#669: Chatting With Amanda Moore
Today, while Jordan is on vacation, Dan sits down for a chat with Amanda Moore about the year she spent undercover living among some of the characters who come up on Infowars a bit.
April 13, 2022 - Knowledge Fight
01:23:16
Participants
| 
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Knowledge Fight. | ||
| I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys, saying we are the bad guys. | ||
| Knowledge Fight. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Dan and George. | |
| Knowledge fight. | ||
| I need, I need money. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| Stop it. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| It's time to pray. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
| Thanks for holding us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, Alex. | |
| I'm a first time caller. | ||
| I'm a huge fan. | ||
| I love your room. | ||
| Knowledge fight. | ||
| Knowledgefight.com. | ||
| *sad music* | ||
| Hey everybody, welcome back to Knowledge Fight. | ||
| I'm Dan. | ||
| Jordan not here today. | ||
| Jordan on vacation. | ||
| Dan here. | ||
| Celine somewhere over there mewing. | ||
| Hello, I am one guy who likes to sit around and worship the altar scene and talk a little bit about Alex Jones. | ||
| And if Jordan were here, I would imagine that right about now I'd be getting just incredibly surprised by him asking me if I had a bright spot. | ||
| And if he were here, I would tell him that my bright spot today is actually, it's something that maybe a little delayed being a bright spot, but there's a new season of Survivor upon us. | ||
| It started a couple weeks back. | ||
| Me and my friend Angela Lampsbury have been watching the season. | ||
| There's a lot of problems with Survivor still. | ||
| I think they have added too many bells and whistles. | ||
| I think I've made this point in the past. | ||
| Too many convoluted rules about idols that only have power at a certain point. | ||
| It's a mess. | ||
| If you don't know what I'm talking about, if you don't understand these Byzantine rules that Survivor has added, good for you. | ||
| I'm rambling a little bit. | ||
| That's what happens when I'm sitting here alone, I suppose. | ||
| So, I wanted to put out a little special Sneaky Snake episode today, and in Jordan's absence, we thought to take the opportunity to have a chat with somebody who folks have requested that we have a chat with, and someone who I think is a very interesting person, and so I sat down and had a little chat with Amanda Moore, and we will be getting into that in just a moment. | ||
| But before we do, I would like to take a little moment to say hello to some new wonks. | ||
| So first, Wonky Kong, thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Next, Barley Wine vs. | ||
| the Westboro Baptist Church. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Next, on Infowars, with this pile of documents all day long in the Shays' Lounge, on the Shays' Lounge, thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Next, Zachary motherfucking Sorrow. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| And Kit Daniel's crying because he can't have any gummy worms. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| And guess what, Jordan, who's not here? | ||
| We have a technocrat in the mix. | ||
| So thank you so much to the technocrat who is a techno cat in a techno hat. | ||
| You are now a technocrat. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| I have risen above my enemies. | ||
| I might quit tomorrow, actually. | ||
| I'm just going to take a little breaky now. | ||
| A little breaky for me. | ||
| And then we're going to come back, and I'm going to start the show over. | ||
| But I'm the devil! | ||
| I've got to be taken off the air! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Fuck you! | |
| Fuck you! | ||
| I've got plenty of words for you, but at the end of the day, fuck you and your New World Order, and fuck the horse you rode in on, and all your shit! | ||
| Maybe today should be my last broadcast. | ||
| Maybe I'll just be gone a month, maybe five years. | ||
| Maybe I'll walk out of here tomorrow, and you never see me again. | ||
| That's really what I want to do. | ||
| I never want to come back here again. | ||
| I apologize to the crew and the listeners yesterday that I was legitimately having breakdowns on air. | ||
| I'll be better tomorrow. | ||
| On that note, let us jump to this interview that me and Amanda did, and we will catch you on Friday for another episode. | ||
| We will see you then. | ||
| Hello, folks. | ||
| How do you do? | ||
| Joining me today in Jordan's absence... | ||
| I thought there was somebody who I wanted to have a conversation with, somebody who I found very interesting and thought might be relevant to a lot of the topics that we cover on the show. | ||
| So I'm thrilled to be joined today by Amanda Moore. | ||
| How are you? | ||
| Good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm so happy to be here on my favorite podcast. | |
| I'm thrilled that you enjoy the show. | ||
| I feel like for most people, it's probably not a healthy thing, but given your particular path and trajectory, maybe it's appropriate for you to enjoy the show. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I messaged you previously when I was undercover, so, you know. | ||
| For those who do not know who you are and your experience, do you want to give a little bit of a brief version of it? | ||
| I don't want to tell it lest I screw up some sort of details. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| So I kind of accidentally, on purpose, went undercover in the far right during COVID. | ||
| So I went to soft and steel rallies. | ||
| January 6th, CPAC, Matt Gaetz, fundraisers, which is so embarrassing. | ||
| You know, you name it, I did it. | ||
| So now, here we are. | ||
| So what were the actual dates that you were beginning and end of your time doing this undercover activity? | ||
| My first event I went to was the November 2020 Stop the Steel Rally in Washington, D.C. right after Trump lost the election. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ooh, that's exciting. | |
| That was so exciting. | ||
| That was the end of Owen Schreuer's caravan up the East Coast. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Yes, it was. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| To be there for the end of the Infowars caravan. | ||
| What a treat. | ||
| I have to start describing it. | ||
| My time started when Owen Schreuer's caravan ended in my city, so here we go. | ||
| And then I got stops on 14 in September of 2021. | ||
| Okay, so yeah, that's a pretty good stretch. | ||
| That covers a lot of the really more turbulent times around that stretch. | ||
| Yeah, it does. | ||
| You said accidentally and on purpose. | ||
| Yeah, you went undercover. | ||
| What do you think was more? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you think it was more of an accident or more on purpose? | |
| You know, I think, so my plan was just to go, like, I went to the South and Steel rallies and I was just, like, there. | ||
| Like, I was taking pictures and, like, tweeting about it. | ||
| And for the second South and Steel rally in December of 2020, my cast asked me to record some audio since I live here and they knew I was going to go anyway. | ||
| And so then, I was like, well, I'll go to the third one, and I'll just see. | ||
| Maybe I can sell the auto to another podcast. | ||
| Maybe I can write whatever. | ||
| And then we started the Capitol. | ||
| So I was like, oh, no. | ||
| So it kind of just kept escalating. | ||
| So I only ever meant to kind of go to things and be in and out and not have a personality. | ||
| But when I was at CPAC, which is a mainstream Republican event, A Nazi recruited me to help his grassroots organization get more congressmen. | ||
| So I became a fully developed undercover person. | ||
| So yeah, it seems like it was, you know, being around and then people coming up to you and sort of being like, hey, you want to dip in a little further? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I guess that's probably a path a lot of people go down. | ||
| More willing and less having a mind for an undercover operation. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| People would ask me, oh, well, have you been involved in politics before? | ||
| And I would say no. | ||
| And I would just be like, well, you know, I'm from Maryland and everybody I grew up with is very liberal. | ||
| And so, you know, they know I'm conservative. | ||
| They assume I didn't vote for Trump and I've never corrected them. | ||
| But now COVID. | ||
| Like, you stay in, or you leave your house, and so everybody knows. | ||
| And so I've, like, lost my friends and my support group and tried to find a new set of people, and everybody would be like, oh, yeah, totally normal. | ||
| Happens all the time. | ||
| So, yes. | ||
| Oh, it's interesting. | ||
| Did you feel like you were intentionally creating that as a way to make yourself look more vulnerable? | ||
| Like, those sort of descriptions of yourself, like, that would be the sort of person that they would want to recruit in? | ||
| It's interesting because I never even thought about it. | ||
| I was just like, oh shit, I need a reason why when you Google my name, I don't come up as a member of the Young Republicans Club. | ||
| But, yeah, that's actually a really good point. | ||
| It seems like that is a lot of the sort of people you hear who fall down these rabbit holes, or people who don't have those support structures, people who maybe have gotten some... | ||
| Weird politics and the people around them are tolerant of it or just have had enough of it. | ||
