urge Spotify to stop COVID-19 misinformation from spreading on its platform.
This is an insider story.
A spokesperson for Archwell Harry and Megan's Foundation said in a statement Sunday, last April, our co-founders began expressing concerns to our partners at Spotify about the all too real consequences of COVID-19 misinformation on its platform.
Spotify shares dropped 12% following Neil Young's request to remove the music from the platform.
Harry and Megan Commons followed the decision by Young and Joni Mitchell to request their songs be taken off the platform.
In some cases, a podcast host saying they won't release new episodes.
Now, by the way, here's other names that have come up.
William Nelson, Bruce Springsteen, which I think he sold his catalog to Sony for half a billion dollars.
I don't even know if he can say that.
Sony decides whether they want to take it off.
I think Barbara Streisand, Queen, Paul McCartney, Rolling Stones, David Grohl, Joni Mitchell, Pearl Jam are removing their music from Spotify in solidarity in solidarity.
And keep in mind that 30% of all the buys of music is on Spotify.
So if people want to buy a song by Snoop, 30% of it is bought on Spotify.
So it's not like it's a small amount of people.
If I can keep the fascists?
Let's just, there's no proof to this comment right here, these artists.
There's 100% proof to Neil Young and Johnny Mitchell.
I don't know if this is true or not.
No, no, no.
No, go type in Bruce Springsteen and Spotify.
If you type in Bruce Springsteen and Spotify, that's all you got to do.
Because that's what I did yesterday.
Type in Bruce Springsteen and Spotify.
Okay.
Right there.
It's an NBC story.
CNBC writes.
It's not him.
Yeah.
So, okay, so these stories are coming out.
What are your thoughts on this, James?
I've got many thoughts.
I mean, it goes back to, I'm sorry to get philosophical again, but it goes back to this concept about what is misinformation because I watched the Rogan reaction on Instagram as I was driving to your studio this morning.
I'm glad I did.
And he said this anecdotally.
He said, well, things a year ago or six months ago, what the cloth mask, you would be banned if you said it.
Well, now it comes out as true from the experts.
So it goes back to this definition of why are they censoring, why they want him off because of misinformation.
What does that even mean?
And what it means is it goes back to the authorized experts say business.
So the government, the CDC, the experts, the pharmaceutical companies, it goes back to what the experts say, but who are these experts?
And it goes back to the very idea of what we're talking about these two-hour segment, which is the unauthorized information.
Our world is becoming such that you are only allowed to think and say what the authorized knowers and the presumed credible sources permit you to say, which is so, it's so anathema to what journalism and the media is supposed to be.
And Rogan said, he said, you couldn't even say these things a year ago that now you're allowed to say.
You know, I'm going to tell a dirty joke, not too dirty, though.
And by the way, I'm happy to say this publicly and privately.
I'm in my, I'm not married, but for this joke, let's say that I am.
And I'm in my bedroom and I'm having an affair with this beautiful woman.
And one night, this woman comes into my bedroom and she goes, oh my God, how could you do this?
How could you do this?
We've been married for 10 years.
And she's looking at me having this affair.
And the next morning, she said, how could you do that to me?
And I said, well, honey, that's actually been debunked by experts familiar with the matter.
Experts say that you never saw that happen, right?
So my question is, disinformation, this is a rhetorical question.
Disinformation is based upon experts and credible sources.
And that's the problem with our modern ecosystem is that you can't say anything contrary to what those experts tell you.
What do you think is going to happen with Spotify and Joe long term?
Is there any chance that Spotify is going to make a big decision?
Daniel Eck is, do you see anything happening there?
The only thing that they've come out and said was that they're going to add content advisories to basically Joe Rogan's podcast.
Did you hear what he had to say yesterday?
Daniel Eck, he came in and made an announcement.
He says, listen, I don't agree with plenty of individuals on Spotify, okay?
Some I strongly disagree with.
We know we have a critical role to play in supporting creator expression while balancing it with the safety of our users.
Quote unquote, we don't want to play content censor, but we are putting rules in place.
Well, this is section 230.
This is a central issue here.
