Speaker 1: Welcome to patse of America on Tommy v Tour. As
Speaker 1: we speak, the Nagamedia world is fracturing, and many of
Speaker 1: its leading voices are desperately trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: a post Trump NAGA movement will mean for them. For some,
Speaker 1: this is about business. They want to know if they
Speaker 1: can maintain the same level of clicks, of ad sales,
Speaker 1: of paid promotion deals in a post Trump political world.
Speaker 1: But for others, it's about influence and a desire to
Speaker 1: steer the Republican Party to a new place, in some cases,
Speaker 1: a much more extreme place. What we're talking about is
Speaker 1: ultimately a battle for the soul and attention of the
Speaker 1: NAGA movement, and it's being fought as we speak. In
Speaker 1: the podcast, YouTube and TikTok. Trend is often on shows
Speaker 1: or on platforms that most Democrats have never heard of,
Speaker 1: but have enormous reach and influence in conservative circles, especially
Speaker 1: younger conservative circles. So to help me understand and track
Speaker 1: where the NAGA movement is going, I'm joined today by
Speaker 1: Will Summer from The Bulwark. Will's newsletter False Flag is
Speaker 1: a twice weekly deep dive into right wing online culture
Speaker 1: in the communities around it, and it is a must
Speaker 1: read for me every week. He has an unparalleled understanding
Speaker 1: of who makes up this world, where it's going, what
Speaker 1: they're talking about, the weird, petty, pathetic infighting between them.
Speaker 1: It is fascinating stuff. Now, unfortunately for all of us,
Speaker 1: right wing media is incredibly popular, which is why we
Speaker 1: hear at Crooked Media are trying to create a progressive alternative.
Speaker 1: The best way you can help us is to become
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Speaker 1: So check that out. Go to Crooked dot com slash
Speaker 1: friends to learn more. And now here's my conversation with
Speaker 1: Will Summer. So Will your coworker Sarah Longwell got a
Speaker 1: bunch of grief recently for saying that a surprising name
Speaker 1: keeps coming up in her focus groups when she's asking
Speaker 1: people who they think should run for president. Candace Owen.
Speaker 1: And again, this is not people saying that they like
Speaker 1: Candace's content. It's voters saying they would vote for Candace
Speaker 1: Owens for president. Now, I'm sure people listening to this
Speaker 1: are thinking, like, shut up, Tommy, that is dumb, this
Speaker 1: is insane. She is bonkers in to them. I say, sure,
Speaker 1: I agree with you, but I think the point is
Speaker 1: that a lot of people don't. So, just to start
Speaker 1: with the basics, who is Candace Owens and why do
Speaker 1: you think she is so popular and influential to the
Speaker 1: point where people want to run for president?
Speaker 2: Sure, so, Candace Owns is a woman who emerged. She's
Speaker 2: from sort of the right wing media eco system that
Speaker 2: kind of these classic characters working for people like Dennis
Speaker 2: Prager and Ben Shapiro, and then for the past year
Speaker 2: or so, past two years, she's become this sort of
Speaker 2: insurgent right wing conspiracy theorist, very anti Semitic. She pushes
Speaker 2: a lot of crazy ideas about most notably Charlie Kirk's assassination.
Speaker 2: She used to work with him and they were friends,
Speaker 2: and she's sort of been, you know, building this YouTube
Speaker 2: empire off of both conspiracy theories and also sort of
Speaker 2: more mainstream celebrity gossip coverage, and so I think she's
Speaker 2: managed to really sort of diversify her audience beyond just
Speaker 2: sort of people who listened to talk radio or watch
Speaker 2: Fox News.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean so Candice's biggest or at least sort
Speaker 1: of like splashiest most recent interview was a surprising one.
Speaker 1: It was with Hunter Biden, of all people. Before that,
Speaker 1: like you said, she's spent months and months and months
Speaker 1: just relentlessly focused on the assassination of Charlie Kirk and
Speaker 1: spreading conspiracy theories about it of all shapes and sizes,
Speaker 1: like planes were tracking Charlie, that there was like a
Speaker 1: false flag operation. She seems to just that Erica Kirk,
Speaker 1: Charlie Kirk's wife, might have been the killer. And then
Speaker 1: before that there was this endless series of videos she
Speaker 1: did alleging that French president of Meno Macron's wife is
Speaker 1: in fact a man. So, just for folks who haven't
Speaker 1: listened to Candace much like, here's a clip of Candace
Speaker 1: on Pierce Morgan's show that I think will give you
Speaker 1: a sense of the vibe that comes out of a
Speaker 1: lot of our content. Let's watch.
Speaker 3: Why are we pretending that we don't know why we
Speaker 3: ask questions like why you're.
Speaker 1: A journalist, you know what there is? You're like, what's
Speaker 1: going on?
Speaker 3: What's going on? Why do you want to know why
Speaker 3: these planes were tracking Charlie? And that is the reason
Speaker 3: why people are watching my show because I'm the only
Speaker 3: one not treating them like they're absolute idiots. Okay, don't
Speaker 3: have too nice you believe in magic bullet earis and
Speaker 3: who understands that Egyptian plains should not have been tracking
Speaker 3: Charlie even three times this year would be an anomaly. Okay,
Speaker 3: they've been tracking him. We don't know where it's going to.
Speaker 3: So we are going to keep asking questions until we
Speaker 3: get clear answers.
Speaker 1: So she was yelling about Egyptian planes tracking Charlie Kirk.
Speaker 1: I mean, like, I what is her beat? You mentioned?
Speaker 1: I think she has like celebrity stuff. She just pop culture?
Speaker 1: Somebody is her beat just conspiracy? Like how would you
Speaker 1: define it?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting. I mean I think this she
Speaker 2: has sort of cohered around this idea that there are
Speaker 2: these sort of pedophile Epstein class powers that be that
Speaker 2: are very closely linked to Israel, closely linked to sort
Speaker 2: of centuries old Jewish cults and cabals. I mean, you
Speaker 2: mentioned Brigitte Macrone. It's not just that Brigitte Macrone is trans,
Speaker 2: but it's that, like the Macrones are part of this
Speaker 2: ancient Jewish network going back to the Middle Ages. The
Speaker 2: francis yes, exactly, yes. I mean even if you listen
Speaker 2: to it, it often like I can get this sense
Speaker 2: of it can be kind of hard to describe because
Speaker 2: in part because it's just you listen to it and
Speaker 2: it's it's like so crazy, and she kind of she
Speaker 2: doesn't really bother to like make a coherent theory per se.
Speaker 2: She more just kind of throws stuff out. She goes, oh,
Speaker 2: isn't that weird? Isn't that weird? And then suddenly you
Speaker 2: find yourself that she's walked you to Erica kirk murder
Speaker 2: her husband or Bergitta Crona's trans And she often will
Speaker 2: sort of abandon things as they're disproven. So like she'll say,
Speaker 2: I think that guy in the crowd at the assassination
Speaker 2: is acting weird, and then that guy will have an
Speaker 2: excuse and she'll say, ah, well never mind, you know,
Speaker 2: moving on, you know, And so there isn't so much
Speaker 2: one conspiracy theory as this general sense of like antisemitic, capeful,
Speaker 2: this sense of like the cabal runs the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, like when I listen to Candas's stuff,
Speaker 1: I find myself getting lost in the sauce and not
Speaker 1: able to follow her, and we're like down all these
Speaker 1: conspiracy roads. But the reason I led with her and
Speaker 1: her in our next subject, Hucker Carlson, is because the
Speaker 1: normies in my life who text me about politics mention
Speaker 1: those two the most. So, like much like Sarah's focus group,
Speaker 1: like Candas, I feel like is very influential. And also
Speaker 1: she's been waging this battle against Turning Point USA TPUSA
Speaker 1: ever since Kirk's assassination. And TPUSA, for those who don't know,
Speaker 1: was an incredibly influential media political, kind of voter turnout organization.
Speaker 1: But now she seems to have done some damage to it.
Speaker 1: Or I guess that's the question. I mean, how much
Speaker 1: damage do you think Candas has done to TPUSA through
Speaker 1: this kind of ongoing fighting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think Candace and sort of the
Speaker 2: conspiracy theorists around her have actually done a lot of
Speaker 2: damage to Turning Point. I mean they have created this
Speaker 2: sense of, you know, after the Charlie Kirk assassination, there
Speaker 2: was a lot of good will towards Turning Point, a
Speaker 2: lot of sense that I think both Trump and that
Speaker 2: organization we're going to capitalize on after the murder. But
Speaker 2: instead Cannas has said, well, maybe Erica Kirk kills her husband.