| And then they find the people who will accept them, you know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, and it was definitely common. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, it's a crass way to say it, but it is true. | |
| During COVID, especially here, I mean, I know the rest of the country was different because I traveled all around the country during COVID, but here, like... | ||
| You know, people like D.C. had one of the highest mask compliance rates in the country. | ||
| So people wearing masks outside, like, well into the summer of 2020. | ||
| I mean, it was all very much like if somebody didn't do the rules or didn't do what was socially acceptable, I mean, you definitely were like, you know. | ||
| Unless you were in Congress, and then you get away with it. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| So you went undercover, and did you... | ||
| I guess something that I'm kind of interested in is early on, when you started to notice that you're getting enmeshed in some of these circles, what sort of goal did you have with the undercover? | ||
| Was there a, like, I'm going to find criminal activity or information? | ||
| Where was your mind at? | ||
| Oh, I was freaking out. | ||
| I mean, at first, like I said, once the guy talked to me at CPAC and was like, "Hey, we have this group," I was still like, "Whatever." And then I Googled him, and I realized his group is actually working in Congress. | ||
| They are actually helping write stuff with Congress. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And when I messaged him, I was like, "Yeah, I'm very interested in helping you." He's like, "Well, I have this contact at the Hungarian embassy, so you guys can be done." And so I was like, oh my god, am I actually doing this edition? | |
| So I mean, it became like, yeah, I was like, this is, you know, at some point, people are like, oh, you should write about it. | ||
| I was like, I'll probably write some long-form article or something. | ||
| And then it started to be like, okay, well, obviously, I think there might be criminal charges here. | ||
| This is definitely something that voters should know about, every congressperson that's running. | ||
| Obviously, this is much more than a long-form piece now that I have to write. | ||
| And so it's just kind of like all over the place, but I didn't really, I still didn't really have a plan other than get as much information as possible and then sort it out later. | ||
| Did a plan of like what you were doing develop over time? | ||
| Was there like a point where you realized like, all right, this is why I'm here or why I'm doing this? | ||
| Well, I mean, the plan, my plan was to like really get as much information about this particular group as possible. | ||
| I mean, so many people knew what I was doing. | ||
| A ton of journalists knew what I was doing. | ||
| A lot of people knew, some on the record and some off the record, the information that I was getting. | ||
| And it was hard to say because you can see, obviously, if A and B is happening, then we know C is happening too, but we have to be able to improve it. | ||
| So a lot of it was just like, can you pull out more information from these people? | ||
| And then I was also like... | ||
| Going to, like, QAnon stuff, which wasn't really related to fascism. | ||
| That was just for fun. | ||
| That was just for fun. | ||
| And a lot of that was, like, they don't have media, they don't allow media, and they don't, they don't, if they live stream, something gets taken down, so that's, like, lost, the lost QAnon chronicles of 2021 that I was recording, so that was a little different. | ||
| So you have, like, an archive of, like... | ||
| The, what would it be? | ||
| The apocrypha of Q&A. | ||
| That's going to be valuable one day. | ||
| That's going to be in a college archive. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So yeah, a whole year of experiences that you've had. | ||
| That's obviously going to be more than a single piece. | ||
| As you're describing it, you know, you're going to these sort of more mainstream conservative areas, you know, whether it be the CPAC or I guess you could call Stop the Steal stuff like fairly mainstream now. | ||
| And then the QAnon stuff. | ||
| And so there's sort of multiple threads and they kind of... | ||
| How much overlap did you experience between that kind of those worlds? | ||
| So here's like the caveat. | ||
| I'm 33 years old and everybody I was hanging out with in the fascist world was like probably my age, a little older, a little younger, like roughly in my age group. | ||
| Cuban and stuff was way more like boomers. | ||
| And so there wouldn't be like that kind of overlap. | ||
| The overlap that I would see would be like Turning Point USA. | ||
| Which is meant for mainstream young Republicans. | ||
| Like, the fascists that I was hanging out with would go there and recruit people. | ||
| Like, obviously, they got me at CPAC. | ||
| They would be happy to use the QAnon people, for sure, which they talked about extensively. | ||
| I think a lot of it's like the age difference, where if the stuff I was going to was free. | ||
| So if I was going to, like, maybe free QAnon stuff, or like if I was more on the West Coast, where there's like all those rallies in LA. | ||
| Where they do skew much younger. | ||
| I probably would have seen more crossover, but just the way it worked out. | ||
| Well, on January 6th, I actually, I messaged a friend of the show, Mike Rothschild, and I was like, this is the first time I've seen a guy in a 3% shirt talk to a guy in a QAnon shirt. | ||
| They're like grilling hot dogs before we stormed the Capitol, you know? | ||
| And so that was a lot. | ||
| And then like 3%ers were handing out water bottles at a QAnon event I went to. | ||
| They were like, Providing, like, security and, like, services for us. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| So do you have a feeling or a sense, then, that, like, what you experienced was, like, after that, there was more melding? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I had never seen it until January 6th. | ||
| And, like, this is not my first, like, I've never been undercover, but because of the way I look, it's pretty easy for me just to walk into the wrong side of the protest. | ||
| So, like, Laura Loomer had a big rally in D.C. A few years ago, and I literally walked out of my office on the wrong side of the building and ended up at it, and I was like, oh, guess I'm recording this now. | ||
| And, like, you know, there wasn't that, like... | ||
| I mean, there's just... | ||
| I've never seen anything like that mesh into people, because people make fun of the QAnon people, you know? | ||
| Even the people in those, like, those right-wing circles are making fun of that, yeah. | ||
| That kind of bums me out, but pretty expected, I would think. | ||
| You experienced, I guess, what you're describing as kind of being an intentional people who are maybe more extreme going to places like Turning Point, like CPAC, in order to maybe find people who would be receptive to their more extreme message. | ||
| This is an intentional strategy that you see people using, I take it. | ||
| I didn't just see people using it. | ||
| I actively discussed doing this. | ||
| Like, I have audio with literal Nazis talking about how, yeah, we're going to just start going to, you know, young Republican stuff, and we're going to say, yeah, I'm a nationalist. | ||
| Yeah, like, I'm, you know, obviously, like, I'm a white nationalist. | ||
| And just, you know, make it normal. | ||
| So, yeah, it's happening. | ||
| Yeah, that's kind of not that surprising. | ||
| I guess that, like, You'd expect that they would be aware of that. | ||
| I wonder how much people like the Turning Point folk are aware of that. | ||
| They are being used that way. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you have a sense of that? | |
| The guys I was hanging out with were a sponsor of Turning Point. | ||
| Oh, so maybe fairly aware. | ||
| There's a weird structure, too. | ||
| I was hanging out with people who... | ||
| I said I was 27 because obviously I need to be... | ||
| Also, my fiancé died. | ||
| That's what I would tell people because I had to explain why I'm not there and I'm just sad. | ||
| I want at least eight white babies. | ||
| I think the guys are mostly in their early 30s. | ||
| There is that. | ||
| Below that, in age range, you have... | ||
| APU, the American Popular Student, which is a spinoff group of GRIPERS who are like, "Nick Quintus is too toxic." And then you have the obviously of Nick. | ||
| So the Turning Point USA banned Nick, banned a handful of GRIPERS. | ||
| And then APU isn't welcome, but plenty of those guys go to Turning Point USA events. | ||
| And then above that, you have the group I was with, who's just straight up given a booth to be an exhibitor. | ||
| So it's like, the more distinguished you are. | ||
| That seems like a bad vibe. | ||
| That seems like a recipe for quite an indoctrination cycle. | ||
| That stinks. | ||
| I guess one question that I'm sure you get all the time, but I'm very interested in, is was there ever a point where you were legitimately afraid? | ||
| For your life. | ||
| Because I have to assume that being in the, like, you're around people who do nothing but spread violent rhetoric. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Like, it's gotta be, I would assume, frequently pretty scary. | ||
| I mean, I think that, like, the correct answer is yes, but the real answer is no. | ||
| I mean... | ||
| I flew across the country to go on a picnic date with a Nazi overlooking a riot. | ||
| I got his car, and I just didn't even think about it. | ||
| I'm like, whatever, this is fine. | ||
| I was in hotel room parties with these people, and I never felt like I was in danger. | ||
| Obviously, the caveat to that is, had they realized what was going on? | ||
| I think it would have been a different story, but they didn't. | ||
