Episode 307: One Fish Forward, Two Fishback

Summary

Blocked and Reported – Episode 307: "One Fish Forward, Two Fishback"

Hosts: Katie Herzog & Jesse Singal
Date: May 11, 2026

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Overview

In this episode, Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal dive deep into the rise and controversies surrounding James Fishback, a 31-year-old, extremely online candidate running for Governor of Florida. They trace his path from a scandal-laden hedge fund career to his affinity for Internet edgelording, campaign lies, and rabble-rousing populist politics. The hosts critique Fishback’s record and persona, highlighting what his prominence says about the current moment in American and online political culture.

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Opening Banter: Corrective Laughter and Invisalign (00:12–05:29)

• Katie issues a tongue-in-cheek apology

  • Jesse calls her in for not posting a photo of his much-praised apartment (00:12)
  • Katie: “I apologize... I will do better. Clap, clap. Do better.” (00:41)

• Invisalign Misery

  • Katie reveals she’s developed a lisp from new Invisalign braces (01:24)
  • Katie: “I now have a lisp. I feel like people are going to think that I’m gay when they hear me talk.” (01:29)
  • Jesse reminisces about his own awkward orthodontics past

• Looksmaxxing and Internet Oddities

  • Katie recommends Jesse try ‘mewing’ as an alternative to orthodontia, referencing bizarre self-improvement advice from online influencers (03:55)
  • Jesse cracks, “I think my lisp is getting worse the more I talk...”

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Lindy West Watch: Book Tour Dispatch and Cancel Culture (05:35–11:07)

• Listener dispatch from a Lindy West book event

  • West addresses but downplays online backlash; avoids discussing certain people in readings (06:43)
  • West expresses (cautiously) that cancel culture has gotten too far, retreats from bold claims (07:54)
  • Jesse: “It’s just sadder than it is anger inducing. I sort of feel similarly about Lindy where, like, she’s like, Cancel Culture’s gotten too far, but she’s too scared to say anything.” (08:21)
  • Katie mentions monitoring Lindy’s Instagram: “She posted a video yesterday... telling people that she was depressed and she didn’t know what to work on...” (09:53)

• Recurring Lindy West Obsession

  • Jesse jokes about Katie’s fixation; “Let’s try to go one episode without you thinking about Lindy West.” (10:53)

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James Fishback: From Hedge Fund Flop to Far-Right Firebrand

Introduction to Fishback’s Origin Story (11:22–22:38)

• Background and Resume Claims

  • 31-year-old Floridian, ex-hedge fund analyst, now running to replace Gov. Ron DeSantis
  • Fishback's own words (LinkedIn): Claimed to work for a “Soros-aligned billionaire,” left to form “anti-woke” investment fund (13:23)

• Myth vs. Reality: Hedge Fund Drama

  • Katie reveals the fabrications:
    • No meaningful Soros connection to his boss, David Einhorn—dog whistle implied
    • Actually left Greenlight Capital before being fired, allegedly for underperformance and ethics breaches—"the termination meeting was on the books" (15:30)
    • Lied about being “Head of Macro” and responsible for $100M in profits; was a junior analyst instead (16:18)
    • Lawsuits followed: Fishback sued (and lost), Greenlight sued for unpaid loans and defamation (19:31)
    • Katie: “He is a schemer. But he’s unfortunately too dumb to know that when you’re telling your friend to make sock puppet accounts, you cannot text it.” (25:22)

• Scheming & Sock Puppetry

  • Fishback coached a college-age campaign worker to impersonate investors and flatter him via sock-puppet email accounts (24:22)
  • Also purchased fake engagement: “He also had this guy buy 350 likes for one of his expos.” (25:22)

• Legal and Financial Fallout

  • Lost or abandoned all lawsuits; court ordered him to repay loans, return materials, and pay legal costs (26:20)
  • Had car repossessed and luxury items seized for non-payment (27:03)
  • Fishback spun it as evidence of “a shadow state,” blaming a “globalist cabal” (27:36)
  • Jesse: “This is victimhood culture.” (28:20)

Public Persona: Scandals and Viral Schemes (29:12–34:51)

• Failed Stunt: The DOGE Dividends

  • Proposed wild plan to send $5,000 to every household from Trump’s budget cuts; superficially endorsed by Elon Musk, then officially disavowed by those running Doge (29:12–30:10)
  • “You know how fucking bad you have to be to be disavowed by Doge?” – Katie (30:28)

• Incubate Debate: The Debate Club That Wasn’t

  • Founded “Macrovoyant” (later Incubate Debate) as an anti-woke debate org
  • Free Press essay decrying left-wing capture of high school debate written by Fishback (21:01), but his credibility now sharply questioned by the hosts

• Relationship Scandal

  • Dated and became engaged to a former high school participant (he was 27, she 17 when it began; 34:13)
  • Relationship ended; ex-fiancée filed for protection order alleging abuse and harassment (33:39)
  • Order denied, judge finding both parties uncredible, most messages work-related

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Fishback’s Populist, Far-Right Platform and Internet Persona

MAGA… Plus Racism and Grift (36:48–46:37)

• Key Planks of Platform

  • End H1B visas and mass-fire immigrants in public sector (36:48)
    • Katie: “Instead of taking advantage of those brilliant minds, Fishback and much of the GOP wants to kick them out.”
  • Promises to end property taxes, attack DEI, “war against radical transgenderism”… and bring back public executions (39:19)
  • Proposes 50% tax on OnlyFans income: “I don’t want young women who could otherwise be mothers... to be selling their bodies to sick men online.” (39:39)
  • Simultaneously rails against “culture war bread and circus”—positioning himself as both warrior and skeptic (45:56)

• Internet Nativism & White Identity Politics

  • Advocates conspiracies like “the great replacement” and “white genocide”: “It should not be this hard for Americans to exist in their own country.” – Fishback (41:03)
  • Adversarial to both “woke on the left” and “woke on the right”

• Racist & Antisemitic Edgelording

  • Past tweets and statements include references to lynching, “fat lazy DEI hire,” racist AI imagery, and anti-Semitic in-jokes like “goy slop” (52:11, 53:28)
  • Publicly affiliating with Nick Fuentes’s groyper movement and wearing America First hats (53:05)
  • Jesse on tone: “This is just genuinely racist 4chany stuff.” (54:10)
  • Katie: “There’s no respectability politics here, but there is plenty of vice signaling.” (51:06)

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Fishback’s Campaign Strategy: Meme Acumen and Youth Audience (55:04–59:56)

• Algorithmic Fame
  • New York Times and New Yorker profiles highlight his mastery of internet virality and appeal to young, attention-hungry, very-online male fans (55:06)
• “Clipper” Accounts & Rage Bait
  • Gathers traction via provocative short clips amplified by fan and aggregator accounts (55:22)
  • Jesse compares to the “Manosphere” and streamers using viral short video as their prime currency (55:36)
• Attention vs. Voter Reality
  • Katie: “He is polling at around 4% statewide but has dominated some junk youth polls.” (46:39)
  • “I have no doubt he’s doing better with 20-year-olds with retvrn in their bios than with retirees.” (46:39)
  • “The stats suggest being openly anti-Semitic is not the obstacle to election it used to be.” – Jesse (59:19)

Endgame: Why Fishback Matters (and Why He Might Not Win) (59:19–End)

• Not Likely to Win
  • Trump and the GOP establishment back rival Byron Donalds
  • Fishback’s support is small and highly online—but it’s real attention
  • Katie: “He is very much a product of the times and of the vibe shift...”
  • Jesse: “I just think he’s going to have a bad time in Florida on this.” (59:56)
• Big Picture Worries
  • Katie reflects on the normalization of extremity and Internet-fueled nihilism in politics: “My fear is that this actually is the new normal... Trump and Wokeness and the backlash and the backlash to the backlash have unleashed something really dark.” (58:30)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Fishback’s grift:
  • “This guy claims to hate DEI... He’s doing everything the worst woke people do, but worse and more shameless. I love this guy so far.” – Jesse (18:32)
• On Internet-fueled campaigns:
  • “Fluid in the blunt provocation and ceaseless performance of the Internet... they’ve become darlings of the algorithms.” (55:06, NYT paraphrase)
• On the dangers of dog whistles and white identity politics:
  • “I’m thinking this is a dog whistle. What do you think, Soros aligned?” – Katie (14:32)
• Summing up Fishback:
  • “Everything you’ve told me... the scamming people, the constant lying, the levels of aggrievement over basically nothing... This guy is going to be president someday. No doubt.” – Jesse (35:38)
• On the future of politics:
  • “I’ve been holding out hope that in the post-Trump world, everything will go back to normal... But my fear is that this actually is the new normal.” – Katie (58:30)

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Additional Highlights

• Katie’s running lisp (and repeated apologies) serves as comedic background, never quite escaping notice.
• Strong critique of how both “woke” leftism and its right-wing reactionaries feed off performative internet outrage.
• Sharp skepticism of junk statistics and influencer-driven faux-populism.
• Frequent asides on the failure of current legal, financial, and party guardrails to weed out total fraudsters.
• An undercurrent of dark comedy threaded throughout each revelation about Fishback.

