President Trump’s first unofficial act as president of the United States was to release a memecoin designed to be the perfect vehicle for institutional bribery. TrumpCoin funnels untraceable cash directly into his bank account. As he took the stage at his inauguration the coin’s value skytocketed to an astounding $31 Billion. There is no way to know how much of that money now lines Trump’s coffers.
It might not be fair to call the current leadership in America an “administration” as much as it is an unstable pyramid of scammers, bullies and oligarchs. Just take a look at the screenshot I took of Elon Musk’s newly-established Department of Government Efficiency, or D.O.GE. on the first day of Trump’s rule:
Never mind that DOGE’s role in the government isn’t yet clear yet. Instead just remember that its name and photo were inspired by the memecoin DOGECoin, which was founded as an admitted scam and parody of the crypto market. Elon Musk has championed the coin for years, presumably to pumping up its value, and dumping it over and over again to add to his untold personal fortune. By making an entire department a meme, Musk isn’t even trying to hide the fact that he’s scamming America.
Try as I might, I can’t even wrap my mind around all of the various and blatant scams that are getting up and running under Trump’s rule—whether it’s speculation on fossil fuels, manipulating the money supply, tax schemes that benefit the ultra-wealthy, impunity for convicted criminals or the rise of the MAHA movement. The overriding theme of the next four years will be legalizing various mechanisms of theft against the American people and the world at large.
All of this is a long way for me to introduce my guest on the podcast today. Timothy Caulfield is one of the top experts on misinformation in the world. And since the world will be nothing but misinformation for the foreseeable future, I figured that it was important to bring him on to discuss the few guideposts for truth that remain to us. His new book, The Certainty Illusion focuses primarily on the way that the general public has lost faith in science, both because of deliberate misinformation by the influencer ecosystem, and the declining quality of scientific literature writ-large.
To quote the introduction of his book:
The present reality: our information environment— that space where we seek, contribute to, and interact with the world’s knowledge—is completely and truly f*cked. It is a tangle of lies, distortions, and rage- filled rants. This has created a massive paradox: we have more access to more knowledge than ever before and, at the same time, less and less certainty about the issues that matter to us.
I follow Caulfield on Threads, but he is on all the other platforms, too.
I hope you enjoy the video.
Below the paywall, I have a few private things to discuss with my premium subscribers who make my reporting possible.
Hi there. The first thing I want to say is THANK YOU so much for helping keep me alive on the internet. With your help this newsletter brings in about a thousand dollars a month which goes directly into keeping me afloat as I investigate a bonanza of internet scams and grift.
To be honest, though, the scope of the problem right now is giving me a bit of an existential crisis. For the last few years I’ve been posting videos and newsletters about highly targeted topics—like the criminal history of the founder of AGI (recently covered by Fortune) and the legal maneuvering of the people behind Fasciablaster. That sort of in depth reporting requires careful examination of various pieces of evidence, legal review and interviews with experts. It’s holding truth to power, and is more a work of passion than it is part of a rational business plan. In other words, it was pretty normal investigative journalism along the lines of what I’ve done for decades.
But here’s the problem: the rate of scams is increasing to a degree where it’s impossible to both cover the breath of the problem while at the same time dedicating myself the the level of investigative standards that I’m used to. For instance, I have a piece about the fallout between the professional billionaire Grant Cardone and the health-grifter Gary Brecka in the works that is still only half done, but has already sucked up 2 weeks of time in research alone.
Meanwhile every time I look up from my keyboard the administration and wellness grifters push out a half-a-dozen new scams that are so obvious that they dont’ even make any attempt to cover their tracks. Whether it’s the move for Trump to take over TikTok which I predicted before it happened, Biden and Sander’s warning about the rise of oligarchy or just my general observation that government is, well, evil.
Tackling these topics quickly changes the nature of the channel. I move faster, but the quality drops. I’m getting quite a bit if pushback from people who say I’m a partisan for making what I think are rational observations on the available facts. Some are even unsubscribing because of the change in tone, like Deborah who thought she could buy me editorial independence to sing a pro-Tump song with $8/month.
It feels like I’m playing a never-ending game of whack-a-mole where I’m trying to do too much with too few resources. A lot of it is happening behind the scenes. My agent wants me to write a new book on the Rise of the Griftoverse. I’m about to release a new version of What Doesn’t Kill Us which will hopefully allow me to put Wim Hof behind me for good. Meanwhile Hollywood keeps on pretending they want to turn something work on into a TV show (but then backs out at the last minute after months of negotiations).
I’m re-reading whatI just wrote and it seems obvious now that I’m on the verge of burning out. Maybe we’re all on the verge of burning out.
I don’t know what this portends for what I’m going to do next with this channel. Because, frankly, I don’t have a plan anymore. I feel like I need a team, but I have no ability to hire one. I’m shooting from him hip and just trying my best to keep doing what I feel is right. Anything you can tell me to make it all make sense would be appreciated.
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