| The violence never directed at me. | ||
| So that worry wasn't in your mind of, like, maybe they know already. | ||
|
unidentified
|
These people, listen. | |
| There's a massive eye roll there. | ||
| Okay, so first of all, these dumb shits. | ||
| I would text these guys. | ||
| So all of the guys who were in, all the fascist, actual Nazi or Nazi people, I would text them. | ||
| And they clearly had no idea. | ||
| I mean, because they would just keep hitting on me and whatever. | ||
| And when I was actually doxxed, someone on 4chan doxxed me and put my doxx in all these telegram groups. | ||
| And all the Qubanon people saw them. | ||
| But the Bashes didn't see it for a week and a half. | ||
| I was still going to fly down to an event in Florida that we were all supposed to go to. | ||
| And I was like, all right, I'm just going to text them. | ||
| And I'm going to see if anybody says anything. | ||
| And everybody responded immediately. | ||
| They literally could not control themselves. | ||
| There's no way they would have been able to... | ||
| Not calling out. | ||
| So they don't have good information awareness. | ||
| The QAnon folks are more plugged in. | ||
| Well, the QAnon folks spend all of their time in the Telegram channels like, what new conspiracy can we come up with today? | ||
| Oh my gosh. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| I guess maybe I'm just kind of like up in my head. | ||
| So I just imagine myself like constantly being like, I've been figured out. | ||
| Oh no. | ||
| I mean, I think it probably takes a certain amount of putting that aside to be able to be in an undercover situation, you know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| In the beginning, I was more... | ||
| I wasn't scared, because sometimes in the beginning, it wasn't anywhere where, like... | ||
| I mean, people in the convention center at CPAC are going to, like, turn on me, you know? | ||
| And, like, there's security. | ||
| Like, I'm fine. | ||
| Even if everybody figured it out. | ||
| So I think it was good. | ||
| I kind of eased in like that because it got it out of the way. | ||
| I wasn't nervous. | ||
| You're saying you were in hotel parties and stuff. | ||
| So you were probably drinking with these folks and such. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would be so scared of that. | |
| I don't know. | ||
| Maybe it's just because I talk a little bit of shit when I have some drinks. | ||
| So I would be so afraid of just saying the wrong thing. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I'm fascinated by this aspect of what you did. | ||
| Being comfortable. | ||
| I got blackout drunk one time. | ||
| And it was at Tony Point USA. | ||
| And it was maybe the second night. | ||
| And there was some shitty dinner. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| And I met this guy who I'd seen him the night before the hotel thing. | ||
| We started talking and he asked me what my vision for America was. | ||
| And I was like, oh, I don't know. | ||
| I never wanted to radicalize people. | ||
| And so I always like match whatever energy you gave me. | ||
| If you were like a regular moderate Republican, I'm not going to be like, have you heard about the Jews? | ||
| So he was like, what do you want? | ||
| He's like, well, like a friendlier Nazi Germany. | ||
| And I was like, okay, you know, I can say whatever you guys can't. | ||
| And so we hung out in for just hours. | ||
| This is a guy I flew across the country to go on a picnic date with. | ||
| And we went to a James O 'Keefe-sponsored open bar party afterwards. | ||
| And I just was like, I can't do this anymore. | ||
| And I just got shit-faced. | ||
| Other than that, I would get gin and tonics and dump it out in the sink in the bathroom and fill it up with water. | ||
| Smart. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Smart. | |
| I mean, I could relate with all angles of that. | ||
| I certainly would end up slamming drinks at an open bar James O 'Keefe party. | ||
| I can't imagine existing there. | ||
| Was that where you got your llama? | ||
| It's where I got them. | ||
| You've liberated this llama? | ||
| I liberated my liberated retracto. | ||
| He was sitting on the table when I walked in, and my arm was broken, so I had a sling, so I was like, and I put him in the sling. | ||
| I tried to steal him all night. | ||
| Wow, it's quite an attractive llama. | ||
| I can understand people wanting to swipe it. | ||
| Well, I also got COVID, so a llama might be like a pox. | ||
| You got a llama and COVID? | ||
| Yeah, it's like a pox blanket. | ||
| Well, congratulations. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So one of the things that I wanted to bring up is kind of like related to the stuff that we kind of go over on this show is I feel like my sense of things is that there's like Alex and his sort of propaganda world and then the sort of waters that you were swimming in were they're related in as much as there's Hard right extremism and a lot of the same ideas and | ||
| a lot of the same desires for the world. | ||
| But it seems like that's a completely separate group. | ||
| There are names that ring out in the communities that you were talking about that have nothing to do with Alex and Infowars. | ||
| And they probably, I'm guessing, think that Alex is a joke. | ||
| Would that be accurate? | ||
| If you mean the, like, younger fascists, no. | ||
| I mean, so people, like... | ||
| Okay, so I was at this American Politics Union event. | ||
| And, you know, they're all... | ||
| I mean, one of the organizers was, like, 16 years old. | ||
| Like, they're not. | ||
| And... | ||
|
unidentified
|
16? | |
| 16 years old! | ||
| And they're all, like, talking. | ||
| And somebody was like, you know, we make fun of the big red man. | ||
| I guess he says the frogs are turning gay, and he's like, what's happening? | ||
| The frogs are turning gay. | ||
| And we have a moment where we also applaud for Alex Jones. | ||
| And like, there is this like, and I don't think it's fake. | ||
| It's like, you know, oh, like, he's like, you know, basically, like, I think there's a lot of recognition that like, he paved the way for people to kind of be who they are. | ||
| And so even if you think some of his ideas are like, silly or stupid, or he's like an out of such movement, it's like, well, he's also done. | ||
| So he like, gets some respect. | ||
| I can't really think of a comparison to the left that we have, but I know that we have these people. | ||
| So, like... | ||
| Yeah, I've seen a lot of that on, like, maybe message boards. | ||
| People trying to rationalize, like, yeah, he sucks, but, you know, he was an OG or whatever, you know, like, about Alex. | ||
| Like, he woke me up, but then also, like, I think he's bad or he sucks. | ||
| Yeah, and I was also thinking of a lot of people who, I mean, everyone that I knew who was a fascist, everybody's like, yeah, we did January 6th. | ||
| It was us. | ||
| It was cool as hell. | ||
| I would do it again tomorrow. | ||
| It didn't go far enough. | ||
| And I actually think that Alex Jones' involvement in creating the atmosphere in which January 6th happened really, like, led to some goodwill because people are pretty forgiving when they're like, oh, you know, he's calling it a conspiracy. | ||
| He's calling it this or that. | ||
| It's like, well, cast him, you know? | ||
| And so, I think that kind of helped him in a way that I didn't really expect. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| That is a bizarre side effect. | ||
| I do think that even Nick Fuentes talks about how awesome The Sixth was. | ||
| Even someone as close to the world of Alex as him. | ||
| Doesn't need to cover himself. | ||
| It's weird that Alex wouldn't just be like, it was good. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| But, you know, I think it's an implicit recognition. | ||
| And then, I mean, Quintez says that stuff. | ||
| He says it like after he was banned on Twitter. | ||
| He was in a Twitter space six months later and said the six was fucking awesome. | ||
| Yeah, he didn't say that out of the gate. | ||
| And he has worked at least a little bit to cover it up. | ||
| And I think, too, The melding of Quintez's fans, because you know, Quintez runs InfoWars on his stupid website. | ||
| And I think that's also created this atmosphere, because they understand. | ||
| All the Gripers get it. | ||
| When Marjorie Taylor Greene is like, "I didn't know who Nick was." Everybody in the chats, when Nick's videos are live, are like, "Yeah, we know. | ||
| You didn't know." And they're like, "And if anybody says, oh..." Fuck her. | ||
| She's denying us. | ||
| Everybody dogpiles. | ||
| Are you stupid? | ||
| Do you not understand how this works? | ||
| Nick's America First pack the whole event. | ||
| Stu Peters came on and was shitty to Marjorie Taylor Greene and they turned on him. | ||
| Nick turned on him even though he was an invited speaker. | ||
| There's something very important about that one. | ||
| That crazy congressperson. | ||
| Yeah, she's terrible. | ||
| You ran into her, I assume? | ||
| You met the MTG? | ||
| I met MTG when I was at CPAC, where I met this fascist group. | ||
| They're called Republicans for National Renewal. | ||
| I was actually at one of their events where they were hosting her and Paul Gosar and Laura Loomer as speakers. | ||
| Seems like you're running into the loom a lot. | ||
| She's really, like, loud. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Like, likes to go places. | |
| So, it's kind of hard not to, especially if you're in Florida. | ||
| Like, you know. | ||
| But yeah, so I met Margella Green. | ||
| I watched her give the same speech a thousand times at this point. | ||
| You know, she's terrible. | ||
