Episode 190: Idaho's Far Right Insurgency Groyper Edition feat Christopher Mathias
Idaho was once home to the headquarters of the Aryan Nations. Recently it has seen extremism creep into political power at local and statewide levels. Emboldened extremists are working to squeeze out Republicans who aren’t far right enough. Our guest is reporter Christopher Mathias of the Huffington Post. He recently spent a week traveling across Idaho and wrote about what he learned for the article “Living With the Far-Right Insurgency in Idaho.”
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Episode music by ENOFA. Editing by Corey Klotz.
Welcome, listener, to Chapter 190 of the QAnon Anonymous podcast, the Idaho far-right insurgency episode.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Brogatansky, Julian Fields, and Travis View.
Breaking news!
Audience reacts to new Travis View podcast series with horror.
The author of Trickle Down is here with us to respond to certain allegations that have been made online.
Welcome to the Field News Network.
Thank you for having me on and sort of responding to this controversy.
I'm on the verge of being canceled because of the response to this podcast.
Yeah, that's fine.
We've been covering the Kate Awakening Patel Patriot defamation trial every day for about 12 to 13 hours a day, but we made some time to talk to you about how some people are reacting to what you've put out there.
Sure, sure.
What have you got for me, Julian?
So here we go.
I put it on when I was trying to take a relaxing bath, LMAO.
Then was immediately like, nope, nope, nope.
Not today, Travis Few.
Well, that's not really a rigging endorsement.
I'm sure you bring it up.
It's like, well, it's a reaction.
I'll give him that.
So, I mean, Gideon, could you explain why you might have achieved such a, I would say, refined and amazing body horror in this episode where you decided to really put people in the body?
Yeah, yeah.
This most recent episode I felt was really fascinating.
It's about the 1918 pandemic, a horrible influenza pandemic that spread all over the world.
But really, I focused more on how it was forgotten by history and how it was a result of this really bumbling response from medical officers during World War I. And yeah, I had to talk about how the influenza created, you know, led to pneumonia and these other secondary infections that led to people dying in horrible ways, because I wanted to emphasize exactly how horrible this event was.
And how absurd it was that a generation of historians just forgot about it because it was, it was awkward and inconvenient for the war effort.
Well, the audience is really reacting to this.
And here is from somebody who has opted to pay $5 a month.
As you know, if you do that, you go sign up on patreon.com slash cumin on anonymous, you can get a premium episode every week.
plus access to these ongoing series.
There's 10 episodes of "Trickle Down."
We have another series down the pipeline with me and Annie called "Man Clan."
Very excited to share more about that soon.
And so they're paying this money.
They're getting access to our whole repertoire of past "Premium" episodes.
There's like over 160, 170.
It's just a crazy amount at this point.
And so here is one of these people reacting.
"I am grocery shopping and have almost vomited "three times in my mask.
"Thanks, Travis."
Well, yeah, that's the reaction.
While you're around all this food and making your grocery list for the week, why don't you feel a little nauseated?
You know, it's a money saver, because all that food looks a little less appetizing.
So what are we covering next?
And how are we going to, you know, lose audiences?
Next, I'm going to cover a really fascinating thing.
I've been researching.
This is something that's a little bit more contemporary.
I was really fascinated by the color-coded Homeland Security System, which was kind of short-lived.
It started in 2002, famously.
It had various terror alert levels, the lowest you went from green all the way to red.
And it lasted just from 2002 to 2011, before they finally realized it was a bad idea and wanted to go away.
I need to go away.
And I was always fascinated by that.
And something I remember, you know, from my 20s, and it always felt absurd, because it was treating terror like it was a weather forecast, you know?
And I wonder, it was like, how did this happen?
How did this, who thought this was a good idea?
And how did we get to a point where, like, you know, the government sort of telling the populace, Turning the knob on the fear machine and watching the audience to see how much money they pump into the military-industrial complex.
Exactly, exactly.
or going back down to yellow level of freight.
Turning the knob on the fear machine and watching the audience to see how much money they pump into the military-industrial
complex.
Exactly, exactly. So I was really, it's one of those panic sort of things that the government did in the wake of the 9/11
attacks.
And when I traced it back, I realized that it traces back to this Cold War, basically, communication policy, all the
way back to Eisenhower.
And there was this project called Project Kandor.
And basically, the Eisenhower administration felt that they need to communicate the existential threat.
That was posed by nuclear weapons in the new nuclear age.
And all of a sudden, national security was like everyone's business.
And so in order to really understand how we got this weird, ineffective terror alert system, we had to go all the way back to the 50s to understand how the government started communicating basically the nuclear threat.
Before it was the terrorist threat.
So yeah, that's what I'm talking about for the next couple of episodes about the way in which it became the the business of the government to let the populace know how afraid they ought to be based upon, you know, the threats that are there existing around the world, which is, you know, a fairly fairly new thing.
Well, that's all the time we have on the Field News Network.
We've been renting out space from the QAA Podcast, so I guess we should let them get back to business.
Thanks, Travis.
It's my pleasure.
Idaho is blessed with many natural wonders.
