Podcaster Tim Pool is part of a new generation of young conservative media personalities effectively radicalizing their cohorts.
On Tuesday, just two weeks before the election, he strongly hinted that he’s calling it quits.
In his surprise announcement, Pool claimed that he needs to focus on his family (which doesn’t yet exist), and it’s all the fault of his shitty staff members who were stealing from him anyway.
He also lays blame on his crew:
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“It’s not a financial thing. We make a lot of money.”
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“The structure [of the business] becomes bigger and bigger and bigger until it becomes impossible to manage.”
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“Compounding [employee] laziness that builds up over time which adds more workload for me.”
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“There aren’t enough people to make the studio operate. I’m Sisyphus.”
That $100,000 per week is equal to $5.2 million in lost annual revenue. Given his staff of 30, it makes sense that he couldn’t keep things going without all those rubles.
Pool likely won’t disappear completely. He’s got a massive platform, and he’ll continue finding ways to milk the rubes in his audience. But it sure was easier for him when hostile foreign powers were funding his toxic rhetoric.
The answer to all of this is: hire better people, of course—particularly if money is no problem. But that’s where he’s likely lying.
Remember, just a few weeks ago, his Putin gravy train dried up. It turns out Pool was being paid $100,000 per week by Russia for his propaganda.
In fact, the Department of Justice indictment itself shows that the right-wing commentators couldn’t survive without the Russian subsidy. “Founder-1” is Lauren Chen, founder of the company Tenet that funneled the Russian cash to the right-wingers. “Persona-I” was her Russian contact/funder. “Commentator-1” is Dave Rubin and “Commentator-2” is Pool. We can deduce this because on page 2 of the indictment it lists their YouTube subscribers and we can match them up (2.4 million and 1.3 million, respectively).
Founder-I cautioned that "from a profitability standpoint, it would be very hard for Viewpoint [i.e., the initial public-facing name of the new venture] to recoup the costs for the likes of [Commentator-I] and [Commentator-2] based on ad revenue from web traffic or sponsors alone." Despite Founder-1's warning that Commentator-I and Commentator-2 would not be profitable to employ, on or about February 14, 2023, Persona-I informed Founder-I that "[w]e would love to move forward with [Commentator-I and Commentator-2]."
