Episode 107 – We Are Losing the Media War with Jordan Chariton

Macro N Cheese – Episode 107
We Are Losing the Media War with Jordan Chariton
February 13, 2021

[00:00:02.790] – Jordan Chariton [Intro/music]

AOC and Rashida Tlaib, and the squad and others, I think they’ve been conditioned to think you can’t make big things happen quickly, even though our history as a country is the exact opposite. I mean, FDR didn’t go for an exception to Pay-Go in 100 days. [laughter]

[00:00:21.680] – Jordan Chariton [Intro/music]

I think we should be telling people to stay true to your original roots, because you do see an evolution in these people where they’re a little bit more fiery when they have 50,000 subscribers, but when they have a million and also they’re an MSNBC contributor, like, people lose touch, people get disconnected, and we should pressure them to get back connected. And if they won’t, then let’s stop pretending they’re part of our sandbox.

[00:01:35.200] – Geoff Ginter [intro/music]

Now, let’s see if we can avoid the apocalypse altogether. Here’s another episode of Macro N Cheese with your host, Steve Grumbine.

[00:01:42.340] – Steve Grumbine

All right, folks. This is Steve with Real Progressives and Macro N Cheese. Today, I am going into the alternative media world where so much is happening right now, so much that is important to you all. Even if you don’t realize how important it is, it’s very important to you all as well.

And this kind of takes us back to the beginning of 2016 and folks bright-eyed and excited about Bernie Sanders and all the things that have happened since then, given the fact that alternative media was largely responsible for people being able to gather in large numbers, being able to organize in large numbers and be able to communicate big, important ideas to large numbers of people prior to these Silicon Valley billionaires deciding to clamp down and stifle us.

The nature of politics today has gotten so grotesquely divorced of any kind of meaningful information, information that is vital to us making proper decisions. And so I reached out to Jordan Chariton. Jordan, formerly of TYT, and now of Status Coup and a friend of the program, to say the least. I reached out to him because he has been inundated with so much bad information, and gaslit, and his channel has been stifled frequently. And Jordan is breaking real news about Flint, Michigan, real news about poisoned water, real news about corruption.

And this goes back to Donna Brazile at the DNC. Jordan has been front and center in so many important stories. The guy has been everywhere. And so I’m really grateful because I know he’s busy. He’s been all over the place. He was recently on Michael Moore’s podcast. He has been in Forbes. He’s been in Vice magazine. He has written for The Intercept now. And he and I, right there, week to week, we’re back-to-back on Jimmy Dore talking about various things. So I’m very excited to have Jordan join me today. Normally, he’s got me. I’m so excited to finally be able to get him. So, Jordan, with that, welcome very much to the show, sir.

[00:03:51.250] – Jordan Chariton

Thank you for having me.

[00:03:52.990] – Grumbine

Absolutely. So you’ve been around front and center going back even before the DNC, but the DNC was really where you became a household name, especially with the reporting going on, at the Dakota Access Pipeline later on. You’ve been all over the place. And it’s interesting to watch how you are able to take highly important, effective reporting and really live and die on putting good information out there.

You have been diligent and thorough and as just a regular citizen, somebody that listens to you, I just want to thank you for doing that. But that has to be an incredibly challenging place to live, carrying the truth, carrying these very important investigative stories, and being drowned out by what I’m going to call a lot of bullshit, a lot of fake news, a lot of evidence-free reporting and a lot of, quite frankly, rumor mills with a cancel culture. You piss “Person A” off, you got to deal with their entire contingent. You lost them, written off, canceled. Talk to me about what that’s been like for you.

[00:05:00.110] – Chariton

I think it started in 2016 when I was at The Young Turks. I was lucky that first year in 2016. I had quite a lot of autonomy to choose stories that I felt should be covered. Didn’t have anyone really telling me how to cover it. So I would be out covering the campaign at that time, Bernie, of course, Hillary, but also splintering off to cover other things. I remember I was in Indiana covering the primary and I went to do a two-day story on a trailer park in Indiana that had a whole lot of people that formerly had homes but lost them in the 2008 crash.

I interviewed one mother in particular in her mobile home, and I just, recurringly, whether it was that story, going to Flint for the first time that year, even while the campaign was going on. Then North Dakota in the fall and winter. It was really a bit of a twilight zone situation because here I’m seeing just whether it be misery economically, the quiet misery and rigging of the system in a mobile trailer home, or whether it be going to Flint, and by that time all the national media cameras had already left – Trump and the escalator and the whole reality show took priority for the media – and then North Dakota.

It was just this recurring thing that I’d be seeing what’s actually happening in the country, which was just an economic Hunger Games mixed with environmental genocide. And I’d get back to the hotel or wherever I was staying, and the media’s main focus would be on whatever Trump tweeted, whatever theatrical one or two hot stories that could get people riled up, but it was a completely disconnected alternative reality to connect to what was actually going on.

It’s not to say Trump wasn’t tweeting or saying bad things that, of course, deserve some coverage. But there was no attention to the stories that I was covering both in the media, and when I would be out in these communities. I would just be blown away every single time I interviewed whether it be a family, or an individual or an advocacy group, they would tell me, “You know, no media has come to talk to us.” And I felt that they viewed me not because I, Jordan, was something special, but just somebody coming in with  – you know, Young Turks was a large outlet with an audience – as kind of like the rescue choppers, because these people were really beyond struggling, just in crisis.

So that’s when I started getting really jaded because it just was very clear that we have a disconnected alternate reality represented in the media versus what’s actually going on on the ground. And I think that’s partially why I was able to build an audience, because I think there’s a huge hunger and demand, not just among progressive viewers, but viewers, period, in real news, whether it be human interest reporting, whether it be investigative reporting, local community reporting. I remember before the Oregon primary, I went to a houseless tent city.

I used to call it homeless, but they taught me it’s houseless. You don’t want to say people are homeless because home is where the heart is. And I interviewed a houseless man and I was blown away. Like this man, literally, this houseless person who was living in his van was more intelligent, eloquent, articulate, and down-to-earth than any pundit I had ever seen on CNN or MSNBC. And he was just in a houseless tent city and I was interviewing him. And I never really looked at the views of videos.

I usually looked at the comments because the views will come but if you’re hitting on the topics and the audience really is connected to the kind of authentic journalism you’re doing, that’s how you know you’re on to something. So it was that experience that’s kind of only gotten worse, really, but now I think it’s evolved into even people in our sandbox, whatever you want to call independent media, progressive media, alternative media, them getting jaded as well and losing sight of the issues and evolving more into sellouts/canceled/rage.

