A new Taylor Lorenz story in Wired reveals details of a “dark money” operation founded to bolster progressive creators — and, in response, left-wing influencers are defensively claiming they’re not being bought. Lorenz and others are also spreading a powerful new strain of copium: it doesn’t matter what democratic dark money is doing, they argue, because Republicans have done the same (and worse!) for “decades.”

In Wired, after detailing how the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a progressive nonprofit, is paying some influencers up to $8,000/month to “push the party line,” Lorenz claims “Republicans have spent decades building up a powerful independent media ecosystem.” She provides just two examples: Tenet Media’s genuinely corrupt scheme to pay right-of-center podcasters like Tim Pool and Dave Rubin, and a half-a-million-dollar GOP operation with Creator Grid to “[connect] Republican candidates with the internet’s most powerful conservative influencers” in 2024.

Lorenz and her article’s subjects, like Brian Tyler Cohen, believe a shadowy conspiracy of conservative donors beat liberals to the punch. Harry Sisson has, predictably, echoed the same claim: “Republicans have been doing this on their side for years and nobody said anything.”