The Scott Adams School - 04/22/26 STEVE CORTES Joins. SPLC, Sheridan Gorman, Charlottesville Hoax

going live. We'll just wait and welcome in the guests, our sippers. Okay, let's see. Did YouTube kick in? Please, YouTube, work today.

It's like Stephen Lang sleeping in today.

Oh no. Let's see. Oh good, you see Bev. Patty, I see YouTube. I'm so excited. YouTube didn't work yesterday, Steve. Sometimes it gets glitchy and then we have to upload it after. Ah, but we go on Rumble, we're on YouTube, we're on X, and we are on Locals with the Beloves. Good morning everybody, it is April 22nd, 2026. It's me, Erica, and you know Owen. Marcela's off in court today and we are so, so lucky to have returning with us one of our all-time favorite guests, Steve Cortez. Thank you so much for joining us today. Welcome back.

Thank you. It's a privilege to be here. Uh, it's just, it's great to be with you talking about really important issues and of course to honor the late Scott Adams, who was so inspiring to all of us.

Amen. I swear. And I, I mean, you know, we always say there's no coincidences and the fact that you're here with the news going on right now is So perfect. All right, so before we get to the news— oh, on this Earth Day, happy Earth Day, everybody— I think there's something we all need to do first. Wouldn't you agree? Let's do it.

You might want to enjoy this simultaneous sip, and all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or chalice or stein, a canteen, jug, or flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like my coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the thing that makes everything better, the dopamine hit of the day, the simultaneous sip. Go.

Mmm.

Tastes like caucus.

It tastes like caucus. Oh no.

I think he rushed that one a little bit, but it was still perfect.

That was funny. Okay, so I just got some kind of a warning. I hope, I hope YouTube's on. Let me check, you guys. All right, so you guys, happy Earth Day. Um, so, so much has been going on in the news. Luckily we're not newscasters and we don't have to cover all of it, but we did discuss a couple things we wanted to talk about, especially with having Steve here. And one is what just went down yesterday with Southern Poverty Law Center, those lovely, lovely people. Um, Steve, could you tell us just briefly who they are in general, and then we'll play some clips for everybody?

Sure. So, and also, just to quickly out of the gate clarify, uh, they're not Southern, they're certainly not poor, okay? Uh, and all they do is engage in leftist attacks, smear campaigns against the right. Under the guise of supposedly fighting hate. And because there's really not that much hate, frankly, in America for them to fight, they've been manufacturing hate, but in a way that I think few of us knew until these indictments came down yesterday. But Southern Poverty Law Center was founded in the 1970s by a guy named Morris Dees, who had a ton of charisma but not many ethics. He finally got pushed out of his own organization for very intense corruption. But unfortunately, he did build a bit of a behemoth that got a lot of corporate money. Most of the biggest corporations in America donate handsomely to the SPLC and have for many years, perhaps some of them not even realizing that they are in fact funding a very partisan, very leftist, in some ways Marxist organization that again, under the guise of fighting hate, is actually simply fighting political opponents and trying to get them castigated into a place in society and in law and in media where they simply can't be effective. And they've used lies and smears forever. And that's been very known. I don't think it was known until yesterday by a lot of folks, just the fact that, just how pernicious it truly was. And the fact that they were actually using this money that they had gotten from donors, again, big corporate donors, a lot of regular Americans too. One thing Maurice Dees was very good at was building a fundraising machine based on propaganda that he was supposedly fighting the Ku Klux Klan. And they were around every corner America, and there's one under your bed, and you need to be afraid. Um, and what this indictment, which is really just incredible and, and worth reading, quite frankly, even if you're not a legal type— this indictment, uh, states is that they have been paying to the tune of millions of dollars, literally paying people to foment hate, to stage hateful events, so that they can then fight that very hate that they themselves, the SPLC, funded, financed, and concocted and staged. So they are setting up an enemy, a boogeyman. They're able to find some derelict people out there, some unscrupulous people who want money and who might have some hateful inclinations but don't have much reach or power. Well, they pay them to stage events. The most significant, I think, being the Charlottesville riot, the Charlottesville hoax that emanates from the events, the violent effects of what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia, where there was not a peaceful protest, there was a violent protest, you know, that was supposedly organic and staged by right-wing racists in Virginia. We now know because of this DOJ indictment that in fact the very left-wing SPLC was behind staging and financing this event, and the primary organizer they had paid According to the government, they have paid $270,000. So we're not talking about small dollar amounts either. We're not talking pocket change or meal money. We're talking significant money to these people to stage events that are not organic and so that they can set up a boogeyman of the right as supposedly racist and of Trump as racist himself and his supporters as racist. And they can then be the heroic fighters against this very fake enemy Scott Adams have concocted.

So we all know on here that, you know, Scott, along with all of us— okay, I want to give all of us credit— so Scott, with all of us, with Steve Cortez and with Joel Pollack, I mean, the fighters, we were out there, we were out there marching to get the truth out about the Charlottesville hoax. And it was so disgusting and egregious to know that everybody that was talking about it knew they were lying. They all knew they were lying. Every news reporter. It was so sickening, Steve, um, just to— because I, I heard what Trump said in real time and I was like, oh, that was a good measured answer, because I knew he's talking about the protests on both sides, not the, not the fake— now we know— KKK situation, um, And people died and people got hurt. And it— I think that hoax was one of the worst things to happen to our country because I hate to break it to anybody that doesn't know this, but when I grew up, I, I got to see where I got to watch— let's just say broadly speaking, racism end. I got to watch our country be like, okay, like everybody's equal. And then I got to watch that whole transformation. And it wasn't until recent years that racism was systematically brought back. Okay, it never used to be like this. So I was like, this is so inorganic, like it all felt so fake. I'm like, what? Why are you gaslighting us? So, um, I just want to play— I just don't even know where to go first, but let's, let's go to, uh, Kash Patel laying it out, these 11 counts, um, and just kind of hear it for ourselves because this is This is big news, you guys. It's going to have to change all the stats on who are the racists, who are the, you know, uh, radicals, because obviously they were bought and paid for. So let's listen to Cash, and then we'll jump back on the other side.