The lush Sawtooth Mountains, a solidified volcanic sea, the powerful Snake River, which carved out majestic canyons and gorges in the southern region of the state.
Unfortunately, the abundant land and supermajority white population has historically made the state attractive to white supremacist organizations.
That state, which was once the home to the headquarters of the Aryan nations, has recently seen extremism creep into political power at a local and statewide level.
Emboldened extremists are working to squeeze out Republicans who just aren't far right enough for them.
To discuss this, we're joined by reporter Christopher Matias of the Huffington Post.
He recently spent a week traveling across Idaho, speaking with Democrats and moderate Republicans who are alarmed by what's happening to their state.
He wrote about what he learned for the article, Living with the Far-Right Insurgency in Idaho.
So yeah, thanks so much for coming on, Christopher.
Oh, thanks so much for having me.
It's an honor.
Now, before we get into your reporting, by the way, fascinating article.
I recommend everyone check it out.
I was wondering if you could help us get some like historical context.
You wrote that right-wing extremists have long been attracted to Idaho.
So can you talk about like why that is and how that manifested?
Right, yeah.
So there have been these kind of overlapping movements over the last few decades to kind of set up like a conservative utopia in the Northwest.
So you have like the American Redoubt movement, which is kind of this very conservative, Christian, libertarian idea of setting up this area out of reach of the federal government in Idaho and eastern Washington, eastern Oregon, Wyoming, Montana.
And then you also have something that was called the Northwest Imperative, which was a more explicitly white supremacist idea of doing the same thing, of going to the Northwest and setting up this kind of, you know, white nationalist ethnostate that is out of reach of the government.
And, you know, with the idea of setting up like essentially an ethnostate, like, you know, Very much the meaning of white nationalism and basically what that has meant is, and by the way, there are some historical origins in this, right?
Like, you know, this owes a lot to the fact of how remote this region is and how like geographically isolated it is from the federal government in a lot of ways.
And kind of its history as like a frontier area.
And also, you know, I think a lot of people forget that A state like Oregon, for example, was by law whites only
for a very long time.
And they had "whites only" signs in stores during Jim Crow, just like the South did.
At any rate, so what that has meant is there's been over the years a lot of high profile
instances of white supremacist groups going there and white supremacist figures going
there and setting up shop.
And like you mentioned in the intro, one of the biggest examples was the Aryan Nations,
which had this kind of sprawling 20-acre compound in Coeur d'Alene, which is in northern Idaho.
And it basically terrorized the community for years and years and years.
And this was not all that long ago.
This was in the 90s up until the early 2000s and the 80s.
And the Aryan Nations were like much more explicitly like neo-Nazi and there are a lot of them there
and they like really terrorize the community.
I talked to a guy in Coeur d'Alene named Sean Keenan, who's like a local progressive activist
and his aunt and cousin who are Native American were driving past the compound one day
and their car backfired and Aryan Nations, you know, in quotes security guards attacked them
and opened fire on them and then viciously beat them.
Um, and that led to this famous Southern Poverty Law Center lawsuit, which eventually bankrupted the Aryan Nations and now their compound is in ruins.
But there's been some other high profile cases like that, like famously the Ruby Ridge standoff, which is, you know, such an important moment in the American far right, which is, you know, galvanized so much of the far right for so long, which was Randy Weaver, who actually just died recently.
who was a white supremacist and had a house in the woods and authorities tried to show up and arrest him on some gun charges and ended up being like a days-long standoff and the feds ended up killing his wife and child during the standoff and it basically made him into a martyr and or not a martyr but like a hero in the far-right movement and yeah so Yeah, I feel like I'm babbling now, but there's a long history of this stuff in Idaho and the greater Northwest.
And you mentioned in the article, although some people, some natives of the state say that there was, once upon a time, there was Republicans and Democrats sort of like were united in their belief that the presence of, for example, the Aryan Nation compound was a bad thing.
Is that right?
Yeah, so like I was saying when I was talking to Sean Keenan, the progressive activist in Coeur d'Alene, he mentioned remembering there being like some bipartisan cooperation to beat back the Aryan Nations.
So for example, Aryan Nations would try to hold these big parades through town and basically all the business owners in town and both parties would kind of work To manage that.
And what they would do is, you know, they would essentially close down all the businesses and just tell everyone not to show up, basically not to give it oxygen.
And, you know, you can say what you want about that as a strategy for Nazis coming to town.
But it was an example of, you know, people from both sides of the political aisle kind of coming together to at least have a strategy against Nazis coming to town.
And, you know, when I was talking to Sean Keenan about and I think what is so scary and is really You know, says a lot about what has happened to the far right over the last couple of decades is that now you have local Republicans openly working with and endorsing white supremacists, which I can get into now if you want.
Yeah, well first I want to talk about, in the article you talk about the white nationalist activist and podcaster Vincent James Fox, who recently moved to Idaho from California, and in February he openly laid out the plan to take over the state with his fellow travelers.
I have a clip of him talking about that.
Here's the solution, right?
The solution is local politics.
Amassing power in these pockets of the country until it's time to unify.
Amassing power.
Not growing quickly.
