Con Ink. (Part Three)

That's K-A-T-I-E-C-O-U-R-I-C dot. com. slash goodtaste. I promise your taste buds will be happy you did.

I'm Jacob Goldstein. I used to host Planet Money. Now, I'm starting a new show. It's called What's Your Problem? Every week on What's Your Problem, entrepreneurs and engineers describe the future they're going to build.

once they solve a few problems. I'm talking to people trying to figure out how to do things that no one on the planet knows how to do, from creating a drone delivery business to building a car that can truly drive itself. Listen to What's Your Problem on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Ben Nadifafri, host of the history show, The Last Archive, and I want to tell you about a new series we're running in our feed. It's called The Deadline. Six essays written and read by Jill Lepore, the New Yorker writer, American historian, and founding host of our show. These are incredible essays on everything from the history of cryogenics to the Silicon Valley gospel of disruption. And at the end of each essay, I interview Jill about her craft as a writer.

You can listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

My name is Michael Wolff. Each week on Fire & Fury, the podcast, I take you deeper into the mind of Donald Trump and his campaign than any other journalist ever goes. I've written three books on Trump, but for some reason, the people around him, they keep on talking to me. To find out what they tell me, listen to Fire & Fury, the podcast, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. From tips for healthy living to the latest medical breakthroughs, WebMD's Health Discovered podcast keeps you up to date on today's most important health issues.

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Previously, on Red Pilled America. Young Eliza Armstrong had been kidnapped.

Steed decided that he himself would try to purchase a young girl as a sex slave. Some of Steed's friends believe that Steed had indulged at one time in the very crimes that he'd been working to expose. So for 100 years after W.T. Steed's 1885 exposé, the concept of human sex trafficking was often weaponized to serve secondary agendas. Sex trafficking is the slavery of the 21st century.

For years, we've tried to produce a story on the topic of human sex trafficking. We decided to shelve the story. We were slowly beginning to sense that this was a topic we needed to enter with caution.

I'm Patrick Kuraltschi. And I'm Adriana Cortez. And this is Red Pilled America, a storytelling show. This is not another talk show covering the day's news. We're all about telling stories.

Stories. Hollywood doesn't want you to hear. Stories. the media mocks. Stories about everyday Americans that the globalists ignore.

You can think of Red Pilled America as audio documentaries, and we promise only one thing.

The truth.

Welcome to Red Pilled America.

We're at part three of our series of episodes entitled Con Inc. If you haven't heard parts one and two, stop and go back and listen from the beginning. We're looking for the answer to the question, what's the purpose of conservative media? By chronicling our long search for a story about human sex trafficking.

So to pick up where we left off, in 2019, we started to come to the conclusion that the topic of human sex trafficking was a bit of a minefield. Adriana and I hadn't yet fully articulated that viewpoint, but I think it's safe to say that we both started to get a bit more hesitant at entering the topic. We'd spent a considerable amount of time pursuing two different sex trafficking stories. The first was about a guy who'd released a movie on the subject, and the second published a book on her experience as an alleged sex slave. We ultimately had to shelve both stories.

The lack of detail, the ability to corroborate, and a few other red flags made it so that they just didn't meet our standards for broadcast.

That said, we were still determined to find a sex trafficking story to use as a vehicle to inform our audience on the topic. So we kept our eyes open, looking for another angle. A few years later, one arrived.

Hi everyone, my name is Eliza and I'm a survivor advocate for those affected by human trafficking. I'm also a survivor of human trafficking. It's hard to pinpoint now exactly how she first landed on our radar, but what we definitely remember is that all of a sudden, she seemed to be everywhere.

I got a special guest for y'all today. I'm so excited to have this gal on the pod today. She is an advocate for those who have been sex trafficked. Joining us today is survivor advocate. She is an advocate for survivors of human trafficking.

She went by the moniker.

. Ms. Eliza Blue. Eliza Blue. Eliza Blue.

And she was popping up on some of the biggest right-of-center podcasts around. Eliza Blue referred to herself as a survivor advocate, a term used within the human trafficking arena to denote someone that has survived being sex trafficked. It should not go without being said that the term was obviously borrowed from the term Holocaust survivor. Eliza's path to becoming a so-called survivor was unique in many ways. I'm a farm girl from the United States of America.

That's Eliza Blue. in a September 2020 episode of the Tough Love podcast. Her story seemed rare because of her upbringing. Many have conjured up a vision of sex trafficking victims as people that come from broken homes. That wasn't the case for Eliza Blue.

Her and her sister are the products of two seemingly happily married parents who had considerable resources at their disposal. Eliza grew up on a farm that has been in the family for generations, and it reportedly spans hundreds of acres. By her telling, there was no abuse in her household, just joy. She loved her family. But from a very young age, some would say before even most children's memories have even began to form, Eliza recalls feeling like she had bigger things in store for her future.

I always had big dreams. I think I wanted to leave the farm. about, I don't know, age three. I started thinking I had bigger, I had bigger plans in my head. at age three.

I was homeschooled, so I was at a disadvantage in the way where I didn't really understand how the world worked. I didn't understand that evil really is out there. But she was eager to explore the world.

