America's Secrets, REVEALED

Doomscroll 5.4.2025

May 04, 2025

Welcome back to another edition of Doomscroll, your favorite newsletter covering all things digital on the right! Small housekeeping note: Doomscroll will be on another brief hiatus next week while I go to Washington to teach Marco Rubio a thing or two about how to spread yourself super thin and pretend like IT’S ALL GOING TO BE OK. Love you, Marco. Hang in there, buddy!

Ok, joking about the Rubio part but not joking about the hiatus! See you in two weeks. xoxo

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One Question

Thanks to everyone who answered last week’s One Question about social media and mental health! 66.7% of you said yes, as digital operatives we should care about how social media impacts mental health. The rest of you were evenly split between “no” and “not sure.” That’s cool. But as for whether or not it should factor into our media planning, 60% of you said NO. I hear you loud and clear! Here are a few of the comments I got:

I gave up social media for Lent and it was the best decision ever. I’ve only logged on a few times since Easter. IG is weird now.

I think you should pay attention to the verified risks and be wary of them; but, I don't think you ought to be concerned about what Social Media says about social media.
AI is here to stay, let's use it like we use other tools. I am excited about the potential it has!
Social media is garbage (and I love it) but it’s a personal choice. If you don’t like its effect on you or your children then make a change. Not everything needs to be legislated.

Couple notes: I haven’t really written about this yet, but IG HAS GOTTEN WEIRD omg. And not to be all conspiratorial or whatever, but Reels started to get super weird right around the time TikTok went dark for a few hours that one day. It’s like all the weird TikTok-ers flocked to Instagram and I DO NOT LIKE THE RESULT. Also: I agree that not everything needs to be legislated. I doubt that there’s a legislative fix to social media’s influence on our (or kids’) mental health…honestly I think it comes down to parenting. IYKYK.

Ok. This week’s One Question is about War Rooms. Twitter War Rooms, to be exact. Trump has one. The RNC has one. Daniel Cameron now has one. Do you think separate “War Room” accounts on X are now a necessity? Or just an added bonus if you have the staffers and bandwidth?

Be cool and click here

One Quote

One Thought

The above quote is from Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom, who spent hours testifying a couple weeks ago in the Facebook antitrust trial in D.C. According to Systrom, Mark Zuckerberg bought Instagram under the pretense of loving it…and then quickly tried to kill it. The accusation goes to the heart of the government’s case here: That Facebook became a monopoly in the world of social media by buying up its competitors and keeping them squashed under the big ol’ Meta thumb.

Look…does the case look NOT GREAT for Facebook? Kind of. I don’t put anything - and I mean anything - past Mark Zuckerberg. But I also don’t know that it matters. Have American consumers really been deprived of a thriving marketplace just because Facebook acquired Instagram and WhatsApp? Meh. I think we’re all doing just fine. Just a thought!

Who’s Doing What

—The Secret Underworld of Some Sketchy FB Ads

Ok, friends. Let’s go on a bit of an adventure. Over the last several weeks, I’ve been seeing some pretty large ad spends on Facebook by the following pages: Patriotic Opportunity Hub, Patriotic Savants, Freedom Asset Advocates, and Alternative Health Remedies. When I’ve noted these ad spends in the “Who’s Spending Where” section of Doomscroll, I’ve included them as right-leaning because the ad creative is almost entirely pro-Elon Musk, pro-RFK Jr, and pro-Trump. So it made sense. But all along I’ve been scratching my head and wondering: WTF are these ads and who is behind them? Well my fellow doomscrollers, I spent some time digging into it this week. Keep in mind I’m no journo so take everything I report here with a grain of salt. Please. But I think I’ve put together some interesting pieces of a bizarre puzzle. If you’ve made it this far and are still wondering why you should care at all - I’ll get to that later. If you’re convinced this is a waste of time then by all means, skip this. Otherwise, keep reading.

In the last 30 days, Patriotic Savants has spent more than $1.5 million on Facebook ads. Freedom Asset Advocates has spent just over $990,000; Patriotic Opportunity Hub has spent around $874,000; and Alternative Health Remedies has spent right around $116,00. Together, this adds up to almost $3.5 million. That’s a lot of money to spend in 30 days.