One organization, you know, one organization that has top-down, registered, categorized leadership, but amassing power in certain pockets, with movements like decentralized movements like America First, pushing gripers into positions, running for office.
I mean, I've been on here for a couple of months, and I'm tapped into the way that I am.
You can do it, too.
Just get involved.
Go to your local GOP meetings.
Push these people further right.
Push them.
And if they don't push, if they don't budge, then replace them.
Period.
Point blank.
Run yourself, run one of your friends, support, volunteer for campaigns, go to your local GOP meetings and start meeting people and talking to people.
That's the solution.
So can you talk a bit about Vincent James Fox and why he's so interested in Idaho?
Yeah, so Vincent James Fox is not from Idaho, he's from California, but he moved there back in November.
And he did so because Vincent James Fox is very close to a guy named Dave Riley.
But first, for a quick background on Vincent James Fox, he has been a big name in white supremacist circles for a while now.
He was a propagandist for the Rise Above movement, which is like kind of this violent fascist
gang, fight club that was involved in Charlottesville.
And then he launched this like alt-right media collective known as Red Elephants.
And now he's been very mixed up with the Groypers, with Nick Fuentes and the Groypers.
At any rate, he has a friend named Dave Riley, who is from Pennsylvania, but basically kind
of got ran out of town in Pennsylvania for He worked at his dad's radio station in Bloomsburg, but then it emerged that he was very, very involved in Charlottesville in 2017, in the Nazi rally there.
And then eventually, he made his way to Idaho.
And I think that's why Vincent James Fox Move there.
And it's because last year, Dave Riley decided to run for school board in Post Falls, which is in Kootenai County in northern Idaho.
His history of anti-Semitism, he said that, you know, Jews, every Jew is dangerous.
I mean, just like the most vile shit ever.
Dave Riley has said, like literally a guy that was marching in Charlottesville, like connected to the worst people in the country.
And the local Republican committee Endorsed him.
And you could say, right, like, oh, maybe they just didn't know who he was.
But, you know, there was like national media uproar over Dave Riley getting this endorsement.
And then when you press the Kootenai County Republican Committee about it, they doubled down and they said, no, we think he's going to make a good school board trustee.
So he ran in the election and he narrowly lost.
He got 47 percent of the vote.
I think he lost by like 130 votes or something.
Um, so, you know, not bad though for a guy who was like literally filming the Tiki Torch March for the Nazis at Charlottesville.
Um, which I think is what inspired Vincent James Fox to go join his buddy.
And there's a lot of other kind of alt-right figures in that area as well that I'm sure they all have like gross barbecues together and shit.
Right.
And if you add, you know, a couple years of, you know, COVID oppression and and all the things that have even just been cooking up, I would say in the last year, you know, that 47 percent or whatever it was, you know, could easily tip.
Yeah, totally.
I mean, I think we'll get into this, you know, as we go on.
But, you know, that clip you played about like amassing local power like this, you know, on its face, it's kind of innocuous.
And I think we were talking about this before we got on, like, You know, it's something that liberals say all the time, you know, like, act locally, think globally.
I forget which one of you mentioned that, but it's innocuous on its face.
But when you start to look at, you know, who's doing this and how they're doing it, it gets really disturbing and could be a very effective strategy for the far right to gain power.
Yeah, you mentioned a lot in this piece.
You mentioned them, the Cooney County Republican Central Committee.
So they seem to have like a really central role in this sort of this, this lurch rightward.
Yeah, so they, Kootenai County is where Coeur d'Alene is and it's, you know, kind of directly east of Spokane, Washington.
It's very beautiful.
Your description up front about Idaho was very true.
It's just one of the most beautiful places ever.
It's also where, oddly enough, where a lot of millionaires and rich people from Silicon Valley are buying up property.
And it's one of the fastest growing regions in the entire country and in the state.
Idaho is the fastest growing state in the country.
At any rate, though, the CUNY County Central Republican Committee has consolidated power and basically kicked out anybody that doesn't align with extremely far right views on things.
And they, you know, have basically, if you like, if you aren't almost a white nationalist, then you are a rhino, like a Republican in name only.
You know, I talked to people that voted for Trump in 2020 who were nevertheless called rhinos or even worse,
like liberals or communists just for not agreeing with the tactics and strategy of the
Kootenai County Central Republican Committee. And it's made politics on the ground there very,
very ugly.
So you would say that being a Trump supporter solely is not enough?
No, no. And that's I think that's what the kind of the scary development is here.
These guys will still support Trump in the elections.
They like Trump.
They want Trump.
But that's not enough.
You can't just support Trump and be in their good graces.
They've done a really good, effective job at staking out these far-right positions, and then if you don't meet them, then you're a rhino and you're exiled and you're cast out.
You know, what that's had the effect of doing is really thrown the Overton window wide open.
And it's, you know, they've taken a lot of people into their coalition who, you know, maybe five or ten years ago wouldn't have been allowed.
You know, as you discuss in the piece, it's not just like local organizations or local officials who are really friendly with extremists.
Even high level state officials in Ohio are, you know, rubbing shoulders with, you know, out and out white nationalists.