By the time she got her driver's permit in the mid-1990s, Eliza says she started going to punk rock concerts. And at the Vans Warped Tour in Chicago, Illinois, I met a photographer that said that he wanted to make me a star and he thought that I had the potential to have a modeling career. According to Eliza, the photographer was from Los Angeles and was in his late 20s. At the time, she was just 15 years old. But she was ambitious, and when she turned 16, she pressured her family into helping her pursue the opportunity.

I flew to Los Angeles. not long after that. My mother accompanied me because I was a minor. While in L.A., Eliza says, her mother let her hang out with the photographer by herself. Which I thought was awesome, but unfortunately what happened was I was sexually assaulted on that trip.

She would eventually head back home to the farm. And she started to get a bit more rambunctious. I wanted to dye my bangs blue when I was a young age. I wanted to wear black fingernail polish. I was just really, really rebellious.

And so I finished my education early because of being homeschooled, and the same photographer that had assaulted me introduced me to a high-profile musician. The high-profile musician said, come out to Los Angeles, we'll start a music career, you're going to be a model, you're going to be a musician, you're going to be famous. And I believed it. So, at just 17,, Eliza says she convinced her father to drive her back out to Los Angeles. He left her behind in La La Land.

And almost immediately, as Eliza tells it, she was brought into the dark world of sex trafficking. Within 48 hours, I was addicted to a drug that I only know as ice. It started off with the famous musician offering me a couple beers. I wanted to be cool, I wanted to fit in. And after I had had a little bit of cocktails, then the drugs were offered.

She took them. And that's when the famous musician made his move. So, the gentleman who promised me the world ended up selling me. after a couple days. I remember it clearly.

I was sold for $500 to a very older gentleman in the Hills, the Hollywood Hills. And this gentleman ran a, it was a trafficking ring. It was a prostitution trafficking ring for transgender folks. However, according to Eliza, it wasn't long before the older man that purchased her gave her back to the famous musician. And that person left me for dead in a hallway.

And I ended up in Cedars-Sinai Hospital in an apparent drug overdose. Eliza says she didn't inform the doctors that she had just been sold to an older man. I don't think I was transparent with them about what had happened. I think I was just seen as a drug addict, which is fine. They released me from the hospital and I flew back to the farm.

I called my parents on a 911 and I'll never forget that. I rolled back home with a trash bag. There was some things. I didn't have any luggage and my family didn't even recognize me when I got off the plane. Keep in mind, this wasn't long after my father had dropped me off.

After about two weeks back on the farm, Eliza says she flew back out to Los Angeles to pick up her belongings. Her car, some clothes, things like that. And on her arrival, astonishingly, she called the guy that originally trafficked her. I was developing a trauma bond with my traffickers and fortunately for me, they didn't accept my call. According to Eliza, after more trials and tribulations, she entered a band and eventually married one of her bandmates.

And unfortunately, that marriage was an abusive relationship. That was a domestic violence situation. He tried to kill me multiple times. Apparently, Eliza's bad luck streak with men continued. She'd eventually leave her husband and after some undisclosed time, she entered into another relationship with a different man.

And unfortunately, that relationship ended in a very tumultuous and heartbreaking way. And because of the heartbreak from that situation, I went back exactly to that initial first set of traumas that had happened. And I was really vulnerable. And part of being vulnerable led me back to being trafficked again.

According to Eliza, this time it wasn't with her original trafficker in Los Angeles. It was a completely new trafficker. She says she was passed around for quite a few years but was afraid to tell anyone. I would consider myself a pretty strong woman, but I am terrified that they would kill myself, my family or people that I care about. This is when Eliza says she went through an extremely rough patch.

She lived on a gang territory line in a bad part of West Chicago. My mattress was on the floor because we had so many shootings that year in the area that if my mattress was up, I just didn't want to get shot. Down and out. and still in the middle of her trafficking nightmare, she turned to YouTube in a desperate state. And that's when she ran across a video that would change the course of her life.

Hi, everyone. It's me, Katie Couric. If you follow me on social media, you know I love to cook, or at least try, especially alongside some of my favorite chefs and foodies like Benny Blanco, Jake Cohen, Lighty Hoyt, Alison, Roman, and, of course, Ina Garten and Martha Stewart. So I started a free newsletter called Good Taste that comes out every Thursday, and it's serving up recipes that will make your mouth water. Think a candied bacon, Bloody Mary, tacos with cabbage slaw, curry, cauliflower with almonds and mint, and cherry slab pie with vanilla ice cream.

to top it all off. I mean, yum. I'm getting hungry. But if you're not sold yet, we also have kitchen tips like a foolproof way to grill the perfect burger, and must have products like the best cast iron skillet to feel like a chef in your own kitchen. All you need to do is sign up at katiecouric.com slash good taste.

That's K-A-T-I-E-C-O-U-R-I-C dot com. slash good taste. I promise your taste buds will be happy you did.

I'm Ben Adafafri, host of the history podcast, The Last Archive, and I want to tell you about a new series running in our feed. It's called The Deadline, and it features six essays written and read by Jill Lepore, the New Yorker writer, American historian and founding host of our show. These are incredible essays on everything from the history of cryogenics to the Silicon Valley gospel of disruption. And at the end of each essay, I interviewed Jill about her craft as a writer and how she's thinking about the themes of these essays. now.

