The Splintering MAGA Media Rage Machine

23:00He was being profiled as like the new Hollywood mogul in Nashville where they're based. He was going to change the face of entertainment. They built out all these streaming shows. They built out a Game of Thrones knockoff that was like his passion project for it was like several million dollars per episode. It went way over budget. The Pendragon cycle. It was tens of millions of dollars over budget. Yes. It's about King Arthur. He doesn't show up in the first season, but, you know, they felt really confident that there would be more. It was all about Merlin. And so this was a dream of his that he had had since college to make this show.

23:32So, I mean, it looks great, but, you know, very expensive. They made a bluey knockoff starring chinchillas to win over kids to conservatism. So they had all these side projects and that cost them enormous amounts of money. So he got booted last year essentially over these cost overruns. Now they're kind of trying to retrench in a much more traditional kind of like we're going to have a couple podcasts. Maybe we're going to have some documentaries from Matt Walsh where he skewers liberals. But I think the bigger problem they're facing is that the kind of politics that Ben Shapiro wants to promote, which is sort of this like anti-anti-Trump.

24:07He's like a little cautious about Trump. He's not a hardcore Trump guy like Sean Hannity. On the other hand, he agrees with things like the war in Iran. He's very pro-Israel. And I think both of those – he's kind of wedged here between he can't go anti-Trump, but he also like doesn't love Trump all that much. So he's kind of trapped. And I think that point of view is just not that popular right now on the right. And then it's losing an audience. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. You read these reports and there are these amazing financial challenges like you mentioned. I mean, like I can't get enough of the stories about the Pendragon cycle and just like the reality of those.

24:42So many of these guys are just theater kids who didn't quite make it and who are trying to revamp their theater kidness in the conservative world. But the Daily Wire reportedly had$200 million in annual revenue in like 2024. Maybe that was a projection. I remember reading about their business success and worrying like how it compared to us, you know, their subscriber count. And then just something seems to have like fallen off a cliff. And I don't know what it is. But I mean, I think Ben Shapiro lives in Florida, but the company is in Nashville. Maybe there's just sort of like a lack of business alignment as well as sort of like ideological and content misalignment with the party that you mentioned there?

25:21Yeah. I mean, I think Puck had some reporting on how basically the guy who followed Jeremy Boring was also seen as kind of bumbling around. There's been a lot of internal discord between Ben Shapiro and the other founders. But I think what we're looking at is that The Daily Wire will probably retrench as something more like The Daily Call or like Steven Crowder. I mean, speaking of like failed theater kids, like it'll be a thing with a popular podcast and a couple other popular podcasts, but not like this kind of what they were going for, which was sort of like a conservative entertainment giant.

25:50Yeah. Yeah. They wanted to replace like a major studio in Hollywood with this conservative thing. And I just wonder, like, is that even doable? Like, are there enough audience or advertisers? And it seems like maybe the verdict is not quite yet, or at least TBD. Yeah, I think that's what they're looking at. I mean, they were, you know, this was the idea is like, well, I subscribe to Netflix, Disney Plus, and, you know, my kids love the chinchilla show. So I got to subscribe to the Daily Wire. Catch every episode of the Pentagon cycle. OK, so again, tell me if you disagree, but I kind of mentally slot the free press into a similar bucket or basket as The Daily Wire.

26:24Now, it's less ideologically overt. It's a little more like trolly maybe, but it clearly has like an editorial slant and a mission. So the free press, as folks probably know, was bought by Paramount for one hundred and fifty million dollars. Must be nice. Barry Weiss, the founder of the free press, was named editor in chief of CBS News. that part of the kind of project is not going great. We've all been reading this week. You and I are talking on Wednesday, June 3rd, about a horrible meeting with the new 60 Minutes executive producer where the kind of 60 Minutes Uber anchor, Scott Pelley, dressed him down and was later fired, which makes me wonder how that show is going to even keep going.

27:06But that's neither here nor there. But, you know, we're reading a lot about CBS and not a lot about the free press. Like what is happening over there? I feel like they've kind of disappeared. Like I just don't see their stuff anymore. Yeah, I mean, I think the free press is trying to, similar to the Daily Wire in some ways, become kind of like a lifestyle thing. They're launching these events. They're going to have free press meetups in their town. So you can meet fellow heterodox thinkers, maybe date them, whatever. They're trying to branch out in these various ways. But I agree with you. I think the free press is kind of facing this drift as Bari Weiss focuses on who she's going to fire at 60 Minutes or what have you.

