The Foundation Was Rigged

Glitched | Sassy Politics Original Series

Episode Three

The Foundation Was Rigged

What feels sudden now… wasn’t sudden at all.

In Episode Three of Glitched, we rewind the clock to the 1970s—before the chaos, before the courts, before the culture wars—and expose the moment the groundwork was quietly poured. This episode traces how power stopped living with voters and started embedding itself inside institutions designed to outlast elections.

This isn’t about candidates.
 It’s about infrastructure.
 And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

The foundation wasn’t flawed.
 It was rigged by design.

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(Yes, all roads lead back to the chaos.)

🎬 Next Episode — Coming Thursday

Glitched | Episode Four
🕗 Thursday at 8:00 PM Central Standard Time

The blueprint gets its muscle.
 The movement finds its majority.
 And belief becomes a weapon.

You don’t want to miss what comes next.

🔥 Also This Monday…

Mindf*ck Monday
Because the news should come with a trigger warning.

Courtrooms. Culture wars. Constitutional crises.
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⚠️ Disclaimer

This content includes historical analysis, political commentary, and opinion-based storytelling intended for educational and advocacy purposes. Interpretations are drawn from publicly available records, historical context, and investigative narrative. Viewers and listeners are encouraged to engage critically, seek multiple sources, and draw their own conclusions.

Chapters

• 0:00 Glitchy Open And Premise
• 0:20 Seeds Of Post-Election Power
• 1:50 Enter Edwin Fulner’s Method
• 3:05 Funding As Strategy
• 4:10 Naming Heritage And Its Playbook
• 5:30 Roles, Systems, And The Long Game
• 7:10 From Structure To Movement

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

What feels sudden now wasn't sudden at all. Is the world glitching or is it just me? Glitched. Wait, are we glitching? Feels like we're glitching. Glitched. A new sassy politics series. With me. Christy Chanel. 1973. Three founders. One mission. Washington, D.C. in the 1970s, left its mark on everything it touched. Briefing folders worn thin from being opened and closed too many times. Conference tables scarred by coffee rings and pencil grooves. Memos moved fast. Red ones passed along before anyone else could be responsible. That was the world Paul Weyrich had grown into. The same young man who once believed a campaign could change the country. That belief cracked with Goldwater's loss. Not just the defeat itself, but what it revealed. The elections weren't the only visible part. That power didn't disappear when votes were counted. It moved into offices without windows. Into hands no one ever elected. The candidates were out front. The control stayed behind the scenes. What stayed with Werich wasn't the loss. It was the aftermath. Power diluted enclosed rooms. Decisions reshaped by people who were never on the ballot. Promises narrowed until voters were left holding something unrecognizable. It was present, but powerless. By the early 70s, Weyrich had stopped treating elections as the main point. He was watching what followed, how authority slipped away once governing began. The failure wasn't random, it was repeated. And repetition has a way of pulling certain figures into view. Edwin Fulner. At 32, Edwin Fulner wasn't building a public profile or chasing donors. He already had a seat inside the system. Working in policy environments where ideas were evaluated quietly and consequences mattered. He cut his teeth at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, an institution built around endurance. Ideas were tested there for how long they could hold their shape once exposed to government pressure and time. Some survived, but most didn't. By the early 70s, Washington was small enough that people wrestling with the same problem kept crossing paths. Policy briefings, closed door strategy sessions, post-Goldwater autopsies. The question wasn't how to win the elections. It was who actually held power once a politician was voted in, focused on permanence, how ideas were documented, how policy survived handoffs, how influence stayed intact after campaigns ended. Same moment, same frustration, different instincts. And by 1973, asking the question was no longer enough. That was the year the answer took shape. Money. What they didn't have was money. Think tanks don't survive on vision alone. They survive on backing that doesn't flinch when ideas get uncomfortable. Funding that doesn't disappear when attention fades. That's when Joseph Kors enters. Not just with money, but with experience. A corporate patriarch shaped by decades of Cold War fear and business logic. Kors wasn't theorizing about power. He had already lived inside it. He understood how influence worked when no one was watching, how systems protected themselves, how control was maintained long after leadership changed. Kors didn't fund causes to be liked. He funded them to make sure certain outcomes never became possible. By the time Weirich approached him, the problem didn't need explaining. Kors recognized it immediately. In business, you don't pour resources into something that can be dismantled every four years. You build what lasts beyond leadership changes. Coors didn't ask for a spotlight. He didn't want one. He wasn't interested in a platform. He believed in permanence. And with his backing, the idea stopped being theoretical. It became viable. It needed a name. Something neutral, respectable. Something that sounded like scholarship, not strategy. The Heritage Foundation. On paper, it would look harmless. Research, policy analysis, conservative thought leadership. A place politicians could cite without feeling owned by it. In practice, though, it was something completely different. A governing playbook, a Bible, so to speak, waiting to be opened by whomever held power. The power of the presidency. Presidents would come and go. Administrations would rise, fracture, and fall. But the system would remain. Quietly training staff, standardizing language, preparing policy long before the cameras ever arrived. It didn't require loyalty. It required access. There was no need for a public face, no founding photograph, no ceremonial moment to point back to. Each man, each man understood his role. Joseph Kors understood money, how it moves, how it protects itself, how it shapes outcomes without ever appearing in the room. Paul Weyrich, Paul Weyrich understood direction, how to design a movement that could steer power without ever holding office. Edwin Fulner understood operations, how to turn ideas into a repeatable process, how to build something that could keep running long after its architects were gone. It was a system strong enough to outlive them. One that is still running more than 50 years later. By the mid-1970s, it had the bones, the shape, the internal logic. What it didn't yet have was the muscle. It didn't have people because policy alone doesn't move a country. Structure alone doesn't create momentum. That kind of force requires belief, identity, something people will defend with every fiber of their being. And Paul Weyridge knew exactly where that kind of power lived. The machine needed a majority.