We talk Frankenstein. We talk writing leads. We talk Barbie. We talk Doctor Who. This is a crazy origin story.

I don't think I've ever told this before. I really loved having these conversations with Jill, and it was a rare chance to talk to her about how she goes about reading, writing, and the work of history. You can listen to The Deadline on The Last Archive feed, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

My name is Michael Wolff, and I'm the host of Fire and Fury, the podcast. Not too long ago, I saw Donald Trump, and he shouted, Hey, Michael, I made you rich. And the truth is, my three books about Trump, they have sold a lot of copies. It all started eight years ago. I found myself in Donald Trump's Beverly Hills home, sharing Häagen-Dazs ice cream with him.

I asked him, why was he running for president? And he answered, without missing a beat, because I want to be the most famous man in the world. Since then, I've become a go-to person when Trump and those around him want to talk. And now, every week, I'm going to share those insider stories with you. Listen to Fire and Fury, the podcast, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Jacob Goldstein. I used to host a show called Planet Money. Now, I'm starting a new show. It's called What's Your Problem? Every week, on What's Your Problem, entrepreneurs and engineers describe the future they're going to build once they solve a few problems.

How do you build a drone delivery business from scratch? Our customers, they want us to do this unbelievably reliably, in the storms, no matter what, hundreds of times a day. How do you turn a wild dream about a new kind of biology into a $10 billion company? We didn't have a particular technology. We didn't have a way of making money.

It was a great way to start a company. I highly recommend it. How do you sell millions of dollars worth of dog ramps for wiener dogs in the middle of a pandemic? We're working with 400 influencers, and the majority of them are actually not a person, but it's actually a dog. I can tell you right now, the dog ramp guy has some very interesting problems.

Listen to What's Your Problem on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, fam. I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay. And we're the hosts of The Bright Side, the daily podcast from Hello Sunshine.

that's guaranteed to light up your day. Every weekday, we bring you conversations with the culture makers who inspire us. Like our recent episode with comedians, writers, and partners in life, Tig Notaro and Stephanie Allen. I felt like I discovered my sexuality late. I now look back and go, God, I wasn't that old.

And I think people carry a lot of shame and guilt for not having figured things out. And then they feel like it's too late to start or try or change things. And we both, I think, were really drawn to just that idea of going, you know what? You can do whatever you want, whenever, and your life will be forever greater for having done it. Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome back to Red Pilled America. So while living in a bad part of West Chicago, Eliza Blue was living a tough life. She was being trafficked. Her apartment was right on a gang territory line. And she had to sleep on the floor so that she wouldn't get shot.

In a desperate state, Eliza says she turned to YouTube. And up popped this survivor. Her name is Annie. But a video on YouTube of Annie telling her story, telling her experience, strength, and hope.

As I watched that video, something deep and magical happened. I think, for the first time, I saw someone put words to my experience that I had never heard before. Annie was a pink-haired, God-fearing YouTuber that spoke about her own experience as a victim of human sex trafficking and how she supported other survivors. Eliza Blue saw her own experience in Annie's ordeal, but Annie was explaining it in a way that Eliza hadn't heard before. She'd never really understood the term sex trafficking or survivor in the context that Annie was using, and hadn't connected that language to her own experience.

It connected with me, and I remembered that along my journey, an organization had given me a Bible with just a tiny little web address on the back of the Bible. I carried that Bible forever. I reached out that night. I wrote a desperate email to this organization, and that organization wrote me back right away. They sent me a survivor advocate, and right away, that survivor advocate started loving on me from a distance.

And then, right away, we started making preparations for me to leave. It wasn't long before that survivor advocate risked life and limb to scoop up Eliza out of this gang-infested neighborhood. My first advocate came and got my stuff, moved me out of this dangerous part of the west side of Chicago in the middle of the night, by herself, which is pretty awesome. And I went away, and that was the beginning of my healing journey. Eliza says they took her to recover in a safe house that was three states away, but that place wasn't a good fit.

Out of a two-year program, she only lasted three months. Within two days of leaving that safe house, I was already back with my trafficker. And one thing that was so alluring about my trafficker at this point was that he was high-profile. He's a high-profile athlete. I'll just leave that there.

She was back in her trafficker's clutches. But according to Eliza, the survivor advocates at the safe house planted some new ideas in her head. I think a big tipping point for me was I started to see what was really going on. After the relationship with the boyfriend had ended, I decided to stay on the farm, and I really started to get the healing. It started flooding in.

Once she had some time to recover and reflect, Eliza says she came to the conclusion that she wanted to give back. So she volunteered to serve victims of sex trafficking. And not long after I started volunteering, an organization asked if they could send me to school to become a survivor advocate in multiple states. She was excited at the idea of doing something to help her fellow survivors, so she accepted the offer and got some training.

Now, according to Eliza, she never wanted to be a public survivor advocate. I didn't want to be public because I thought it would make it seem like I was trying to get attention or money or something. But when the global pandemic hit in 2020, she concluded that the conditions were just too dire for victims of sex trafficking. I just remember sitting there, and I was like, holy crap, we're going through something really intense, and I'm going to need to step up and help. Because I don't have kids, and I don't have that much to lose, so you're going to have to put your all into helping out with the pandemic.