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Key Timestamps

• 00:12 – Correction & apology banter; Katie’s lisp reveal
• 06:43 – Lindy West event; cancel culture discussion
• 13:23 – Fishback’s “origin story” and resume mythbusting
• 19:31 – Court battles, promissory notes, and asset seizures
• 24:22 – Sock puppeting, fake investors, and social media fakery
• 33:31 – Relationship with an underage debate club participant
• 36:48 – Populist policy breakdown (immigration, property taxes, OnlyFans tax)
• 41:01 – Fishback on “great replacement” and white genocide
• 52:11 – Racist, antisemitic, and trolling campaign rhetoric
• 55:06 – Internet algorithms and the “clipper account” phenomenon
• 59:19 – Final analysis: online popularity vs. real electability; closing thoughts

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Conclusion

This episode uses the rise of James Fishback as a case study for understanding the corrosive, meme-driven, post-shame direction of contemporary American politics. Herzog and Singal pull back the curtain on the recycling of old scams in new edgy packaging, the convergence of left and right populism, and the risks of internet performance overshadowing substance. By episode’s end, the hosts express both alarm and a faint, exhausted hope that institutional guardrails still matter.

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[Visit www.blockedandreported.org for show notes and premium content.]

Transcript

[A]

Katie, I believe you have a correction and an apology.

[B]

No, I don't think so.

[A]

Yeah, you do.

[B]

That must be a different show. I don't know what you're talking about.

[A]

At the start of our last episode, you were going on and on about how amazing the apartment I rent was. No, you made a whole thing about how you were going to post a photo of it. Oh. And this was like. I think you talked about it for like 40. You're like, Jesse, you have such good taste. This apartment you rent, you sublet was amazing. And then you just didn't post the photo. So I want to have a little accountability session. Apologize.

[B]

All right. You're calling me in. I apologize.

[A]

Are you going to try to do better in the future?

[B]

I will do better. I will. Clap, clap. Do better.

[A]

Okay, do clap. I don't care at all. But at least one person asked, so if you want to post it, maybe in the. In the show notes.

[B]

I will. I will.

[A]

It was a nice apartment. It was great.

[B]

All right, well, with that out of the way, Jesse, do you notice anything different about me?

[A]

I usually try not to look at you while we're recording. You look more glasses. Big fucking nerd glasses. The hair. Your hair has been growing longer. Do you have a name tag on?

[B]

No. I'm wearing a sleeping bag, though.

[A]

Okay. What am I supposed to be noticing? This is such a classic. We're having, like a very gender normative. Don't even notice what I did to my eye. What are you going to say?

[B]

I have a brand new lisp.

[A]

Oh, God. What'd you do?

[B]

I got Invisalign and I now have a lisp. And I like, the whole thing has been like a very unfortunate process. Yeah, I now I feel like people are going to think that I'm gay when they hear me talk. Or like maybe a girl with ferrets. That's what I sound like right now.

[A]

That classic stereotype of women with lisps being lesbians.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. No, I was thinking more like a gay man, but I just want to acknowledge this because I think it's apparent and I'm going to be talking a lot this episode. And yeah, I have a lisp. I hopefully it will go away with time, but it has not gone away in the last three days.

[A]

Two things. One is getting worse. I genuinely didn't notice. So now I'm gonna typical a lot. Also, I'm. I have sometime in my future. I have Invisalign in my future. I bet just because my teeth are getting messed up. Well, I also. In seventh and eighth grade, you should

[B]

just get, you know what? Adult braces, and write a book about it called Adult Braces.

[A]

I could just knock out all my teeth. We don't need real organic teeth. Fake teeth do the job. No one's ever, like, you don't even notice if you get. I should get blinged up. I had a lisp in middle school, and they called me shingle, which is not even accurate. It should be fingle, not shingle.

[B]

Yeah, that's not accurate. Okay, well, let me give you some advice before you get the Invisalign.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Don't do it.

[A]

What? I mean, is it uncomfortable otherwise?

[B]

It's uncomfortable. The whole thing, it just, like, it doesn't feel good. I'm like. I'm very mad at my. The dentist I had when I was a child who told my parents that I didn't need braces. I went to go write him a Yelp review yesterday, but he's dead, so I had to write it for his son who took over the business. I'm mad at my parents for giving me a small jaw. I'm mad at Jana for her not being the one who had to get Invisalign. I'm mad at you now, too, because you didn't. You didn't notice my lisp.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So it's just. It's put in a bad mood. Worse than usual.

[A]

Well, my situation's worse because I. I had a huge, Like, a lot of orthodontia done and braces. I think I.

[B]

Again, yeah.

[A]

I think I just like. You know how you're like, 16 or 17 or whatever and pass braces. You're like, you really need to wear your retainer every night. I was like, I actually found my retainer cleaning up my. Cleaning up my childhood room recently. You should put it back in. It was so effing disgusting. But I should have worn it. And my teeth are legitimately. Luckily, I have a misshapen face and, like, big mouth, so my teeth aren't visible a lot, but they're definitely getting messed.

[B]

Well, there's something else that you could try. And I did try this. It didn't work for me, but maybe it would try, but maybe it would work for you. So there are these influencers, like, looks maxer types who. I think my lisp is getting worse the more I talk, who say that you. That nobody needs orthodontia, that you can. You can correct your. Your teeth by mewing, by, like, putting your teeth against your. Your tongue against your teeth. The Roof of your mouth and that'll like, expand your palate. And there's something called thumb pulling where you basically stick your gums in your mouth and like exert pressure and it widens your palate. So I think you should try that just instead of Invisalign. I tried. It didn't work for me. But maybe your bones are more pliable than mine. Softer.

[A]

Clavicular broke into Boston local. I check Boston.com regularly because it's my hometown. Greatest city in the world. And clavicular broke into local Boston news because he's accused of raping a girl on Cape Cod. What? You laugh?

[B]

That was your cool hometown story?

[A]

That was your response was laugh. He.

[B]

He left Miami. I'm surprised.

[A]

Well, it is just. It's not haha funny, but it's sort of funny because the article has to first be like the dual tasks of explaining what clavicular is, what looks maxing is. And then also he was accused of rape.

[B]

So I'm looks ming now.

[A]

I've been looks mining for years. It's worked out well for me. We could talk about your lisp. My impending lisp looks maxing, Your failure to put the thing in the show notes. We could talk about this all day. Surely that's not what you want to talk about.

[B]

No, Jesse, today we are going to be discussing. God, it's so bad. I just. I like if there's like some sort of filter.

[A]

You don't. I don't. I genuinely don't notice it. I know, but that's because you're. You're inside your own head.

[B]

I am. I'm inside my lisp. So today we're going to be discussing an up and coming and extremely online political hopeful named James Fishback.

[A]

Friend of the pot.

[B]

He is a man with a lot of imagination, let's put it that way. But before we get to that, I asked listeners. God, that's a hard one to say. Listeners, Listeners, during one of our many Lindy west episodes to go to her book readings and let us know if she discussed any of the backlash to her memoir.

[A]

Wait, you. You. You send people to stalk and harass Lindy West?

[B]

I said, I said if anybody goes, write in and let me know what happened.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

It wasn't like I didn't feel.

[A]

You made it sound like you. You instructed our millions of listeners.

[B]

I might have said go to a reading and email me about it. Jesus. She. Yeah.

[A]

Anyway, wait, hold on. I need to re. Also reset the. Actually, no. The counter was already at zero episodes since we Last mentioned, Lindy West. I'll just. I'll.

[B]

It will remain at zero. Anyway, a few of our listeners did in Austin. This is from the Austin Bar Pod Meetup Group. And one sent the following dispatch. So, Jesse, will you please read this?

[A]

Lindy was in good spirits, alluded to the Internet firestorm, but gave no indication that it had altered her life or her plants. Read the key passage from her book in which she almost drowned on a booze cruise in Key west, conspicuously stopped reading shortly before the chapter mentioned Aham's name for the first time. Lindy took a few audience questions, one of them along the lines of, are there any subjects you'd like to make jokes about but are afraid to prove very.

