#842: Amanda Moore Returns
In this installment, Jordan sits down with Amanda Moore to chat about her time undercover, names that should not exist, and Ron DeSantis's rizz.
Aug. 25, 2023 - Knowledge Fight
01:00:12
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys, saying we are the bad guys. | ||
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unidentified
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Knowledge fight. | |
| and enjoy knowledge fight need money Andy in Kansas stop it Andy in Kansas it's time to pray Andy in Kansas you're on the air thanks for holding hello Alex I'm a first time caller I'm a huge fan I love your room knowledge fight knowledge fight dot com Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Hello, everyone. | ||
| Welcome to Knowledge Fight. | ||
| Unfortunately, I am alone again without my co-host, Dan. | ||
| However, I am today joined by Amanda Moore. | ||
| Thank you so much for coming on to the show. | ||
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| Amanda, you are famous now, I think, for... | ||
| Well, obviously there's the undercover stuff, but I read in a piece a couple of years ago, I think it was, that you investigated, in your own words, gold diggers' boyfriends? | ||
| Yeah, I used to do that. | ||
| Okay, so that's what this interview is entirely about. | ||
| I understand you were on January 6th, you did undercover stuff, I understand all of that. | ||
| All I want to know... | ||
| I wonder how many of those boyfriends were also at January 6th, in retrospect. | ||
| Isn't that the question? | ||
|
unidentified
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No. | |
| So, yes, no, please. | ||
| You just have a piece that just came out in The Nation. | ||
| Could you kind of give our listeners a little bit of a background for you? | ||
| During the pandemic, your job was, like most everybody else's, busted, right? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| And then you decided to go undercover. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Everybody was doing something during the pandemic, you know? | ||
| I'd always wanted to be a writer or a journalist, but it pays shit. | ||
|
unidentified
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But when your job is gone, it doesn't matter anymore. | |
| Yeah, when everything pays shit, then it doesn't matter what you do. | ||
| So I went to the Stop the Steel rallies, and I'd always been gone. | ||
| I live in D.C., so I'd always been gone to, like, Laura Loomer gave us an unhinged rally behind my office one day, and I went to that. | ||
| And just kind of observe. | ||
| And like, you know, I had like a blog I would write on. | ||
| And I was like, well, maybe I'll sell some audio. | ||
| Maybe I'll sell like a blog post or something. | ||
| Maybe, you know, whatever. | ||
| We'll see. | ||
| We'll see what happens. | ||
| All of a sudden, everyone's storming the Capitol. | ||
| I'm like, I think this is a lot bigger than a blog post. | ||
| And the rest is history. | ||
| I do appreciate that in this one situation, we're not dealing with like a jump cut. | ||
| That's a family guy reference, like, oh, the next thing you know, people are overrunning the Capitol. | ||
| Oh, that happened. | ||
| That's where you were. | ||
| Yeah, that's where I was. | ||
| Yeah, it was wild. | ||
| It was really wild, too, because, you know, that summer, back in like 2014 and 2015, I had been to a lot of Black Lives Matter protests, especially up in Baltimore. | ||
| And I... | ||
| I didn't go to so many in 2020 because I was super depressed and broke and just like generally unhappy internally. | ||
| But I went to one and it happened to be the one where the president tear gassed everybody so he could hold a Bible upside down for a photo op. | ||
| We're like marching to the Capitol and nothing's going on. | ||
| And I'm like, wow, I remember when we were just standing. | ||
| We were tearcast. | ||
| And here we go today. | ||
| Straight on, straight on inside. | ||
| I mean, I did not go inside. | ||
| I wanted to, but a reporter I know ran into me and he was like, you're not going inside. | ||
| You're actually leaving now. | ||
| We're leaving. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know. | ||
| I wonder if you're, you know, like, no, I was going undercover for blog posts would sell if you were right next to... | ||
| Stuart Rhodes on the stand, you know? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| I'm just not the guy. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Listen, I was undercover to do a thing! | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| So I was wondering, as we go back through this, right, so as you just pointed out, you know, in the 2014-2015 area, you're going through, well, we're all going through a period where... | ||
| You know, Black Lives Matter protests, we're fighting all of those things. | ||
| Just a few years before that, you know, relatively speaking, you're in more January 6 people territory again, you know? | ||
| So you grew up in an environment that led you to be a libertarian at 12, or if that's what I read correctly, right? | ||
| Yeah, I read a Larry Elder book. | ||
|
unidentified
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And I became a libertarian at 12. So don't let your kids read Larry Elder. | |
| That's the moral of the story here. | ||
| Don't let it happen. | ||
| Larry Elder and the Sorcerer's Stone was my favorite book, but next time I think he's going to have to step up his game. | ||
| You know, if JK can meet him on Transphobia now, we're in real trouble. | ||
| Yeah, but tell me a little bit more about growing up like that, because I feel like your childhood kind of informed your ability to chameleon yourself into the far right that easily, right? | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| So my dad is still in like the evangelical sex with Christianity. | ||
| That's what I grew up in. | ||
| You know, my dad's pastor right now, raises people from the dead, has a mega church, all like that stuff. | ||
| And so, you know, I broke my arm when I was undercover and I was at a QAnon conference and people were praying in tongues on my arm. | ||
| And like afterwards, people were like, how did you deal with that? | ||
| And I'm like, you've never heard someone praying in tongues before? | ||
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unidentified
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Weird. | |
| Totally. | ||
| No, what's funny about that is I was at a God camp when I was 15. I was working a God camp. | ||
| I broke my arm, and you better believe I got some prayer over it in tongues. | ||
| So, yeah, yeah. | ||
| I'm right there with you. | ||
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unidentified
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That was everybody. | |
| Yeah, and my mom is a two-time Obama voter who also voted for Trump. | ||
| Twice. | ||
| Yeah, she's the one. | ||
| She's the only one in America. | ||
| The New York Times did an interview. | ||
| Just her. | ||
| And they'll probably get her now. | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| So, you know, my mom's also like an atheist. | ||
| I kind of like had a foot in each world growing up. | ||
| And then I've always loved politics. | ||
| I always loved writing. | ||
| And so, you know, libertarianism was like huge. | ||
| Like, I mean, the Black Lives Matter marches in 2014 and 15. And then Trump becoming The de facto libertarian candidate. | ||
| Or why I left the party. | ||
| And it was like a gradual... | ||
| The same way leaving religion took a few years. | ||
| It was like, oh, I'm not religious. | ||
| Or I'm not religious. | ||
| I'm non-denominational. | ||