| I imagine if I were to ask you about just about anybody, it would be about the same response. | ||
| Like, terrible. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm trying to think if there was anybody that was, like, cool. | ||
| Yeah, that is something I was curious about. | ||
| Like, if there was somebody who sticks out as, like, but then you know what? | ||
| I don't know if I want to necessarily dwell on positives about these folks. | ||
| Like, even tolerable. | ||
| Like, so, I would say that You know what? | ||
| I'll give it to Mike Lindell. | ||
| There we go. | ||
| Mike Lindell, super rich. | ||
| I think he's a true believer because I think he's all in. | ||
| I think a lot of people are in line. | ||
| I don't think he is. | ||
| Really accessible guy, you know? | ||
| You could be walking past them and you could be like, "Hey, Mike, great pillows." And he'll stop and talk for like 30 minutes. | ||
| And his security's like, "Dude, we gotta go." And he's like, "No." So that's nice. | ||
| If you're into that, it's probably good. | ||
| So there's like a sincerity behind that. | ||
| Even if it is, you know, I want to talk to you about how China stole the election and I have forensic, you know, at least it's sincere that he thinks that that's what's going on. | ||
| There's something to be said to that. | ||
| Flynn is also accessible, but only when there's alcohol. | ||
| Flynn opens up, is a little bit of a... | ||
| A little bit of a... | ||
| What's it called? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Blooming... | |
| I don't know. | ||
| Blooming onion? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| He loves attention. | ||
| And so if you were at an event... | ||
| I remember I was at an event and there was this long line and there were people in military shit patting people down. | ||
| I was up to one of the guys in uniform and I was like, what is this? | ||
| He was like, back up! | ||
| And I'm like, bro. | ||
| My arm's fucking broken. | ||
| I'm obviously not a threat. | ||
| What do you... | ||
| I was like, people are taking a picture of a general plan. | ||
| I was like, why do I have to go through all this? | ||
| I was like, we paid $500 to get into this event. | ||
| Why are we able to do security? | ||
| And he was like, that's how it always is. | ||
| And I was like, the background on my phone was a picture of me and Flynn. | ||
| And I was like, I got this in the bar. | ||
| He's like, no, you did it. | ||
| I'm like, yeah, I did. | ||
| Because in all these events, if Flynn's a speaker, you just go, where does he usually stay? | ||
| I think Hyatt's. | ||
| Just go to the closest Hyatt bar. | ||
| And there you go. | ||
| He'll be sitting there and he'll talk to you for hours. | ||
| So, he's super accessible. | ||
| I'm trying to think. | ||
| That seems irresponsible for him just to be in public, you know? | ||
| It's weird. | ||
| Roger Stone is like, I don't know, if you pay to get into an event that Roger Stone is at and he's willing to be there and not just as a cash grab. | ||
| I mean, it's all cash grabs, but if it's a good event. | ||
| For Roger Stone, he will hang out and talk to people. | ||
| But he's pretty standoffish, too. | ||
| Loomer's a bitch. | ||
| I'm just going to put that out there. | ||
|
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|
Whoa! | |
| Not nice. | ||
| Shots fired. | ||
| Yeah, that's right. | ||
| She's very rude. | ||
| I don't think you would get that from her sort of public appearances. | ||
| Yeah, she's so friendly. | ||
| Yeah, I feel like she comes off as not mean at all. | ||
| Super, super nice. | ||
| If you can do something for her, she's very friendly. | ||
| If you're in a position of power whatsoever. | ||
| All of these people, I'm trying to think of who has crossover on to knowledge fight, because not all of these dipshits go on. | ||
| That's one of the things that I think is really, you know... | ||
| Weird here is the overlap in terms of a lot of ideology, but not actual overlap. | ||
| I mean, you got Flynn, you got Mike Lindell, you got Laura Loomer, you got Nick Fuentes. | ||
| So, I mean, there are at least a number of people. | ||
| And then you said you went to the November rally to stop the steal, and then I guess January 6th, and Stuart Rhodes was at both of those. | ||
| And then, I mean, I saw Jones. | ||
| That's what I messaged you about when I was in the comments. | ||
| I saw Jones in the December rally, and I actually... | ||
| We're going to talk about the December South still rally. | ||
| I spent, like, weeks thinking that I'd had some fever dream and just made up half of this rally because they had three different stages. | ||
| I guess they had one at Freedom Plaza, so that's closer to the White House. | ||
|
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|
And then they had one halfway down the mall, so it's further east. | |
| And then behind... | ||
| The Capitol is where the Supreme Court is, and they had a Supreme Court stage. | ||
| And no media covered that stage. | ||
| So I went back there, and I saw Lauren Boebert speaking, and she was already elected at this point. | ||
| And I saw Alex Jones try to take over the stage. | ||
| And I literally, I found one Japanese newspaper that had a single picture of Lauren Boebert on that stage. | ||
| Nobody else had anything. | ||
| I couldn't find nothing. | ||
| When you covered I guess, whoever was there reporting Alex, you're the only person that I could find that talked about it. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| When you tried to storm the stage. | ||
| You got a scoop! | ||
| You got a scoop! | ||
| It was wild. | ||
| And it was strange, too, because there was a stage that was run by Jennifer Lawrence. | ||
| Not the actress. | ||
| Not the actress, unfortunately. | ||
| Good for her that she's not a terrible person, but also it would have been more exciting to watch for me. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And like Millie Weaver was speaking on the stage. | ||
| Is this pre-Shadowgate Millie Weaver? | ||
| Or had you been fired yet? | ||
| Yeah, she had been fired. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so Boebert went on and then Millie Weaver went on right after Boebert. | ||
| And Alex tried to rush the stage. | ||
| And he like, he plowed into me. | ||
| Very cool. | ||
| I got to touch Alex. | ||
| As if touching him has healing properties. | ||
| Yes, I have touched Alex. | ||
| He was trying to get up there and he had a megaphone and his megaphone was broken. | ||
| So you couldn't really understand him. | ||
| And people were like, who is that? | ||
| And I'm like, it's Alex Jones. | ||
| But there were so many Proud Boys around him. | ||
| It's like, obviously, it's easy to not see him. | ||
| And they went and let him on stage. | ||
| And Dustin's up on stage. | ||
| He's like, we're not, you can't, you've got to leave, sir. | ||
| And everybody's like, let Alex speak. | ||
| This is America. | ||
| Alex Jones is America. | ||
|
unidentified
|
First Amendment. | |
| First Amendment. | ||
| And then when he walked away, the whole rally ended. | ||
| I mean, like, the whole crowd followed Alex away from the stage. | ||
| And Dustin was like, okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's the effect he has. | |
| He ruins other people's things by just bombarding with energy and then everyone's just burnt out or like, let's Pied Piper this shit. | ||
| Let's follow that guy. | ||
| Yeah, and then he was like, oh, party tonight. | ||
| And I was like, where are people going tonight? | ||
| And so I went, once it was dark, to kind of where Alex was saying, which is the JW Marriott. | ||
| It was like a party in the streets. | ||
| Some people got stabbed, as happens. | ||
| Yeah! | ||
| And after the stabbing, everybody lined up in front of the Marriott, and Alex Jones led us in a nice 1776 chant. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And then he yelled into his megaphone some more, but it was still broken, so I have no idea what he said. | ||
| And then the Proud Boys went off in groups of eight. | ||
| To stomp around the city like they were in the army. | ||
| I mean, there were stabbings. | ||
| There's a call for Proud Boys to be wandering around and deputizing themselves, of course. | ||
| Everybody who lives in D.C. is anti the federal agent. | ||
| Well, obviously. | ||
| Obviously. | ||
| I went to D.C. not too long ago, and I made a pilgrimage to Comet Ping Pong. | ||
| And nothing but Antifa federal agents, the entire place was packed with lousy with them. | ||
| Full of them. | ||
| Absolutely full of them. | ||
| So one question I thought of is, I think, and this is something that I talked with Bill Ogden, one of the lawyers in the Sandy Hook case, like sometimes being Exposed to a ton of material on a kind of a regular basis makes you question a little bit of your preconceived notions or, like, the ideas you go in with. | ||
| I was wondering if there's any point that you can think of where you questioned, like, maybe these people are right or onto something. | ||
| Did that ever happen? | ||
| Never. | ||
| But I was raised evangelical. | ||
| And I used to be a libertarian. | ||
| So if the fascist or QAnon ship was going to sail, it would have been like two decades ago. | ||
| Well, less that and more like just losing a grip on where you were. | ||
| So I think part of why maybe this didn't happen to me is because... | ||
| I wasn't leading one life undercover, but, like, there would be things I would say to Cuban people about things that, oh, yeah, I believe, yeah, sure, of course there's children out of the Getty. | ||
| And, like, that's the kind of stuff that you can't say to, like, a 28-year-old normal fascist because they're going to be like, what's wrong with you? | ||
| And so I was already having to do all of this, like, mental gymnastics where I'd have to overanalyze stuff and be like, okay, and if I... | ||
