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Notes -
Project Veritas published another video that has gone on to have millions of views, but no media is willing to touch it - even Daily Mail deleted its article about it within hours.
I thought there'd be some coverage here, but apparently... ? It's a very CW event I believe.
Gist of it is, some affirmative action double minority hire (both gay and black) MD working for Pfizer under the lofty sounding but probably not that important position of "Pfizer Director, Research & Development Strategic Operations for mRNA scientific planning"
got slightlyy drunk with his Grindr date and said a good bunch of plausible seeming stuff, ranging from gosh, the revolving door between regulators and Pfizer is kinda unethical, but good for us to saying Pfizer is considering doing its own gain-of-function research to come up with better vaccines via either serial passage or something else. Give it a watch if you're interested, I think he wasn't making it up.
Then PV met up with him again, and showed him a tablet with the captured video. He said he had made all of that up to impress his date. (doubtful).
The second video is probably more interested for people who like "public freakouts" as the guy first acts like a bad gay stereotype, and later as a black one, at one point trying to destroy PV's tablet.
Interesting is that people like Majid Nawaaz were seen coming up with 12d chess theories about how this is an op to discredit Veritas and that the guy was a plant.
People have saved his Linked in before it got deleted and videos of him from schools he had attended according to his linked in, so if it's an op, it's an improbably good one.
EDIT: youtube took down the videos, still up on twitter.
1st vid: https://twitter.com/Project_Veritas/status/1618420826986123265 (the date one)
2nd vid: https://twitter.com/Project_Veritas/status/1618748408982040576 (confrontation in someone's restaurant and the freakout)
EDIT:
pfizer responds: https://www.pfizer.com/news/announcements/pfizer-responds-research-claims
They say they aren't doing serial passage / gain of function but are merely putting new spikes on the original virus in vitro, in an effort to see whether the vaccine still does something against new variants. I feel normies won't like this one bit.
They also say that they're doing "in vitro resistance selection experiments are undertaken in cells incubated with SARS-CoV-2 and nirmatrelvir in our secure Biosafety level 3 (BSL3) laboratory".
So, it does seem like the guy is an idiot who talked about stuff they admit they were doing, of which he doesn't know enough about and which seems mostly reasonable, and then completely fucked up by adding in his own speculation about what they could do.
I'd say the video is most notable for seeing how absolutely blasé insiders can be about corruption and conflicts of interest. I guess if you have med school debts to pay off, chortling about how 'covid and covid vaccines are going to be great for the company' comes naturally ?
His admission that Pfizer is in bed with its regulators is important. That’s not something that people make up to brag about on dates, it’s actually the opposite. No one brags about their company being corrupt to a gay liberal on a date, neither would they say that they think Covid leaked from the Wuhan lab. This makes me strongly believe he wasn’t lying about his first claim, either.
I don’t know what Pfizer’s defense will be. “You don’t understand, our director of global research was a token diversity hire” is not something that can be transmitted on CNN.
Even if we were to interpret his remarks as “the idea came up in a meeting for fun but was shut down”, his statement on Pfizer being corrupt is super important!
"This is coming from a group of hucksters that have been proven to be lying multiple times," and then link to the various takedowns. Sure, it won't convince right-wing entertainers on Twitter or anti-vax folks, but Pfizer doesn't care about that.
That will in all likelihood be the response, but what specifically has Veritas lied about?
It depends on what you consider a "lie". Two potential examples come to mind with the first being an ACORN lawyer, Juan Carlos Vera, who took down information about the (fake) sex trafficking coming in through Tijuana and immediately reported it to law enforcement. Even after this information came out, O'Keefe still kept implying that Vera was indeed an enthusiastic participant in sex trafficking. The second example comes from the NPR sting, where Veritas used deceptive editing to imply that NPR executives were very eager to accept a $5 million donation from a Sharia group in exchange for coverage input.
Huh?
