7/16/26: Israel Op To Derail Negotiations, Trump Cuts Lead To Disease Outbreak

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2:25Turning now to Brad Parscale, a name some of you may have forgotten at this point, but let's put this up here on the screen. He was, of course, Donald Trump's campaign manager. For years, he raised hundreds of millions of dollars. He himself had quite a bit of controversy at the time. And so what has he been doing in his retirement? Well, we've known this for quite some time, but Time Magazine really dug into the details. Trump's ex-campaign manager, Brad Parscale, is running an Israeli influence operation targeting the MAGA base. So let me read in case you have not heard of any of this before.

3:00Last September, the global ad agency, Havas, hired Brad Parscale's firm, Clocktower X, to conduct a digital campaign on behalf of the state of Israel. This is according to the Foreign Agents Registration Act filings, which were reviewed by Time magazine. Under Parscale's operation, he would produce 100 original pieces of content each month with aimed at least 80 % for Gen Z audiences across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and podcasts. In a services agreement, Parscale pledged to amplify the campaign across social media, integration of narrative messaging into the Salem Media Network properties, and aligned distribution channels, which refers to the Christian Conservative Broadcasting and Publishing Company, where he is the chief strategy officer.

3:45He vowed that the effort would produce at least 50 million digital impressions per month, as well as influence how AI tools such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropics Cloud, and Google's Gemini characterized Israel and the war. For all of this, they agreed to pay some$1.5 million per month. And so what you can see here is that you had a nearly$40 to$50 million ad campaign, which has now been running for years in the background, exclusively targeted at the MAGA base to keep them from staying on side whenever it comes to the issue of Israel. Now, we don't really know who exactly has been ensnared in all of this, but some of the names are at least familiar to those of us on Twitter.

4:34So, for example, it is not clear how much Brad Parscale has actually paid individual influencers as part of this campaign. Other recent influenceable campaigns have offered them a base payment of$2 ,250 plus$1 for every 1 ,000 views up to 2 million, allowing them to earn as much as$4 ,250 per post, per post. So let's say and extrapolate this from Twitter. I'll just give people an example. Both of us are Twitter blue, not by choice, by the way. You know, it's like we were just kind of given it to us. And so I can see what my creator, you know, output or whatever is. For all of my tweets in a month, we earn and all the funds go to the company.

5:24It's like$300 for every tweet that I put out. And I think, I don't know, I haven't looked at the average impression or any of that, but I'm sure it probably, at least some of them, some of the more viral ones would meet this standard. So they are paying 10 times market value, so to speak, all for pro-Israel messaging, which is all being used and coordinated by power scale and this influence operation all on behalf of the state of Israel. I will say one noteworthy piece, as an Israeli official actually said, he didn't even do a good job. Yeah, the Israelis are like, look at our approval rating from the U.S.

5:58This is not working. Young people hate us, whether they're on the right or the left. So what are you doing with this money? It's not working. Right. So at least one funny karmic thing in here is that the Israelis are bitching that they didn't get enough value for their money and paying. So yeah, I mean, OK. Brad Parscale got really rich. So that's good. Good for him. Buy a couple more mansions in South Florida. But it is still noteworthy because it reveals how there are so many people who, and usually the ones accusing us and others of being Qatari agents who actually are on the payroll. Now, I'm not going to say on the payroll of a foreign government because it's laundered.

6:36It's like, oh, to an American thing. But ultimately the cash, if you were to trace it back, would be to either the Israeli government or some friends of the Israeli government. And more importantly, it's inorganic in terms of what they're posting. And usually it's the people who have the most vicious accusations. It's really a confession. The very people who want to accuse Tucker Carlson or our show or other. Yeah, I just had this recently. It's like your pro terror funded media outlet. And, you know, I often just want to be like, OK, let's both of us will independently audited our tax returns.

7:08Let's see who's got money coming from a foreign. It ain't me. I can guarantee you that, you know, and they would never put up with any of that. Yeah. I mean, it is very it's first of all. So what a sleazy guy, like so disgusting. And it really does. You know, we're about to play a J.D. Vance clip on Joe Rogan. Like it really is aimed at undercutting the negotiations and any sort of potential diplomacy process. immediately after the MOU was signed, you saw all of these right-wing influencers. We don't know technically whether they were all paid or not, but a bunch of them, similar language, attacking the MOU, saying it was a disaster for the U.S., you know, all this very coordinated-looking messaging coming from the right-wing influencer community.