| I would hear news, I would literally have to think, how would a Q person respond to this? | ||
| And how would a fascist person respond to this? | ||
| And so instead of adapting one mindset or listening to one thing for so long, I was kind of listening to things that sometimes conflict with each other. | ||
| And I think that probably helped because it was constantly... | ||
| You know, I might listen to Alex Jones talk about a topic. | ||
| So I have both sides. | ||
| That's fascinating, because I imagine that that forced you to be analytical more than just if you had one persona, if you will. | ||
| That might have been really helpful, probably, to keep you grounded. | ||
| Yeah, and I find... | ||
| It's very easy for me to think, like, how would a fascist think? | ||
| But I find, like, how would the QAnon people think? | ||
| I actually have to take a minute, too, because I can be so out of touch with reality. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And so there would be times, too, where I would hear stuff from the QAnon side of things where I would have to be like, what the fuck are they talking about? | ||
| And I would have to Google it just to understand where they're coming from because it's like, how are we even getting here? | ||
| And so I think that also was helpful because it's like I have to see the real world answer to whatever they're saying. | ||
| Yeah, you have to sort of translate and decode. | ||
| I feel like it would be tough not to just succumb to thinking of QAnon as kind of randomness because so much of whatever the belief is You could just have any belief. | ||
| You'd think. | ||
| At least I think that most people view it that way. | ||
| Do you think that there is more of a set system for the things that they believe than randomness? | ||
| I think that the set systems for what they believe are easily traced back to which influencers indoctrination they support. | ||
| Because just like you having QAnon, you have people who believe JFK Jr. is still alive. | ||
| And then you have people who are like, that's crazy and makes us look bad. | ||
| Stop saying that. | ||
| And so it's kind of like, okay. | ||
| And then I think some of it might kind of be random. | ||
| So a lot of what I would experience, especially QAnon stuff, is people want to tell you all their conspiracies. | ||
| They can't shut up. | ||
| They want to make sure you're super well-informed. | ||
| It's incredibly tiring. | ||
| And I would get people... | ||
| Like, I would watch people say shit like, Ashley Babbitt's still alive. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And everybody would be like, you're a lunatic. | |
| What are you talking about? | ||
| But then an hour later, people were like, Ashley Babbitt was a crisis actress and she's still alive. | ||
| I didn't know it until this person convinced me. | ||
| Yeah, over two martinis in the lobby bar of this hotel. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And so I think some of it, I think it does kind of mutate in person in a way that isn't like... | ||
| Easily controlled. | ||
| So I was at one event and it was a 9-11 memorial party where General Flynn was the keynote speaker. | ||
| Weird end to the sense. | ||
| 9-11 memorial party. | ||
| I don't know what else to call it. | ||
| It was $500 and I had to buy a chair when I got there. | ||
| That is steep. | ||
| It's a big grift to not come with a chair. | ||
| The VIP dinner the night before the main event, this chiropractor named Brian Artis was there. | ||
| He's just an absolute piece of shit. | ||
| He says to the crowd, "How many people died in the Holocaust?" And I'm like, "Wow, this is zero. | ||
| Not enough. | ||
| I don't know what answer you want. | ||
| I'm just so quiet." Yeah, in those circles, that's a question you do not want to hear someone pose like, oh God, this is going to go horribly. | ||
| But then he was like 6 million, and I'm like, okay. | ||
| So he's like, but you know, more people are dying from Fauci's Holocaust because the current gas chambers are the ER rooms. | ||
| And everybody's like, what? | ||
| So that's what he's, like, going into, like, you know, it's not COVID that fills your lungs with fluid, it's remdesivir, and he's intentionally done this, and it's all bullshit and lies. | ||
| But it's like, it's like a comedian, like, doing a test set, but it's, you know, these conspiracy theorists, like, trying things out. | ||
| At a $500 dinner? | ||
| Again, I had to buy my own chair. | ||
| And the dinner? | ||
| The dinner was in a bar. | ||
| The dinner was in a bar. | ||
| I'm saying that that's disrespectful of someone to do open mic conspiracy material at a $500 dinner. | ||
| You're eating your microwave food sitting in horseshit. | ||
| Whatever. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go for it. | |
| We've already paid. | ||
| What are we going to do? | ||
| Fair enough. | ||
| I do think with QAnon sometimes it's about Q's interpreting information. | ||
| I think I have a sense, and this is a completely uneducated sense, but I feel like the people are definitely responding to whatever YouTube videos they watch or whatever creator, their version of things. | ||
| But whatever their creator believes, that has a slight bit of randomness to it. | ||
| I think so. | ||
| I think so. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Especially now that QAnon is no longer posting. | ||
| I think there weren't, but now there's no... | ||
| It can't be like, oh, how does Q feel about whatever topic in the news? | ||
| So yeah, I mean, it just is like, how are you feeling today? | ||
| Oh, you're feeling very cranky? | ||
| Okay, well, then I'm going to make a bad situation. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Now the world's doomed. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, and it's very much like you talk a lot with Alex and how it's in a mood. | ||
| You're like, oh, he's in a mood. | ||
| Yeah, it's narcissism projected somewhat. | ||
| You mentioned the kids under the Getty. | ||
| I wanted to loop back to this really quick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do people believe that? | |
| Yes. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| People believe... | ||
| Okay, listen. | ||
| Whatever you can think of, I've met people who believe it with all their heart and soul. | ||
| People believe their kids are in the gutter. | ||
| I've watched people break down in tears over this, so I know they're not thinking. | ||
| And I don't mean grifters. | ||
| I mean people giving the money. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| People who have been conned. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I've only heard that ever from one weird guy on YouTube named Stephen Kelly who believes that he has mental ninjas or he calls them Jedi who go down into the Getty to do battle with the demons and stuff down there. | ||
| I've never heard that being a more popular theory. | ||
| I'm excited to hear that the Jedi are getting some help. | ||
| Yeah! | ||
| There's, you know, there's people there. | ||
| I was at an illicit beachside baptism. | ||
| So, you know, like if you go to a conference, people who like go to them for their jobs, you know, they travel, they fly out somewhere, they're on their work dollar, they go out to the bar, they get really drunk, like a club or something. | ||
| So at these events, the QAnon events. | ||
| It's like that, but instead you go to extra baptisms all night. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| Yeah, super cool. | ||
| I had a great time. | ||
| So I was at an illicit beachside baptism with Greg Locke and this other guy. | ||
| And we FaceTimed Lynn Wood. | ||
| And now there's like video of me on Lynn Wood's Telegram channel, like in the crowd chanting, we love you, Lynn. | ||
| It's so embarrassing. | ||
| People were asking if we hung out, people were asking the guy who had FaceTime on wood, like, okay, so, like, tell us all about it, and people were like, does he know if Hillary's been executed? | ||
| And it's like, ugh. | ||
| This is not an appropriate question for a baptism. | ||
| Listen, it is important. | ||
| It's not the time or place. | ||
| We gotta get rid of those demons. | ||
| So, you know, like, the answer was relieving her for you. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| That answer in and of itself is so telling. | ||
| We want you to be able to let out your blood lust. | ||
| We're going to throw Hillary to you, the wolves. | ||
| And that's populism when you think about it, really. | ||
| It's good. | ||
| So you said you grew up evangelical and were libertarian. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| How does this translate to what I presume is a pretty decently left set of beliefs now? | ||
| So my mom was never religious, and my dad was. | ||
| So I kind of had a foot in each world growing up. | ||
| And then once I was, I begged, I begged to stop going into... | ||
| It's a religious school. | ||
| And I finally got my way. | ||
| I got to go to school in eighth grade. | ||
| And so I was able to start... | ||
| I started that journey that people go through where you are like, I'm non-denominational. | ||
| I'm agnostic. | ||
| There is no God. | ||
| So I had that journey. | ||
| And then, you know, my mom always wanted for Democrats. | ||
| And my dad was life-on-conservative. | ||
| And like many life-on-conservatives, that is his personality trait. | ||
| That's his defining personality trait sometimes. | ||
| And I, like, have interest in politics my whole life. | ||
| And so, obviously, I was conservative too. | ||
| And then I read a book by Larry Elder. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| He didn't bat Larry Elder when I was 12 years old. | ||
| And he's a libertarian. | ||
| And I was like, oh, this book is great. | ||
