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The Splintering MAGA Media Rage Machine · Pod Save America

• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: As we speak, the mega media world is fracturing and
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: many of its leading voices are desperately trying to figure
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: out what a post-Trump NAGA movement will mean for them.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: For some, this is about business.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: They want to know if they can maintain the same
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: level of clicks, of ad sales, of paid promotion deals
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: in a post-Trump political world. But for others, it's about
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: influence and a desire to steer the Republican Party to
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: a new place, in some cases, a much more extreme place.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: What we're talking about is ultimately a battle for the
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: soul and.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Attention of the MAGA movement, and it's being fought as
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: we speak in the podcast, YouTube, and TikTok trenches, often
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: on shows or on platforms that most Democrats have never
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: heard of, but have enormous reach and influence in conservative circles,
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: especially younger conservative circles. So to help me understand and
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: track where the MAGA movement is going, I'm joined today
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: by Will Sommer from The Bulwark. Will's newsletter, False Flag,
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: is a twice-weekly deep dive into right-wing online culture and
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: and the communities around it. And it is a must
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: read for me every week. He has an unparalleled understanding
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: of who makes up this world, where it's going, what
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: they're talking about, the weird, petty, pathetic infighting between them.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: It is fascinating stuff. Now, unfortunately for all of us,
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: right-wing media is incredibly popular, which is why we here
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: at Crooked Media are trying to create a progressive alternative.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: The best way you can help us is to become
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: a friend of the pod subscriber. For about 10 bucks
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: a month, you get bonus episodes of Pod Save America.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: You get ad-free episodes. You get deep dives into the
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: latest polling data from Dan Pfeiffer and tons more bonus content.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: And you also can get discounted tickets to our upcoming
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: CrookedCon conference and fun on-site perks.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: So check that out.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: Go to crooked.com slash friends to learn more. And now
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: here's my conversation with Will Sommer. So, Will, your coworker,
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: Sarah Longwell, got a bunch of grief recently for saying
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: that a surprising name keeps coming up in her focus
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: groups when she's asking people who they think should run
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: for president.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: Candace Owen.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: And again, this is not people saying that they like
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: Candace's content. It's voters saying they would vote for Candace
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Owens for president. Now, I'm sure people listening to this
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: are thinking like, shut up, Tommy. That is dumb.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: This is insane. She is bonkers.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: And to them, I say, sure, I agree with you.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: But I think the point is that a lot of
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: people don't. So just to start with the basics, who
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: is Candace Owens? And why do you think she is
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: so popular and influential to the point where people want
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: to run for president?
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Sure. So Candace Owens is a woman who emerged.
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: She's from sort of the right wing media ecosystem that
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: kind of these classic characters working for people like Dennis
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: Prager and Ben Shapiro. And then for the past year
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: or so, past two years, She's become this sort of
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: insurgent right-wing conspiracy theorist, very anti-Semitic. She pushes a lot
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: of crazy ideas about most notably Charlie Kirk's assassination.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: She used to work with him and they were friends.
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: And she's sort of been building this YouTube empire off
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: of both conspiracy theories and also sort of more mainstream
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: celebrity gossip coverage. And so I think she's managed to
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: really sort of diversify her audience beyond Just sort of
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: people who listen to talk radio or watch Fox News.
• 3:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, so Candace's biggest or at least sort of
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: like splashiest most recent interview was a surprising one. It
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: was with Hunter Biden, of all people. Before that, like
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: you said, she spent months and months and months just
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: relentlessly focused on the assassination of Charlie Kirk and spreading
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: conspiracy theories about it of all shapes and sizes. Like
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: planes were tracking Charlie, that there was like a false
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: flag operation.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: She seemed to suggest that Erica Kirk, Charlie Kirk's wife,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: might have been the killer.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: And then before that, there was this endless series of
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: videos she did alleging that French President Emmanuel Macron's wife
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: is in fact a man. So just for folks who
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: haven't listened to Candace much, like here's a clip of
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: Candace on Piers Morgan's show that I think will give
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: you a sense of. the vibe that comes out of
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: a lot of her content.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Let's watch.
• 4:22
  Speaker 5: Why are we pretending that we don't know why we
• 4:24
  Speaker 5: ask questions?
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: Like, you're a journalist.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: You know what this is.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: You're like, what's going on?
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: What's going on?
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Why do you want to know why these planes were
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: tracking Charlie?
• 4:31
  Speaker 5: And that is the reason why people are watching my show,
• 4:34
  Speaker 5: because I'm the only one not treating them like they're
• 4:36
  Speaker 5: absolute idiots. who don't have two eyes, who believe in
• 4:39
  Speaker 5: magic bully theories, and who understand that Egyptian planes should
• 4:42
  Speaker 5: not have been tracking Charlie even three times this year
• 4:45
  Speaker 5: would be an anomaly, okay?
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: They've been tracking him.
• 4:48
  Speaker 5: We don't know where it's going to end, but we
• 4:49
  Speaker 5: are going to keep asking questions until we get clear answers.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: So she was yelling about Egyptian planes tracking Charlie Kirk.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, what is her beat?
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: You mentioned, I mean, she has like celebrity stuff, she
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: has pop culture stuff, but is her beat just conspiracy?
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: Like, how would you define it? Yeah, you know, it's interesting.
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think this she has sort of cohered
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: around this idea that there are these sort of pedophile
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: Epstein class powers that be. They're very closely linked to Israel,
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: closely linked to sort of centuries old Jewish cults and cabals.
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: I mean, you mentioned Brigitte Macron. It's not just that
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: Brigitte Macron is trans. But it's that like the McCrones
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: are part of this ancient Jewish network going back to
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: the Middle Ages.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: Is that the Frankists? The Frankists. Yes, exactly.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: Too deep in the shit.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: I mean even if you listen to it, it often–
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: like I can get this sense of– it can be
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: kind of hard to describe because in part because it's
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: just– you listen to it and it's like so crazy
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: and she kind of– she doesn't really bother to like
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: make a coherent theory per se. She more just kind
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: of throws stuff out. She goes, oh, isn't that weird?
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: Isn't that weird?
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: And then suddenly you find yourself that she's walked you
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: to Erica Kirk murder her husband or Brigitte McCrone is trans.
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: And she often will sort of abandon things as they're disproven.
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: So like she'll say, I think that guy in the
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: crowd at the assassination is acting weird.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: And that guy will have an excuse. And she'll say, oh, well,
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: never mind, you know, moving on, you know.
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: And so there isn't so much one conspiracy theory as
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: this general sense of like anti-Semitic, hateful, this sense of
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: like the cabal.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: Runs the world.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, like when I listen to Candace's stuff,
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: I find myself getting lost in the sauce and not
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: able to follow her.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: And we're like down all these conspiracy roads.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: But the reason I led with her and her in
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: our next subject, Tucker Carlson, is because the normies in
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: my life who text me about politics mentioned those two
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: the most. So like much like Sarah's focus group, like Candace,
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: I feel like is very influential. And also she's been
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: waging this battle against Turning Point USA, TPUSA ever since
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: Kirk's assassination. And TPUSA, for those who don't know, was
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: an incredibly influential media, political kind of voter turnout organization.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: But now she seems to have done some damage to it.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: Or I guess that's the question.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: I mean, how much damage do you think Candace has
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: done to TPUSA through this kind of ongoing fighting?