I wouldn’t have even known these pages were connected if it weren’t for the sketchy ad creative. They’re all either identical or very similar and link to the same weird videos. What’s more, when you type in the base url of the landing pages into a search bar, they all redirect to other companies. For example: A lot of the ads paid for by Patriotic Opportunity Hub are about NASA and some secret $150 trillion national endowment. The NASA ads lead you to a landing page with a video (more on that in a second), with a base url of https://pro.whydoctorslie.com/, which redirects to https://nutritionandhealing.com/.

.Other urls redirect to a company called The Paradigm Press. The url in the ads by Patriotic Savants and Freedom Asset Advocates also redirects The Paradigm Press. Ads from Alternative Health Remedies go to https://hsionline.com/, so that one is at least straightforward. At this point you may be wondering: “Ok, Amanda, what’s the big deal. How do you actually know these are all connected?” Great question! I’m like, 98% sure these pages and ads are all connected and funded by the same source, but it is a little hard to keep track so let me lay out some evidence in bullets:

The ads link to landing pages that all look alike and feature the same (or very similar) videos.
The urls on ads from each page redirect to the same websites
Also: At the bottom of the landing page for each NASA video is a copyright that has the same address: NewMarket Health Publishing, LLC P.O. Box 913 Frederick, MD 21705.
At the bottom of each landing page for videos about the national endowment is a copyright notice for Paradigm Press, LLC, 1001 Cathedral St., Baltimore, MD 21201.
- Freedom Asset Advocates and Patriotic Savants have the Paradigm Press copyright
- Alternative Health Remedies uses the NewMarket Health Publishing
- Patriotic Opportunity Hub uses both on its landing pages depending on the video topic. This tells me that Paradigm Press and NewMarket Health Publishing are connected. But how?

Here’s my theory: The pages were set up and the ads are all funded by The Agora Companies, a “small publishing outfit” founded in Washington, D.C. in 1978 by Bill Bonner.

The Paradigm Press basically sells subscriptions to a bunch of newsletters authored by one Jim Rickards, who claims to be a financial guru who’s consulted for several presidents and the CIA (could very well be true; who the heck knows!?). A subscription to just one of Rickards’ newsletters (he writes several) costs $5,000 a year. Subscriptions to newsletters published by other editors on the site go for $299 a year.

The Agora Companies makes it difficult to uncover its list of publications. In fact, if you google search “Agora Companies” and click on the wikipedia search result, it actually sends you to an “Agora (disambiguation) page, which is totally not sketchy at all.

Anyway, I tracked down the CEO of the NewMarket Group on LinkedIn and her bio very clearly states that NewMarket Group is part of Agora and owns NewMarket Health Publishing. The NewMarket Health Publishing-related ads, by the way, redirect to two nearly-identical sites: the aforementioned Nutrition and Healing and the Health Sciences Institute. BOTH websites offer memberships at various levels ($199, $148, $89, $74) that unlock content and newsletter subscriptions.

While I can’t say for sure that Paradigm is published by Agora, Rickards and Bonnner definitely know each other. So…..yeah.

Now let’s get to the content of these weirdo videos.

They’re long, they’re weird, and they’re conspiratorial. The NASA videos, while each a little bit different, boil down to this: When the astronauts landed on the moon they saw a flash. Whatever caused the flash holds the key to making astronauts cancer-proof, but NASA has been covering it up ever since and hiding it from the American public. All we have to do to unlock the truth is click through to the aforementioned sites and subscribe to get information that the government is hiding and the mainstream media is ignoring! The national endowment videos, which feature Rickards, all boil down to this: The government has been hiding a $150 trillion endowment that President Trump will unlock as soon as this summer (some ads even say May 3). If you know how to take advantage of this endowment, you could transform your financial life. You could “watch your net worth soar.” The endowment, says Rickards, is enough to pay off the national debt four times over and make millions for every American family. The catch? This endowment won’t be distributed evenly to all citizens - only the ones who know how to take advantage of it. That last part is key because the only way to know how to take advantage is by investing in five companies - identified by Rickards alone - that will explode once Trump unlocks the endowment. To get the names of the five companies you just have to, you guessed it, pay for a monthly Rickards newsletter that will give you the names and ticker symbols of the five companies. And oh yeah, he specifically calls out the 50+ age group.

And if you’re wondering what the endowment actually IS…it’s not like, gold bricks sitting in Ft. Knox. It’s $150 trillion worth of natural mineral reserves. And Trump is only now able to unlock it because the Chevron Doctrine was overturned.