We're here today is to announce what the— what the general just told you. The Southern Poverty Law Center, in a massive sweeping indictment, has been charged with allegations of fraud and using the banking system to perpetrate that fraud. I just want to talk about a couple brief things here. The Southern Poverty Law Center themselves advertise to raise money to dismantle violent extremist groups for a period of at least a decade. They use their donor network to raise money to purportedly dismantle violent extremist groups. However, the SPLC, the Southern Poverty Law Center, used the money they raised raised from their donor network to actually pay the leadership of these very groups. I just want to say that again. They used the fraudulently raised money by lying to their donor network, thousands of Americans, to go ahead and actually pay the leadership of these supposed violent extremist groups. The groups, as the general, um, laid out, include the Ku Klux Klan, the United Clans of America, Unite to Write, National Alliance, the National Socialist Movement, the Aryan Nation Motorcycle Club, and the National Socialist Party of America, and also the American Front. In at least one of these matters, our investigation revealed that funds were used to facilitate the commission of further state and federal offenses totaling over $3 million. Furthermore, our investigation revealed that the Southern Poverty Law Center, on top of perpetuating this widespread, decade-long, multimillion-dollar fraud, conducted more criminal activity. They attempted to hide their criminal activity from our financial banking network. They set up shell companies and entities around America so that the financial institutions that we rely on as everyday Americans were deceived in believing that money was not coming from the Southern Poverty Law Center in the perpetration of this scheme and fraud, but rather fictitious entities they stood up to perpetuate this ongoing fraud. This is a serious and egregious violation of a group that purported to dismantle violent extremist groups, but in turn actually only fueled the hatred. This is an important case brought by the president— by President Trump's administration We're thankful for the President for his leadership and funding of not just the FBI and DOJ, but his commitment to go out there and wipe out fraud and conspiracy and waste and abuse wherever it occurs, including the Southern Poverty Law Center. Even though this money was made to appear to be coming from legitimate people and legitimate entities, we at the FBI, with our great partners at the Department of Justice and in the state of Alabama, were able to comb through a decade worth of material, a scheme that took a decade to build, so that we were able to follow the money, because money never lies, and they got caught. As the Attorney General said, these charges are varying, um, they are widespread and wide-ranging, and this investigation is very much ongoing. Today we're here to announce the charges of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and this investigation and the individuals who are responsible will be brought to justice. Yes, thank you, General.

Of which there's 11 counts: 6 counts of wire fraud, 4 counts of bank fraud, 1 count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. Um, Owen, do you— or do either of you know, Steve or Owen, the American Front? Is that that Patriot Front group? Do you know the guys that we all said were feds that were like khakis with like a thing over their face?

I don't know if that's the same. I do know that Unite the Right did become Patriot Front. So I think that the Unite the Right is like the, the leader of that broke off and then, you know, started the Patriot Front. So those are related in some way. Um, but I'm not sure if the American Front is a different one.

Okay, so that's pretty amazing. And I mean, the people, if you watch, you know, who they listed as, you know, these dangerous people. It's, it's, it's laughable, Steve. I mean, some of the most nice, normal people got this like label and got attacked. And, and these people— and by the way, I can't finish a thought because I'm so like upset about this, or I'm happy, I don't know what I am. But I also want the people who push the narrative of the Southern Poverty Law Center to be in trouble, like newscasters that knew they were lying and pushing it, like Joe Biden.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And in the case of Joe Biden, by the way, let's remember that he launched his entire presidential campaign based on this lie. And by the way, he knew it was a lie because I'm saying the lie of the Charlottesville hoax, which again was available to any rational person who just wanted to take a look at the full transcript or full video. Which he surely knew, or at least people around him certainly knew. Who knows cognitively where he was at that point. But regardless, he said, he claimed as the reason, as the compelling motivation for him to run, to get back into politics, to come out of retirement, to save the nation, was to save America from racism as exemplified by the Charlottesville riots, who were Trump supporters and doing the bidding effectively of their leader, Donald Trump. Of course, that was based on a clear lie, which we all knew at the time because it was all public information. But you're exactly correct. Two things happened. First was corporate media was more than willing to take that lie and run with it and amplify it and repeat it again and again. The second part, and this is also key, those of us who were doing our best to fight it with the facts, right, with the actual videos, the actual transcripts, of what Donald Trump said that proved that not only is he not racist, but in fact he explicitly condemned the neo-Nazis, big tech suppressed our voices, punished our platforms, and effectively censored us from our ability to widely get that information out. So let me give you a great example that is specific and tangible here. The great Dennis Prager, who's a friend of mine and somebody who very early on said, saw how hateful and malicious this Charlottesville hoax was and how effective it was, unfortunately, against Donald Trump and against our movement. He knew that I had been on CNN trying my best to get the truth out amidst a sea of lies on that network where I worked at the time about the Charlottesville hoax. So he asked me to do one of his PragerU videos, his really well-done 5-minute videos that have a lot of reach. And thankfully we did one. It went mega viral. It got millions and millions of views. It was tweeted out. Tweeted out by then-President Trump in his first term. But YouTube, Google YouTube suppressed the video. You actually needed to verify yourself to watch it. At one point, it was actually, it had to be age verified also, you know, as if it was somehow X-rated or violent or, you know, whatever. And then at one point taken down, you know, just fully taken down from YouTube. We also could not do any ad spending to promote it. We couldn't do paid promotion. These are for-profit companies, but they said, no, not your money. Not when you're telling the truth about the Charlottesville fine people hoax. I mean, thankfully, the truth largely got out. And I think by now, all these years later, almost a decade later from the initial incident, the actual press conference on Charlottesville from President Trump, I think the truth is widely known, but it took a long time. And it's for those two reasons. It's number one, the legacy media, which was still very powerful then. They're a lot less powerful now, thank goodness. But legacy media, CNN, CBS, NBC, they were still very powerful in those days and they refused to tell the truth and in fact amplified the lie. But then the second aspect was big tech and the censoring and just really horrific behavior, anti-free speech, anti-American behavior of corporate America in cahoots with big tech. And this grand lie. And we now know that the lie was fueled by— the lie flowed from an event which was in itself a lie because the event was staged. It was financed and paid for by the left so that they could create racism, create an issue where it didn't exist. What this proves once again, and this is a phrase that's been repeated a lot, but I think it's worth repeating, is that the demand for racism from the left, it far exceeds the actual supply out there in American society. And I'm so glad too, Erika, that you mentioned that for those of us who are sort of middle-aged, I'm 54 years old, by the time we were becoming sort of adolescents into young adults, racism had largely disappeared from American society, right? So America clearly had a serious problem with race. We had the civil rights movement primarily in the 1960s. I think the '70s and '80s were largely times of sort of reckoning And then the '80s into the '90s were really times of largely racial harmony. It's not just my opinion. You can see this in some of these statistics. For example, approval of interracial marriage, which had been minuscule previous to that, became the overwhelming majority in America. No big deal, interracial couples. Um, and you know, there's all kinds of metrics we can use, but, but the point is America had become in many ways post-racial, where young Americans at least just didn't even really see race. They, judge people based on their character, right? But the left couldn't have that. They couldn't have because they need to gin up racism as the vehicle by which they then fight since they can't be persuasive based on their ideas because their ideas are lousy and garbage and Marxist. And so they start to create racism where it doesn't exist. And this really, really accelerated in massive ways with the election of Barack Obama, right? What should have been a wonderful moment for racial healing America electing a Black man, a country that once regarded Black men as property and could be abused as property, now elected one, chose one to be president of the United States. It was actually a great opportunity for real racial reconciliation in this country. And instead, what did Barack Obama do? He used his platform to at all times be as divisive as possible. So that's the Obama presidency.