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think Candace and sort of the
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: conspiracy theorists around her have actually done a lot of
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: damage to Turning Point. I mean, they have created this
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: sense of, you know, after the Charlie Kirk assassination, There
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: was a lot of goodwill towards Turning Point, a lot
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: of sense that I think both Trump and that organization
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: were going to capitalize on after the murder. But instead,
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: Candace has said, well, maybe Erica Kirk killed her husband.
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: Maybe this organization, you know, she's picked out all these
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: individual executives. Maybe they were involved in these murders. And
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: I think, you know, anecdotally, if you look at like
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: groups of conservative moms, they'll say, oh, well, we were
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: going to order some Turning Point shirts.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: But now, you know, we don't want to be associated
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: with them, stuff like that.
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think it's been at at best for
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: a turning point, a big distraction.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: I think it's been a lot more damaging. Yeah.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: Do you think Candace actually has political ambitions? Because it
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: seems like she kind of flirted with maybe running for
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: office in some of her answers, but I don't know,
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: maybe that's just a way to keep yourself in the news.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: You know, it's a good question.
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: I don't think, it's hard for me to imagine her
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: running just because I think she has such a good
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: thing going right now. I mean, she's making so much money.
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: She's making tens of thousands of dollars per video. She's
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: putting out four or five videos a week. I think
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: she has far more influence at the point where I
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: think it's relatively credible reports that Macron complained to Trump
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: and asked him to have Candace cut these things off.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, That shows you sort of the influence that
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: she enjoys.
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: So I think she could run for office if she wanted.
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: But I think right now, I think she'd be foolish
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: to do it. I think she's happy right.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: Where she is.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: Until the French clean her out in this libel lawsuit.
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: And now some turning– at least one turning point person
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: is suing her. I think there's more to come. You know,
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: her husband is this mega wealthy British guy. So they
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: may be able to weather that. But I think ultimately
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: these lawsuits, you know, just as Alex Jones was able
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: to avoid it until he couldn't.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: I think she could face the same issue. Yeah, not fun.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: OK, let's turn to another sort of heavyweight in this
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: fight for the future of MAGA, which is Tucker Carlson.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: So Tucker's career arc is fascinating to me. He was
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: widely viewed as one of the best magazine writers of
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: his generation. Then he bumped along in various TV jobs
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: for a while, including stints at CNN and MSNBC. Those
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: sort of eventually ended or failed in some way. Then
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: he got picked up at Fox and was kind of
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: like a weekend journeyman until he got on the Trump
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: train early and then parlayed that support relationship, you know,
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: I don't know, just focus into the highest rated show
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: in the history of cable news before he was suddenly
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: fired in 2023. And then after getting fired, Tucker started
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: his own news network and show, He currently has about 5.6
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: million YouTube subscribers, which is more than his old show
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: in terms of the aggregate ratings. So do with that
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: information what you will. Obviously, not all of those people
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: are watching every episode, but it's a lot. And then
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: more recently, he's kind of broken with Trump on some issues,
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: particularly on Iran and U.S.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: Policy towards Israel.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: But a lot of the critiques were at times very
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: harsh and very personal. So, you know, Will, in your opinion,
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: where does Tucker rank in terms of kind of influence
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: in this media world we're talking about today? Is he
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: number one?
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: You know, it can be hard to quite figure out.
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think he's very influential. I think he
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: sits at a unique point, which is You know, someone
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: like Candace Owens, someone like Nick Fuentes, people kind of
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: further than that on the right or more into conspiracy theories.
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: They're sort of existing in this kind of insurgent anti-Trump
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: from the right world. Tucker sort of straddles both camps.
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: I mean, he has a lot of influence in the
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: White House. He's still seen as enough of a mainstream
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: conservative figure to appear at Turning Point USA conventions, for example.
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: On the other hand, he has this kind of growing
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: credibility with the anti-MAGA right, you know, what might call
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: themselves the America First Movement, people like Marjorie Taylor Greene.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: Fuentes, Candace.
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: And so I think he's sort of uniquely able there
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: to mainstream these really hateful and toxic ideas, like having
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: Nick Fuentes on his show for a very nice sit-down interview,
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: while also, let's say, having ties to the Heritage Foundation
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: and getting support from them. So in that way, I
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: think he's very powerful. And as you said, he also
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: has a massive audience just on his own.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: So let's watch a recent clip from the Israeli ambassador
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: to the United Nations, Danny Dannen, talking about a phone
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: call he got from Tucker Carlson.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: Then I'll ask you a question about it.
• 11:16
  Speaker 6: He told me, Ambassador, can you please take me off
• 11:19
  Speaker 6: the list? And I was shocked. I told him, what
• 11:22
  Speaker 6: are you talking about? He told me, I'm being attacked
• 11:26
  Speaker 6: by the Jews. So maybe you have like a list.
• 11:30
  Speaker 6: Can you take me off the list? So I waited
• 11:33
  Speaker 6: for a minute and I told him, Mr. Carlson, we
• 11:36
  Speaker 6: don't have a list. You are being attacked because you're
• 11:39
  Speaker 6: spreading lies.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: It's an interesting phone call there. So of all the
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: people we'll discuss today, Tucker seems to be among the
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: most interested in shaping policy, or at least the Republican
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: Party's policy views, especially U.S. policy towards Israel. He's been
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: a fierce critic of Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. He's
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: been a fierce critic of the war in Iran, of U.S.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: policy towards Israel generally. At times, as you mentioned, I
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: think that criticism has veered into anti-Semitic territory in some
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: really troubling language. Do you think that his general motive
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: is policy-focused or is this political? Is this like kind
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: of Tucker knows where the puck is going and he's
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: skating there by becoming more isolationist?
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: I think throughout his career– I mean you mentioned these
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: kind of different changes he's done, whether it's like a
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: writer at the Weekly Standard or now– or then Fox
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: News or now this. I think he's a guy who
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: is very– maybe it's a mix. I think he's trying
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: to stay ahead of things. I think he recognizes– that
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: things like the Iran war are going to be unpopular
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: with Republicans and only get more so as the years
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: goes on. So he's trying to avoid associating himself with that.
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: But I think also being fired from Fox News really
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: sort of radicalized him and sort of caused him to
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: seek out these more extreme politics where he could sort
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: of stake out his own position in a way that
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: wouldn't just look like another Fox News type person.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: Do you think– I mean a lot of people worry
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: or wonder if he is setting himself up for a
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: run for president. And I can make a pretty compelling
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: case for it. I mean he's a huge media figure.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: He is probably.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: Universal name ID in the Republican Party. He has– I think,
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: carved out this interesting lane. I don't know how big
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: the lane is, but there is an isolationist lane in
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: the Republican Party, right? And Trump, you know, was courting
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: them and then went back on everything he told them
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: in the campaign when he went to war with Iran.
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: Do you view what Tucker's doing as some sort of
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: like political setup?
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: I think it's very possible that he could run for
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: president or some other office. I mean, I think if
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: we look in 2028, the lane for someone who opposed
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: the war, who's kind of a more populist figure, is
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: pretty open.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: J.D.
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: Vance, I think, is going to be damaged both by
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: his association with the Trump administration, but also by associations
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: with people like Peter Thiel, all these kind of tech oligarchs.
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: And so I think if you have someone like Tucker
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: Carlson who could say, oh, I hate AI data centers,
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: and we got to go back to, he's up in
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: this cabin in Maine, he says, I just want to
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: grow my family and go back to the traditional American ways.