Most notably, the Lieutenant Governor Janice McGeehan.
So she appeared at AFPAC, the extremist-friendly version of CPAC, which includes white nationalist Dick Fuentes among the speakers.
Here's what she said to the attendees of AFPAC.
I need freedom fighters all over this country that are willing to stand up and fight for the protection of our freedoms and liberties, even when that means fighting amongst our own ranks, because there are too many Republicans.
Okay, this is an alien pretending to be human.
It's either that or she is being held somewhere and forced to make these videos.
You can hear the buzzing of, like, the fluorescent lights above her, like, and this is their official video?
Well, and I think, I could be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure when they played the video at AfPak,
you can see them, something like the camera falls over or they're practicing.
Like they didn't edit it correctly.
Like yeah, she has such a strange speaking style, like kind of a vacant expression.
This is act two in Mars Attacks when everybody's TVs kind of go fuzzy
and then all of a sudden, one of the Martians appears like in a human costume,
like, you know, with a message of peace.
(laughing)
That's exactly what it is.
Yes.
So McGeehan was later confronted by the local news station KTVB about her appearance at AFPAC, which led to an awkward back and forth between her and the reporter.
Are you familiar with who puts this event on?
Like Nick Fuentes?
I don't know who he is.
I've never met him.
I don't know who he is.
Did you not look into it before you decided to say okay?
Like to find out?
I mean, his name is on it.
Well, you know what?
Nick Fuentes, as I said, I don't know him.
I've never met him.
I don't know what everything that he says or doesn't say does not reflect on who I am or the thousands of others that are participating in this movement.
You didn't bother to look up his name?
I didn't say that.
You did look him up?
That's not the question that you asked.
Did you look up who Nick Fuentes was and what he's talked about?
Like, things he has said?
I have since.
Since last week, not before?
Yes.
Okay.
I guess the question is, because if you've said, well, I'm only here because... Again, it's not fair.
I mean, the mainstream media, you do this to conservatives all the time, but you don't do it to yourself.
That every time, any time there's any kind of affiliation with anybody, at any time, on any stage, that we're all guilty by association.
And it's not appropriate.
Holy shit, she is terrible at this.
She's like a child that was caught, like, vandalizing the school lockers.
Incredible!
I mean, she just has no capacity to go toe-to-toe with anyone.
This is amazing, because I think that we're going to see some really, if we really do have a kind of, if this is the model for the takeover, we're going to have some really interesting television to look forward to.
Yeah, shit's going to get real dumb.
Yeah, some brutal, brutal content.
The content minds will be bare in those days, those dark days ahead.
Also, a quick shout out to KTVB and a lot of local press in Idaho.
They are dealing with so much right now.
And like in that interview you can just hear how patient and calm he is and like impressing her on this.
And it's just like it's such good reporting and they have to deal with some really absurd shit.
So shout out to KTVB and everybody out there.
Yeah.
It's a tough slog waiting through these, uh, you know, these types of interviews.
It's amazing because, like, they clearly did prepare her a little bit, but because the guy uses slightly different words than the person who prepared her, she's like, wait, wait, you're cheating.
Please wait.
Use the script that we used in the, what the hell?
I'm confused.
Yeah.
And then, of course, she goes on a FireAid podcast like two or three weeks later and is much more comfortable and relaxed.
And, you know, basically says that she's not ashamed of going having gone to AFPAC at all and, you know, is just kind of completely unapologetic.
So, yeah.
And that's the second most powerful person in Idaho.
So another major player in Idaho politics is the Idaho Freedom Foundation, which rates politicians according to a scoring system called the Freedom Index.
So how does that work and how are they influencing the state?
Yeah, this was one of the most fascinating parts to me out there.
Basically, the Idaho Freedom Foundation is kind of this dark money organization, extremely far right, is connected to the Kochs and others.
And basically what the Freedom Index is, is the score they've developed.
So they look at every state legislator and look at how they vote on every piece of legislation.
And then they have this kind of far-right scoring system, so from like 1 to 100.
to 100. And there are about 24 or 25 legislators with a score over 75 percent, which to give
you an idea of how extreme they are, you know, at 100 percent at the top of the rating, you
have Heather Scott, who has been involved in two armed conflicts with the federal government,
who is opposed to the Confederate flag, who has defended white nationalism, who organized
mask burning events, who said, like, I think she compared mask mandates to Jews being taken
to concentration camps.
And then let's, if you go all the way down to 74%, 75% on the Freedom Index, you have someone, uh, fuck, I'm blanking on his name right now.
I think it might be Ben Adams.
But do you guys remember that viral clip from a couple months ago?
It's at like a TPUSA, Charlie Kirk rally.
And this guy, it's in Idaho.
And this guy gets up on the microphone and he asks when they can start shooting Democrats.
And this Ben Adams guy, another state house member, You know, wrote on Twitter that this was a fair question.
So you have and that's like the bottom end of the extreme faction.
So you have the way I've kept describing it to people in the way I described in the piece is like a statehouse full of Marjorie Taylor Greene's and Steve King's.
Yeah, that's nuts.
There's also another person you mentioned who is rated very highly in this scoring system named Chad Christensen.