27:43I think also – I mean it's also worth noting. I mean like they had a crazy high turnover of people. I mean they brought in kind of other prominent people like Chuck Lane from The Washington Post. People may remember from the movie Shattered Glass. Michael Moynihan who's kind of like a podcast personality. Andy Mills who founded The Daily at The New York Times. And they just – these people just quit like really quickly. Suggesting, by the way, sort of a foreshadowing of what 60 Minutes and CBS News and how they're run now. So I think there is some amount of trouble there. They're down to like Olivia Reingold, who's kind of like a wannabe daily Barry Weiss figure, who's like a bit alarming, you know, in her demeanor.

28:20I just don't find it. Like, I don't know if people have like a huge care of social. No, no, there was a journalist who was, you know, fairly or unfairly, you decide, mocked for taking video during the shooting attempt at the White House Correspondents' Dinner when there was an assassin. Everyone calls it an assassination attempt. The individual got nowhere near Donald Trump. But there was a reporter who videoed sort of like the aftermath of it but had the camera turned on herself the entire time and got a lot of grief for it in the media. That's Olivia Reingold. Yeah, and, you know, I mean, to get into like a larger structural issue, I think they're facing it.

28:54sort of these other figures, you know, I think there's been a decline in interest in like anti-woke content. Yeah. As obviously Donald Trump is in charge, I think a lot of these companies have sort of retreated from things like, you know, from like woke entertainment such as it is. So on the upscale end, you have something like the Free Press, which is going to have all these kind of cancel professors. On the lower end, you have people like Tim Pool or The Quartering on YouTube who are going to say, I can't believe they have a black Disney princess or what have you. But all of those guys have said, you know, my traffic's going down.

29:26My views are down because when Democrats are out of power, there's just less wokeness to get outraged about. Yeah, there's less to be outraged about. It always struck me, though, that the free press had an impressive elite audience. You know, like there's like smart, professional, thoughtful people I know here in L.A. who consume a lot of free press content. She clearly had a Barry Bari. I said – is it Barry or Bari? I don't know if I'm saying it right. I kind of think – I don't know, to be honest with you. Either way, Miss Weiss. Miss Weiss clearly was able to build relationships with charm. Otherwise, you know, get investment from billionaires or, you know, elites like the Ellison family.

30:06But was that the secret sauce of the free press only or just like that kind of elite audience and maybe not the mass market appeal that they need? I think Barry Weiss has had a lot of success kind of having these what appears to be like a relatively like straightforward, often admirable ideology of like free speech and, you know, all this stuff, intellectual pursuits. But often that boils down to, and I think we can see this elsewhere in right wing media, is sort of like respect rich people ideology or like rich people should get to do whatever they want. And obviously that's very flattering to the tech oligarchs, to people like the, you know, all these kind of – certainly Elon Musk, people like that.

30:43And so I think that's why she was so successful on the L.A. cocktail party circuit. And, you know, it's sort of similar to to the Spencer Pratt thing. You know, I mean, different flavors of it. But this idea of like, you know, we got to clean up the streets, you know. So the I think that has obviously served her very well. And I think got her that one hundred fifty million dollar purchase. Yeah. A lot of it is just like I find the people you find annoying, annoying, too. And I'm going to make fun of them on my Web site. So subscribe to me. Yeah. I'm going to validate you for these opinions. you might otherwise be uncomfortable having.

31:13Yeah, exactly. All right, now I'm going to ask you about the kind of darker, more extreme fringe that people I worry about you listening to as you're making your kids mac and cheese. You have probably, folks have probably heard of Nick Fuentes, who is an openly racist, misogynistic, Holocaust-denying streamer, podcast host, whatever you want to call him. His content really exploded, at least in my feeds in recent months, especially after his interview with Tucker Carlson. But also his episodes get clipped and shared everywhere. And if you kind of like make the wrong moves on the Twitter algorithm, all of a sudden they're getting force fed down your throat.