And I think that’s a bad thing because as I tell my viewers, nothing is black or white. I mean, some things are, but most aren’t. And I think there’s unfortunately a lot of people that are probably good at heart with pretty good platforms in progressive media, independent media that have become very narrow-minded, become very short-sighted and become, in my view, extreme in the way they look at things and the way they influence their audience to look at things. And I don’t think that’s good for anybody.

[00:09:59.960] – Grumbine

You bring up the alternative media jadedness, and I have taken easily six months away from video on my own platform just because I personally needed a reset. I couldn’t stand looking at the camera anymore. I couldn’t stand thinking about defending my positions inside the chats. I had gotten to the point where I knew that there was going to be nothing but trolls or people that have been misinformed. And now in order to inform them, I end up pissing them off, making new enemies.

And that feeling of, hey, guys, we need a movement so big that the little teeny movement we think we have isn’t nearly big enough to change the world the way we think we need it changed. And I just got so unbelievably depressed and jaded, especially watching the way the Bernie Sanders primary went. 2016 was gut-wrenching because I didn’t see it coming. Stupid me, naive, whatever you want to call it. But 2020 this go-round, I was expecting it.

And I just had no idea how far ahead Bernie Sanders was until the Clyburn southern wall for the establishment caved in on us and literally brought us all to our knees. But watching Iowa, that was a particularly gut-wrenching experience because Mayor Pete, in our opinion, didn’t really have a platform, didn’t really have anything of substance to say. And Bernie had gotten more votes. But there had been so much shenanigans with the voting system, issues with the actual technology.

Weird, weird, perverse relationships between Buttigieg and the actual company that created the software to do the voting. There was so many things about that, that whether anything happened that was wrong or not, there was enough appearance of wrong that it didn’t take much to start the conspiracy theories and to start dividing truth from some sort of an Alex Jones type experience. In the absence of truth, people are left to try and make up stories, come up with the answers, fill the void.

What is your take in particular? Let’s start with Iowa here, because I know you have some thoughts on Iowa. What happened in Iowa? And talk to me a little bit about the coverage of Iowa, both the mainstream media coverage of Iowa and the alternative media.

[00:12:31.070] – Chariton

Yes. So I was on the ground in Iowa and the states after that and honestly, what happened in Iowa wasn’t a conspiracy. It was fraud. I mean, I don’t know what other way to put it. I think that putting aside the app and all of that, you just have to think from a commonsense perspective, right? If it was Hillary Clinton versus Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton was leading, but there was a malfunction with the app. Would they delay the results by five days?

[00:13:07.460] – Grumbine

For sure! [laughs]

[00:13:08.740] – Chariton

They would have called it that night. And the reporting I did made very clear that the Iowa State party actually had control of the situation. But two weeks before the caucus, Tom Perez and the DNC asked Shadow app to make, I guess, conversion software so that the DNC would have access to the real-time numbers as they were coming in. In the  reporting I did, I found that the DNC did not ask for that access, real-time numbers, for New Hampshire, South Carolina, or any other contest, just Iowa.

And because of that slapdash process, two weeks before the caucus, there were glitches in the software and the DNC made the Iowa State party stop counting and don’t release the results. And I don’t have 100 percent evidence of this, but based on being there and my intuition on it, I think Bernie Sanders was leading, and I think that’s why they did that. And the reporting I’ve done since – I got a transcript from an Iowa state party meeting that they said ultimately what happened here is “we had the right results on election night, but because of the DNC and all that, it was delayed.

The same results that were ultimately reported we had on that night and it could have been released.” And there were other things. I mean, it was just flying around Twitter, not conspiracies, but literally, precinct captains for Bernie posting, “Why is this precinct being reported that Elizabeth Warren won, or Buttigieg won when I have the sheet right here and Bernie won?” I mean, there was example after example after example. And ultimately, without getting into the weeds, I was really not about who wins Iowa.

It’s how the media shapes the narrative for the whole entire thing. So that’s why the winner of Iowa is super important. I think Obama winning could tell you that. That gave him the credibility that, OK, this guy could win because the media latches onto Iowa because they’re a bunch of nerds and also kind of corrupt. So it was very important for them to stop Bernie at any cost, because if he wins Iowa and, well, he won New Hampshire convincingly last time.

[00:15:27.350] – Grumbine

Vegas, too.

[00:15:28.340] – Chariton

Yeah, probably would win again. And, you know, if he wins two, three out of three. No matter what you do, that’s a very hard train to stop. I also think if Bernie would have declaratively been announced the winner of Iowa is probably a whole lot more pressure on Elizabeth Warren to drop out after New Hampshire where she came in an embarrassing, I think, third place – right next to Massachusetts.

So, ultimately, I think what happened is progressives who put everything in, I mean, I met people on the ground there that flew in all over the country to Iowa, flew in from around the world in some cases to canvass, to knock on doors, volunteer for Bernie to win Iowa. At a certain point, if you keep feeling like it’s being stolen from you and there is some legitimacy; it was being stolen from you. That disappointment will turn into anger, which will turn into cynicism, which will turn into rage.

And I think the rage that a lot of progressives feel  – and a lot of it is righteous indignation. I can understand their rage because they’re feeling it. These are the people that badly need Medicare for All. These are the people that badly are being affected by the climate crisis. These are the people who are working two, three jobs, driving Ubers on the side. These are the people they didn’t love Bernie because he’s a raggedy old Jew from Vermont, they loved his policies and the personality is second.

So all of this corruption, that’s what it is, has created this rage that I think a lot of people in independent media have seized on. Some of them, I think intentionally, some of them maybe not intentionally, but they’ve taken that rage and I think not radicalized in terms of any violence, but radicalized in terms of thought, radicalize people to thinking, oh, Bernie is a sellout.

I mean, I’ve criticized Bernie Sanders quite a lot, but I can’t say I think he’s a sellout. I can’t say I think he’s a coward. And I think that kind of thinking, unfortunately, has been elevated not just about Bernie, but a whole lot of other issues that kind of narrow-minded, “you’re a sellout,” canceling people if they even show the slightest hint of nuance. I think that has developed in large part because people are rightfully angry. But sometimes being so angry can also give you blinders to the gray areas of things. And even me saying that – some people would say, “Oh, he’s a sellout.” So that’s ultimately the problem.

[00:18:05.750] – Grumbine

Right?

[00:18:07.010] – Chariton

 I’m not known as Mr. Nuance. I could be a bomb thrower, but I’m also not someone who is interested in playing for clicks. So when I’ve explained that nuance, when I haven’t gone with the direction a lot of the independent left is going, which is a more extreme-in-thought mentality, it’s lost me some subscribers. It’s lost me some paid members, it’s got me attacked on Twitter and all this. But I just will do what I think is right and let the chips fall where they fall.