So what's his story?
Yeah.
Chad is out in Eastern Idaho and he literally lists on his official government profile page,
he lists his membership in the Oath Keepers, like the militia group, that whose leaders
have been charged with seditious conspiracy for January 6th.
And he literally lists that on his government website.
He also lists his membership in the John Birch Society on his official Idaho website.
And the John Birch Society, which I'm sure is something you guys have talked about before,
has a real stronghold in Idaho and I think across the West.
But it's, you know, the very conspiratorial anti-communist organization that kind of emerged in the 50s, McCarthy era, and basically sees a secret communist plot everywhere.
So yeah, that's that's Chad Christensen.
He just lists his membership into pretty extreme organizations on his government website.
Yeah.
So it's not enough to just say you're a member of like the NRA anymore.
That's like table stakes.
You need to be a member of like Oath Keepers and John Birchers.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, and this is the pattern everywhere.
So there's like a group there called, actually, so this is something that didn't make it in the story, but I took a personal day in Idaho and went up to Sun Valley and decided to kind of had a when in Rome moment and decided to go get a shooting lesson at a gun range.
And I did it.
And, you know, by the end, the guy, my instructor, asked me what I was doing in town.
And I told him, you know, that I was there writing about the Republican Party and about Janice McGeehan.
And without missing a beat, he goes, Oh, yeah, Janice, she's she's a friend of mine.
I'm a big supporter.
And then he turns out and I think he like delighted in the fact that he was giving like a gun lesson to a liberal or someone from a liberal publication.
Oh, I'm sure.
I'm sure.
What kind of guns you shoot?
I was just shooting a 9mm Glock.
I hadn't shot a gun since I was like 12 or whatever, and I've been meaning to learn something I just want to know how to do.
It was a bit ironic we were shooting a zombie Nazi target, but at any rate... From the popular video game series...
Of which there are four installments.
Okay, yeah, I think that probably was it.
But he brought me back inside and he gave me, he offered to give me a baseball hat for the Second Amendment Gun Alliance, which is a, like, basically the NRA on steroids.
They, like, basically think the NRA are a bunch of cucks.
They, like, you know, it's like a fundamentalist gun rights organization.
And then, like, by the end of our conversation, he was talking to me about how, you know, he was ready to, like, if the feds ever showed up in Idaho to, like, have his sights, like, by gun sights, like, on the feds.
Like, dude's, like, ready for battle.
And works at the gun shop, coincidentally.
Yeah.
But that was your test, of course.
It was like, see the power of the gun?
Now, will he accept the power of the hat?
Yeah, I know.
I did not accept the hat.
But he did, you know, to his credit, he did offer to talk to me for the story, but we kind of, you know, didn't get the opportunity.
But maybe in a follow-up.
All right, well, what can you do?
Let's talk a little bit about the impacts of these extremists gaining power.
So in that piece you write about Dr. Ted Epperle, who is a member of the Central District Health Board in Boise.
Now, as you write, he has a really impressive resume.
He was a physician in the Army for 21 years.
He served in the Gulf War, reached the rank of colonel, also served in the White House as a personal doctor for two U.S.
presidents, and was later himself the president of the American Academy of Family Physicians.
He has testified before Congress 18 times.
He contributed articles to medical journals.
But despite all these credentials, he was ousted from his position by the Atta County Commission.
So what happened there?
What sin did Dr. Epperle commit?
Yeah, so his sin was being a Democrat and believing that COVID is real.
He, like you said, is hilariously qualified.
Like, maybe the most qualified doctor in the country for any position.
But last June, I believe it was last June, he received notice that he would no longer be the physician board member of the Ada County Health Commission.
Which kind of oversees all public health matters for the county and most notably for COVID stuff.
And that was because the county commission got taken over by two Republicans, one of whom was especially far right and I think dragged the other one with him.
But basically they were COVID denialists and they pushed Ted Eberly out and replaced him with a guy named Ryan Cole.
And Ryan Cole is kind of an anti-vax influencer who has called the COVID vaccine needle rape and a poisonous attack on our population, among other things.
And that's who they installed in this position over Ted Eperle.
And I should mention too that like, you know, this came after months of Eperle facing harassment locally for supporting health measures related to COVID.
Yeah, I think it's important for everybody to know that we are in, like, the 90s apocalypse movie plot lines.
during a meeting.
So it was kind of the culmination of a campaign.
I think they tried to harass him out of office and when that didn't work, they just pushed
him out.
Yeah, I think it's important for everybody to know that we are in like the 90s apocalypse
movie plot lines.
Like this is the first act where the like doctor who's trying to get the truth out
Okay.
So it should be fun, right?
pushed out of like realizes that like the rest of the board is like he's gonna
be let go and and you know which starts his investigation obviously that
propels us into the second act but okay but but we're we're with this we're here
yeah so it should be fun right no no no no no no it ends well it's a happy end
no no no no They learned... No, no, no.
One lesson that they learned from the 80s and 90s films is that, you know what?
Maybe we don't want to give audiences a happy ending.
Maybe, yeah.