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: I think that would appeal to some people. I mean,
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: I think it would be a risk for him to
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: run because potentially he would kind of get crushed like
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: a bug somehow and then, you know, lose his audience.
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: But I think more so than Candace or someone else,
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: other media figures, I think he's the one I see
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: most likely as potentially running.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's fascinating because so many people run
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: for president knowing they're going to lose, but they know
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: they'll hand them a giant megaphone. And like Tucker has
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: a giant megaphone. It's totally unclear to me, like you
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: were saying with Candace earlier, like would getting in politics benefit.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: Or hurt them?
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: Because they're such heavyweights already.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: It's just not obvious. Yeah, I agree.
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: And, you know, he might also throw himself behind, gosh,
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: like maybe Joe Kent, the counterterror chief who resigned. I mean,
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: it seems like someone who's potentially setting up a run
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: for office. So I think on the other hand, you know,
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: he was very supportive of J.D. Vance only to see
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: that kind of fizzle out and JD Vance to support
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: the war. So I could see maybe if he's like,
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: you know, I got to get this done myself.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: So, Will, before we keep going, can I just ask,
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: how the hell did you get on this beat? Because
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: we've spoken a bunch of times. Look, I have a
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: whole bucket of questions coming up about the kind of
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: like Nazi adjacent media space. You end up having to
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: consume all that content. You have to learn about all
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: these terrible people. How did you get into this focus?
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: So I was a sort of young teen Republican in
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: Texas and I just had a huge– I consumed a
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: lot of conservative media, talk radio and Fox News and
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: all this. And then during the second– the George W.
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: Bush administration, my politics changed. I thought it was just awful.
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: He did such a bad job. But I still was
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: like– I still had such a passion.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: For right-wing media.
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: And then a couple of years went by and then
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: I was following figures like Ben Shapiro whose whole thing
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: was that he was a virgin at the time.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: It wasn't that novel. It was all these characters.
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: And then in 2016, I was at a party and
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: people were like, have you heard about Laura Loomer and
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: Milo Yiannopoulos? And I thought, oh my gosh, people are
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: finally interested in these people. And so I started writing
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: about them.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: No way.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: So you were like, I'm just gonna make this my
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: thing and focus on these folks.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: And you know, I mean, there's, you know, as we've discovered,
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's really sort of an endless well of
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: bizarre stories about them.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: Well, sometimes I'll be I'll find myself sitting in bed
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: with headphones in not speaking to my wife at 10pm
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: because I'm streaming something horrible. And I wonder what it's
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: doing to my mental health. Does it does it impact yours?
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: Are you able to divorce the two?
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: No, it's a good question.
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: I think I just have a really high tolerance. I
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: really enjoy the the twists and the turns, you know,
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: whether it's kind of the personalities or the appearance of
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: a new idea or ideology. Similarly, you know, I do
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: a lot while I'm cooking for my kids. And so
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: I run through these videos and my wife will come
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: down and see, you know, five people hunched over a computer,
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: you know, broadcasting something.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: And she'll say, you know, that certainly looks like something
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: you'd be watching.
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: Speaking of great replacements, we're going to do onions instead
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: of scallions in this.
• 16:46
  Speaker 5: Yes.
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• 20:36
  Speaker 1: Going right now. Let's get to Megyn Kelly.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: Megyn Kelly, I kind of slot in with Tucker in
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: a bucket because I feel like they're friends, they're aligned,
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: they talk to each other on their shows. But she
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: has also broken with Trump in some notable ways recently.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: It started again with Iran and Israel. But now more recently,
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: Megyn's been criticizing Trump for like infidelity, which surprised me.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: What do you make of Megyn's kind of rapid pivot
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: into Trump critic?
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Is this a business decision? Is this policy, some combo?
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: You know, I would say Megyn Kelly is much more
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: mercenary even than Tucker Carlson is. I think she is
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: someone who, you know, they're very similar in some ways.
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: They both came out of Fox News and these kind
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: of more, such as it is, moderate, more traditional conservative environments.
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: But I think she is really seeing the way the
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: wind is blowing and she number one, doesn't want to
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: get targeted by figures like Candace Owens or Nick Fuentes,
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: because I think she sees them correctly as much more
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: dynamic and much more able to make people look like
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: dinosaurs in the way that Ben Shapiro or Mark Levin
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: have kind of been sidelined. And so I think she
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: really wants to stay out of their way. She's also,
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: I think, is trying to ride this wave of discontent
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: with Trump. And look, I think if Trump was at
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: like 60% approval, I'm sure she wouldn't be saying, you know,
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: shut up with the tweets and stop threatening to destroy
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: Iranian civilization. But I think right now she's recognizing where
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: the wind is blowing and trying to stay on the
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: right side of things.
• 22:00
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: You mentioned the Daily Wire. There's been a lot of
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: coverage lately of the decline of the Daily Wire and
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: in particular, the decline in viewership for America's favorite Virgin
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: podcast host, Ben Shapiro. Last month, the Daily Wire CEO
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: stepped down. He handed the reins to this game show
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: producer and host named Mike Richard. So I think it's Uh,
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: his claim to fame is almost becoming the host of
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: jeopardy before you have to, until some like old quotes
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: from a podcast he did resurfaced that were offensive and
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: got him, uh, bounced. Um, Ben Shapiro has reportedly lost
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: at least 80,000 YouTube followers this year alone, which is,
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: you know, that's remarkable. Um, How real do you think
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: these issues are for The Daily Wire? And to what
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: do you attribute their decline?
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: I think they're very real for The Daily Wire. I
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: think there's maybe, let's say, two challenges they're facing. I mean,
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: it's striking because just a few years ago, Jeremy Boring,
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: who was the co-founder of The Daily Wire and really
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: kind of became the face of the company for a
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: while as Ben Shapiro sort of receded, he was being
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: profiled as like the new Hollywood mogul in Nashville where
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: they're based. He was going to change the face of entertainment.
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: They built out all these streaming shows. They built out
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: a Game of Thrones knockoff that was like his passion
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: project for, it was like several million dollars per episode.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: It went way over budget.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: The Pendragon cycle. It was tens of millions of dollars
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: over budget.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: Yes, it's about King Arthur.
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: He doesn't show up in the first season, but they
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: felt really confident that there would be more.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: It was all about Merlin.
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: And so this was a dream of his that he
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: had had since college to make this show. I mean,
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: it looks great, but very expensive. They made a bluey
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: knockoff starring chinchillas to win over.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: Kids to conservatism.
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: So they had all these side projects and that cost
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: them enormous amounts of money. So he got booted last
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: year essentially over these cost overruns. Now they're kind of
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: trying to retrench in a much more traditional kind of
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: like we're going to have a couple podcasts. Maybe we're
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: going to have some documentaries from Matt Walsh where he
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: skewers liberals. But I think the bigger problem they're facing
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: is that the kind of politics that Ben Shapiro wants
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: to promote, which is sort of this like anti-anti-Trump. He's like,
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: you know, a little cautious about Trump. He's not a
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: hardcore Trump guy like Sean Hannity. On the other hand,
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: he agrees with things like the war in Iran. He's
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: very pro-Israel. And I think both of those that he's
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: kind of wedged here between he can't go anti-Trump, but
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: he also like doesn't love Trump all that much. So
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: he's kind of trapped. And I think that point of
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: view is just not that popular right now on the right.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: And then it's losing him audience. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: You read these reports and there are these amazing financial challenges,
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: like you mentioned. I mean, like I can't get enough
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: of the stories about the Pendragon cycle and just like
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: the reality that so many of these guys are just
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: theater kids who didn't quite make it and who are
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: trying to revamp their theater kidness in the conservative world.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: But the Daily Wire reportedly had $ 200 million in annual
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: revenue in like 2024. Maybe that was a projection. I
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: remember reading about their business success. and worrying like how
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: it compared to us, you know, their subscriber count. And
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: then just something seems to have like fallen off a cliff.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: And I don't know what it is, but I mean,
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: I think Ben Shapiro lives in Florida, but the company's
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: in Nashville. Maybe there's just sort of like a lack
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: of business alignment as well as sort of like ideological
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: and content misalignment with the party that you mentioned there.