| I'm a libertarian too. | ||
| I was 12 years old. | ||
| I'm not judging. | ||
| I am. | ||
| I can tell. | ||
| I can tell. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're deeply troubled. | |
| When Larry Elder started making the news again, I'm like, God damn it. | ||
| No, people are going to know who he is now when I say his name. | ||
| But I like, I, so I was, I was very, I mean, I was like involved in the party. | ||
| And when Michael Brown died in 2014, I was doing a lot of the protests and we were shutting down DC. | ||
| And, you know, there were a couple libertarians, but not many. | ||
| And then Freddie Gray died here in Baltimore. | ||
| Obviously, like, much more local to me. | ||
| I was like, there's literally no fucking libertarians here. | ||
| And I'm like, isn't this our thing? | ||
| Like, fuck the cops. | ||
| Like, that's our whole, that's the libertarian, like, personality of, like, anybody who's like, you know. | ||
| In their 20s and as a libertarian, we should all be here. | ||
| It's supposed to be. | ||
| It's a non-aggression principle. | ||
| You can't have the state having the monopoly of force. | ||
| Gotta get out there. | ||
| Gotta stop those police. | ||
| From hurting the white people. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Or from not protecting businesses and capital. | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| It is very important. | ||
| You know, if you can't... | ||
| Should I protect my business in your cop uniform? | ||
| You could put on your, like, Oath Keeper gear and then protect my business. | ||
| There's also that option. | ||
| That wouldn't be state monopoly of force. | ||
| It's still good. | ||
| You know, we still like that. | ||
| And that was the thing, too, is a lot of the people that I knew when I was libertarian became Oath Keepers and Cowboys and Paper Sinners. | ||
| I mean, when... | ||
| When Michael Brown was killed, I mean, that's where these militia groups really, I think, made national news probably for the first time. | ||
| And I really remember, I mean, I remember them from before, but I don't remember them making news the way they did when they were, you know, in St. Louis, in Baltimore. | ||
| So you had, like, some disillusionment then, I'm guessing, that that's what you're describing with the libertarian bend? | ||
| Yeah, I mean... | ||
| It was just, it was a joke. | ||
| And then when Trump became, I mean, so I was like already, like by the time the transition election happened, I was like, absolutely, I'm done with this party. | ||
| Like this, these people are insane. | ||
| And like, this is not, and there's. | ||
| You weren't a Gary Johnson stan? | ||
| I mean, look, in high school, I had like, like a libertarian sticker on my binder. | ||
| So I'm not really one to be able to judge. | ||
| But, and what is Aleppo is. | ||
| Honestly, it's very embarrassing. | ||
| It's a very embarrassing thing to say. | ||
| It wasn't good. | ||
| They were running for any office, really, I think. | ||
| So I'm not a fan. | ||
| I wasn't allowed to vote that year, so I would not have voted for Trump had I been allowed to vote. | ||
| And then I just became more and more left. | ||
| Before the pandemic, I think the last social activity I did was... | ||
| Campaign for Bernie Sanders. | ||
| And I imagine that awareness or connection with some of the libertarian ideas probably came in handy along the way. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I mean, everyone I met that was a fascist was a former libertarian. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's one of the things that I find really interesting. | ||
| Who is it? | ||
| Webster Tarpley, I believe, wrote a piece around the time Trump was running about how libertarianism and Ron Paul fandom was a doorway to fascism, basically. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I don't like him at all. | ||
| He's a former Infowars dude who has got a lot of problems himself, but I think he was fairly accurate on that one, that assessment. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I've seen people who have been, you know, stalkers for all. | ||
| So, yeah, it's bizarre. | ||
| I'm always surprised when people don't know of the libertarian fascism pipeline. | ||
| I'm like, have you ever paid attention to libertarians before? | ||
| But, you know, it is, I mean, just overwhelming the number of people that I know. | ||
| I mean, there's a couple of people who went left or who just, I think, are like... | ||
| They're like, oh, I'm a Little L Libertarian. | ||
| And it's like, sure. | ||
| Yeah, but you hear even Nick Fuentes say stuff like that, like Little L Libertarian. | ||
| That dodge is on both sides there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| In fact, one of the guys who this organization recruited me, the one that they wanted me to meet at their embassy, had worked for Paul. | ||
| I mean, it's like, yeah. | ||
| Stuart Rhodes was a Ron Paul staffer, too. | ||
| There's all kinds of tentacles coming out and so many seeds planted by that weird family. | ||
| The Paul family. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So you were doing this over the course of the pandemic. | ||
| Do you... | ||
| I imagine... | ||
| I don't know if this matches up with your experience, but I imagine things got worse over the course of the pandemic. | ||
| Like, more people gravitating towards these groups, more extreme stuff going on, angrier talk. | ||
| So, yeah, so I started not in the beginning of the pandemic, right? | ||
| And I wish I had. | ||
| I wish I had just said, fuck it, and then at the beginning. | ||
| And I severely regret not thinking to do it earlier. | ||
| Whatever. | ||
| So I didn't get to see the initial evolution. | ||
| But things certainly got worse. | ||
| People became more willing to be honest, I think, about how they felt about stuff. | ||
| The actual content became worse because I mean, I was vaccinated in February of 2021, and I was telling people if they asked, or if somebody seemed... | ||
| A lot of people were afraid of COVID, you know, very afraid of it. | ||
| So I would, like, offer it as like, you know, like, I'm probably a dead end. | ||
| So if you're sitting next to me, it's probably fine. | ||
| And by May, I was like, well, can't do that anymore. | ||
| Because at that point, you know, I was shedding my vaccine and making everybody sterile. | ||
| Especially in the QAnon places, I'm sure it was very unwelcome to be vaccinated. | ||
| I was in line to get a photo with General Flynn at the bar in May of 2021, and this mother-daughter duo in front of me turned around, and they did not say hello. | ||
| The daughter just goes, I'm my mom's last chance for grandchildren. | ||
| And her mom goes, yeah, her twin brother got vaccinated so we could keep going to college. | ||
| And I was like, I'm Amanda. | ||
| And that was the moment where I was like, Okay, so nobody's ever going to know I'm vaccinated. | ||
| I'm going to lie and deny it. | ||
| I'm like, whoa. | ||
| I'm my mom's last chance for grandchildren. | ||
| That's a concept a child shouldn't be dealing with at all. | ||
| Well, we're in line to get a photo of a general plan. | ||
| It was wild. | ||
| So there was that. | ||
| And then by the time I got COVID in July, Because it had been four or five months since I was fully vaccinated. | ||
| I was not. | ||
| I knew I had it because I'd previously had it. | ||
| And there's a certain feeling, which I describe as altitude sickness. | ||
| It's the only time I've ever felt it. | ||
| And I had that for like a day. | ||
| I blew my nose a couple times and I couldn't taste anything. | ||
| And then I caught poppy, tasted like vomit for like two weeks. | ||
| And that was it. | ||
| However. | ||
| I did not get COVID again. | ||
| And every event I went to was a super spreader event. | ||
| And people were dying at all of them. | ||
| Because their kids were vaccinated. | ||
| And it's just like, when I was finally out, I'm like, look, you're literally, your friends are dying. | ||
| And I had to drink cold brew for two weeks. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| Wait, cold brew was fine, but coffee wasn't? | ||
| Yeah, it had to be something about taking it to that temperature. | ||
| Because even if I made hot coffee and let it sit out for like six hours, it was like vomit and old mouth. | ||
| Very strange. | ||
| Weird. | ||
| I also would like to apologize that you're talking about people dying and the thing I got hung up on was cold brew being okay. | ||
| It's really weird, right? | ||
| It's super strange. | ||
| I ate a bunch of warheads because I could taste them, but then my mouth would hurt because I was eating a bunch of warheads. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So then they were like, oh, so we don't have COVID. | ||
| We're getting anthrax poisoned at all of these events. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| That makes sense. | ||
| So if you get the COVID vaccine, it's also an anthrax vaccine, I guess. | ||
| And then you shed anthrax to everybody. | ||
| Because I'm like, why do you all have anthrax and I don't? | ||
| Is there something different between us? | ||
| Yeah, you see? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's spike protein anthrax. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| I have enjoyed watching sort of the gymnastics and the hurdles of trying to make sense of the shifting landscape of the conspiracies. | ||
| And I imagine being there for it and having conversations with people about it would have been even more confusing. | ||
| It's so bizarre. | ||
| I mean, I was in maybe April or May, I was at some event and this woman was like... | ||
| Do you know how to make hydroxychloroquine? | ||
| And I'm like, oh my god, she's going to tell me to drink bleach. | ||