So it's like a 90s action film with a 70s Deer Hunter ending.
Doesn't Deer Hunter end with them all singing the national anthem together?
Sure, sure, well, but you know, things have been lost along the way if you know what I mean.
I'm not saying it's happy, it's a dark ending.
Yeah, it's the wrong people singing the anthem.
Yeah, it's the wrong people singing the anthem.
[laughter]
Oh man.
Yeah, so I mean, I don't mean to make light of this, but it's...
Too late, too late!
It's so depressing.
It's so depressing that you got to you got to have some sense of humor about it.
It's pretty dark.
I mean, and then what the anti-vax doctor, it turned out, did some really fucked up shit since he's been in office.
Which is he was making viral videos basically without evidence claiming that the COVID vaccine was causing cancer.
And then there's this really big report by the Idaho Capital Sun that found he had misdiagnosed two women with cancer and including a woman who underwent a major surgery removing her reproductive organs.
And when they sent the organs to the lab to test them, there was no cancer.
So all for an illness she didn't have.
Oh my goodness.
God!
That is... That is so, so dark.
Dire.
Very dire.
Extremely fucked.
Okay, so they're shoving out incredibly qualified doctors and replacing them with anti-vax lunatics who misdiagnose people with cancer.
Not great.
You also write about how far-right activists endorsed by the KCRCC took over the board of the North Idaho College.
So how did they go about managing that college once they took power?
Yeah, sure.
So a little background, I guess.
North Idaho College is like a community college in Coeur d'Alene.
It's like on the waterfront in a very pretty part of town.
Basically, they have like a board of trustees and it was always nonpartisan, but the local Republican committee decided to make it partisan.
So they installed three members in local elections via local elections, got them in.
And then what their first order of business was to fire the president without cause, which kind of sent the school into chaos.
And because they fired him without cause, they ended up having to pay him, you know, his salary and then some.
So they like wasted over half a million dollars on this move.
And then they've just kind of generally mismanaged the place so severely,
including its president, Todd Banducci, has been like accused of like threatening and harassing
people that work at the college.
Then they've so severely mismanaged it that it was very, very close to losing its accreditation,
which would have gone a long way towards ruining the school, which is a very like important part of the community. And,
you know, I talked to people that went to the school and, you know,
they talked about like what a valuable institution it was in the school,
but that the reason they think the Republican committee was targeting it was
that they felt that this college, this place of education was basically infecting the local
community with liberalism.
And that, you can hear Ted, Todd Banducci and the Idaho Freedom Foundation, they talk about that.
They think that every school and institution is indoctrinating students with critical race theory and with far left ideas, which is absurd.
Yeah, it's like they just swapped out the... It's like the communism scare of, like, the 50s, but, like, they've just swapped out the word communist for liberal.
Yeah, yeah, it's the same.
Exactly.
It's the same old playbook.
The treatment is exactly the same.
The, you know, the course of action, the plan of what to do about it and where to snuff it out is all exactly the same.
It's just the terminology has changed.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
I mean, it's very, like, you know, we were talking about John Birch Society earlier.
It's very, like, McCarthyism at your local level.
Yeah, by, like, your, like, weird uncle who's got a really fast internet connection.
Right.
I mean, like, they hired a new president, and they literally hired, like, the wrestling coach to be the president of the college.
Of course.
It doesn't matter anymore.
Now that Trump's been president, it's like, well, I don't care who you are.
Like, you got a voice.
Like, do the guys like your vibe?
Like, we'll run you for something.
Yeah.
All that matters at the end of the day.
And I think this is, you know, a very, like, important thing to think about when it comes to authoritarianism and fascism and how it plays out is that they value loyalty above all else.
So they like value loyalty to, you know, this group over any kind of expertise or anything in that regard.
It's all about power and consolidating power and having the people in those places of power being loyal to, you know, in this case, a local, a very extreme local Republican committee.
Yeah, I think, you know, one of the scariest things is in that very first clip with the guy, you know, talking on his stream or on his podcast where he was like, yeah, he was like, if you don't like the local guy, get your friend or your buddy, you know, your buddy to run.
And that's like the scariest thing is like just going to your friends and being like, hey, we'll get you in there.
This is unfortunately how all politics have been built in this country for a long time.
I mean, at least now you can't trade a drink for a vote, but that's about it.
Yeah, I think that's exactly right.
kind of logic where it's like what really matters is like you have someone who has your back
and won't snitch on you and knows how to keep their mouth shut and like nothing else matters
how smart they are or how competent they are.
Yeah, I think that's exactly right.
I mean, and we saw that, you know, at the macro level with the Trump administration, of course.
And now it's, we're seeing it play out at the local level in a real way.
In that piece you discuss, I guess, a technique that these extremists are using
that they call a confrontational politics.
And in particular, you show how it affected one conservative Republican named Representative Greg Cheney.
And like you discussed, he is a conservative Republican.
NRA endorsed, he backs the blue, he wants to ban sanctuary cities, but he's not right wing enough for this movement that we're discussing today.
So what exactly is confrontational politics and what happened to Representative Greg Cheney?
Sure.
Yeah, this was a fascinating interview.