Speaker 2: Maybe this organization, you know, she's picked out all these
Speaker 2: individual executives, maybe they were involved in these murders. And
Speaker 2: I think, you know, anecdotally, if you look at like
Speaker 2: groups of conservative moms, they'll say, oh, well, we were
Speaker 2: going to order some Turning Point shirts, but now you know,
Speaker 2: we don't want to be associated with them, stuff like that.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's been, at at best for
Speaker 2: a Turning Point, a big distraction. I think it's been
Speaker 2: a lot more damaging.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Do you think Candace actually has political ambitions, because it
Speaker 1: seems like she kind of flirts with maybe running for
Speaker 1: office in some of her answers. But I don't know,
Speaker 1: Maybe that's just a way to keep yourself in the news.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a good question. I don't think it's
Speaker 2: hard for me to imagine her running, just because I
Speaker 2: think she has such a good thing going right now.
Speaker 2: I mean, she's making so much money. She's making, you know,
Speaker 2: tens of thousands of dollars per video. She's putting out
Speaker 2: four or five videos a week. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: I think she has far more influence at the point where,
Speaker 2: you know, I think it's relatively credible reports that Macrone
Speaker 2: complained to Trump and asked him to have Candice cut
Speaker 2: these things off. I mean that shows you sort of
Speaker 2: the influence that she enjoys. So I think she could
Speaker 2: run for offices she wanted, but I think right now,
Speaker 2: I think she'd be foolish to do it. I think
Speaker 2: she's happy right where.
Speaker 1: She is until the French clean her out in this
Speaker 1: libel lawsuit.
Speaker 2: Yes, and now some turning you know, at least one
Speaker 2: turning point person issuing her. I think there's more to come.
Speaker 2: You know, her husband is this mega wealthy British guy,
Speaker 2: so they may be able to weather that. But I
Speaker 2: think ultimately these lawsuits, you know, just as Alex Jones
Speaker 2: was able to avoid it until he couldn't, I think
Speaker 2: she could face the same issue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not fun. Okay, Let's turn to another sort of
Speaker 1: heavyweight in this fight for the future of mag which
Speaker 1: is Tucker Carlson. So Tucker's career arc is fascinating to me.
Speaker 1: He was widely viewed, as you know, one of the
Speaker 1: best magazine writers of his generation. Then he bumped along
Speaker 1: in various TV jobs for a while, including stints at
Speaker 1: CNN and MSNBC. Those sort of eventually ended or failed
Speaker 1: in some way. Then he got picked up at Fox
Speaker 1: and was kind of like a weekend journeyman until he
Speaker 1: got on the Trump train early and then parlayed that
Speaker 1: support relationship. You know, I don't know, Just focus into
Speaker 1: the highest rated show in the history of cable news
Speaker 1: before he was suddenly fired in twenty twenty three, and
Speaker 1: then after getting fired, Tucker started his own news network
Speaker 1: and show. He currently has about five point six million
Speaker 1: YouTube subscribers, which is more than his old show in
Speaker 1: terms of the aggregate ratings. So do with that information
Speaker 1: what you will. Obviously not all of those people are
Speaker 1: watching every episode, but it's a lot. And then more
Speaker 1: recently he's kind of brooken with Trump on some issues,
Speaker 1: particularly on Iran in US policy towards Israel, but a
Speaker 1: lot of the critiques were at times very harsh and
Speaker 1: very personal. So, you know, will in your opinion, where
Speaker 1: does Tucker rank in terms of kind of influence in
Speaker 1: this media world we're talking about today. He is he
Speaker 1: number one.
Speaker 2: You know, it can be hard to quite figure out.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think he's very influential. I think he
Speaker 2: sits at a unique point, which is, you know, someone
Speaker 2: like Candio and someone like Nick Fuentes, people kind of
Speaker 2: further than that on the right or more into conspiracy theories.
Speaker 2: They're sort of existing in this kind of insurgent anti
Speaker 2: Trump from the right world. Tucker sort of straddles both camps.
Speaker 2: I mean, he has a lot of influence in the
Speaker 2: White House. He's still seen as enough of a mainstream
Speaker 2: conservative figure to appear at Turning Point USA conventions for example.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, he has this kind of growing
Speaker 2: credibility with the anti Mago right, you know what might
Speaker 2: call themselves the America First Movement, people like Margie Taylor Green,
Speaker 2: Fuente's Candace, and so I think he's sort of uniquely
Speaker 2: able there to mainstream these really hateful and toxic ideas
Speaker 2: like having Nick Fuentes on his show for a very
Speaker 2: nice sit down interview, while also let's say, having ties
Speaker 2: to the Heritage Foundation and getting support from them. So
Speaker 2: in that way, I think he's very powerful, and as
Speaker 2: you said, he also has a massive audience just on
Speaker 2: his own.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So let's watch a recent clip from the Israeli
Speaker 1: Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Dannon, talking about a
Speaker 1: phone call he got from Tucker Carls. So then I'll
Speaker 1: ask you a question about it.
Speaker 5: You told me, ambassador, can you please take me off
Speaker 5: the list? And I was shocked. I told him, what
Speaker 5: are you talking about? You told me I'm being attacked
Speaker 5: by the Jews, so maybe you have like a list.
Speaker 5: Can you take me off the list? So I waited
Speaker 5: for a minute, and I told him, mister Carlson, we
Speaker 5: don't have a list. You are being attacked because you're
Speaker 5: spreading live.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting phone call there. So of all the
Speaker 1: people will discuss today, Tucker seems to be among the
Speaker 1: most interested in shaping policy, or at least the Republican
Speaker 1: Party's policy views, especially US policy towards Israel. He's been
Speaker 1: a fierce critic of Israeli Prime Minister be Being in Yahoo,
Speaker 1: He's been a fierce critic of the war in Iran.
Speaker 1: You US policy towards Israel generally at times, as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: I think that criticism has veered into anti Semitic territory
Speaker 1: in some really troubling language. Do you think that his
Speaker 1: general motive is policy focused or is he is this political?
Speaker 1: Is this like kind of Tucker knows where the puck
Speaker 1: is going and he's skating there by becoming more isolationists.
Speaker 2: I think throughout his career, I mean you mentioned these
Speaker 2: kind of different changes he's done, you know, whether it's
Speaker 2: like a writer at the Weekly Standard or than Fox
Speaker 2: News or now this. I think he's a guy who
Speaker 2: is very interested. Maybe it's a mix. I think he's
Speaker 2: trying to stay ahead of things. I think he recognizes
Speaker 2: that things like the Iran War are going to be
Speaker 2: unpopular with Republicans and only get more so as the
Speaker 2: years goes on, So he's trying to avoid associating himself
Speaker 2: with that. But I think also being fired from Fox
Speaker 2: News really sort of radicalized him and sort of caused
Speaker 2: him to seek out these more extreme politics where he
Speaker 2: could sort of stake out his own, his own position
Speaker 2: in a way that wouldn't just look like another Fox
Speaker 2: News type person.
Speaker 1: Do you think, I mean a lot of people worry
Speaker 1: or what under if he is setting himself up for
Speaker 1: a run for president, and you know, like I can
Speaker 1: make a pretty compellit case for it. I mean, he's
Speaker 1: a huge media figure. He is probably universal name idea
Speaker 1: in the Republican Party. He has I think carved out
Speaker 1: this interesting lane to I don't know how how big
Speaker 1: the lane is, but there is an isolationist lane in
Speaker 1: the Republican Party right and Trump, you know, was courting
Speaker 1: them and then went back on everything he told them
Speaker 1: in the campaign when he went to war with a run.
Speaker 1: Do you view what Tucker is doing as some sort
Speaker 1: of like political setup.
Speaker 2: I think it's very possible that he could run for
Speaker 2: president or some other office. I mean, I think if
Speaker 2: we look in twenty twenty eight, the lane for someone
Speaker 2: who opposed the war, who's kind of a more populist figure,
Speaker 2: is pretty open.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Jd Vance, I think is going to be damaged both
Speaker 2: by his association with the Trump administration but also by
Speaker 2: associations with people like Peter Thiel, all these kind of
Speaker 2: tech oligarchs. And so I think if you have someone
Speaker 2: like Tucker Carlson who could say, oh, I hate AI
Speaker 2: data centers and you know, we got to go back
Speaker 2: to you know, he's up in this cabin in May,
Speaker 2: and he says, you know, I just want to have
Speaker 2: you know, grow my family and you know, you know,
Speaker 2: go back to the traditional American ways. I think that
Speaker 2: would appeal to some people. I mean, I think it
Speaker 2: would be a risk for him to run, because potentially
Speaker 2: he could kind of get crushed like a bug somehow
Speaker 2: and then you know, lose his audience. But I think
Speaker 2: more so than Candace or someone else like other media figures,
Speaker 2: I think he's the one I see most likely is
Speaker 2: potentially running.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Mean, it's fascinating because so many people run for president
Speaker 1: knowing they're going to lose, but they know they'll hand
Speaker 1: them a giant megaphone, and like Tucker has a giant megaphone.