7:49But also, you know, I think, like, this is one very important vector. I need you guys to understand how much of messaging in the right-wing media influencer space is paid for. Like there was another incident. Remember we covered it when there was all of a sudden this very coordinated messaging around some soda issue. They talk about this in Time Magazine. You'll see things like that pop up where you're like, what, where did this come from? Or there was this coordinated attack on Harley motorcycles that appears to have been funded by their competitor. And you all of a sudden had all of these right wing influencers who were like deeply passionate about how Harley Davidson has gone woke, which was preposterous and like based on literally nothing.

8:30But you'll see this. And I'm not going to say there's none of that on the left, but I can tell you it's not the same. It genuinely isn't. You had a whole scandal about the chorus, you know, influencer community. That was a thing. But I'm telling you, you do not have the same level of expectation that you can just buy people. And this is commonplace and accepted among the right-wing media influencer class. We interviewed, Kyle and I interviewed Ashley St. Clair, Elon Musk's ex. Paramore. Yeah, ex. And she was talking about how, yeah, she'd be in these group chats and this is just how it works. So when you had that scandal involving Tim Pool and some other influencers who were like getting the shady money, they were like, what's the problem?

9:11Everybody does this. This is just normal. This is how we operate. So I don't know. It's really wild. But people need to understand that what you're seeing on Twitter or the content that's being produced, video content that's being produced, that is not necessarily just coming because of their neutral analysis. Oftentimes, there is someone behind the scenes who has a perspective, has an interest, who is paying them to say what they are saying. Yeah, I've been on the receiving end of this. So somebody called me and said, I know you really are passionate about sports betting. Would you be willing to post against a sports betting piece of legislation.

9:44I was like, well, I was like, I don't accept money for posts. Just tell me about it and maybe I'll post about it or not. I don't get paid for Twitter or for anything, you know? And, uh, and I go, wait, out of curiosity, cause I would love to meet this person who is paying to lobby against sports betting legislation. And they said, oh, well, we're working for the prediction markets. And I was like, oh, so the prediction markets are paying people to lobby against legal sports betting so they can be the only option that's – that's the level of scumbaggery which is happening out there. Of course, I just said, no, I don't want your blood money, basically.

10:20I also didn't even end up posting about it just because it's so skeevy and so disgusting. But that's a perfect example. And then the way that they justify this stuff is there's always – like soda. They're like, oh, who cares? Okay, sure. I'll take a few dollars here and there. At one point, I saw there was this whole scandal over India, like the government of India or somebody had been paying these influence or some firm on their behalf because Indians were under attack by a lot of these like, you know, Groyper types. And so a bunch of these right wing accounts started posting on behalf of India and then they got attacked and they deleted and apologized.

10:51I mean, I know this all may sound, you know, a little bit Byzantine, but this really does matter in terms of taste making, I think on the right. And that's why it's important. Yes. And especially now you You have, you know, it's the wild, wild west in terms of journalism and media, which in some ways is great. That's why we exist, right? It's enabled our ability to create the show and reach an audience and all those sorts of things. But don't leave your media analysis behind, right? We all understand, or viewers of this show, I think, understand the way that corporate media is influenced by their advertisers and by access journalism and by the sort of journalists that they even select to be at those organizations and who's able to succeed and rise to the top.

11:32Like we understand all of that in a lot of ways in the in quote unquote independent media ecosystem. The incentives are vastly worse because at least at corporate media, there was a line between the people who were selling. Oh, yeah. If you took money like this, you're fired. Like at CNN. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. You get caught for taking direct like corporate money or from any sort of interest and then providing a viewpoint based on that. You would be out the door here. It's just it's just commonplace. commonplace. It's just become an accepted part of the ecosystem to have this sort of direct, undisclosed pay for play.