| She's going to tell me to drink bleach. | ||
| Undoubtedly, that's what's coming next. | ||
| And I'm like, no, you want to tell me? | ||
| And she goes, you take a grapefruit and you peel it and you put it in water and put it in your fridge for 30 days. | ||
| And I'm like, yes! | ||
| What? | ||
| Yes! | ||
| That sounds really good. | ||
| We should tell everybody here. | ||
| It's fermented grape juice. | ||
| That's going to have so... | ||
| Probably be full of bacteria. | ||
| Whatever, it's not bleach. | ||
| I'll take it. | ||
| I do have sort of a begrudging respect for folk remedies that people come up with. | ||
| And when I say begrudging respect, I mean the creativity and optimism of it. | ||
| Not so much the trying it. | ||
| The month-old grapefruit in a fridge is... | ||
| Yeah, that's pretty sweet. | ||
| You have to be a dreamer for that to be something that you could tell someone else. | ||
| Like, yeah, I mean, some of the things I heard just so bizarre, and then there'd be these weird times where it would be like, some would be like, COVID doesn't even exist. | ||
| But then, that was a pretty rare opinion. | ||
| I very rarely heard it, but when I heard it, it was always in a book, so I think it would be like, I literally almost died of it. | ||
| It's real. | ||
| And they'd be like, "But you could have just had the flip." And they'd be like, "Well, I couldn't taste anything." And they'd be like, "Well, your nose is stuck. | ||
| You can't taste." And it's a completely different experience. | ||
| And so watching people have little fights over whether or not COVID is real was always kind of very bizarre. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's kind of like a reality versus non-reality in a really micro scale of just these people as the sort of avatars of reality and not reality. | ||
| And I'm guessing not reality generally wins. | ||
| No, because almost everybody had COVID. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's like, who's this asshole who hasn't had COVID yet, you know? | |
| I mean, people were very open and honest from the beginning. | ||
| I had COVID, or my mom died of COVID, or my sister almost died of COVID. | ||
| I very rarely ran into COVID full-on denial. | ||
| You said at first people were really open. | ||
| Did that change? | ||
| No. | ||
| It just became more and more common because more and more people got it. | ||
| Did you run into many people who I've noticed a thing, and maybe it's just through Project Camelot stuff, but there's people, and David Icke too, I guess, but people who are like, you know what? | ||
| This whole thing has made me realize that science isn't real. | ||
| There is no such thing as a virus. | ||
| Do you ever write into any of those folk? | ||
| Those cool, cool folk? | ||
| Not often. | ||
| I think they were probably about as common as the full COVID denialists were. | ||
| So not very. | ||
| But I think that is a pretty extreme opinion, even in extremist groups. | ||
| So I could see if I believe that being a little uncomfortable to bring it up. | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| That's something that I hadn't really considered. | ||
| There is probably a taboo on... | ||
| Some conspiracy ideas, even in these circles. | ||
| Like, there is a point that's too far. | ||
| Well, that's what JFK Jr. being alive used to be. | ||
| And, like, one of the big, unbelievably boring influencers, Jordan Seifer, I mean, I saw him at the first juvenile rally in 2019. | ||
| And he was... | ||
| You know, he literally did the exact same speech he gave when I saw him in 2021. | ||
| So nothing's changed with him. | ||
| But he hates the JFA Junior stuff. | ||
| He hates it. | ||
| And it's just, you know, it's picked up more and more traction. | ||
| And, like, when I was at, when I was in Dallas in May, I was with him. | ||
| It was me and him and two other people. | ||
| And we were, like, drinking. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And this car pulls up. | |
| And this car is not infamous. | ||
| I'm sure many of your listeners have seen this car. | ||
| It's a red Mazda. | ||
| And it's got stickers all over it, the windshield, the windows, and the person who owns it ended up joining the QAnon cult that would form in Dallas later on. | ||
| And it's all J.K. Jr. and Donald Trump, you know? | ||
| And he was pissed. | ||
| He was like, this is bullshit. | ||
| This makes us look bad. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I'm like, okay. | |
| Not sure it looked great before, but okay. | ||
| All the other stuff is so impressive and respectable. | ||
| Totally normal and believable, and JFK Jr. is really about to lie, but it is true that some of them do, and so I think that kind of stuff, I think it is now what JFK Jr. used to be. | ||
| Yeah, I find that example, or that one seems like, that makes a lot of sense, because it's kind of like, this is undercutting our brand. | ||
| This is going to make it more difficult for me to get people into the revenue stream. | ||
| JFK Jr. is dead. | ||
| Or is alive, as it were. | ||
| That makes sense. | ||
| The virus doesn't exist. | ||
| I guess that probably is maybe in the same realm. | ||
| They're like, I'm trying to spread medical conspiracies, but this one is, that's too much. | ||
| Yeah, if the viruses don't exist, how am I supposed to sell all of my cures? | ||
| Come on, man. | ||
| That's a good point. | ||
| You know, these chiropractors saying they're doctors. | ||
| Well, that's a grift as old as time. | ||
| Dr. Group, the piss doctor, he is a chiropractor as well. | ||
| And if science doesn't matter, then all of those doctor credentials don't matter. | ||
| Then you gotta be like, no, I'm a chiropractor. | ||
| I'm not a doctor. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| I'm just about keeping your spine in line. | ||
| That's all we're doing here. | ||
| That's bones. | ||
| That's science. | ||
| Being in some of these worlds and these communities, we're coming up on the midterms, and you were around in what I would say is an election-heavy time to be embedded with these folks. | ||
| What do you expect? | ||
| We've had the last free and fair election in this country to the extent that we've been around. | ||
| You're convinced of that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So a lot of the stuff that I would go to would be like, you know, it starts off with, you know, dominion and it's charismatic. | ||
| They're evil, satanic, whatever. | ||
| Only God has dominion over us. | ||
| That's why they called it that, man. | ||
| I literally sometimes I'm just like, how do you come up with this? | ||
| So that's fine. | ||
| But then it shifted to Audit every single election. | ||
| And not only that, but I remember people being like, I don't understand why we would audit elections where we won. | ||
| And I snapped one day and I was like, it's to undermine the entire electoral process so that we can say that we won everything. | ||
| And people were like, right, exactly. | ||
| I said the quiet part out loud. | ||
| People were like, yeah, duh, obviously. | ||
| And we would have People come in and teach us, like, okay, this is how I harassed my, like, fairly elected, low-level GOP, like, county chair out of office so that I could take over. | ||
| And here's how you can do it, too. | ||
| That's quite a workshop to offer. | ||
| Some of it was like, oh, I just followed her kids home from the school bus every day until she decided it wasn't worth the $8,000 a year that she got. | ||
| What? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Stalking? | |
| I stalked her children. | ||
| It's not stalking. | ||
| It's just walking. | ||
| They rhyme. | ||
| I know it's confusing. | ||
| It was a coincidence that I was constantly following her children. | ||
| Yeah, of course. | ||
| That's pretty fucked up. | ||
| And we have allowed for that stuff to be common. | ||
| I don't know how commonplace it is, but I mean, it's like... | ||
| So at that point, what's the cure to that? | ||
| How do you solve harassing a woman's children because she's a rhino until she quits her job? | ||
| And it's like, maybe you do it through the court system. | ||
| But you know what? | ||
| We have a seven-year-old who has to go to court to point at a friend of Lynn Wood's and be like, "That's the man to follow the people on the bus!" And we're putting democracy on the back of a seven-year-old kid. | ||
| That's fucking crazy. | ||
| Or, you know, like, there's no intervention process, and private lawsuits from Spartmatic and Dominion can only go so far. | ||
| They can only target so many people. | ||
| They can't be, you know, at every jurisdiction, especially because a lot of these places didn't even use their voting machines. | ||
| And so, no one's offered a solution to combat this, so I don't really see how it gets better. | ||
| And maybe they're, I mean, trying to think of a solution is probably Probably impossible. | ||
| Just the example you're giving, whether or not this happened exactly as it did, but the person following someone's kid's home and then they quit their low-level position, probably no one ever would hear about that. | ||
| There are tons and tons of offices that are in local levels that all kinds of nonsense could be happening around them. | ||
| Yeah, and a lot of it is targeting school boards and district chair. | ||
| And so, obviously, district chair, that position, whatever it's called, wherever people live, all different things are in places, but they are the beginning stepping stone for completely not delegating elections. | ||
| And I've been looking for it somewhere around me. | ||
| I have a little booklet teaching me, okay, if there's a rhino and you're in the position that you want, talk shit. | ||
| Talk shit about them to everybody. | ||
| Show up to everything. | ||
| You know, it's like a plan to beat them. | ||