So she took to Twitter.

And once I started tweeting about human trafficking and tweeting out resources and just tweeting, just dropping, like, knowledge in tweet form, folks were really receptive. The reaction made her broaden her horizons. She began pitching media outlets. And only one wrote me back. I said, hey, can you just do a piece on human trafficking, vulnerable populations, and where folks can go if they run into a situation that's exploitative?

And the publication said, yes, we will do that piece. And I was like, awesome.

And the publication said, hey, we'd like to add your name and picture in the article, if that's possible. And I remember I thought about it, for, I think, two days. Is this what I want to do? Do I want to be public? She would eventually decide that the pandemic created the extenuating circumstances for her to go public.

with her experience. They added my name and picture to the article. Her image stood at the top of the Daily Wire story. She looked sort of like a reimagination of Annie Lennox from the Eurythmics, with blue eyes, short white hair, and a T-shirt that said, stop traffic, across her chest. The Daily Wire article read, Sex trafficking survivor turned advocate.

Coronavirus shutdown. Perfect storm for abuse. Here's what you should know. We are here to help, Eliza, declared in her article. I am saying this as a survivor of human sex trafficking and as an advocate for those affected by trafficking.

I know what it's like to have too much pride to ask for help. If I hadn't asked for help when I did, I would be dead. You are not alone in this. Right-of-center podcasts quickly requested interviews, and, given her quick proliferation, she appeared to say yes to all of them. Eliza seemed to be a seasoned media personality, as if she'd been in front of the spotlight for years.

Within a matter of months, she was all over right-leaning podcasts. And that's when she began landing on our radar. Eliza Blue appeared to be the perfect entry into the topic of sex trafficking. By the time we noticed her, she'd been on Dr. Drew, The Daily Wire had published a story on her, the popular TimCast show had her on.

She'd been on podcast after podcast, and had damn near saturated our Twitter feed. Surely she'd been vetted by these people, we thought. So. before reaching out to her, we did a little research ourselves. And almost immediately, red flags began popping up.

When we actually listened to a few of her podcast appearances, we started to get a familiar sensation. There appeared to be a deliberate vagueness in her story. My trafficker was high profile. Whenever she was asked about dates, she seemed to leave herself some wiggle room. How long have you been out for?

People always ask me that, and I actually, I tried to figure it out the other day. I honestly think it totals six years. And I might change that later, and it's not because I'm lying. It just might be because I didn't remember something, or I might need to go back further. Her memory seemed good when a detail lent credibility to her trafficking story.

I remember it clearly. I was sold for $500 to a very older gentleman in the hills. But when details could help corroborate her story, she could always turn to a fuzzy memory. I've been blessed in a way where I am fortunate enough, where I don't remember everything. My memory is very spotty because I had had a lack of food, I had had a lack of water, and I was on drugs and other substances.

And, perhaps most notable, when podcast hosts wanted to give a shout out on the air to the organization that rescued her from the gang-infested West Chicago. hellhole, she wouldn't name the group. Can you share the name of the organization? You know what? I'd rather not right now, just because I want to make sure I protect them as well.

That sounds like an incredible place that was able to help you out. What was the name of that place? I would love to shout them out, but I always let folks know. when I left the game, my traffickers lost a lot of money. And what was that website?

You know, I've never asked their permission. if I can promote them. Okay. So I'm not going to, because when I left the game, my traffickers lost a lot of money. I don't want them to become a target for my former abusers.

My former abusers are still out there and kicking, they know where I'm at, they know what I'm doing. In interview after interview, her descriptions were often vague, contradictory, and she seemed to avoid sharing information that could help corroborate her story. And then there was the way that she spoke about her sex trafficking. When I really fully decided to leave the game for good, I started volunteering. So, after I had decided to leave the game for good...

Deciding to leave the game? That didn't sound like it was an involuntary situation. It sounded like Eliza Blue was a willing participant. And once you dug a little deeper, a different narrative began to reveal itself. And one of those non-profits had dropped off a beautiful stack of Bibles one night to a gentleman's club that I was being trafficked out of.

But before I went to go sell my body for someone else.

. Eliza Blue sounded like an ex-stripper, or an ex-call girl, or an ex-prostitute. Perhaps that explains why her moniker sounded like that of a porn star.

Remember that YouTuber, Annie, that Eliza credited with giving her the words that helped describe her experience? Well, when Eliza eventually appeared on Annie's podcast to thank her for saving her life, a much clearer picture of her trafficking emerged. You stood out and said, I'm a survivor of human trafficking. before it was a pop culture topic. I appreciate you laying that groundwork for me and all the folks that worked in the movement to lay that groundwork, to be there when survivors like myself reach out.

I wanted to say something first, that you said that I'm a survivor of human trafficking. I did say that, but not till later. What I first said was, I'm an ex-prostitute. And I had a pimp. And everyone's like, and it's your fault.