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think Puck had some reporting on
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: how basically the guy who followed Jeremy Boring was also
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: seen as kind of bumbling around there's been a lot
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: of internal discord between Ben Shapiro and the other founders.
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: But I think what we're looking at is that The
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: Daily Wire will probably retrench as something more like The
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: Daily Call or like Steven Crowder. I mean, speaking of
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: like failed theater kids, like it'll be a thing with
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: a popular podcast and a couple other popular podcasts, but
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: not like this kind of what they were going for,
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: which was sort of like a conservative entertainment giant.
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: They wanted to replace like a major studio in Hollywood
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: with this conservative thing. And I just wonder, like, is
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: that even doable? Like, are there enough audience or advertisers?
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: And it seems like maybe the verdict is not quite yet,
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: or at least TBD.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's what they're looking at.
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: I mean, they were, you know, this was the idea
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: is like, well, I subscribe to Netflix, Disney Plus, and
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: you know, my kids love the chinchilla show.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: So I got to subscribe to the Daily Wire.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: Catch every episode of the Pentagon Cycle. Okay, so again,
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: tell me if you disagree, but I kind of mentally
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: slot the free press into a similar bucket or basket
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: as the Daily Wire.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: Now, it's less ideologically overt.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: It's a little more like trolly maybe, but it clearly
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: has like an editorial slant and a mission. So the
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: Free Press, as folks probably know, was bought by Paramount
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: for $ 150 million.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: Must be nice.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: Barry Weiss, the founder of the Free Press, was named
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: editor-in-chief of CBS News. That part of the kind of
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: project is not going great. We've all been reading this week.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: You and I are talking on Wednesday, June 3rd, about
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: a horrible meeting with the new 60 Minutes executive producer,
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: where the kind of 60 Minutes Uber anchor, Scott Pelley,
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: dressed him down and was later fired, which makes me
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: wonder how that show is going to even keep going,
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: but that's neither here nor there. But we're reading a
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: lot about CBS and not a lot about the free press.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: What is happening over there? I feel like they've kind
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: of disappeared. I just don't see their stuff anymore.
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think the free press is trying to,
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: similar to The Daily Wire in some ways, become kind
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: of like a lifestyle thing. They're launching these events. They're
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: going to have free press meetups in their town. So
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: you can meet fellow heterodox thinkers, maybe date.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: Them, whatever. You know, they're trying to branch out in
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: these various ways. But I agree with you.
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: I think the free press is kind of facing this
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: drift as Bari Weiss focuses on who she's going to
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: fire at 60 Minutes or what have you. I think also,
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: I mean, you know, it's also worth noting, I mean,
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: like they had a crazy high turnover of people. I mean,
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: they brought in kind of Other prominent people like Chuck
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: Lane from The Washington Post, people may remember from the
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: movie Shattered Glass. Michael Moynihan, who's kind of like a
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: podcast personality. Andy Mills, who founded The Daily at The
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: New York Times. And they just– these people just quit
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: like really quickly, suggesting, by the way, sort of a
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: foreshadowing of what 60 Minutes and CBS News.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: How they're run now.
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: So I think there is some amount of trouble there.
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: They're down to like Olivia Rheingold, who's kind of like
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: a wannabe daily Barry Weiss figure, who's like a bit alarming,
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: you know, in her demeanor. I just don't find her
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: like I don't know if people have like a.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: No, no.
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: There was a journalist who was, you know, fairly or unfairly,
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: you decide mocked for taking video during the the shooting
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: attempt at the White House Correspondents Dinner when the there
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: was assassin. Everyone calls an assassination attempt. The individual got
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: nowhere near Donald Trump. But there was a reporter who
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: videoed sort of like the aftermath of it but had
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: the camera turned on herself the entire time and got
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: a lot of grief for it.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: That's Olivia Reingold. Yeah.
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: And, you know, I mean to get into like a
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: larger structural issue I think they're facing and sort of
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: these other figures, you know, I think there's been a
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: decline in interest in like anti-woke content.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: As obviously Donald Trump is in charge, I think a
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: lot of these companies have sort of retreated from things like,
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: you know, from like woke entertainment such as it is.
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: So on the upscale end, you have something like the
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: Free Press, which is going to have all these kind
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: of canceled professors. On the lower end, you have people
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: like Tim Pool or The Quartering on YouTube, who are
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: going to say, I can't believe they have a black
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: Disney princess or what have you. But all of those
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: guys have said, you know, my traffic's going down.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: My views are down.
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: Because when Democrats are out of power, there's just less
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: wokeness to get outraged about.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's less to be outraged about. It always struck me, though,
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: that the Free Press um, had an impressive elite audience,
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: you know, like there's like smart, professional, thoughtful people I
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: know here in LA who consume a lot of free
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: press content that she clearly had a barrier. I said, uh,
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: is it barrier Bari? I don't know if I'm saying
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: it right.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: I kind of think, I don't know. Okay. To be
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: honest with you. Either way, Ms. Weiss, Ms.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: Weiss clearly was able to, um, build relationships with, charm, otherwise,
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: you know, get investment from billionaires or, you know, elites
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: like the Ellison family. But was that the secret sauce
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: of the free press only or just like that kind
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: of elite audience and maybe not the mass market appeal
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: that they need?
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: I think Barry Wise has had a lot of success
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: kind of having these, what appears to be like a
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: relatively like straightforward, often admirable ideology of like, free speech and,
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: you know, all this stuff, intellectual pursuits. But often that
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: boils down to, and I think we can see this
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: elsewhere in right-wing media, is sort of like respect rich
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: people ideology or like rich people should get to do
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: whatever they want. And obviously that's very flattering to the
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: tech oligarchs, to people like the, you know, all of
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: these kind of, certainly Elon Musk, people like that. And
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: so I think that's why she was so successful on
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: the LA cocktail party circuit. And, you know, it's sort
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: of similar to to the Spencer Pratt thing, you know,
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: I mean, different flavors of it, but this idea of like,
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: you know, we got to clean up the streets, you know?
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: So the, I think that has obviously served her very well.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: And I think got her that $ 150 million purchase.
• 31:02
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: A lot of it is just like, uh, I find
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: the people you find annoying, annoying too. And I'm going
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: to make fun of them on my website. So subscribe
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: to me.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: I'm going to validate you for these opinions. You might
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: otherwise be uncomfortable having.
