RadixJournal - Lauren Southern and the Russians

00:00:00.000 Hey everyone, I hope you're well. It's a little bit late here, but I guess I'm up. And I just

00:00:11.460 dove into a rabbit hole involving Lauren Southern and her recent testimony in the Canadian Parliament

00:00:22.900 over the Tenet Media affair. Now, Lauren Southern has been on radio silence for a number of months

00:00:35.820 now, ever since the indictment by the DOJ was issued. And the indictment was of Russian nationals

00:00:48.640 who were involved with the Kremlin, who were sort of former RT producers, who after RT was banned

00:00:57.840 with the invasion of Ukraine, decided to, I guess, go rogue in a certain way. That's probably not the

00:01:05.060 best way to describe it, but who decided to hire a bunch of independent contractors. Now, Lauren was 0.99

00:01:12.480 sort of mid-range in terms of notoriety, in terms of these contractors. There was Dave Rubin,

00:01:20.040 there was Tim Poole. There were a couple of people I had never heard of. I had certainly heard of

00:01:26.920 Lauren Southern and Lauren Chen and the bigger names. Benny Johnson, that was a big one as he is

00:01:34.760 connected with Turning Point USA and rubbing shoulders with Trump and so on. At least one or

00:01:44.820 two degrees of separation. I think he might have been, I don't know, been to Mara Larga multiple times,

00:01:52.160 written on Trump Force One. Who knows? Sorry, my dog is trying to get in on the act. He has some

00:02:00.320 commentary, so he's right here. The whole thing, her testimony, the whole thing is fascinating.

00:02:10.720 And it gets at the general strategy of Russia, which is not so much to promote on-the-nose Russian

00:02:21.860 propaganda, not so much to have commentators out there saying Russia is good, Russia is innocent,

00:02:28.020 the special military operation is justified, etc. That's a little almost too on the nose.

00:02:35.700 Though you can, of course, find people who will do that, paid or connected to the Kremlin or not.

00:02:42.060 The strategy seems to be, and this is very similar to what they were doing with RT, the strategy seems

00:02:48.460 to be to sort of promote everything. It's the spaghetti against the wall strategy of just throw up a bunch

00:02:56.900 of nonsense, see what sticks. That was what RT would do. RT, back in the day, would have me on there. 0.75

00:03:07.160 They'd have Alex Jones. They'd have a guy talking about UFOs. They'd have a Marxist leftist. They'd have

00:03:14.780 a Buddhist. They'd have a pagan. They'd have blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 0.97

00:03:18.940 And it was sort of, and I would say at the time that I was going on there, which was between 2011 and 2016,

00:03:26.580 it was mostly leftist, you could say. If it had any sort of discernible bent, it was towards the left.

00:03:35.380 Now, what can they do now in the age of Trump? It's promote conspiracy theories, promote stolen

00:03:46.560 election stuff, promote, you know, protest against lockdowns and vaccines. Anything that can jam up the

00:03:57.380 works, anything that is seen as divisive, chaotic, anti-government, conspiratorial, they are into it.

00:04:08.500 So the fact that they were doing tenant media, that tenant media was sort of

00:04:15.140 grassroots, bottom up, but also was only a few steps away from President Trump. Fascinating stuff.

00:04:27.380 I've talked a lot of it about this on the Substack, and you can go look at that. Well,

00:04:32.080 I just listened to Lauren Southern's testimony. I listened to her opening statement

00:04:39.020 in Canadian Parliament. That's available on Twitter. And I actually had to drive a little bit,

00:04:44.520 so I just listened to the Q&A session. And I would say this just to get the conversation started.

00:04:54.800 I think Lauren Southern's strategy, her demeanor, and her attitude towards these lawmakers,

00:05:06.900 her attitude towards the Canadian police, which she revealed in this testimony, is insane.

00:05:13.280 And I think it's going to get her in a lot of trouble. It is unnecessary. Reminds me of this old

00:05:23.260 line that someone said about Bill Clinton, he would lie when the truth would do. Unnecessary lying.