The edited Veritas video portrays the same thing as the unedited Veritas video: NPR exec clearly states that they won't let a donation influence their coverage, but also NPR exec is totally sympathetic with and yes-manning this guy. That's even visible in the takedown video you linked.
Maybe I overlooked something, but where does the edited Veritas video show the NPR exec stating they won't let a donation influence their coverage?
Around 9 minutes in: https://www.projectveritas.com/video/npr-muslim-brotherhood-investigation-part-i/
The point Veritas is conveying with this part of the video is not at all that NPR will shade their coverage - that's something your video is claiming via a deceptive edit. The actual point Veritas is trying to make is very clear since they print it at the top of the screen in big capital letters:
Begin my transcript of the Veritas video itself:
Sharia guy: "I'm not too upset about maybe a little bit less Jew influence of money into NPR. The Zionist coverage is quite substantial elsewhere"
NPR guy: "I don't actually find it at NPR."
Sharia guy: "What, exactly?"
NPR guy: "The zionist or pro-Israel even among funders. No. I mean it's there in those who own newspapers obviously but no one owns NPR. I don't find it."
Paraphrased capital letters above caption, i.e. what Veritas wants you to notice: "JEWS OWN THE NEWSPAPERS OBVIOUSLY"
Sharia guy: "I just think what Israel does I don't think can be excused, frequently, so I'm glad to hear this."
NPR guy: "Even one of our biggest funders who you'll hear on air, the American Jewish World Service, may not agree with us. I visited with them recently. They may not agree with what we put on the air but they find us important to them. And sometimes it's not easy to hear what we have to say and what our reporters think, but they still think NPR is important to support. Right because I think they are really looking for a fair point of view and many Jewish organizations are not."
Paraphrased capital letters: "MANY JEWISH ORGS NOT LOOKING FOR A FAIR POINT OF VIEW"
Your anti-Veritas video edited that part out.
NPR guy: "Frankly, I'm sure there are Muslim organizations that are not looking for a fair point of view. They're looking for a very particular point of view and that's fine." (I wonder - is he about to draw a parallel to the thing he said a few seconds ago?)
Muslim guy interrupting: "We're not one of them."
NPR exec: "I'm gathering that you're not, actually."
The paraphrased capital letters clearly indicate what Veritas wants you to take away: NPR guy will say antisemitic things for the chance at a donation, but they won't bias their coverage for donations from Jews or <didn't get to finish that thought because this potential donation doesn't want biased coverage>.
And if you watch the full video you get the broader point being made: NPR guy hates the tea party and white Republicans, but he's totally cool with Muslim Brotherhood guy and admits Jews control the newspapers.
I really sincerely appreciate that you took the time to research this fairly. The transcripts you provide are accurate but I'm not sure how they're relevant to this point. The overarching insinuation is that NPR is biased towards Palestine/Muslims and against Israel/Jews, so it's neither notable nor surprising for the NPR execs to deny that Jewish funders affect the coverage. That's perfectly in line with the suspicion that NPR is heavily biased in favor of Palestine (which I don't think is at all unreasonable). The full context here would be to include all the times that NPR execs deny that any donor can influence coverage. The fact that Veritas excluded the six denials about all donors from the edited video but chose to include the laugh line about National Palestinian Radio appears to have been done deliberately in order to leave the viewer with the impression that their "donors don't affect coverage" line only applies in one direction.
This is another example of the deceptive editing. The full unedited Veritas video is 2 hours long and is still available here. At the 2:34 mark of the edited video, the NPR exec is portrayed as disclosing that he personally believes Republicans are intensely racist. The full video at the 33:30 mark shows him explicitly stating that he's relaying what someone else, a top Republican donor, believes. Maybe the NPR exec is lying and just using a fictitious sockpuppet to launder his own beliefs, but if that's the suspicion, why not let the audience decide instead of just editing the ambiguity out?
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This is next level -- selective editing on interviews to make the interviewer look bad?
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