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: Um, all right.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: Now I'm going to ask you about the kind of darker,
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: more extreme fringe, the people I worry about you listening
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: to as you're making your kids mac and cheese. Um,
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: You have probably folks have already heard of Nick Fuentes,
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: who is an openly racist, misogynistic, Holocaust denying streamer, podcast host,
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: whatever you want to call him. His content really exploded,
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: at least in my feeds in recent months, especially after
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: his interview with Tucker Carlson. But also his episodes get
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: clipped and shared everywhere. And if you kind of like
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: make the wrong moves on the Twitter algorithm, all of
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: a sudden they're getting force fed down your throat.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: Then there's figures like Chud the Builder.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: Which I'd love to get into a bit with you,
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: who was just a truly awful new Internet figure who
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: would literally run around screaming racial slurs in an effort
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: to bait black people into fights. And that story ended
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: exactly how you'd expect it would end with him getting
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: arrested for shooting someone in one of those fights. So,
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: can you tell us about those two individuals and any
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: other big voices in this extremist fringe that you keep
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: an eye on?
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: So, this kind of fits into sort of the Gen
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: Z streamer community. You know, Nick Fuentes being the most
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: prominent one, this white nationalist. He has– sort of unique
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: demeanor among racists, which is like he's a little fae.
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: He's like a kind of a little guy. And so
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: he appeals in sort of a strange way, you know,
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: to the extent that I think he has had sort
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: of a Candace Owens-like breakout into the broader internet where
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: people will, you know, play his audios and, you know,
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: over their TikToks or what have you. I think Chud
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: the Builder, as you said, I think one of the
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: most reprehensible people I've ever written about Someone who goes around,
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: says the N-word, and then when a black person says, hey.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: What are you doing?
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: He says, you know, step to me and I'll shoot you.
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: And ultimately, not only did he shoot someone, but he also, doofus,
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: ended up shooting himself.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: Did shoot himself. So now he's on trial for attempted murder.
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: And so even more broadly, we can look around to
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: people like whether it's Clavicular, the guy who's trying to
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: look so handsome, or these like dating podcasts where they
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: bring in a bunch of women from OnlyFans. and they say,
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: what's your body count? And then they go, oh my God,
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: that's not trad. And these things just kind of like
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: whipping up hate against women or minorities. And it's all
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: kind of united around, a lot of it gets clipped,
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: as you said, into these one, two minute segments.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: That get a lot of social media traction.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: And to your point about the clipping, I mean, it
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: can feel really hard to understand if these shows are
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: actually big and influential, or if I just see them
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: because Twitter knows that I clicked on a bunch of
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: Fuentes clips at one point and now it's just constantly
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: serving me more of them. Do you have a sense
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: of like kind of the aggregate influence of this world?
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: You know, it's interesting. I think, you know, we can
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: have– there are a couple metrics. And as you said,
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: it can be challenging, right? Because on one hand, we've
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: seen these articles that say, you know, clipping, it's making
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: it all fake. You know, there's– none of this is real.
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: None of these people are popular. But, you know, as
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: Taylor Lorenz has pointed out, I mean someone like Clavicular–
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: was popular before he came to the attention of people
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: like you and me. He was popular at kind of
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: like a Gen Z, here's this handsome oddball level. And also,
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: you know, if clipping, if this was all this fake thing, then,
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: you know, everyone would do it. We would have 100,000 claviculars, right?
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: Heaven forbid. But like, you know, these are, it is
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: a challenging world. And for me, it's often when it
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: kind of spills over into the real world. So when
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: clavicular is out walking around and all these people are going,
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: oh my God, it's clavicular. Well, clearly there's some amount
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: of fan base there. Or when Chud the Builder unfortunately
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: raises 300 grand after shooting a guy. I mean, clearly
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: there's some amount of genuine support.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: Another side.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: So for us at Crooked, I mean, when I think
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: about the technology and the platforms we focus on, it's
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: like the standard podcast app from Apple.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: It's YouTube.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: It's huge for us, especially in terms of growth. And
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: then obviously we try to clip and share our stuff
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: too on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Obviously the conservatives use a
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: lot of these same sites as well, but they're also,
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: they use platforms that I feel like Democrats just don't
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: really live on like Rumble, Kick, Twitch is a little more,
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: you know, broadly used. What are the biggest platforms you
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: think for this sort of conservative mega media world and
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: how important are they to the growth of these spaces?
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: So, I mean, you mentioned Kick, which is like basically Twitch,
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: the people who were kicked off of Twitch went to
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: Kick and And it's sort of a like, it's basically
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: funded all by like gambling ads because they couldn't have
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: those on Twitch. So that's like the very unsavory people
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: on Kik. And that's someone like Clavicular, for example. And
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: then if you get kicked off of Kik, You end
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: up where Chud the Builder ended up, which is like
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: something called like brainpill.info or something along those lines.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: I've never even heard of that. Yeah, it's these like–
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: I think I'm mangling the name.
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: But it's these like really like these kind of backwaters
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: of the internet. Now, it can all still get clipped
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: and end up on Twitter. And especially as we've seen
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: the mainstream social media platforms sort of pull back from
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: moderating and really go hands off. I mean a lot
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: of it still happens on places like YouTube and X. And,
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: you know, as you mentioned, Rumble, which is sort of
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: the the right wing YouTube alternative, which just hosted, you know,
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: was the main sponsor for the steroid games that were
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: held recently. I mean, so that's kind of the world
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: the world they're operating.
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Was it the enhanced games or the enhanced games?
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: Yes. I, you know, I feel like everyone was sharing
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: the picture of that one swimmer who looked like he
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: had been inflated, you know, with a with a hose.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: But then I don't think they broke any records.
• 36:47
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: I mean, you had some sort of natural athletes just
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: smoking the steroid guys.
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I watched it. In a way, it wasn't as
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: sinister as I hoped. I mean, they tried to make
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: it just look like the Olympics. But yeah, ultimately, really,
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: the guys, I think with especially things like weightlifting, these
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: guys are on so many drugs anyway that it's kind
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: of same, same.
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: And also, I think it wasn't hosted by the guy
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: Brian Johnson, who's trying to maximize his longevity. But in practice,
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: that means, I guess, tweeting out things, observations about his
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: girlfriend's vaginal biome was one of them?
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a disturbing fellow. Yeah, I'd say so. And
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: he appeared with an umbrella so that he wouldn't get
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: any natural sunlight.
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: How does that space overlap with conservative media?
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: Or does it? Am I wrong?
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think there is some overlap. I mean,
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: certainly someone like Brian Johnson is trying to live forever.
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: I mean, he's like a tech guy, kind of tech-adjacent guy.
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: You have these guys who are like trying to, you know,
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: someone like Clavicular, similarly as Brian Johnson is trying to
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: live forever.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: Clavicular is like trying to, you know, be as handsome
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: as he can be.
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: And so I think this idea, particularly among young people
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: of like, you know, optimizing and having this kind of
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: very– Clavicular represents kind of like a very nihilistic view
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: of the world where it's like if you aren't in
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: the like 0.1 percent, you know, women are– they call
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: it hypergamy.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: So, you know, the most handsome.
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: Men will have 10 lovers, you know, at the same
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: time and everyone else will be will be an incel.
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: And so, you know, then your life is over, essentially.
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: And so you have to compete in these really intense ways.
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: I think we see that reflected a lot in this
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: kind of really intense like Silicon Valley culture.
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a very weird culture. I mean, it's always
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: interesting to me to kind of identify points where the
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: Venn diagrams overlap.
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: Because I think Maha, the Make America Healthy Again agenda is.