[00:18:35.340] – Grumbine

So that brings me to the next point. After 2016, everybody questions everybody. There was a fairly sizable contingent that gave up on Bernie Sanders because Bernie folded the tent and said, “OK, I’m supporting the nominee.” And you could see he wasn’t really into it, but he was out there stumping for Hillary and then he got grilled for the next three and a half years for not supporting her enough.

So he doubled down and was the chief cheerleader for Joe Biden during his thing because Joe was hiding in the basement somewhere. I didn’t even see him. So now everyone hated Bernie again for his good friend, Joe Biden. It’s like saying Kissinger is a good guy. It just didn’t make any sense to me. So I understand why people are like, what the hell? But these guys are politicians. And my take on all this electoral stuff has been point blank that I don’t think we can vote our way out of this mess.

That doesn’t mean that I won’t vote, and that doesn’t mean that I won’t care about policy. And it doesn’t mean I won’t champion people that are championing the right causes and so forth. But I really do believe that we’re at a point now where direct action, real organizing, is going to have to take place beyond phone banking and beyond door knocking. It’s going to require meaningful mutual aid. It’s going to require legal aid for people to actually take time away from their jobs.

And what if they get arrested and really, honestly consider what it means to participate in democracy outside the voting booth. And I’m just curious, what is your thoughts on the state of the left in terms of our ability to get policy through when we’re staring at least four years of Biden and probably eight years of Harris? Because that’s kind of the way these incumbent things go. The next, let’s say hypothetically, 12 years. What do you think of the chances of progressive policy really meaningfully getting passed?

[00:20:25.130] – Chariton

I’ve actually come closer to your school of thought over the last few months and explained to my audience that I think maybe I have a different lens because I cover protest after protest after protest. And I’m not pooh-poohing a lot of these protests because a lot of them are great. And I love what Black Lives Matter did in terms of really historic mass mobilization after the George Floyd murder.

But at a certain point, when you’re covering protest after protest and nothing substantial is happening, you kind of have to start to think we could continue rounding 10 blocks, chanting the same things over and over, but do we need to adjoin that with something more? And I think that the blessing and the curse of Bernie, even though he kept saying, not me, us, I think people put all of their stock into Bernie.

[00:21:21.560] – Grumbine

Oh, yes.

[00:21:22.160] – Chariton

Just like people right now might be putting all of their stock into Nina Turner. The truth is, people are humans. People are good. People are bad. People are weak. People are strong. And a mix of all of that. And I don’t think we would have an AOC or these other people that now are being called sellouts, if not for Bernie.

[00:21:40.550] – Grumbine

Amen.

[00:21:41.120] – Chariton

I don’t think Medicare for All would be over 30 percent. It’s at 70 percent, if not for Bernie. Go down the list. This man, who as a political figure, in my view, was weak, made a lot of mistakes in the campaign. I think he could have been president twice. But that doesn’t mean if somebody is weak, it doesn’t equate to them being a coward or a sellout.

And I think because of the rage we just spoke about, people are losing sight, unfortunately, of that gray area where somebody could disappoint you or not take you to the promised land, but also you could recognize everything that person has done. And to me, the failings of Bernie Sanders and others make it even more clear that electoral politics as a 80, 90 percent of the focus is a losing strategy.

And I think imagine, Steve, if even a quarter of the physical bodies that were on the streets protesting for George Floyd, imagine if a quarter of those people joined their physical protest protesting with their wallets, whether it be Amazon, big banking, fast food. We could go down the list. I’ve always said we live in the United Corporations of America. It’s not Joe Biden you’re going to move left.

You have to move Joe Biden’s masters left, and that would be his donors. Same thing for the Republicans. And they don’t see red or white. They donate across the board to Democrats and Republicans. They see greed. So I think the left, as great as Our Revolution and Sunrise Movement and all these groups are, if your only focus is on primarying and getting more politicians in there, if your only focus is ballot initiatives, all these things, you’re only looking at half the picture.

We need to put heavy heat on corporate America, on the donors. Frankly, I think on corporate media. To be clear, that’s not the same thing as mail something dangerous to CNN. That’s not what I’m advocating. But corporate media is, to me, 60 percent of the problem. They are why the politicians are allowed to be corrupt. They are why Jeff Bezos is not exposed and is made into a philanthropist.

And I think that there’s been some divestment campaigns, things like that, but there’s a lot of smart minds on the left that are not focused on – before we do a general strike, how about we successfully exert pressure on one company and build up company to company? One example I use, the Washington Football Team who used to have the name that was offensive to Native Americans.

The owner said, I think a decade ago, “Over my dead body am I changing the name.” Well, guess what? There was an economic campaign to pressure FedEx and other sponsors. They felt the heat and their business was being harmed. So they went to the owner and they said, “If you don’t change the name, we’re pulling our money.” He changed the name lickety-split.

[00:24:38.630] – Grumbine

Sure did.

[00:24:39.380] – Chariton

That’s not a one-off. That can happen on a grand scale, but I think progressives, you can do two things at once. Yeah, do your thing, try to get Nina Turner elected, others elected, but realize… I mean, we see it now. Progressives currently technically have enough numbers to block anything they want in the House of Representatives. For whatever reason, they’re not doing it. So you can’t leave it only to electoral politics. You have to organize.

I’m for a general strike. And I also think at the end of the day, what if you got 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 100,000 people all at once not to pay their rent? Not to pay the medical bills? I mean, these things are possible, but there has to be organizing behind it and you have to organize not just lefties, but righties, even neoliberals. There’s plenty of people that voted for Joe Biden now out of a job and suffering economically due to covid.

That is where I think things need to go. And that’s as much as I can, on top of my investigative stories, I’m hoping to speak with more organizers and focus on the economic aspects. You see what’s going on right now in Alabama with efforts to unionize at Amazon. To me, that should be every group’s focus right now on the left, but unfortunately, it’s not.

[00:25:58.270] – Grumbine

I want to take you back a couple sentences, and this is really important to me. The idea of a general strike, the original discussions about a general strike happened during the industrial revolution. You had a union floor. You had everybody in the same building. People could literally look at each other, give a wink, give a handshake, flash a sign.

And everybody knew it was time to walk out into the streets and they would just leave the building and the whole gang would go and they were able to talk at the union shops, at different coffee houses. And there were other unions that didn’t just support their industry. They supported all unions because an injury to one is an injury to all.

We had Sara Nelson, who’s the head of the airline attendant union, and she spoke eloquently saying there’s no such thing as an illegal strike; there’s only a failed or successful strike. And she put it out there. So did Joe Burns, who works with her as well. And one of the things that jumped out in each of these conversations was the clear need for underlying systems, underlying ability to support the strikers financially, with legal help, with food, with shelter, with clothing, with communications, whatever you need.