By design, by the way.

Yes, very much. And then we get into the Trump presidency. And of course, they're shocked, the left is, that Trump won. What's their main tactic against him then? I mean, how did this guy win? They say, well, we're gonna call him racist and all of his supporters racist. And what did SPLC do with their millions and millions of donor dollars? Some of it coming from regular Americans, most of it coming from big business in this country. What did they do? They said, We are going to finance events, we're going to stage events, we're going to pay for fake hate so that we can then fight it for our own political advantage, for our own donor base, for our own selfish needs. And in the case of Charlottesville, think about the consequences. Number one, a young woman died, right? Heather Heyer died in the subsequent riot that we now know was created and concocted. So that's the first immediate dire consequence. But then the, for the country, the macro consequence for everyone is that it gave rise to this grand lie that Donald Trump praised neo-Nazis, even though the opposite was true. And unfortunately, Erica, for a very long time, most of America, or at least roughly half of America, believed that lie. And it was so divisive to not just our politics, but to our entire society. And one of the reasons I started picking up on this in 2018 and 2019 when I was working for CNN. I got fired, by the way, for telling the truth about this lie. But when I was working for CNN, as I saw it every night on the air, you know, in the panels that I was on, I saw it just constantly brought up, right, as the— it was the foundational attack upon Trump and his supporters. You're bigots. You praise the neo-Nazis at Charlottesville. You praise the hateful killers at Charlottesville. But then I also just saw it in my personal life. Talking to people, anytime I would ask, what, you know, what's your main problem with Donald Trump? Almost always the very first answer was he praised Nazis in Charlottesville. I mean, that just got to be the standard answer. I said, listen, you can have all kinds of reasons to dislike Donald Trump. You can have all kinds of reasons to oppose the America First agenda, but don't base it on a lie because that's a lie. But unfortunately, that became the go-to, almost default excuse to dismiss not just Trump himself. I mean, Trump can handle it, of course, but Trump and tens of millions of people who rallied to the America First cause. And so I said, I'm going to do what I can with my platform to start to fight this. So I started to write articles and do the PragerU video. And then independently of what I was doing, Joel Pollack was chasing it on his own. Then, of course, Scott Adams was using his powerful platform to chase it on his own. And eventually, thankfully, the three of us synced up and linked up and formed sort of this trinity of truth tellers who said, we're gonna do whatever we can to cooperate with each other in fighting this lie, you know, in our various lanes and help amplify each other. And eventually, eventually the truth did get out. But we now learn again that the entire fight that I'm talking about, that I was happy and honored to engage in, especially with somebody like Scott Adams, it's what brought us together. Thankful for that. But the entire ordeal didn't have to happen because it all flowed from a dishonest staged event that the left paid for. And that's not just unethical, it's not just immoral, it's illegal. It is illegal. A nonprofit cannot take donor money and then pay to stage, uh, to stage events of hate and in some cases criminal events.

Yes, inciting.

This is illegal. This, this is a mafia-like organization. I'm glad to hear that Kash Patel said this investigation is ongoing. I hope there's a lot more indictments out there.

I do too. Thank you, that was so well said. Um, speaking of Joel, so, uh, the account Maze, you guys, on X, he put together a video. I just want to show you guys and see if you can spot Joel because Yes, he also was shocked about this blatant lie. But this is Biden's campaign. And I always do like to point out that I think it was that day when Biden was on stage with like Clooney and Obama at the end when he was giving it one last push. Obama pushed it again that time. That was just in 2023 or 2024. So they never dropped this. So anyway, look out for Joel. Tell me when you see him.

Close your eyes. Remember what you saw on television. Remember seeing those neo-Nazis and Klansmen and white supremacists coming out of fields with lighted torches? And remember what the president said when asked? And you had people— and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally. Der Bane's Bolzen.

That's specific.

