Watch Larry Wilmore Explain How You Can’t Escape the Koch Brothers

After learning that the Koch brothers and their allies plan on spending a whopping $889 million on 2016 elections, Larry Wilmore took to his TV show Wednesday evening to announce his intention to boycott all Koch Industries products.

“I’m sorry, I can’t get behind these guys,” Wilmore explained. “This just doesn’t smell right to me. So what do they make again?”

But after learning that the answer is virtually everything from Dixie cups to greeting cards to Lycra, the Nightly Show host realized that any attempt to free himself from the Koch web of influence was doomed. Wilmore then reminded viewers that it’s not just the Koch brothers who dole out millions to score political advantages, pointing out Michael Bloomberg and George Soros as similar examples. (It’s true that there are big money liberal donors but their networks pale in comparison to the on the Koch brothers maintain.)

“It’s called dark money. Keeping with the white privilege convention of saying that everything bad is dark.”

 
 
More Mother Jones reporting on Dark Money

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In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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