[B]

Wait, I think that is that. That's the section on the booze cruise where she doesn't talk to anybody because she's convinced they're all. She's convinced they're all Trump supporters because

[A]

she hates them all, because they're conservative,

[B]

because none of them have set them rings.

[A]

If she really thought she was gonna drown, I could imagine her last thoughts being not about Aham, let alone Roya. That's the other one. But just how much she hates the people on the boat. Lindy took a few audience questions, one of them along the lines of, are there any subjects you'd like to make jokes about but are afraid to prove? Very difficult for an answer. She suggested diplomatically, it'd be funny if

[B]

she said rape if you're.

[A]

Wait, sorry. So Lindy west in this scenario is like, I have all these great rape jokes because of political correctness. She suggested diplomatically after a while that she thought Cancel Culture had gone too far.

[B]

Wait, a little late on that, though.

[A]

Lindy west is great, but walked it back several times. Can you imagine? I just. I sort of. I was at a. A dinner party. Katie, maybe you've heard of them here in L. A. And we were talking about Gia Tolentino. Let me set that timer back to.02. And I was talking about how it's like when she just sort of offhandedly says she thinks blowing up pipelines should be legal.

[B]

Yeah, not just like. Not that. Just that it's moral, but that it should be legal to be fair.

[A]

In response to a question of is there something you think isn't legal that should be. For me, it's hard to even get outraged about her opinion because it's like, you see the dot of Internet psycho lefties on the. On her forehead, and she's just desperately trying to say anything That'll keep her seeming cool. Like, it's just sadder than it is anger inducing. I sort of feel similarly about Lindy where, like, she's like, cancel culture's gotten too far, but she's, like, too scared to say anything.

[B]

Even in Austin, apparently.

[A]

Back to the thing. But there was an uncomfortable bristling. I mean, Austin is still extremely lefty, even if it's like a heterodox. But there was uncomfortable bristling visible among the heftier and more POTS afflicted set. That's not. That's mean. I didn't say that. I. I wouldn't say that.

[B]

I actually. This is an edited version of the email. I deleted the really mean.

[A]

What's POTS again?

[B]

It's a. It's one of these, like. Like, Lena Dunham probably has it.

[A]

That doesn't. Doesn't really narrow it down. Oh, okay. That. What is. Okay, pots.

[B]

It's. It's one of these. I can't remember what it sounds. Stands for, but it's one of these, like, illnesses that.

[A]

Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. A chronic office.

[B]

Okay. Yeah. Like, when you stand up, you get dizzy, which I have. I have pots.

[A]

Oh, you have pots.

[B]

But I don't complain. You don't hear me complaining about it. I'm too busy complaining about my list.

[A]

Okay, let me finish reading this mean email. Overall, the event was unremarkable, except insofar as Lindy seems to have weathered the outrage with no visible breakdown. This is sort of a disappointing dispatch. They should have him. They should have said she started doing her baby voice and crying and eating avocado toast.

[B]

Yeah. You know, except I. At this point, I feel so sorry for Lindy that I'm glad that she seems to have weathered this with no visible breakdown. Although I don't know if it's true, because I've been following her Instagram, and she posted a video yesterday, kind of a long one, telling people that she was depressed and she didn't know what to work on and asking for. She did a little survey, like, should I work on my newsletter? Should I edit videos from my book tour? Should I go to the grocery store? And unfortunately, there wasn't a fourth option for divorce your man and move back to the city.

[A]

So you. You are, at this point, false stalker, legitimately fixated on Lindy West.

[B]

Oh, yeah. And. And in fact, I think she might be fixated on me because one of the videos that she posted yesterday was just of her driving down a road. Guess what road it was your road. Yes.

[A]

Oh, Jesus.

[B]

She doesn't know that she's gonna end in a. If I had timed it right, I could have orchestrated a fender bender. How's that for meet cute? I could join the polycule.

[A]

Katie, I know you're. You're opposed to therapy, but were I your therapist or. If you had a therapist, your therapist would say, let's take this one day at a time. Let's try to go one episode without one, one hour without you thinking about Lindy West. How about. No, let's start with that.

[B]

All right, Jesse, let's move on. But thank you to the Austin Bar Pod meetup for the Dispatch. And I'm glad that we got this email because it would have been hard to work Lindy into a story about James Fischback. That's hard too, Fishback. But he's from Florida and she's been to Florida, so I would have found a way.

[A]

Before you get into that, I'm putting a link in the show notes to the page where you can find the meetup groups like this Aust Austin one. It's like a pretty big. We've got these communities everywhere and if you look in the comments, you might be able to find some. Oh, the Austin one is just. Is listed there, but it is only for primo, so I won't say it out loud.

[B]

Yeah, I went to a meetup just a couple weeks ago and it was great. There was probably like 40 people there. All these people came from mostly from across Puget Sound out to the place that I took you down the street from my house. So I was like a five minute commute for me and like several hours.

[A]

You gotta do a bigger venue next time, though.

[B]

Well, it was good. No, it was good. It was a. It was the exact right amount of people. Okay, Jesse, God willing, in January 2029 or maybe earlier, if he continues to eat like Morgan Sperlong every day, we will see the tail end of Donald Trump, who will presumably head south to spend his retirement in a condo at the Villages, happily cheating at golf and creeping elder grandchildren. And when that day comes, there will be celebrations all across this great nation and this exceptional planet. And yet, Jesse, despite yearning for that day, despite dreaming of that day, I am less and less convinced that Donald Trump will someday be seen as the low point of American politics rather than a harbinger of something even worse to come. And part of the reason I worry about that, Jesse, is because, Jesse, I've been keeping an eye on a few political hopefuls who I'm afraid may represent something even darker than maga. And we're going to be discussing one of those up and comers today. Jesse, are you familiar with James Fishback?

[A]

I have seen some disturbing videos, but tell. Tell us more.

[B]

Yes. So Fishback is a young man, just 31, and he's running for governor of Florida to replace Ron DeSantis, who is hitting his term limit. Fishback is a fourth generation Floridian. He frequently mentions that. He less frequently mentions that his mom is a Colombian immigrant, although he will drop that when it's convenient. And before we got into politics, he was in finance. So Jesse, please read his origin story in his own words. He posted this on LinkedIn.

[A]

I worked at a hedge fund run by a Soros aligned billionaire. I left that firm in 2023 to start a competing investment firm called Azoria to invest in companies that refuse to use de.

[B]

You can only invest in monster energy.

[A]

After I left, I filed the civil rights complaint against my former boss for discriminating. Oh, so now you like civil rights law? For discriminating against me for being Christian and praying at work. He didn't like that, so he hit back and threw the book at me with lawfare and $2,500 an hour lawyers. Did any of this happen?

[B]

Not quite. So we can just go line by line. He says I worked at a hedge fund run by a Source aligned billionaire. He did in fact work at a hedge fund. Oh my God. This is. I'm. I'm really sorry about my voice. He did in fact worked at a hedge fund. That part is true. It was called Greenlight Capital and it's run by David Einhorn, who is probably a billionaire. He's never disclosed his worth. But when Fishback says Soros aligned, there's no meaningful documented connection between Einhorn and. And Soros. Yeah, Einhorn, like Soros, it's a philanthropist and a Democrat. But his foundation is focused on bridge building and depolarization, you know, helping Americans find common ground, shit like that. It's much less partisan than Soros, but it is true that they're both Jewish, so maybe they run into each other at baby blood testings or something like that. I'm thinking this is a dog whistle. What do you think? Source aligned?

[A]

Yeah. I mean, at this point, yes. Yeah. Cuba Soros carries huge weight. The name among right wing populist types. I mean, bad weight. I'm having trouble talking today. You know what I mean?

[B]

It's you. You're having trouble talking.

[A]

I have a really bad lisp. Oh, Wait, that's you. Okay, so I still haven't noticed it, for what it's worth.

[B]

You can't hear it.

[A]

Yeah, I cannot.

[B]

Okay, let's go back to Fishback. So again back to his statement. He says that he left Greenlight to start his own hedge fund, his own anti woke hedge fund. And that he was discriminated against for being a Christian.

[A]

And so is that, is that part true? Is that or is that not true either?

[B]

That is also not true. It does not appear to be true. So Fishback was hired by Greenlight in 2021 as a research analyst. And when he left two years later, it wasn't because he wanted to go start this anti woke hedge fund. It was because he was about to be fired.

[A]

How do we know who said that?

[B]

Okay, so we know this from legal filings. And when I say Fishback was about to be fired, I mean imminently about to be fired. The termination meeting was on the books. And before he was canned, Fishbook forwarded confidential Greenlight information to his personal email address. Which I've never worked at a hedge fund, but I'm pretty sure you can't do that.

