We’re teaming up with Taylor Lorenz to talk about the latest Dem scandal. It’s a highly-funded dark money program to recruit nearly a hundred influencers for some much-needed good publicity. In this episode, we get into why the Sixteen Thirty fund is sinking its fangs into the world of Dem influencers, who the program is recruiting (and why), and how a content creator incubator ended up making headlines this week. Watch below:

Chorus, the incubator itself, has put some draconian rules on the content creators it’s started to bankroll. Creators, for example, can’t host politicians on their independent platforms without notifying Chorus; they can’t even share their opinions on politicians, progressive, centrist, or conservative without checking in. It was a plan the company refused to budge on as contracts were signed. It’s all to the tune of up to $8k per month. And, of course, the influencers get plenty of good exposure.

But what will they even have to say to rally Gen Z peers for the increasingly rotted Democratic Party? We know that it’s a generation that has connected even less than its predecessors to the party establishment, and isn’t enthusiastic about or motivated by the party, to the extent of not coming out to vote in particularly high numbers. It’s also wild to hear about how Chorus’s goal is “to fund independent progressive” voices, when “independent” has totally lost its meaning as a way of talking about so much of the media. They’re bankrolled by dark money, and they’re trying to inundate the digital world with more pro-Democrats content by just paying people to do it.

We don’t fully know who Chorus and the Sixteen Thirty fund tried to recruit for their enterprise. The companies refused to provide that info. But it’s interesting to imagine the kind of echo chamber the Dems want online, representing them for younger generations. This episode finds us talking to Taylor, who’s been doing amazing investigative work on the topic, about how well the Dems actually adapt to major online platforms, why dark money is pushing a pro-Democrat message, and how dark money is influencing American politics.