| I'm agnostic. | ||
| I'm a fucking atheist. | ||
| It's the same thing with the libertarian party. | ||
| It was like, I don't like how we're handling Black Lives Matter. | ||
| And I don't like how we're handling these things. | ||
| And then Trump came down the escalator and Gary Johnson, people didn't like him. | ||
| They liked Trump over Gary Johnson. | ||
| And I was, you know, it took several years to walk away completely, but I did. | ||
| And so, but all these things, you know, because there is a direct libertarian to all right pipeline. | ||
| There's a direct libertarian to inside the Capitol pipeline, as it were. | ||
| And so, yeah, I think that's kind of what prepared me. | ||
| It's also why I was interested in it. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, one of the... | ||
| What was it? | ||
| One of the lines... | ||
| Let me see if I can't find it. | ||
| I believe it was Nelson, maybe? | ||
| Alex Nelson was talking to a recruiter for the Patriot Front website, and the recruiter said at one point, like, keep at conservatism. | ||
| In a wink-wink, that'll get you to anti-Semitism. | ||
| Kind of thing. | ||
| You know, hey, keep at it, kid. | ||
| Eventually you'll hate the Jews. | ||
| Right? | ||
| And it is very much like the way you just described it. | ||
| It's so much like, wow, the Libertarian Party isn't so much a party as it is a conveyor belt to problems. | ||
| Yeah, and you know, I mean, something could have been done about that. | ||
| And you look at, so like the former head of the party, like the guys, one of the guys I know to cover, Shane Trejo, used to like... | ||
| Make this guy's life hell, Nick. | ||
| His name is Nick. | ||
| And, like, he would write all these articles about Nick being a cuck-servative, a libertarian, all that stuff. | ||
| And it's like, I don't, I mean, I'm not saying this is Nick's fault, but, like, on an individual level, like, at the county levels where we were and the state levels, you know, people will come in and it's like, that guy's a fucking Nazi. | ||
| And, you know, it's like, oh, you can't just call people Nazis, we're not the left. | ||
| And it's like, okay, well, he just did a... | ||
| You know, and it's like, oh, well, you know, it's better not to punch that way. | ||
| Like, we can't, you know, and it's just like, this denial. | ||
| And, you know, I was completely out by the time Unite the Right happened. | ||
| You know, I feel like if we had stood up stronger in more numbers, we could have kept them out of the party. | ||
| And who knows? | ||
| Maybe I would still be a libertarian. | ||
| Maybe I wouldn't have been pushed so far to the left. | ||
| Kind of the opposite intent or effect of what they wanted. | ||
| And, you know, now, of course, we see this happening in the GOP. | ||
| Like, the Libertarian Party is a disaster. | ||
| You've got the Libertarian Party in New Hampshire at the state level, which has not been, you know, they're not defederated. | ||
| They're a member of the National Party. | ||
| Tweeting out the 14 words, but instead of whites, they're saying libertarians. | ||
| You know, it's a joke, and now those same people are kind of trying to get into the GOP and do the same thing there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, you know, that's a really interesting question as far as, like, are they trying to get into the GOP? | ||
| Well, I have private chats of Gavin Waxes and Shane Trejo's. | ||
| I have their private chats. | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh, no, no, no. | |
| That's not what I mean. | ||
|
unidentified
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Obviously. | |
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Obviously, they're trying to do that. | ||
| I've got the DTL blueprints. | ||
| Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. | ||
| I'm speaking more of, like, are they really trying to keep him out? | ||
| Did they ever even really try and keep him out? | ||
| Did they? | ||
| Did they? | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| And I think now they're really going to have to come to Jesus' moment because they already had a fraction in the GOP with Trump. | ||
| And now I think Ukraine is probably maybe a bigger deal than, like, they want to admit because so many of the people who are running for president on the Republican ticket are bizarrely pro-Russia. | ||
| Or at least not willing to condemn Russia, as we saw last night at the debate. | ||
| And, you know, I just, I don't know. | ||
| Like, these are things, I think, you know, maybe the best case scenario for us is we just have a crumbled little GOP that's like five different factions that are all fighting each other at all times. | ||
| That'd be great, honestly. | ||
| I mean, it might be great electorally on a national level. | ||
| On the other hand, it might be bad physically for all humans. | ||
| That's true as well. | ||
| That could be an issue for the rest of us. | ||
| I mean, that is a fascinating thing, though. | ||
| And it comes up again when you were in January 6th. | ||
| You know, the way you described it... | ||
| The way that the crowd was functioning, you know, there were people who saw the violence start happening and the cops start attacking the violent people and they were going, yeah, get them! | ||
| You know, like not realizing that we ourselves are those violent people. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| And in the same way, this is kind of another expression of that. | ||
| You know, like, we think of ourselves as the, like, we're anti, we're pro-United States, Rocky IV, USA, you know, that whole thing. | ||
| And yet somehow, wait a second, we're voting for the guy, we're voting for Drago. | ||
| What's happening right now? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, it is. | ||
| And the disconnect, too. | ||
| Between, I mean, just, like, people not living in reality, not living on planet Earth, you know, like, especially some of the, like, extreme Trumpers who, you know, it's just, how do you even talk to these people? | ||
|
unidentified
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You know, like, at least a regular Republican, you could be like, hey, here's all your economic policy is shit. | |
| You know, you have to be, like, some of these people, you have to be like, actually, I don't think that Donald Trump was a time traveler. | ||
| I think he probably doesn't travel for time. | ||
| It's very hard to grapple with it. | ||
| So that leads to my next question. | ||
| And this is a question I ask myself pretty regularly. | ||
| Do you think you're connected to reality? | ||
| Do you know what I mean? | ||
| It's hit or miss. | ||
| You were a libertarian just a short while ago. | ||
| Did you feel like you were less connected to reality then than you are now? | ||
| Or is it really that your relationship to reality has just changed? | ||
| I mean, I think, so there's like multiple kinds of libertarians, right? | ||
| There's the pedophile kind. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| There's the 14 words kind. | ||
| I was going to go ahead and say, I was not the pedophile kind, nor was I the 14 words kind. | ||
| You were the 14 pedophiles kind. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
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You got me. | |
| Don't tell Jim Stewart. | ||
| You know, I always thought, like, we should probably have schools and roads. | ||
| I think roads are good. | ||
| I like roads. | ||
| But maybe we should not have so much with war, that kind of thing, you know. | ||
| And where programs need to exist... | ||
| What changed for me is seeing, like, you know, I think the government does a pretty shitty job with a lot of social welfare programs across the board. | ||
