How a Bizarre Healing-TV-Screen Tycoon Is Funding MAGA Media
I had to try it out for myself.
TUCKER CARLSON HAS NEVER BEEN AVERSE to appearing alongside idiosyncratic oddball figures. But Carlson’s recent decision to hang out with a wannabe pundit named Elizabeth Lane struck even fellow travelers in MAGA media as confusing.
Lane, a native of the former Soviet republic of Georgia, has made no secret of her fondness for Vladimir Putin. Until recently, she had a small presence online, with fewer than 1,000 followers each on YouTube and X. Yet in early October she secured a sitdown interview with Carlson in his Maine cabin. As soon as a preview of it went up on X, others on the right began asking: Why?
“How did she secure an interview with someone as big as Tucker Carlson?” RedState blogger “Bonchie” asked.
The interview—which saw Lane asking the former Fox News host such newsworthy questions as “What is love for Tucker Carlson?”—did its job: Lane’s following on X is now up to roughly 20,000 people. And while her previous YouTube videos struggled to crack 1,000 views, the Carlson interview has passed a quarter million.
It was, undoubtedly, a boon for Unifyd TV, a burgeoning new right-wing streaming platform where Lane is the most prominent host and chief operating officer.1
Unifyd pitches itself as a place for “groundbreaking” shows and “powerful investigative content” that, at first blush, appears to be supported by subscription fees ($11.99 per month or $95.88 per year). But that may not actually be its primary funding source.
According to court records, millions of dollars have come in to Unifyd from sales and promotion of a device called the “Light System”—or, if you take prefer the nomenclature of the other side of a bitter lawsuit over its origins, the “EESystem”—whose supporters claim it can cure nearly every ailment, from tumors to autism.
The devices have been compared to a real-life version of medbeds, the mythical medical tanning beds some conspiracy theorists believe will fix anything that’s wrong with you (which recently got a boost from President Trump). The system includes a screen, identical to a computer monitor, running on what looks like a form of the BASIC programming language and flashing symbols of different colors. Those symbols, proponents say, are sending out waves of healing power to anyone who sits in front of one of the screens.
Because the promise of these devices is so massive (a person’s health and well-being is basically the whole ball game this side of eternity), the money around them is vast. A twelve-unit system goes for $54,200, according to court filings, on top of a one-time $125,000 licensing fee. More than 800 centers across the world have the machines installed, according to an internal report filed in court and reviewed by The Bulwark for one company that makes the devices. Total revenue for that company is approaching $100 million after just a few years of selling the machines.
But the “Light System” is more than just a machine. It is a key component to a conspiracy theory that a shadowy, benevolent cabal—made up of thousands of people, some essentially immortal and others non-human—is on a mission to elevate human consciousness through things like mass adoption of meditation and veganism, and further, that they’re doing so to accelerate our species’s progress on the way to contact with alien races.
Buckle up: Here’s how this aliens-walk-among-us conspiracy theory and these mystical medical devices are supporting this new right-wing media venture.