[A]

Seems bad.

[B]

That would be like. Yeah, it would be like you, like you sending our, our, our proprietary schedule, our calendar, our shared dog.

[A]

What calendar? We have a calendar. I guess we do.

[B]

We do.

[A]

But carry on this analogy. I think it is going to end up being a really good analogy. He, him sharing personal information from the hedge fund he worked at or they, they, you know, investors trust them with their personal information is like me doing what?

[B]

Sharing our dock of ideas of show pitches.

[A]

Okay, yeah, you're right. That would be exactly the same.

[B]

At the time, Fishback also had an undisclosed personal trading account that mirrored Greenlight's positions. This is highly unethical. And besides that, a breach of his employment contract. But he's not an idiot. He knows the show is over and so he leaves Greenlight before they could fire him and starts raising money for his own hedge fund, this anti woke hedge fund. And he does this by claiming he had been Greenlight's head of Macro and he was responsible for generating a hundred million dollars in profits. Not true. In reality, he was a junior analyst. There was no head of Macro at Greenlight. And when Greenlight found out about this, they started warning. That's.

[A]

Look, that's just ambitious to say you had a position that didn't even leaning in, didn't even exist and he invented it. That's what you want in young analysts.

[B]

You know what they say? Dress for the job you want.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

So when Greenlight found out about this, they started warning his potential investors. So in the fall of 2023, he filed. He filed a lawsuit against Greenlight claiming they defamed him by telling investors he wasn't actually the head of Macro.

[A]

Yeah, that's incredibly ballsy because he is.

[B]

If nothing else, he is ballsy.

[A]

And you're saying there was. There was. They did not have a head and macro. Macroeconomics or macroeconomic analysis or whatever. He. It didn't exist. And then he files a lawsuit saying. Nuh. Yeah, it did.

[B]

Yes. And he also filed a complaint with the New York State Division of Human Rights claiming that Greenlight discriminated against him as a Christian. And he started playing this up in public. Right. I was fired from my religious beliefs.

[A]

My religious beliefs dictate that I have to lie about my resume.

[B]

Yes. According to God, I'm the head of Macro.

[A]

As for. I mean, I'm starting to detect a pattern here. I'm guessing there was not significant evidence he was fired for praying at work. The idea of like, it's like a mom and a teenage son situation, except with his boss. His boss is like knocking like, what are you doing there? And he's like, trying to pray quietly. Don't come in.

[B]

So his evidence was that after he left Greenlight, David Einhorn, the company founder, wrote in an email that Fishback was beyond salvation.

[A]

Well, he doesn't meet beyond salvation. By Christ, he means he's completely ethically compromised.

[B]

He sucks.

[A]

It's a way of saying. Yeah, it's a way of saying that guy sucks. Fuck that guy. Yeah.

[B]

And Fishback said an arbitration filing that this was, quote, a vicious smear against someone who Einhorn knows is a devout and practicing Catholic.

[A]

This is. He is this entire pattern. This guy claims to hate dei. Surely he claims to hate woke people. He's doing everything the worst woke people do, but worse and more shameless. I love this guy so far.

[B]

I should also mention that he claimed age discrimination and says that Einhorn called him a kid.

[A]

Okay, this guy's multiply victimized.

[B]

At least he wasn't called buddy. That one really hurts. Okay, so fishback was seeking $5 million in damages, but in March 2024, Greenlight sued him over two unpaid promissory notes. So basically what happened was that while he was an employee at Greenlight, fishback borrowed around $300,000 from the company, which I guess is something that happens when you work at a hedge fund. This is not customary in the indie Podcast industry.

[A]

So it's literally. Wait, you literally just. This is a world where you're just like, I need $300,000, and you basically do an IOU with your company.

[B]

Except he didn't actually pay them back.

[A]

Right, Right.

[B]

So Greenlight sued him over that, and then a few months later, they sued him again for defamation and breach of contract. And the complaint is incredible. And this is how we learn about his performance at work. So the complaint says that Fishback was lazy, careless. He was told he was on thin ice, like, during his first year on the job. They say it took him days to complete tasks that should have been done in minutes.

[A]

I love this guy. This guy is awesome.

[B]

He reminds me of someone, if he completed them at all. And they say that he was so preoccupied with his personal endeavors that he neglected his duties at work.

[A]

What were his personal endeavors?

[B]

So he founded an organization called. I mean, you would think it was just, like, straight up lying, but he had this organization called MacroVoyant. And of course, there was scandal there, too. So for one, Greenlight had a donation matching program, and Fishback went to them and said, hey, will you give this nonprofit $10,000? But it's a matching program, Right. Greenlight would match his employee donations, and they wanted proof that he had actually donated $10,000 to this group. And his proof was an uncashed check made out to. Made out to Macro. Buoyant. Quoting here from the lawsuit, Greenlight informed Fishback the next day that a picture of an uncashed check was not sufficient proof of his donation and asked Fish fract to provide a tax receipt for the donation. Approximately months. One month later, dot A dot. Fishback provided an unsigned letter, not on letterhead, purporting to be a receipt for Macro Buying to be a receipt for Macro.

[A]

Boy, this is like crayon on a napkin. I donated, but. Okay, but what is. What is macrovoyant?

[B]

Okay, do you remember that viral essay published by the Free Press a year a few years ago about high school debate?

[A]

Yeah. This is just about how. And also. So this was about high school debate having gone totally crazy. Yeah, basically. Basically, it's just been infected with, like, really insane social justice stuff and is no longer, like, debate in its normally recognized form.

[B]

Right. So the Free Press article was called, at high school debates, debate is no longer allowed. And national tournaments, judges are making their stances clear. Students who argue capitalism can reduce poverty or Israel has a right to defend itself will lose, no questions asked. So, Jesse, I put a link to that in our notes. There. Please click that. Look at who the author is.

[A]

James Fishback.

[B]

Mm.

[A]

Oh, no. I thought this article was really. Wait, but didn't we did it.

[B]

I think we did an episode about it too.

[A]

Yeah, I thought this was a really good and interesting article at the time, but now I don't trust it at all.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, to be clear, James Fishback is not the only critic of what has happened in debate culture. Because he lies about some things doesn't mean he lies about literally everything. But, yeah, I think that you have to take everything this guy says with a grain of salt. And by the way, James Fishback, before, as you will hear, his latest turn towards rank racism, anti Semitism, was a fan of Barry Weiss's. He published this article with the Free Press. When her book on anti Semitism came out, he said it was one of the best of the year. And this has come back to haunt him. So James Fishback has explained this away as saying that he was initially charmed by Barry Weiss. She is very charming, it's true, but that he has since come to his senses and now he thinks that she is a Israeli asset.

[A]

Okay, so this guy is sort of a psycho.

[B]

Oh, just you wait. But you asked what this organization, Macrovoyant is. Yeah, Macrovoyant was a high school debate organization. He's changed the name. It's now known as Incubate Debate. They have an extremely bare bones website that says that their mission is to challenge young Americans to debate. And hilariously, considering Fishback's stance on dei, which we will get to the only if you go to the website, like the landing page, the only picture of a kid is black. Now, Incubate Debate is going to come back in a second. But in short, according to his bosses, Fishback sucked at his job. He spent all his time working on, at the time, macroboyant. And he pulled the old, you can't fire me, I quit. And then after he left, he became an even bigger headlight for Green Light. So, for instance, in 2024, he was told he was not welcome at Greenlight's annual partner dinner. And the lawsuit claims that he that Fishback, quote, threatened to stand outside the event and distribute letters to attendees, including Greenlight's investors. These letters contain Greenlight's confidential information and strategies and maliciously and disingenuously called into question the firm's macro investing capabilities. The lawsuit also says that he, quote, deceived the unwitting host of a podcast into extending and square quotes. Invitation to Mr. Einhorn to debate Fishback on the merits of an investment in Tesla. He then used Mr. Einhorn's rejection of this sham invitation as a pretext to reach a wide audience and launch a days long social media and podcast tirade against Greenlight and Mr. Einhorn. So Fishback would get on social media and shit talk Einhorn, you know, he won't, he won't debate me and say that Greenlight was preventing him from trying to start his anti woke hedge fund. And according to Greenlight, they were just trying to correct the record by, for instance, telling people that he wasn't the head of Macro for the company, which didn't exist, was not a position that existed.

[A]

Oh man.