So it’s more than just let’s block said thing. It’s we’ve got to build these structures to make it so that we are able to survive. Whereas neoliberalism forces us back to work. The ability to organize outside to provide financial strength and support I think that’s a really key thing to being able to bypass the neoliberal model and get the people out there really taking those bold, direct actions that you just talked about. What are your thoughts on that?

[00:27:40.920] – Chariton

I agree completely. I think that, unfortunately, a large part of the left has been conditioned and I think we’re starting to see it with AOC and Rashida Tlaib and the squad and others into thinking we have to play ball and we have to think in terms of the long term. I think they’ve been conditioned to think you can’t make big things happen quickly, even though our history as a country is the exact opposite. I mean, FDR didn’t go for exception to PAYGO in 100 days. [laughter] You know, Ronald Reagan did not come in and, you know, try to get committee assignments first.

[00:28:19.800] – Grumbine

Funny, huh?

[00:28:20.670] – Chariton

Yeah. And I think some of this is Pramila Jayapal and Ro Khanna, not that they’re bad people. You know, I don’t really get into the “sellouts” and all this because I just think it’s silly. But I think they don’t realize the power that they have, just like the organizers don’t realize the power that they have, because the corruption and the corporate power structure accelerates and maintains because they don’t really face a significant challenge.

For example, this whole Force the Vote issue, which I supported. This mentality that the main focus on so many detractors of this strategy was, “Well, it’s not going to pass if you do it. So what’s the point?” That loses the point of actual protest. That’s like saying, “Well, Martin Luther King, you know, let’s not bother crossing Selma because it’s not going to get the Voting Rights Act tomorrow.”

[00:29:14.610] – Grumbine

Kind of ridiculous.

[00:29:16.530] – Chariton

I mean, go down the list. Gloria Steinem, Harvey Milk, indigenous leaders. That’s just not how any political change in our country has happened. In fact, you have to lose many battles to ultimately win the war because it’s the battles being waged that start putting the pressure on the aristocracy, on the plutocracy. And it’s the battles being waged that widen your tent because people are naturally attracted to fighters. Look at how Trump won.

[00:29:47.670] – Grumbine

Amen.

[00:29:48.030] – Chariton

 It’s not because he’s a policy wonk. It’s not because he’s a good person. It’s because he talked the talk. He didn’t walk it, but he talked that talk as “no B.S., they’re all puppets. I’m going to fight for you, blah blah blah.” And that’s what people want. And that’s, unfortunately, we’ve seen in history a lot of bad, bad men fill that vacuum when people are looking for a fighter and get a little brainwashed.

And it doesn’t matter if that fighter is actually giving the tax cuts 83 percent to wealthy people. You’re getting something, you know. So I think, frankly, Ocasio-Cortez and others, although their intentions might be pure – I think they are – I do think that they don’t realize that the biggest threat that Nancy Pelosi is worried about, Biden is worried about is not the tweets, is not the door knocking. It’s guerrilla warfare.

[00:30:47.770] – Grumbine

Amen.

[00:30:48.250] – Chariton

They know how to wage guerrilla warfare, the establishment, but when they’re met at that same level, they’re not particularly fond of that. And that’s where I think Bernie’s failures were, although he was right-on on the policy and of course, inspirational to millions and did the best he could. He was not conditioned – for whatever reason – he would only go up to go kind of close to that line, but never cross it. I personally think because he didn’t want to become Ralph Nader in the media, even though I think that was total B.S. as far as Nader.

[00:31:20.020] – Grumbine

Low blow for sure, yeah.

[00:31:21.850] – Chariton

I think Bernie was deathly afraid of going down as the person responsible for Trump. And I also think a lot of people didn’t realize, you know, Bernie’s a human. His family, a lot of them died in the Holocaust. And in his view, whether you agree with it or not, he saw fascistic tendencies in Trump. And I think that took precedence for him. And I respect that. So, yeah, I think the left needs to stop futzing around. They need to start with guerrilla warfare. And if not, they need to get out of the way.

[00:32:05.660] – Intermission

You are listening to Macro N Cheese, a podcast brought to you by Real Progressives, a nonprofit organization dedicated to teaching the masses about MMT or Modern Monetary Theory. Please help our efforts and become a monthly donor at PayPal or Patreon, like and follow our pages on Facebook and YouTube, and follow us on Periscope, Twitter, and Instagram.

[00:32:29.870] – Grumbine

Lead, follow, or get the fuck out of the way. No joking.  That really is very important. And I’m going to go into some of the pseudo-establishment media, people that I’ve actually had friendly thoughts for. And I don’t want to get into casting aspersions.  I just want to document this. You’ve got Nomiki Konst,  you’ve got Sam Seder, you’ve got Emma Vigeland like spending day after day after day lampooning Jimmy Dore for being an agitator, the kind of agitators that Lenin talked about in all his writings, the necessary agitator.

Doesn’t mean that you have to like everything he says. Doesn’t mean that you agree with everything he says. But what he did was he created enough stir that people were talking about Medicare for All in a way that they hadn’t been in a long, long time. And I think that the left has been domesticated in a large way in terms of being afraid to actually speak truth to power. And they keep suckling back to this romanticized view of electoral politics. I think they’re stuck there.

And I think that everything comes down to whether Politician A did what they thought they should do or Politician B said what they thought they should say, and they’re waving their hands and not having any responsibility whatsoever in owning the direct actions that it requires to put the pressure on these powers to make any kind of change. And we’re not talking about the rich oligarchs keeping us down. We’re talking about people that are one step removed in a different layer of alternative media, keeping activists down.

Now, again, you can certainly make a case that Jimmy Dore was being acerbic and strident and being even petty at sometimes, right. But I felt like what he did was so important, right, wrong or indifferent, but something even more major than that. I want to piggyback on what you just said a minute ago about how we’re going to have to organize with people that maybe we don’t even like – establishment neoliberals, even some people that would consider themselves to be Republican or libertarian.

And this is the decision, I think, that’s before us today. Are we Democrats – are we just electoral politics through and through – or are we a class-based movement that is fighting for the 99%? And we saw a lot of signs out there talking about we’re the 99%. The 99% includes some people out there that might even be QAnon Shaman. And so there’s a strong case to be made for never platforming a fascist. I get it. But there’s also a case to be made that the 99% and the working class is not neatly a Democrat.

It is Democrats, Republicans, libertarians, independents, progressives, communists, socialists. It’s the whole enchilada. The entire working class is the people that don’t own the system. From the dawn of time, from the beginning of this country, we have watched as the oligarchs and the rich have placed wedge issues in there to ensure that the poor whites stop bonding with the poor blacks various times. And you could see it throughout history.

