As controversy brews over the alleged federal funding of Politico, the hosts explore the depths of media bias and the claims of misinformation. With a keen eye on the unfolding narratives, Gallagher and Davis dissect how these revelations reveal much about the dynamics between media organizations and government funding. Tune in for a thought-provoking dialogue on transparency and accountability in journalism.
00:00:00 Introduction to Mike Gallagher and Mark Davis
Mike Gallagher. Every day, Mike visits with Mark Davis, morning host on 660 AM, The Answer in Dallas. Here’s today’s M&M experience.
SPEAKER 04 :
I’ve been, yesterday I was getting dizzy and lightheaded, so I went over to the doc, and he gave me a bunch of tests, and he said, yeah, something’s going on. You know how they take your, you know how the doctor takes his finger and puts it in front of your eyes, and they go left and right, and you’ve got to follow back and forth? It scared me for a minute, but yes, I am familiar with that as well. Right, well, listen, I’ve been there too.
SPEAKER 03 :
I’d rather have him do that.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, I like where this one goes.
SPEAKER 03 :
Exactly.
SPEAKER 04 :
But he said, my eyes, when I go back and forth, left and right and right to left, are jiggling a little funny. That’s funny.
SPEAKER 03 :
It’s like failed field sobriety. That’s what usually happens on the roadside.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, it’s like, oh, crap, I failed the test. So he said, look, we’re going to order an MRI, he said, just to make sure nothing’s serious. He said it could be an inner ear thing.
SPEAKER 03 :
That one’s okay if you get wobbly at all.
SPEAKER 04 :
I’m just kind of dizzy. I mean, look, I think I’m just giddy with the first 17 days of the Trump administration.
SPEAKER 03 :
I do.
SPEAKER 04 :
I find my head spinning as well in nothing but good ways. I mean, we’ve always heard about first 100 days. How about first 17? I mean, you know, lost in everything that’s happening right now with that magnificent, beautiful moment where he signed the executive order, no boys in girls’ sports, and you got emotional. I heard you as I was driving in get kind of cracked. Your voice cracked a little bit. It’s a big moment. All these appreciative women saying… Thank you for not, you know, facing, like you said, a spiked volleyball in my daughter’s face at 50 miles an hour. But we also forgot that Pam Bondi ended federal funding for all the sanctuary cities. That’s right. That’s a big deal. You know, before we get to all of it, and Doge finding out about our tax dollars funding Politico, and incidentally, contrary to what the mainstream media is squealing, it is true. Our taxpayer dollars have been funding Politico.
SPEAKER 03 :
Take 30 seconds on how that happened, because it’s…
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, before I do that, I want to lay the groundwork for something. Of course. Because I’m just stunned. I’m astonished that all this has happened in 17 days. And you know what? You inevitably ask, why didn’t this happen first time around? Well, the answer is pretty easy. We all thought that after 2020, Trump went home to Mar-a-Lago and just played golf and licked his wounds. But he didn’t. He was doing his homework. He was assembling a team, and he was putting together an agenda and a strategy. And he said, if I get back in again, this is what it’s going to look like. And he spent the four years in the Mar-a-Lago wilderness… plotting and planning and scheming and readying his offense his his assault against the deep state his assault against the weaponization of the court system he’s gonna he knew he made mistakes and look he admits that admits this he made mistakes with having people in his administration know washington he trusted people too much sometimes he trusted the john kelly’s of the world and the the comey’s of the world and these are these were bad bad actors these are people acting in bad faith they wanted their 15 minutes in the white house and then they wanted to write a tell-all and rip trump because they thought it was fashionable and and it was this is and it was profitable at the time but boy has the tie has the has the tide turned it’s so different now i So let’s go to the doge thing real quick and talk about this is the best part. We know when your kid gets his hand caught in the cookie jar. Your kid either says, yeah, dad, I did it. You caught me. You got me. Or, no, no, no, no, no. It’s not what you think. It’s not what you see. My sister did it. Well, that’s what right now drudge is. Mediaite, Politico, even Axios is trying to do. They’re trying to claim that all this wasteful spending that has been uncovered is a vast right-wing conspiracy. Exactly. Exactly. Oh, it’s just a conspiracy. I mean, look at Daily Beast. Politico goes toe-to-toe with MAGA over these false money rumors.
SPEAKER 03 :
And stop, let’s do this together, because a lot of people might be driving around going, what is the Politico thing? What is the Politico thing? Describe, you can probably do it more briefly than I can, the notion to which there was money being funneled to a massively expensive Politico subscription service.
SPEAKER 04 :
USAID and the federal government has been, thanks to Elon Musk and his team of Doge youngsters, and yeah, they are young kids.
SPEAKER 03 :
Some of them are 19. More on that in a minute.