| But I would still, at this point, rather they are doing it than the private sector. | ||
| And so that's really what shifted for me. | ||
| Like, my actual belief system of who is deserving of things and that kind of stuff never really changed. | ||
| It's just, where is the money coming from? | ||
| And a lot of that, I mean, like, I remember being in Baltimore after Freddie Gray was murdered and being, like, you know, looking around and being, like, where the fucking libertarians at? | ||
| They're the ones who say, like, when things happen, it falls on the individual to come and fix it. | ||
| And that's not who's here, you know? | ||
| Or paying taxes or whatever. | ||
| You know, like, well, that's not the fucking... | ||
| I mean, come on. | ||
| You can't just be like, well, I'm paying taxes. | ||
| I'll never get off my ass. | ||
| Like, you have to do the work in addition to... | ||
| In addition to the forced taxes that you're paying. | ||
| And so, you know, that is, like, what changed for me. | ||
| And that is a perception of not what is real or what is not, but, like, how do most people actually come to action, no matter how much they run their mouth. | ||
| No matter how much they run their mouth about how they're going to be there to support inner-city schools and kids, they're never going to fucking do it. | ||
| And so that is, like, what changed for me. | ||
| So I, you know, I don't... | ||
| I've never thought Trump was a time traveler, for instance. | ||
| You know, that kind of stuff. | ||
|
unidentified
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But yeah, so I guess maybe that's too many words. | |
| I think that's a really, really good answer because I don't know if my question was terribly clear, but you got to kind of what I was hoping to hear. | ||
| The question about that, though, then is like, okay, so... | ||
| Are you and I talking about a difference in orthodox libertarian belief, and that's the schism that led to you rejecting libertarian as a concept? | ||
| Or is it a situation wherein you realize that everybody wasn't actually being orthodox libertarian, and they were talking shit all the time, and you were just like, well, I don't want to be part of everybody talking shit. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it was that, and it was also, I mean, the infiltration of white nationalists into the party was very clear to anybody who was listening. | ||
| And, you know, I'm from D.C., and I moved from D.C. to Dallas, and I just remember in Christmas Day 2012, so effectively 2013, I just remember getting faced with people, libertarians in Texas, when there was that shooting in Paris at... | ||
| The nightclub are constant. | ||
| I can't remember. | ||
| It's so long ago now. | ||
| Do you remember my fellow libertarians in Texas being like, oh, well, that could never happen here because everybody has a gun. | ||
| And I'm like, hey, asshole, look up the Texas liquor laws. | ||
| If you have a gun in a nightclub, you're going to jail. | ||
| And they would be like, I don't know what you're talking about. | ||
| I fucking do. | ||
| Here's the tab seat rules. | ||
| And it's just that constant frustration with people having this idealistic version of how the world works. | ||
| And the left does it, too. | ||
| I mean, everybody does it. | ||
| But not really applying that to reality. | ||
| And so, you know, you have this difference in the way people view stuff and their biases that they bring in. | ||
| And it's also like, you know, just not telling white nationalists to get fucked. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, like... | ||
| I knew people who ended up in the Proud Boys, who ended up in all these organizations. | ||
| Christopher Cantwell, a crying Nazi from Charlottesville, he was known as the anti-cop guy. | ||
| Everybody knew who he was. | ||
| Everyone knew he was an asshole, but it really took Charlottesville for people to be like, "Hey, fuck that guy." Probably shouldn't take a white nationalist march, you know, where someone's murdered to get people to be like, hey, we gotta get rid of this guy. | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Yeah, you know, it really shouldn't. | ||
| Sometimes things should be that simple. | ||
| I thought of it, you know, the problem with questions like that is you say that and I immediately think of like 15 different practical real politic reasons why we're stuck in this scenario. | ||
| But the real answer is, yeah, fuck that. | ||
| That shouldn't be happening. | ||
| What are we doing? | ||
| What is going on here? | ||
| Yeah, you know, I was at the Young Republican National Convention last weekend. | ||
| Which was pretty funny because my article came out while I was there. | ||
| And one of the guys who was in the article was there and he was very mad at me. | ||
| Oh, yeah? | ||
| But, you know, yeah. | ||
| But some of them, you know, would be like, why do you care so much? | ||
| I'm like, first, I don't really know. | ||
| I just, by chance, I make this guy's friends when I was undercover. | ||
| So this is my beat now. | ||
| But also, like, you know, I did watch this happen already. | ||
| Like, I watch as a bunch of people, you know, look the other way. | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, people like Gavin Wax. | |
| Literally. | ||
| Gavin Wax did a libertarian party. | ||
| You know, literally the same people. | ||
| I wrote down in my notes, I refuse to believe that name is real. | ||
| I refuse on principle to believe that Gavin Wax, an 80s supervillain name, is also a 2023 real-life villain's name. | ||
| That's fucking disgusting to me. | ||
| Gavin Mario Wax, by the way. | ||
| Gavin Mario? | ||
|
unidentified
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Get the fuck out! | |
| Jesus Christ! | ||
| Fucking bad guy in Happy Gilmore. | ||
| He should be played by that fucking guy. | ||
| Jesus Christ. | ||
| Oh my God. | ||
| Anyways, I can't focus on that right now because I'm going to get distracted by how much I hate his name. | ||
| But that is another connection that you have there. | ||
| Which is another thing that I find... | ||
| So, you know, my last interview was with Talia Lavin, who had gone undercover in a more online space, right? | ||
| And you've gone undercover in a literal meat space, as the people my age used to say a long time ago. | ||
| And so, I find it... | ||
|
unidentified
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I find the decision... | |
| To go undercover, to be that, like, you know, I have to do something. | ||
| That personal nexus point. | ||
| Why did you suddenly go, like, I have to do something? | ||
| You know, because what you're describing with the Libertarian Party is essentially that. | ||
| I'm watching people talk shit, and I'm sick of it. | ||
| I need something, I need to do something to make a positive impact on my belief system, right? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I really didn't intend to go undercover in the way that I did. | ||
| I really thought I would just go to stuff and record it. | ||
| And after January 6th, I bought a ticket to CPAC. | ||
| And I flew down there thinking a lot of reporters can't travel right now. | ||
| They're not allowed. | ||
| Their outlets aren't going to send them to CPAC. | ||
| Like, they can't, you know, whatever. | ||
| I could probably just get some audio and sell it to the reporters. | ||
| Not the reporters themselves, but an outlet or something. | ||
| You're hustling. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I kind of got recruited while I was there. | ||
| And so, yeah. | ||
| I had a little loose backstory that I was telling people. | ||
| And it was very similar to my real life. | ||