But Annie, we didn't have the language to put to it. We didn't have the language to put to it. back then. Annie was the founder of a group called Hookers for Jesus. And as Eliza Blue opened up in that podcast, her sex trafficking ordeal seemed to match that of Annie's.

Let's keep it real. I don't have to leave my pimp and become a nerd. You know, I thought I was going to be a nerd if I left the lifestyle. By early 2022, we'd come to the conclusion that Eliza Blue was likely a former sex worker that had repackaged her behavior to fit the new raging fad, human sex trafficking. At least that could have been the case in her adult years.

Regarding her Los Angeles ordeal as a minor, using her math, it would have placed her alleged abuse in the late 1990s. It was obvious that we weren't going to be able to easily corroborate her story. She didn't inform the police and no charges were brought. So we decided to abandon our third attempt at publishing an episode on sex trafficking.

Now we shelve stories all the time, but not three times, on a popular topic where those people have already published stories on the subject. The pattern was becoming unmistakable. But what was most troubling was that the right-leaning media seemed to be amplifying Eliza Blue's story without really vetting any of it. I mean, it only took a few hours of us delving into her story to see that there was a real problem with credibility telling her story. Yet right-leaning media seemed to just take her word as gospel, likely because it fit a narrative.

In the months that followed our decision to shelve the story, Eliza Blue's voice would only grow. The Daily Wire continued to expend ink on covering her sex trafficking advocacy. Eliza began publishing on TheBlaze.com. After Elon Musk purchased Twitter, Eliza was even drawing the attention of the billionaire about child exploitation on the social media platform.

And by the end of 2022, she started jumping from the webpages of The Daily Wire onto its popular Ben Shapiro podcast.

This is a full circle moment for me as a survivor. I step forward for the first time in a Daily Wire piece. So this is a full circle moment. So thank you so much for having me. But what most of the public didn't know at the time was that trouble was brewing for Eliza Blue, because she was being vetted by internet sleuths.

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My name is Michael Wolff, and I'm the host of Fire and Fury, the podcast. Not too long ago, I saw Donald Trump, and he shouted, Hey, Michael, I made you rich. And the truth is, my three books about Trump, they have sold a lot of copies. It all started eight years ago. I found myself in Donald Trump's Beverly Hills home, sharing Häagen-Dazs ice cream with him.

I asked him, why was he running for president? And he answered, without missing a beat, because I want to be the most famous man in the world. Since then, I've become a go-to person when Trump and those around him want to talk. And now, every week, I'm going to share those insider stories with you. Listen to Fire and Fury, the podcast, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, everyone. It's me, Katie Couric. If you follow me on social media, you know I love to cook, or at least try, especially alongside some of my favorite chefs and foodies, like Benny Blanco, Jake Cohen, Lighty Hoyt, Alison Roman, and, of course, Ina Garten and Martha Stewart. So I started a free newsletter called Good Taste that comes out every Thursday, and it's serving up recipes that will make your mouth water. Think a candied bacon, Bloody Mary, tacos with cabbage, slaw, curry, cauliflower with almonds and mint, and cherry slab pie with vanilla ice cream.

to top it all off. I mean, yum. I'm getting hungry. But if you're not sold yet, we also have kitchen tips like a foolproof way to grill the perfect burger and must-have products like the best cast-iron skillet. to feel like a chef in your own kitchen.

All you need to do is sign up at katiecouric.

com slash goodtaste. That's k-a-t-i-e-c-o-u-r-i-c dot com. slash goodtaste. I promise your taste buds will be happy you did.

I'm Ben Nadif-Hafri, host of the history podcast The Last Archive, and I want to tell you about a new series running in our feed. It's called The Deadline, and it features six essays written and read by Jill Lepore, the New Yorker writer, American historian, and founding host of our show. These are incredible essays on everything from the history of cryogenics to the Silicon Valley gospel of disruption, and at the end of each essay, I interview Jill about her craft as a writer and how she's thinking about the themes of these essays. now. We talk Frankenstein.

We talk writing leads. We talk Barbie. We talk Doctor Who. This is a crazy origin story. I don't think I've ever told this before.

I really loved having these conversations with Jill, and it was a rare chance to talk to her about how she goes about reading, writing, and the work of history. You can listen to The Deadline on The Last Archive feed, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Jacob Goldstein. I used to host a show called Planet Money. Now I'm starting a new show. It's called What's Your Problem? Every week on What's Your Problem, entrepreneurs and engineers describe the future they're going to build.

once they solve a few problems. How do you build a drone delivery business from scratch? Our customers, they want us to do this unbelievably reliably, in the storms, no matter what, hundreds of times a day. How do you turn a wild dream about a new kind of biology into a $10 billion company? We didn't have a particular technology.

We didn't have a way of making money. It was a great way to start a company. I highly recommend it.

How do you sell millions of dollars worth of dog ramps for wiener dogs in the middle of a pandemic? We're working with 400 influencers, and the majority of them are actually not a person, but it's actually a dog. I can tell you right now, the dog ramp guy has some very interesting problems. Listen to What's Your Problem on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, fam.

I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay. And we're the hosts of The Bright Side, the daily podcast from Hello Sunshine. that's guaranteed to light up your day. Every weekday, we bring you conversations with the culture makers who inspire us.