00:05:29.620 I think she showed unnecessary antagonism. And she refused any sort of self-reflection or not necessarily

00:05:40.180 admission of guilt or anything like that, but a sort of sense of, well, wow, maybe chills went down my

00:05:49.900 spine when this indictment came out that I was this close to a geopolitical conspiracy like this.

00:05:58.980 She didn't show any of that. I think that would have been very good for her. That would have helped

00:06:05.020 her out, actually. Instead, she presented herself as the only one with integrity,

00:06:13.500 which is just funny, actually, how ridiculous that is. And I imagine that some Lauren Southern fans,

00:06:24.080 if there are any still, or people who sort of resonate with rebel media or that type of thing,

00:06:33.080 or tenant media, conservatives, they might think that this is a great thing, that she just

00:06:37.880 spoke truth to power, something like that, never backed down a step.

00:06:45.920 Lauren Southern is in a tremendous amount of water. She's in a boiling pot. 0.95

00:06:53.160 And the idea that she would act this way strikes me as insane, as delusional, as needlessly

00:07:04.140 divisive. And she's going to, in a way, encourage the authorities to crack down on her because she 1.00

00:07:12.240 didn't show any sense of responsibility. So her defense was basically that no one watched our videos

00:07:19.340 anyway. Now, tenant media, it takes time to build up an audience. And tenant media was slowly but

00:07:26.700 surely getting pretty big. After all, they were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for these

00:07:31.820 videos. And if you just start out on YouTube, even if your content is really good, you might get

00:07:39.680 dozens of views. No one knows it's out there. It's one of those paradoxes of the network effect,

00:07:45.960 of how do you begin. And the fact is, they were making a good start at having a media company and

00:07:54.620 getting a ton of views and developing an audience. Cut short by the federal government in the United

00:08:03.960 States. And then it was banned from YouTube and so on. And so she makes this argument of no one was

00:08:11.360 watching our videos anyway. But then, because she is, you know, she thinks highly of herself.

00:08:19.840 She talks about how she speaks for the real Canadian people, and how she has so much integrity.

00:08:26.820 And how she's the first one out there saying these things, and other people follow later.

00:08:33.340 And so on and so on. And she sort of brags a bit about her own stardom in the media landscape.

00:08:44.240 So it's contradictory. It would be one thing if, say, there was some totally unknown and irrelevant

00:08:55.320 professor who's a Russophile. And he's writing articles that no one reads about Russia. And the

00:09:02.820 Kremlin, you know, just because they're flattered, maybe they pity him a bit, throw him 500 bucks a

00:09:08.460 month. Who could genuinely say that even if this were illegal, this had no impact? You can't make that

00:09:17.740 argument if you're also bragging about the amazing documentaries you made, and how millions of

00:09:24.280 people watch your stuff and love you. It's just inherently contradictory. She also bragged about

00:09:33.280 how she had total control. Now, there was an editor that she revealed that was Russian.

00:09:40.220 And so she also, she mentioned that. So again, it's this kind of contradiction. It's like,

00:09:46.420 okay, you might very well write your own script, or speak extemporaneously, or so on. But the editor

00:09:53.560 is the key, there's a final word, someone has the final word on what goes up, what gets cut out,

00:10:01.800 etc. And it's not you. So again, you're not really helping yourself. The she kept stressing how she

00:10:08.660 wants creative control. But again, that's irrelevant. Because the way that the people in Canadian Parliament

00:10:14.740 think, and I think this is the correct way to think about it, is that they are finding voices

00:10:22.440 that are already, or are inclined to amplify what they want to amplify. And they're going to cultivate

00:10:31.860 these voices. And maybe on occasion, they will kind of force them to do something. There was something in

00:10:40.060 the indictment, where one of these sort of players in the scheme, was asked to retweet Tucker Carlson

00:10:47.480 videos. And these Tucker Carlson videos were with him. And they're notorious at this point, they're him

00:10:54.700 at a Russian grocery store. And he's basically saying, isn't this amazing how inexpensive it is?