| I was a libertarian. | ||
| I said I still lived in Maryland. | ||
| Whatever. | ||
| But yeah, it wasn't like I sat down and was like, this is my plan. | ||
| You know, I'm going to get in and do this. | ||
| It just happened, which really pisses people off. | ||
| People don't like that answer. | ||
| But, you know, that's kind of... | ||
| You know, people like that answer. | ||
| I fucking love that answer. | ||
| Yeah, but we're like kindred spirits in some ways, I think, because, you know, people... | ||
| Who don't get the background, who don't get the natural lifelong interest in it. | ||
| They're like, what are you, you know, like, this is sketchy. | ||
| This is weird. | ||
| But yeah, it's like, it's kind of always who I've been, where it's just like, all right, this is what we're doing now. | ||
| Okay, cool. | ||
| And yeah. | ||
| I don't find that too different from Beauty and the Beast. | ||
| Truly, like, Belle being picked up. | ||
| I don't find it too, and believe me, I identified with Belle. | ||
| All right, that library, that's what I dreamt of. | ||
| So, I'm with you. | ||
| That's very funny. | ||
| So, you got recruited. | ||
| So, and who, was it Shane himself who recruited you? | ||
| Like, right out the gate? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, it was Shane. | ||
| It was Shane. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So, so Shane comes up and he's like, hey, there's no way you're somebody with a passing interest in becoming an undercover agent. | ||
| Right? | ||
| That was his first sentence. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| He was like, you're normal, right? | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| You're totally, totally not going to kill me. | ||
| But I appreciate in your story, it is a certain amount of just like a general affability and quietude. | ||
| And these guys will be like, well, yeah, obviously women love what I say all the time if they're being quiet and just staying around me. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, yeah. | |
| You know what's really funny is when I met Shane, it was at... | ||
| His organization was having, like, an event. | ||
| Laura Loomer was speaking, and so it was Margie Taylor Greene and Polkasar. | ||
| And within a couple minutes of meeting Shane, the director, the executive director of the organization was like, I think that person back there was a journalist. | ||
| And I'm like, oh, really? | ||
| Which person? | ||
| And I watched him pick somebody out for possibly maybe being a journalist because she was looking around sketchy. | ||
|
unidentified
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And I'm just like, wow, you guys are really bad at it. | |
| And that was the theme throughout the time I was undercover. | ||
| I watched multiple people get kicked out of events for being journalists that were probably not journalists at all. | ||
| But never me. | ||
| Never me. | ||
| No, it's weird. | ||
| I'm going to tell you another secret. | ||
| These are the same type of people who are like, I'm pretty sure that's a witch and then murdered somebody. | ||
| They're not good at this. | ||
| No, not at all. | ||
| It's all in their own heads. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| There's so many fun little interesting stories. | ||
| Like you being at the Kirk Cameron anti-drag show story time hour somehow? | ||
| Yeah, well, that was just a couple months ago. | ||
| I just went and there were a lot of adults for the children's story time hour. | ||
| A disproportional amount of adults. | ||
| The children that were there were primarily siblings, so maybe four of the children to one adult, but then, you know, so why do you have so many adults? | ||
| Who knows? | ||
| I think we all know. | ||
| I think we all know. | ||
| Those books are not for kids. | ||
| Those books are not for children. | ||
| TikTok was there. | ||
| I think it was the first time Hyatt ever interacted with a child. | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh, boy. | |
| Yeah, she was real weird with kids. | ||
| Yeah, so tell me more about how that came about. | ||
| Obviously, we all know that conservative parents see children being read to and go, ah! | ||
| Like that. | ||
| So, we know that they get mad about it. | ||
| Why is it that they started trying to read to children themselves? | ||
| That's what confuses me. | ||
| Well, there's a lot of money. | ||
| And getting parents to buy books for their kids that are for them. | ||
| So Brave Books started this genius idea of getting all of the worst influencers you've ever heard of to collaborate on creating children's books. | ||
| So whatever your niche thing is, your niche culture war issue is. | ||
| They'll help you write a book about it. | ||
| Except they did tell me Sean Spicer insisted on being extremely hands-on with his book, which when you hear his book, it's all about... | ||
| He's a creative soul! | ||
| He's a creative soul! | ||
| He's got a creative bone in his body! | ||
| I find that more... | ||
| That almost makes me endeared to him compared to these other listless assholes letting somebody churn out a children's book with their name on it. | ||
| Sean Spicer doesn't put his name on Drek! | ||
| Sean Spicer's book was all like, and sometimes maybe you get the wrong impression about people. | ||
| And sometimes... | ||
| When you think that people are doing something wrong, maybe they're trying their best to do a good thing, but you can't tell it from the outside. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I put the audio on my sub staff because I'm like, bro, are you okay? | |
| He was reading the book and I'm like, do we need to get you help? | ||
| He wrote a children's book that's him being like, everybody was so fucking mean to me. | ||
| Everybody was so mean to me. | ||
| I was just trying to do my job, man. | ||
| I'm not even an... | ||
| I'm just a guy. | ||
| I'm just a guy. | ||
| You don't even know my story. | ||
| A children's book just... | ||
| I'm just a guy. | ||
| Come on! | ||
| Yeah, it was really good. | ||
| This was by far the best rating because of how clearly personal it was. | ||
| That's fantastic. | ||
| So Brave Books now creates bespoke children's books for shitheads. | ||
| How did they all get together to read them? | ||
| Wow. | ||
| I think that Haya was here for, Haya lives at TikTok. | ||
| I think that she was here for something else, maybe on the Hill. | ||
| There must have been something going on. | ||
| And then, of course, Sobek and Spicer live here. | ||
| You know, Sobek lives in Maryland. | ||
| He's not too far away. | ||
| So they're both locals. | ||
| So I think Haya was here for an event. | ||
| And they were like, oh, we'll do this. | ||
| And it was at the public library, so they can't turn people away. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And they were clearly ready for protesters. | ||
| Like, I don't mean, like, armed. | ||
| I mean, like, spiritually, they were ready to be pressed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| No, we're so important. | ||
| We're so, like, this is a revolutionary act we're taking. | ||
| The reading of a hastily pressed book we had nothing to do with. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| And unfortunately for them, there were no protesters. | ||
| No, no, because no one cares. | ||
| No one cares. | ||
| No one cares. | ||
| So, yeah, it was... | ||
| I mean, it's also like D.C. It was like the middle of the day on a weekday during the school year. | ||
| So, you know. | ||
| Yeah! | ||
| Children are famously free on Tuesdays at noon. | ||
| Right. | ||
| No, and I can... | ||
