Thanks to the work of Elon Musk’s DOGE, it was recently revealed that Politico has received $8 million from USAID and other government agencies. The money was reportedly payments for subscriptions to Politico Pro. But BlazeTV’s @lizwheeler joins Glenn to discuss her findings: The $8M was just the tip of the iceberg. In reality, the government has spent $34.3M on “subscriptions” over the past few years. But that’s a hefty price per subscription, especially since taxpayers are paying for it! So, what’s really going on here, and can it explain why Politico has led the way on pushing disinformation about things like the Hunter Biden laptop story? Plus, Glenn reveals how the government treated news organizations like TheBlaze...
Transcript
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: Liz Wheeler is here. She's the host of Blaze TV's the Liz Wheeler show.
She broke the news early yesterday, that the federal government has been subsidizing Politico. Not to the tune of 6 million. But $34.3 million!
She has the receipts. Liz, welcome to the program!
LIZ: Hi, Glenn. Thanks for having me.
GLENN: You bet. So the media is now saying, this is a right-wing conspiracy. There's nothing to see here. But if the Trump administration -- if -- if those people were all subscribers to TheBlaze and we were getting 6 million or 35 million dollars from the Trump administration, even if it was all legitimate, they would go apoplectic. So tell me why --
LIZ: As they should.
GLENN: What?
LIZ: As they should, when that was happening. This is one of the biggest media scandals of this decade. And it's also a litmus test, anybody in the swamp, anybody, an elected politicians, anybody getting this amount of money from the federal government, they're part of the problem. They're the baddies. Not the goodies here.
So what's happening is yesterday, we woke up to news, that Politico had received $8 million from USAID. USAID, of course, is a so-called autonomous agency of the federal government, that Elon Musk has been DOGing.
He's been exposing corruption in that agency.
GLENN: It's a CIA front.
It is in charge of all the Colour Revolutions all around the world. And the Colour Revolution that they've been trying to pull here in America. Anyway, go ahead.
LIZ: That's exactly right.
I was going to say, it's the nexus of the Censorship Industrial Complex. They've taken their political warfare run and aimed it back at us.
So no better target for Elon Musk than USAID.
This is a scandal in and of itself.
That Politico was receiving $8 million from them in 2024. But what my team and I did is round this website, where any American citizen can find out how their taxpayer money is spent. It's called USASpending.gov.
And you plug in the name of any recipient organization group. We type Politico as the key word.
And then instead of just looking at year 2024, we said all fiscal years. Let's see how much Politico has received in the last 10 years. And what we found, before our very eyes, it began to populate millions upon millions of dollars, totally -- it's $34.3 million.
And, Glenn, this is not just from USAID. This is from a variable laundry list of the most corrupt federal government swampy agencies like the Department of Education. The Department of Health and Human Services.
Subagencies like the FDA. And the CDC. And the EPA. If you look at when these subsidies started, it started just about the moment that Trump descended on that golden elevator in 2015. That's when the gravy train for Politico started.
And then you can see it year by year in 2020 and 2021 when Joe Biden took office, all of a sudden, these subsidies for Politico increased exponentially.
Exponentially. And, of course, you'll have these defenders saying, well, these are just subscriptions that federal government employees paid for Politico pro. It's like a 10,000-dollar a year subscription. They claim it's a premium service.
GLENN: Aimed right toward the Beltway. Aimed right directly at the Beltway. So go ahead.
LIZ: 100 percent.
Well, first of all, that's clinical insane to pay $10,000 for a subscription service.
That's not a subsidy. That's a patronage. If you're paying $10,000, this is what money laundering is. It's nebulous. It's vague. Money is fungible.
So if the bulk of your revenue. Or a huge percentage of your revenue is coming from so-called federal government employees, that are paying this exorbitant fee, what are you going to expect in response?
You're going to expect in response, coverage exactly like Politico is giving us.
Where they told us the Hunter Biden laptop wasn't real. That it was Russian disinformation.
GLENN: But they were the leader on that. They were the leader. Yeah.
LIZ: They were! Of course, which makes sense where they're getting all this 33.3 million. They were defenders of the COVID-19 jab, the Moderna jab, even for young men, which we now know is dangerous.
They're the ones that led, when the Supreme Court leaker leaked -- when the Supreme Court was going to overturn Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs case. They were the ones that published that. So they are the arm, the propaganda arm of the federal government. And here's what's funny.
My team and I got a hold of one of these log-ins for a Politico pro-subscription. We just borrowed it from a friend because we're normal people. That's what everybody normal does.
Aren't going to pay for this. And we went in there. And we went, well, what does Politico pro offer? They said it's a critical function of their job to have access of this.
You know what is behind their pay wall there?
It's a glorified Rolodex. It's just like the phone numbers of staffers and the federal government, kind of a rumor mill. All very publicly available information, if you just exert the tiniest bit of effort.
We're still digging into it, and we'll keep you updated. We'll have more on this Monday on the show.
There is, so far, absolutely nothing useful that would justify even one 10,000-dollar subscription, let alone $34.3 million!
GLENN: This -- as you said, is the biggest scandal in media. So you know, Liz, just a point of information that most people don't know.
During the Obama administration, it may still be true.
I don't know.
You couldn't not only get to Blaze TV, to log on. On a government computer.
You couldn't go to TheBlaze.com. It was banned as a website. For the government! Yeah. Yeah.
LIZ: What? Wow, man. It's so nuts.