[B]

So one other part of that lawsuit, I should mention this, was first reported by the outlet Florida Politics. So Fishback's texts were included in discovery for the lawsuit and it turns out that he had a college student named Alex Munguia who is now working for his campaign. Fishback got Alex to pretend to be a Greenlight investor and use fake email accounts to reach out to journalists to express concerns about Einhorn and to compliment Fishback, he actually wrote a script for the guy to send. He had Alex call him a smart cookie and he had this kid, this guy reach out to the Free Press and praise his debate club article. And there's more. So Jesse read this passage from Florida Politics.

[A]

In one exchange, Fishback told Munguia to have his father make calls on his behalf because he has a. An older voice that's in quotes. After Munguia said his father would not be comfortable doing so. Fishback responds, wtf? My dad will do it. Then he also had this guy buy 350 likes for one of his expos?

[B]

So he's a schemer, but he is unfortunately too dumb to know that when you're telling your friend to make sock puppet accounts, you cannot text it. You actually got to talk on the phone, which to be fair, is really hard for millennials. So I get it.

[A]

This guy's 31. He's not. He's not a millennial. Zoom. You mean it's hard.

[B]

He is. I looked it up.

[A]

How old is he?

[B]

He's a millennial. He's 31. He's a. He's a millennial.

[A]

31 is millennial. So you're so young. Okay, but who won? Who won the lawsuits?

[B]

Okay, yeah. So there were three separate cases. First, the one that Fishback initiated against Greenlight, he abandoned that one. It was moved to arbitration and then Fishback stopped showing up. So the arbitrator dismissed it. Then there was the one Greenlight brought against him for unpaid loans. He outright lost that one. He was ordered to repay them. And then there's a separate settlement from last September where Fishback admitted to emailing Greenlights confidential positions to a personal account and running this undisclosed trading account on the side. And as part of that settlement, he agreed to return materials and pay Greenlight's legal fees. So basically, Greenlight won all three.

[A]

And does he still owe the money or did he pay up?

[B]

He is not paid. And not only that, he has refused to pay his own attorney the over $150,000 that he owes him in legal fees. And his, his, his reasoning for that is that they lost. Fishback claims that's a breach of contract.

[A]

Yeah, it's a breach of contract to do legal work for someone and not be successful.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, he said that. It's.

[A]

There's a thing called a contin like you can do. Some lawyers will take work on contingency. That's not how most legal work does. That's a argument.

[B]

Yes. And he said that as governor of Florida, he will only pay government contractors when the job is done fully, correctly and on time.

[A]

Can you imagine how the state would fall apart? Like, I will only pay you for building this road, which will take six months after the road is done. Good. Good luck with that.

[B]

Okay, so because Fishback has not paid his debts, in January of this year, a judge ordered him to turn over 43 luxury items, including a Swiss watch and designer clothing. His Tesla was repoed. And the judge ordered him to relinquish his own stake in his anti woke hedge fund. That's a Zoria Capital, but it's basically worthless at this point because the fund was liquidated less than a year after it was founded and the money returned to investors. And when this happened, Fishback tried to spin this as a political attack. He said he was being targeted because of his politics. So Jesse, read this tweet.

[A]

Take what happened to Azoria last week as proof that the threat to liberty no longer comes only from government. It now comes from a quote unquote private sector that acts like a shadow state. They can debank you, delist you and erase you if you violate their sacred globalist creed. You can vote a government out of office. You can't vote out them. You don't know their names. You can't hold them accountable. But they can destroy you for what you believe. Caveat emptor. Buyer beware. So he worked for a hedge fund and tried to rip off the hedge fund and did an incredibly poor job and now owes huge amounts of money to a lawyer that he obviously knew when he hired a lawyer, that the lawyer worked not on contingency. And now he's saying this is all the result of a globalist cabal. This is victimhood culture.

[B]

Yes, all of that happened. But when he says, take what happened to Azoria last week, he's talking about the fund being liquidated.

[A]

Oh, yeah, but. But this is. I mean, but isn't this. This is tied to his, like, broader. Yeah, because he's just. He's a scam artist.

[B]

He's a scam artist. So what happened with his own fund was that the board of trustees for Title Trust, so that's an independent board that oversaw his hedge fund, they said in a statement that they were liquidating the fund because of his legal problems. They're protecting investors. And that statement is highly unusual. So liquidation announcements are usually extremely bare bones. Jessica the 80s baby, she does some trading herself. She knows more about money than we do. She said that what the board did is basically the investment firm equivalent of a Mexican telenovela character, ripping off the rival, ripping off her rival's wig and pushing her wheelchair down the stairs. So this is like, a very unusual action for them to take. That's how fucking bad he is.

[A]

He seems like a really good guy.

[B]

He'll be a great governor. So Fishback's business acumen is, shall we say, wanting. But he did have one idea that got the attention of some powerful people. So about a year ago, he proposed what he called the Doge dividends on Twitter, and this idea briefly took off. He said that because Doge was going to save taxpayers trillions of dollars in cuts, Trump should take 20, 20% of those savings, which he estimated at 400 billion, and return it to taxpayers. That would be about 500. That would be about $5,000 per household. And Elon liked this idea enough to retweet it. So there was a lot of chatter online about how everyone would be soon receiving our stimulus tech check from Doge. And Fishback actually traveled to D.C. and spent some time pitching this idea to people in power. And then he later claimed that he was a Doge advisor, but this was refuted by the agency. Are we calling Doge an agency? Whatever it was, I mean, I feel

[A]

like anyone can say they're a Doge advisor, right? Given the standards there.

[B]

Quoting here. Yeah. If Elon retweets you, you're a Doge advisor.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

Quoting here from ABC News, multiple Senior officials who worked for Doge both before its official establishment in January and after told ABC News that Fishback never held any official or informal role advising Musk or the Doge team, and that he was inflating his connection to the group. You know how fucking bad you have to be to be disavowed by Doge?

[A]

That's insane. Yeah, that's. That's insane. That's. I don't even have a comparison.

[B]

Did you get your, your dose check, Jesse?

[A]

Yeah, well, if memory serves, they did a super good job cutting the government. And yeah, we all got $5,000. Yeah, there's a level of multiple layers of idiocy here that we can, we can gloss over. We don't need to make this political, Kitty.

[B]

So after his DOGE idea swirled down the toilet, Fishback lobby for a seat on the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors, apparently even calling Trump aides personally in attempt to get to get the role.

[A]

How is he qualified to be.

[B]

It's not. It didn't happen. Thankfully, Trump appointed Laura Loomer instead.

[A]

Wait, Laura Loomer's on the.

[B]

I'm kidding.

[A]

I see. I. I genuinely did not know. I don't know who's doing our monetary policy. Laura Loomer, Candace Owens.

[B]

Okay, so Fishback has had one more big viral moment prior to joining the gubernatorial race. And it goes back to his nonprofit that we mentioned earlier, Incubate Debate. So he is truly passionate about debate and he founded this group as an alternative to the big national debate associations, which he saw as captured by progressive ideology. Again, I think we did an episode on this.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

One of the things his non profit provides is a teacher toolkit, which is all about bringing debate into the classroom. And it seems pretty reasonable. So Jessica, the 80s baby, in addition to knowing about money, was a competitive debater in college, and she took a look at the toolkit and said, quote, I'll give it to him. Fishback genuinely seems to be care about doing high school debate properly. So he does have that going for him. Unfortunately, the praise ends there because Incubate Debate led to Fishback's biggest scandal to date. So in 2021, he met a girl named Kenna Fort through Incubate Debate, and girl here is the correct word because she joined the program when she was 16. The following year they started dating. She was 17, he was 27.

[A]

Oh, God.

[B]

And Jesse, there's been a lot of online chatter recently about age gaps and power dynamics and relationships, and I think I tend to be a bit more libertine when it comes to some age gaps depending on the situation. But as a general rule, if one party is old enough to get a rental car and the other has a high school locker, I think it's best to avoid.

[A]

Yeah, not great.

[B]

Yeah. And in fact, this relationship was problematic enough that the Broward County School district cut ties with Fishback and Incubate Debate after complaints from parents.

[A]

It's sort of funny that that's what got him in trouble. Like they're just a complete scam artist. Well, I guess maybe not all of it had happened. This was 2021. You said she met.

[B]

They met, so they started date. This was in 2022.

[A]

Okay. Yeah. I don't know what happened, but anyway. No 27. No 27 years old. It's very easy to just not date a 17 year old.

[B]

Is it though? Is it?

[A]

Yeah, it's super. It's a really easy thing to avoid doing.

[B]

But what if she's in your high school debate club that you run, that you founded and run.

[A]

Oh, and so you have like, power overs or. So you can make her.

[B]

Well, in that case, Jesse, what if she's really mature?