Speaker 1: It's totally unclear to me, like you were saying with
Speaker 1: Candace earlier, like would getting in politics benefit or hurt
Speaker 1: them because they're such heavyweights already. It's just not obvious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, And you know he might also throw
Speaker 2: himself behind ah gosh, like maybe Joe Kent, the counter
Speaker 2: terror chief who resigned. I mean, seems like someone who's
Speaker 2: potentially setting up a run for office. So I think
Speaker 2: on the other hand, you know, he was very supportive
Speaker 2: of JD Vance, only to see that kind of fizzle
Speaker 2: out and JD Vance to support the war. So I
Speaker 2: could see maybe if he's like, you know, I got
Speaker 2: to get this done myself.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So before we keep going, can I just ask
Speaker 1: how the hell did you get on this beat? Because
Speaker 1: we've spoken a bunch of times, like I have a
Speaker 1: whole bucket of questions coming up about the kind of
Speaker 1: like Nazi adjacent media space. You end up having to
Speaker 1: consume all of that content, you have to learn about
Speaker 1: all these terrible people. How did you get into this
Speaker 1: this focus?
Speaker 2: So I was a sort of young teen Republican in
Speaker 2: Texas and I just had a huge I consumed a
Speaker 2: lot of conservative media talk radio and Fox News and
Speaker 2: all this. And then during the second of the George W.
Speaker 2: Bush administration and my politics change, I thought it was
Speaker 2: just awful. He did such a bad job, but I
Speaker 2: still was like, you know, I still had such a
Speaker 2: passion for right wing media. And then you know, a
Speaker 2: couple of years went by, and then I was following
Speaker 2: figures like Ben Shapiro, whose whole thing was that he
Speaker 2: was a virgin at the time, and you know, it
Speaker 2: wasn't that novel. It was all these characters. And then
Speaker 2: in twenty sixteen, I was at a party and people
Speaker 2: were like, have you heard about Laura Lumer and Milo Uanopolis?
Speaker 2: And I thought, oh, my gosh, people are finally interested
Speaker 2: in these people, and so I started writing about them.
Speaker 1: No, I see, you were like, I'm just going to
Speaker 1: make this my thing and focus on these folks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, I mean there's you know, as
Speaker 2: we've discovered. I mean, there's really sort of an endless
Speaker 2: well of bizarre stories about them.
Speaker 1: Well, sometimes I'll I'll find myself sitting in bed with
Speaker 1: headphones in, not speaking to my wife at ten pm
Speaker 1: because I'm streaming something horrible, and I wonder what it's
Speaker 1: doing to my mental health? Does it impact yours? Are
Speaker 1: you able to divorce the two?
Speaker 2: No, it's a good question. I think I just have
Speaker 2: a really high tolerance. I really enjoy the twists and
Speaker 2: the turns, you know, whether it's kind of the personalities
Speaker 2: or the appearance of a new idea or ideology. Similarly,
Speaker 2: you know, I do a lot while I'm cooking for
Speaker 2: my kids, and so I run through these videos and
Speaker 2: my wife will come down and see, you know, five
Speaker 2: people hunched over a computer, you know, broadcasting something, and
Speaker 2: she'll like, you know, that certainly looks like something you'd
Speaker 2: be watching.
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Speaker 1: come to Megan Kelly. Megan Kelly I kind of slot
Speaker 1: in with Tucker and in a bucket because I feel
Speaker 1: like they're friends, they're aligned, they talk to each other
Speaker 1: on their shows. But she has also broken with Trump
Speaker 1: in some notable ways. Recently it started again with her
Speaker 1: on in Israel, but now more recently, Megan's been criticizing
Speaker 1: Trump for like infidelity, which surprise me. What do you
Speaker 1: make of Megan's kind of rapid pivot into Trump critic
Speaker 1: Is this a business decision? Is this policy some combo?
Speaker 2: You know? I would say Megan Kelly is much more
Speaker 2: mercenary even than Tucker Carlson is. I think she is
Speaker 2: someone who you know, they're very similar in some ways.
Speaker 2: They both came out of Fox News in these kind
Speaker 2: of more such as it is moderate conser more traditional
Speaker 2: conservative environments. But I think she is really seeing the
Speaker 2: way the wind is blowing, and she number one, doesn't
Speaker 2: want to get targeted by figures like Candice Owens or
Speaker 2: Nick Fuentes because I think she sees them correctly as
Speaker 2: much more dynamic and much more able to make people
Speaker 2: look like dinosaurs in the way that Ben Shapiro or
Speaker 2: Mark Levin have kind of been sidelined, and so I
Speaker 2: think she really wants to stay out of their way.
Speaker 2: She's also, I think, is trying to ride this wave
Speaker 2: of discontent with Trump. And look, I think if Trump
Speaker 2: was at like sixty percent approval, I'm sure she wouldn't
Speaker 2: be saying, you know, shut up with the tweets and
Speaker 2: stop threatening to destroy Rany and civilization. But I think
Speaker 2: right now she's recognizing where the wind is blowing and
Speaker 2: trying to stay on the right side of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you mentioned the Daily Wire. There's been a lot
Speaker 1: of coverage lately of the decline of the Daily Wire,
Speaker 1: and in particular the decline in viewership for America's favorite
Speaker 1: virgin podcast host Ben Shapiro last week. Last month, Sorry,
Speaker 1: the Daily Wire CEO stepped down. He handed the reins
Speaker 1: this game show producer and host named Mike Richards. So
Speaker 1: I think his claim to fame is almost becoming the
Speaker 1: host of Jeopardy before you have to until some old
Speaker 1: quotes from a podcast he did resurfaced that were offensive
Speaker 1: and got him bounced. Ben Shapiro has reportedly lost at
Speaker 1: least eighty thousand YouTube followers this year alone, which is
Speaker 1: you know, that's remarkable. How real do you think these
Speaker 1: issues are for The Daily Wire and to what do
Speaker 1: you attribute their decline?
Speaker 2: I think they're very real for the Daily Wire. I
Speaker 2: think there's maybe, let's say two challenges they're facing. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's striking because just a few years ago, Jeremy Boring,
Speaker 2: who was the co founder of The Daily Wire and
Speaker 2: really kind of became the face of the company is
Speaker 2: for a while, as Ben Shapiro sort of received, he
Speaker 2: was being profiled as like the new Hollywood mogul in Nashville,
Speaker 2: where they're based. He was going to change the face
Speaker 2: of entertainment. They had they built out all these streaming shows.
Speaker 2: They built out a Game of Thrones knockoff that was
Speaker 2: like his passion project for It was like several million
Speaker 2: dollars per episode.
Speaker 1: It went way over Hendriguns cycle. It was tens of
Speaker 1: millions of dollars over budget. Yes, it's about King Arthur.
Speaker 1: He doesn't show up in the first season, but you know,
Speaker 1: they felt really oufidive.
Speaker 2: That there would be more. It was all about Merlin
Speaker 2: and so this was a dream of his that he
Speaker 2: had had since college to make this show. And I
Speaker 2: mean it looks great, but you know, very expensive. They
Speaker 2: made a blue knockoff starring chinchillas to win over kids
Speaker 2: to conservatism. So they had all these side projects and
Speaker 2: that cost them enormous amounts of money. So he got
Speaker 2: booted last year essentially over these cost overruns. Now they're
Speaker 2: kind of trying to retrench in a much more traditional
Speaker 2: kind of like we're going to have a couple podcasts,
Speaker 2: maybe we're going to have some documentaries from Matt Walsh
Speaker 2: where he's skewers liberals. But I think the bigger problem
Speaker 2: they're facing is that, you know, the kind of politics
Speaker 2: that Ben Shapiro wants to promote, which is sort of
Speaker 2: this like anti anti Trump. He's like, you know, a
Speaker 2: little cautious about Trump. He's not a hardcore Trump guy
Speaker 2: like Sean Hannity. But on the other hand, he agrees
Speaker 2: with things like the war in Iran. He's very pro Israel,
Speaker 2: and I think both of those that he's kind of
Speaker 2: wedged here between. He can't go anti Trump, but he
Speaker 2: also like doesn't love Trump all that much, so he's
Speaker 2: kind of trapped, and I think that point of view
Speaker 2: is just not that popular right now on the right,
Speaker 2: and then it's losing him audience.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it's interesting you read these reports and there
Speaker 1: are these amazing financial challenges like you mentioned. I mean,
Speaker 1: like that I can't get enough of the stories about
Speaker 1: the Pendragon cycle, and just like the reality of that
Speaker 1: so many of these guys are just theater kids who
Speaker 1: didn't quite make it and who are trying to revamp
Speaker 1: their theater kidness in the conservative world. But The Daily
Speaker 1: Wire reportedly had two hundred million dollars in annual revenue
Speaker 1: in like twenty twenty four, or maybe that was a projection.