No, he did not. He said he walked out and he said, let's get this trade. The veins bulging on their skin as they were screaming. Remember, just close your eyes and picture what it was. Their veins bulging. Their veins bulging. Nazi sympathizers carrying Nazi flags. Veins bulging. Veins bulging. Veins bulging.

Veins bulging.

How are you, baby? How old are you? Their veins bulging. Is their veins bulging? Bulging veins. Well, I'm sick and tired of smart guys.

Their veins is—

they're bulging.

Their veins bulging. Their veins bulging. Veins is bulging. Bulging. Fewer. Have you ever heard this president say one negative thing about white supremacists?

Have you ever heard it?

Racism is evil. Damn it. And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs. Including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.

I love that. Oh my gosh. So yeah, you guys, I'm watching you in the chat. It should make you mad. And all of the relatives, you're saying. I'm with you 100%. Owen, don't you just feel like— well, no, Owen, tell me what you feel like about all this.

I mean, it's, it's again a mix of emotions. I am angry that this all happened, um, but I'm also satisfied to see some consequences finally hitting. Um, I think a lot of us have been waiting for some of these types of charges to hit, and I'm hoping there's a lot more. I think this type of thing is much more widespread than just what we heard about today. You know, I remember seeing some videos of some white supremacist guy giving a speech, and they made it seem in the media like it was this very big thing, and it was this, you know, sign that racism is back in America and it's growing. And then the camera pans back and you see that there's literally like 10 people in the crowd watching it, and there's more media people filming it than there are people in the audience. And that to me was just a stark example of where it's like they're making this into this huge thing. They're giving it a platform. They're basically promoting this hateful person that would otherwise just be talking to 10 people and, and it wouldn't go anywhere. And, and the media is the one that was doing that. And so I think this was part of a much larger effort to try and push this kind of hoax and this kind of lie. Um, and I, I remember this very vividly back to 2016 when that was the conclusion, like you said, Steve, that Oh, the only reason Trump got elected is because America is racist. And that became what they ran on after they realized they couldn't do the Russia collusion thing, um, or that that didn't work in the campaign. They just moved on to racism as the reason why Trump got elected, and then it just built from there. And, um, I'm sure that had a big part to do with the 2020 election. And, um, it seems like a very broad conspiracy to just push this lie and You know, push back on anyone who says no, Trump's not a racist. I mean, you remember how they made a big deal out of the Central Park Five when that was a hoax too. And there were all these other ones that they just would add onto the list to say, well, look at all of these things. And they were all lies. Yeah, they were all lies. Trump is not racist. He's probably one of the least racist presidents I've had in the, in a long time. And they just pushed this with repetition and, you know, more and more lies to the point that they convinced a lot of people. That this is what was happening in America. And it's been divisive, it's been harmful to the entire nation, um, and it's had a massive impact on our culture.

Oh, I mean, the riots, like what? And, and because of this, you know, you could go on for days about like what's snowballed from this. When you look at people, you know, the entitlement now— and please, I'm using this loosely, you guys, don't freak out on me— but of Black culture now, and, you know, just running rampant into businesses and destroying things. And it's like, then if you say something, they're like, oh, you're racist. And it's like, oh my God, like, they did this, they did this, you know. Like, nobody was acting like this before. It's so gross. And then, um, I can't not play this, you guys, because you'll understand why. But I just want to play one more clip, and I just want you to see, you know, once again drive home who the SPLC really is. And let's Let's just look at this last clip and then I'll ask Steve to react to this.

You're mean, you're anti-women. And speaking of that, the Southern Poverty Law Center has now labeled— you're in the club with me, by the way— they've labeled Turning Point as a hate group.

Yes, it's coming from a hateful group. Like, it's a surprise it took them so long to get us on.

What took you so long?

Understand that they're literally putting high school chapters of ours on a hate group next to the KKK. And next to neo-Nazi groups. And I mean, we can laugh this off. There's an element to this. Remember that there was a shooter that went to the Family Research Council years ago, inspired by the SPLC list. This is them trying to make us basically surrender at Turning Point USA. We're going to do the opposite, and our students are only going to lean in even more. But they can't debate us on our ideas. They cannot have dialogue. They cannot actually go on to the merits of why they are right or why we might be wrong. Instead, they must smear us with the age-old one-liner that you are a racist or that you are a hater. And they're finally realizing the power of Turning Point USA, which is why they put us—

well, when you're effective, you're a threat, right? So they call me the high priestess of hate, right, Sam? Is that what they call me?

Congratulations.

2008.

Oh, it's old. It's so old. But again, the Democrats, I think they appeal to a certain very whiny man.

That's right.

It's that the pajama boy, whatever they're calling them.

So you remember that Obama—

yeah, I never forgot that guy.

It was the archetype of the Liberal.

They think a man—

yes, that's right. Never standing up for yourself, very feelings-based, no assertion, no drive, no grit. Um, almost always pandering to the zeitgeist, to the times where it turns out, especially in the heartland of this country, the American man is still alive and he wants his country back. And they showed up in record numbers for President Trump and they're rejecting the Democrat Party. They're the backbone class of this country. They make the country work. They're largely forgotten.

And the Democrats spending $20 million on video game advertising, let them spend them on—

let them burn that. By the way, if they think that's what it's actually going to take to win back young men, Maybe you need a message and a messenger that they can relate to.

Well, they think their messenger might be David Hogg.

I understand. Oh, you know, when I think of masculinity, I think of David Hogg.

Yeah.

Is he—

what's the idea behind him?

Again, that goes to show the Democrats probably got in a room. They said, guys, we're losing the youth. So what we need is a young vice chair of our party. Turns out, you know, David Hogg is all over the place talking about how he's going to primary sitting Democrats. And he went on The Breakfast Club saying that Jasmine Crockett is one of the most inspiring leaders of the Democrat Party. And if their solution to winning men is David Hogg, Please continue, because you're not going to win a national election for quite some time.