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: really did bring in a big community of people to
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: the Trump orbit that might not otherwise have ever voted
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: for Republican, right? I mean, a lot of it was like,
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: you know, out here in LA, it's like West Side
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: Moms who were, you know, sort of like anti-vax in
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: some way, kind of got drawn into the Maha movement
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: during COVID and ended up voting Trump.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: And it's interesting, like, sort.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: Of like the longevity, lifestyle, health space can get coded
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: conservative if Democrats are not talking to those people or
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: communicating an alternative message.
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's a huge overlap between all these different groups. So,
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: you know, for example, let's take a look at Candace Owens,
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: who got really into Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni stuff. And
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: so she drew in a lot of people who didn't
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: care about conservative politics, but it was kind of these
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: like conservative coded, like blame the woman kind of anti-me
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: too type stuff. And they start, you know, combing through
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: the court documents. And then, oh, you want to comb
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: through something else? Let's go through Brigitte Macron's high school
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: yearbooks or what have you. Or like the world of
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: meme stocks where people, oh, I lost all my money
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: on Bed Bath & Beyond. Then they're championed by people
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: like Bill Pulte, now our deputy intelligence chief or our
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: director of national intelligence. And then they get into QAnon
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: or they get into other conspiracy theories because they feel
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: that they've been wrong.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: Extraordinary video going around the internet this week of Bill
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: Pulte at a conference where he is trying to promote
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: the Bed Bath & Beyond stock. And the speaker before
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: him slaps another man in the face with a dildo.
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: And then Pulte himself gets presented with a dildo. So,
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: I mean, this is the– A trophy.
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: I think, when it said Bill Pulte fucks only the
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: young was the joke.
• 40:10
  Speaker 4: I guess.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: He loves the Taylor Swift song Only the Young. I've
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: unfortunately– but it's certainly regrettable phrasing. It is, oh yeah,
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: very regrettable facing.
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: This week alone, you got Bill Pulte talking about only
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: the young and then Ivanka talking about buying an island.
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: It was not a good week for moving on from
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: the Jeffrey Epstein dialogue for the Trump administration.
• 40:37
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• 42:00
  Speaker 2: Okay, let's talk about the kind of manosphere world such
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: as it is. You've mentioned Clavicular a few times. You're right,
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: he's been around for a while, but I think he
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: exploded onto the national scene a few months back and
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: taught us all about looks maxing and this weird lingo
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: he has.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: And hitting his face with hammers.
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: Um, and he also infamously went to a club in
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: Miami with Nick Fuentes. We talked about earlier, the kind
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: of neo-Nazi, uh, content creator, and then a truly awful
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: guy named Andrew Tate, um, who was charged with what
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: is it? Human trafficking and rape, human trafficking, all kinds
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: of genuinely awful human being who, by the way, it
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: was just in Russia, uh, with Candace Owens, for some reason,
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: we can talk about that if you want, and a
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: streamer named Sneeko. They all sang along to Kanye West's song,
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: Heil Hitler, filmed it, chucked it on the internet. Are
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: those folks, Clavicular, Andrew Tate, Sneeko, are they talking about
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: politics these days? How do you think about them and
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: their influence in this kind of media world?
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting.
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: I feel like each of them has Sort of a
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: bespoke ideology all on their own.
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: You know, someone like Clavicular famously said that, you know, J.D.
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: Vance is too fat and he's going to vote for
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: Gavin Newsom as a result because Gavin Newsom is just
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: more handsome. You know, you have these figures that almost
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: exist in sort of a right-wing realm beyond any– even
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: like Trumpian politics where, you know, for example, you know,
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: Clavicular's representatives will always say, oh, he's not right-wing.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: You know, he likes Gavin Newsom.
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: But then when you actually watch him interact with women,
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: he's like– It's like a caveman view. Like a girl
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: will say, like, I'm going to college.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: And he's like, what? Why?
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: So it's ultimately this very reactionary, ultimately really nihilistic view
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: of the world. Someone like– whether it's Andrew Tate who
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: obviously has all these sort of criminal allegations– you know,
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: also in the club was this guy named Myron Gaines, who's,
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: you know, sort of pseudonym because they're admiring his gains
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: in the gym. You know, he's, these are guys who
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: are really like just pumping out this like hate content.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: And so it is interesting.
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: I feel like when there's kind of a big political moment,
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: they might discuss it, but they certainly aren't like orthodox
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: conservative figures as we might think of them.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's interesting.
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: Hearing you talk about it made me think that You know,
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: I guess if Candace Owens' beat is conspiracy, their beat
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: is misogyny and hate for women.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, frankly.
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, hate for women, sometimes hate for Indian people. That's
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: kind of a rising one. You know, they're kind of
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: just– there are these guys who sort of like– look,
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: I mean they just want more attention essentially is what
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: they're after. And they do– you know, it's– they can
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: get– you know, someone like Chud the Builder is sort
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: of an extreme example of this. They get sort of
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: trapped in these like escalatory attention cycles. And so Sneeko
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: converts to Islam and then, you know, is caught drinking
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: and all this stuff. And so they live some pretty
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: twisted lives.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: Just weird drama all the time.
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: I used to listen to Steve Bannon's podcast all the
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: time because I felt like it would tell me where
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: MAGA was going at least a couple of weeks early.
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: You hear like some crazy idea and then all of
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: a sudden to be on Trump's true social feed a
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: few weeks later. I have fallen off on that listening
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: habit in part because the guy just cranks out like what, three,
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: four hours of stuff a day and I couldn't keep.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: Up for it.
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: But also I felt like in the beginning of Trump 2.0,
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: the Bannon wing of the party seemed to be losing, right?
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: Like his enemy was Elon Musk. Elon Musk was sitting
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: in the White House. He was like co-president for a while.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe that's not the case anymore.
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: Like, where do you think Bannon and that media empire
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: sit in the kind of mega media space? hierarchy in
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: space these days.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting.
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: People have asked me this before and I'm kind of
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: trying to figure it out myself exactly what influence Steve
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: Bannon has. I mean, I think it's often sort of
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: overstated because I think he's a pretty easy source for journalists.
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: And so they're happy. He's often in articles or kind
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: of cited as his wisdom. He is, as you said,
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, he still has these.
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: Figures who are kind of like these like B-tier operatives
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: who will sort of reveal that something's going to happen.
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: Like he'll have Like John Solomon, who's kind of this
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: conservative investigative reporter.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: And is now joining the government.
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: And he'll say, you know, Tulsi Gabbard, you know, basically
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: digging up stuff to interfere with elections, things like that,
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: which is very– or Tina Peters' lawyer was on and
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: he said, Tina Peters is going to get pardoned soon.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: And that happened.
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: And so I think– but as for his like actual influence,
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: I mean as you said, he was kind of this
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: like anti-tech oligarch guy. I think we're seeing more of
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: that coalition kind of congeal on the right. But at
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: the moment, I think he's kind of just humming along,
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: but not with any sort of particular amount of sweat.
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think he was last seen pushing the anti-sharia
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: law ballot initiative in Texas, for example, as a way
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: to maybe turn out voters for Pax. And clearly, it's
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: his hobby horses and his candidates. But yeah, I'm sort
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: of not exactly clear where he's at in this space.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: So look, the whole point of this conversation was to
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: talk about this mega media ecosystem and figure out what
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: it tells us about where the party is going, because
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: they're all kind of clamoring to figure out what a
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: post Donald Trump political reality will be, even if it's,
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: you know, later than we all want it to be.