Speaker 1: I remember reading about their business success and worrying, like
Speaker 1: how it compared to us, you know, their subscriber account
Speaker 1: and then just something needs to like fallen off a cliff.
Speaker 1: And I don't know what it is, but I mean
Speaker 1: I think Ben Shapiro lives in Florida, but the company
Speaker 1: is in Nashville. Maybe there's just sort of like a
Speaker 1: lack of business alignment as well as sort of like
Speaker 1: ideological and content misalignment with the party that you mentioned there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think Puck Hadson reporting on how
Speaker 2: basically the guy who followed Jeremy Boring was also seen
Speaker 2: as kind of bumbling around. There's been a lot of
Speaker 2: internal discord between Ben Shapiro and the other founders. But
Speaker 2: I think what we're looking at is that the Daily
Speaker 2: Wire will probably retrench as something more like the Daily
Speaker 2: Caller like Steven Crowder, I mean speaking of like failed
Speaker 2: theater kids, Like it'll be a thing with a popular
Speaker 2: podcast and a couple other popular podcasts, but not like
Speaker 2: this kind of what they were going for, which was
Speaker 2: sort of like a conservative entertainment giant.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, they were to replaced like a major studio
Speaker 1: in Hollywood with this conservative thing. And I just wonder,
Speaker 1: like is that even doable, Like are there are enough
Speaker 1: audience or advertising and it seems like maybe the verdict
Speaker 1: is not quite yet or at least TBD.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's what they're looking at. I mean,
Speaker 2: they were, you know, this was the idea is like, well,
Speaker 2: I subscribe to Netflix Disney Plus, and you know my
Speaker 2: kids love the Chinchilla Show, so I got to subscribe
Speaker 2: to the Daily Wire.
Speaker 1: Catch every episode of the Pendergen cycle. Okay, so again,
Speaker 1: tell me if you disagree. But I kind of mentally
Speaker 1: slot the Free Press into a similar bucket or basket
Speaker 1: as a Daily Wire. Now it's less ideologically overt, it's
Speaker 1: a little more like trolley maybe, but it clearly has
Speaker 1: like an editorial slant and a mission. So the Free Press,
Speaker 1: as folks probably know, was bought by Paramount for one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty million dollars must be nice. Barry Weiss,
Speaker 1: the founder of The Free Press, was named editor in
Speaker 1: chief of CBS News. That part of the kind of
Speaker 1: project is not going great. We've all been reading this week.
Speaker 1: You and I are talking on Wednesday, June third, about
Speaker 1: a horrible meeting with the new sixty minutes executive producer
Speaker 1: where the kind of sixty Minutes uber anchor Scott Pelly
Speaker 1: dressed him down and was later fired, which makes me
Speaker 1: wonder how that show is going to even keep going.
Speaker 1: But that's neither here nor there. But you know, we're
Speaker 1: reading a lot about CBS and not a lot about
Speaker 1: the Free Press, Like what is happening over there? I
Speaker 1: feel like they've kind of disappeared, Like I just don't
Speaker 1: see their stuff anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think the Free Press is trying
Speaker 2: to similar to the Daily Wire in some ways. It
Speaker 2: become kind of like a lifestyle thing. They're launching these events.
Speaker 2: You could, they're gonna have Free Press meetups in their
Speaker 2: town so you can meet fellow heterodox thinkers, maybe data
Speaker 2: and whatever. You know, they're trying to branch out in
Speaker 2: these various ways. But I agree with you, I think
Speaker 2: the Free Press is kind of facing this drift as
Speaker 2: Barie Weise focuses on who she's gonna fire at sixty
Speaker 2: minutes or what have you. I think also, I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, it's also worth noting. I mean like they
Speaker 2: had a crazy high turnover of people. I mean, they
Speaker 2: brought in kind of other prominent people like Chuck Lane
Speaker 2: from the Washington Post. People may remember from the movie
Speaker 2: Shattered Glass. Michael moynihan, who's kind of like a podcast personality,
Speaker 2: Andy Mills, who founded The Daily at the New York Times,
Speaker 2: and they just these people just quit like really quickly,
Speaker 2: suggesting by the way, it's sort of a foreshadowing of
Speaker 2: what sixteen Minutes and CBS News how they're run now.
Speaker 2: So I think there is some amount of trouble there.
Speaker 2: They're down to like Olivia Ryan Gold, who's kind of
Speaker 2: like a wanna be Daily Barry Wise's figure, who's like
Speaker 2: a bit alarming, you know, in her demeanor. I just
Speaker 2: don't find her like I don't know how people have
Speaker 2: like a here listeners.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: No, there was a journalist who was, you know, fairly
Speaker 1: or unfairly you decide, mocked for taking video during the
Speaker 1: shooting attempt at the Whites Correspondence dinner when the there
Speaker 1: was a assassin everyone calls an assassination attempt. The individual
Speaker 1: got nowhere near Donald Trump. But there was a reporter
Speaker 1: who videoed sort of like the aftermath of it, but
Speaker 1: had the camera turned on herself the entire time and
Speaker 1: got a lot of grief for it.
Speaker 4: In you.
Speaker 1: That's Olivia Rainold.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know, I mean to get into like
Speaker 2: a larger structural issue I think they're facing and sort
Speaker 2: of these other figures. You know, I think there's been
Speaker 2: a lot a decline and interest in like anti woke content.
Speaker 2: As obviously Donald Trump is in charge. I think a
Speaker 2: lot of these companies have sort of retreated from things, like,
Speaker 2: you know, from like woke entertainment such as it is.
Speaker 2: So you on the upscale end, you have something like
Speaker 2: the Free Press, which is gonna have all these kind
Speaker 2: of cancel professors. On the lower end, you have people
Speaker 2: like Tim Poole or the Quartering on YouTube. We're gonna say,
Speaker 2: I can't believe they have a black Disney princess or
Speaker 2: what have you. But all of those guys have said,
Speaker 2: you know, my traffic's going down, my views are down
Speaker 2: because we and Democrats are out of power. There's just
Speaker 2: less wokeness to get outraged about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's lessing less to be outraged about. It always
Speaker 1: struck me though, that the Free Press had an impressive
Speaker 1: elite audience, you know, like there's like smart, professional, thoughtful
Speaker 1: people I know here in la who consume a lot
Speaker 1: of Free Press content that she clearly had a Barry
Speaker 1: Bari Wis is a barrier Bari. I don't know if
Speaker 1: I'm saying great.
Speaker 2: I kind of think I don't know, I be honest
Speaker 2: with you.
Speaker 1: Either way, miss Weiss. Miss Weiss clearly was able to
Speaker 1: build relationships with charm Otherwise, you know, get investment from
Speaker 1: billionaires or you know, elites like the Ellison family. But
Speaker 1: was that the secret sauce of the free press? Only
Speaker 1: just like that kind of elite audience and maybe not
Speaker 1: the mass market appeal that they need.
Speaker 2: I think Barry Wise has had a lot of success
Speaker 2: kind of having these what appears to be like a
Speaker 2: relatively like straightforward, often admirable ideology of like free speech
Speaker 2: and you know, all this stuff intellectual pursuits, but often
Speaker 2: that boils down to and I think we can see
Speaker 2: this elsewhen writing media is sort of like respect rich
Speaker 2: people ideology or like like rich people to get to
Speaker 2: do whatever they want. And obviously that's very flattering to
Speaker 2: the tech oligarchs, to people like the you know, all
Speaker 2: these kind of certainly elon musk people like that. And
Speaker 2: so I think that's why she was so successful in
Speaker 2: the La cocktail party circuit. And you know, it's sort
Speaker 2: of similar to to the Spencer Pratt thing. You know,
Speaker 2: I mean different flavors of it, but this idea of like,
Speaker 2: you know, we got to clean up the streets, you know.
Speaker 2: So the I think that has obviously served her very
Speaker 2: well and I think got her that one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty million dollar a purchase.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of it is just like I find
Speaker 1: the people you find annoying annoying too, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to make fun of them on my website. So subscribe
Speaker 1: to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm going to validate you for these opinions you
Speaker 2: might otherwise be uncomfortable having.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. All right. Now I'm going to ask you
Speaker 1: about the kind of darker, more extreme fringe the people
Speaker 1: I worry about you listening to as you're making your
Speaker 1: kids mac and cheese. You probably folks have probably heard
Speaker 1: of Nick Fuentes, who is an openly racist, misogynistic, holocaust
Speaker 1: denying the streamer podcast host whatever you want to call him.