I couldn't cut off Charlie. So although the beginning part was about the Southern Poverty Law Center, but I mean, it just goes to show you, Steve, like that was their plan. Like just divide, make, you know, what would be strong men weak, you know, make it right. So it was all calculated for, for what?

Yes. And it went further than just aspersions and smears. It wasn't just about trying to damage their reputation. Of course, that's part of it. But thankfully, particularly patriotic Americans like Laura Ingraham and the late Charlie there, you can see they wore that scorn from the SPLC, they wore it as a badge of honor, right? As well they should. But it wasn't just about trying to damage their reputations. It was also the tangible aspect. I mentioned before Big Tech. It was trying to separate them from any of the sort of benefits of powerful American society. So what I mean by that, for example, is any kind of corporate support, if they might want that. Or large philanthropic support. But then even more importantly is it gave the excuse— once you were tagged as a hate group, it gave the excuse that companies like Meta and like Twitter under previous ownership and like Google, YouTube needed to then censor this information, to censor the truth actually, uh, to get out. And I want to make this point too because I think it's really important for the audience, is that we're in a better place now, thank goodness, because of Trump's second election. We're in a better place regarding tech censorship, but everything's not okay in my view, okay? So Twitter right now is a very free, free speech zone, uh, but that's only because frankly we are counting on the benevolence of its owner, of a single billionaire. That's not healthy for American society long term. I'm glad it has become a free speech zone, of course, and I'm thankful to Elon Musk for what he has done. And right now Mark Zuckerberg is sort of playing ball with free speech because because he's clearly trying in some ways to cozy up with Donald Trump. And so Facebook, Meta, is better, still not perfect on these issues of free speech. And I would argue that Google, YouTube still has a lot of problems regarding the censorship of speech. And so my point is though, we shouldn't have to rely on their goodwill or them, you know, having some affinity or needing a favor from the current occupant of the Oval Office. I really believe that there needs to be significant legal basis, regulatory oversight, of big tech so that the digital public square cannot be censored going forward. Because again, part of why the Charlottesville lie was so effective was not just that it was amplified by corporate media. That was a big part of it. Thankfully, corporate media is not nearly as effective today as they were 10 years ago. That's a good thing for our society. But then secondly, it was that truthful voices were being censored. And, and part of why they were being censored, to tie this back into SPLC, is because SPLC was considered, by these corrupt companies and corrupt organizations, was considered to be an arbiter of who is a hate monger and who is not. And of course, they were anything but that. They were a criminal enterprise that was using corporate money and donor money to actually create and concoct hateful events, and in some cases even crimes, so that they could then pretend they were the heroes. To fight against it. So this is, this is communism. This is Marxism at its core. Let's be very honest about what this is. And I commend the DOJ. By the way, I'm one of the people on the right who has been frustrated so far in this Trump term with the DOJ. I don't think there has been enough action. I don't think there have been enough indictments. So this is good news, though. Let's give credit where it's due. I think lots more to do. But so far, there hasn't been the kind of truth-telling and righteous retribution that I think a lot of us are looking for from the Trump DOJ. But having said that, this is certainly a big, big step in the right direction for sure.

And Owen, you know, you were talking about ActBlue.

Yeah, well, I agree. I mean, I think I can envision Scott Adams in this instance saying something like, you know, this is exactly what you thought it was. And I think I would extend that to ActBlue. Blue as well with all the things that are going on in terms of investigating them. And I'm really hoping we're about to see some indictments there too. I, I mean, that situation, you know, they've been doing these things called smurfing where they impersonate people and they make little donations for them to all these various Democrat races. And it might be $5 or $20, all these little ones that are, I think, are intentionally designed to go under the radar, not be noticed. And, um, Now that as soon as the investigation started, then, you know, their entire compliance and regulatory department got either quit or they either quit or they got fired. So all their lawyers just scrambled like cockroaches. And, you know, so it's, it's pretty clear to me what's going on there. I think it's exactly what it looks like. And I know personally that they're doing that because I looked into it myself because I noticed that my own mother is on that list. I looked up her records. And there's all sorts of little donations for races all over the country, not just my state, not federal, just like Nebraska or some random state like that where she supposedly gave money to these races. And, you know, I asked her, I was like, did you make these donations? And, you know, she is a Democrat and she's like, well, I've made a couple of donations, but nowhere near that many. So she said, yeah, a lot of these are not real and it's happening all over the country and in a massive scale. And I'm really hoping to see some consequences there too. Because I think a lot of the Democrats have been just funding them themselves through these foreign donations, most likely, but clearly illegitimate donations because there would be no other reason to do it that way.