00:11:02.740 The fresh Russian bread. Oh, you can't get this in America. They must love their country.

00:11:11.400 So he's he objected to this, because he was like, look, this just feels too much like propaganda. This

00:11:19.060 is too on the nose. I'd rather not retweet it. He did retweet it a day later or something, but he

00:11:23.260 hesitated. So they will, at some point in this relationship, make you do something. That's the

00:11:32.420 whole point. They like what you're doing already. You're already promoting their views. And they can

00:11:37.520 call on you, if need be, to promote something. They can call on you in the future, something you

00:11:42.940 can't even foresee at the moment. They're going to call on you. That's why they cultivate you as an

00:11:48.080 asset. Lauren is either oblivious to this, or she is trying to deny it, because that would sort of

00:11:57.480 wound her ego, her sense of herself as the only one with integrity. And so she keeps bragging about

00:12:06.160 how she's the truly independent one, and everyone should add her on the back. It's Lauren that has

00:12:15.680 been, you know, it's an indictment, so it's allegations, you know, guilty towards proven

00:12:19.640 innocent, but it's Lauren who's clearly the one involved in this. See, she talks about, and this is

00:12:25.680 what I think is pretty interesting. She talks about her personal relationship with Lauren Chen,

00:12:31.600 and Liam, who's Lauren Chen's very curious husband. Now, Liam doesn't have a social media profile or an

00:12:38.480 internet profile that I could find. I mean, I don't have tools to do super deep dives. I just use Google,

00:12:44.920 but it was very, it's very hard to find information on this guy. There are a couple of photos of him

00:12:51.100 with Lauren Chen smiling. He's a curious person. I think it's Liam Donovan, if I remember correctly,

00:12:58.340 a name like that. And he has this, you know, Anglo name, but then a very swarthy looking person. It's

00:13:09.180 it's like the, his purse, his face and demeanor doesn't quite fit the name. Now that can, of

00:13:18.100 course, easily explain, but it is just rather odd. Who is this person? Where did he acquire this

00:13:23.940 name? Just going to let my dog out real quick. It's starting to bother me while I try to record this.

00:13:33.740 Yeah. But Lauren Southern claims to have known Lauren Chen for a decade. They were besties of 1.00

00:13:41.920 some kind. Now she claims that she had no knowledge that this was a Russian operation. And that, you

00:13:50.760 know, it's fair enough. How much research do you do when someone's just throwing money at you?

00:13:58.020 You know, it's cold, hard cash across the barrel. Are you really going to ask too many questions?

00:14:03.760 Are you going to simply take it? I think that's reasonable.

00:14:09.220 That argument would seem more reasonable if Lauren Southern wasn't so combative with everyone who 1.00

00:14:14.300 talked to her and she wasn't, you know, claiming, bragging about her own integrity. I mean, it's just

00:14:20.460 unbelievable, actually. A couple of other things. So she was paid a hundred grand is what she claimed. 0.99

00:14:27.640 She had a hundred grand US of take-home pay. And she had a quarter of a million dollar budget. So she 0.99

00:14:36.280 was able to pay this out to editors, videographers, sets, et cetera. Now, Lauren,

00:14:49.580 I mean, look, 100 grand is not $100 million. I get it. But I think most fair commentators would

00:15:02.720 conclude that Lauren is pretty stupid. And just the idea that she's getting a $100,000 contract is, 1.00

00:15:14.180 I don't know, sort of suspicious in itself. It's a bit much. That is a big budget. That isn't a

00:15:23.380 shoestring operation. This isn't like, you know, we'll give you a 200 bucks a video, which is imagine

00:15:31.700 what she was getting at like Rebel Media or something. This isn't like we're fighting some

00:15:36.180 young person. It's all shoestring. They're living with roommates. They just want the exposure.