This is the White House, quote, you shouldn't be banned from one platform and not another.
So these companies can't have it both ways.
They can either be platforms or they can be sort of, they can make editorial judgments.
And once these start, what I saw, Daniel Eck is his name?
Once you start making decisions to ban certain things and not others, and you start crossing that threshold, now you're effectively a news.
You're effectively, you're not protected by those immunities and you should be sued for liability.
These are tough issues.
And we've never crossed this Rubicon before.
Today, here sitting here today, we've never gone this far.
So I don't know what the future holds, but I don't know.
And the only thing is these CEOs of these companies, these for-profit people like Eck, I don't know what his values are, but if your value is money and profit, what ends up happening is they're always going to fold.
They're not going to be able to stand firm.
That's what I think is going to happen.
They're going to fold and there's going to be more censorship.
And I think it's bigger than just Daniel Eck.
Look at Twitter and Jack Dorsey.
People have their thoughts on Jack Dorsey, but people who know Jack say that the whole reason he started Twitter was for a free speech ecosystem.
And he got pushed out by the board, by executives, et cetera, et cetera.
So now there's talk of him starting his own platform.
But what happens with Spotify?
Can Daniel Eck hold strong or will the executives come in, the board members come in and say, no, we're done with you.
Thank you very much.
That's a great question because listen, 45%.
You know how much is 45%?
You're not talking they lost $16 million.
You're not talking they lost $100 million or $400 million.
45%, you're talking about billions of dollars, okay?
Billions of dollars.
Their market cap right there, if you look at, look at their market cap right now.
What's the market cap of Spotify?
$36.4 billion.
Do you see it?
Do you see the market cap of Spotify?
$36.4 billion.
If you're talking 45%, what is a drop-off to go to $36 billion?
That's $70 billion valuation.
You're talking about they lost nearly $22 to $24 billion in 12 months.
We're not talking a little bit of money.
So imagine the conference calls where investors are on and saying, how are you handling Joe Rogan?
What are you going to do about it?
Imagine a board.
Board is sitting there saying, hey, like I remember my board, we had a meeting.
It was a tough conversation they had with me.
What are you doing to get 100%?
What are you doing to get your agents to get vaccinated?
It's a conversation I had with me at my board meeting.
So I'm sitting there, I'm having to have a conversation with them.
They've had to have a conversation with Daniel saying, what are we doing about this?
You are also giving a great lecture for your audience about why I am a 501c3 nonprofit organization, which protects the freedom of association rights for donors to the First Amendment, because we don't have this problem.
We don't have to disclose our the Supreme Court has protected our rights.
They can't boycott our donors because they don't know their names.
And this is the problem.
I mean, I'm going to go back to my argument.
This is the problem with these for-profit news, because Joe Rogan is technically a man who's disseminating information and news is that they'll invariably fold.
And that's why they'll fold.
I've seen it.
The first chapter of my book is called Suffering, because the amount of pain that this man is going to, Eka is going to have to endure to go through this.
I mean, I think the only way forward is philanthropic, nonprofit sort of the model to get information out there where they can't boycott and target the people that support you.
So as soon as the $100 million contracts happen, we'll see what happens.
We'll see what happens.
I don't think Rogan's going anywhere.
I think Rogan's going to be in demand for a long time to come.
I don't think Rogan's going to have a problem because yesterday when he posted a video, did you guys see the commentary of what people said to him?
Did you look at the commentary?
So let me ask you a question.
If you go to Rogan's Instagram post, so check this out.
Go to his Instagram post.
Just tap in and Google, Instagram Joe Rogan.
I want to show you a couple people that commented that says who Joe is.
So when you think about The Rock, what do you think about The Rock?
Type in right there, click on that.
What do you think The Rock is?
Left, right, center, where do you put The Rock?
Politically, I don't know.
Center-ish.
Well, he defended the, what do you call it?
Well, Keith doesn't see left, right, center.
He's not going to be able to do that.
Sure, he kind of identified properly.
But he went out there and he had Biden on and Kamala Harris on, but he didn't have Trump on, right?
So he supported one side.