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Welcome back to Red Pilled America. So by the end of 2022, Eliza Blue's voice was being amplified by conservative media. She'd been making appearances on some of the biggest podcasts on the right. She even got the attention of Twitter's new billionaire owner, Elon Musk. But what the general public didn't know was that trouble was brewing for Eliza Blue.

In December 2022, a Canadian podcaster named Katie Herzog published a phone call between her and Eliza Blue. And the call was very revealing. Katie had scheduled an interview with Eliza's assistant to talk about Eliza's anti-sex trafficking advocacy on Twitter, as well as her origin story. But Eliza didn't want to talk about the latter. And during the call, she let the Canadian have it.

I don't know if I, I mean, for me to tell my story at length is going to take a while. I don't even, I don't even need that. For me to answer questions about my story is going to take a while. So I know the basics of your story because I've listened to your podcast. Eliza snapped.

So I'm trying to figure out exactly what the question is. Well, I can ask you the question. I didn't agree to this. I didn't agree to this. All I agreed to was answering a few questions about Twitter.

Well, okay, sure. That's totally fine. But can I just, can I ask you the questions or email you the questions and you can decide if you want to answer or not? I mean, did you, did you ask Amanda in advance to do that? No, I told her that I wanted to ask you about the Twitter stuff and about your own story.

Okay. So you deceived. Amanda, didn't tell her everything you wanted to ask her, and then you got a survivor on the phone and started asking her about her personal trauma. No, I, I, I, that's not, that's not what happened. I said.

Katie, I think, I think we're probably going to be done here. Please, the next time you want to speak to a survivor about their trauma and bring up their own past. I literally asked her. I'm going to read you, I'm going to read you, I'll read you the message that I sent her. Please be honest in advance.

I, I, I won't. Because there are times when I feel cool about talking about it and there's other times when I don't. I'll read you the message that I sent it to her. You're not listening to me. I was totally comfortable talking about Twitter.

If you were going to ask me about my own traumatic, traumatizing story, I would have appreciated a little bit of a heads up. And you know what? The two went back and forth for a few minutes until finally there was a window for Katie to get a word in edgewise.

You're not listening to me. I, here's what I said to her. I said I'm interested in the Twitter changes as well as her history as a survivor. That is what I told her. Okay, then I'm going to speak to, then I'm going to speak to her about that, because then she messed up and didn't tell me what's up.

Okay, well, can I. So I apologize for glooping out on you. She should have told me that. I'm going to go. get in her ass.

Can, can I ask you the questions? How cool is that? It's been a long few days.

What Katie may not have known at the time was that for over a year and a half, many Twitter users had been publicly questioning Eliza's story. And apparently, the scrutiny was getting to her. In mid-2021, victims of sexual abuse began to call her out, suggesting that she was a grifter trying to profit off the issue of sex trafficking. Sex workers went after Eliza as well, suggesting she was a hypocrite, even showing videos of her enthusiastically working as a hip-hop video vixen during the time she claimed she was being sex trafficked. A video vixen is a woman who's scantily clad in music videos.

Sex trafficking victims accused Eliza of blocking them on Twitter when they tried to connect with her. Filmmakers that were fighting to expose sexual abuse in Hollywood even posted a video published in May 2016, where Eliza talked about refusing a booking request to have sex for $150,000.. What's been your strangest booking request so far? Um, $150,000 to have sex. It's a nice offer, but it's not me.

Turned it down. I did, yeah.

Social media sleuths found instances of Eliza Blue going by the name of Eliza Cutts, a hairstylist, and Eliza Nose, a Chicago curvy model, and Eliza Seip, a makeup artist and hairstylist, and also by her birth name, Eliza Morthland. They also uncovered a long documented history of Eliza trying to be famous. Around 2002, Eliza appeared on the reality show Blind Date. Now, Eliza lives a rock and roll lifestyle. She says she's pretty exciting, but she still has problems when it comes to men.

My name is Eliza. Mark. Nice to meet you. Oh, you ready to go? Yeah.

So what do you do? Uh, I'm a singer. Sometime around the early 2000s, she was working as a hairstylist for bands, when she became romantically linked to the lead singer of an up-and-coming rock band called My Chemical Romance. His name was Gerard Way. They dated for four or five years.

He ultimately married another woman in 2007,, reportedly leaving Eliza heartbroken. Around 2008,, Eliza Seip posted a story she'd written to her MySpace blog. She called it fictional, but many My Chemical Romance fans who hated her claimed that the story was based on her relationship with Gerard Way. The narrative seemed to closely follow the trajectory of their relationship, and, most troubling, the lead female character was obsessed with suicide. This small group of internet sleuths found articles from 2010 showing that Eliza Blue tried out for American Idol under the name Eliza Seip.

Her published age on the show would have put her birth around 1981. Then, in 2012,, in the time frame that she would later refer to as her second period of being trafficked in Chicago, Eliza appeared as an amateur model. on The Steve Harvey Show. Model, Tyra Banks judged one of her poses. So, one, two, three, Gucci tooch.

Oh, look, girl, you got it in the middle. You're working it. You are working the Gucci tooch. Booty was ready. That same year, she was promoting her work as a video vixen.

