A field guide to the grifters destroying American discourse, one "independent" thought at a time

Look, we need to talk about the most successful con job in modern media. You know those beanie-wearing, podcast-hosting perpetual victims who've convinced millions they're brave truth-tellers fighting the establishment? The ones racking up more views than actual news while claiming they're just regular folks asking the tough questions?

Yeah, those guys. Turns out they're about as independent as a Starbucks inside a Target.

Welcome to the digital age's greatest grift, where partisan hacks discovered they can make more money pretending to be something they're not than just admitting what they are. It's like OnlyFans for people who get off on fake intellectual honesty.

Tim Pool: The $5 Million "Centrist" Who Forgot to Mention the Russians

Let's start with the king of this shit show: Tim Pool, a man who somehow convinced millions he's a centrist truth-teller despite having the political subtlety of a Monster truck rally at a yoga retreat.

Pool's backstory reads like political conversion therapy fan fiction. Dude starts livestreaming Occupy Wall Street—remember when fighting corporate power was trendy?—then mysteriously transforms into someone who thinks Ukraine is "one of the greatest enemies of our nation."

That's quite the journey from "eat the rich" to "actually, let's help Putin eat Ukraine."

But here's where it gets beautiful: Pool was pulling down $100,000 per episode from Tenet Media, which—plot twist!—turned out to be a Russian propaganda operation. We're talking over $5 million a year to sit in front of a camera and regurgitate Kremlin talking points while wearing the same crusty beanie like it's some kind of conspiracy theory security blanket.

When the Justice Department blew up this whole operation, Pool's response was peak victim complex theatre. He claimed to be "deceived" and called himself a "victim." Right. A victim who just happened to start buying real estate the same month his Russian sugar daddies opened for business.

It's like getting caught with your hand in the cookie jar and claiming you were just checking if the cookies were okay.

Dave Rubin: The "Classical Liberal" Classical Liberals Never Heard Of

Then we've got Dave Rubin, who built an entire brand around being a "classical liberal," which is conservative speak for "I want to smoke weed AND think poor people should bootstrap themselves to death."

Rubin's whole thing is this sob story about being driven away from the left by their intolerance and "groupthink." Compelling narrative, except for one tiny detail: his show gets funding from the Institute for Humane Studies, which is essentially the Koch Brothers' finishing school for libertarian influencers.

So Rubin's "journey" from progressive to classical liberal wasn't some organic intellectual evolution—it was a career pivot subsidized by some of the richest motherfuckers in America. He's about as independent as a McDonald's franchise owner who insists they're a small business entrepreneur.

This is the same guy who interviews Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern with all the critical rigour of Jimmy Fallon interviewing a celebrity's pet. "So Stefan, tell us about your fascinating theories on why some races are smarter! And Lauren, how was it when you tried to block refugee boats? You both seem like very serious people with very serious ideas that definitely aren't Nazi shit with better lighting!"

The Grift Economy: Weaponizing Your Political Identity Crisis

Here's what makes this ecosystem so perfectly cynical: it's not just the big, obvious funding. These "independent" voices created an entire parallel economy that monetizes political grievance like some kind of QVC for the perpetually pissed off.

Check out their sponsors sometime. It's always the same carnival of gold dealers, patriot phone companies, and supplement pushers. Because nothing screams "independent journalism" like hawking precious metals to people convinced society is collapsing.

Megyn Kelly shills for "Patriot Mobile" between segments about how independent she is. Michael Knowles pushes "Jeremy's Razors" while explaining the decline of Western civilization. Benny Johnson peddles "Blackout Coffee" to his audience of culture war casualties who need politically aligned caffeine.

They've created this beautiful closed loop where your political identity becomes a consumer lifestyle. You're not just watching content—you're joining a movement that conveniently requires you to buy specific products. It's like Goop for people who think the deep state is real instead of thinking crystals cure cancer.

Actually, you know what? At least Gwyneth Paltrow admits she's selling you overpriced bullshit.

How to Sound Independent While Being Completely Partisan: A Masterclass in Bullshittery

The real artistry here is how these grifters maintain their "independent" facade while delivering content so partisan it makes Fox News look balanced. They've perfected a rhetorical shell game that would make carnival barkers weep with professional jealousy.

Step 1: Pick a vague political label that sounds reasonable. "Classical liberal," "centrist," "disaffected progressive"—anything that suggests you've evolved beyond crude partisanship into some higher plane of enlightened thinking.

Step 2: Create a terrifying enemy that justifies your rightward journey. The "regressive left," "woke ideology," "mainstream media"—pick your boogeyman and blame them for forcing your hand. "I didn't leave the left, the left left me!" Sure, Dave. And I didn't eat that entire pizza; the pizza ate itself.

Step 3: Platform extremists, while claiming you support "open dialogue." Nothing says intellectual curiosity like giving Nick Fuentes a friendly chat and nodding along as he explains why demographics are destiny. It's just asking questions, bro!

Step 4: When people call you out, claim persecution. You're not a partisan hack—you're a truth-teller being silenced for asking the wrong questions! Because nothing threatens the establishment quite like... checks notes ...promoting the exact same talking points as Tucker Carlson.

It's a perfect system. You get to be a partisan hack while claiming to be an independent truth-seeker. It's like working at McDonald's but telling everyone you're a freelance sandwich artist.