00:15:41.440 We can pay them little. It's not that. It was actually a salary that you can easily live on.

00:15:47.840 And I don't know. It's just, I don't think that's going to help her. The other, she mentioned a couple

00:15:55.000 of other things. So when she interviewed Dugan and I think she interviewed Dugan with Brittany

00:16:01.600 Pettibone in 2018, she mentioned that she flew herself out there and that she sort of arranged the

00:16:08.140 whole meeting. But once she was there, that she was contacted by Russian officials and they wanted

00:16:14.880 her to do a documentary on the Donbass. So again, you see this, they're setting up the invasion by

00:16:23.480 claiming that, you know, Russians are being oppressed in the Donbass, et cetera. So we need to

00:16:27.300 save the minority population. Very interesting. And she said she didn't like that. And she removed some

00:16:32.360 videos from YouTube that she had posted for, I don't know. I don't know when she did that. It's

00:16:40.220 interesting, but it just sort of raises other suspicions of you were in contact with these people

00:16:47.640 just immediately. What are some other tidbits here? There are a couple more things that I wanted to

00:16:55.340 mention. I can't think of them right now, but the whole thing is worth looking into. Oh, this is what

00:17:07.980 I, this is a big tidbit actually. So she mentions that she was contacted by the, I forgot what it's

00:17:19.480 called in Canada. It's like CIS or something. It's, it's basically the FBI of Canada in effect. And that

00:17:26.520 they came to her home and she was trying to, you know, cook for her, her child and they were harassing

00:17:33.420 her. And she claims that they said something to the effect of, you know, you've got a nice life here. It

00:17:39.920 would be a shame if anything happened to it. Like we might throw you in prison. And she was saying that

00:17:45.140 they were trying to shake her down to be an informant, um, to the federal government.

00:17:52.780 I mean, this is what I would say to Laura, Lauren, excuse me. You should probably take that deal.

00:17:59.740 I mean, are you really going to be thrown into prison on behalf of Lauren Shedd?

00:18:07.060 Unless you're guiltier than even I imagine. And so you're, you're just being standoffish and not

00:18:12.700 giving them any information. I mean, this is a real thing. This is a clear situation in which

00:18:22.700 a geopolitical rival is paying journalists to from, you know, create, create their own content and

00:18:31.560 sort of sing a tune and maybe a tune that these journalists are already singing, but to sing a

00:18:36.780 particular tune. So a much, much better strategy would be to fall on your sword a little bit.

00:18:46.060 Say, I didn't fully know what I got into, but the moment that indictment dropped, it's so,

00:18:51.360 it set chills down my spine. I, Lauren Chen, I, I, you know, do you ever really know a person? Is

00:18:57.200 someone working behind your back in a way? Um, I want to work, I want to cooperate with

00:19:03.260 the Canadian government to my, to the best of my abilities so that this will never happen again,

00:19:08.900 that the, you know, the perpetrators will be brought to justice. It's so easy. So either

00:19:16.540 she is treating this like a way to, I don't know, get publicity as someone fighting against the 1.00

00:19:28.540 government or something. She's so deluded in that conservative mentality that this is how she, 0.93

00:19:35.000 you know, understands her predicament or she is quite guilty. And so she is just basically not

00:19:43.660 going to answer anything. Lauren Chen had, you know, on this kind of scale, Lauren Chen basically

00:19:50.540 took the fifth, uh, there's, you know, the, the equivalent of the fifth amendment in, um,

00:19:56.040 Canada, you can't testify against yourself. So she just refused to answer questions. Um,

00:20:02.500 you know, Lauren Southern was answering them, answering them in just a horrible way. If these 1.00

00:20:09.280 people think that you take no responsibility, that you think you're the only one with integrity

00:20:16.320 and they're the guilty ones, uh, they're going to take pleasure in going after you. I don't

00:20:24.240 understand. Does she not think that this is a big deal? It, does she re I mean, this is not,

