In the ongoing campaign to smear, marginalize, and ultimately cancel dissenting voices to its power structure, the Left in America keeps trying to cut scalps under the guise of being concerned about alleged (and virtually always false claims of) “anti-vaxx” discussion. These de-platforming calls don’t come with factual corrections or proof of falsehoods – they’re just noise designed to rustle up a cloud of negativity over outlets that threaten their supremacy. At the time of this writing, Joe Rogan is a top cancellation target of the Left and now the journalism platform Substack – a place where authors can write articles independently from the corporate press and readers who like it can pay them directly – is in the crosshairs.
Former President Bill and Never-President Hillary Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea, (notable only for being Bill and Hillary Clinton’s daughter) joined in the echo chamber to denounce Substack for “facilitating” (fancier way of saying “allowing”) speech she doesn’t like but can’t argue against.
Glenn Greenwald covered the larger story of the Left’s tactics on the subject in his Substack article here. It’s a good piece about the attempt to cancel Rogan but of particular interest is his devastatingly accurate rebuttal to Chelsea Clinton’s smear on Substack in her tweet above. That portion of his piece notes:
This Post attack on Substack predictably provoked expressions of Serious Concern from good and responsible liberals. That included Chelsea Clinton, who lamented that Substack is profiting off a “grift.”
Greenwald is being sarcastic in calling Clinton a “good and responsible liberal” of course, and proceeds to demolish her credibility on her chosen attempted line of attack thusly:
Apparently, this political heiress — who is one of the world’s richest individuals by virtue of winning the birth lottery of being born to rich and powerful parents, who in turn enriched themselves by cashing in on their political influence in exchange for $750,000 paychecks from Goldman Sachs for 45-minute speeches, and who herself somehow was showered with a $600,000 annual contract from NBC News despite no qualifications — believes she is in a position to accuse others of “grifting.”
Such a prominent grifter using this type of projection has been common in the post-Trump election era in where shameless scam artists seek to remain relevant and retain steady income from inventing fake controversies and fear based hoaxes (that they will save you from for a small donation), but they are typically from more shadowy figures like those from the Lincoln Project that no one had ever heard of before. Rarely does someone so publicly known and matched only by how talent-free they are in any of the positions they fail-upwardly into become one of the front-facing voices in a smear campaign like this. Greenwald finishes the paragraph by noting that not only is Clinton a grifter with no credibility to call out others for her own history, but that the same applies to her judgement of moral character:
She also appears to believe that — despite welcoming convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell to her wedding to a hedge fund oligarch whose father was expelled from Congress after his conviction on thirty-one counts of felony fraud — she is entitled to decree who should and should not be allowed to have a writing platform.
No lies detected, but legitimate questions raised: Why is a political heiress who got $600,000 from corporate news despite having no background, experience, degree, or discernible talent in journalism (her master’s degree at Oxford is in “international relations”) and whose family of millionaire politicians received millions from mega-banks to make 45-minute speeches think it is a “grift” for a platform to allow citizens to pay journalists directly for their coverage?
That’s going lightly on her family, too. The masterclass in political grifting of course goes to The Clinton Foundation which filtered money for the charitable cause of Haitian relief from Hurricane Katrina that somehow never got to relieving Hatian’s, among its other dubious streams of income from foreign leaders and other foreign sources for years while Hillary Clinton was the United States Senator for New York, then a candidate for President in 2008, and then United States Secretary of State for the Obama administration, and then a candidate for President again. When the world believed Clinton would win her second run for President – coincidentally – donations to the Clinton Foundation skyrocketed – but it wasn’t a grift and was totally coincidental and legitimate we are supposed to believe, and I suppose many do. Curious that when Clinton lost the election to Donald J Trump, the Clinton Foundation fundraising started to dry up for some reason…
Watchdog group OpenSecrets reported that after Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election, speaking fees to the Clintons dropped like a rock, falling from $3.6 million in 2014 to $370,000 in 2018, and IRS disclosures reveal that the once high-flying Clinton Foundation took in $30.7 million in 2018 and just $16.3 million in 2020.
“Ethics experts,” the Daily Caller reported, are “alarmed” by the speedy decline of donations and say it shows “clear red flags of political corruption.”
And Chelsea hasn’t just cashed in on her last name through unqualified positions in the corporate press, but in corporate investing as well.
The Hill reports that Chelsea reaped $9 million in compensation since 2011 for being a board member for IAC/InterActiveCorp (the company that owns 150 big brands like Vimeo, Tinder, Angie’s List, The Daily Beast, Care.com, Liquer.com, Ask.com, ThoughtCo, People Magazine, and –well, you get the idea). Despite no background, degree, experience, or having done anything ever in corporate management, her board seat not only came with that fat $9 million but includes an annual $50,000 retainer and $250,000 worth of restricted IAC stock units, according to Barron’s.
These are the privileged elites concerned that journalists are collectively earning $2.5M directly from their readers…