Sonny Joy Nelson, a North Carolina-based political commentator, traces her activism to a pro-life family and early exposure to Fox News, joining the Trump campaign in 2016. She critiques Sesame Street and PBS for injecting vaccine and anti-war propaganda into children’s programming, comparing it to Virginia’s education policy debates. Nelson condemns NFL vaccine mandates for players like Aaron Rodgers, calling them hypocritical given left-wing support for abortion rights, while defending Getter’s free-speech platform. Unfazed by losing social media connections over her views, she highlights Trump’s pro-life consistency and dismisses Biden’s ignorance of Antifa as predictable, reinforcing her stance against institutionalized moral and political messaging. [Automatically generated summary]
Sonny Joy Nelson is a political commentator, reporter, and director of media affairs forgether.com.
She's from what I'm told is the greater of the two Carolinas, North Carolina.
Thank you for joining me, Sonny.
How are you?
Oh, I'm good.
And thank you for having me.
And yes, you're exactly right.
North Carolina is the greater of the two Carolinas.
I don't know anything that happens in South Carolina.
I think there's a beach there.
Is that correct?
Or is that North Carolina?
No, we both have beaches.
South Carolina has Charleston, which is beautiful, but North Carolina has superior barbecue and everything else.
Okay, I'm going to need to be mailed some barbecue sauce after this, I think.
Yeah, okay, text me your address.
Okay, no problem.
First thing I wanted to ask you, mainly for the audience and for me, what got you into politics?
How did you sort of get your start?
Because looking back at your first videos, was big league politics your first gig or what got you started?
Yeah, so my family has always been super into politics.
I grew up watching the news and just being super into politics.
And my family is very, very much involved in the pro-life fight.
So that translates into politics very easily for me.
But after college, I actually jumped on the Trump campaign, which was amazing.
I mean, that's a pretty good first job out of college.
So it was great.
You know, President Trump just, he stood for the values that I believed in.
He's the most pro-life president we've had in terms of action.
And so that was my start.
And since then, it has just been rolling and I've loved every minute of it.
Was there one like event or somebody or something that really sort of got you into politics?
Or was it just, like you said, your family was always into it, so you're always just sort of aware of it?
Because up here, it's like, not unless you like immerse yourself in it, you're not just going to be into politics, I feel like.
Yeah, I really think it's just the way I was raised.
It was something I was always aware about.
And like, you know, I grew up watching Fox News all the time with my grandparents.
Propaganda on Sesame Street?00:04:41
So it's something that was just instilled in me at a young age.
And when I actually started college, I started as political science.
Then I changed my major like five times.
And so I'm glad I ended up back in the political arena.
I think we have some B-roll of one of your first videos.
Do we have that?
Can we throw that up?
I'm Sonny Joy Nelson.
We're at the March for Our Lives tour as they stop in Greensboro, North Carolina.
We're going to talk to people today about why they hate the Second Amendment.
What do you think should be changed?
Should the Second Amendment be changed or what?
The right to bear arms.
Oh, the right to bear arms.
Everyone's protesting about here.
All right, well, I'm guessing this is what, March for Our Lives rally?
Do you think the Second Amendment should be outlawed completely?
Hold on.
No, don't.
What should change about it?
Well, I'd have to see the whole thing to answer that question.
Now, you don't hear that you had a thicker accent in that?
That makes me so sad that people keep telling me my accent has changed, and I blame it on living in the swamp for two years.
But now that I'm back in the South, I'm hoping it will come back with time.
With time, exactly.
A lot of stuff in those videos you asked people about, the questions you asked them, it seemed like there was a lot of propaganda they must have been subject to.
And I feel like propaganda is at like an all-time high.
It's gotten to this point where as long as people think that they're doing something for the greater good or doing the right thing, they're okay with pushing it.
And I'm specifically talking about Sesame Street, where they're so unafraid to push propaganda, I think, that they're willing to give medical advice to children and see nothing wrong with it.
So I want to show two clips.
One of them I hadn't seen until today, so I included it.
But basically, Big Bird and Elmo pushing vaccines.
Can we play that, please?
My granny bird says that since I'm six years old, I can get the vaccine.
Well, Big Bird has been on Sesame Street for decades.
His ageless character is supposed to be six years old.
He announced on Saturday that he's been vaccinated against COVID-19, just days after the CDC director signed off on Pfizer's pediatric vaccine.
The announcement quickly drawing backlash.
Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz accusing the bird of, quote, government propaganda.
Elmo and I are feeling hopeful and excited.
We're excited because lots of grown-ups are getting the COVID-19 vaccine.
Soon, lots of us will be able to do our favorite things again.
But Elmer, a daddy kissed you a cookie's been cookie mustache for my story.
Oh, yeah.
I didn't know Elmo's father was like a southern prospector in the gold rush.
Well, Elmo, it's time we get a vaccine.
But I feel like they probably did that to try to make it relate to people in the south.
But what's your initial reaction to something like that?
Well, I guess he's more southern than I am now.
But I just, all of this is just so cringy to me.
I mean, why are we marketing to children?
I just want to know how many children that are watching Sesame Street are also checking Twitter to see what Big Bird is tweeting.
I mean, what happened to Sesame Street?
I honestly, as a child, I never watched Sesame Street, so I don't even really know their characters and things like that.
But I just, what happened to teaching them the alphabet and counting and their colors and things like that?
They're trying to market to children.
And have they not learned anything what Facebook just went through?
You know, they just got in trouble marketing to children.
But here, Sesame Street and PBS, here they are trying to influence children in their thought processes.
And it is just insane to me.
And I really want to be like, did y'all not learn anything from what just happened at the Virginia governor's race?
I mean, it all came down to education and the government thinking they have the right to raise your children or that they can raise your children better than you can.
But we saw that didn't resonate with the American people.
So I just feel like PBS should have learned something from that and that this was not a good tactic at all.
Well, I did some research into this actually, and it seems like they've always been pushing different views.
From what I wrote down here, children meeting with hippies.
Of course, they had George Floyd stuff on there before.
And in Ben Shapiro's book that I haven't admittedly read the whole thing of, but it's called Primetime Propaganda.
And one of the original executive producers told Ben Shapiro that they purposely had anti-war political messaging after 9-11 happened.
They were talking about alternatives to going to a war.
So what I want to ask you is, do you think political messaging directed at children is inevitable from both sides?
Political Messaging on Social Media00:12:30
Or do you think that it has to purposefully be put in there?
You know, I don't know.
I think it's just very strange that they are, I don't want to say attacking, but trying to influence children at such a young age.
And they're trying to go around the parents.
You know, things like politics and stuff like that, it should come from the parents.
It shouldn't come from the government and it shouldn't come from schools.
But yet we see this on TV and, you know, social media, everything, because they're going after children and trying to influence them at their most impressionable ages.
Yeah, I think it would be a lot safer, like you said, teach the alphabet, maybe say be healthy.
I mean, they're not really affected by this anyway, so that's probably a good start.
I think another form of what we're seeing, especially around all these trials happening these days, but Aaron Rogers from the NFL, I think he's a perfect example.
Have you heard about the story surrounding him and how they're calling him a liar and everything?
Yes, I have.
And I actually was looking on your Getter feed and reading some of the articles that you posted about him.
This is just insane to me.
Aaron Rodgers, who is allergic to one of the ingredients in the mRNA vaccine, is being put on blast for not taking this vaccine.
You know, what happened to bodily autonomy?
He said it, he said it best.
You know, healthcare is not a one-size-fits-all type of thing.
And yet he's still being condemned and fined for not getting this vaccine.
And it's hard for me not to draw the parallel here where, you know, the left, they just, they are totally fine with bodily autonomy when it comes to abortion and ending life inside of the womb.
But when it comes to a vaccine, oh no, you have no bodily autonomy.
You have to do what is best for the greater good, not what's best for you personally.
And it's just crazy to me that the NFL is treating him like this.
Why can't the NFL just play football?
That's impossible.
From what I understand, he said he took the antibodies, the monoclonal treatment.
He took ivermectin, and he told his entire team and the league and said that he got, his statement was that he got immunity, which is what you get from, you know, like they're injecting immunity into you essentially.
But they still call him a liar and that's not like immunization.
That's exactly what it is, getting immunity.
What do you think is the motivation?
Obviously, from mainstream media, as we call them, or left-wing Twitter or something like that.
What do you think is the motivation to sort of be like, vaccines are the only thing that are the solution and this is the only thing you can promote or talk about?
Why do you think that is?
You know, I don't know because I feel like we saw a flip.
When vaccine first came out under the Trump administration, there wasn't this like giant, huge push for vaccines and mandating them.
But as soon as Joe Biden took office, now all of a sudden it's a mandate and you have to get it.