Hi, guys. Welcome to your first installment of Life of a Video Vixen. Most of this activity never made it into Eliza Blue's many interviews with right-wing media. To many of the internet sleuths, Eliza's documented online behavior did not seem to align with her story of being a sex trafficking survivor. It all signaled that she was a willing participant, albeit perhaps an unstable one.

Either way, the veracity of Eliza Blue's story was in question, but the controversy hadn't yet gone viral. That is, until a YouTuber that goes by the name Defango entered the scene. Real name Manuel Chavez III, Defango actually claims to have invented QAnon and has been involved in a lot of online shenanigans. He's also a YouTuber that claims to have known Eliza Blue going back to 2007.. I'm an online creator, so I've been, like, live streaming since probably about 2007..

That's Defango. And actually, that's when I first started interacting with Eliza Blue, but back then she was known as Eliza Cuts. She had been, like, this weird individual that was, like, always popping around to all the chats. She seemed to be very, very enamored with a guy named Jeffree Star. I guess he's, like, a makeup mogul now.

Defango's streaming co-host was actually friends with this Jeffree Star character. His co-host often asked Defango to hang out with him and Jeffree Star. So, I would tag along sometimes, right? And that's actually when I met her in, like, actual person.

So, when he began to see Eliza Blue pop up on social media as a survivor advocate in 2020, he recognized her from way back in the day. She looked just, you know, like the same girl, just bigger. He says. at first, he wanted to help her anti-sex trafficking efforts. I first reached out to her in 2020, actually, to, like, try to help her, so I could talk about her story.

And I asked her pretty basic stuff, like, so, did you ever go to the law on any of this stuff? And she, just kind of, like, immediately didn't want to have anything to do with, you know, the situation. From a distance, he continued to watch her rise and began to notice problems with her story.

It wasn't until, like, 2021 when I started actually digging into her backstory, because stuff wasn't making sense. Looking at her story and what she was saying, I'm just kind of like, you know, I remember talking to this girl back in, like, 2007.. I'm, like, a young guy. Still, I'm not even 21.. She was older than me.

You know, we were talking about the Warped Tour. She said she went the first time to go see My Chemical Romance. Eliza's math would have put her at the Vans Warped Tour in 1996.. My Chemical Romance didn't even form until 2001.. What DeFango also remembered about Eliza was that in 2007, her priorities were to party.

She seemed to more care about hanging out with Jeffrey and his friends and, you know, finding people for them to party with when they go back to the after party and that sort of thing. Now I'm looking at her story, it doesn't make sense. I have personal connection to her, so I can say, you know, I can't say for a fact that none of this ever happened. But I can say that, you know, I saw her acting more like a Glisane Maxwell than being a Virginia Gouffre.

Glisane Maxwell is the convicted sex offender that worked with Jeffrey Epstein. Virginia Gouffre is an alleged victim of Maxwell and Epstein. She seemed like she was more of a person that would be willing to traffic people than to not traffic people. But that's just my opinion, right? Now, maybe DeFango was misremembering his conversations with then-Eliza Cutts.

His old 2007 memories of her was not what stood out to us. What's more interesting is the verifiable online evidence that he was able to dig up on her. And then, when it got weirder, when I was like, you know what, I kind of remember her just disappearing in like 2009.. She just fell off the map and I didn't know where she went, right? And when I started researching that stuff, I realized, like, you know, she went on to American Idol.

She tried to do some other stuff like that. He knew her previous names and a few details of her past. And what he found on Eliza Blue was not the Eliza Cutts person he once knew. You're looking at an entirely different person with a completely different personality. In many of her online videos, she spoke like she'd grown up in an urban hip-hop environment with kind of a ghetto accent.

He dug deeper. So I started looking more into her, like, timeline from like 2011 to 2016.. And that's when I started uncovering the cam sites and the cam stuff. Camgirl sites are websites used by adult entertainers. DeFango found Eliza's pictures on a camgirl site called ChatStar.

Someone pulled down Eliza's page just a few months before she went public as a survivor advocate in April 2020.

. So DeFango began questioning Eliza on what he found. So I tried to reach out to her again. I kept on trying to press her, though, because I felt like, you know, there was a problem brewing, basically. Like, I was like, your story doesn't seem to add up.

I was like, if I'm asking questions, other people are going to be asking questions. And then, you know, you're going to have some trouble here in the future. According to DeFango, he didn't get a response. So he began compiling everything he'd found, together with the stuff other internet sleuths had discovered. And then he decided to troll her with his Twitter account.

And I was like, OK, I'm going to kind of make fun of her on this account. And eventually, when she blocks me, I'm going to just start unloading stuff. Eliza Blue eventually blocked his Twitter account in late December 2022. So the day after Christmas of that month, DeFango dropped all of his findings. in a long Twitter thread.

He posted a detailed, documented history of her life. Her long search for fame. The conflict in the dates of her story. Her life as a video vixen. Her fiction writing.

Everything got dropped in one master thread. Over the next few weeks, the thread led other internet sleuths to post more findings. Like instances where she used her so-called survivor status to raise money. I'm going to get abused in this whole interview.