31:49Then there's figures like Chud the Builder, which I'd love to get into a bit with you, who was just a truly awful new Internet figure who would literally run around screaming racial slurs in an effort to bait black people into fights. And that story ended exactly how you'd expect it would end with him getting arrested for shooting someone in one of those fights. So can you tell us about those two individuals and any other big voices in this extremist fringe that you keep an eye on? Yeah, so this kind of fits into sort of the Gen Z streamer community. You know, Nick Fuentes being the most prominent one, this white nationalist.

32:26He has a sort of unique demeanor among racists, which is like he's a little fae. He's like a kind of a little guy. And so he appeals in sort of a strange way, you know, to the extent that I think he has had sort of a Candace Owens like breakout into the broader Internet where people will, you know, play his audios and, you know, over their tick tocks or what have you. I think Chud the Builder, as you said, I think one of the most reprehensible people I've ever written about someone who goes around, says the N word. And then when a black person says, hey, what are you doing? He says, you know, step to me and I'll shoot you.

33:03And ultimately, not only did he shoot someone, but he also, doofus, ended up shooting himself. Did shoot himself. So now he's on trial for attempted murder. And so even more broadly, we can look around to people like whether it's clavicular, the guy who's trying to look so handsome, or these like dating podcasts where they bring in a bunch of women from OnlyFans. And they say, what's your body count? And they go, oh, my God, that's not trad. You know, and these things just kind of like whipping up hate against women or minorities. And it's all kind of united around a lot of it gets clipped, as you said, into these like these one, two minute segments that get a lot of social media traction.

33:42And to your point about the clipping, I mean, it can feel really hard to understand if these shows are actually big and influential or if I just see them because Twitter knows that I clicked on a bunch of Fuentes clips at one point and now it's just constantly serving me more of them. Do you have a sense of like kind of the aggregate influence of this world? You know, it's interesting. I think, you know, we can have – there are a couple metrics. And as you said, it can be challenging, right? Because on one hand, we've seen these articles that say, you know, clipping, it's making it all fake. You know, there's – none of this is real.

34:16None of these people are popular. But, you know, as Taylor Lorenz has pointed out, I mean, someone like Clavicular was popular before he came to the attention of people like you and me. He was popular at kind of like a Gen Z, here's this handsome oddball level. And also, if clipping – if this was all this fake thing, then everyone would do it. We would have 100 ,000 claviculars, right? Heaven forbid. But these are – it is a challenging world. And for me, it's often when it kind of spills over into the real world. So when clavicular is out walking around and all these people are going, oh my god, it's clavicular.

34:48Well, clearly there's some amount of fan base there. Or when Chud the Builder unfortunately raises 300 grand after shooting a guy. I mean, clearly there's some amount of genuine support. Another side. So for us at Crooked, I mean, when I think about the technology and the platforms we focus on, it's like the standard podcast app from Apple. It's YouTube is huge for us, especially in terms of growth. And then obviously we try to clip and share our stuff, too, on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok. Obviously, the conservatives use a lot of these same sites as well. But they're also they use platforms that I feel like Democrats just don't really live on like Rumble, Kik.

35:25Twitch is a little more, you know, broadly used. What are the biggest platforms you think for this sort of conservative mega media world and how important are they to the growth of these spaces? Yeah. So, I mean, you mentioned Kik, which is like basically Twitch. The people who were kicked off of Twitch went to Kik and it's sort of a like it's basically funded all by like gambling ads because they couldn't have those on Twitch. So that's like the very unsavory people on kick and that's someone like Clavicular, for example. And then if you get kicked off a kick, you end up where Chud the Builder ended up, which is like something called like brain pill.info or something along those lines.

36:02I've never even heard of that. I mean, yeah, it's these like I think I'm mangling the name, but it's these like really like, you know, these kind of backwaters of the Internet. Now, it can all still get clipped and end up on Twitter. And especially as we've seen the mainstream social media platforms sort of pull back from moderating and really go hands off. I mean, a lot of it still happens on places like YouTube and X. And, you know, as you mentioned, Rumble, which is sort of the right wing YouTube alternative, which just hosted, you know, was the main sponsor for the steroid games that were held recently.