| I mean, I know it seems like I may be jumping back and forth, but the reason that this jumps out at me is because back on January 6th, you know... | ||
| When you're describing the way these people see reality versus the way it is, you know, when you're walking around on January 6th, people all around you going like, hey, don't walk around alone. | ||
| Don't be alone, you know? | ||
| You're the people that she should be afraid of, you know? | ||
| Like, that's kind of the situation there. | ||
| And the same thing is going on here. | ||
| They're creating this enemy that's around the corner all the time. | ||
| And it's just not... | ||
| They are the problem. | ||
| Yeah, it's just this boogeyman situation. | ||
| I mean, like, the lead-up to January 6th, there was a rally in December 2020, and it was, like, haunting. | ||
| I don't even know how to describe it. | ||
| I'm sure my friends wish that I would shut up about it, because for, like, weeks, I mean, probably until the 6th, I was just like, man, this was really bad. | ||
| Like, these people are out of their minds, and they're not, like, saying that lightly. | ||
| I mean, like, literally the perceived threats that they were saying. | ||
| And the concern, if I walked across the street, like, I tried to go buy a Red Bull or something, and people were like, oh, my God. | ||
| Walgreens, there's many enemies afoot. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm like, help me not at the Walgreens. | |
| Don't tell you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Like, what the fuck? | |
| Just, like, out of their minds. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Like, it's like, what is happening? | |
| And so I had not noticed that to the same extent at the November rally. | ||
| And I think maybe some of that, it was partially people getting their bearings and understanding the city. | ||
| Because a lot of people came back for all three. | ||
| And also, you know, people like your friend, Alex, trying to whip everyone up into a paranoid frenzy. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| You're not going to have an event like that and not have him make an appearance. | ||
| Come on, now. | ||
| That's the event of the season. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It is. | |
| I stood December 12th, 2020. | ||
| Probably, I don't know, 10 p.m. | ||
| I stood in front of the JW Marriott and chanted 1776 with Alex Jones. | ||
| Big highlight of my life. | ||
| Oh, and earlier that day, he ran into me. | ||
| He just barreled on into me. | ||
| Moving forward? | ||
| Yeah, he had a broken megaphone and he was trying to interrupt Millie Weaver's speech. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I was standing between him and Millie, so I had to be... | |
| There's so many apropos images that you evoke throughout all of this. | ||
| Alex holding a broken megaphone annoying Millie Weaver is like a poignant visage. | ||
| But also, like, here's how fucked up I am because of your podcast. | ||
| People around me are like, aren't they friends? | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I'm like, actually, let me tell you about me. | |
| These are people who are like in the war shirts. | ||
| Let's get real specific. | ||
| No, no, no, no. | ||
| Let me explain to you where everybody in Star Trek stands in relation to each other in the UN, okay? | ||
| I know you think you're a fan, but listen. | ||
| That is very funny. | ||
| And then it gets back to the false reality thing. | ||
| That's what I keep coming back to. | ||
| With your story, I keep finding so many different moments where the people who are being honest, like Alex Nelson, I think, is the one in your most recent piece who's like, hey, yeah, I know Biden won. | ||
| I still think we should have done January 6th because fuck those people, you know, like that kind of thing, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| To me, when I hear that, what fascinates me is that you would not have gotten a... | ||
| You would not have had January 6th if you hadn't lied people into it. | ||
| Do you know what I mean? | ||
| Like, you could not have convinced even these idiots straight up just like, hey, fuck it, let's overthrow the government. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| They had to make up a fun little story about that. | ||
| And I feel like that same kindred issue there for you with libertarianism. | ||
| They just keep making up all this bullshit and expecting us to cram it down our throats. | ||
| Does that track? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, baby. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| So yeah, that's where I'm at there. | ||
| What I'm trying to say is keep at conservatism. | ||
| I think if you keep going... | ||
| You just got to do it until you know the Jews can't really be Americans. | ||
| Right! | ||
|
unidentified
|
You got to know what their loyalties lie. | |
| That one is nuts. | ||
| That's actually another question that I want to go into. | ||
| No, they're Americans. | ||
| They really can be. | ||
| No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. | ||
| Completely unrelated. | ||
| Completely unrelated. | ||
| I meant my question was, how much of all of this shit, you've spent time in these spaces, how much of this is just shit talk? | ||
| How much of this is dudes trying to impress other dudes in a jerk circle that never ends? | ||
| Here's what I think happened. | ||
| I don't know what I think happened with Trump. | ||
| As I think about the Trump campaign, I mean, not the official campaign, but the way it played out, especially on the internet. | ||
| Let's say you don't like Jewish people, and let's say you're racist. | ||
| I think the edgelord meme warfare thing created a culture where instead of just passively Being just trustful of Jewish people or passively, like, avoiding Black people or just maybe not even really knowing anything. | ||
| These things became fixtures in the front of people's minds in a way that, you know, maybe it wouldn't have otherwise. | ||
| And so I'm not saying it's, like, fine to be passively racist, but, you know, there's a difference between being passively racist and being obsessively fixated on something. | ||
| Which is what happened, I think, for a lot of people. | ||
| And so I think maybe some of these people don't even really know the answer to that question themselves. | ||
| I think that it's now just become a cultural and social thing to be this edgelord caricature of a person. | ||
| And I don't know that people really know where their identities begin and end anymore. | ||
| I mean, it's obviously for the more extreme elements, like not for regular people or whatever. | ||
| And I think as you look at people who are walking away from the Trump movement, you kind of see that. | ||
| And it's like, I mean, I don't really deal with people who are reformed or reforming. | ||
| That's not really my lane. | ||
| I don't really, like, I don't want to say I don't care, but like, I just, I don't care to deal with it. | ||
| I don't care to make assessments. | ||
| I don't care to assist people. | ||
| It's not your job. | ||
| Yeah, not my job. | ||
| Somebody else's job. | ||
| Not my job. | ||
| My sister is a special ed elementary school teacher, so she got 100% of the patience between us, you know? | ||
| Like, she's a very kind and patient, and I'm like, ugh, shut up, I don't give a fuck, you know? | ||
| Perfect. | ||
| Like, so I don't have the personality for it. | ||
| But I do interact with these people sometimes, and I do see people, like, trying to understand, like... | ||
| How do I really feel about things? | ||
| You have to deprogram and separate yourself. | ||
| And so I think it's both. | ||
| I think there are people who are very interested in the idea of an ethnicity and would actually like to work to make it happen. | ||