12:06So it was, you know, this is an important story, obviously, because of how consequential the decision making around the Iran war is ultimately. And so it was interesting to hear J.D. Vance talking to Joe Rogan about this. And Vance, of course, was the one who sent out to do the negotiations and was trying to present to Rogan this idea that like, oh, yeah, no, we're bombing them again, but I promise we're getting back to the negotiating table. We'll see if that works out. In any case, he had a lot to say about this foreign influence operation that is being run to undermine the negotiations. Let's take a listen to that.

12:39But I definitely think you have seen this very discreet, extremely well-funded campaign to try to derail the negotiation and try to derail the deal. And, you know, there was, again, there's this Time article that came out Yesterday, a friend sent it to me. It's like worth reading because it lists a bunch of people who have quite literally been paid by a former Trump campaign person who was himself paid by certain elements within the Israeli government. And those people are attacking me viciously for quite literally trying to accomplish the negotiation objective that the president set for the country.

13:19So what is their position? Are they attacking you? How? Oh, it's social media posts. They're leaking to reporters. They're attacking me obsessively, saying that we should not be negotiating with Iran. We should just keep the military campaign going indefinitely. Let's say certain elements of the Israeli government want to criticize the deal or have disagreements about the deal. I don't even mind an effort to try to influence, you know, foreign governments try to influence the United States all the time. You know, Israel does it. Other countries do it. It's just sort of the nature of the beast.

13:53What bothers me is actually when Americans allow, meaning American leadership, allows that influence to affect their judgment and to affect what they are advocating for. Let me just point out that his boss took how much money from Mary Mandelson for his campaign. And then you have the audacity to be like, oh, the money and the influence. It's like the influencing politicians. That's what's really terrible. I don't know. That's a lot for me to swallow. Fair. I will say the reason why, I mean, it's kind of interesting that you would call it out in the first place. The reason why is I think is I don't think he would if it weren't actually influential on his ability to negotiate.

14:36and within the administration. Because I can tell you how this all works. It's all happening right now. Because JD basically just said the same stuff on Rogan that he always says about Israel. It's like, look, they're, I mean, look at that. And this is why it's so tortured and why, in my opinion, the pro-Israel position just ultimately has to collapse. So you have to twist yourself into knots of like, I don't even mind if they try. You know, every other country tries. It's like fucking Estonia is not trying as much. Estonia does not have nearly as much influence. Did you know we have more of a legal responsibility to protect Estonia than we do Israel?

15:03Do people even know that? But I think both are nuts, just so you know. But just in terms of the level of influence. My point around this is those posts are all you. And I know how this works. To the extent that I tweet it all, because I really don't much anymore, I only really do it to either put an opinion out there for fun, like weed or daylight savings, or to influence the debate in the White House. Because I know that these posts get surfaced and passed around in group chats and others to influence the debate against each other. That's why Laura Loomer does what she does. That's why she's out today attacking Joe Rogan, Mark Levin, Randy Fine.

15:42And just to show you all how important this stuff is. It's a hyper online administration. It's incredibly incestuous. And J.D. Vance is really like the pinnacle of that online nature. I mean, that is really how he developed a lot of his view and became prominent in the right wing media ecosystem space. Yeah. So what I mean, yes, he wrote the online space to the Senate and arguably, I would say, to the vice presidency. Yes. And largely, you know, that's what set him apart from a lot of the other people who were GOP politicians. I'm Jake Brennan, and on the Disgraceland podcast, I explore the wild lives of rock stars and unbelievable true crime stories from music history.

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18:19Hey, everyone, it's the Jonas Brothers. This week on the podcast, hey, Jonas, we're hanging out with the one, the only, the only, and the one, Michael Buble. You guys, I'm genuinely a huge fan. Like, it's funny, you know, I made a whole thing about doing this TikTok where I got you guys to sign the guitar. But it was real. Like, we listen to you in the car all the time. Like, it literally is hanging up with all your signatures. Wow. I am so honored. After Kevin's recent, let's call it interesting confession about Michael. I had a feeling this wasn't going to be going away. We figured there's only one thing to do.

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19:21What I find fascinating, though, is let's put this one up here on the screen from Randy Fine, the senator from or the sorry the congressman from tel aviv aka florida but here he says randy fine has now told white house officials he will vote against every rule on the floor which just so you know rule on the floor is like how you bring legislation so this is a major pain in the ass for mike johnson and for the gop because what this means is that they will have much more difficulty advancing legislation especially when you have such a narrow majority that's in the house of representatives. What he says is he'll vote it until Trump fires Alex Brusewitz.