Steve, oh, and I'm so glad that you mentioned that. And, you know, and Erica, you, uh, earlier mentioned BLM. Uh, I think BLM probably has similar criminal problems to the SPLC, and I hope that the Trump DOJ is taking a very serious look at what happened, particularly in 2020 2020 with BLM, because, uh, the SPLC has been really effective over decades and taken in millions of dollars. I would guess probably into the hundreds of millions, but certainly at least into the tens of millions. BLM, in a very short period of time, in, in just weeks and months, took in billions and billions of dollars. Uh, big, big corporate money. Every big corporation in America was tripping over themselves after, uh, the George Floyd killing. To, to give massive amounts of money and prove, you know, their, their anti-racist credentials by giving BLM just absolute mountains of money. There is significant evidence that a lot of that was at least wasted, that there was at least very, very unethical behavior going on. I suspect it goes much deeper and gets much worse than that. I suspect there was actual criminal activity going on. Probably a lot of the tactics just like what we see with the SPLC. And, uh, and I hope and expect that the Trump DOJ is taking a similar look there, because if they do, I'm confident that we would see real indictments. And if you want to talk about consequences, by the way, the consequences for the country of BLM and its activities were horrific. I mean, in terms of loss of life, loss of property, division of this country, um, you know, the, the supposed Summer of Love, which was one of the worst periods of time in recent American history. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that. So, you know, these, these leftist organizations, uh, need to be scrutinized in many ways. And, and Owen, to your point about foreign money, one of the great things— I don't think Doge did enough, unfortunately, um, and I was overall disappointed with the lack of big-time success from Doge— but dismantling USAID, I think, was massive. And we're just starting to learn how much supposed foreign aid money was actually funding the American left right here at home. So not just getting donor money, getting our money, getting taxpayer money. Those of us, even those of us on the political right, unknowingly through our taxes, we're funding the left-wing ecosystem in the United States, a lot of it flowing through USAID. So under the guise of, oh, we're feeding starving kids in Africa, Africa, when in fact you're actually feeding an NGO in the Washington Beltway who's then acting in a very partisan way against your interest here in the United States and funding your own political opponents. And so I also think there's a lot of criminality to be uncovered there. Thankfully, most of that money has been— has dried up, but, you know, a lot more work to do here. What we're seeing again and again is in so many ways we've been fighting such an unfair battle, such a biased battle, because we on the right generally are fighting with ideas and with our own money, with our own money that we go out and earn. On the left, they have been fighting largely with corporate money, with publicly traded company money, big business money, and they have been— and they've been fighting with censorship, lies, and we now know actual staged events, actual false flag staged events that they created to, to impart upon the public a myth that there is some scourge, widespread scourge of racism in the country, and that Donald Trump and his supporters are part and parcel of that very bigotry. So once you start peeling back this onion, there's just so many layers to it. And Hopefully this is the beginning in this specific case of a lot more indictments out of this Trump DOJ because indictments are a really, really powerful tool, of course, for us finding out the truth and getting to a place where our politics can be honest again and where we can actually argue about ideas and know that we won't be censored and know that we won't be fighting against events that have been financed and staged by our opponents.

It's starting to look like this vast left-wing conspiracy, Steve.

Yeah.

That's right.

I mean, we got the Birnbeck story too with, you know, millions of pages of documents that were hidden and put aside, and now we're, you know, gonna take a year, I guess, to go through it to even see some of them. But, um, you know, it seems like it crosses into the FBI, it crosses into the media. We had even Snopes on this Charlottesville hoax that, that took them until 2024 to finally do a fact check and say, well, actually he didn't say that.

Oh, I have that here. Look at me having that.

Yeah, and but it wasn't until June of 2024 that they came out with that. So, you know, it was well after all the benefit that they could have gotten out of that was juiced completely. And then they come out and say, oh well, you know, let's save our credibility and just throw that in there at the end and say, look, you know, we did the fact check here too. Um, it's ridiculous. And, um, you know, these things are all tied together, right? I don't know if George it would have been nearly the scandal it was if these other things hadn't preceded it.

I was right in the middle of— well, oh, didn't that kick off— be— that kicked off BLM. Yeah, no, it would not have been, Owen. I agree. And I want to congratulate anybody who's listening to this that did not donate to BLM. Congratulations. Honestly, I'm like not even kidding, because your gut told you something and you didn't fall for it. And I'm so proud of you, um, because you have to really be careful. And, you know, we always say you just can't trust or believe anything if you're donate to something, really know what you're donating to. Like, I tend to do it like directly to somebody, um, you know, or to like something smaller, or, you know, just if you, if you know someone that needs help. But these big organizations, the organizations like these big orgs, you got to be really careful. And, you know, you're not getting reparations for the money you lost either. So, and the other thing I just want to put a a point on that was very upsetting to me was, you know, all of these hoaxes, and we knew they were hoaxes. And then to have people that were your friends in real life and they were like, oh, you know, Trump's a racist, his supporters are this and that. And you're like, is that really what you think of me? Like, you think that, you know, I, I'm racist or I would be, you know, in favor of somebody who is like a Nazi sympathizer. It just like made no sense. So they did a great job dividing everybody. And I mean, never again.

That particular thing I think was based on all these people who wrote these anti-racism books like Ibram Kendi and the, you know, D'Angelo woman, where they would essentially redefine racism in a way that basically said if you are white, you're automatically racist. There's nothing you can do about it. You're just part of the problem. And, you know, for a while, a lot of people seem to actually believe that. Like, it was like they actually let that go, and it was all just a, you know, trick on their part. And so ridiculous and racist in itself to say those sorts of things, which is basically saying if you, if you have white skin, that makes you racist. I mean, that is a racist statement.

Yes.

And, and, and then they tried to redefine racism to say, oh, well, if you're a minority, you can't be racist. They started saying, that's prejudice, that's a different thing. And so they, they were trying to just play with words to say that all whites are racist. And it was just so divisive and so harmful to our country. And I really hope we're starting to put a nail into this.

I think we are. I'm going to ask everybody to take an interstitial sip right now because I just want to switch gears for the last 15 minutes because it is Earth Day. And those of you that know me, you also know that this whole wind turbine wind issue is something that is, you know, very close to my soul. Scott Adams helped me with this, um, you know, because I live on the Jersey Shore and they're putting in these turbines in the ocean and we've had well over 100 humpback whales wash up on the coast, like from New York to, you know, south, like through New Jersey, Connecticut also, and then down to— gosh, I forget where it stopped, but You know, 2 whales is a little alarming. 5 whales is like, what? Over 100, you're just like, oh my God. So wind is a problem. And Steve, you, you know, if you could just tell us what's happening, and I would like to talk about this, you know, in the future also, you guys, because it's bigger than you can imagine. But Steve, tell us what, what you're looking into here.