Now, while you look at that, I'll read it, okay, if you can't find it.
I'll read it here.
So when he posted this video, here's a commentary.
It got 4 million views, okay, million likes, okay?
Here's what The Rock said.
The Rock, Dwayne Johnson said in the comment section.
He commented and he said something about, hey, man, you know, obviously Tulsi Gabber commented, I'm trying to find The Rock's comments.
Jewel commented, sure.
But there is one from The Rock, man.
If you can't find it, I hope he didn't delete it.
I mean, this thing was up yesterday.
And something about, hey, I can't wait to come on one of these days and be on the podcast.
It's crazy that he hasn't been on yet.
He said that.
Yeah, he said, I'd love to one of these days.
Okay, there you go.
Great stuff here, brother.
Perfectly articulated.
Look forward to coming on one day and breaking out the tequila with you.
Okay?
And got 60,000.
A comment got 60,000 likes.
So he's protected.
Joe is going to be in demand no matter where he goes.
You're saying he's uncancelable.
I don't know if I'm going to say he's uncancelable.
When I sat down with Joe, my suggestion to him was, the only way you can protect yourself 100% long term is to do what?
Consider opening up your own thing.
For example, if he and Musk teamed up together.
Imagine if him and Musk teamed up together to start something, right?
Yeah, I agree with you.
That was profound.
You have to be the chairman of your own company.
You have to be the owner and the chairman.
To be a journalist.
Let's take that to the journalist.
That's a very astute point.
I want to comment on this.
I didn't start out thinking, I'm going to create a business with 75 employees and $20 million budget.
Of course, I ever thought I'm going to do that.
I said, I need to tell this truth.
I need to expose this thing.
And then along the way, I realized, okay, in order to not settle the lawsuit, I have to have the autonomy, the power to make that decision.
No one would ever allowed me to make these decisions unless I was in control of making those decisions.
So you're right.
I think he has to be the owner and the controller.
And right now, he's, I guess he's in contract with Spotify.
Is that correct?
Four years.
He's not on the board of Spotify, right?
He's not.
No, he's not.
Well, that's not.
But I tell you, think about it this way.
The other day I was invited to a party that was going to be in Miami the same night.
And I don't know if you remember who the party was, by do you remember when I told you who the party was?
Okay, I'll tell you afterwards.
It's one of the biggest guys in the technology world who was having a party with everyone that's going to be there, some big names that were going to be there.
I want to kind of show you who this was.
And the reason why I'm saying this, because I think this guy right here needs to be involved in this conversation with Joe and in the conversation with Elon Musk.
I think if they do it together, I think there's some damage that can be done if those guys were able to team up together.
Because one, you need somebody that understands technology very well.
Two, you have to have somebody that has a lot of, no, it's a little bit more than Musk technology.
Two, you need somebody that has to know, has access to unlimited amount of resources, which who has?
Musk has.
And then three, you have to have somebody that's loved, admired, adored, and it's as much in the center as possible.
And this is the guy.
By the way, you can't get Trump involved because it wouldn't work out if you get a personality like that involved.
But there's three people I think if they team up, some damage can be made on this side with Joe and some of these names.
So, anyways, last question for you here is, what's the story with you still being on YouTube?
Well, why isn't YouTube bothering you?
Because I was looking at your stuff.
I'm like, let me get this straight.
This guy's still on YouTube.
Doing well on YouTube.
Yeah, you're still on YouTube and no one is saying anything about you on YouTube.
Because we tell the truth.
Because we've won every lawsuit because we were very careful and diligent.
And I mean, that's the only explanation.
We haven't lied about anything to the people.
We use undercover techniques.
But there we are with 1.46 million subs.
We still haven't gotten our gold Google, what do they call it, the YouTube gold plaque.
We got the silver one at 100,000.
They won't send us the plaque.
Oh, that's a conscious decision?
I don't know.
I mean, we haven't gotten it.
When did you?
We've been over a million subs for about a year.
When did you apply to get the gold?
Well, they sent it to you.
They sent us the silver unasked for when we get 100,000.