36:31I mean, so that's kind of the world the world they're operating. Yeah. The enhanced games were they in Las Vegas? Yes. Yes. I, you know, I feel like everyone was sharing the picture of that one swimmer who looked like he had been inflated, you know, with a with a hose. But then I don't think they broke any records. Right. I mean, you had some sort of natural athletes just smoking the steroid guys. Yeah, I watched it. You know, in a way, it wasn't as like as sinister as I hoped. I mean, they tried to make it just look like the Olympics. But yeah, ultimately, really, the guys, you know, I think with especially things like weightlifting, these guys are on so many drugs anyway that, you know, It's kind of same, same.

37:08And also, like, I think it wasn't hosted by the guy, Brian Johnson, who's like trying to maximalize his longevity. But in practice, that means, I guess, tweeting out things, observations about his girlfriend's vaginal biome was one of them. Yeah, he's a disturbing fellow. And, you know, he appeared with an umbrella so that he wouldn't get any natural sunlight. How does that space overlap with conservative media or does it? Am I wrong? I mean, I think there is some overlap. I mean, certainly someone like Brian Johnson is trying to live forever. I mean, he's like a tech guy, kind of tech adjacent guy.

37:40You have these guys who are like trying to, you know, someone like clavicular, similarly as Brian Johnson is trying to live forever. Clavicular is like trying to, you know, be as handsome as he can be. And so I think this idea, particularly among young people of like, you know, optimizing and having this kind of very clavicular represents kind of like a very nihilistic view of the world where it's like, if you aren't in the like 0.1%, you know, women are, they call it hypergamy. So, you know, the most handsome men will have 10 lovers, you know, at the same time, and everyone else will be an incel.

38:14And so, you know, then your life is over essentially. And so you have to compete in these really intense ways. I think we see that reflected a lot in this kind of really intense like Silicon Valley culture as well. Yeah, it's a very weird culture. I mean, It's always interesting to me to kind of identify points where the Venn diagrams overlap, right? Because I think Maha, the Make America Healthy Again agenda, really did bring in a big community of people to the Trump orbit that might not otherwise have ever voted for Republican, right? I mean, a lot of it was like, you know, out here in LA, it's like West Side moms who were, you know, sort of like anti-vax in some way, kind of got drawn into the Maha movement during COVID and ended up voting Trump.

38:52And it's interesting that sort of like the longevity lifestyle health space can get coded conservative if Democrats are not talking to those people or communicating an alternative message. I mean, there's a huge overlap between all these different groups. So, you know, for example, let's take a look at Candace Owens, who got really into Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni stuff. And so she drew in a lot of people who didn't care about conservative politics, but it was kind of these like conservative coded, like blame the woman kind of anti me too type stuff. and they start, you know, combing through the court documents.

39:24And then, oh, you want to comb through something else? Let's go through Brigitte McCrone's high school yearbooks or whatever. Or, you know, like the world of like meme stocks where people, oh, I lost all my money on Bed Bath & Beyond. Then they're championed by people like Bill Pulte, now our deputy, you know, intelligence chief or our director of national intelligence. And then, you know, then they get into QAnon or they get into other conspiracy theories because they feel that they've been wronged. There's an extraordinary video going around the internet this week of Bill Pulte at a conference where he is trying to promote the Bed Bath and Beyond stock.

39:55And the speaker before him slaps another man in the face with a dildo. And then Pulte himself gets presented with a dildo. So, I mean, this is the – The trophy, I think, when it said Bill Pulte fucks only the young. Was the joke, I guess? Yeah. He loves the Taylor Swift song, only the young. I've unfortunately – but it's certainly regrettable phrasing. It is. Oh, yeah. Very regrettable phrasing. This week alone, you got Bill Pulte talking about only the young and then Ivanka talking about buying an island. It was not a good week for moving on from the Jeffrey Epstein dialogue for the Trump administration.

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41:59Okay, let's talk about the kind of manosphere world such as it is. You've mentioned clavicular a few times. You're right, he's been around for a while, but I think he exploded onto the national scene a few months back and taught us all about looks maxing and this weird lingo he has and hitting his face with hammers. Um, and he also infamously went to a club in Miami with Nick Fuentes. We talked about earlier, the kind of neo-Nazi, uh, content creator, and then a truly awful guy named Andrew Tate, um, who was charged with, what is it? Human trafficking and rape, human trafficking, all kinds of stuff.