Sure, you bet. So, uh, one of the— I do a lot of documentaries, generally short-form documentaries in the 20-minute range or so. And one of the more successful ones I've done was exposing the wind scam, and it is absolutely a scam. It's called Blown Away. Uh, if you'd like to see it, it's on my cortesinvestigates.com website. I believe it's 20 or 25 minutes long. I did it actually in New Mexico. We do talk about offshore wind as well. It's a scam everywhere, you know, from the, from the valleys to the mountains to the sea. It's, it It's a scam, but we did our very best to expose it and why it's a scam. And what I started with though, 'cause I think it's important and I think this is a way you can grab people, especially if they're not right-wing or don't consider themselves MAGA or America First. What I started with is just how aesthetically unpleasant they are. These are just ugly and they're marring some of the most beautiful landscapes in America. And that was one of the reasons I went to New Mexico is the New Mexico desert is really just spectacular in so many spots and quite unique, you know, a look that you don't find elsewhere in the world, frankly, certainly not in America. And a lot of these wonderful desert landscapes have been completely just polluted, the, the scenery polluted by these windmills. And I found them hideous, first of all, just aesthetically from that standpoint. Once I started to look into the economics of them, right, found out that they don't work at all in terms of a cost-benefit ratio, in terms of the actual energy produced for the cost of building them and maintaining them. They don't make any sense. I mean, absolutely none. So on the economic side. And then lastly, what I started to learn about is the grave environmental harm done by these windmills. And on land, it's primarily about birds. That's most of it. So you've got the aesthetics, the, the, the economics that don't work, and then the, the environmental part. But The, the sea-based windmills, unfortunately, the turbines in the ocean are far worse as far as the environment goes, mainly because you have to do such a disruptive build underneath the surface of the water on the seabed to maintain these giant windmills. And a lot of folks who haven't been close to one don't realize just how big they are. The ones I was filming next to in New Mexico, 200 feet tall. I mean, these are skyscrapers. Yeah, every one of them. Is a skyscraper. And to moor that to the seafloor and to make it stationary in a windy area and to last for at least, you know, they hope a couple of decades. That's the other thing. They don't last long enough to pay for themselves. And we don't know what to do with them, by the way, once they're done. There's nothing environmentally sound to do then with this behemoth of plastic and steel and petroleum, by the way.

Yes.

Which a lot of people don't realize just how much petroleum is necessary to build them, to operate them, to transport them, and, you know, to lubricate them, all of that. And so I, I used Landman. A lot of people know this very popular series Landman. There's a rant by Billy Bob Thornton, and I don't think he is by any stretch a right-winger, but he delivers— his character delivers a rant about how there's nothing clean about windmills in that show that went kind of viral. And so I use that in my documentary as the basis for my documentary, and I, and I go step by step through what he said. And most of the things he said, not all of it, but most of what he said is actually true in terms of his disparaging as an oil man, his disparaging of windmills. And but the reality is, you know, on Earth Day, I think it's a good day for us to be talking about this and to be exposing the fraud because billions and billions of dollars of your money. Okay, we are funding these things. If it were up to the private sector, on a cost-benefit analysis ratio, right, as a regular economic investment to, to, you know, to, uh, greenlight these windmills, they would have never happened, okay? It's only because of massive, massive subsidies from us, from the American taxpayer, uh, for supposedly green reasons that a lot of companies and some really connected individuals have gotten massively wealthy off of this entire boondoggle. They've gotten wealthy by building hideous structures that mar our landscapes and our seascapes that don't provide any real energy benefit. One of the biggest reasons is that they don't work economically, by the way, is because of the redundancy issue. In other words, they have to be backed up, okay, because the wind doesn't always blow, so they have to be backed up. Our power demands are not intermittent with the wind. And what are they backed up by in almost every case? Fossil fuels. They're backed up by hydrocarbons. So because they need to be fully redundant, there's no cost savings. There's actually no environmental savings either. And then, in fact, you know, again, to that third point, they do grave environmental damage in many cases. So I think Americans are starting to wake up to this, thankfully. But on a day like Earth Day, which has been used as a cudgel to sort of beat people over the head of, if you don't believe in our full ridiculous fake green agenda, you somehow don't like flowers and honeybees and rainbows, right? That is, you know, has been the narrative for far too long. We need to wake up about that. And Earth Day is a great time to do it and say, wait a second, a lot of this supposed green agenda, a lot of it is a fraud. And to me, the most fraudulent aspect of it, the most fraudulent, are the windmills. And they're also, to me, again, just the most offensive. We have a beautiful country. Let's not allow these leftists to pollute it any longer with these ridiculous windmills that don't work.

And besides the windmills, Steve, it's like, okay, they, they're constantly breaking. Like, if you see a field of them, there's always a bunch that aren't working. Nobody is like really rushing out to fix these things. And if the— if a blade or a whole turbine is broken, you guys, they bury it in the earth. They're burying these things in the earth and polluting the earth. Also about the animals on land, there's also like, there was a study, you guys don't quote me, this is like directionally accurate 'cause I just can't remember right now, but there's like big wild cats and they aren't mating properly. Like the migration for them and the way they colonize and the way they like go off and do their families, they're all screwed up from the windmills. It's like changed their patterns of everything. So they're not reproducing the way they're supposed to. And I just read something this morning this morning about, um, an island that they're putting these turbines on, and the noise scared off the entire seal population. When the noise from all the drilling and the putting them up stopped, they came back, but now they're like, we don't know what to do. And they're, they're all, they're just all screwed up and confused. They don't know what to do. Um, they're— I'll post that story later. And then I always tell you guys, in the ocean You cannot even believe the size of the crane they have put off my coast here to pile drive the base that goes under the water into the ocean floor so far down. The noise that this thing makes, because they're like pounding it like through the ocean floor and the disruption it causes for everything that lives in the ocean. Like, you know, when you're underwater, the sound, everything's so magnified. All of our sea life has to function by hearing signals to and from each other. If they can't hear it, they don't know how to eat. They don't know where their young are. They don't know how to do anything. So, what's happening with the whales is they're like mapping the ocean floor with like a sonic sound thing, which is making all of the sea life insane. Okay. It's like screaming in your head 24/7. Then they're like with the whales, I've told you before, if you were ever here, is that the calves are being separated from their mothers because the mother can't communicate with the calf and send signals to know where everybody is. They're all getting separated. They're getting turned around in the directions they're supposed to be in. And that's why we've had well over 100 of these majestic, gorgeous whales washing up on the beaches. You know, it's like, what are we doing? In the name of what? And our former governor here, Murphy, uh, He leased our ocean to other countries to do this. So it's like another country is leasing our oceans to put these useless pieces of garbage into our water that are just rusting. They're dropping into the water, they're leaking fuel, and then when they aren't working, like I said, they just— on land, they just dig a hole in our earth and they just are burying them. And it's like a graveyard of— it's so disgusting. So don't ever be fooled by the money grab of environmental issues, you know, and grifts, because it's such BS and they are causing so much damage. You can see I'm passionate about this, Steve. I told you. But it's just— it's the biggest grift and the saddest thing happening. It's killing animals. It's ruining vistas. It's changing the wildlife on land. And also, when you dig those things into the ground, you're also disturbing every ecosystem that lives in the ground right there. The vibration of these things, the sound of these things, it's just wrecking everything. So you guys are like, you go girl! I am so sick of this, I can't even tell you.