Whew! This is a lot of weird information, but someone had to put this together. And since I nominated myself, I feel like I gotta deliver. That said, even I started to wonder if all this digging around was just a massive waste of time.

Like, what does it matter? People run sketchy ads all the time, right? Well, yes…but these are extra sleazy in my opinion.

It’s extra sleazy to prey on the over-50 age group with promises about how to live cancer-free and how to create generational wealth before it’s too late (aka you kick the bucket). These videos, the people in them, and the companies producing them are using Trump and Elon Musk to spin outrageous conspiracy theories to get Americans to fork over thousands of dollars to get access to what will surely be even MORE dubious content. And as digital operatives, we should ALWAYS care about bad actors in our space - bad actors who are attempting to dupe voters into giving away their money. Not only is it seriously unethical, but it also makes our job as online fundraisers that much harder if we’re competing against sleazy companies that have way more ad dollars to spend to go after the same donors we’re going after. Is Joan going to donate to Mike Lawler if she just spent $5,000 on a Paradigm Press subscription? I…don’t know?

And sadly, it’s clearly working for them. No one is going to drop $3.5 million on Facebook ads in 30 days if it wasn’t profitable. Anyway, I still can’t say with 100% certainty that The Agora Company is behind all these ad campaigns. But it kinda looks that way. Oh and I should say for the record that I DID reach out to Paradigm and that NewMarket Health CEO. Neither got back to me, but if I can dig anything else up, I’ll report back!

Who’s Spending Where

Facebook

Google

P2P

This week’s P2P shout-out goes to Sen. Tom Cotton. This is, in my opinion, just a really good example of doing basic P2P and doing it well. No gimmicks. No guilt trips. No pre-checked boxes. Just well-written copy and straight to the point. Nicely done.

Industry Watch

💰 Interesting nugget from Google’s Q1 earnings report:

Google Search continues to be Alphabet’s revenue anchor. It’s the company’s largest ad segment, and its revenue grew almost 10% year over year to $50.7 billion, slightly ahead of the Street’s estimates.

📊 Study up on those Threads analytics! Go here.

🤖 LMAO: Here’s how NOT to use AI… Embarrassing…

2025-2026 Watch

Will Scott Jennings run for Senate in Kentucky? Maybe?
An early survey of the South Dakota GOP gubernatorial primary shows a dead heat between U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson and incumbent Gov. Larry Rhoden.
According to Larry Sabato, Arizona and Michigan are the two toss-up gubernatorial races to watch next year.
Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann is running for governor in Wisconsin.
Some VERY EARLY new polling in the Texas Senate primary race has Sen. Cornyn down 17 points against Ken Paxton.
Speaking of heated primaries, the NRSC is trying to avoid them at all costs…

The Grapevine

Hate it when Mom and Dad are fighting…Read the NYT about the bad blood between Speaker Johnson and Rep. Elise Stefanik.
Dems still can’t get over their 2024 loss. In his NYT essay, Rob Flaherty blames it on Democrats losing their ability to influence culture. Groan. Give me a break, Rob!
The Columbia Journalism Review profiled Alex Bruesewitz.

Got a tip for The Grapevine? Job announcement? Job opening? Email ‘em to me at itsthedoomscroll@gmail.com

Last But Not Least

From the other side of the aisle:

How do you get Dem activists excited in 2025? Apparently you live stream a virtual town hall with four of America’s most out-of-touch, boring AF liberal governors. While MeidasTouch is celebrating the heck out of the event it hosted on Tuesday, I didn’t see it make any news…unless I’m just missing something? And yes, I did try to watch the recording with Govs. JB Pritzker (IL), Maura Healey (MA), Kathy Hochul (NY), and Tim Walz (MN), and I barely made it 5 mins.

I don’t know. I found it boring, but maybe their stats are worth a look: 312,00 views and 1,625 comments ain’t too bad. Unless of course, you have 4.78 million subscribers, which means only about 6% of them actually tuned in. Are we considering that to be good these days?

P.S. Here is where I remind everyone that Governor JB Pritzker removed all the toilets from his second mansion in order to avoid paying taxes. Yes, it’s a true story.

From the other side of the tracks:

Who says you can’t use tariffs to your advantage? Below is an ad I got on Instagram this week from Caraway. Pretty smart to tell consumers they better buy NOW before prices go up…