19:56So Alex Brusewitz, a name some of you may not know, he was kind of the podcast whisperer of the Trump campaign in 2024. He was the one behind Theo Vaughn, Joe Rogan, the Andrew Schultz interview, like a lot of stuff, which you say whatever you want. It obviously worked tremendously to Trump's benefit and kind of set a cultural vibe of Donald Trump ahead of the election. Brusewitz has been one of the people who has been most vociferously attacking the Brad Parscale, or not even attacking, pointing out a lot of these pro-Israel influencers are all being paid off and saying you're undermining the administration.

20:31How dare you not trust Donald Trump? So Randy Fine finds it so important to fire this person who is just elevating the fact that pro-Israel influencers are being paid and that Parscale himself is being paid, that he is going to vote against every piece of legislation until Bruce Huitz is fired by Trump as an advisor. We don't know how long and how far this is going to go, but I just do think that this is incredibly noteworthy for how he sees the, you know, how Randy himself, of course, one of the most pro-Israel peace, you know, one of the most pro-Israel politicians in the GOP, he sees this as vital to his influence operation.

21:12And this has now been endorsed by Mark Levin, who's like, great job, Randy Fine. So you can see how for them, they find Twitter and the battle of ideas there that takes place, as well as here in podcasts. So important because what they need is to elevate this and show that there's actually more backlash against diplomacy than there actually is. Because if you're going to actually ask the American people, do you support diplomatic efforts? They're like, yes, of course. No question. Right. And for Trump, because he's such a blank slate, they always try to use they attack J.D. whenever they can attack Trump or they use Trump to attack J.D.

21:48And this is all part of what's going on right now. So it's very noteworthy. This is a separate issue. I think Fox News is a big problem for diplomacy, too, because they're still beating the drums of war. It's like the one thing that they'll be critical of Trump on. And but I also want people to understand it's not just like Twitter influencers. officers, Brad Parscale is the chief strategy officer for Salem Media, which has all sorts of properties. They have a whole radio network. They fund a podcast network. They fund Town Hall, Red State, Hot Air, PJ Media. They've got all this Christian content.

22:24They even fund some financial publications. So it's a large conservative media network that Parscale is the chief strategy officer for. And overtly in his contract, he says he pledged to amplify the campaign across social media and through integration of narrative messaging into Salem Media Network properties and aligned distribution channels, referring to the Christian Conservative Broadcasting and Publishing Company, where he serves as chief strategy officer. Yes, sir. It will not surprise you that our own Ryan Grimm confronted Scott Jennings, who is part of this Salem media network, over the foreign Israeli ties and how that might influence his commentary that he offers on his show.

23:10Let's go ahead. This is E2. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that. As a student, be as critical as you want, really, of the United States. You just can't be critical of Israel. And also, and this is not personal, but there is so much money pouring in to push us in that direction. Even Salem Media, where you do your show, right? Brad Parscale, who is the chief strategy officer there, is a registered foreign agent for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Like, this is an American, I think it's American, right? Salem, yeah. It's an American media company whose chief strategy officer is a foreign agent registered for the state of Israel.

23:59And 30 % of this company is owned by Lara Trump and Don Trump Jr. So before we're talking about what is America, who should be an American, it's like, can we as Americans discuss this? Let's get Scott's response. So you seem to have some issue with Israel having a presence in the United States or even on American? I think we should be sanctioning Israel. Even on American universities? I think they should be sanctioned, yes. I think it should be criminal for an American media company to take money from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs because I think they should be under sanctions for what they did in Gaza.

24:45Do you believe that American universities should be taking money from, say, Qatar? If we want to do a broad sanctioning around human rights… You seem to have singled out one country, which, by the way, is an ally of the United States. They committed a genocide. Qatar, a lot of human rights problems there. UAE, a lot of human rights problems. But universities all over this country do take Qatari money. I'm asking you, does your concern about internationalism exist beyond Israel? I'd be okay with banning that too. They always think it's a gotcha. In beast mode. I know. They always think the left isn't going to be willing to condemn Saudi Arabia.