And I just want to know what happened to the time when your health and your health records were kept private.
Now, I mean, even you have to show your vaccine card to go out to eat at a restaurant in New York or California or all these other liberal cities.
And I just cannot believe this is an America that we are living in right now.
It's not one that I want to live in.
It sounds like your restrictions are pretty similar to here.
What's the passport and vaccine proof situation in Carolina there?
We don't have any of that right now.
Thankfully, North Carolina has been pretty laid back, even though we do have a Democratic governor.
We have an amazing lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson.
So I haven't heard anything about a vaccine passport.
I think if the governor tries that, it will not end very well for him.
So we're kind of staying in the you wear a mask if you're not vaccinated and you don't have to wear a mask if you are vaccinated.
But they're not asking for any kind of proof or anything like that yet.
For the audience, I did ask Sonny to put on a mask for this interview and she refused.
So don't blame me, everybody.
Somebody else from North Carolina, Bryson Gray, all over the Let's Go Brandon train, number one on so many different platforms.
I want to ask you about the Let's Go Brandon thing as a whole.
Do you think it's an important thing?
I see people on the right wing, some maybe greater minds than I saying, you know, this is just a trope that doesn't really get anything done.
Do you think it's important for the culture or is it just sort of a distraction because it doesn't actually change anything?
You know, I think it is important because if you look at where this chant is taking the taking storm, it's at college football games.
It's at college events.
And so it just gives me so much hope to see all these young people, you know, getting involved in politics, even at the lowest level by like a simple chant.
It makes me happy to see that people actually care and they're noticing how horrible of a job Joe Biden's doing and that he's running our country into the ground.
We at Getter, we're sure you have seen, we have flown our Let's Go Brandon Join Getter banner.
We've flown it across college football games, across the sky, and President Trump's rallies.
And it's been a great thing.
We've gotten a lot of traction from it.
And I think it shows really that I saw a tweet that said, hatred against President Trump is manufactured and manipulated by the mainstream media.
But hatred against Joe Biden is organic.
It just screens up, you know?
And so I guess they want to hope.
What do you think is the most pressing issue in the country right now?
I mean, a lot of things.
I mean, when Trump, when I think back to when Trump is prime minister, I think that the border was probably the most important story at the time.
Is it the border?
Is it inflation?
Is it gas prices?
Is it the supply chain?
In your opinion, what do you think people should be paying most attention to?
Can I say all of the above?
Because they all are just, I feel like equally so important.
Gas is so expensive right now, but the supply chain crisis is also insane.
You know, I just moved into a new house and so I've been ordering a lot of furniture and things like that.
And it has taken weeks to get here.
So, I mean, I'm personally being affected by it.
It's extremely annoying, in my opinion.
So, I mean, yeah, we see the immigration crisis that's happening at the border.
I don't think I can narrow it down to just one single thing because, I mean, you also have the vaccine mandates and people that are getting fired from their jobs.
Nurses and police officers that worked throughout the entire pandemic and were called heroes, but they're now getting fired because they have decided, hey, I do have some bodily autonomy and I should be able to decide what medical, you know, procedures and things like that I have happened to me.
And I just think Joe Biden, he doesn't know what's going on.
And it is just resulting in our country just going downhill.
It's really weird to me how much people get a sense of self-entitlement when they tell people, you know, that they're an idiot for not taking the vaccine or something or like, good, that we should kick them out of their job.
It's sort of like it's given, in my opinion, it's given people, you know, this definitive thing to point to themselves and say, I'm a good person.
And now here's this definitive thing that I can separate myself from other people.
And if you don't have this, then you're not a good person.
It's sort of like your get out of jail free card where you sort of have this societal upper hand in their mind.
I think it's really weird when I see people talking that way.
It's like, would you be saying this to somebody if like you they had cancer and you didn't have cancer?
Like it's sort of the same thing.
Like you have a medical procedure that I haven't had, so I'm better than you.
It's it kind of creeps me out.
I think that's a big problem with the culture today.
But I do want to talk to you about more Getter stuff before I forget.
I talked to Jason Miller a few times now.
I want to get your thoughts, your story on how you got involved with it from the start.
Because this is, I don't know, how many months into Getter are we?
Oh, let's see.
Our official launch was on July 4th.
So we're a few months in, four or five months in, and it is really just taken off.
I think we're up to almost 3 million users now if we haven't surpassed that already.
So, you know, people are attracted to freedom and freedom of speech.
