Blonde's statement:
https://x.com/Blondes_tweets/status/1847851545049911648
https://nitter.poast.org/Blondes_tweets/status/1847851545049911648
Matt's (sorta) response:
https://x.com/MLChristiansen/status/1847852591868531091
https://nitter.poast.org/MLChristiansen/status/1847852591868531091
If you don't know, the Matt and Blonde Show was a weekly (briefly twice weekly) show going over a handful of noteworthy news stories for the week. Matt Christiansen hosted it on his channel, and it was co-hosted by Blonde. Matt's more of a borderline-autistic conservative, while Blonde is burn-this-shit-down reactionary, so they had a pretty interesting dynamic. One disassembles and analyzes a story, the other just rips it to shreds.
You may also have heard of Matt from the recent Tenet drama, since he was one of the channels under them. As an independent channel, he was always a very thorough investigator, and meticulous about sourcing his arguments. His work was practically spotless, which made it hard for anyone to smear him until the Tenet thing happened.
We'll have to wait until tomorrow to hear Matt's side apparently. Normally I'd back him immediately, but being involved in a phony federal investigation is the kind of pressure that makes most people crack, especially when they have something to lose.
TL;DR: Blonde says she'd have to pull back on important topics for her (likely race and failing democracy) for somewhat unclear reasons, and chose to leave the show instead, Matt says he'd word it differently. It's all very vague as of yet.
Former regular watcher starting during COVID and falling off the last few years due to the length of the show and the tired format.
There's really not much info provided in either party's statement.
Blonde already had one foot out the door a year ago when pregnant with her 2nd child and Matt announced his deal with Tenet. They canceled their Wednesday call-in show they'd done for years to be replaced by Matt's solo "Matt Christiansen Hour" for Tenet with his grating Aussie producer Tim. The show did not perform well. Blonde & Matt continued to do their usual Sunday news show.
When Tenet collapsed, Blonde returned and they went back to twice weekly shows (I haven't watched any since Tenet's demise).
Matt has always been the straight man, doing all the show prep, dealing with sponsors, booking guests, hosting the show on his channel, doing the IT stuff, etc. Blonde is the firebrand, based, politicaly incorrect co-host with the pretty face that simply shows up.
Another problem is that their life situations have changed since the start of the show. Blonde lives in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Matt lives in Bozeman, Montana.
They've only met in person on a handful of occasions IRL. The show started around the time of Trump’s initial run in 2016. At the time, Rebecca was a single, recovering alcoholic, Lauren Southern-style shock jock right-leaning twenty something babe living in Seattle, originally from St. Louis, MO with an Economics degree and working a finance job she hated.
Matt was a recovering leftist working in ?Portland, OR for some leftist org, making CoD videos as skagg_3.
Matt was single. Rebecca helped him vet dating profiles, eventually meeting his current wife Ping2 and mother to his ?two children (there was also a miscarriage at some point).
Matt's brother ?Wade was a vet who committed suicide with a firearm in the Main St of his town. Matt lived in his dead brother's house and streamed out of it for years until his family got too big and recently sold it.
Blonde is a practising Catholic (tho her hubby might not be). Matt is an agnostic who recently took an interest in Christianity through weekly online Bible study sessions.
Blonde has got married and had two children since starting the show. She quit her finance job long ago and is a SAHM. She's well into her 30s, is sober and is well past her conservathot days.
Blonde does do sporadic hour long interviews with people she finds interesting on her own channel that somehow isn't banned (Owen Benjamin, Gavin McInnes, Radfem Hitler, Ramzpaul, etc). She seems to be able to pull guests based on her looks. The knock has always been that she's lazy and inconsistent as a creator on her own, particularly as a mom now.
Matt is consistent like a Swiss watch. He does two live shows and two videos a week. He's well researched, trustworthy and boring. He hasn't really changed the style of his content much over the last 8 years. His videos are well produced but get fairly low views. His entire income comes from his YT content.
I don't know how well Matt will do on his own. He's hardworking, but a slave to routine and pretty dry on his own. His livestream audience didn't seem to follow him to Tenet. Part of this was because subscribing to his shows there required being bombarded with the rest of the mishmash of slop from the other 5 creators.
Some of it was that his Aussie producer Tim was nice but awful to listen to and didn't add much to the product. Matt, while philosophical, fair and well read, simply isn't willing to be as edgy and avant-garde as Blonde. Which means a lot of his content isn't that different from the rest of Con Inc.
Very useful summary. I like Matt from what little I've heard of him in the post-Tenet interviews, seems more principled and less retarded than some of the rest of the conserva-sphere, but this video on SIDS was the first vid I've ever seen from her and it's clear from both the topic of the video and bits like 9m45s that she is not YT friendly.
I suspect these parts cut to the root of the issue and are the final-straw factors behind the reported pay disputes discussed further up:
He is running a dissident political channel that is heavily reliant on a captured, censored, hostile media platform. She's more based, is less connected to his audience and could take or leave the show. Intriguingly, that SIDS video is the last example of her content which isn't a livestream.
Seems less about money than it was about patience - he'd lost patience with a lesser contributing partner, she'd lost patience with tailoring her contributions to a censored show, so any pay dispute is just a cloaked opportunity for them both to announce their exhausted patience.
It is, in my opinion, not very wise, umm, not very a lot of things to put your newborn's picture on YouTube. They can't consent to that. And you can't take it back.
But I'm very, very careful with pictures. I've had people tell me they can't find recent pictures using my real name. SO maybe other people disagree.
On the topic, the people who roll over their babies and kill them are drugged or they have some sort of medical problem. Those particular cases aren't the result of a syndrome, as commonly understood. It's just drunk, tired, and retarded people.
It's actually a similar thing that happened with Dev and Scrumpmonkey.
ShortFatOtaku got his channel demonetized because Scrumpmonkey blurted out Power Word Nigger in a broadcast. It completely fucked Dev over and caused a fallout with Scrump. I'm also fairly sure Scrump didn't earn a majority of the money nor did he do a majority of the tech work and SFO did most of it. And, just like the above situation, SFO needed the money. Scrump probably has a career outside of YT and doesn't need it. Same problem.
The "firebrand with moderate" schtick doesn't work in the YouTube spaec because of the censorious media. The "firebrand" only worked because she had her golden parachute in her husband she could scab off of, while Matt was trying to build a career off of making this show work.
There's a pretty obvious reason why the lady doesn't want to present her side. If any of what Matt said is correct, people would instantly be going "...oh."
https://kotakuinaction2.win/p/1994kCXymm/pretty-wild-tenet-media-owned-by/c/
TL; DR - Tenet Media was a multichannel network startup from 2023 signing up six American conservative personalities (Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, Benny Johnson, Tayler Hansen, Lauren Southern, Matt Christiansen) to produce YT content for their new channel.
It was silently run by Lauren Chen and her husband. It was always somewhat suspect because it had relatively big names producing slick content with very low engagement.
The DOJ blew the lid off it a few months back revealing that the channel was financially backed by thinly veiled Russian glowies. Payments immediately stopped and the channel folded. Lauren Chen isn't charged but has gone into hiding, completely radio silent.
All the front facing US creators claim ignorance. The DOJ seems to agree they didn't know and no one has been formally charged.
The problem is this was an ideologically driven attack on the right wing conservative media space. You know the DOJ only does it because it serves the deep state. Having these big conservative channels fly around like that that can automatically counter the mainstream left wing narrative is a threat to their status.
That also begs the question, why hasn't the DOJ attacked Russia Today for existing?
He's hosed without her. She's jumping ship before the feds take everything. Probably diming to them behind his back.