Lid Blown Off USAID COVID Censorship Machine [WATCH]

A recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience took aim at the federal government’s role in the COVID-era information crackdown, with guest Mike Benz revealing that U.S.-backed organizations coordinated a sweeping global censorship effort that impacted thousands of media outlets and journalists around the world.

Benz, a former State Department official and current director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, outlined the scale of a U.S.-funded project called “Rooted in Trust,” describing it as part of a massive information control campaign coordinated during the pandemic.

“Okay, so this is Internews with a worldwide media octopus sponsored a half a billion dollars a year, you know, reaching 9,000 journalists, 5,000 media outlets,” Benz told Rogan.

“And here’s what they were doing, just on COVID censorship. So Rooted in Trust is an Internews program. It’s a global pandemic information response program to counter the unprecedented scale and speed and spread of rumors and misinformation.”

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Rogan responded bluntly: “All of which turned out to be true.”

Benz agreed: “All of which turned out to be true. Our own CIA says that, our own House Oversight Committee says that now.”

The conversation then shifted to the long list of COVID narratives that were aggressively suppressed but later validated. Rogan didn’t hold back.

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“Every single step of the way. There’s not one thing they said that turned out to be accurate,” Rogan said.

“Not the death rate, not the ability to stop infections and transmissions, not the side effects, not the fact that natural immunity is far superior, none of it, not—nothing. Not one thing. Not the lab leak theory, nothing. Not even the funding of the research and the actual lab, which was also USAID, right?”

“Yes, yes,” Benz replied.

“$50 million dollars,” Rogan added.

“Right. Right. From UC Davis to EcoHealth directly into—,” Benz continued before emphasizing the role of U.S. foreign aid agencies in funding controversial research abroad.

“But yeah, because I always say, when it’s too dirty for the CIA, you give it to USAID, and that’s why you have all this pandemic stuff.”

Benz then returned to highlighting the vast scope of the censorship efforts coordinated under Rooted in Trust.

“This USAID-sponsored project has tracked more than 19,000 rumors about the virus across 14-plus languages globally,” he said.

“Over 81 million people in response to the unique rumors sourced from each country context. This USAID-sponsored project has produced a total of over 130 rumor bulletins, 500 radio broadcasts and 480 media stories through a series of training opportunities, events, peer-to-peer networks, and small grants. Rooted in Trust has supported 550 local media organizations in order to scan and ban the internet.”

Mike Benz show proof on Joe Rogan that American taxpayers paid for both the Covid Pandemic and our own Covid Censorship with USAID money

“I always say when it’s too dirty for the CIA, you give to USAID”

“This is Internews with a worldwide media octopus sponsored a half a… pic.twitter.com/cqSKC3nXc6

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The revelations on Rogan’s show add to growing scrutiny over U.S. involvement in both the origin of COVID-19 and the widespread suppression of dissenting medical views.

Congressional committees continue to investigate federal agency funding and coordination with private platforms and media outlets during the pandemic.

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