| I think there are other people who would have, in a different situation, just continued to be passively racist until they died, but who got whipped up into the idea of it and became something else. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| If it weren't for this asshole, I would have run a store and I've kind of been an asshole to people and no one could ever have truly proven that I was racist. | ||
| But thanks to this guy, now I'm all out over the place throwing my business around, right? | ||
| Yeah, now I'm an American Renaissance and I'm writing hateful screens that are getting shared around. | ||
| I'm a thought leader now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was so close. | |
| I could have just been a guy and now I'm a massive internet racist. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, I think that happened fairly often. | ||
| I do think, I'm going to be clear, I was like, I am not so dedicated to the craft, but I'm going to be hooking up with a fascist. | ||
| So I did have to find, like, Nelson was way more interested in being racist than cocaine and sex with random people, right? | ||
| Which, you know... | ||
| That's a really good point to bring up. | ||
| There is a selection bias based around people who are racist enough to get over the fact that they are not horny right now. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, truly. | ||
| I mean, a lot of this culture, I turned out a lot of coke and I turned out a lot of ecstasy, you know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wise move. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And so, you know, I don't know. | ||
| I feel like, you know, I think if maybe some people are really into the partying aspect of the culture, too. | ||
| And so it is just also more shit talk for them. | ||
| But there are certainly people who are dedicated to it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, since you were undercover in it, when you're talking about, you know, like, how do people keep their identity together? | ||
| And maybe they don't really know where theirs is. | ||
| How did you maintain yours? | ||
| I mean, obviously not doing coke and ecstasy helps a great deal in maintaining one's sense of self. | ||
| Naturally. | ||
| But how did you maintain kind of your concept of I am Amanda, despite the fact that you gave your fake persona Amanda's name? | ||
| My advice? | ||
| Don't do that. | ||
| But continue. | ||
| Oh, I knew I would not respond to a fake name. | ||
| I know who I am. | ||
| I know. | ||
| It would be like, Heather, Heather, Heather. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I'd be like, who the fuck is Heather? | |
| That's secretly why Craig Robinson is named Craig in everything he's in. | ||
| Yeah, you know, I just, that's what I really thought about. | ||
| I mean, it would get kind of weird, like, if I met new people in my real life, I'd have to, like... | ||
| Switch gears. | ||
| Not to not be racist, but I use my mother's maiden name, which is Willie. | ||
| I didn't mean to say that to you. | ||
| You're a regular person. | ||
| You're just a normal. | ||
| I'm undercover. | ||
| I apologize. | ||
| I gotta explain the whole thing. | ||
| You would have to explain the whole thing if you broke one time. | ||
| Yeah, so that never happened. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But I would be like, oh, like... | |
| My name is Amanda Lily. | ||
| I mean, no, it's more. | ||
| You know, like, just smaller stuff. | ||
| But I will say, maybe this is, like, some weird trauma response to, like, participating in a lunatic religion. | ||
| You know, I really didn't find it very hard. | ||
| It's like, I went to this stuff, and then I came back. | ||
| I was like, okay, let's go out drinking. | ||
| Let's drink. | ||
| When COVID was in, like, full, full swing, let's sit in the park and have a drink. | ||
| We gotta go. | ||
| That's, like, the first day that it's, you know, after that, it's kind of fine. | ||
| I mean, I was also pretty fortunate in that, like, I had friends who were interested in this kind of stuff, and I had friends who were reporters, and so I would call, and I could decompress with a journalist covering, you know, this kind of stuff for, like, an hour, instead of having to, like, start from zero and explain to somebody, like, okay, this is what a problem boy is, you know? | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| So I was very fortunate in that regard. | ||
| But, yeah, you know, I just... | ||
| I just was able to do it. | ||
| I'm very good at compartmentalizing. | ||
| Do you find any part of that snuck its way that's unexamined? | ||
| Do you ever find that world coming through? | ||
| I picked up a lot of the slang for sure. | ||
| Be careful the mask you wear kind of idea. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I really think it was, like, slang, which is probably, I mean, I would say it's probably fine, because it's, like, leftist internet culture has often adopted right-wing, like, you know, manner of speaking, you know? | ||
| And so that's kind of, like, whatever. | ||
| Yeah, not so much. | ||
| Not really. | ||
| I mean, because if I was gonna... | ||
| I had an opportunity to believe all of this stuff growing up. | ||
| You know, I was... | ||
| An active decision to not participate in this world. | ||
| I feel like once you make that active decision, it's like a vaccine. | ||
| It's like an immunization. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| That makes sense. | ||
| When did you make that the first time? | ||
| Oh, God. | ||
| I was like, religion is probably not so great. | ||
| I was like 17. Pretty early. | ||
| Yeah, I think it probably took like five years for me to be like, I'm not religious at all, but yeah. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Well, I went to Baptist school until high school, and it was just like, you know, dumb shit. | ||
| I'm not... | ||
| This isn't an interrogation. | ||
| I'm not trying to... | ||
| I don't need a good answer. | ||
| I'm just interested. | ||
| No, I mean, like, actual dumb shit, where it's like, you know, you're like, okay, well, if everything in the Bible is right, then why was Paul, like, don't have sex, but if you have to have sex, get married, because the end of days is coming. | ||
| And it's like, if nobody can answer that for you when you're, like, 11... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, it kind of messes with your faith. | ||
| It doesn't need to be a big dramatic thing. | ||
| It doesn't need to be a giant, like, arguing with, you know, God in a tornado. | ||
| You can just be like, nah, I'm out. | ||
| Yeah, like this is making less and less sense. | ||
| The rules are weird. | ||
| You know, like I had a teacher who'd be like, you know, they would like really, like, I liked Buffy the Vampire Slayer. | ||
| The rules are weird. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The rules are weird. | |
| We had a whole chapel session about... | ||
| We had a whole temple session about how Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a demonic show. | ||
| And I'm like, this is about me. | ||
| Just say it's about Amanda. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is a personal message from God, I guess. | |
| And it's just stuff like that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm like 12. What are you doing? | |
| Don't do this. | ||
| When I was around that age... | ||
| That was when the very first Harry Potter came out. | ||
| And the collection of elderly women in my church gave me, 12, 13-year-old Jordan, this book being like, can you read this to make sure that it's not demonic? | ||
