Subscribe for the full episode at the bottom of the page. Watch a free preview here:

Useful Idiots fan-favorite David Sirota returns this week with a new book that dives into the dark money plot for elites to take full and final control of mainstream media. Subscribe for the full interview with David on Bari Weiss’s takeover of CBS News, the rise of tech oligarchs in America, and David’s message for disgruntled leftists.

Here’s a preview of our chat:

Useful Idiots: You have this great new book out called Master Plan: The Hidden Plot to Legalize Corruption in America. It’s really relevant to so much of what’s happening today when it comes to media conglomeration, but it’s also relevant to a scary lawsuit that’s being headed by Vice President JD Vance that could have a damaging effect on some of the last campaign finance laws in this country.

David Sirota: Master Plan tells the story of the fifty year secret plot to legalize corruption in a systematic way: deregulate the campaign finance system and make it nearly impossible to prosecute bribery. This plot started in the early 1970s with the Powell Memo, a memo written by Lewis Powell before he became a Supreme Court Justice. He was worried about corporations and oligarchs losing power, and he wrote this call to arms about how corporations, oligarchs, and the like had to invest in politics to make sure, essentially, that democracy didn’t continue to get ‘destroyed.’

There were secret meetings in which some of the most powerful people in the country laid out how they were executing the Powell Memo. There was an effort to take over media, which we’re now seeing culminating in the Paramount-Skydance takeover with Donald Trump and Bari Weiss.

Powell writes these memos that have never been seen before: he engineers a ruling extending constitutional protection for money as speech. Money is speech. Right now, as we speak, JD Vance is spearheading a low profile but huge case at the Supreme Court to try to give the now 6-3 conservative court an opportunity to eliminate all of the remaining limits on campaign contributions directly to candidates.

Useful Idiots: So what’s the playbook for selling all this to the public? As a victory for the working class? For freedom? JD Vance fashioned himself as being pro-working class, but I don’t see anything in his record that supports that. So is this just an effort to push this through and hope nobody notices? Or is there a massive propaganda campaign to get people to buy into this agenda?

David Sirota: I think their theory is: ‘We don’t care.’ There is no public-facing argument in the effort to deregulate campaign finance. They are making a straight up First-Amendment-legalistic-technical-argument to the Supreme Court, hoping the Supreme Court gives them what they want, because once they get what they want, then it unleashes unlimited spending for them.

I don’t think they’re going out to the public saying, ‘hey, we’re deregulating campaign finance. We’re making sure the anti-bribery laws can’t be enforced. We’re doing this for some higher purpose.’ They’re doing this expecting that the media and the public will not follow the ins-and-outs of campaign finance law and anti-bribery law, knowing that if they’re successful, it will give them more power under the law to spend as much money as they want, making the political discourse and public policy whatever it is they want.

Subscribe for the full interview with David Sirota. Order his new book Master Plan here.

And don’t miss this week’s Thursday Throwdown: Fmr Congressman Reveals What Happens at Closed-Door AIPAC Events

Thanks for supporting independent media, watch the full episode here:

“I remember my first AIPAC reception,” said former Congressman Matt Gaetz on a podcast this week.

“You get there and you wear this name badge and there’s a QR code on it. We were supposed to go talk to donors and then if they liked you, they scanned your QR code to make a donation on the spot. Can you just imagine how demoralizing that is? To be told that your job is to go chat people up, hoping they would scan you like a can of tomato soup.”

And yet they claim the Russians are the foreign agents meddling in US society while Israeli lobbyists are literally buying US politicians auction-style. If media and politicians had the integrity to call out the actual foreign-interference campaign, we’d instead be talking each week about Israelgate.

But that’s not the only way Israel weaseled itself into this week’s Thursday Throwdown: on the 2-year anniversary of October 7, NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani released a statement calling out Israel for committing genocide, but began it with a loud condemnation of Hamas, incorrectly claiming that Hamas killed 1,100 people on October 7.