The Tenet Media Scandal: When Foreign Money Meets American Greed

The Tenet Media thing was like watching the most predictable plot twist in history finally happen. Russian intelligence, working through RT, funnelled $10 million to American influencers, including Pool, Rubin, and Johnson.

But here's the genius part: the Russians didn't need to give these people explicit instructions. They just cut massive checks and watched as these "independent" voices naturally started promoting content that served Russian interests. It's like evolution, but for selling out your country.

You don't need to threaten these people or blackmail them. Just show them a bank account with lots of zeros and watch them rationalize their way into becoming foreign assets—the invisible hand of the market, but for treason.

When they got caught? Universal amnesia struck like lightning. Suddenly, none of them remembers anything. They were all just innocent victims of sophisticated deception, despite mysteriously aligning with Russian strategic objectives for years.

It's like if someone paid you $100,000 a month to promote vodka and borscht, and when you got busted, you claimed you had no idea why you'd developed such passionate opinions about Russian cuisine.

Meet the New Boss: Same as the Old Boss, but with Better Marketing

Here's the fucking beautiful irony: these "anti-establishment" rebels are bankrolled by a different establishment—one that makes the mainstream media look like a lemonade stand run by ethical kindergarteners.

The Daily Wire doesn't just employ Michael Knowles; it's a petroleum billionaire vanity project courtesy of the Wilks Brothers, who looked at their oil fortune and thought, "You know what this needs? More culture war content." 

Turning Point USA isn't some scrappy youth movement—it's an $81 million influence machine funded by conservative megadonors who wipe their asses with more money than most people see in a lifetime. 

The Rubin Report? Dave's basically a Koch Industries subcontractor with a YouTube channel.

These genius entrepreneurs created an alternative media ecosystem that's more corrupt, more partisan, and more beholden to billionaire puppet masters than anything MSNBC ever wet-dreamed about. But because they spend half their time screeching about "mainstream media bias," their audiences genuinely believe they're sticking it to the man.

It's like McDonald's convincing you that Burger King is poison, so you should eat at McDonald's to fight Big Fast Food. While Ronald McDonald personally injects your burger with diabetes and capitalism.

The revolution will not be televised. It will be monetized, sponsored by ExxonMobil, and sold back to you as authentic grassroots rebellion.

The Poison Pill Strategy: Corrupting Everything Just Because You Can

The most insidious part isn't just that these influencers are compromised—it's that exposing them poisons the entire well of independent media. When Tim Pool gets caught taking Russian money, it doesn't just damage Tim Pool. It makes everyone suspicious of every independent voice.

Which is exactly what foreign adversaries want.

It's perfect: corrupt some independent voices, then expose the corruption to make people lose faith in ALL independent voices. The resulting cynicism and confusion serve authoritarian interests like a five-star meal. When people can't tell who to trust, they usually default to whoever shouts loudest or tells them what they want to hear.

It's weaponized nihilism, and it works like a fucking charm.

The Real Casualties

The tragedy here isn't that some grifters got rich lying to their audiences, though that sucks. The real tragedy is watching millions of Americans get manipulated by people who sold them "independence" while serving up the most dependent, compromised content imaginable.

These influencers weaponized legitimate skepticism about institutions and turned it into a tool for advancing even more powerful institutions, ones with better branding and worse accountability.

They made "independent" meaningless, turned political identity into a consumer product, and convinced their audiences that the solution to being manipulated by one set of powerful interests is to get manipulated by a different, shadier set of powerful interests.

It's like escaping from prison by running directly into a different, worse prison that charges admission.

The Solution: Show Me the Money

The only cure for this poison is radical transparency. Every political content creator should have to disclose their funding sources in real-time, right there on their channels. Not buried in some legal disclaimer that nobody reads, but prominently displayed so audiences know exactly who's paying for the shit they're consuming.

If you're truly independent, transparency shouldn't be a problem. If you're secretly funded by Russian intelligence, petroleum billionaires, or the Koch network, well, that seems like information your audience might want to have before deciding whether to trust you.

The current system lets grifters pose as independent truth-tellers while secretly serving powerful interests. It's fraud, and it's rotting our democracy from the inside like some kind of political cancer with a Patreon account.

The Emperor's New Beanie

Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, and their fellow travellers convinced millions of Americans they're independent voices speaking truth to power.

In reality, they're just power speaking to truth—and charging $29.99 plus shipping for the privilege.

They weaponized people's desire for authentic, independent voices and turned it into a vehicle for the exact kind of elite manipulation their audiences think they're escaping. It's the perfect scam for the digital age: sell people independence while making them more dependent, sell them authenticity while feeding them performance art, sell them truth while burying them in propaganda.

The next time you see someone in a beanie claiming to be an independent journalist while hawking gold investments and patriot phones, remember: the only thing independent about them is their relationship with intellectual honesty.

Everything else—their content, their messaging, their convenient political evolution—has been bought and paid for by someone with very specific interests and bottomless pockets.

The emperor has no clothes. But he's wearing a dirty beanie and collecting Russian paychecks while claiming to fight the establishment.

The grift is up. The question is: will anyone give a shit?

Want to support actual independent journalism? Start by demanding radical transparency from everyone claiming to be independent. If they won't show you their funding sources, they're probably not as independent as they pretend to be.

I don't sell memberships or anything, but if you want to buy me a beer, I won't refuse.