42:34Yeah. Just like genuinely awful human being, who, by the way, was just in Russia with Candace Owens for some reason. We can talk about that if you want. And a streamer named Sneeko. They all sang along to Kanye West's song, Heil Hitler filmed it, chucked it on the internet. Are those folks, Clavicular, Andrew Tate, Sneeko, are they talking about politics these days? How do you think about them and their influence in this kind of media world? You know, it's interesting. I feel like each of them has sort of a bespoke ideology all their own. You know, someone like Clavicular famously said that, you know, J.D.

43:10Vance is too fat and he's going to vote for Gavin Newsom as a result because Gavin Newsom is just more handsome. You know, you have these figures that almost exist in sort of a right wing realm beyond any even like Trumpian politics where, you know, for example, you know, Clavicular's representatives will always say, oh, he's not right wing. You know, he likes Gavin Newsom. But then when you actually watch him interact with women, he's like – it's like a caveman view. Like a girl will say like, I'm going to college and he's like, what? Why? You know? So it's ultimately this very reactionary, ultimately like really like nihilistic view of the world.

43:46Someone like – whether it's Andrew Tate who obviously has all these sort of criminal allegations. Also in the club was this guy named Myron Gaines. Yes. Who's sort of pseudonym because they're admiring his gains in the gym. You know, he's – these are guys who are really like just pumping out this like hate content. And so it is interesting. I feel like when there's kind of a big political moment, they might discuss it. But they certainly aren't like orthodox conservative figures as we might think of them. Yeah, no, it's interesting. Hearing you talk about it made me think that, you know, I guess if Candace Owens' beat is conspiracy, their beat is misogyny and hate for women.

44:27I mean frankly. Yeah, hate for women. sometimes hate for Indian people. That's kind of a rising one. They're kind of just – there are these guys who sort of like – look, I mean they just want more attention essentially is what they're after. And they do – they can get – someone like Chud the Builder who's sort of an extreme example of this. They get sort of trapped in these like escalatory attention cycles. And so Sneeko converts to Islam and then is caught drinking and all this stuff. And so they live some pretty twisted lives. Just weird drama all the time. I used to listen to Steve Bannon's podcast all the time because I felt like it would tell me where MAGA was going at least a couple weeks early.

45:09You hear like some crazy idea and then all of a sudden to be on Trump's true social feed a few weeks later. I've fallen off on that listening habit in part because the guy just cranks out like what, three, four hours of stuff a day and I couldn't keep up for it. But also I I felt like in the beginning of Trump 2.0, the Bannon wing of the party seemed to be losing, right? Like his enemy was Elon Musk. Elon Musk was sitting in the White House. He was like co-president for a while. I don't know. Maybe that's not the case anymore. Like, where do you think Bannon and that media empire sit in the kind of mega media hierarchy in space these days?

45:45You know, it's interesting. People are, people have asked me this before, and I'm kind of trying to figure it out myself, exactly what influence Steve Bannon has. I mean, I think it's often sort of overstated because I think he's a pretty easy source for journalists. And so they're happy. He's often in articles or kind of cited as his wisdom. He is, as you said, I mean, he still has these figures who are kind of like these like B-tier operatives who will sort of reveal that something's going to happen. Like he'll have like John Solomon, who's kind of this like conservative investigative reporter and is now joining the government.

46:18And he'll say, you know, Tulsi Gabbard, You know, basically digging up stuff to interfere with elections, things like that, which is very – or Tina Peters' lawyer was on and he said, Tina Peters is going to get pardoned soon. And that happened. And so I think – but as for his like actual influence, I mean as you said, he was kind of this like anti-tech oligarch guy. I think we're seeing more of that coalition kind of congeal on the right. But at the moment, I think he's kind of just humming along but not with any sort of particular amount of sweat. Yeah, I think he was last seen pushing the anti-Sharia law ballot initiative in Texas, for example, as a way to maybe turn out voters for PACs.

46:56And clearly it's his hobby horses and his candidates. But yeah, I'm sort of not exactly clear where he's at in this space. So, look, the whole point of this conversation was to talk about this MAGA media ecosystem and figure out what it tells us about where the party is going, because they're all kind of clamoring to figure out what a post Donald Trump political reality will be, even if it's, you know, later than we all want it to be. We talked about Tucker in the policy fights around Iran and U.S. support towards Israel. Are there other ideological or policy splits that you are observing kind of bubble up in this space?