I met Greg Cheney in the Statehouse, in his office, and he showed me the gun that he carries to work every day on his belt.
And that's because he has dealt a lot with the far right in Boise, in the statehouse,
most notably during the pandemic when Aaron Bundy, which I'm sure has come up on your
podcast before, you know, is kind of the militia adjacent anti-government extremist who was
involved in the standoffs with the federal government in like the Malheur National Wildlife
Refuge in Oregon.
And his dad, Clive and Bundy, had the standoff in Nevada with the federal government.
But yeah, Bundy, you know, stormed the Capitol at one point over the state Capitol at one
point over COVID measures.
And they also, he has a group called People's Rights, which is very big out West.
And they have a strategy where they often will turn up to protest outside people's houses.
So after they did this to some people like Ted Epperle, um, and other like health board related people, uh, near Boise, uh, Greg Cheney, this, the state house member decided to You know, introduce this bipartisan bill kind of making it illegal to protest outside public officials' homes with the intent to, like, harass or threaten or alarm.
And in response, two nights later, far-right activists turned up outside his house with pitchforks and tiki torches and they had an effigy of him Well, they had a stuffed animal in a shirt that said Cheney, his name, hanging from a noose on a pitchfork.
And, you know, he talked to me a little bit about how that affected his family and, you know, how his wife kind of jumps when she hears a car door slam now and how his daughter asked them why these people wanted to kill daddy.
And, you know, that's just one example of a lot of what's happened across Idaho.
You know, a really interesting part is that Greg Cheney and his wife and a lot of other people I talked to, they have bought copies of this book called Confrontational Politics, not because they want to follow or practice confrontational politics, but because they are the targets of confrontational politics.
And Confrontational Politics is this book written by a former California state senator named H.L.
Richardson, who was also a gun rights fundamentalist activist.
And the book is essentially a how-to guide or a blueprint for a Christian nationalist insurgency.
And it's basically like this philosophy of kind of always being the loudest person in the room and like always shouting down your opponent, always being on the attack, never apologizing.
And it's this very zero sum idea of politics where, you know, either we're going to be in power and run government or they are.
And so we should start acting like it.
It's fundamentally anti-democratic.
It's very explicit about the fact that there's no room for compromise.
And that is essentially the playbook by which the far right has been operating.
And the book pays very close attention, special attention to primaries because they see it as an opportunity to seize power.
Because, you know, for example, in Idaho, it's a closed primary, right?
So only Republicans can vote in the primary.
And if they can mobilize enough people on the far right to vote, you know, they can capitalize off the fact that there's low voter turnout and win elections.
This far-right insurgency has also affected progressive activists as well.
that model being used in Idaho over these last few years.
This far-right insurgency has also affected progressive activists as well.
Could you discuss what happened to one woman named Laura Tennyson?
Yeah, sure.
So Laura is a progressive activist in Coeur d'Alene and she literally like organized, co-organized this very innocuous kind of project called Love Lives Here Coeur d'Alene and it was basically like kind of a You know, anti-hate campaign to make Coeur d'Alene seem like a welcoming place to the rest of the country, to the rest of the state.
You know, it's kind of like the equivalent of the like, in this house, we support, you know, black rights, yada, yada, yada that you see in a lot of like suburban households, for example.
And for this, she received just, like, horrendous harassment.
She was walking back to her car one day and found an unspent shotgun shell on the hood of her car.
Which, by the way, didn't make it in the story, but that's happened to a few people around town, including a local reporter.
And then these disgusting racist postcards started to be sent around town with her likeness on it, in which she was dressed as a clown and there was all these racist caricatures of different minority groups that she was allegedly, you know, that she was allowing into the city through this welcome, like, you know, no hate campaign.
And then the following year, she organized like a local women's march and a guy messaged her on Facebook and explicitly said she was going to die.
And so she had to file a protective order.
And, you know, it kind of had its intended effect.
And, you know, Laura told me that she's had to take a huge step back in her activism just because she doesn't feel safe.
You know, she's kind of always looking over her shoulder, which is, you know, when you think about it, that's exactly what these kind of harassment campaigns are designed to do.
I mean, what's really interesting about this whole, I guess, this plan is that it's not secret.
They're really super open about it.
In fact, for the store, you acquire recording from a KCRCC meeting from August of 2021.
So what did they discuss in that particular meeting?
Yeah, sure.
So they discussed basically seizing every nonpartisan position in the county.
So, you know, like we were discussing before, like health boards and the community college boards and water district, fire districts.
This guy in the recording says, you know, he's identified about 217 of these positions in the county and that they need to put their people, far-right people, in all of these positions.
And he's very clear in the recording.
You know, if you know a conservative, and then he goes, you know, I won't say this in some places, but if you know a conservative Christian that might be interested in this, let me know and we'll get them an office.
And, you know, basically it's just kind of this idea of, you know, complete domination of one party control, taking it all over.
You know, the other thing that happened up there that they allegedly tried to do, was that there was another recording that local press caught wind of where they basically devised a plan to disguise their supporters as liberals to run for local precinct chairs in the Democratic Party with the idea of taking over the local Democratic Party and installing Dave Riley, the white nationalist who marched in Charlottesville, as the head of the local Democratic Party, basically as a way of destroying the local Democratic Party.