00:20:31.440 this is not some liberal journalist being a jerk. Uh, this is, you are potentially involved with 0.99

00:20:40.400 treasonous activity. You could be sent away for the rest of your life. Potentially. I don't know the,

00:20:46.440 uh, the punishment for treason is death, maybe not in Canada, but you get the drift. It could be

00:20:52.640 very, very, very bad if they decide to, if they are able to prove that Lauren Southern knew exactly

00:21:01.640 what was going on and either shrugged. Oh yeah, it's kind of fun. Uh, or even supported the efforts

00:21:10.740 to undermine Canada. That is very bad. This isn't just some, like you got to pay a parking ticket or

00:21:19.740 something. This is very bad for her. And I don't know why she acted like this. I think it's just

00:21:25.500 her personality and I think she's basically delusional. So, uh, anyway, those are my thoughts

00:21:32.600 on the matter. Um, you know, I find it hard to answer questions on this because it's a chat,

00:21:40.280 but if anyone wants to ask a question, I will in the time that I, uh, am willing to do this.

00:21:49.980 So you can ask one there if you want. No questions. You guys just want to listen to me talk. Okay.

00:21:58.180 Fair enough. All right. Just some thoughts. Um, I hope you enjoy these. These are kind of easy to do

00:22:04.620 and, uh, I might do more of them. Uh, the lack of interaction is what I don't like. I always like

00:22:10.300 someone to push back a little bit. Um, what Canadian law would Lauren be subject to? Ricardo 1.00

00:22:15.880 asked that. Uh, I don't know the exact answer to it. I would imagine there are all of these

00:22:20.720 analogies, um, but a conspiracy to undermine democracy or undermine the government. Um, there's

00:22:29.300 simply FARA laws. You cannot in, in the United States, I presume there's some parallel in Canada.

00:22:35.360 You, you can't act on behalf of a foreign country and be compensated for it without registering.

00:22:43.240 Yeah. So you can be a lobbyist for Saudi Arabia. I presume you can't be a lobbyist for Russia at this

00:22:50.220 point, since they've been declared an adversary. I don't, I don't know the exact details of that,

00:22:54.820 but you, you could be a lobbyist for Italy. You could be a lobbyist for Saudi Arabia,

00:22:58.820 but you have to register as such. You can't just be walking around, you know, um, uh, shaking hands,

00:23:06.320 uh, going, doing interviews, et cetera, getting paid by a foreign government and not report it.

00:23:12.240 Sounds like it would be hard to prosecute. Uh, Ricardo? No, it sounds like it would be easy to

00:23:17.160 prosecute. I, I, I don't, I don't know. They've got, uh, according to the document, they've got the goods.

00:23:28.280 So no, um, I, I just, uh, the, the woman I saw there, I don't know. It's, it's her own personality

00:23:35.740 that she reacts to these things in the way that she did. But the woman I saw there struck me as

00:23:40.620 just outright delusional. Uh, she also mentioned that she's sort of, she's mentioned that she's

00:23:46.680 leaving social media because it's not real anymore. There are too many bots and it's unhealthy. I mean,

00:23:52.980 fair enough. It's hard to disagree with that. Uh, but she sort of claimed that she was leaving media. 1.00

00:23:59.120 She just wants to be a regular citizen. I don't know. She's claimed that before.

00:24:03.200 Um, anyway, I will just leave it here. Uh, unless someone asked a really quick question and, um,

00:24:13.820 no. All right. I'll just sign off for here. It's little, it's getting late. Um,

00:24:20.460 there's some very crude comments that are showing up in the, in the, uh, in there. Uh, you don't think

00:24:27.320 a free speech offense would be effective for her in court. I think it, yeah. Okay. Let me go back to

00:24:33.700 what I was saying. Her defense of, I was simply hired. I didn't ask enough questions and I expressed

00:24:44.120 my opinion. I do think that that is a fairly good defense. If you're going to make it, you got to make