Speaker 1: His content really exploded at least in my feeds in
Speaker 1: recent months, especially after his interview with Tucker Carlson, but
Speaker 1: also his episodes get clipped and shared everywhere and if
Speaker 1: you kind of like make the wrong moves on the
Speaker 1: Twitter algorithm, all of a sudden they're getting force fed
Speaker 1: down your throat. Then there's figures like Chud the Builder,
Speaker 1: which I'd love to get into a bit with you,
Speaker 1: who is just a truly awful new Internet figure who
Speaker 1: would literally run around screaming racial slurs in an effort
Speaker 1: to bait black people into fights. And that story ended
Speaker 1: exactly how you'd expect. It would end with him getting
Speaker 1: arrested for shooting someone in one of those fights. So
Speaker 1: can you tell us about those two individuals into any
Speaker 1: other big voices in this extremist fringe that you keep
Speaker 1: an eye on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this kind of fits into sort of the
Speaker 2: gen Z streamer community. You know, Dick fent Is being
Speaker 2: the most prominent one this white nationalist. He has a
Speaker 2: sort of unique demeanor among racists, which is like he's
Speaker 2: a little fae. He's like a kind of a little guy,
Speaker 2: and so he appeals in sort of a strange way,
Speaker 2: you know, to the extent that I think he has
Speaker 2: had sort of a Candice Owen's like breakout into the
Speaker 2: broader Internet, where people will you know, play his audios
Speaker 2: and you know, over their tiktoks or what have you.
Speaker 2: I think Chud the Builder, as you said, I think
Speaker 2: one of the most reprehensible people I've ever written about,
Speaker 2: someone who goes around says the end word and then
Speaker 2: when you know, black person says that what are you doing,
Speaker 2: he says, you know, step to me and I'll shoot you.
Speaker 2: And ultimately, not only did he shoot someone, but he
Speaker 2: also Dufius ended up shooting himself.
Speaker 1: Did shoot himself.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, so now he's on trial for attempted murder.
Speaker 2: And so even more broadly, we can look around to
Speaker 2: people like whether it's clmicular, the guy who's trying to
Speaker 2: look so handsome, or these like dating podcasts where they
Speaker 2: bring in a bunch of women from only fans and
Speaker 2: they say what's your body count? And then you know,
Speaker 2: they go, oh my god, that's not trad you know,
Speaker 2: and these things just kind of like whipping up paid
Speaker 2: against women or or minorities, and it's all kind of
Speaker 2: united around. A lot of it gets clipped, as you said,
Speaker 2: into these like these one two minute segments that get
Speaker 2: a lot of social media attraction.
Speaker 1: And to your point with the clipping, I mean, it
Speaker 1: can feel really hard to understand if these shows are
Speaker 1: actually big and influential or if I just see them
Speaker 1: because Twitter knows that I clicked on a bunch of
Speaker 1: Fuentez clips at one point and now it's just constantly
Speaker 1: serving me more of them. Do you do you have
Speaker 1: in a sense of like kind of the aggregate influence
Speaker 1: of this world.
Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting. I think you know we can
Speaker 2: have there are a couple metrics, and as you said,
Speaker 2: it can be challenging, right because on one hand, we've
Speaker 2: seen these articles that say, you know, clipping, it's making
Speaker 2: it all fake. You know, there's none of this is real.
Speaker 2: None of these people are popular. But you know, as
Speaker 2: Taylo Lorens has pointed out, I mean someone like Clurvicular
Speaker 2: was popular before he came to the attention of people
Speaker 2: like you and me. He's popular at kind of like
Speaker 2: a gen z. Here's this handsome oddball level. And also,
Speaker 2: you know, if clipping, if this was all this fake thing,
Speaker 2: then you know everyone would do it. We would have
Speaker 2: a one hundred thousand ever killers, right Heaven forbid. But
Speaker 2: like you know, these are it is a it is
Speaker 2: a challenging world. And for me, it's often when it
Speaker 2: kind of spills over into the real world. So when
Speaker 2: curricular is out walking around and all these people are like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, it's clurvicular. Well, clearly there's some amount
Speaker 2: of fan base there. Or when Chud the Builder unfortunately
Speaker 2: raises three hundred grand after shooting a guy, I mean,
Speaker 2: clearly there's some amount of genuine support.
Speaker 1: There's so for us at crook It. I mean, when
Speaker 1: I think about the technology and the platforms you focus on,
Speaker 1: it's like the standard podcast app from Apple, It's YouTube
Speaker 1: is huge for us, especially in terms of growth, and
Speaker 1: then obviously we try to clip and share our stuff
Speaker 1: too on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok. Obviously the conservatives use a
Speaker 1: lot of these same sites as well, but they're also
Speaker 1: they use platforms that I feel like democrats just don't
Speaker 1: really live on, like Rumble, Kick, Twitch is a little
Speaker 1: more you know, broadly used. What are the biggest platforms
Speaker 1: you think for this sort of conservative Agamedia world and
Speaker 1: how important are they to the growth of these spaces?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, I mean you mentioned Kick, which is like
Speaker 2: basically Twitch. The people who were kicked off of Twitch
Speaker 2: with Kick, and it's sort of a like it's basically
Speaker 2: funded all by like gambling ads because they couldn't have
Speaker 2: those on Twitch. So that's like the very unsavory people
Speaker 2: on kick and that's someone like curricular for example. And
Speaker 2: then if you get kicked off a kick, you end
Speaker 2: up where Chud the builder ended up, which is like
Speaker 2: got something called like brain pill, dot info or those lines.
Speaker 1: I've never even heard that.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, it's these like I think I'm mangling
Speaker 2: the name, but it's these like really like you know,
Speaker 2: the kind of backwaters of the Internet. Now, it can
Speaker 2: all still get clipped and end up on Twitter, and
Speaker 2: especially as we've seen the mainstream social media platforms sort
Speaker 2: of pull back from moderating and really go hands off.
Speaker 2: I mean a lot of it still happens on places
Speaker 2: like YouTube and x and you know, as you mentioned Rumble,
Speaker 2: which is sort of the right wing YouTube alternative, which
Speaker 2: just hosted, you know, with the main sponsor for the
Speaker 2: steroid games that were held recently.
Speaker 1: I mean, so that's kind of the world the world
Speaker 1: they're operating. Yeah, it was the enhanced games or the games. Yes,
Speaker 1: you know, I feel like everyone was sharing the picture
Speaker 1: of that one swimmer who looked like he had been inflated,
Speaker 1: you know, with a with a hose. But then I
Speaker 1: don't think they broke any records, right, I mean you
Speaker 1: had some sort of natural athletes just smoking the steroid guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I watched it. You know, in a way, it
Speaker 2: wasn't as like as sinister as I hoped. I mean,
Speaker 2: they tried to make it just look like the Olympics.
Speaker 2: But yeah, ultimately, really the guys, you know, I think
Speaker 2: especially things like weightlifting, these guys around so many drugs
Speaker 2: anyway that you know, it's kind of say same.
Speaker 1: And also like I think it wasn't hosted by the
Speaker 1: guy Brian Johnson who's like trying to maximalize his longevity.
Speaker 1: But in practice that means I guess tweeting out things
Speaker 1: observations about his girlfriend's vaginal biome was one of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's a disturbing fellow. And then you know he's
Speaker 2: he appeared with an umbrella so that he wouldn't get
Speaker 2: any natural sunlighte How.
Speaker 1: Does that space overlap with conservative media or does it?
Speaker 1: Am I wrong?
Speaker 2: I mean I think there is some overlap. I mean, certainly,
Speaker 2: someone like Brian Johnson is trying to live forever. I
Speaker 2: mean he's like a tech guy, kind of tech adjacent guy.
Speaker 2: You have these guys who are like trying to you know,
Speaker 2: someone like Clovicular. Similarly as Brian Johnson's trying to Live Forever,
Speaker 2: Clovicular is like trying to you know, be as handsome
Speaker 2: as he can be. And so I think this idea,
Speaker 2: particularly among young people of like you know, optimizing and
Speaker 2: having this kind of very clurricular represents kind of like
Speaker 2: a very nihil stick view of the world where it's like,
Speaker 2: if you aren't in the like zero point one percent,
Speaker 2: you know women are, they call it hypergamy. So you know,
Speaker 2: the most handsome men will have ten lovers, you know,
Speaker 2: at the same time, and everyone else will be will
Speaker 2: be an in sell and so you know, then your
Speaker 2: life is over essentially, and so you have to compete
Speaker 2: in these really intense ways. I think we see that
Speaker 2: reflected a lot in this kind of really intense like
Speaker 2: Silicon Valley culture as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a very weird culture. I mean, it's always
Speaker 1: interesting to me to kind of identify points where the
Speaker 1: ven diagrams overlap, right, because I think MAHA, the Make
Speaker 1: America Healthy Again agenda really did bring in a big
Speaker 1: community of people to the Trump orbit that might not
Speaker 1: otherwise have ever voted for Republican right. I mean, a
Speaker 1: lot of it was like you know, out here in
Speaker 1: LA it's like West Side moms who were you know,
Speaker 1: sort of like anti VAXX in some way kind of
Speaker 1: got drawn into the MAHA movement during COVID and end
Speaker 1: up voting Trump. And it's interesting like the sort of
Speaker 1: like the longevity lifestyle health space can get you know,
Speaker 1: coded conservative if Democrats are not talking to those people
Speaker 1: are communicating an alternative message.