[A]

I mean, not as mature as James Fishback.

[B]

Okay, so after Kenneth Fort turned 18, she and Fishback moved in together and she started working full time at Incubate Debate. Although she claimed later that she was paid, quote, sporadically and randomly.

[A]

Sporadically and randomly? Is that redundant for a paycheck? Can you be paid sporadically but not. Anyway, randomly.

[B]

They later got engaged, but they broke up in September 2024. And then in April 2025, she filed a protection order against him. She claims that during the relationship, he was angry and occasionally violent. She also said that after she broke up with him, he stalked her and cyberbullied her. And there are text exchanges in illegal filings. And he does some tech storms, which is never a good idea. Like, here's some unsolicited advice for the listeners. When it comes to texting, the last word is no word. Just don't do it. Sadly for Kenneth Fort, that order of protection was denied. And the judge said that he found neither James nor Kenna's account of who ended the relationship and why credible. And he concluded that a lot of Fishback's post breakup texts were about were about work at Incubate Debate rather than stalking and harassment. He said Fishback was, quote, perhaps a little obsessive compulsive, but he did not initiate contact with the petitioner directly and indirectly with no legitimate purpose. So there's also A lesson there. If you're going to cyber stalk your ex, make sure it's work related.

[A]

I'm curious about this judge and what his or her life is like. And like, where, you know, reflecting on their legal training as they're looking at these text messages from these stories. Two busted people. Has Fish back talked about this relationship publicly?

[B]

Yeah, so he later claimed that Kenna made false allegations against them and he once tweeted his version of the breakup story. So Jesse read this.

[A]

I called off my engagement when I realized I couldn't say with certainty that I'd want her raising my children if something happened to me. Does he have. Oh, he means hypothetical children. One moment really hit me. A mutual friend let her 12 year old skip church because he wasn't interested and claimed to be an atheist. My fiance saw no issue. I did. A child can't discern faith without hearing the gospel and participating in the sacred mysteries. What? Just like, what a. Just the loathsomeness of this slimy, money stealing artist. They'd be like, it's super important 12 year olds go to church. I mean, like, it's just insane.

[B]

Well, how else is he gonna meet a girlfriend? Sunday school.

[A]

Everything you've told me so far about this guy, the scamming people, the constant lying, the levels of aggrievement over basically nothing, over basically getting in trouble, doing things that are morally wrong, the questionable relationships with women. This guy is going to be president someday. No doubt. Like there's no doubt in my mind. We're going to have President Fish back.

[B]

All right, so that's the background. Let's get on to the politics. But first, housekeeping. Will you do it? Jesse Molesp is killing me.

[A]

This is a podcast. You can find us at blocked or imported podcast gmail.com. the best way to support us is to go to blocked orimported.org and become a premium subscriber, which gives you access to all sorts of extra stuff, including will the Helen thing already have happened by the time they hear this? If you become a premium subscriber, you can go back and listen to Katie's chat with Helen Lewis about Lena Dunham's book, which will have happened by the time you hear this. It's on Friday. But if you're. But if you're a premium subscriber, you'll be able to watch it live. Also, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and yeah, that's it. Okay, so we've talked a lot about how James Fishback is a scam artist. But let's talk about his actual politics.

[B]

Okay. Yeah. So his politics are basically exactly what you would guess, MAGA on steroids. So he's running on a populist agenda. A lot of it is very trumpy. So end H1B visas. Fire every H1B worker at state agencies. And state agencies themselves almost never sponsor H1B visas. Like, the DMV isn't hiring from abroad. So the main immigrants this would actually hit are researchers, faculty, healthcare workers at Florida's public universities. They've already paused H1BS in Florida higher Ed. But Fishback says he's going to fire the ones who are already here and send them back home. And I just want to pause for a second on this and remark on how stupid that is. I think there are some. There can be some valid reasons to be against mass immigration, but the reason that America has dominated in so one of the reasons that America has dominated in so many areas is in no small part because this is a place where the best and brightest people in the world want to go. And instead of taking advantage of that, of taking advantage of those brilliant minds, Fishback and much of the GOP wants to kick them out. I do not understand how you make America great again when you kick out the people who are curing cancer. Do you have any disagreement there, Jesse?

[A]

No. I mean, the H1B thing is, is this. It caused a schism in MAGA world because I think Elon Musk was actually like, no, we sort of need those folks. But it became this among a group of people who I don't think follow policy closely. This suddenly became this big boogeyman issue. And I don't think the people we bring over on H1B visas are like, well, I don't know much about this issue. It just became this strange and pretty ugly fixation for a little while.

[B]

Yes. So Fishback also says he's going to stop big corporations like Blackstone from buying homes.

[A]

Some horseshoe theory here between left and right wing populists.

[B]

Absolutely. Yes. So. So there's this nationwide effort to get big corporations out of the housing market, I think Sounds nice. This sounds nice in theory, but it probably won't make a dent in the housing crisis. It might actually reduce the housing supply. Read Matt Inglesias on that. And then on the more traditionally conservative side, Fishback says he's going to end the property tax, which is also a Desantis thing. And he's also a culture warrior. He says he's going to war against DEI Soros back prosecutors, radical Transgenderism, child predators, voter fraud, abortion, and the quote, millions of illegals that invaded our country under Kamala Harris, his watch.

[A]

Well, she was the border. She was the border czar.

[B]

Was she?

[A]

Yes. This was the whole thing. Biden sent her down for the possibly impossible task of being the border czar.

[B]

He was sabotaging a brown woman.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

So he says. Fishback also says he's going to bring back public executions.

[A]

Finally.

[B]

And in his campaign announcement, he says that he's a proud American who will never apologize for her history over a shot of a Confederate monument. I don't think we really need to read between the lines to know what he's saying there. And he's also proposed a 50% tax on only fans income. So here's what he said about that. Jesse, please read this.

[A]

As Florida governor, I don't want young women who could otherwise be mothers, raising families, rearing children. I don't want them to be selling their bodies to sick men online. And I don't want young impressionable men who have strayed from Christ, who have strayed from our Lord and Savior, to be told and to be drawn into lust and have their entire brain rewired. Okay, strip. What an interesting mix here.

[B]

I think he's, he's won the swerve vote there.

[A]

Do you think he's a radical feminist?

[B]

Yes. So it's a mix of culture warring and economic populism. And it's interesting to me how you said horseshoe theory. That's exactly right. Not all, but some of his positions could easily be mistaken for a leftist candidate. And Fishback has spoken about how he wants to attract leftists.

[A]

Yeah, I mean that we. The stuff like the, the belief that Blackstone is why you can't afford housing and some of the immigration stuff, there's like protectionist lefties.

[B]

Totally. Fishback is also very hostile to Israel. He's against the war in Iran. He's actually something of an environmentalist. So he wants to ban data centers, restore the Everglades and clean up Florida's parks and water. But at the same time, he's also pretty racist.

[A]

How racist we talking?

[B]

Okay, let's start with a video. So here is Fishback with Ella Moulding. She's a right wing influencer who calls herself a Christian nationalist as well as a re migration and anti porn advocate. I'm here with James Fishback. He is a candidate running for Florida governor. James, what's something that is such a big issue in America that Republican politicians won't talk about?

[C]

The great replacement and White genocide.

[A]

They're both real.

[C]

And I'm running for Florida governor to stop it. It should not be this hard for Americans to exist in their own country. The entire premise of my campaign is that Florida is our home, America is our birthright, and we can never let them steal it from us.

[B]

Let's go.

[A]

Did you see this response from Vicente Foxmulder?

[B]

Yeah, read the. Read the first response on that.

[A]

Don't mean to gatekeep white nationalism by any means, but I'm not sure it's for you. You said his dad is Colombian.

[B]

His mom, his mom.

[A]

Racial categories all made up, blah, blah, blah, blah. He doesn't look white. He looks like he's got Latino heritage.

[B]

So does Ella Moulding. Or she might just have some spray tan.

[A]

It's like just Florida.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

So that's her race. Floridian.

[B]

Yeah. So in addition to ending the white genocide in Florida, which is actually what's going to happen when the baby boomers die, he's campaigning to end white guilt in Florida schools.

[A]

This is real, real red meat for a certain type of, like, pretty online conservative culture warrior.