| And, I mean, school boards, too. | ||
| Let's see what the school board elections. | ||
| Last year, in April, I was at an event, and Landon Starbuck was a speaker, and she's a right-wing propagandist, who's the wife of Robbie Starbuck, who's a congressional candidate, which is good. | ||
| And... | ||
| And she said, the Democrats want to teach your kids CRT because CRT makes children more susceptible to child sex trafficking. | ||
| And Democrats want to, you know, they want to sex trafficking their kids. | ||
| And they want them to be in gay porn. | ||
| And, you know, all of this, like, absolute nonsense. | ||
| And I was like, literally at the time, I was like, what? | ||
| This makes so little sense. | ||
| Like, nobody. | ||
| But everybody was all in. | ||
| And the whole thing was you have to run for school board. | ||
| You have to stop this stuff. | ||
| And so, like, watching, you know, what's anybody done about that? | ||
| Fucking nothing. | ||
| Yeah, and it, like, being exposed to that at that time, that, like, seems like complete nonsense. | ||
| This is never going to stick. | ||
| And then now, here we are. | ||
| It was so effective. | ||
| It was so effective. | ||
| That's... | ||
| That's probably a lesson that is very difficult to learn, is that stuff that sounds like it might be insane could be adopted by the entire GOP in six months. | ||
| You never know. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, watching all the CRT stuff happen with the school boards, it was so well organized on the back end. | ||
| I mean, I literally don't know. | ||
| I made a spreadsheet of everybody, as many people who won elections in Virginia for school board that I could find. | ||
| And it was really exhausting because it took like hours of watching people debate because in like some podunk county with like a couple thousand people and I'm like, but talk about CRTs. | ||
| I had to like watch on Facebook their debates to figure out what people believe. | ||
| And like a lot of people that won in Virginia are like CRT is evil. | ||
| Some of them are like public schools are evil and so is George Soros. | ||
| And behind the people who are probably complaining just about CRT, just a little bit under the surface is Public Schools Are Evil and George Soros. | ||
| Yeah, some of them say it publicly, most of them. | ||
| Yeah, that makes me think of, if you go back to some of the episodes from around when QAnon was coming around, I very famously was like, this isn't a big deal. | ||
| This is just some dumb thing that's happening on a message board. | ||
| Boy, I was wrong about that one. | ||
| That seemed to me like there's no way people are going to buy into this. | ||
| Yeah, it's so weird. | ||
| It's weird, too, what sticks and what doesn't stick. | ||
| I don't think people can really predict it. | ||
| You have to see how people react before you're able to take an assessment. | ||
| If you just go by what you hear, the conspiracy is we would never. | ||
| Yeah, we just discount everything. | ||
| Yeah, because they're all, I mean, they're just going progressively more out of the reality. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So you think we're going to have another bad election? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I hate to say I agree with you. | ||
| Yeah, I 100%. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| I just, it's very frustrating to see all of these elected Democrats in Congress or whatever saying stuff like, oh, the GPP is just uneducated, Lauren Boebert. | ||
| And it's like, oh my God, are you like doing marketing for them? | ||
| Is that what you're doing now? | ||
| Because that's not cool. | ||
| It's not cool at all. | ||
| That's not. | ||
| It's unfortunate that the opposition party, as it were, does not seem to grasp the reality of the other side, what they're against. | ||
| Yeah, and a lot of media, and I mean, this one you've talked about extensively over the years, is like, I mean, they're essentially platforming stuff instead of like really, really, really dragging it or combating what people are saying. | ||
| And you'd think it'd get better because after January 6th, but it doesn't really seem to have gotten better. | ||
| Like, outlets still refuse to hire people who would be like, hey, that headline is a really bad headline. | ||
| Here's why you shouldn't do that. | ||
| They just won't listen. | ||
| Yeah, that headline is a trap that you're setting for yourself. | ||
| Yeah, but the article's fine. | ||
| Who cares? | ||
| No one's reading the article. | ||
| Yeah, the news is the onion now. | ||
| Put it all in the headline because people are just going to skim this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| So when you were from your time hanging out with these folks, What do you think is the most troubling thing for you right now? | ||
| What worries you the most looking back on your time and how things have developed since then and the things that you've seen? | ||
| What should people be aware of maybe that they're not paying enough attention to? | ||
| The rise of right-wing populism and the under-30 or under-35 crowd. | ||
| I think people don't really... | ||
| Understand how impactful that publicly is. | ||
| I've seen stuff where shortly after I was docked, Josh Hawley gave a speech at the event I was supposed to be at where he was like, "Oh, we need more masculinity in society." And a lot of people on the left are making fun of it. | ||
| It's like, look at this guy. | ||
| He's not exactly like a lumberjack. | ||
| Who's even talking about masculinity? | ||
| He's talking about special family roles and a man being able to provide for his family and a woman being able to provide for his kids. | ||
| That's what he's talking about. | ||
| I don't know how that went over the heads of so many people. | ||
| He's not talking about being the brawny man. | ||
| Right. | ||
| He's not like, yeah, you've got to go to CrossFit more. | ||
| No, that's not what he's saying. | ||
| I understand that people are still missing that kind of stuff. | ||
| And those are points that are going to resonate with people who are not Republicans. | ||
| It's going to resonate with people who are like, yeah, I'm not our own house. | ||
| I want to have kids and I can't afford to have kids. | ||
| Whatever. | ||
| That will resonate with people. | ||
| And we haven't done anything to prepare for combating that. | ||
| The sort of right-wing points of Making fair points with bad solutions, kind of? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Because, you know, like, they mean for white people, and they're number one. | ||
| And they also, you know, like, what, I mean, traditional family rules, but it's just like the environment in which this is all happening in their minds. | ||
| So, yeah, this is, yeah, it's not great. | ||
| Some of the candidates, you know, that they are, like, aligned with are, like, very open. | ||
| I mean, there was Joe Kent running in Washington State. | ||
| When I was at APU, part of his speech was, like, Joe Biden's, like, family planning bill or whatever doesn't go far enough. | ||
| We should, you know, like, we should get more money. | ||
| Like, why are we funding these wars? | ||
| You know, we could be funding, you know, if you have a kid, you get money, whatever. | ||
| And that's just... | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's no response from the left. | |
| That could be a problem. | ||
| You're saying also in the under-30s, that's a community that you think is turning to a right populism in a more troubling way? | ||
| I would say under-35, maybe under-40. | ||
| I mean, because people are people, right? | ||
| It's not like... | ||
| Some, you know, line of wealth going down. | ||
| People who are Republican, like, they're facing the exact same problems that we're facing the same age on the left, whereas we're priced out of the housing market. | ||
| Rent is 70% of your income, you know? | ||
| So, yeah. | ||
| Same problems. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| And then the people who will speak to those problems are maybe people who have a darker agenda. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Well, I hope that all of this doesn't combine into a terrible tornado of shit this year in the elections. | ||
| The school boards, the turn towards right-wing populism, the denial of election, the COVID stuff. | ||
| Seems like a perfect storm. | ||
| Yeah, well, you know, God has dominion. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| And not Dominion Incorporated. | ||
| So it's in his hands now. | ||
| That is true. | ||
| And now I believe it's time to pray. | ||
| I think that's as good a point to drop off at or to wrap this up. | ||
| Amanda, thank you so much for chatting with me. | ||
| I'm sorry it was a little bit all over the place. | ||
| How I am, too. | ||
| It's fine. | ||
| Do you have anything that you'd like to plug, to direct the folks towards? | ||
| You can follow me on Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok at NoTurtleSoup17. | ||
| NoTurtleSoup. | ||
| Is 17 a Q wink? | ||
| Yeah, so NoTurtleSoup is from that time that Alex was stripping on camera. | ||
| Sure. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And then told Owen he would eat his turtle in a soup. | |
| That was a sober moment for him, for Alex. | ||
| One of my favorite moments. | ||
| He was just tired. | ||
| He was just tired. | ||
| And then Seventeen is a QAnon reference. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Nice. | |
| Well, it's been a delight. | ||
| I'm sure we will speak again in the future. | ||
| Andy in Kansas, you're on the air. | ||
| Thanks for holding. | ||
| Hello Alex, I'm a first time caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a huge fan. | |
| I love your work. |
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