Speaker 2: I mean there's this huge overlap between all these different groups.
Speaker 2: So you know, for example, let's take a look at
Speaker 2: Candice Owen's who got really into Blake Lively justin Baldoni stuff,
Speaker 2: and so she drew in a lot of people who
Speaker 2: didn't care about conservative politics. But it was kind of
Speaker 2: these like conservative coded like blaming the woman, kind of
Speaker 2: anti METWO type stuff. And they start, you know, combing
Speaker 2: through the court documents and then oh, you want to
Speaker 2: comb through something else. Let's go through Brigitte mccrone's high
Speaker 2: school yearbooks or whatever you or you know, like the
Speaker 2: world of like meme stocks where people oh, I lost
Speaker 2: all my money on bed bath and beyond. Then they're
Speaker 2: championed by people like Bill Poulte, now our deputy you know,
Speaker 2: intelligence chief are our director of National Intelligence. And then
Speaker 2: you know, then they get into qan on and they
Speaker 2: get into other conspiracy theories because they feel that they've
Speaker 2: been wronged.
Speaker 1: Extraordinary video going around the internet this week of Bill
Speaker 1: Pulti at a conference where he is trying to promote
Speaker 1: the bed Bath and Beyond stock and the speaker before
Speaker 1: him slaps another man in the face with a with
Speaker 1: a dildo.
Speaker 2: Pulte himself gets presented with a dildo. So, I mean,
Speaker 2: this is the trophy.
Speaker 1: I think what it said Bill Poulti, Fuck's only the
Speaker 1: Young was the joke. I guess, yeah, he loves the
Speaker 1: tailor show song only the Young. I've unfortunately, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's certainly regrettable phrasing. It is, ah yeah, very regrettable fracing.
Speaker 1: This week alone, you got Bill Polty talking about only
Speaker 1: the young and then Evanka talking about buying an island.
Speaker 1: It was not a good week for moving on from
Speaker 1: the Jeffrey Epstein dialogue for the Trump administration.
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Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk about the kind of manosphere world, such
Speaker 1: as it is. You have mentioned Clovicular a few times.
Speaker 1: You're right, he's been around for a while, but I
Speaker 1: think he exploded onto the national scene a few months
Speaker 1: back and taught us all about looksmaxing and this weird
Speaker 1: lingo he has and hit in his face with hammers.
Speaker 1: And he also infamously went to a club in Miami
Speaker 1: with Nick Fuentes. We talked about earlier the kind of
Speaker 1: neo Nazi content creator and then a truly awful guy
Speaker 1: named Andrew Tait who was charged with what is it,
Speaker 1: human trafficking.
Speaker 2: And rape human trafficking again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like genuinely awful human being who, by the way,
Speaker 1: was just in Russia with Candice Owens for some reason.
Speaker 1: We can talk about that if you want. And a
Speaker 1: streamer named Sneako they all sang along to Kanye West song.
Speaker 1: Kyle Hitler filmed it, chucked it on the internet. Are
Speaker 1: are those folks, Clovicular Andrew Tate, Sneako? Are they talking
Speaker 1: about politics these days? Like? How do you think about
Speaker 1: them and their influence in this kind of media world?
Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting. I feel like each of them
Speaker 2: has sort of a bespoke ideology all on their own.
Speaker 2: You know, someone like Clurricular famously said that, you know,
Speaker 2: jd Vance is too fat and he's going to vote
Speaker 2: for Gavin Newsome as a result, because Gavin Newsom is
Speaker 2: just more handsome. You know, you have these figures that
Speaker 2: almost exist in sort of a right wing realm beyond
Speaker 2: any even like Trumpian politics, where you know, for example,
Speaker 2: you know, Clinicular's representatives will always say, oh, he's not
Speaker 2: right wing, you know, he likes Gavin Newso, but then
Speaker 2: when you actually watch him interact with women, he's like
Speaker 2: it's like a Caveman view, like a girl will say,
Speaker 2: like I'm going to college and he's like, what why
Speaker 2: you know? I mean these So it's ultimately this very reactionary,
Speaker 2: ultimately like really like nihilistic view of the world. You know,
Speaker 2: someone like you know, whether it's Andrew Tate, who obviously
Speaker 2: has all these sort of criminal allegations.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: Also in the club was this guy named Myron Gaines. Yes,
Speaker 2: who's you know, a sort of pseudonym because they're admiring
Speaker 2: his gains in the gym, you know, He's These are
Speaker 2: guys who are really like just pumping out this like
Speaker 2: hate content. Uh and and so it is interesting. I
Speaker 2: feel like when there's kind of a big political moment,
Speaker 2: they might discuss it, but they certainly aren't like orthodox
Speaker 2: conservative figures as we might think of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's interesting. Hearing you talk about it made
Speaker 1: me think that, you know, I guess if Candice Owen's
Speaker 1: beat is conspiracy, They're beat is misogyny and hate for women.
Speaker 2: I mean, frankly, yeah, hate for women sometimes hate for
Speaker 2: Indian people. That's kind of a rising one. You know.
Speaker 2: They're kind of just they're these guys who sort of like, look,
Speaker 2: I mean, they just want more attention, essentially, is what
Speaker 2: they're after, and they do you know, it's they can get,
Speaker 2: you know, someone like Chud the Builder, who's sort of
Speaker 2: an extreme example of this. They get sort of trapped
Speaker 2: in these like escalatory attention cycles, and so sneak O
Speaker 2: converts to Islam and then you know, is caught drinking
Speaker 2: and and all this stuff, and so they they live
Speaker 2: some pretty twisted lives.
Speaker 1: Just we drama all the time. I used to listen
Speaker 1: to Steve Bannon's podcast all the time because I felt
Speaker 1: like it would tell me where MAGA was going. At
Speaker 1: least a couple of weeks early. You hear like some
Speaker 1: crazy idea and then all of a sudden it be
Speaker 1: on Trump's true social feed a few weeks later. I've
Speaker 1: fallen off on that listening habit in part because the
Speaker 1: guy just cranks out like what three four hours of
Speaker 1: stuff a day, and I couldn't keep.
Speaker 2: Up for it.
Speaker 1: But also I felt like in the beginning of Trump
Speaker 1: two point zero, the bann And wing of the party
Speaker 1: seemed to be losing right like his enemy was Elon Musk.
Speaker 1: Elon Musk was sitting in the White House. He was
Speaker 1: like co president for a while. I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: that's not the case anymore. Like where do you think
Speaker 1: Bannon in that media empire sit in the kind of
Speaker 1: maga media hierarchy in space these days?
Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting people ask me this before, and
Speaker 2: I'm kind of trying to figure it out myself exactly
Speaker 2: what influenced Steve Bannon has. I mean, I think it's
Speaker 2: often sort of overstated because I think he's a pretty
Speaker 2: easy source for journalists and so they're happy he's often
Speaker 2: in articles or kind of cited as this his wisdom.
Speaker 2: He is, as you said, I mean, he still has
Speaker 2: these figures who are kind of like these like B
Speaker 2: tier operatives who will sort of reveal that something's gonna happen.
Speaker 2: Like he'll have like John Solomon, who's kind of this
Speaker 2: like conservative investigative reporter and is now joining the government
Speaker 2: as and he'll say, you know, Tulsea Gabbards, you know,
Speaker 2: basically digging up stuff to interfere with elections, things like that,
Speaker 2: which is very enter Or Tina Peters's lawyer was on
Speaker 2: and he said data Peters are gonna get pardoned soon,
Speaker 2: and that happened, And so I think, but as for
Speaker 2: his like actual influence. I mean, as you said, he
Speaker 2: was kind of this like anti tech oligarch guy. I
Speaker 2: think we're seeing more of that coalition kind of congeal
Speaker 2: on the right, But at the moment, I think he's
Speaker 2: kind of just humming along, but not with any sort
Speaker 2: of particular amount of sweat.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think he was last seen pushing the anti sharia
Speaker 1: law ballot initiative in Texas, for example, as a way
Speaker 1: to maybe turn out voter for Paxay. Clearly it's his
Speaker 1: hobby horses and his candidates, but yeah, I'm sort of
Speaker 1: not exactly clear where he's at in this space. So look,
Speaker 1: the whole point of this conversation was to talk about
Speaker 1: this mega media ecosystem and figure out what it tells
Speaker 1: us about where the party is going, because they're all
Speaker 1: kind of clamoring to figure out what a post Donald
Speaker 1: Trump political reality will be, even if it's you know,
Speaker 1: later than we all want it to be. We talked
Speaker 1: about Tucker in the policy fights around Iran and US
Speaker 1: support towards Israel. Are there other ideological or policy splits
Speaker 1: that you're observing kind of bubble up in this space?