[B]

Yeah. And I think we should pause on this for a second because, you know, we started this podcast in 2020. This was the height of the anti racist madness that took over swaths of the country. I think our first 20 episodes mentioned Robin D', Angelo, and we have done many, many episodes about anti racist actions and reactions that were straight up wacky.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Just off the top of my head, you know, there was a story of Shannon, who's now our graphic designer. She worked at a theater in Seattle that had over a year of anti racist trainings with Robin Diangelo herself, because someone on the staff read a line in a play that was showing at the theater that included the N word. And then Shannon herself was later publicly shamed at work because these anti racist trainers saw what they thought was a subliminal swastika in a poster that she made. We did a live show about a hair salon that literally closed down because someone made an okay symbol. It's easy to forget in the face of this current vibe shift and everything coming out of the federal government, how mad it was, but it was madness. And I do think it's fair to say that we're both early critics of what became known as woke ideology on the podcast and health work. But I also think that to many liberals, it probably sounds like Fishback is campaigning to end extraterrestrial invasions. Like, this is just not a thing that happens. No one teaches White guilt in public schools. And considering everything I've said so far about James Fishback, I think people can absolutely be forgiven for assuming this is a right wing fever dream. But it's also true that some teachers in some schools in America have embraced anti racism in a way that, that I think crosses a line. So Jesse, can you think of any specific examples of this happening in public schools that you remember?

[A]

I mean there's often like a conflation of like weird shit woke teachers will post online versus stuff they get in trainings versus stuff that makes it in the classrooms. In the classrooms. I think there's sometimes these weird like privilege exercises, stuff like that, which like I think could have the effect of making people feel guilty over immutable characteristics.

[B]

Yeah, there's this thing called Wheel of Power slash privilege. These exercises where students are instructed to catalog their privileges or like a privilege walk. I think that more likely more happened at places like Evergreen State than at public high schools around America. But if you search Wheel of Power privilege in middle school, you will see instruction for teachers on how to implement these lessons. You'll also see complaints from parents about teachers who've implemented these lessons. But in Florida, this sort of thing appears to be exceedingly rare. I found one case of a middle school teacher in 2023 who did some exercise in class where, where white kids were bowing to and fanning black kids during Black History Month. The teacher posted videos of this on social media. Libs of Tick Tock got a hold of it. It went viral. And for what it's worth, many parents and students at that school actually defended this particular teacher and said the students, it was the students idea. But the teacher was placed on leave. That's the only case I could find in Florida. I contacted the Florida chapter of fair, that's the foundation against intolerance and racism. Basically an anti work organization that in theory would track this kind of thing. I didn't hear back from them. And if anywhere has successfully expunged wokeness from public schools, it's Florida. Ron DeSantis signed the Stop Woke act in 2022. This prohibits, among other things, teaching that any person is inherently racist or oppressive by virtue of the race. Which in theory I think is fine. Like no one should be taught that being white makes them an oppressor. They should be taught that being straight makes them an oppressor. And since the act was passed, Jesse, guess how many documented cases there have been of K12 teachers being found in violation of the Stop Woke Act.

[A]

I mean, I think the whole Point was for this to have a chilling effect. So I'm guessing none.

[B]

None, yes. My point being James Fishback is campaigning to stop, to stop something that appears not to exist. This is sort of like Ron DeSantis signing a law banning the enforcement of Sharia law in Florida, which in fact he just did.

[A]

And it's about time, Katie. It's about time.

[B]

It plays to the base, but it really means nothing. And at the same time that Fishback is leaning into this culture war shit, he's also complaining about other politicians leaning into the culture wars. So River Page from the Free Press, he went to interview Fishback in Florida. Why don't you read this, Jesse?

[A]

Your latest offensive in the culture war. Fishback said with a bit of feigned disgust, why don't you ban Blackstone from buying up single family homes? I fear that the woke on the left has now in many respects become the woke on the right. It's bread and circus. Don't worry about income inequality. Let's talk about dei. Let's talk about identity politics. Don't worry about the fact that your job is being replaced by cheap foreign labor and now you're unemployed and now you and your fiance won't be able to afford, afford a home and get married and have kids. Don't worry about that because we just ban paper straws.

[B]

So on one side of his mouth he's saying, why are these politicians wasting time on dumb culture war? On the other side, he's wasting his time on dumb culture war. He's going to de wokeify the schools. And my guess is that Fishback's message changes depending on who he's trying to convince at any given moment.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, does he have any chance to actually win?

[B]

Probably not. And you might think that the, the platform, you know, light on substance, heavy on culture words, would attract back the eye of Sauron. I mean, Donald Trump. Trump has actually thrown his way behind the leading Republican candidate, Representative, he's current Representative Byron Daniels. And according to the latest polling from Emerson, Fishback is just, is polling at just around 4%. That actually puts him in second place, almost tied with Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins. Now there are some polls that find him dominating among Gen Z. That was actually a headline from the Federal News Network. But if you look at the methodology at those polls, it's just trash. Like sometimes it's not even polls. The Federal News Network, their, their article was based not on polls, but prediction markets. But James Fishback will boost any shit poll or market that shows him doing well. And I Have no doubt that he's doing better with 20 year olds with return in their bios than he is with retirees. But these polls are really poorly done. That said, Zo Ron mondame was polling at 1% in the early days of the Democratic primary, and now there's a halal cart in Gracie Mansion. And there have been a fair number of comparisons between the two. You know, they're economic populists, they're both anti intervention, anti Israel. And while I'm sure Mandami wants nothing to do with Fishback, Fishback has embraced that comparison a bit. So here he is on the Matan show. This is a very strange YouTube show. And to understand this, you have to know that there are three guys in the studio. You're going to hear the host speak and then fish back and then there's a third guy in the corner drawing something on a whiteboard.

[D]

Fair to say you're the conservative version of Zoran Mamdani?

[C]

Yeah, if you frame it as conservative. I think that we're both in our early 30s. We've. We both have very different ideas that depart from the traditional Republican Democrat Party. And I think, like Zoran, we're going to win and pull off a stunning upset. So, yeah, I think it's a compliment.

[D]

Now, do you like him? What's your take on him?

[C]

I certainly don't like a lot of his policies, but I think that he's probably a pretty cool guy.

[D]

What. What does that mean? I feel like that's kind of contradictory, especially for a politician to say, well,

[C]

I would rather hang out with him than Byron Donalds for five hours.

[D]

What's this thing with Byron Donalds? I don't know anything about him. What has he done specifically? I mean, I hadn't heard of him before your. Your stuff. Because I don't live in Florida, so I just didn't know anything about the guy.

[C]

Yeah, I mean, he's endorsed by Donald Trump. He's. There's four people in the race. He's in first, I'm in second. He's. He's a pretty bad dude.

[D]

What has he done?

[C]

Nothing. That's the whole point.

[D]

Okay.

[C]

He's been in Congress for five years. He has absolutely nothing to show for it.

[D]

I wouldn't say that means he's a bad dude. Maybe that means he's just kind of a useless fool if that's the case.

[C]

But I would say useless slave. But yeah.

[A]

Slave, yes.

[C]

La.

[D]

Because he's black?

[C]

No, because he's a slave.

[D]

But is it like a Black joke.

[C]

Maybe, but that's irrelevant. It's also. He's just a slave.

[D]

Yeah, but you don't just say things like that about. I'm just inquiring from where. That's pretty interesting you would say that about your political opponent. I mean that it is kind of like Zoron on the complete other end.

[C]

Interesting.

[D]

Do you think Zoran would call his opponent slaves?

[C]

Probably not. He's not edgy enough.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

So here the guy with a whiteboard is showing off his creation, which is a couple of crudely drawn stick figures that you're shooting.

[D]

A homeless person looks like a woman.

[C]

What'd she do?

[A]

This is one of the stranger clips I've seen on the Internet of anything. It's hard. People should just watch. We'll link to it. It's very hard to describe. They genuinely look like they're in some sort of containment, like an insane asylum.

[B]

Yeah. So Fishback, as you can tell from this video, he really leans into this sort of edgy, extremely online humor and rhetoric. He is not afraid to be called racist. And in fact, even though the Trump endorsement probably would have been good for his campaign, Fishback is in some ways way more extreme than Trump. And he's waffled on Trump a bit. So back in November, he was saying that Trump is among the greatest presidents in history. And now he's one of these guys like Nick Fuentes who argues that Trump hasn't gone far enough with mass deportations. He's too pro Israel, he hasn't prosecuted anyone connected to the Epstein files, etc. And fish. And Fishback now claims that he was denied entreated Mar A Lago over his criticism of Israel in the Iran war. He posted that last month. I mean, who the fuck knows if it's true? He might have been called the Mar? A long Mar? A Lago as a doordasher and they wouldn't let him in. I don't know. You cannot trust this guy. But he is part of this new and extremely online generation that might call themselves Republicans, but have they have very little in common with the GOP as we knew it 10 or 20 years ago. There's no respectability politics here, but there is plenty of vice signaling and he

[A]

has sort of like a long trail of very offensive stuff he said online, right?