But I know that Tim Poole showed me the gold plaque that he got multiple, and I think he used it as a doorstop for his door.
He puts the gold plaque under the door, I think.
But I don't know.
The reality is that we are very diligent and extremely careful.
If you watch our news reports on the Project Veritas YouTube channel, they are extremely professional, very serious, and very diligent.
So I think they're going to try to find an excuse.
At some point, it might be like a copyright violation or you're on the street and you hear a song in the radio of a car, but they'll take you off.
They'll find some bizarre.
Like they did take us off one of the videos because we were doing a report outs in the street in California, and you could see in the corner of the screen a lamp post with a number for one of the houses.
This is absurd.
Like news journalists do this all the time.
So now we blur every license plate.
We're so tediously careful.
The standards we are applied to is above any journalism standard in the history of the media.
And for that reason, at least so far, they have not taken down our news reports.
Go to videos.
Go to videos and type in solve for most views.
Go to the right.
Sort by views.
The COVID work.
Go to the top one.
The COVID one, don't click on it.
But the COVID one, which was four months ago, 5.2 million views.
And by the way, if you've never seen it, folks, you got to watch that.
Here's the thing.
I can't believe that's still up.
I cannot believe that's still up because, you know, Prager, you went and sued YouTube and they went back and forth and they took a lot of their videos down.
I am surprised that video has been lost.
Here's another thing.
As you're talking, these thoughts are occurring to me.
We sue people and we win.
And to a certain degree, I think it's a fair statement to say that they fear us more than we fear them.
What does that mean?
I sued the New York Times for defamation.
I got past motion to dismiss.
Can you name anybody else?
I mean, Sarah Palin did, but that was in an opinion section.
I did it with the news section.
So there are very few human beings that are able to accomplish that.
It's like sort of being in the boss phase of the video game, you know, like when you play Nintendo.
Like we've gotten to the boss level.
And I think that there's to a certain degree, there's an incentive for them not to do this sort of thing where they ban me for some bullshit reason because I'm the sort of man that will sue them and win.
Now, you might say, well, there's no legal theory to do that with YouTube, but they don't know that.
And frankly, maybe there is a legal theory under Section 230 or a defamation law.
So what I mean to say is I actually believe that these companies might be afraid to ban me because if they were to do that, they would have to create some pretext, some erroneous rule that applies to me, but doesn't apply to the other guy who breaks the rules all the time.
I don't.
And they're actually afraid of being exposed for violating their own rule.
This is an interesting psychological thing.
And that's probably the reason why they haven't taken that down because of course our journalism is correct and those things actually occurred.
And if the third video there, Pfizer Whistleblower leaks exec emails, that was a Pfizer whistleblower who released emails of the director, one of the senior executives at Pfizer Pharmaceutical saying in an email, these are her words, not mine, and she's saying, we don't want our customers to know that we use fetal cells in the development of the vaccine.
And that's what that video was, 3.5 million views.
An actual email is real evidence.
They haven't banned it.
So why were you taking off Twitter then?
Great question.
They said that Twitter's excuse was I was, quote, creating fake accounts.
No, I've never created a fake account.
So I sued them for defamation.
And that matter is ongoing.
They just seemingly made up an excuse.
It wasn't because my reporting was false.
No, it's because I, quote, made fake Twitter accounts.
I'm not sure what they mean by that.
Who came up with the word provocateur?
Was that something that they used to describe you?
I suppose.
Well, you know when you go on Wikipedia, like you have a reputation.
Oh, Wikipedia, it'll evoke audible gasps from people who read it.
You think I'm a monster reading the Wikipedia page.
And it's all just circularly sourced nonsense.
What's your long-term aspirations?
What's long-term?
I think the ultimate vision, the vision of Veritas has now evolved into effectively being the answer to the question, what can I do?
So we are a catalyst for citizen empowerment.
So we have, as I sit here on my iPad right now in front of you, we have a team of people that get tips from DMs from people, Instagram DMs, and people call our hotline.
Hundreds of people a day message us and people from all society, you know, military people, school nurses, cops, honest firefighters, everyone.
And it's effectively creating a mass movement of these people on the inside of these institutions to blow the whistle.