Speaker 2: I do think, you know, things like certainly, AI, I
Speaker 2: think is emerging as a real issue, whether it's data
Speaker 2: centers or like government oversight of AI. People like Steve
Speaker 2: Bannon have really been whipping up the idea of like,
Speaker 2: you know, we need more government oversight or I think
Speaker 2: there's also, you know, on sort of a more smaller scale,
Speaker 2: there's this growing sense on like places like TikTok where
Speaker 2: you'll have a video of a farm or being like
Speaker 2: people keep asking to buy my land for a data center. Now,
Speaker 2: you know, admittedly I don't think that's much like a
Speaker 2: SOB story. You know, he can sell it or not,
Speaker 2: but it's giving people this sense of like there's like
Speaker 2: sinister forces at play, and I think that always like
Speaker 2: really hits with the right. On the other hand, you
Speaker 2: have these people like David Sachs, these these tech people
Speaker 2: who are clearly very associated with the administration who basically
Speaker 2: you don't want to run amuck, and so I think
Speaker 2: things like AI and tech in general. You know, Matt
Speaker 2: Walshit the Daily Wire, on the other hand, is like
Speaker 2: a very anti AI guy. So you can see these splits.
Speaker 2: I mean, certainly, as you mentioned, the Iran and sort
Speaker 2: of intervention Israel in general is like a huge fault line.
Speaker 2: So I think we're as Trump kind of recedes an influence.
Speaker 2: I think this fight is going to break out more
Speaker 2: in the open.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The other thing I want to ask you is,
Speaker 1: you know, there's been some suggestion that a lot of
Speaker 1: the heat you see in the NAGA media world is
Speaker 1: just financially driven. Like there's a woman named Ashley Saint
Speaker 1: Clair who is a former MAGA media influencer who is
Speaker 1: probably best known to this audience is for having a
Speaker 1: child with Elon Musk and then kind of like talking
Speaker 1: about it afterwards, she read said that the whole right
Speaker 1: wing influencer world is just getting paid and that most
Speaker 1: of this posts you see or that causes that kind
Speaker 1: of these MAGA folks take up happened because someone is
Speaker 1: cutting them a check. And I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people appointed the fact that like all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: Katie Miller, Steven Miller White as advisor, Steven Miller's wife
Speaker 1: is talking about like what solar farms I think, and
Speaker 1: people like, hmm, interesting that happened. Is that true? Do
Speaker 1: you think? Is Ashley Saint Clair right that there's a
Speaker 1: lot of folks on the takeout there?
Speaker 2: I think she is right. I think there's like a
Speaker 2: huge amount of pay to play or payola washing around.
Speaker 2: I mean, whether it's people who are kind of like
Speaker 2: named figures like the talk radio is like Chad Prather
Speaker 2: or what have you, or just these like meme acounts
Speaker 2: that are like end wokeness and have a million followers.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: I'll give you an example. I just wrote this week
Speaker 2: about how suddenly a bunch of these people were saying,
Speaker 2: Harley Davidson is so woke and gay, we got to
Speaker 2: get ditch here, Harley whatever, and by an Indian motorcycle
Speaker 2: which is there's another motorcycle company called Indian, And it
Speaker 2: was so strange that there wasn't at the moment at
Speaker 2: that time, like a real like wokeness, like a genuine
Speaker 2: wokeness controversy, and all of a sudden they all just
Speaker 2: start attacking it. And I think, like, I haven't proven it,
Speaker 2: but I think it's clear that this is a paid campaign,
Speaker 2: whether by this rival motorcycle company or some other third force,
Speaker 2: to just pump out these these articles and then these posts.
Speaker 2: You know, Similarly, someone like Laura Lumer will suddenly be like,
Speaker 2: we got to straighten out these Venezuela and oil export licenses.
Speaker 2: I mean, these these things. Oil is a big one.
Speaker 2: The Gateway punted had this thing that was like, we
Speaker 2: gotta we can't keep sanctioning this Indian oil refinery.
Speaker 1: I mean these things.
Speaker 2: Like these guys, these people who normally just like base
Speaker 2: level culture war stuff are just like I just am
Speaker 2: really passionate about the Indian hydrocarbon yo strate. It's so
Speaker 2: funny to all of a sudden have like dozens of
Speaker 2: influencers be like Harley Davidson is gay, Like I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: what what is it?
Speaker 1: What are you talking about? Where is that coming from?
Speaker 1: The Other one that was very obvious to a lot
Speaker 1: of people, I think Ashley Saint Clair called out was
Speaker 1: after the White House Correspondents dinner shooting, all these influencers
Speaker 1: were posting essentially verbatian messages saying Trump needs a ballroom,
Speaker 1: and she suggested that that was clear evidence that there
Speaker 1: was a coordination of this message and like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe a discord chat room or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think clearly there's like group chats
Speaker 2: of some kind that you know, whether I don't think
Speaker 2: necessarily those people are being paid, right, but I think
Speaker 2: there is also this kind of like there's like an
Speaker 2: access I think you probably want to preserve with the
Speaker 2: Republican Party with the White House, so you get invited
Speaker 2: to the events or tomorrow lago and so they'll say,
Speaker 2: you know, the line is, you know, within like twenty
Speaker 2: thirty minutes of the shooting, suddenly like it is unbelievable
Speaker 2: that Democrats won't let Trump have his giant ballroom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the White House is not directly paying these folks,
Speaker 1: but if you do their bidding, then people like Stephen
Speaker 1: Miller will reply to you, share your content, help algorithmically
Speaker 1: boost you so you have more followers and more engagement
Speaker 1: and can make more money off future posts. So there's
Speaker 1: a whole smart grift to it. This episode is sponsored
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Speaker 1: What are the thing I want to ask about? There's
Speaker 1: sort of like there's this conservative gonzo media world out there.
Speaker 1: There's James O'Keeffe was a project Veritas was his old thing.
Speaker 1: He's sort of still doing that kind of thing, like
Speaker 1: the sting operation type reporting gigs. There's a story in
Speaker 1: Politico this week about a Florida woman who is a
Speaker 1: former QAnon organizer who went undercover to seduce several liberal
Speaker 1: men who worked in politics, record them, and then release
Speaker 1: these embarrassing clips to right wing figures like Steven Crowder
Speaker 1: or James O'Keefe. Is this a boom in business? Is
Speaker 1: this something that like anyone in Washington needs to worry about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I would say it is. It's so
Speaker 2: o'keith clearly is just so as you said, Project Veritas
Speaker 2: kind of imploded. O'keith got pushed out. He was spending
Speaker 2: all this money on like like putting on musicals that
Speaker 2: he was in. I mean, it was truly like crazy stuff.
Speaker 2: And so that collapsed. And now he's basically posted up
Speaker 2: in DC and he's doing much cheaper things. Like we
Speaker 2: might remember he used to like plant people in Democratic
Speaker 2: campaigns for a long time, and now he just has
Speaker 2: you know, beautiful women scrolling on Tinder and they'll get
Speaker 2: a hit. And if it's anyone who seems at all
Speaker 2: like government or media. He recently got a guy who
Speaker 2: like worked at the Washington Nationals baseball team, like as
Speaker 2: a community relations guy, and they're like, this guy is woke.
Speaker 2: I mean, so often it's kind of a scattershot approach.
Speaker 2: It doesn't really you know, always bring in the big targets.
Speaker 2: But at the same time they have they've gotten people
Speaker 2: at the Department of Justice all this stuff, and so
Speaker 2: you know, look, I would say, if you're like a
Speaker 2: middle aged ball DC bureaucrat and like and this is
Speaker 2: a real one, Like a twenty year old au pair
Speaker 2: in Georgetown just finds you so fascinating. I want to
Speaker 2: hear about your job. You know, you've got to be
Speaker 2: on the lookout.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, If someone is really really interested in all
Speaker 1: the work you do at at GSA and then wants
Speaker 1: you to talk shit about Donald Trump, be on the
Speaker 1: lookout for that. It's interesting the way some candidates have
Speaker 1: or staffers have kind of dove into this super right wing,
Speaker 1: the most extreme media world and parlayed it to some success.
Speaker 1: Like you have written about this right wing nut in
Speaker 1: Florida named James Fishback who's running an insurgent campaign for governor.