47:32I do think things like certainly AI I think is emerging as a real issue, whether it's data centers or like government oversight of AI. People like Steve Bannon have really been whipping up the idea of like we need more government oversight. Or I think there's also on sort of a more smaller scale, there's this growing sense on places like TikTok where you'll have a video of a farmer being like, people keep asking to buy my land for a data center. Now, admittedly, I don't think that's much of like a sob story. He can sell it or not. But it's giving people this sense of like there's like sinister forces at play.

48:06And I think that always like really hits with the right. On the other hand, you have these people like David Sachs, these tech people who are clearly very associated with the administration who basically want to run amok. And so I think things like AI and tech in general – Matt Walsh at The Daily Wire on the other hand is like a very anti-AI guy. So you can see these splits. I mean certainly as you mentioned, the Iran and sort of intervention, Israel in general is like a huge fault line. So I think we're – as Trump kind of recedes in influence, I think this fight is going to break out more in the open.

48:37Yeah. The other thing I want to ask you is, you know, there's been some suggestion that a lot of the heat you see in the MAGA media world is just financially driven. Like there is a woman named Ashley St. Clair, who is a former MAGA media influencer who is probably best known to this audience is for having a child with Elon Musk and then kind of like talking about it afterwards. she recently said that the whole right wing influencer world is just getting paid and that most of this post you see or that causes that kind of these MAGA folks take up happen because someone is cutting them a check. And I think a lot of people have pointed the fact that like all of a sudden Katie Miller, Stephen Miller, White House advisor, Stephen Miller's wife is talking about like what solar farms, I think.

49:21And people like, hmm, interesting that happened. Is that true? Do you think is actually St. Clair right that there's a lot of folks on the take out there? I think she is right. I think there's like a huge amount of pay to play or payola washing around. I mean, whether it's people who were kind of like named figures, like the talk radio has like Chad Prather or what have you, or just these like meme accounts that are like, end wokeness and have a million followers. I'll give you an example. I just wrote this week about how suddenly a bunch of these people were saying, Harley Davidson is so woke and gay.

49:50We got to get ditch your Harley, whatever. And buy a Indian motorcycle, which is there's another motorcycle company called Indian. And it was so strange that there wasn't at that time a real wokeness, like a genuine wokeness controversy. And all of a sudden, they all just start attacking it. And I think, like, I haven't proven it, but I think it's clear that this is a paid campaign, whether by this rival motorcycle company or some other third force, to just pump out these articles and these posts. Similarly, someone like Laura Loomer will suddenly be like, we got to straighten out these Venezuelan oil export licenses.

50:25I mean, these things, oil is a big one though. The gateway pundit had this thing that was like, we got it. We can't stop, keep sanctioning this Indian oil refinery. I mean, these things like these guys, these people who normally just like base level culture war stuff are just like, I just am really passionate about the Indian hydrocarbon industry. It's so funny to all of a sudden have like dozens of influencers be like, Harley Davidson is gay. Like, I'm sorry. What, what is it? What are you talking about? Where other one that was very obvious to a lot of people, I think Ashley St. Clair called out was after the White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting, all these influencers were posting essentially verbatim messages saying Trump needs a ballroom.

51:02And she suggested that that was clear evidence that there was a coordination of this message in like, I don't know, maybe a Discord chat room or something. Yeah. I mean, I think clearly there's like group chats of some kind that, you know, whether they're, I don't think necessarily those people are being paid. Right. But I think there is also this kind of like, there's like an access I think you probably want preserve with the Republican Party, with the White House. So you get invited to the events or to Mar-a-Lago. And so they'll say, you know, the line is, you know, within like 20, 30 minutes of the shooting, suddenly like it is unbelievable.

51:32The Democrats won't let Trump have his giant ballroom. Yeah. The White House is not directly paying these folks. But if you do their bidding, then people like Stephen Miller will reply to you, share your content, help algorithmically boost you so you have more followers and more engagement and can make more money off future posts. So there is a whole smart grift to it.