I would love to get more federal government people to do that.
The challenge we're going to have with people inside the federal government like Ed Snowden and Julian Assange have shown us that I think people are going to be persecuted.
And I think that people are going to have to deal with that persecution and prosecution.
So long term, the answer to your question is we want to create a mass movement of whistleblowers.
Mass movement of whistleblowers.
Movement of these whistleblowers.
Yes.
You and Snowden, have you guys ever done anything together or no?
Well, funny enough, I was walking into your studio, literally through that massive bank, heavy-ass door.
It's kind of heavy.
When you open it, you can't do kill.
It's kind of creepy, myself.
So security detail was like, I can't move the door.
Oh, Keith, you think you're leaving it anyway?
I feel more unsafe in this room.
Okay, all right.
We don't want to see this guy.
Alan, whoa, Alan's been half asleep the whole time.
Now he's busting out of.
All right.
So what were you asking?
You were talking about when you were walking in the middle of the day.
When I was walking through this incredible entrance to your studio here with the bank door, Snowden tweeted, Ed Snowden tweeted a video of our performance in Miami the other night.
Ed Snowden was tweeting about the performance.
And I had to say about Ed Snowden, this is an example of this both sides issue.
Is he a hero?
Is he a villain?
And I said when this happened eight years ago, I thought about this because I think he defies characterization.
You know, he defies characterization.
What he exposed was true.
James Clapper lied under oath.
The NSA director said, we do not wittingly spy on people.
He's the worst liar ever for a spook.
He was giving away all the gestures.
He was rubbing his brow.
You're not supposed to do that, bad spy.
But he defies characterization.
But the amount of pain and persecution he's had to deal with.
He's in Russia.
He can't live in the United States.
Otherwise, he's going to be in solitary confinement somewhere.
It's going to require that level of sacrifice and service.
And you might say, well, who will ever do that?
Well, our service members go overseas and die for their country.
They do that.
Is there someone in Washington, D.C. willing to live in solitary confinement for the rest of their life for bringing disclosures to the public, showing what's actually happening inside of an organization like the Department of Justice?
Is that someone, is there a human being willing to do that?
Because I can show you, history is replete with millions of people who get killed for this country.
So I have a dream where there are people that come out and hopefully they are not prosecuted.
Hopefully the disclosures are to such a degree that the people of this country say, you know what?
We're going to have their back no matter what.
And we're going to elect you out of office if you go after those people.
That's my vision for the future of this organization.
And you know what?
Sitting here right now today, I think it's going to happen.
You seem determined to do it.
Folks, if you enjoyed today's podcast with James O'Keefe from Project Veritas, hit the subscribe button if you're here for the first time.
And secondly, we're going to put the link below to his book.
I read this.
I listened to it.
Highly recommend you go do the same as well.
We're going to put the link to Amazon.
Is that the main link you want us to drive it to?
Yeah, it was number four on Amazon.
And if you want to go Barnes ⁇ Noble or wherever you want to buy it, please.
Thank you.
Yeah, I highly recommend that.
And all proceeds from this book go to our nonprofit organization.
This book has sold a lot of copies.
It'll probably generate a few hundred thousand dollars revenue for us.
So we appreciate it.
It goes to pay our reporters' salaries.
Tyler, can you do me a favor and put that in the chat box as well as in the comment section on the bottom so people can find the book?
Having said that, James, appreciate you for coming on, man.
This was a blast.
Thank you.
Having said that, folks, this week, I think we're doing a podcast four times, right?
Tomorrow, tomorrow's podcast is with who?
Tomorrow's?
Johan Hari?
Johann Hari, which we're going to talk about mental anxiety, mental issues.
You know, people are going through depression.
We'll talk about that tomorrow.
I think we got Jordan Peterson on Friday or Saturday.
Stay tuned.
And I think Thursday, who do we have on Thursday?
Mr. Mike Ritland.
Mike Ritland's going to be here.
Mike Ritland, the man's going to be here as well.
So having said that, stay tuned, folks.
This is going to be the first week we're doing a podcast four times.