| You know, like in case our children read it, can you make sure? | ||
| Oh, you almost all! | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen, I have to say... | ||
| I almost elicited a full spit take. | ||
| We've all missed out on a full-on spit take. | ||
| It is a disaster that I will regret for the rest of my life. | ||
| You kept it in! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why would they tell a 12-year-old to be the Anubis? | |
| I don't know! | ||
| Demonic books. | ||
| Because I was the one who would know. | ||
| I swear to you, I have no idea. | ||
| There's no reasonable explanation and no answer anyone has ever given me actually makes sense. | ||
| This might be demonic. | ||
| Anyway, you're 12 now. | ||
| I mean, right? | ||
| If it is, what am I? | ||
| Do I have some sort of power to bulwark myself against it? | ||
| If it is demonic, what am I going to tell you the truth? | ||
| Well, no, because you're possessed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I would be possessed! | |
| Yeah. | ||
| What, did you read it? | ||
| Did you tell them? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Did you tell them how bad it was? | |
| I read them all. | ||
| I'll tell you what. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think they were right. | |
| In retrospect, hindsight being 20-20, look where we are now. | ||
| Moth is a real bitch. | ||
| I mean, I'm gonna be honest, it makes me a little bit frustrated to think that if those ladies had kept everybody from reading Harry Potter, we would all be better off! | ||
| If only they had given it to a 13-year-old, something more reasonable, I'm sure. | ||
| I know, it was probably my fault to be honest. | ||
| So then, I mean, I want to ask you, because your work is continuing, you're obviously not done writing, or, you know, you're done going undercover in very specific places, I assume, right? | ||
| I'm done undercover completely, but I'm not done writing about Gavin Wax, much to his testimony. | ||
| Fucking give him a better name. | ||
| Tell him to change his name. | ||
| Tell him Jordan Holmes of the podcast Knowledge Fight says he needs to get his shit together and change his name. | ||
| Well, people in his circle, some of his friends were recently on InfoWars, Extended Universe. | ||
| So our worlds are colliding. | ||
| Every time it happens, I message Dan. | ||
| I'm like, what the fuck is this? | ||
| And he's like, I don't speak for Owen Troyer. | ||
| Harrison. | ||
| I don't speak for Harrison. | ||
| I'm like, you should. | ||
| You should speak for him because I don't like this. | ||
| I speak for no man but myself. | ||
| So yeah, so what's, like, how do you move forward from here? | ||
| So, I mean, the thing is, I somehow stumbled upon some of the most disliked men, maybe in America, when I was undercover. | ||
| And... | ||
| I'm like an ambulance chaser. | ||
| Gavin Wax will have these big public fights with people who have been his close friends for years. | ||
| And I'll have them on Twitter. | ||
| He'll quote tweet them and bully them. | ||
| And I'm like, hi, my name is Amanda. | ||
| We don't have much in common. | ||
| Except we do have one interest that we share, and that's Gavin Wax. | ||
| I would love to talk to you about it. | ||
| I know, so I guess I'm writing a profile about Gavin Wax. | ||
| Have you been hurt by Gavin Wax? | ||
| Please call 1-88-501-5555. | ||
| If you've been hurt by Gavin, we'll take care of you today! | ||
| It is like, literally, people are like, yeah, as soon as we had that fight, I knew you would message me. | ||
| Because I don't tag him or anything when I'm doing it. | ||
| Everybody who's in the tweet thread gets a notification. | ||
| I don't give a shit. | ||
| Because when it's your turn, you need to know that I'm going to be there for you, too. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And so, you know, I guess I got him in this group that I was hanging around, and that's kind of like my next journalistic journey, I think. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Just an oral history of Gavin Waxby and a piece of shit. | ||
| Man, it has to be like a condensed version. | ||
| Because everybody's going to squeeze. | ||
| No, you can make it. | ||
| I mean, Game of Thrones lasted for a lot of seasons. | ||
| You can keep on rolling it. | ||
| It doesn't have to be good all the time. | ||
| Just enough. | ||
| Just enough. | ||
| Just enough to string people along. | ||
| So, I mean, I feel like the place that I want to kind of close things up with is... | ||
| For most of us, we've never been inside of those, like, it's just us conversations. | ||
| And so our perception of this faction of the far right will always be tempered by what it is that we can see and who shows us what from what points of view, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so it's very hard to just kind of like, oh, here's what they're going to do, because I don't really know. | ||
| I don't really know. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| From talking to them, do you kind of have an idea of, are we descending further into fascism? | ||
| Are we going to try and overthrow the country again? | ||
| Or is there another trick? | ||
| Should I be wearing different clothes? | ||
| What are they doing next? | ||
| That's what I need to know. | ||
| Well, they're still really afraid of gathering. | ||
| They're really afraid of federal informants. | ||
| Everything glows, and that is beautiful. | ||
| I love that. | ||
| Patriot Front is a real organization. | ||
| Patriot Front is not a group of federal informants. | ||
| And yet, people cannot stop saying Patriot Front is just federal informants. | ||
| And it's crazy, because actually, when you're inside the organization, they're worried about federal informants all of the time, because they are not federal informants. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And so you've got these internal struggles where they're so afraid. | ||
| They're so afraid to have a rally. | ||
| And that's great, because as long as they're physically distanced from each other, after the election, I don't know what will happen. | ||
| I think nobody knows what will happen. | ||
| I think they don't know. | ||
| I assume Trump will be the nominee. | ||
| And I assume that he will lose. | ||
| And I did not think he could lose in 2016. | ||
| I knew he would win. | ||
| I knew he would win from the minute he came out of the escalator. | ||
| Well, that's our next president. | ||
| Yeah, it was fun. | ||
| So I was a Chicago comedian at the time. | ||
| And I want to say it was Fritz. | ||
| I want to say it was Jim Fritz. | ||
| But he tweeted something out like, any comic who's worked the road in the Midwest knew Trump was going to be our president. | ||
| And that like touched a... | ||
| But yeah, of course we all did. | ||
| We all saw it coming, you know? | ||
| Yeah, I did. | ||
| From 2013 to 2015. | ||
| I did the launch of the redesign of Chevy Silverado. | ||
| So I worked mostly farm shows across the country for two years. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I was surprised. | |
| I mean, also my family. | ||
| I've met my family before. | ||
| But I have a memory of me in North Carolina. | ||
| Now we're talking some interesting stuff. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| You're doing farm shows for two years. | ||
| Tell me more about this. | ||
| Well, I remember being in North Carolina in 2013 during a furlough, and I remember some guy getting in my car, my truck, we were talking. | ||
| He'll just talk about whatever with you. | ||
| And he was like, at the time, the farm bill, the corn bill was up, like the farm, whatever, so they could just get their free corn money. | ||