How did you get involved with Getter?
Because you were on the Trump.
I want to ask about Trump too, but and your time there, but how did you get involved with starting up the platform?
Yeah, so I've been involved with Getter since the very beginning.
I worked with Jason at the campaign a little bit, and we worked together on the second impeachment at the beginning of this year.
And he came to me and told me about this amazing idea and amazing opportunity.
And I was very happy to jump on board because I love everything that Getter stands for.
And it's very important as we're going forward and we're seeing our freedom stripped away.
It is very important that there's a platform like Getter that's standing up for those freedoms when so many people are just handing their freedoms over to the government.
Jason told me when I spoke to him that he was in talks with Trump.
Now, I imagine you were either behind the scenes or there with him.
Did you guys get the feeling that he was going to start his own platform?
Was the writing really on the wall there by the way he was speaking?
You know, I'm not sure I wasn't involved in any of those conversations, so I don't want to say, but we obviously are very happy that President Trump is joining the social media atmosphere again.
We have missed him, and I'm excited to be able to hear directly from him once again.
Do you guys have any new features you can tell me about that are coming out?
Because I've seen most of the time when I, if I take like a week off from going on, but I usually post my stuff, but when I'm usually sitting there browsing, I see something new, and I've always touted you guys as having the best, you know, video uploading.
It's so much faster than Twitter and the other platforms.
So I appreciate that.
What else new can you say that's coming?
Yeah, that is one of the great things about Getter is our superior technology, especially when it comes to uploading videos and in-app video editing.
We have our live feature coming up.
Right, right.
Yes, I am super excited for that.
I'm actually going to go try to go live after we finish this.
I haven't gone live yet.
So I'm going to try that.
That should be coming to everybody hopefully in the next few weeks or months.
Right now it's available on the desktop version and it should be coming to the mobile version soon.
So we have that coming up.
We also have more giveaways coming up.
The Harley-Davidson Get Revin giveaway.
That's a lot of geese back to back.
We're actually going to announce that winner tomorrow in the villages of Florida.
Jason has announced where that's going to be.
So it's going to be a, you know, I don't know of any other social media platform that does use the basic giveaways, but Getter, we really care about our people and our users.
So I'm excited for that.
Spoiler alert that it's me who won.
Everybody, it's rigged.
I'm just kidding.
If you see me in a new car tomorrow or something, that's why.
We want to get on the Getter Live.
So if we can get on that, please let me know.
Something else I wanted to ask you is you're obviously deeply involved in social media.
When you were first getting your name out there with the Trump campaign and everything, did you lose friends on social media?
I feel like that probably happened to a lot of us.
What was that genesis like?
Yes.
You know, I did.
I don't know if I would call them friends, maybe acquaintances, people I went to college or high school with, but that's something that I'm honestly not too concerned about because when you stand up for truth and when you stand up for what's right, you're going to lose friends.
You know, it's hard to stand up for the truth and it's hard to stand up for what is right.
But in the end, it's what we're called to do and it's something that I am happy to stand for.
Were you vocal back then too?
Or did you just sort of keep it to yourself?
Well, in 2016, I wasn't on the campaign.
I was pretty vocal on Twitter in 2016, but that was, you know, just with my friends.
2020, yes, I tweeted all the time.
So I stayed pretty vocal.
And like I said, the pro-life issue was my number one issue as it remains today.
And President Trump had, he had so many pro-life wins that it was, you can't keep that in.
You know, when you have somebody that values the sanctity of life from the very moment of conception, that's something that you should celebrate.
And it's something that I celebrated a lot.
What would you say, what comes to mind first looking back, working for Trump?
What's the story that pops into your head first?
I'm sure you get asked this all the time.
Oh, like, hmm, there's so many.
But I think, honestly, the debates.
Debates And Pro-Life Wins00:00:51
Going to the presidential debates in Cleveland and in Nashville, both of them were really, really amazing.
The one in Nashville was awesome.
I have just, I'm so thankful for my time there.
It taught me so much.
And I hope that I can continue to help President Trump in the future.
Was it weird to sit there and hear Biden pretend that he didn't know what Antifa was?
And like.
Yes, but also it's to be expected because it's what he's been doing for his entire life now.
So it is to be expected.
All right, Sonny.
Thanks for joining me.
I'm out of questions for you.
It's fun to talk to you.
Sonny Joy Nelson from Getter, you guys, still with a Carolina accent.