Stephanie Ruhle: Exclusive reporting from NBC News. Linking a Chinese spiritual group, footing the bill for some of the biggest pro-Trump advertising on Facebook, the Epoch Times has spent more than 1.5 million dollars on 11000 pro-Trump advertisements in the last six months alone. Put that in perspective, that is more than any organization outside the Trump campaign itself, even more than most Democratic presidential candidates have spent on their own campaigns. Joining me now, the reporters who broke this extraordinary story, NBC's Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny. I'm gonna start with this. What?!
Ben Collins: Yeah, it's wild, I know, it's a very wild story, but here's the deal. so, there is this group called Falun Gong and they run this thing called The Epoch Times. If you are over, but based on ad target, if you're over 50 on Facebook, you probably got one of these ads. In fact, you may have gotten in the mail, they send out physical mailers talking about the Deep State and talking about how Hillary Clinton is part of a cabal sort of taking over the government. They are I would say pretty much everywhere and their end goal of the spiritual group, is to bring about a Judgment Day that will pit communists and send communists to Hell and anyone who's sympathetic to them to heaven, and they think that Donald Trump is the guy helping bring that out.
Brandy Zadrozny: What's interesting about this too, is that in the age of Trump, you know, we have seen grifters pop up everywhere.
Stephanie Ruhle: With this kind of money?
Brandy Zadrozny: Well, this is the thing. So, it looks like a regular conservative outlet because it just keeps getting crazier and crazier the regular conservative ecosystem. But when you look behind it, you see it's nonprofit. So, the Falun Gong has several media arms. One is the Epoch Times which is this. One is NTD TV, which is their television production company which they make tons of weird interviews, and they do YouTube shows. And the other is Shen Yun which you've ever been anywhere. You've seen these ubiquitous advertisements for a dance troupe that looks like a traditional…
Stephanie Ruhle: Yeah.
Ben Collins: Yes.
Brandy Zadrozny: This is actually aligned with them as well. So, that's their media arm and they represent Epoch Times as the, you know, the new conservative player on the block, but really this is a decades old media arm of an anti-Chinese government propaganda outlet.
Stephanie Ruhle: What does Facebook have to say about this? Say, “we looked it as a different industry”, say “this was investment banking”. And some foreign company that you didn't know calls up and says, “Yep! I wanna do a massive transaction with you, and pay you millions of dollars.”The bank would have to say, “We're gonna do a deep investigation in knowing your client before I take your money. ”Facebook?
Ben Collins: Yeah. It's a really good point and we thought about this too. All of this dark money, we don't even know how they're getting the money, right? We've done, we’ve investigated this for five months, we still don't really know where this money is coming from.
Stephanie Ruhle: And what does Facebook say?
Ben Collins: They don't have an answer to the sort of thing.
Brandy Zadrozny: If you have money, it’s because of the ads space. They really react to negative press. So, you know, if we say, “Look, this is a violation of your advertising policies”, then Facebook will usually bat it down. Facebook has, if you look at their ad archive, they have batted down a lot of the Epoch Times advertisements. But, generally, overall, they accept pretty much anybody who's willing to come to the table with money.
Stephanie Ruhle: The shift began in 2016 and we're seeing it kick up again, is it because of the Election?
Ben Collins: Oh, it's definitely because of the election, and this is not gonna stop. When there are large political moments, they step up. In fact, after the Muller Report dropped, that week afterwards, they were a top 10 advertiser on all of Facebook. Not political advertiser, but advertiser like Exxon Mobile, was next to them in this list.
Stephanie Ruhle: Is there any coordination or acknowledgment with Brad Parscale or President Trump's reelection campaign team?
Brandy Zadrozny: I think again what we're going to find is that the Trump campaign will align itself with whoever's going to pay and put eyeballs on their message. So, they have Lara Trump had an interview, a 40-minute interview, the president's daughter-in-law with one of the editors of with the senior editor of the Epoch Times in Trump Tower recently. They were at CPAC interviewing everybody from Candice Owens to sitting congressman. They are a big player on the block now, and nobody knows what's behind.
Ben Collins: Yeah. The President's Facebook page shared their content 6 times. Donald Trump Jr. shared them a couple times as well. So, this is they are ingrained in that campaign and trying to ingratiate themselves into it. We'll see if that's actually happens.
Stephanie Ruhle: You spoke to former reporters there, what they tell you?
Brandy Zadrozny: Well, that was really interesting. So, usually the people that are working there are just Falun Gong volunteers. So, there are people that practice the religion or the spiritual movement, and they also work for the Paper. That's part of their spirituality they have to volunteer their time there. But in 2016, the Epoch Times did a really interesting thing and they decided to hire from outside, so they brought in seven new reporters that didn't practice. They put them in a locked room away from the rest of the newspaper staff and they had them turn out article. So, one of the former reporters said that it was almost like a Russian troll farm. So, that's what's happening behind the scene here. I'm so curious about what their tactic is for 2020.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdSFaR2Tll8