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: We talked about Tucker in the policy fights around Iran
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: and U.S.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: Support towards Israel.
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: Are there other ideological or policy splits that you're observing
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: kind of bubble up in this space?
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: I do think, you know, things like certainly AI, I
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: think is emerging as a real issue, whether it's data
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: centers or like government oversight of AI. People like Steve
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: Bannon have really been whipping up the idea of like,
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: you know, we need more government oversight. Or I think
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: there's also, you know, on sort of a more smaller scale,
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: there's this growing sense on like places like TikTok, where
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: you'll have a video of a farmer being like, People
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: keep asking to buy my land for a data center. Now,
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: you know, admittedly, I don't think that's much of like
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: a sob story. You know, he can sell it or not.
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: But it's giving people this sense of like there's like
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: sinister forces at play. And I think that always like
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: really hits with the right.
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: On the other hand, you.
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: Have these people like David Sachs, these tech people who
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: are clearly very associated with the administration who basically, you know,
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: want to run amok. And so I think things like
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: AI and tech in general, you know, Matt Walsh at
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: The Daily Wire, on the other hand, is like a
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: very anti-AI guy. So you can see these splits. I mean, certainly,
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: as you mentioned, the Iran and sort of intervention, Israel
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: in general is like a huge fault line. So I
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: think we're as Trump kind of recedes and influence. I
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: think this fight is going to break out more in
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: the open.
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: The other thing I want to ask you is, you know,
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: there's been some suggestion that a lot of the heat
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: you see in the mega media world is just financially driven.
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: Like there is a woman named Ashley St.
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: Clair.
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: Who is a former MAGA media influencer, who is probably
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: best known to this audience is for having a child
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: with Elon Musk and then kind of like talking about
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: it afterwards. She recently said that the whole right-wing influencer
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: world is just getting paid and that most of this
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: post you see or that causes that kind of these
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: MAGA folks take up happen because someone is cutting them
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: a check. And I think a lot of people have
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: pointed the fact that like all of a sudden Katie Miller,
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: Stephen Miller, White House advisor Stephen Miller's wife is talking
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: about like what solar farms I think and people like.
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: Hmm, interesting that happened. Is that true? Do you think
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: is Ashley St.
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: Clair right that there's a lot of folks on the
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: takeout there?
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: I think she is right.
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: I think there's like a huge amount of pay to
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: play or payola washing around. I mean, whether it's people
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: who are kind of like named figures, like the talk
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: radio is like Chad Prather or what have you. Or
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: just these like meme accounts that are like end wokeness
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: and have a million followers.
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: I'll give you an example.
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: I just wrote this week about how suddenly a bunch
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: of these people were saying Harley Davidson is so woke
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: and gay. We got to get– ditch your Harley, whatever.
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: And buy an Indian motorcycle. There's another motorcycle company called Indian.
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: And it was so strange that there wasn't at that
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: time like a real like wokeness– like a genuine wokeness
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: controversy there. And all of a sudden, they all just
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: start attacking it. And I think– like I haven't proven it,
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: but I think it's clear that this is a paid
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: campaign whether by this rival motorcycle company or some other
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: third force to just pump out these articles and these posts. Similarly,
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: someone like Laura Loomer will suddenly be like, we got
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: to straighten out these Venezuelan oil export licenses.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, these things, oil is a big one.
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: The Gateway Pundit had this thing that was like, we
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: got to, we can't keep sanctioning this Indian oil refinery.
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: I mean, these things like these guys, these people who
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: normally just like base level culture war stuff are just like,
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: I just am really passionate about the Indian hydrocarbon industry.
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: It's so funny to all of a sudden have like
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: dozens of influencers be like, Harley Davidson is gay.
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: Like, I'm sorry, what? What is it? What are you
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: talking about? Where is that coming from?
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: The other one that was very obvious to a lot
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: of people, I think Ashley St. Clair called out was
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: after the White House Correspondents Dinner shooting, all these influencers
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: were posting essentially verbatim messages saying Trump needs a ballroom.
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: And she suggested that that was clear evidence that there
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: was a coordination of this message in like, I don't know,
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: maybe a Discord chat room or something.
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think clearly there's like group chats of
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: some kind that, you know, whether I don't think necessarily
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: those people are being paid.
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: But I think there is.
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: Also this kind of like There's like an access I
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: think you probably want to preserve with the Republican Party,
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: with the White House, so you get invited to the
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: events or to Mar-a-Lago. And so they'll say, you know,
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: the line is, you know, within like 20, 30 minutes
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: of the shooting, suddenly like it is unbelievable the Democrats
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: won't let Trump have his giant ballroom.
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the White House is not directly paying these folks.
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: But if you do their bidding, then people like Stephen
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: Miller will reply to you, share your content, help algorithmically
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: boost you so you have more followers and more engagement.
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: and can make more money off future posts. So there
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: is a whole smart grift to it. This episode is
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  Speaker 2: at betterhelp.com slash PSA. That's betterhelp.com slash PSA. One other
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  Speaker 2: thing I want to ask you about, there's sort of
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: like there's this conservative gonzo media world out there. There's
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: James O'Keefe was a Project Veritas was his old thing.
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: He's sort of still doing that kind of thing, like
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: the sting operation type reporting gigs. There's a story in
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: Politico this week about a Florida woman who was a
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: former QAnon organizer who went undercover to seduce several liberal
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: men who worked in politics, record them and then release
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: these embarrassing clips online. to right wing figures like Steven
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: Crowder or James O'Keefe. Is this a boom in business?
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: Is this something that like anyone in Washington needs to
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: worry about?
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I would say it is.
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: So O'Keefe clearly is just, so as you said, Project
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: Veritas kind of imploded.
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: O'Keefe got pushed out. He was spending all this money.
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: On like putting on musicals that he was in. I mean,
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: it was truly like crazy stuff. And so that collapsed.
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: And now he's basically posted up in DC and And
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: he's doing.
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: Much cheaper things.
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: Like we might remember he used to like plant people
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: in Democratic campaigns for a long time. And now he
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: just has, you know, beautiful women scrolling on Tinder and
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: they'll get a hit. And if it's anyone who seems
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: at all like government or media, he recently got a
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: guy who like worked at the Washington Nationals baseball team,
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: like as a community relations guy. And they're like, this
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: guy is woke. I mean, so it often it's kind
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: of a scattershot approach. It doesn't really, you know, always
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: bring in the big targets. But at the same time
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: they have, they've gotten people at the department of justice,
• 55:08
  Speaker 3: all this stuff. And so, you know, look, I would
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: say if you're like a middle-aged bald DC bureaucrat and like,
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: and this is a real one, like a 20 year
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: old au pair in Georgetown just finds you so fascinating
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: and wants to hear about your job. You know, you
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: gotta be on the lookout.
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: If someone is really, really interested in all the work
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: you do at GSA and then wants you to talk
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: shit about Donald Trump.
• 55:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: Be on the lookout for that.
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: Um, It's interesting the way some candidates have or staffers
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: have kind of dove into this super right wing, the
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: most extreme media world and parlayed it to some success.
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: Like you have written about this right wing nut in
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: Florida named James Fishback, who's running an insurgent campaign for governor.
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: Can you just tell us about Fishback, what he believes
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: and like the degree to which the kind of neo-Nazi
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: adjacent kind of Nick Fuentes fringe content creation world has
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: helped him rise?
