The Weekly season 1 episode 7 recap: Connecting the World

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THE WEEKLY “Connecting The World” Episode 7 (Airs Sunday; July 28, 10:00 pm/ep) — Pictured: Kim Joiner, the principal deputy assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. CR: FX /

What’s being done?

The Weekly transitions to Nicas sitting down with Kim Joiner, the principal deputy assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs to ask what the military is doing to combat these issues.

This is, by far, my favorite interview The Weekly has done so far. Nicas is so prepared to tear through Joiner’s PR nonsense, it’s amazing.

To start, Joiner claims that the military works closely with Facebook and she’s satisfied with how well Facebook is doing to combat the issue.

Ok, so Nicas shows her some profiles he found in a few minutes of research. He looked up high ranking members of the military (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford, Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley and Air Force Chief of Staff David Goldfein) and found 120 imposter profiles on Facebook and Instagram, and that’s just what he has in his spreadsheet. There are more.

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He asks if she’s still satisfied with how well Facebook is doing. And she says she’s satisfied with how Facebook reacts when they find out about the fake profiles, the trouble is with finding the fakes.

Ok, so Nicas shows her that he reported 70 of the profiles he found between Facebook and Instagram combined. They’re all still up and he has responses from Instagram saying the profiles don’t violate their guidelines.

Now Joiner shifts and says that, well, when they report things, Facebook is great. But she doesn’t know about how Facebook responds to The New York Times.

I’m sorry, if Facebook won’t take a fake profile down for the Times, you really think they’ll take it down for an average American or vet lodging a complaint? Are you saying vets need to take a complaint all the way to the secretary of defense’s office to get things done and they have to do it every time they find a new fake profile? (Reminder, Anonsen said that for every profile he successfully got taken down, 10 more popped up.)

This is a bad look for Joiner and the military branch of the government.

But it only gets worse when the interview ends with Joiner unable to answer Nicas’ question of why one of the most technologically advanced companies in the world and the most powerful military in the world can’t seem to stop a bunch of Nigerian teenagers.

The Weekly then dives more into the scammers, who, as Nicas shows, are planning their scams in the open in public Facebook groups. People are asking for photos, asking for the blueprint on how to pull off the scam, everything. The scammers are even praying on widows in Facebook military widow groups to find their marks.

The scammers, Nicas explains, have their victims send money to a third party to cover their tracks. So The Weekly follows Nicas as he tries to track down a woman that Renee was told to send money to.

He shows up to the house of Maria, who says she’s also been a victim of these fake military scams. She agrees to talk, but wants to keep her identity hidden so her kids don’t find out that she was a victim of this scam.

Her story is very similar to Renee’s. She talked for months with a man who said he was in the military and wound up sending him a total of $15,000-$20,000. She even stopped paying her mortgage to pay him. She starts to cry, saying she’s still behind on her mortgage and her bank froze her account.

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