And even with the wishy-washy disclaimer, CNN was NOT happy with even the notion of harsh words against Mother Israel. And on October 7 of all days!

This episode is free to all. Please help us share Diana Buttu’s important message.

Palestinian lawyer Diana Buttu returns to Useful Idiots, joining us from Haifa, Israel. We begin our conversation asking about the Global Sumud Flotilla, which sailed through international waters in an effort to break Israel’s starvation siege on Gaza. On Wednesday and Thursday, to international silence, the IDF kidnapped over 450 Flotilla members including Greta Thunberg and former Useful Idiots guest Thiago Ávila.

Useful Idiots: What is your reaction to this news?

Diana Buttu: We’ve been spending the past two years watching a live stream genocide. And here we watched 450 people being kidnapped and acts of piracy! And still nobody is doing anything about it. It shows you the lengths to which Israel is willing to go to actually starve the people of Gaza.

Useful Idiots: Polls in the US now show that more Americans sympathize with Palestinians than they do with Israelis. After decades and decades of pro-Israel propaganda in the US, which now is only intensifying with pro-Israel oligarchs buying TikTok, CBS, Paramount, and possibly even CNN, a majority of Americans oppose U.S. military support to Israel.

But in government, there’s so much to overcome. This week, Trump unveiled a new so-called peace plan to Netanyau. It’s basically a complete surrender for Palestinians. And one of the demands that Netanyahu made was an end to what he called lawfare: no more taking Israel to the International Criminal Court. As a Palestinian attorney, what is your response to this?

Diana Buttu: This model of thinking of putting conditions on freedom, there’s a word for that. It’s called colonialism.

That model ended a long time ago and the fact that they’re still trying to revive it when it comes to Palestinians is really quite repugnant. The Americans have always treated Palestinians by patting us on the head, like, ‘if you’re good Palestinians, if you do exactly what we say, then maybe, just maybe we will give you the things that you want.’

It shouldn’t be a question of what the United States wants, what Israel wants, or what anybody wants. The fact that the country that has perpetrated genocide and the country that is funding the genocide have anything to say about what Palestinians do is so abhorrent. That’s number one. Two is I absolutely insist that these war criminals be held to account. It is step number one!

Useful Idiots: I want to talk to you about Israel’s crimes. There’s a pretty scary statement that was tweeted out by Israel’s so-called defense minister, Israel Katz:

The IDF has completed the capture of the Netzarim axis up to the Gaza coast, effectively dividing Gaza between north and south.

This is the last opportunity for Gaza residents who wish to do so to move south and leave Hamas terrorists isolated in Gaza city itself, facing the IDF’s ongoing operations at full force.

Those who remain in Gaza will be considered terrorists and terror supporters.

The IDF is prepared for all possibilities and is determined to continue its operations.

So this is ominous. What is your response to this statement?

 

Diana Buttu: They’re openly saying that they’re just going to kill everybody.

There are hundreds of thousands of people living in Gaza City. There’s a number of hospitals there. There are old people, there are young people, there are people who are ill, who are in hospital. There are people who are disabled. There’s just a whole range of society. And what he’s saying is, ‘if you remain, you are a fair target.’

Again, it’s like flipping this idea of international law on its head, but they’ve done it now for the past two years. In the way that Israel has been operating, anybody in Gaza equals Hamas. They’ve said this. They’ve warned against this. We’ve been tracking their statements. That’s why it’s genocide. And now they’re coming out very clearly and saying, ‘if you remain in Gaza City, we’re going to treat you as Hamas, and therefore we are going to get rid of you.’ I don’t think they’ve made it any clearer than that.

Please share this episode to spread Diana’s important words. Thanks for supporting Useful Idiots and independent media.

And don’t miss this week’s Thursday Throwdown: “No More Beardos”: Hegseth’s New ‘Professional’ Military Standards Just Dropped