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so James Fishback, is a guy who's running for
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: governor in the Republican primary in Florida. He's challenging Byron Donalds,
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: who's the sort of Trump-endorsed congressman. And James Fishback is
• 56:11
  Speaker 3: a guy with a resume that is like– he makes
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: someone like Bill Pulte look like extremely qualified. I mean
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: this guy really should not be anywhere near elected office.
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: He had this whole thing with– he got fired from
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: a hedge fund. He had all these kind of sleazy
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: machinations that were exposed in court records where he would
• 56:28
  Speaker 3: like– he had an intern who he wrote for the
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: free press speaking of. And he was like, send them
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: an email under a fake name and say you want
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: more James Fishback.
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: And so as a result of.
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: These machinations, he's now like $ 2 million in debt. So
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: he's basically running from his creditors. His campaign staff was
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: saying his couch might get repossessed. So at the same
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: time though, he has endorsed basically Nick Fuente's politics. He's
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: sort of the first test of this like angry, like
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: super racist. Byron Donalds is black and James Fishback will
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: call him a slave. I mean, all this race, we'll
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: send him back to the ghetto, all this sort of stuff.
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: And yet he's rising in the polls. I don't think
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: he's going to win. But if you look at, you know,
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: Byron Donald's events, kind of lackluster, not that many people.
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: He's fished back. Meanwhile, he's hosting these events, standing room only,
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: huge overflow crowd.
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm like really worried about the seeming lack of
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: cost for this right-wing extremism. Like one other individual that
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: has made a splash this week is Greg Bovino.
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: Folks probably remember him.
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: He was the kind of like, a fascist munchkin who
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: is running customs and border patrol who used to wear
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: that long Nazi coat. And he ran, you know, the
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: occupations of Minneapolis before Donald Trump finally decided like, okay,
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: this guy's too extreme. Even for me, he popped up
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: at a remigration conference in Portugal recently with a bunch
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: of totally extremist far right kind of neo-Nazi types. Remigration
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: for those who don't know the term, it's definitely cleansing.
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: It's the idea of like pushing out, you know, migrants
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: from whatever European country. And, you know, Bovino did an
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: interview in advance of this conference with some.
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: Far right outlet.
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: Out of nowhere, he brought up Erwin Rommel, the Nazi general,
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: also known as the Desert Fox, as sort of like
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: an example of how their career tracks were similar.
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: Like it was bizarre fucking shit.
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: But like, I don't know, is Bovino going to parlay,
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: you know, his work at CBP into these like alt-right
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: spaces into something else.
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: It's very worrisome stuff.
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I think he's certainly going to try to.
• 58:33
  Speaker 3: I was just talking to someone who's trying to run
• 58:35
  Speaker 3: a sort of draft Bovino for 2028 campaign. But as
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: you said, I mean, you know, it's an interesting kind
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: of character because he's wearing the Gestapo coat. He's doing
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: all this border patrol stuff. You know, you don't want
• 58:45
  Speaker 3: to jump to conclusions, but it turns out, yes, he
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: is essentially an admirer of Nazis and is kind of
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: hanging out with these fascists. As you said, remigration is
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: a term I think, unfortunately, we're going to hear more
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: and more about. This isn't just deporting people who are
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: here illegally. This is saying, well, you're brown, even if
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: you're a citizen.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: Even if you're a citizen.
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: You got to go back to your parents' or grandparents'
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: country of origin. And so he's hanging out with people
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: like that. Austrian far-right figures. This guy, it was organized
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: by a guy who has an organization called Reconquista, which
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: obviously was kicking the Jews and Muslims out of Spain.
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: And it said, you know, Weimar problems call for Weimar solutions.
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: So like some kind of Nazi-like movement. And now this is,
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: you know, who Greg Bovino is hanging out with and
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: really kind of being embraced by these Gen Z Republicans.
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: And sort of tying that back in with James Fishback,
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: you know, Fitchback has also faced these allegations of like
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: having a sexual relationship with a high school student. You know,
• 59:38
  Speaker 3: he hasn't been charged with anything. But if you imagine
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: a candidate that damaged and how much success he's having,
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: how successful could someone who doesn't have all that baggage do?
• 59:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: I mean, look, this re-migration concept, I mean, it's too
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: extreme even for like Marine Le Pen and the National
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: Rally Party in France.
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is really dark stuff.
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: This is like the AFD, the kind of neo-Nazis from
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: Germany were at this conference and Greg Bovino was there.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: And I think the day of, he tweeted himself like
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: very much doing, I'm not going to do it, a
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: Hitler salute. So yeah, your point, like the mask is
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: off with this guy. And he certainly doesn't seem to
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: see a political cost in any way.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: And it's not like the Trump administration is grappling with
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 3: the fact that this guy had such a big role
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: in the border patrol.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they could care less. Finally, so look, of all
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: the people we've discussed, is there one that, I don't know,
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: worries you most? Maybe worry is the wrong word, but
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: that has the most crossover appeal to Democrats and independents
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: and the most influence to sort of drag people into
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: this conservative space or that MAGA space?
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think there are a lot that
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: are concerning. I mean, my mind just instantly jumps to
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: Candace Owens, who I think has done a lot to,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 3: you know, mainstream anti-Semitism to, you know, I was getting
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: my hair cut and the woman cutting my hair was
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: otherwise very liberal and said, but, you know, but I
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: think Candace Owens is on to a lot. You know,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: she's just doing investigations. I mean, we saw Hunter Biden
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: when he was on her show. He said, I love
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: the questions you're asking about.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: Charlie Clark's murder. He's kissing her ass the whole time.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: It was gross. It was crazy.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: And so I think someone like that, and frankly, she's
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: a very compelling broadcaster. And so I think that kind
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 3: of combination, I think, is pretty concerning.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: I'd put Fuentes up there too.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think that there's a lot of young
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: kids in fraternities at SEC schools who are listening to
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: Nick Fuentes. And to his credit, he's a compelling broadcaster.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: He sits in front of a microphone for an hour,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: several hours a night and just speaks into the ether.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: And that is an incredibly hard thing to do. And
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: he is skilled at it. And he also can be very,
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: very funny.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, like.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: You'll see clips of like Joe Rogan and other very
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: famous comedians talking about how funny Nick Fuentes is. And
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: I worry that like that really can help, you know,
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: obscure some genuinely like neo-Nazi, scary, misogynistic, racist views.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: I mean I think– and we can see not just
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: with things like the way Fuentes has promoted Fishback but
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: also these sort of recurring Republican– young Republican racist text
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: message leaks and things like this. I mean those views,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: this is not just one guy who has a sizable
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 3: social media following. I think those views are really sinking
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: in with young Republicans and those people are unfortunately the
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: future of the party.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: Yep, the future of the party. And this kind of
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: mega media world, I think, will determine the course that
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: party takes. And so, Will, I'm so grateful to you
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: for talking me through all of this. I find this
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: endlessly fascinating. I could literally go on all day, but
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: I'm grateful to you. And everyone, again, should subscribe to
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: False Flag, your incredible newsletter, which, by the way, we
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: promoted the top two.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, thanks for having me on. Thanks, buddy. Thanks
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: again to Will Sommer for joining the show.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: And Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, and I will be back
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: next week on the regular Tuesday episode.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: Pods of America is a Crooked Media production.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts,
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