| And he's like, you know, this furlough, I'm really glad it's happening. | ||
| These Blacks, these Welfare Queens, you know, it's time that we, like, really restructure this. | ||
| But I really miss that corn shack. | ||
| And I'm like, my brother, guess who the Welfare Queen is? | ||
| That's you! | ||
| That's you! | ||
| But, like, you're coming down that escalator. | ||
| It sounded like my grandparents on my mom's side. | ||
| I mean, it's like so many people that I met when I was, like, talking about these trucks. | ||
| I'm like, You know, yeah, so I know. | ||
| But I think Malch will be the nominee. | ||
| I think there's a good chance he'll lose. | ||
| I think his health is degrading, and I think more people are disgusted with him that voted for him in 2016, and even 2020 that might not vote for him now. | ||
| January 6th did have an impact on some people. | ||
| But, you know, I think they're going to have a struggle. | ||
| The Republicans in general are going to have a struggle because... | ||
| How long can you entertain somebody like Carrie Lake who is living on Mars? | ||
| That's a really good question that we haven't found the answer to yet, and I feel like we should have a long time ago. | ||
| Yeah, I feel the same way. | ||
| Do you think there's a difference in a campaign like 2016 where you didn't have a Carrie Lake, you didn't have QAnon? | ||
| And in 2020, you've got QAnon. | ||
| But even then, oh, Trump's a time traveler is like a real obscure sect of QAnon. | ||
| And I think now at this point, many people who are, I mean, many people recognize my photo with Vincent Fusco, who is famously actually JFK Jr. | ||
| People who I would not have expected to recognize a fake JFK Jr. recognize it. | ||
| So I think like, just the... | ||
| What a weird celebrity! | ||
| What a weird celebrity! | ||
| The craziest parts of MAGA-ism have become more known. | ||
| And I think it makes it more embarrassing for people to be involved with it. | ||
| And so I don't know. | ||
| I think they're having a hard time. | ||
| Poor guys. | ||
| Poor MAGA people. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, I mean, that's a good question. | ||
| Because we don't really know. | ||
| And, you know, it's really only happening to a few thousand people, right? | ||
| So you don't have a personal connection to it. | ||
| But I know that people who were at January 6th are getting sentences. | ||
| I know people are getting jail time. | ||
| I know, you know, Stuart Rhodes is in jail, right? | ||
| I don't know exactly what that means for the people who are in the larger movement, you know? | ||
| Is it really that? | ||
| Is it a huge dent? | ||
| That a thousand people are... | ||
| Do you know what I mean? | ||
| So if you're telling me that, yes, that makes everybody afraid, that's very good news. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, they really are afraid to gather. | ||
| I went to a rally in September 2021 here in D.C. And it was very... | ||
| I mean, it was... | ||
| People were saying, don't go. | ||
| It glows. | ||
| It was much smaller than they intended for it to be. | ||
| There was a heavy, heavy, heavy police presence. | ||
| You know, I... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| They're not getting together like they used to. | ||
| And also, shit's back open again. | ||
| Do you want to come here? | ||
| Do you want to come to D.C. and march around? | ||
| Or do you want to maybe go to, I don't know, Disney World with your kids? | ||
| You want to go to Disney. | ||
| You don't want to stand in front of Biden's White House or cry. | ||
| I think it's lost its luster. | ||
| When that might change, when Trump loses the presidency, it might become more exciting to come here and bitch. | ||
| I think it is one of the most reinforcing, like, results for my belief that if politics is boring, everybody's better off. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| You know, the more you're like, okay, here's our big argument. | ||
| I believe in a 4.125% progressive tax on imports above this, you know, like, yeah, cool, your government, have fun. | ||
| I don't want anybody like, this person should live or die. | ||
| No! | ||
| No! | ||
| Stay away! | ||
| I don't see anybody having a coup for putting fingers wrong. | ||
| I just don't think he has the riz to make people want to do that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, it is the question of how much of January 6th is just a really good story. | ||
| Took people by storm. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| I mean, I think a lot of people, a lot of people were not necessarily prepared to storm the Capitol. | ||
| I mean, when Trump told us to go to the Capitol, I was standing by the, that's the cloud, that's the big pencil, the monument, Washington Monument. | ||
|
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And you can look to your right and there's the Capitol. | |
| It's a mile down the road, but you can see it. | ||
| People around me are like, where's the capital? | ||
| I'm like, oh. | ||
| It's right there. | ||
| You didn't see it with your eyes. | ||
| Like those people, I mean, there were maps online. | ||
| Some of those people, they had not printed out the map. | ||
| They were not familiar with the coordinates of the city. | ||
| Tactically, this is where, you know, a lot of the people were just there. | ||
| I never got to take a field trip to D.C., so I wouldn't know where the fucking capital was. | ||
| I don't judge them for that. | ||
| You should have been on January 6th. | ||
|
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Without those people, without that kind of person... | |
| You're right! | ||
|
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You could have also met Alex Jones. | |
| Without those people who are just like, well, whatever, let's do... | ||
| You need that, because without them, there's not enough bodies to have a coup. | ||
| And those people are afraid now. | ||
| Those people are largely afraid of gathering. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| If you could, please tell everybody where to find you, where to follow your work, where to... | ||
| You know, just support you. | ||
| Yeah, so I'm on all the platforms. | ||
| There's NoTurtleSoup17. | ||
| Twitter mostly, but I've got Instagram and BlueSky and Mastodon and Facebook and, I don't know, Tumblr, I think, TikTok. | ||
| And then I have a Substack, which is also NoTurtleSoup17 at Substack. | ||
|
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That's where I am. | |
| Well, thank you so much, and I hope everything for the future goes just swimmingly. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Oh, and then I guess... | ||
| Oh, there's more! | ||
| Yeah, this is coming out. | ||
| This is coming out, what, the 25th? | ||
| So I guess next week I'll have a follow-up to my recommendation that'll be out because of Gavin Wax. | ||
| Screaming at me in person when the article drops. | ||
| I went a little write-up about that, so I'll be in The Nation, too. | ||
| Nice! | ||
| Well, that's awesome! | ||
| Everybody will be looking forward to that. | ||
| Knock at him. | ||
| Probably not. | ||
| But I still don't think he's real, so we'll see how that goes. | ||
|
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Alrighty. | |
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Take care. | ||
|
unidentified
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Take care. | |
| Andy in Kansas, you're on the air. | ||
|
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Thanks for holding. | |
| Hello, Alex. | ||
| I'm a first-time caller. | ||
| I'm a huge fan. | ||
| I love your work. |
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