Darryl Cooper Finally Responds — With Boring Emotional Blackmail

Darryl Cooper, aka Martyr Made, has finally responded at some length to my inquiries — 12 days after my first email communication to him, and two days after I published my resulting article.

As perhaps could be expected, it’s 100% devoid of any actual substance. Rather than engage on even the slightest bit of substance, Cooper decides to invite a referendum on my personality traits. He objects to my “aggressive tone” — so the Tone Police have predictably been called. He says I’m “rude.” He objects to my having sent him “confrontational emails, texts, and phone calls.” He says he’s “never liked the way I’ve conducted myself,” whatever that means. I have never met this guy. Is he my mother or something?

So rather than address a single substantive point I’ve raised — like his fabrication of a non-existent quote by a federal judge, or his completely untrue assertions about various legal proceedings related to the Epstein case, or a host of other false information he transmitted to an audience of millions on Tucker Carlson’s podcast — he instead deploys some tried-and-true emotional blackmail tactics. In this way, his approach is eerily similar to that of Whitney Webb, who decided to bring up the fact that she had a newborn baby when I contacted her, thereby introducing some sort of emotional burden to place on me — such that I was obliged to not add further turmoil to her personal life with my pesky emails. Although in fairness to Whitney Webb, at least she did provide some substantive response when I contacted her. Cooper, however, has provided none whatsoever. He instead decides to emphasize that a family member of his recently died. Which he’d already told me when I first emailed him, 12 days ago. Like Webb, albeit more blatantly, he tries to saddle me with some sort of emotional burden — as a person simply sending him a journalistic inquiry after engaging with his public work output. And who otherwise has zero interest in his personal life. But now I’m obliged to accomodate his personal life.

OK, fine. Given that he chose to divulge to me what was going on in his personal life, I was willing to make a reasonable accommodation. So I sent him some polite emails, requesting an approximate time-frame in which he might be able to respond, given what he said were his extenuating circumstances. Please bear in mind that in theory, I didn’t have to ask him for any comment at all. No law would’ve bound me to seek a response from him to my questions. I could’ve just written an article describing his demonstrable falsehoods, ridiculous “research” methodology, failure to read relevant government reports and judicial rulings, etc. — and then published it without even bringing him into the loop at all. But instead, in the interest of maximum fairness, I wanted to extend him a “right of reply,” just as I have in other similar circumstances — especially given the gravity of Cooper’s conduct, such as making up a quote from a federal judge, concocting myriad bogus storylines, and repeatedly making factually false claims about the subject that he’s supposed to be some kind of internet-leading expert on. And now, because I proactively wanted to give him every reasonable opportunity to respond, he’s using that to derail any substantive engagement that might be had, and instead have a debate about email etiquette. So, fine. I will post the emails. (And I know I said before that I was going to paywall this followup post, but I don’t want people crying about it, so I will omit any paywall.)

Here is Darryl’s big response today:

Here is my response:

And here are the communications I so rudely “bombarded” him with. (By the way, how do you think journalists are supposed to go about seeking comment for an article? Whispering into the abyss?)

Here are all the DMs I sent him:

I wish I had a copy of the voicemail message I left him by phone on August 18. I can assure you it was incredibly unremarkable. Please, Darryl, feel free to post the voicemail so everyone can hear how terribly “aggressive” and “rude” it was.

And now, here’s the entire email thread, full of shockingly “confrontational” emails that I so despicably “bombarded” him with.

This was the first email I sent:

In the remainder of this email, I proceeded to lay out all my factual questions, most of which I summarized or addressed in the eventual article. If you really want, you can read the entire email here, but much of it’s going to be redundant if you’ve already read the original article.

Here are the additional emails that followed. I have blacked out Darryl’s phone number, as well as the name of a person I spoke to privately:

I figured this was the last thing he had to say, and was content to just end it there. “I don’t have anything to say. No comment” — sounds pretty final. But then he sent me another email:

So that’s it. That’s the entirety of our communications, aside from the appallingly “aggressive” voicemail I left him, and which I don’t have access to, but Darryl is more than welcome to post.

Aren’t these guys supposed to be all about reviving traditional masculine honor or whatever? Are they really so fragile that they can’t take a couple of blandly inquisitive emails? What the hell? Can we return to the substance now?

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