Speaker 1: Can you just tell us about Fishback what he believes
Speaker 1: and like the degree to which the kind of neo
Speaker 1: Nazi adjacent kind of Nick Fuente's fringe content creation world
Speaker 1: has helped him rise.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, James Fishback is a guy who's running for
Speaker 2: governor in the Republican primary in Florida. He's challenging Byron Donalds,
Speaker 2: who's the sort of Trump endorsed congressman. And James Fishback
Speaker 2: is a guy with a resume that is like he
Speaker 2: may make someone like Bill Poulte look like extremely qualified.
Speaker 2: I mean, this guy really should not be anywhere near
Speaker 2: elected office. He had this whole thing with it. He
Speaker 2: got fired from a hedge fund. He had all these
Speaker 2: kind of sleazy machinations that were exposed in court records
Speaker 2: where he would like he had an intern who he
Speaker 2: was he wrote for the Free Press speaking of and
Speaker 2: he was like, send them an email under a fake
Speaker 2: name and say you want more James Fishback. And so
Speaker 2: as a result of these machinations, he's now like two
Speaker 2: million dollars in debt. So he's basically running from his creditors.
Speaker 2: His campaign staff was saying his couch might get repossessed.
Speaker 2: So at the same time, though he has endorsed basically
Speaker 2: Nick Fuente's politics, he's sort of the first test of
Speaker 2: this like angry, like super racist. Byron Donalds is black
Speaker 2: and James Fishback will call him a slave. I mean,
Speaker 2: he'll all this race. It will send him back to
Speaker 2: the ghetto, all this sort of stuff. And yet he's
Speaker 2: rising at the polls. I don't think he's gonna win.
Speaker 2: But if you look at you know, Byron Donald's events
Speaker 2: kind of lackluster, not that many people he's Fishback. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: he was hosting these events standing room only, huge overflow crowd.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm like really worried about the seeming lack of
Speaker 1: cost for this right wing extremism. Like, one other individual
Speaker 1: that has made a splash this week is Greg Bavino.
Speaker 1: Folks probably remember him. He was the kind of like
Speaker 1: fascist munchkin who is running customs and border patrol, who
Speaker 1: used to wear that long Nazi coat and he ran,
Speaker 1: you know, the occupations of Minneapolis before Donald Trump finally
Speaker 1: decided like, Okay, this guy's too extremely even for me.
Speaker 1: He popped up at a remigration conference in Portugal recently
Speaker 1: with a bunch of totally extremist, far right kind of
Speaker 1: neo Nazi types. Remigration, for those who don't know the term,
Speaker 1: definitely cleansing. It's the idea of like pushing out, you know,
Speaker 1: migrants from whatever European country. And you know, Bavino did
Speaker 1: an interview in advance of this conference with some far
Speaker 1: right outlet out of nowhere. He brought up Irwin Rommel,
Speaker 1: the Nazi general also known as the Desert Fox, as
Speaker 1: sort of like an example of how their career tracks
Speaker 1: were similar. Like it was bizarre fucking shit, but like
Speaker 1: I don't know, is Bavino gonna parlay you know, his
Speaker 1: work at CBP into these like ault right spaces into
Speaker 1: something else, like it's very worrisome stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I think he's certainly going to try to.
Speaker 2: I was just talking to someone who's trying to run
Speaker 2: a sort of draft Bovino for twenty twenty eight campaigns.
Speaker 2: But as you said, I mean, you know, it's an
Speaker 2: interesting kind of character because he's wearing the Gestapo code,
Speaker 2: he's doing all this this border patrol stuff. You know,
Speaker 2: you don't want to jump to conclusions, but it turns out, yes,
Speaker 2: he is a you know, essentially an admirer of Nazis,
Speaker 2: and it is kind of hanging out with these fascists.
Speaker 2: As you said, remigration is a term I think, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: we're going to hear more and more about this isn't
Speaker 2: just deporting people who are here illegally. This is saying,
Speaker 2: you know, well, you're brown, even if you're a citizen.
Speaker 2: Even if you're a citizen, you got to go back
Speaker 2: to your parents, a grandparents country of origin. And so
Speaker 2: he's hanging out with people like Austrian far right figures.
Speaker 2: This guy, it was organized by a guy who as
Speaker 2: an organization called Reconquista, which obviously was kicking the Jews
Speaker 2: and Muslims out of Spain and has said, you know
Speaker 2: Whymar problems called for Wymar solutions, So like some kind
Speaker 2: of Nazi like movement. And now this is you know
Speaker 2: who Greg Bovino's hanging out with and really kind of
Speaker 2: being embraced by these gen Z Republicans and sort of
Speaker 2: tying that back in with James Fishback. You know, Fishback
Speaker 2: has also faced these these allegations of like having a
Speaker 2: sexual relationship with a high school student. You know, he
Speaker 2: hasn't been charged with anything, but if you imagine a
Speaker 2: candidate that damaged and how much success he's having, how
Speaker 2: successful could someone who doesn't have all that baggage do?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, look, this remigration concept, I mean it's
Speaker 1: too extreme even for like Marine La penn In the
Speaker 1: National Rally Party in France. I mean this is really
Speaker 1: dark stuff. This is like the AfD, the neo Nazis
Speaker 1: from Germany. We're at this conference in Greg Bavino was
Speaker 1: there and I think this the day of he tweeted
Speaker 1: himself like very much doing I'm not gonna do it.
Speaker 1: A Hitler's salute. So, yeah, you're pointing like the mask
Speaker 1: is off with this guy, and he certainly doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to see a political costs in any way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's not like the Trump administration is, you know,
Speaker 2: grappling with the fact that this guy has like a
Speaker 2: big role in the border patrol.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they could care less. Finally, so, look, of all
Speaker 1: the people we've discussed, is there one that I don't
Speaker 1: know worries you most me worries the wrong word, But
Speaker 1: that has the most crossover appeal to democrats and independence
Speaker 1: and the most influenced to sort of drag people into
Speaker 1: this conservative space or that Naga space.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think there are a lot that
Speaker 2: are concerning. I mean, my mom just instantly jumps to
Speaker 2: Candice Owen, So I think has done a lot to
Speaker 2: you know, mainstream anti semitism to you know, I was
Speaker 2: getting my haircut and the woman cuting my hairs was
Speaker 2: otherwise very liberal and said, but you know, but I
Speaker 2: think Canis owns is on to a lot. You know,
Speaker 2: she's she's just doing investigations. I mean, we saw Hunter
Speaker 2: Biden when he was on her show. He said, you know,
Speaker 2: I love the questions you're askingssing crazy, and so I
Speaker 2: think someone like that, and she's frankly, she's a very
Speaker 2: compelling broadcaster, and so I think that kind of combination
Speaker 2: I think is pretty concerning.
Speaker 1: I put Fuente's up there too. I mean, like, I
Speaker 1: think that there's a lot of young kids in like
Speaker 1: fraternities at SEC schools who are listening to Nick Fuentes,
Speaker 1: and like, to his credit, he's a compelling broadcaster. Like
Speaker 1: he sits in front of a microphone for an hour
Speaker 1: several hours a night and just speaks into the ether,
Speaker 1: and that is an incredibly hard thing to do, and
Speaker 1: he is skilled at it. And he also can be
Speaker 1: very very funny. I mean, like you see you'll see
Speaker 1: clips of like Joe Rogan and other very famous comedians
Speaker 1: talking about how funny Nick Fuentes is. And I worry
Speaker 1: that like that really can help, you know, obscure some
Speaker 1: genuinely like neo Nazi, scary, misogynistic racist views.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, I mean, I think, you know, and we
Speaker 2: can see not just with things like the way Flantes
Speaker 2: has promoted fish back, but also the these sort of
Speaker 2: recurring Republican young Republican racist text message leaks and things
Speaker 2: like this. I mean those views, this is not just
Speaker 2: one guy who has a sizeable social media following. I
Speaker 2: think those views are really syncing in with young Republicans,
Speaker 2: and those people are unfortunately the future of the party yep.
Speaker 1: In their future of the party, and this kind of
Speaker 1: megabedia world I think will determine the course that party takes,
Speaker 1: and so Will. I'm so grateful to you for talking
Speaker 1: me through all of this. I find this endlessly fascinating.
Speaker 1: I could literally go on all day, but I'm grateful
Speaker 1: for you and everyone again should subscribe to False Flag,
Speaker 1: your incredible newsletter, which, by the way, we promoted the
Speaker 1: top two.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, thanks for having me on, Thanks buddy, Thanks again
Speaker 1: to Will Summer for joining the show and John Fava.
Speaker 1: John loved and I will be back next week on
Speaker 1: the regular Tuesday episode. Podzve America is a Crooked Media production.
Speaker 2: Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts,
Speaker 2: and Faris Safari with re Jerlin, Elijah Cone and Adrian Hill.
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