So, and I would just throw in, like, amazingly, uh, Michael Moore produced this documentary called Planet of the Humans. He released it on Earth Day 2019, and it talks about a lot of these things too, not just wind but solar and a lot of the other renewable energies. And it kind of makes the case that none of these things really work and that it's really all just a big money grab by all these people. And I think they were just going after those government subsidies and saying, hey, we can just grab a bunch of money, so let's go do it. And, and this is a massive scale. It's like billions and billions, maybe even trillions of dollars that we've spent on this renewable energy that doesn't accomplish Steve, go ahead.

And the good news there, by the way, too, is that we have the alternative, and it's primarily natural gas. The United States is the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. Thank goodness we sit upon oceans of it that we've just been blessed with. And listen, I think other things are going to work in our energy future. Things like geothermal, nuclear obviously should be bigger. So I'm not saying it has to be only hydrocarbons, you know, or fossil fuels. But in terms of fossil fuels, The one that is plentiful, that is clean, that works is natural gas. So, you know, we don't have to rely on these boondoggles in any way. We're just choosing to chase those ridiculous paths when— that's also part of why I went to New Mexico was to make the point that, by the way, we're building these, you know, obnoxious structures that don't work when right beneath those very structures are oceans of natural gas, enough to cleanly, efficiently, domestically power this country. So, you know, we have the near-term answer. And then long-term, again, maybe there's other answers that make sense, but it sure isn't windmills, and certainly not as promoted right now. And I think on Earth Day, it's a good day to be aware and to be vigilant about saying no more of this, and certainly not with our money.

Yeah, and just to tack onto that, same thing with solar. Okay, stop taking up our land with these solar farms. You can be way more creative if you have to use them, you know, lease them out, lease property to people to put them on like your buildings or, you know, there's already structures that are there, put them on there. Don't take up, you know, they're again killing farmland and the whole ecosystem that just lives within our earth by covering it with these things. One hailstorm, all these things break and you have all this wasted land, it's just disgusting, it's ugly, it's pollution. I happen to care, I guess, more than I thought I did, but it really bothers me. It breaks my heart. It just breaks my heart because the other thing I was thinking, you know how people stack up little rocks when they go camping somewhere and they like to make a stack? One day, I don't know, I think it was Periscope about the same time I found Scott Adams 100 years ago, somebody was saying like, don't do that. Like when you lift up a rock, like you're like, oh, I'm on vacation, I'm going to make a stack of little rocks and it's so cute. And then he talked about the whole little environment that lives under that rock, all the little bugs and the little creatures that have been under there for, you know, forever, like making their home and where it goes to. And then we pick it up and move it. And it's like, oh my God, let's just leave everything alone. Like, leave it alone. You know, I don't know. I get crazy. Who knew Earth Day was going to be so triggering for me? So you guys, we have 2 minutes left. And Steve, I can't thank you enough. We really appreciate you coming on with us. And last time we under— you know, we got it. You couldn't be here, but I'm glad you could be here today with us. And you bring such good perspective and you know so much, and it makes Owen and I look a lot better. So that's really nice.

You two don't need to be made to look better. You just are. You're that patriotic I can smart, but no, thank you. Yeah, I missed the last one. I had an emergency appendectomy, which is a really minor surgery. No big deal, thank goodness. But yes, I was, I was in excruciating pain. I would have much rather have been on your show, but I was having a very minor surgery that day, and I'm thrilled to be healthy and with you here today. And it's always just an honor. Scott Adams meant so much to me, to millions and millions of Americans, to this audience, and it was just a privilege of my life to get to meet him. And again, this Charlottesville issue that we talked so much about today is what brought that on. And so I'm thankful for that. I'm not thankful it happened, but I'm thankful that it brought some great people together. And anytime I can be here, I love being here.

And we— I didn't divulge why you weren't here, but you guys, Steve was like, yeah, you know, um, I don't know, I might have to get my appendix out, so I don't know if I'll be able to be on tomorrow. I'm like, Uh, Steve, that's a no. You're so sweet. I was cracking up. But we're so glad you're here today and that we can ask you to come back in the future because you are definitely one of our favorite people here at the Scott Adams School. So with that being said, you guys, it's time to go. Tomorrow, guess who's coming? One of my other favorite people in the whole world, first time on the show, Michael Malice will be here with us. And did you know he was an underwear model? It's true. I'll show you tomorrow. So in the meantime, you guys, we'd like to thank Shelley and Scott Adams for keeping this going. And please go out there and be useful. And on this Earth Day, be extra useful and kind to the Earth. And let's have a closing sip to all of you and to Scott Adams. And Owen Adams and I always appreciate you guys being here. Thank you so much, Owen Adams. Thank you so much.

Thanks, everyone.

Okay guys, to Scott. Thanks Steve.

Be useful.