Our past, our motives and our future.

Perhaps over the course of the next few weeks we will both get our Twitter accounts back. Perhaps we won't. Either way, we aren't losing sleep over it. But one thing that still irks us almost as much as the death threats our families received from far-right anti-semites, the bomb threat called into the international airport under my name and the person threatening to chop my kids up because I posted a fact about Trump's dealings with foreign powers, is the left-wing media's attacks on both of us.  

From the very start, as we began to grow our accounts on Twitter, journalists would accuse us of "grifting". The definition of "Grifting" is "to engage in petty or small-scale swindling." The way the media seems to use it to describe us was to monetize our social fame in a sneaky way. The problem is, we never actually did that. We launched our Twitter accounts a week before Trump became president. My son was born literally that week, and it scared me to death that he would be born into a country led by a man who appeared to attack the disabled, cozied up to fascist leaders and used language that no President ever should.  With that said, these are our opinions, and we respect those who wish to argue otherwise.

As our accounts grew to nearly 1.6 million followers combined, we sought to expand our reach with a News site, HillReporter.com, and a podcast Krassencast. None of this was to make us rich, but rather to counter the right-wing media machine that continued to grow under the new President. We felt that if we could fact check the president, both within his own tweets as well as in other media outlets, we could at least slow the spread of the misinformation we saw on social media at the time. We had influential guests on our podcast from Andrew Yang to members of congress. We broke numerous stories later covered by the mainstream media, such as the Jacob Wohl/Caroline Cass/Robert Mueller plot. We spent thousands of dollars on equipment, on freelance work and on software. When all was said and done we had probably brought in a total of $5-6k in profits over 3 years. Additionally we wrote a parody book in our free time which sold on Amazon, and actually lost us money. Do you know how much of those $5-6k in profits we made, were donated to children's libraries as well as a Whistleblower fund? 130% of it.  

Meanwhile, the very people who attacked us in articles such as this one: https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-unwelcome-return-of-trumps-resistance-reply-guys continue to use their own reach to, guess what... make money. We aren't attacking journalists. They are the lifeblood of information and are crucial to informing a populace, but they are almost ALL writing their stories, building their following and promoting their content, for one reason and one reason only, to continue to make money and advance their own careers and own influence. The hypocrisy of it all is just baffling.  

We will continue to speak out for what we believe in. We will continue to push facts over fiction whether it's coming from the left or the right. We will continue to do so without personal attacks, foul language or divisive rhetoric, like we have always done. Journalists on both sides will continue to call us ‘grifters,’ while they do the very thing they accuse us of, but none of that helps the current chaos and division we see in this country and on social media. What we won't do, however, is profit off of our political actions. That's not what we are here for. That's not what we are about. In conclusion, I'm sure this article will spark additional attacks such as "Krassenstein's cry about being called grifters" or "Krassenstein's melt down and attack journalists," but that's not what this is all about. Stop attacking each other. Stop attacking those with different views than you. Start spreading facts, promoting critical thinking and fighting policies, not people.