Michelle Alexander in her New Jim Crow lays it out perfectly. So does Sandy Darity and Kirsten Mullen in their book From Here to Equality; Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the U.S. From the dawn of time this has been going on, they’ve created wedge issues to ensure that class struggle is never realized in the United States. It’s always broken up by identity politics. It’s always broken up by partisan nonsense. And here we have Jimmy Dore who went out there to talk to a Boogaloo, and Boogaloos to me are trash.

But at the same time, though, where do you fall? How do you balance never platform a fascist because you’re antifascists with, hey, I’m a socialist, or something akin to that, and I believe in class struggle and class is the working class and the working class includes a lot of people I probably wouldn’t want to go to dinner with. How do you take that message and make it so that it’s palatable for the people to understand? To make a class-based movement, you’re going to need people that ain’t your tribe. How do you get that out there?

[00:36:38.440] – Chariton

Right. Well, I want to go back to something you said, because you mentioned a few hosts who were anti-“Force the Vote.’ Frankly, I think they would have been for it if, let’s say Cenk Uygur launched it. You know, I think it was as trivial as “Jimmy Dore launched it.” I’ve taken some heat sometimes. Jimmy’s my friend, we text. He’s nice enough to have me on the show, but I’m not a worshipper.

And I said I think Jimmy did an amazing job with Force The Vote where I think he probably let his comedian/angry jagoff comedian get the better of him.  They’re fucking sellouts, they’re fucking frauds. Again, it goes back to that rage we spoke about. Ultimately you got to make a decision. Are you trying to convince these politicians to do what you want or are you trying to feed viewers what they want? And I don’t think it was intentional, like, for clicks or anything like that.

I mean, if you’ve heard Jimmy’s health care horror story, it’s completely genuine what he was doing. But ultimately, human beings are human beings. And when people call me a fucking sellout, fraud, coward, I generally don’t want to do what they asked me to do, you know? So I said that on my show that I think if he would have taken the posture of not shaming them, I think you should shame them, but kind of losing the F bombs at them. You’re fucking Lucifer.

This, that and the other thing, I think it might have had a chance to get them to do it. I mean, if you look at AOC’s tweet in response, that’s exactly what she seized on, which is what I feared, him dropping F bombs at her. Now, people could say and people have, “Jordan, stop tone policing,” this and that. In my view, it’s not about tone policing. It’s about winning. So your tone, if it could help you get this successfully done or hurt you get it successfully done, then your tone does matter.

So I think that, in my view, he deserves a lot of credit for raising the consciousness. But ultimately, if instead of the F bombs, there would have been an organized campaign for #Where’sTheRuckusAOC. Remember she said, “I’m going to bring the ruckus.” If there would have been more of a focus on public shaming rather than public demonizing. Those are two different things.

She’s a politician. Shame her till the cows come home, but calling, whether it’s progressives, whomever, f-ing this, f-ing that, is not going to get us to where we want. It’s going to make people happy that are watching. And people are going to call me a sellout for saying such things. But that’s not just about Jimmy, it’s just about the psyche. Do you only want to rant on the Internet and be a minority forever, or do you want to seize power?

Because if you want to seize power, yes, you’ve got to fight, but you also have to fight smartly. And I don’t think it’s smart to demonize progressives. They’re not going to do what you want if you are ranting and raving F-bombs at them. But on the other side, full disclosure, I don’t know Sam Seder. I used to work with Emma [Vigeland]. I don’t think these are bad people per se.

But I do think – and I’ve realized this within myself – I’ve had the fortune, both with the Young Turks and now with my own company, to travel the country. And generally, if you are a commentator in a studio… I’m not saying there’s no place for that. I’m not saying I’m any better than those people because I get out there. It’s just different. And I think that those people like Sam and others, frankly, it’s just human nature.

If you’re not out there actually connecting with people and really just sitting in the studio for a living pontificating, you get disconnected. You just do. I mean, I know when I’m not out there for a month or two, I get itching to get back out there because you get disconnected from what’s actually happening. And I think whether it be Sam Seder, these other people, I don’t know them as people. I can’t call them bad people.

But I think, unfortunately, when you are that disconnected for that long, meaning, you’re not out there. You know, you’re not talking to the nurses on the ground. You’re not talking to single mothers on the ground. You’re not talking to the poisoned citizens of Flint. You’re not there as Native Americans are getting shot at for banging on drums. You get a little jaded into hot takes. You get a little jaded into, “Oh, Trump tweeted something terrible.”

You get disconnected from what’s really going on. And that disconnection made those people fixate on Jimmy Dore rather than the strategy. And I think that’s a place of privilege, not white privilege, but just privilege. When you’re comfortable, when you have health care, when you’re not out across the country and you might theoretically read articles and consume media to see what’s going on, but you’re not actually out there to feel it.

There’s a difference between reading and being smart and being out there and feeling it. I’ve spoken with children on porches in Flint that can’t count past five anymore. Can’t say the alphabet anymore. The horror stories I heard in North Dakota, I mean, the list goes on. And I think that’s the twofold problem: on one end is overheating, which I think Jimmy did, unfortunately – and I’ll be attacked for saying that, but I don’t really care; I told him this privately.

It’s not anything I haven’t said to him – and then on the other side, really, progressives or self-described progressives kind of falling into that edgier, coked-out version of MSNBC, not because they’re bad people . . .

[00:42:03.400] – Grumbine

I love that.

[00:42:03.930] – Chariton

But because they are disconnected. And again, I think it’s on everybody, including commentators. Not everybody has the money. I mean, we’re scratching quarters together to travel. Not everybody has the money or just the will to travel. But if you have an audience, it is your responsibility to stay connected – to go beyond 24/7 coverage of Russia or Marjorie Taylor Greene or whatever horrible thing Trump or the Republicans do – to be connected to General Motors just laid off 15,000 workers, which I went to cover.

To be connected to the absolute economic terrorism Amazon is waging. Look at Seattle. It’s a homeless frickin utopia right next to pristine luxury condos. To be connected to a 26-year-old black man in Dallas, Botham Jean, being murdered in his apartment by a white police officer.  He didn’t get the George Floyd historic protests, but the same horror, just without the video. The list goes on.

And again, it doesn’t make me special that I go out and cover these things, but I think everybody needs to make sure if you have an audience, if you have a platform that you are connected to what’s actually happening out there. And to tell you the truth, Steve, this is not just a progressive media thing. This is an all media thing. It is financially prohibitive to do that.

I know every time I do a Flint video, it’s not going to get the clicks that a Trump video would get. It’s not going to get the revenue a Trump video would get. It’s not going to go viral on Twitter like a Trump video or a Russia video will get, but you’ve got to make a choice. Do you want to elevate the voices that have no voice? Do you want to elevate the communities that don’t have any attention on their horrors?