GLENN: Yeah. So anybody who is like, you know, they were just -- well, there were a lot of people who wanted to subscribe. And subscribe personally, not through their office.
And just be able to listen or watch. Or just get their news from the news site, TheBlaze.com.
And they were blocked! Every government employee was blocked.
LIZ: I did not know that. It proves exactly what we've been saying. First of all, there is no justification on the face of this earth, for $34.3 million to be given from the federal government agencies to a supposedly objective media organization.
There is just -- there's no explanation for it. We all know that. The swamp creatures that are defending it are exposing their true colors here.
We're not always lucky enough to have an email that says, this $10,000 is for the big guy. Or the 10 percent is for the big guy.
But we know! We're smart people. We use common sense. We know how human nature works. We know if the federal government is giving this exorbitant amount of money to a media organization, what they're going to get in return is coverage and cover-up and propaganda.
And emotional manipulation.
And exactly what we've seen from Politico for the past -- for the past -- for the past decade.
You know, coincidentally since this gravy train began. And one comment on, you know, TheBlaze TV.
I double-checked this morning to see how much our subscriptions are. Because I was like, okay. I pay for a couple of subscriptions to even mainstream media outlets. Although, I really try not to. Because I don't like to give them my money. But I need to for research sometimes.
Normal people pay $100 a year. That's why -- if you go to BlazeTV.com/Liz, it's $120 for an annual subscription, and you can get $20 off. That's what normal people pay.
And even then, they probably share a log in. Which also normal people do.
GLENN: Well, we don't encourage that. But, yes. You're right.
I mean, you know, my initial payment to open the doors, I had a few partners. And they -- I can't remember what they gave. But it was probably around 10 million, together.
And I had put in 20 million, myself.
We started this entire operation, with $30 million!
$30 million, is what kicked off TheBlaze.
When the technology didn't even exist.
That we had to invent all of this stuff to do it.
To have 34 million dollars coming in from the federal government, they are your master!
They are absolutely your master. Could you talk about one thing, Liz?
The press is hanging their hat on the fact that some media outlets said, that was -- that was the cause of them not making payroll. Was DOGE. That didn't have anything to do with it, did it?
LIZ: Well, it depends if you're a swamp creature. And if you view the world through your own twisted reality or if you're a normal person that can look at things, that probably aren't coincidences.
We were told that -- we were told that, according to this initial report. That Politico would never miss a paycheck before.
So I would just pose those questions, to all of us normies, you think as a coincidence that the day the gravy train is cut off, they're not able to make payroll.
GLENN: It's funny. It's funny. Because one of my producers knows one of the people at Politico.
And on the phone, all day yesterday, arguing back and forth.
And this person said, we have payroll glitches here, all the time.
And I thought, I've never had a payroll glitch!
If -- I would get another payroll service, if it was glitchy all the time.
So, I mean, they either have the worst payroll service, which you -- there's lots of them out there, you can get, that actually work.
Or there was something else going on. But that's not the story. The story is --
LIZ: No. That's what they're using to distract from the $34.3 million. Even those subscriptions are a distraction because they don't want us to think, $34.3 million given from basically the Biden regime to Politico.
It is one of the most significant scandals the mainstream media has been exposed without an excuse. Being in the middle of, that I can remember.
GLENN: So we also found out the other day. That our federal government gave millions of dollars to the BBC.
The BB-freaking-C. That have that's supposed to be the queen's money. Not our money!
What the hell are we doing funding the BBC?
I mean, the -- go ahead.
LIZ: No, listen.
This is what is so critical to understand.
The reason why -- I don't know if you've been watching Brian Stelter, it's quite funny. They're freaking out about this.
Jen Psaki on MSNBC, she's like, there's a hostile takeover of the federal government happening. Because you and I are identifying ways that taxpayer money has been corruptly abused. That's a hostile takeover in her mind. But the reason they're freaking out about this, isn't just because their pet projects won't be funded anymore.
They won't have a log-in to their gospel rag. Politico magazine or whatever it is.
Reason they're freaking out. Is because their mechanism of controlling us.
Hinges on the mainstream media outlets.
These corporate media outlets running propaganda for them.
They'll never be able to lie to us. Or emotionally manipulate us.
If the media is not taking a leading role on that.
And now, they can't.
GLENN: On top of that, they also have lost their gravy train through the NGOs.
They found a way to get all of their radical friends to open up an NGO, and then funnel millions of dollars into it so they can do everything that they want with taxpayer dollars!
If you look at just USAID's 2023 fact sheet, they -- the agencies supported 6200 journalists, 707 news outlets, 279 media sector civil society organizations, and the -- and this comes from the Columbia Journalism Review. Now, I don't know.
If you've got 6,000 journalists on your payroll, you could probably influence a few people.
This has got to stop. And I don't know what it's going to take for your neighbors, to stop listening, to the mainstream media.
That's why it's important not to say, in my opinion, that this is why they didn't make payroll. Because we can't prove that. We don't know.
I mean, great coincidence. But we don't know. It's important to say, but this is provably true! It's the thing with Ben Stiller. And, you know, Angelina Jolie going over to Ukraine, getting $20 million.
That didn't happen. That's not true.
You need to know what the truth is! Because the truth itself is so unbelievably powerful!
That you need to know what that is. And that's what we try to give you here, every day.
Liz, thank you for this exposé. It's great!
LIZ: Thanks, Glenn. I appreciate it.
GLENN: Liz Wheeler from the Liz Wheeler show on Blaze TV.