I was trafficked on Twitter as well. What does that mean that they trafficked you on Twitter? How can someone traffic you if they're not in contact with you? They posted podcast clips where she expressed strange views on the age of consent. And do I feel that some minors are more equipped to engage in sexual activity with adults than others?

Yes. A reported two-decade-long friend of Eliza's, a woman named Carly Wenzel, spoke to the Daily Beast, stating that she didn't recognize any of Eliza's Los Angeles trafficking stories. In Wenzel's words, she believed that That absolutely didn't happen. Eliza's roommate from Chicago came out and said She was not in a precarious situation in West Chicago. Adding that she did not sleep on the floor for fear of getting shot.

She slept on the floor Because she was into these floor pillows at the time. In a defensive move, Eliza Blue identified the organization that whisked her out of her West Chicago apartment.

She said it was Eve's Angels, a Christian non-profit that combats domestic sex trafficking and the exploitation of women in the commercial sex industry. The founder of Eve's Angels, Annie Dunwald, came out in defense of Eliza, tweeting that Eliza was the real deal. But Annie had a questionable past herself. According to a 2022 appeals court opinion, in 2018, Annie Dunwald and her group accused Dunwald's own parents of trafficking children. She took her claims to the police, who investigated the matter.

Her credibility was shot when it was discovered that Dunwald reportedly fabricated the claims against her parents with the goal of extracting a payoff from them. Annie Dunwald was ordered to pay $47,000 plus legal fees.

As the beginning of 2023 arrived, the questions about Eliza Blue's backstory began to reach YouTubers like Brittany Venti. Brittany began to press Eliza on Twitter to address her discrepancies found by Defango. Other YouTubers went on attack, posting clips of Eliza Blue's video vixen days. That's when the survivor turned to her newfound relationship with Twitter. People that posted certain video vixen clips of Eliza began to find their accounts either temporarily suspended or permanently removed.

We've been talking about the quartering, Brittany Venti, all of the other people that have been banned. Well, the guy who called this stuff out in the beginning, Defango, he's been banned. The act of censorship only angered YouTubers, including a few like Chrissy Mayer, who'd previously had Eliza Blue on as a guest. This is, I guess, a good lesson for everybody. Like, I was like, oh, you didn't vet her.

I'm like, what was I supposed to do? Like, search for, I don't know, porn and see if I could find her?

It was a massive censorship scandal, yet very few of the major right-leaning figures that helped elevate her to prominence jumped back in the ring to condemn her. Again, Defango. It's bad for the community because, like, she, can be used to attack alternative media, right? Like, everybody that had her on her show can now be targeted by the news media, and I've literally seen it happen. It's happened to me.

In the end, the massive internet vetting of Eliza Blue turned out to be too much for the alleged survivor advocate to take. She announced via Twitter that she was officially stepping out of the public survivor advocacy arena.

The rise of Eliza Blue was another litmus test for right-wing media, and it failed.

With almost no vetting of her story, she quickly rose to a place of prominence within conservative media and even had a direct channel to Elon Musk. During her rise, no major figure on the right that gave her a platform thought to question her origin story or her seemingly natural acumen with the media. I mean, people don't just come out of nowhere and have the kind of success within the media she was experiencing unless they'd had some practice. And Eliza Morthland, I mean, Eliza Seip, I mean, Eliza Cutts, Eliza Knows, no, Eliza Blue, had a lot of practice. She'd been trying to be famous for at least 20 years, yet it was her work as an alleged victim of sex trafficking that put the winds of fame beneath her wings.

Now, none of this means that Eliza isn't potentially a victim of sex trafficking, but, given the nature of her story and her skill at omission and her attempt at censoring the truth of her past, it's impossible to know the truth. That should have been easy for conservative media to see, but because her story helped feed a popular narrative in right-wing circles, her story was just too good to check. Patrick and I were seeing a major problem with conservative media. It was starting to become the exact thing that it had been fighting against. But the rot seemed to go a lot farther than the Eliza Blue story.

And this time, it wasn't just conservative media that was feeding the problem. Coming up on Red Pilled America. If anybody wants to look up Tim Ballard, he is committed to serving survivors of human trafficking, especially minors, both in the United States and around the world. Very amazing organization. Red Pilled America is an iHeartRadio original podcast.

It's owned and produced by Patrick Karelchi and me, Adriana Cortez, of Informed Ventures. Now you can get ad-free access to our entire archive of episodes by becoming a backstage subscriber. To subscribe, visit redpilledamerica.com and click join in the top menu. Thanks for listening.

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once they solve a few problems. I'm talking to people trying to figure out how to do things that no one on the planet knows how to do, from creating a drone delivery business to building a car that can truly drive itself. Listen to What's Your Problem on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Ben Nadifafri, host of the history show The Last Archive, and I want to tell you about a new series we're running in our feed. It's called The Deadline.

Six essays written and read by Jill Lepore, the New Yorker writer, American historian, and founding host of our show. These are incredible essays on everything from the history of cryogenics to the Silicon Valley gospel of disruption. And at the end of each essay, I interview Jill about her craft as a writer. You can listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. From tips for healthy living to the latest medical breakthroughs, WebMD's Health Discovered podcast keeps you up to date on today's most important health issues.

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