While I was juggling this investigative story, I just spoke for two hours with a mother from Sycamore, Illinois, that is a half-hour, 40 minutes from Chicago. They’ve had smelly, dirty water for 10 years, never gotten any coverage. It was sent to me on Facebook. So, you know, I’m a little long-winded, but the point is, I think that instead of focus on calling everybody a sellout, calling everybody frauds and all this, I think we should be telling people like Sam Seder and others, stay true to your original roots because you do see an evolution in these people where they’re a little bit more fiery when they have maybe 50,000 subscribers.

But years later, when they have a million and also they’re an MSNBC contributor, like… you get the point. People lose touch, people get disconnected, and we should pressure them to get back connected. And if they won’t, then let’s stop pretending they’re part of our sandbox.

[00:44:48.170] – Grumbine

Fair enough. One of the things, and I have a lot of things I want to bring up, but in the spirit of time, I think one of the most important things I want to bring up is that for the longest time, obviously, I have been focused  – almost to the exclusion of a lot of things, sadly – on Modern Monetary Theory.

And nobody knew what the hell it was back when I started in 2015. And I’ve been doing it for 10 years, but 2015 is the first time I had a huge audience where I had an opportunity. Real Progressives was really hitting at that time, and we had close to 30 million reach, especially through the end of the DNC and into Trump. We had huge audiences.

[00:45:28.400] – Chariton

Before Facebook strangled us.

[00:45:29.630] – Grumbine

Exactly. Before the Facebook close down. And that’s going to lead to a couple more points. I think you already see where I’m heading with that. We had a huge audience. We had all kinds of visions of being able to change the world using this platform, and it didn’t really happen. And so when Facebook started shutting us down and we went from adding an extra 2,000 followers a week, down to where we were adding 150 followers a month. Maybe.

And sometimes going negative, even. And so we got up to over 130,000 followers and it was like a trickle through a closed spigot that maybe had a missing grommet. And it was just drip, drip, drip. And that was about the only way we were getting people through the door for a while. And people like yourself, though, I went up to you at the Convergence Conference. I talked to you at the Draft Bernie. Talked to you at a bunch of things.

Back then, the progressive movement had not gotten keen to MMT yet. And you were one of the very first, though, who took a chance. We had talked a couple different times and you didn’t really have an understanding of it yet. And then as you started digging deeper, you started realizing. I have never been more impressed with watching somebody.

Not that you need my approval, per se, but for me, fighting 24 by seven for this one specific issue, which I feel is vital to the movement being able to get a Green New Deal, health care, you name it. It was just really refreshing to see someone such as yourself who does investigative journalism better than anyone else that I know. And yet here you are bringing me on and bringing MMT.

You brought Rohan Grey in and you talked about the “Mint the Coin.” And each time you’ve brought me in for various things to watch the progressive movement starting to embrace and understand that we can, in fact, have these nice things, all the stuff that we’ve been begging for. It was never “pie in the sky” as Hillary said. We’ve always been able to do this. We just haven’t been able to make people within the progressive movement really even understand that we could do it.

And so they’ve been stuck in this tax and spend paradigm, which Republicans mocked them for back in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and probably even now. You don’t really hear “tax and spend liberal” anymore. But back in the day when that was the thing that stuck in everyone’s head and it just never went away. Let me ask you.

Given the state of affairs and knowing that we’re not even able to get survival checks out of this Congress, we’re not even able to get them to take Medicare for All in the middle of a pandemic seriously, what would you say as someone who has come into the MMT world and has given me plenty of opportunities to express these things before your larger audience, what are some of the thoughts you have in terms of MMT and in terms of messaging that might help the movement get angry enough in a right way to maybe take that next step and have a general strike or maybe take the next step to organize around policy issues? What are some of your thoughts there?

[00:48:24.750] – Chariton

I think also for me, before I answer that, people should know, I get a lot of angry emails. Part of why it takes me a little while to get onto things is I’m only one person. I mean, my poor wife never sees me anymore. I’m trying to do four or five investigative things at a time while doing a live stream every day. So . . .

[00:48:42.270] – Grumbine

You’re amazing.

[00:48:44.250] – Chariton

And Jenn, my partner, works just as hard, but she’s unfortunately had covid for three months now. So, yeah, I’m glad that eventually I was able to have you on and it just was clear we should do it regularly. So for me, I kind of looked at it very simply. I don’t often credit The Washington Post, but they did a good investigation, I think, last year on Afghanistan.

And they showed basically that the commanders – or the Pentagon, whatever – were literally mandating the lower soldiers to spend three million dollars per day. Doesn’t matter on what, just spend three million dollars a day, essentially to justify still being there. And to me, it’s very simple. If we could get one of those Now This News or Bernie campaign-style videos that just shows a table with a poor child on the right, with a single mother with their hand out and then a rich plutocrat coming up.

And the money’s about to go to the poor child, but it gets then diverted to the rich aristocrat, that’s basically our economic situation. It’s not that there’s not enough. It’s just that the money has been diverted. And the donors, they know that if there were things like Medicare for All, if you even open that Pandora’s box to actually give people access to the finite resources we have.

Which is basically what MMT is about, that the people will demand even more and the plutocrats don’t want to give the people even that opening, because if you open the door, I mean, look at Social Security, Medicare, you’re never getting those things back. So the wealthy people in America, the corporations – and by extension their employees known as the politicians – know Joe Biden knows right now “I could give $2,000 a month easy.”

There’s nothing stopping Joe Biden from doing that. They all know this. Even the Republicans who bullshit about the debt, they all know that very easily we could do that. I mean, does anybody actually think taxes are fully funding Iraq, Afghanistan and the eight other countries we’re bombing? There wouldn’t be enough taxes to cover all that. So to me, if it was shown, if the people could understand and maybe my analogy of the table wasn’t the best, but if it could be visually shown in a way that everybody gets it, this isn’t an issue of a restricted amount of money that we have.

This is an issue of a corrupt ruling class that is hoarding all of the unlimited resources and refusing to give any of it to the proletariat. Then I think you would have people storming the gates. I really do.

[00:51:34.200] – Grumbine

Absolutely. I want to be really fair here. You have been a huge help in my work in terms of letting me get that out there. But Jimmy Dore gave me a platform, too, to talk about this, and our numbers doubled after going on Jimmy. And we got a huge bump from you as well. And Convo Couch had me on for an hour to their credit. And so did Heartland’s media out there in Chicago.

Give those guys credit as well. We’ve had a number of other folks like, for example, Fault Lines with Jamarl Thomas, who has been demonetized on YouTube even. Jamarl has had me on many times to talk MMT on Fault Lines and when he was on Misfits and the Soapbox and also Michelle Witte and Bob Schlehuber on Political Misfits on Radio Sputnik.