Now, you are a really seasoned extremism reporter.
You even got arrested at one point while covering some George Floyd protests.
but still gives you an idea of like the lengths these people are willing to go.
Now you are you're a really seasoned extremism reporter.
You even got arrested at one point while covering some George Floyd protests, but
is there anything that you ran into while while researching this story that
you know I guess surprised or shocked or even like worried you?
Yeah man, This trip fucked me up a little bit.
Like you said, I've been on this beat for a while, but I think it kind of crystallized a lot for me.
Yeah, the trip fucked me up just because, you know, I think kind of like a roadmap for what the far right is going to do around the country.
And I think like, I think a lot of times on this beat, and I think this is certainly something that you guys can sympathize with, with the work you do, and like the way you're plugged in, is that it often feels like you can never really scream loud enough about what's happening.
Like you kind of want to like shake everybody and just tell them how bad it is.
And I think, you know, what the scary part about Idaho is that like we're seeing kind of this The anti-democratic project at the heart of the GOP at the national level is really starting to play out at the local level.
And so we're getting like a vision of the future of the GOP, which is just this very kind of ugly authoritarian, you know, inexplicit partnership, open partnership with white nationalists and militias who target their opponents with, you know, shocking cruelty and are not interested in democracy and not interested in compromising.
And I think what's so striking about it for me was that all the people I interviewed were not, you know, I didn't talk to any radical leftists, really.
You know, these were very centrist folks out there who aren't all that used to being alarmist and including conservative Republicans.
You know, I think at a point where you have Trump supporting conservatives saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Um, you know, I think we need to take stock and realize what we're, what we're dealing with.
So yeah, I mean, I've been heartened by the response to the piece, um, cause I kind of pulled my hair out writing it and really, really was stressed about getting across how, what an emergency it feels like out there and how we kind of need to brace for what's happening in Idaho to happen to the rest of the country.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And like, uh, one thing, one thing before we wrap up, think of it this way.
If it stays as it is right now, and doesn't get any worse, and doesn't spread out into other states or whatever, you still have a state that's what, like 93% white, where people are being threatened, they're having burning effigies on their lawn, they're having shotgun shells left on their car, like that's already bad enough.
Even if it got any worse, even if it's just one state.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
I mean, it's also I think it's always easy, like, you know, for people on the coasts to like, you know, there's that kind of annoying thing sometimes that liberals do where they like dismiss states like, we should just get rid of Idaho or get rid of Florida.
But that, like, it's, you know, always neglects, like, the fact that there are people living there that are dealing with this stuff.
And, you know, there's literally people that are really leaving Idaho right now because of its politics.
And on the opposite end of the spectrum, there's a huge influx of political migration to Idaho because of its politics.
And it's a very scary development.
I talked to a woman who didn't want to be in the story, but she had been involved in politics in North Idaho.
She was a progressive.
And she fled.
She left because the harassment was too intense.
And she said something that was really, you know, heart-wrenching.
She said, like, what did she say?
She said, Idaho is beautiful, but it'll break your heart.
Which has kind of stuck with me.
Thank you so much for sharing, for writing a story, spending so much time, you know, really explaining what the situation is like in Idaho and talking about it with us today.
Where can people find your work, Chris?
Yeah, I'm at HuffPost.
And you can find me on Twitter at Let's Go Matthias.
Thank you so much.
Thanks, guys.
It's great.
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Listener, until next week, may the deep dish bless you and keep you.
I mean it.
It's not a conspiracy.
It's a fact.
And now, today's Auto Q. Now, you have some very strong America First credentials.
Again, I believe you're involved with President Trump's 2016 campaign.
I think you were a delegate for him at the convention, correct me if I'm wrong?
Absolutely.
And I was also the first vice chair of the Trump-Idaho team.
So I served in that capacity, worked hard all across the state of Idaho for President Trump.
And I was a delegate, and I was a delegate in 2020.
Would have been nice if we would have actually had a convention that year.
And then I had the honor of serving as an elector for the state of Idaho.
And it was a pleasure to serve in that capacity and to cast a vote in support of the Thousands of Idahoans, 65% of the people who voted in Idaho voted in support of President Trump.
So it was an honor to be able to do that.
And so, yes, I absolutely support Trump's America First policies.
That's why he's endorsed my campaign.
Traveled to meet with him twice.
Personally, he's a great man.
Very real, very human.
And to be able to sit and talk That's like a number one issue on the minds of people in Idaho.
And we spoke about the things that we both share concern, primarily the election integrity.
That's like a number one issue on the minds of people in Idaho.
They're worried about what we saw happen in 2020 happening again in subsequent elections.
So I joined, I was able to get an amicus brief in support of President Trump back then in 2020, when Governor Little refused to do so.
But we got that submitted.
And I also have signed on to support the 50 state forensic audit, that we should audit all of our elections, all of our counties as a small businesswoman, We get audited all the time.
I audit my books, my inventory is audited, my tax returns are audited.