00:24:53.000 sure that you, the, the prosecutors feel like you're on their team and that you're cooperating,

00:25:03.740 that you are scandalized by this, embarrassed, shocked, saddened by all of this, and that you

00:25:11.720 want to help out. If she is going to be hostile towards the government, she, uh, reported to the

00:25:18.800 government that she was hostile to the FBI equivalent of Canada. Uh, that strikes me,

00:25:27.800 they're, they're going to punish you for doing that. If you're innocent or even more or less

00:25:34.300 innocent, why would you take that posture? Why not just work with them? They've got the goods on this. 0.99

00:25:41.440 I, I, I just, it just strikes me as insane and delusional and she just can't help herself or she

00:25:49.760 thinks that this will, this is what you should do, or this will gain you traction. She also said,

00:25:55.940 I should have mentioned this earlier, but I'll mention this now. So she repeated a phrase that I

00:26:01.060 imagine her lawyer gave her, which is that I was totally unaware of what was revealed in the indictment.

00:26:07.860 Now, many of the things that were revealed in the indictment, she was aware of because there were

00:26:15.520 text met group chats and things like that. So, but I, I found that legally is interesting. Now she's 1.00

00:26:24.380 under oath. She, she's testifying. She can't lie. That would expose her to more jeopardy. She's lying

00:26:31.860 to parliament. But I guess it raises the question. It's kind of like, well, fair enough. You didn't

00:26:41.240 know what was in that indictment. Well, what do you know, Lauren? Why did you say that? It just, I,

00:26:49.740 I understand you have to use legalese and she's been counseled to do that, but it just struck me as

00:26:56.880 suspicious. Again, she starts attacking the disinformation. She's like, you've spread

00:27:03.280 disinformation because you claim that Dave Rubin had millions of followers. Well, on Tenet, he didn't

00:27:08.380 have millions of followers. That was only independently that he had millions. Just, just, it's like she's

00:27:14.500 splitting hairs basically. And I, I don't, I don't see the point of it. And it seems a way of

00:27:24.560 distracting from the real issue. Um, Carl said, uh, Richard, what do you mean when you said

00:27:32.940 in a interview about their mating? Oh, that's about something else. Trudeau collapsed soon.

00:27:39.760 Did, um, did she know who Edward Gregorian was? Uh, yeah, it's a good question. She, she,

00:27:46.360 we'll have to get into details. I mean, the, the answer is no to that, but she seemed to know

00:27:52.680 something. Do you think both Lauren's careers are over at this point? Yeah. I don't know how anyone

00:27:59.680 could take them seriously. I mean, particularly Lauren Chen because Lauren Chen was, this was her

00:28:04.620 company. She was the owner of the company. Um, I mean, I don't know how Lauren Chen is going to get 0.53

00:28:13.140 out of this. Now, Lauren Southern is one degree removed, at least for apparently, but can anyone 1.00

00:28:20.140 take Lauren Southern seriously? Uh, the, the problem is, is that, uh, I mean, the problem for

00:28:26.900 Lauren is that she's not as well known as Dave Rubin or, uh, Benny Johnson. They've got much,

00:28:33.540 uh, bigger, they had much bigger contracts. They're paid more or Tim pool. Uh, they were paid all paid

00:28:39.560 more, but they have more contacts. They've, they're sort of, they can be independent. They have other

00:28:46.960 people there to support them. Uh, I would imagine they might even throw Lauren Southern under the bus, 1.00

00:28:52.320 but anyway, uh, Lauren Southern has been so tedious that she's begun to just annoy the hell out of me,

00:29:00.860 to be honest, over the past few years. So yeah, bye-bye to the Laurens. All right, guys. Um,

00:29:10.020 so 75 joined and I imagine maybe there's more than that with the churn. Um, so that's good.

00:29:17.760 All right. More can watch this later. All right, guys, I will talk to you later. Bye.

RadixJournal - November 24, 2024

Lauren Southern and the Russians

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