So there’s been a lot of movement in the alternative media world in terms of getting the word out that we can, in fact, afford this entire progressive agenda. And I just want to thank everybody. But since I’ve got you on here, you really have been a great friend of the program. And one of the big things I think was you coming and asking questions because you were in the middle of real time stuff happening and shit wasn’t making sense.

And I think that the overall movement as a whole – if it takes a break from canceling AOC, if it takes a break from being angry at Jimmy or it takes a break from calling you a sellout or calling me an angry white dude or whatever else is that we get called  – if we take a pause for a minute and ask ourselves, where does money come from and how in the world do we give $750 billion dollars to the military-industrial complex while simultaneously cutting taxes?

I think every one of us is going to have an epiphany, a wake up call. And I really think that when you start seeing people suffering, you realize that they can’t take a day off from work for fear of losing their job or for fear of losing their health care or whatever. I think you’re going to see a radical shift in the population in terms of what they’re willing to do to demand that our government serve us.

And if for some reason our government doesn’t serve us, after you get this massive demand, I suspect that the movement itself would have to take some more drastic actions to have its needs met. We’re not talking about luxury items. We’re talking about survival. We’re talking about eating and shelter and medical care. It seems like this would be the kind of earthshaking deal, especially with a climate crisis going on. Right?

A climate crisis, that it’s going to require a massive infusion of cash and labor to mitigate so that we don’t have ghost towns on the coast and people dying from tsunamis, et cetera. I guess I’ll give you the last word here. What are your thoughts in terms of where the movement goes from here and getting the word out that we really are not cash poor? We really are just a political will away from winning this thing?

[00:54:31.400] – Chariton

I think that a major thing – and I’ve told my audience this more and more, particularly with this censorship onslaught going on – is the phrase you use “get the word out.” I don’t see progressives getting to the promised land until we take on the corporate media. And I think that as good as it is, the Sunrise Movement protesting outside Nancy Pelosi’s office and protests at the airports against ICE, and all of these things, I’m not pooh-poohing any of that.

But I think the media needs to be moved up the priority list in terms of protest, because the media is in large part the reason nobody knows about MMT. Nobody knows that Flint still doesn’t have clean water. Nobody knows… name the 500 things nobody knows. I mean, I use my parents as anecdotal. They both voted for Trump. They’re not like racists. They’re just dumb and think like he’s good for business.

My dad’s a Zionist. Trump moved the embassy. That was all he cared about. So bottom line, when I showed them my stuff at Standing Rock, when I’ve showed them interviews with Flint residents, their reaction every single time, why is CNN not covering this? Why is nobody talking about this? That’s the reaction of normal people who are just learning what is actually happening for the first time. I say this all the time.

Most people actually are not lacking compassion, even right-wingers, in a lot of cases. They just have no fucking clue what’s happening because they’ve been conditioned to be stupid. They’ve been conditioned to be uninformed. They’ve been conditioned to think the biggest threat to America is Marjorie Taylor Greene. Russia. You could go down the list. This is what manufacturing consent is.

And it’s why in large part, I think Joe Biden won because people were fed: repeat the lie, repeat the lie, repeat the lie over and over, “he’s the only one that could beat Trump.” “He is the safe choice.” “The Midwest won’t vote for Medicare for All,” even though there’s data to show otherwise. There’s a lot of things to show otherwise, even though Joe Biden, frankly, barely won if you look at the margins in these states.

I think that we need to protest corporate media. And when we say corporate media, we’re really talking about corporations who have hijacked journalism. That’s what it is. We need to protest corporate takeover of the information war because we’re losing the information war. And that is why, even in politics, so many older voters are conditioned to think we can only have crumbs and they tell younger people, be happy with your crumbs because the media has conditioned them to think that way.

And I’m not talking about let’s do anything violent. But why should CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, Washington Post, the Associated Press, why should all these outlets be perpetually comfortable as they continue to conceal and cover up what’s going on? A perfect example: Jenn and I just broke a major story with Flint. In a healthy media environment, it would have been front page of every newspaper.

We got our hands on the former governor, Rick Snyder’s phone calls that showed he, his chief of staff, his health director, scrambling for two days in October 2014… it happened to be right before his re-election. We found through documentation from the criminal investigation, investigators had concluded what they were doing on the phone was making sure a deadly water disease known as Legionella that killed upwards of 100 people because of the Flint River switch that they were on the phone trying to stop it from getting out to the public.

That has not been covered by any major outlet, a couple of local outlets, no major outlet. Detroit Free Press? I literally drove to Michigan during a pandemic. Want to call me a sellout? You drive nine hours there and back. I met the editor in a parking lot. We’re talking about media that’s disconnected? He rolled in with a very, very nice BMW – an editor from the Detroit Free Press. Handed him the proof, the documentation, the phone logs. There was other stuff in the story.

We found a briefing that was sent to the governor that same month, October 2014, for people that don’t know, that was six months after this water switch. By this time, you got children and adults showing up with rashes, hair loss, worse. Catastrophe. Six months later. And we found a governor’s briefing addressed to the governor that mentioned the Legionella outbreak. Why is that important? Well, he told Congress he didn’t know about it until a year and a half later. He did know about it and he covered it up and people died.

[00:59:08.230] – Grumbine

What a liar.

[00:59:09.460] – Chariton

So why I’m bringing that up is not to highlight my work. It’s to show you the entire problem. Those kind of stories? There’s not a lot of investigative reporting like that, because whether it’s lazy journalists or, frankly, fake journalists – I don’t like to use Trump’s terminology – but frankly, the pundits, reporters on CNN, MSNBC, they’re basically Washington high school nerds. They just care about the food fight. They just care about the horserace. You think they want to go to Flint, Michigan, and cover poor people being poisoned? No.

[00:59:42.150] – Grumbine

No way.

[00:59:43.000] – Chariton

No. So what I’m trying to tell people is we could win because if more people are made awake, if more people are woken up to MMT, to the water crisis, to the climate crisis, to the economic grand bank robbery that has gone on in this country for 40 years – you’ve seen the chart with the money awarded to the one percent – if that was being made aware to everybody on a consistent basis, you better damn well believe, whether it be Bernie or anybody else, progressives will start winning in droves.

You better damn well believe people will be pulling their money from certain corporate entities. You better damn well believe people would move from complacency and contentedness, being content with crumbs, to storming the gates. That would happen. I don’t think that’s overpromising. I think that’s human nature. If people find out they get angry and they demand action.