SPEAKER 04 :
Go ahead. I know. And so they have uncovered this massive… Epic, fraudulent spending. Slush fund. It’s a slush fund where millions and billions of dollars of our money. Understand something about USAID. USAID is not a charity. They’re not a philanthropic group. They’re an organization that was signed into law by John F. Kennedy in the early 60s with a stroke of his pen. And it has turned into a leftist group. you know, slush fund for, you know, operas in Paraguay and Sesame Street in Iraq and all this nonsense. But it’s our money. It is our money. So then it comes to Politico. They find out that Politico has gotten millions of dollars from the slush fund. Well, look at Mediaite. MAGA influencers pushed erroneous claims that Politico was being funded by the United States Agency for International Development. The false claim surfaced. Now, here’s why they say it’s false. Politico evidently has something called pro-Politico. Yeah, buddy. You could spend $75,000 if you want a really super-duper subscription with a dash, with a dashboard. Oh, you get a dashboard. You get, yeah, yeah, 75 grand for a subscription? Well, and they got a gazillion, got a bunch of them that…
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SPEAKER 04 :
The federal government was funneling into Politico. Here’s the best. My hand really wasn’t caught in the cookie jar. I get it from Axios. This is the best one of all. Ready? Headline. Doge targets Fed’s media subscriptions. um maga media it’s all maga of course they they determined that the government paid politico 8.2 million dollars in the last 12 months for politico pro policy content that spending fueled says axios a false conspiracy theory that usaid was funding politico that turned into dozens of viral posts It’s a prime example of how false information sweeps through social media and it could spell trouble for other media organizations with government subscribers. Well, I hope so. Let’s hope it does. Now, here’s the best part. Are you ready? I’m ready. You ready for the… They have to do a disclosure in this article pretending this is a vast right-wing conspiracy that taxpayer dollars went to Politico? Disclosure… Our Axios Pro products provide in-depth policy and industry news to paying subscribers, including government employees. Last year, $5,550 in payments were made to Axios as part of an FCC subscription, according to the government’s database that tracks federal spending. They’re having to do a disclosure. We do it too, they’re saying. So on the one hand, they’re saying… Yeah, pay no attention to what you’re really seeing here. Nothing to see here. Move on. This is an amazingly glorious time, Mark.
SPEAKER 03 :
I’ve never seen. And how do you doubly, triply know? Look at the react. They’re holding rallies. Schumer and others clasping hands. In these weird chanting, yelling moments, nobody elected Elon. Nobody elected the deep state scoundrels who tried to savage the Constitution and destroy our lives under Biden either. Nobody voted for Connelly.
SPEAKER 04 :
There wasn’t one vote cast for her in the primary.
SPEAKER 03 :
At least our unelected people are helping the country.
SPEAKER 04 :
And I can put your voice this morning, thank God he won, thank God he won on a loop. You saw the 60 minutes. You watched it, right? I sure did. This woman is a stone-cold dummy. We are so lucky because not only policy-wise did we dodge a bullet, but she’s a moron. And when you see a 55-minute video that shows her in her own… natural setting you know with bill whitaker unedited she’s a moron she she is so vapid and the truth is there wasn’t anything that really i i’m kind of like you on this i was a little lukewarm okay so they edited it that did i’ve been in television and broadcasting for years 60 60 minutes is notorious for editing You know, there’s a technique that 60 Minutes and other shows like that use all the time. They’ll use what they call a cutaway. They use a reverse, and it makes it look like there’s a pause and there’s no pause. They do that all the time. It’s actually very, very shrewd the way all the reality, like, for example, the reality TV shows, they do that. One of the characters, you know, will say something on the show, and then it looks like there’s, like, stunned silence. There’s not stunned silence. They’ve edited in a 10-second pregnant pause to make it look like people are just looking at it.
SPEAKER 03 :
Katie Curry interviewed a bunch of gun activist folks, NRA supporters. and asked them a question, and they created silence to make it look like they were stunned and unable to answer her question.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s what I mean. So that happens all the time with editing. But at the end of the day, here’s what we know. 60 Minutes did bend over backwards to try to make her look better. They edited out the word salad. She gave an answer on Israel. You couldn’t translate that if you held a gun to your head. She’s a moron, and she’s babbling like an idiot. And Bill Whitaker’s even looking at her like, what are you talking about? So they edited that out. They left that on the chopping room floor. That’s what Trump’s complaint was. You think they’ve edited out anything to make Trump look good ever in the history of the industry?
SPEAKER 03 :
I’m going to go with no. And you mentioned Israel. Can you imagine how Israel would be feeling? Netanyahu visiting, and he was on Hannity last night, got some excerpts of that. And, of course, it is a wild, eye-opening thing, the notion of America having anything to do with Gaza. I think that’s designed. Maybe he means it. Maybe it’s just another kind of a device to get everybody. Did you hear what Beebe said about it? I know he said, basically, why not? Beebe’s saying it’s brilliant. He loves the idea. And I think it creates the necessity. It prods us. It prods the world to imagine Gaza… prosperous and peaceful, which it ain’t going to be under blood-soaked Palestinian rule. It’s just not. And once people think, wow, it could be that way, and maybe if they don’t like America having a big footprint there, you know how else it might be that way? Let Israel run it again, as it once properly did.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, like you said the other day, you asked the perfect question, where is Gaza? What country is it in?
SPEAKER 03 :
It’s in Israel. Albania? Is it in Turkey? No. It’s in Israel. Oh, no, Mark.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, Mark, Mark, Mark, come on. Don’t you know? It’s in Palestine. Wink, wink.
SPEAKER 03 :
Uh-huh. Wink, wink.
SPEAKER 04 :
Back at you, buddy. Where’s the government of Palestine, huh?
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
Where’s their treasury department? Where’s their doge? Oh, my goodness. And you’ve got great things you’re doing. You’ve got a big heart, and I know you guys got a food for the poor campaign.
SPEAKER 03 :
We’ll talk about it tomorrow because we’re out of time. Because the last real thing that I want to do with you in these last 30 seconds or so is there’s a meme going around, and I want to leave it with you, and it goes like this. You know, Mike, I haven’t seen liberals this upset since yesterday.
SPEAKER 04 :
Inject it into my veins. When I climb into that MRI, put that into my veins.
SPEAKER 03 :
I’m thinking about you praying for good, uneventful stuff, everybody, because we need you for many, many more decades, man. Thank you so much. I’ll see you tomorrow. I love you. I’ll see you. That is Mike Gallagher ready for you today, right after we’re done at 10 on 660 AM, The Answer.
SPEAKER 02 :
Download the podcast and hear all of Mike and Mark’s conversations at MikeOnline.com for the M&M experience.