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53:42one other thing i want to ask you about there's sort of like there's this conservative gonzo media world out there um there's james o 'keefe was a project veritas was his old thing he's sort of still doing that kind of thing like these sting operation type reporting gigs uh there's a story in politico this week about a florida woman who is a former q anon organizer who went undercover cover to seduce several liberal men who worked in politics, record them and then release these embarrassing clips to right wing figures like Steven Crowder or James O 'Keefe. Is this a boom in business? Is this something that like anyone in Washington needs to worry about?

54:19Yeah, I mean, I would say it is. So O 'Keefe clearly is just so as you said, Project Veritas kind of imploded. O 'Keefe got pushed out. He was spending all this money on like putting on musicals that he was in. I mean, it was truly like crazy stuff. And so that collapsed. And now he's basically posted up in D.C. and he's doing much cheaper things. Like we might remember he used to like plant people in Democratic campaigns for a long time. And now he just has, you know, beautiful women scrolling on Tinder and they'll get a hit. And if it's anyone who seems at all like government or media, he recently got a guy who like worked at the Washington Nationals baseball team, like as a community relations guy.

54:57And they're like, this guy is woke. I mean, so it often it's kind of a scattershot approach. It doesn't really always bring in the big targets. But at the same time, they have they've gotten people at the Department of Justice, all this stuff. And so, you know, look, I would say if you're like a middle aged bald D.C. bureaucrat and like and this is a real one, like a 20 year old au pair in Georgetown just finds you so fascinating to hear about your job. You've got to be on the lookout. Yeah. If someone is really, really interested in all the work you do at GSA and then wants you to talk shit about Donald Trump, yeah, be on the lookout for that.

55:32It's interesting the way some candidates have or staffers have kind of dove into this super right wing, the most extreme media world and parlayed it to some success. That's like you have written about this right wing nut in Florida named James Fishback, who's running an insurgent campaign for governor. Can you just tell us about Fishback, what he believes in like the degree to which the kind of neo-Nazi adjacent kind of Nick Fuentes fringe content creation world has helped him rise? Yeah. So James Fishback is a guy who's running for governor in the Republican primary in Florida. He's challenging Byron Donalds, who's the sort of Trump endorsed congressman.

56:09And James Fishback is a guy with a resume that is like – he makes someone like Bill Pulte look like extremely qualified. I mean this guy really should not be anywhere near elected office. He had this whole thing with – he got fired from a hedge fund. He had all these kind of sleazy machinations that were exposed in court records where he would like – he had an intern who he wrote for the free press speaking of. And he was like, send them an email under a fake name and say, you want more James Fishback. And so as a result of these machinations, he's now like$2 million in debt. So he's basically running from his creditors.

56:43His campaign staff was saying his couch might get repossessed. So at the same time, though, he has endorsed basically Nick Fuente's politics. He's sort of the first test of this like angry, like super racist. Byron Donalds is black and James Fishback will call him a slave. I mean, he'll he all this race. It will send him back to the ghetto, all this sort of stuff. And yet he's rising at the polls. I don't think he's going to win. But if you look at, you know, Byron Donald's events, kind of lackluster, not that many people. He's his fishback. Meanwhile, is hosting these events, standing room only huge overflow crowd.

57:17Yeah, I'm like really worried about the seeming lack of cost for this right wing extremism. Like one other individual that has made a splash this week is Greg Bovino. Folks probably remember him. He was the kind of like fascist munchkin who was running customs and border patrol who used to wear that long Nazi coat. and he ran the occupations of Minneapolis before Donald Trump finally decided like, okay, this guy is too extreme even for me. He popped up at a remigration conference in Portugal recently with a bunch of totally extremist, far-right kind of neo-Nazi types. Remigration for those who don't know the term, it's ethnic cleansing.

57:56It's the idea of like pushing out you know, migrants from whatever European country. And, you know, Bovino did an interview in advance of this conference with some far right outlet. Out of nowhere, he brought up Erwin Rommel, the Nazi general, also known as the Desert Fox, is sort of like an example of how their career tracks were similar. Like it was bizarre fucking shit. But like, I don't know, is Bovino going to parlay, you know, his work at CBP into these like alt-right spaces into something else. It's very worrisome stuff. Yeah. You know, I think he's certainly going to try to. I was just talking to someone who's trying to run a sort of draft Bovino for 2028 campaign.