And I think that’s our biggest problem, Steve. I mean, there’s so many problems, but I think it’s a fool’s errand. You’re not going to move Joe Biden left, but you’re not going to move the Republicans back to sanity at this point. Clearly, it’s going to be hard to even force AOC and those others into aggressive action. But what you can do is shame these media outlets. I’m not talking of a couple hundred people. I’m talking thousands.

Outside these buildings. I’m talking digital campaigns. They can ignore it until they’re not in a position to ignore it. And you start targeting their advertisers, too, the same way the resistance has targeted Tucker Carlson’s advertisers, why shouldn’t we be targeting Anderson Cooper’s advertisers if he is not covering contaminated water all over the country? They’re focused on Marjorie Taylor Greene 24/7 all week when literally the unemployment situation that was just brought out is at Great Depression levels. They’re not even talking about that Gavin Newsom and Biden just handed out fracking permits like candy.

[01:01:45.380] – Grumbine

Insane, insane.

[01:01:47.090] – Chariton

So if they’re going to instead of covering the news, covering up the news, there should be heat and pressure on them. And that’s what I’ve been telling my audience. Not that you’re protesting the wrong thing, but you got to prioritize what to protest. Let me tell you, I used to work at MSNBC. If I was in that newsroom and there were thousands of people outside, you better believe they would take notice and the advertisers would take notice.

And I think that’s what everybody is missing. And it’s hard when you’re beaten down economically, socially, time and time again, people lose that will to fight. And I understand that. I’ve seen it in Flint. I’ve seen it elsewhere. People are just tired, physically and mentally. But we need to recharge and start focusing on how do we organize so that that mass mobilization that we saw with George Floyd protest and millions across the country, how do we get even 10 percent to 15 percent of those people to withhold their money from X, Y and Z entity?

Let’s organize that. How do we organize protest of corporate media? Frankly, why has there not been a wide scale organized campaign against Amazon? I’m not pooh poohing what some groups have done, but they should be joined by every group. And that’s where I would like to see a progressive movement move. And I think, listen, if you want to be angry and just watch media channels that tell you everybody is a sellout who doesn’t do what you want all the time or doesn’t say what you want all the time, then enjoy watching that, but you’re never going to seize power that way.

It feeds your righteous indignation. But calling people sellouts, frauds, enemies, this and that, that ain’t going to get to the actual change you want. It might be entertaining, but it’s not going to get the change we want. It’s a lot more difficult to convince the people you want to see it your way. It’s a lot more difficult to seize power through organizing the masses, not just the progressives, but people outside of that. And I think it could be done, but it’s going to take different ways of thinking and different ways of organizing. So that’s my long-winded way of saying . . .

[01:03:55.250] – Grumbine

Wait. Your long-winded saying, let’s make it happen, Jordan. This particular podcast gets between 50 and 100,000 downloads a month. You’ve got a huge audience. Let’s friggin make it happen, man.

[01:04:07.310] – Chariton

Yeah, let’s do it. Absolutely.

[01:04:10.640] – Grumbine

All right. Well, look, you and I have each other’s phone numbers. We can work on that offline. But for this show, I want to thank you for taking the time. There’s so much more I want to talk to you about, but we’ll talk again, I’m sure, in the future. This was really good for me. And Jordan, thank you so much for taking the time. Folks, just so you understand, Jordan has been working his ass off to finish this story, the one that he just talked about within Flint.

And we had to postpone this a couple of times because this guy is nonstop. I wish everybody in alternative media could take a moment and think about the level of work guys like Jordan do. And they’re just getting somebody throw a couple dollars their way every month in terms of subscriptions and so forth, and with watching so many of our left media getting demonetized from YouTube.

Remember folks, people like us, we either are doing it for free, out of the goodness of our heart, out of some great desire to change the world, or maybe we get a small payment through these YouTube ads or whatever. Bottom line is, is that folks like Jordan are doing this on a shoestring budget and they are putting life and limb in jeopardy. I mean, you heard him just now driving out there in the midst of a pandemic.

I really hope that you all take a moment to think about supporting alternative media, supporting people that are doing this hard work. It really is important. I can’t stress enough the systems that you have to use to be able to put this stuff out there, all the physical equipment to film and to record, all the post-production stuff, all the time and gas just to be able to provide a roof over your head and food and gas throughout this process.

And Jordan, I would say that you do more work and it’s really important that we do fund alternative media. And I hope our audience considers not only supporting us, but definitely supporting Jordan and Status Coup because they are out there physically in the streets doing the hard work that so many people claim they want but maybe aren’t willing to do. But Jordan’s there to do it for us. And I want to thank you for taking the time and for doing all that extra work on our behalf. It’s for my kids. I think about you doing work for my kids. And I really appreciate that, Jordan.

[01:06:17.090] – Chariton

Well, thank you. I hope people see that because sometimes you get people “stop asking for money, you’re greedy” this and that. And I’m like, do you realize I’m making like 60 grand less than I did three years ago? This is not a money-making scheme. This is how do I pay for gas, food, and flights, and equipment, and all the other things that you need to build an investigative team.

It takes money to go places for me, a cameraman, my partner, Jenn. Often we travel together to cover stories, tag team. It’s expensive. And I can’t tell you how many stories we’ve lost money on going out in the field where the expenses to cover it, we just didn’t make enough in terms of new members in that week or whatever. But I think that it’s important.

And whether it be you with MMT or me in a lot of these communities, a lot of times you do have those days where you’re like, what the fuck am I doing? This isn’t doing anything. This isn’t making a difference. I’ve had a lot of those days, but then I read the comments and I read the tweets not for my ego, but really as my therapy to make sure and to be reminded of how much people want this kind of coverage, how much people appreciate it.

And that kind of gives me fuel to keep going because honestly, my wife, I feel bad. We’re newlyweds of a few months and I’ve been pulling like 15, 16 hours a day on these investigative pieces. Even when we’re watching TV together, I’m kind of like one eye watching the other one typing. And so I appreciate the kind words and always nice to have you on and glad I could come on.

[01:07:58.130] – Grumbine

Absolutely. And just one final thing for all the spouses out there that support activists and other alternative media that don’t sit there and try and do everything they can to make it difficult, really want to thank those who are supportive of activists. You folks really are the lifeblood of making change.

So never, ever forget that when you have an opportunity to be nice to your activist, be nice. Anyway, on that happy note, Jordan, thank you again, sir. I look forward to talking in the future. Let’s organize, let’s make some stuff happen. This is Steve Grumbine and Jordan Chariton. Macro N Cheese. We’re out of here.

[01:08:38.610] – Ending credits

Macro N Cheese is produced by Andy Kennedy, descriptive writing by Virginia Cotts, and promotional artwork by Mindy Donham. Macro N Cheese is publicly funded by our Real Progressives Patreon account. If you would like to donate to Macro N Cheese, please visit patreon.com/realprogressives.