[B]

Yeah. So he's called his opponent Byron Donalds, the state rep. He's called him a fat, lazy DEI hire. He is black. That's an odd way to refer to someone who is literally elected by the voters. Here's some more Examples from his Twitter. So, Jesse, read these tweets.

[A]

Impressive door knockers for. By Byron Byron. Great work for others. Byron, like, instead of Tyrone, I guess. And it's. I don't know if this guy's. It's two guys. Two black guys. One of them has.

[B]

It's George Floyd.

[A]

Oh, I didn't even recognize it. It's like an AI image. Well, whoever then he's holding. He's holding, like, Uzi. Our gun. Our gun. Listeners are going to be mad for me misidentifying, but it looks to me like. So just an AI image of two. Two black guys, one with a gun.

[B]

Well, it's not just two black guys.

[A]

It's George. Yes.

[B]

Holding a. Holding a. Like a little placard thing for Byron Donald.

[A]

A pamphlet, a leaflet. Yeah. God, what a horrible era we lived in.

[B]

Okay, read this next tweet.

[A]

There is a fork in the road. I told that to Vivek, and he said, what's a fork? Oh, because like, Indian people eat food with their hands. Okay.

[B]

There's also a video of him. A video of him telling a black man who confronted him about dating a high schooler, which he did again, that the guy should be lynched.

[A]

That he should be lynched for saying something true. But who's. Okay, so is this just like. There's obviously some younger, I imagine, stereotypically male people online who. Who love this kind of. Is that who this is like, for?

[B]

Yeah, this is. This is for gripers. So at a campaign event in December, he was filmed putting on one of Nick Fuente's America first hats. And that probably would have gone unnoticed by anyone over the age of 40, but this was clearly a signal and he's not trying to hide it. And following that event, he was criticized for calling reapers patriotic and really impressive. And when called out for that, he posted this.

[C]

I want to clarify some comments that I made this week rather abruptly in a live interview about the young men in our country who watch and follow Nick Fuentes. I want to clarify and apologize for absolutely nothing.

[A]

Okay, so he's defending Fuentes.

[B]

Yeah. And also in February 2026, he said this about junk food in high school cafeterias. So, Jesse, why don't you read this quote?

[A]

I'm not saying that the test scores are the result of the pop Tart, but if you wanted kids to fail, if you wanted to set our kids up for failure, you would feed them the absolute goy slop in our cafeterias.

[B]

Do you know that term goy slot?

[A]

No, but I can I can use context clues here.

[B]

Yeah, so this is a 4chan term that it's sometimes used for food, sometimes for TV shows, sometimes online content. But it's the. You know, it's essentially like the trash at the shadowy cabal of elites use feed their subordinate goyim to keep us. Not you, Jesse, but the rest of us, keep us going submissive. It's like Maha taken to its most anti Semitic extreme. You know, Jews are controlling our minds by feeding us Doritos, McDonald's, whereas my

[A]

diet is extremely, extremely healthy.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Yeah. So this is all just. I mean, so this is just genuinely racist 4chany stuff.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

In. In a diverse state and a state with a large and politically active Jewish population, yes.

[B]

Florida is now less than 50 white. Although of course, minorities do not always vote in the way that Democratic strategists would like. But I do not think that this messaging will resonate with voters or that James Fish will be the next governor of Florida. But as a phenomenon, I do find him and his race somewhat interesting because of what it says about the moment and how the Internet influences politics. And this extremely online campaign is getting a lot of attention from the mainstream media. More than it deserves, probably. He's been profiled in the New Yorker and the New York Times. The New York Times, their profile was called Running on Rage Bait. And the author explained how this campaign, despite having a very small war chest, like in the low tens of thousands compared to Byron Donald's tens of millions, how this campaign has managed to grab so much attention. And the answer is, of course, the Internet. So here's a quote from that earned

[A]

media, they call it.

[B]

Yeah, fluid in the. In the blunt provocation and ceaseless performance of the Internet. Mr. Fishback and his campaign have become darlings of the algorithms powered in part by clipper accounts, social media pages that post video snippets and spread them widely, generating attention among young conservative voters.

[A]

This reminds me a little bit of the Louis Theroux thing on the Manosphere, which. Which really leaned into how manosphere influencers. You know, you'll have some number of people watching you stream live, but the whole. The point of the stream is to generate these short, provocative clips.

[B]

Absolutely. These Clipper accounts are massive. And I see them all the time. Like, I don't follow Nick Fuentes and Hassan Piker, but I see them all the time because of these clippers. And some clippers are surely fans of the content they're clipping. Some of them are just trying to make Elon bucks. And this seems to be benefiting James Fishback in the attention economy. So he's getting a bunch of attention online and from more traditional media. Michelle Goldberg from the New York Times, she went down to Florida. She met some of Fishback's supporters, and her piece is this kind of disturbing portrait of these mostly disaffected young men who feel victimized by progressive culture and who apparently see someone like Fishback. This amoral douche is standing up for them. You know, finally someone is speaking for the unwashed masses gooning away in mom's basement. And honestly, I do have some sympathy for this population because it's a population that has been denigrated in elite circles. They've been told that their whiteness or their maleness is a problem, but I don't think Fishback is the solution. Jesse, I want to end with one more Fishback post. He tweeted this one on February 10th. The text reads, on Sunday, an arsonist tried to burn down my home where our staff was working. If anyone attacks, our staff are volunteers. We will not wait for police. We will shoot you dead. So there's a video here. Jesse, please describe and we will watch it.

[A]

He's like coming out of a house, presumably his own, holding a rifle in one hand, screaming.

[C]

If you threaten our campaign,

[A]

if you

[C]

lay hands on a single one of our volunteers, if you come back to this home and our staff, our volunteers are working hard. We're not waiting for the police. We're going to shoot you with an AR15 sight on scene 556. Yeah, that's what we're going to do.

[A]

It's very simple.

[C]

Shall not be infringed.

[A]

Did someone actually try to burn out his house? I don't trust anything that comes out of this guy's mouth.

[B]

Good instinct. So this is there was a fire.

[A]

Is he jester mogging?

[B]

He's firemaxing. There was a fire, but Florida authorities confirmed that the fire was not being treated as arson.

[A]

He was probably trying to burn one of his promise notes

[B]

and he lies about things big and small. So I do not think we should trust when he says that someone tried to set his house on fire. And Jesse, while I would like to say that James Fishback is the biggest douchebag of this election season, please click

[A]

on this tweet and read appears at Dan Bilzerian has actually filed to run against vote Randy Fine. That's a Florida congressman.

[B]

He was also absolutely terrible.

[A]

Randy Fin is. But then Dan Bian is that crazy looks maxer slash rabid anti semite with more than 2 million followers on X. Because of course he has. Okay, lot going on in Florida.

[B]

A lot going on. So, yeah, again, I don't think that Fishback is going to win in Florida, but I do think he is very much a product of the times and of the vibe shift and he's pandering to an audience that loves edge lording and racist jokes. And his campaign strategy seems to be to capture the most loathed demographic in America. And you know, I've, I've, personally, I've been holding out hope that in the post Trump world, everything will go back to normal. Like Republicans will be more like Mitt Romney, Dems will be more like Jimmy Carter. We can be done with extremists on both sides. But my fear is that this actually is the new normal that Trump and Wokeness and the backlash and the backlash to the backlash have unleashed something really dark. And when you have completely amoral figures like James Fishback willing to exploit that, I just hope there are enough guardrails, insane bloaters to keep him out of any office. But we'll see.

[A]

Yeah, I don't, I don't think this guy will be elected to high office from Florida, but it's not great that he's popular among young people. Although with all this, it all comes down to attention and trying to project that you have attention and I think especially among younger consumers of online, of social media, like I think slash hope they follow a lot of people just for the like spectacle of it and that. But I do think, like the stats suggest being anti, openly anti Semitic is not the obstacle to election it used to be. I just think he's gonna have a bad time in Florida on this.

[B]

Yeah, he. Maybe he should have gone with Alabama. All right, Jesse, that's it for this week. Any questions?

[A]

No. I'm gonna go just go log off after a while after this one. That was more than enough Internet for me.

[B]

Maybe you should run for office. You're a nice guy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You've never borrowed $300,000 from this business and not paid it back.

[A]

We'll talk about that. Off mic I need to ask you about something. Thank you, Katie.

[B]

You're welcome.

[A]

This has been blocked reported as always. We are produced with help from Jessica the 80s, baby. Thank you for listening.

[B]

Bye bye.

[A]

Sa.