58:38But as you said, I mean, you know, it's interesting kind of character because he's wearing the Gestapo coat. He's doing all this, this Border Patrol stuff. You know, you don't want to jump to conclusions, but it turns out, yes, he is a, you know, Essentially, he's an admirer of Nazis and just kind of hanging out with these fascists. As you said, remigration is a term I think, unfortunately, we're going to hear more and more about. This isn't just deporting people who are here illegally. This is saying, well, you're brown even if you're a citizen. Even if you're a citizen. You got to go back to your parents' or grandparents' country of origin.

59:08And so he's hanging out with people like Austrian far-right figures. This guy – it was organized by a guy who has an organization called Reconquista, which obviously was kicking the Jews and Muslims out of Spain and has said Weimar problems call for Weimar solutions. So like some kind of Nazi-like movement. And now this is who Greg Bovino is hanging out with and really kind of being embraced by these Gen Z Republicans. And sort of tying that back in with James Fishback, Fishback has also faced these allegations of like having a sexual relationship with a high school student. He hasn't been charged with anything.

59:39But if you imagine a candidate that damaged and how much success he's having, how successful could someone who doesn't have all that baggage do? Yeah. I mean, look, this remigration concept, I mean, it's too extreme even for like Marine Le Pen and the National Rally Party in France. I mean, this is really dark stuff. This is like the AFD, the kind of neo-Nazis from Germany were at this conference and Greg Bivino was there. And I think the day of he tweeted himself like very much doing, I'm not going to do a Hitler's salute. So, yeah, your point, like the mask is off with this guy. And he certainly doesn't seem to see a political cost in any way.

1:00:11Yeah. And it's not like the Trump administration is grappling with the fact that this guy had a big role in the Border Patrol. Yeah, they could care less. Finally. So look, of all the people we've discussed, is there one that, I don't know, worries you most, maybe worries the wrong word, but that has the most crossover appeal to Democrats and independents and the most influence to sort of drag people into this conservative space or that MAGA space? Yeah. I mean, I think there are a lot that are concerning. I mean, my mind just instantly jumps to Candace Owens, who I think has done a lot to mainstream anti-Semitism.

1:00:42I was getting my hair cut and the woman cutting my hair was otherwise very liberal and said, but I think Candace Owens is on to a lot. She's just doing investigations. I mean, we saw Hunter Biden when he was on her show. He said, I love the questions you're asking about Charlie Clark's murder. He was kissing her ass the whole time. It was gross. It was crazy. And so I think someone like that – and frankly, she's a very compelling broadcaster. And so I think that kind of combination, I think, is pretty concerning. I'd put Fuentes up there, too. I mean, like I think that there's a lot of young kids in like fraternities at SEC schools who are listening to Nick Fuentes.

1:01:16And like to his credit, he's a compelling broadcaster. Like he sits in front of a microphone for an hour, several hours a night and just speaks into the ether. And that is an incredibly hard thing to do. And he is skilled at it. And he also can be very, very funny. I mean, like you'll see clips of like Joe Rogan and other very famous comedians talking about how funny Nick Fuentes is. And I worry that like that really can help, you know, obscure some genuinely like neo-Nazi, scary, misogynistic, racist views. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think, you know, and we can see not just with things like the way Fuentes has promoted Fishback, but also the these sort of recurring Republican, young Republican racist text message leaks.

1:01:59things like this. I mean, those views, this is not just one guy who has a sizable social media following. I think those views are really sinking in with young Republicans. And those people are, you know, unfortunately, the future of the party. Yep. Their future of the party. And this kind of mega media world, I think, will determine the course that party takes. And so, Will, I'm so grateful to you for talking me through all of this. I find this endlessly fascinating. I could literally go on all day, but I'm grateful to you. And everyone, again, should subscribe to False Flag, your incredible newsletter, which, by the way, we promoted the top two.

1:02:29Yeah, well, thanks for having me on. Thanks, buddy. Thanks again to Will Summer for joining the show. And Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett and I will be back next week on the regular Tuesday episode. Pods of America is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts and Faris Safari with Ree Cherlin, Elijah Cohn and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Kirill Pellaviv, David Tolles, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young and Naomi Single. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

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