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Hello, you're listening to a preview of a premium episode of Blocked and reported. This one concerns a wonderful young gentleman named Lucian Wintrich, founder of Twinks for Trump. Well, alleged founder of Twinks for Trump. He may have stolen it from one of Katie's colleagues. Long story. We're going to get into it. Katie's just going to catch me up on what he's been up to. So if you want to hear all that, go to blocktoremporter.org and become a premium subscriber. Best deal in media. In the meantime, enjoy the preview.
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I think I had set my expectations for the Giant Succubus too low.
A
Good for her. Good for the Giant Succubus.
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Okay, next update. This one comes from Canada. So, Jesse, we've discussed the Canadian Indigenous grave scandal a few times. Can you just sum that up?
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Yeah. There were these residential schools that were part of this ongoing campaign to like, quote, unquote, civilize indigenous kids in Canada. And I think it was. It was done rather coercively.
B
Kill the Indian, Save the man.
A
Done rather coercively. And some years back, supposedly these. This mass grave of children's bodies had been found at residential schools. I think one particular site in particular, Kamloops. But. Kamloops, yes. But it became this weird thing where, like, the technology they used didn't. It just discovered something there. And it was actually pretty unclear what it was. But it's become this really weird. I don't know, like, almost like a cultural hysteria where, like. Right. Thinking Canadians are not allowed to point out that no one's quite sure what's there. And. Oh, and also the Kamloops tribe, I think, refused to let anyone, you know, dig and try to figure out exactly what's what, even though I think they. I keep remembering all these bits and pieces, I think because I subscribed to. What's his name? Substack. Who? Terry Glavin.
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Oh, Glavin. Yeah.
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And I think they received a bunch of money from the state, but then haven't, like, done anything to really confirm it. But I'm. This is all just off the dome. I'm not sure how much of this is accurate.
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They receive, like, $10 million and no bodies have been found. So there were real consequences to this story.
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If someone gave me $10 million, I could get them at least one child's body. Yeah, I'm sure.
B
Come on, 3D. Print that. So after the story. After the story came out, there was a wave of vandalism, even arson at Cat. Like, dozens of Catholic Churches around the country. Canadians really mourned for this story, for these children who they thought had been killed. So the government ordered flags to be lowered to half mass for five months. They sent not just Kamloops, but, but other tribes. They sent them millions and millions of dollars. I guess they don't use the term tribe, excuse me, first nations. To search the other residential school sites for graves. The Pope delivered a formal apology because the schools were run by Catholics. So this was Canada's racial reckoning. And like America's racial reckoning, in some ways it was built on misperceptions and faulty statistics. Bad information. Not to say that the residential schools weren't awful. I mean, by all accounts they were abusive. Kids were taken from their families to have the Indian beat out of them. The death rates from things like tuberculosis, this is doc documented. They were very high. None of that is disputed. But whether or not there were mass killings of first nations children is a different story. And from the very beginning there were skeptics. You mentioned Terry Glavin. He was writing at the National Post. There was Jonathan K. From Colette. But the skeptics were generally coming from outside the mainstream. And then last month, May was the fifth anniversary of the scandal breaking. And Canada's most read and most prestigious newspaper marked the occasion with a big feature on the Kamloop story. With no answers unearthed at Tikumalup's grave sites, doubt and denialism take root. And look, they aren't wrong that the lack of bodies has fueled doubt and denialism.
A
That's true, but it's, it's question begging because it's not doubt or denialism to point out that in fact no one knows what it is.
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Right. And the, the story itself is a bit more nuanced than the headline is. Like these two, there's two authors on it, they go into why the site hasn't been excavated yet. And they do talk about the problems with using this ground penetrating radar. Like apparently same technology was used to unearth what people thought were mass graves in Tulsa, Oklahoma after the Tulsa massacre. And what they found was like a dead sewage sewer system. Like it just wasn't. You just can't tell what is beneath this. Using that particular technology, you just can't tell what is beneath the surface of the ground. So it does, it's, it does go into that a bit. But there was little attempt in the piece to actually take any responsibility for the Globe and Mail's part in spreading the initial story. And it seems to me that this, that a not insignificant Reason or cause of the right wing backlash we've seen in recent years is this distrust of establishment media in particular for spreading stories exactly like that one. I mean, I'm speculating here, but do you think that could explain some of what we're seeing?
A
I mean. Yeah, yeah. And they can think of numerous examples in the states of maybe not flubs that are this dramatic, but pretty bad mainstream media flubs that just like all you can do is sort of shrug and say right wing media is correct. They screwed this up.
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Yeah. And not that. Not that these like right wing, you know, citizen journalist on X are like picking up the mantle where the mainstream media has failed and crowning themselves in glory. I don't think that Nick Sorter is, you know, is the next should be winning any Pulitzers. But yes, I do think the failures of the media have contributed to what's going on now. Okay, so there was that piece, and then a week later the editorial board of the Globe and Mail published a piece with a completely different tone. And in this one they admitted that they got the story wrong. So this was called no Reconciliation without truth. Jesse, will you read this passage?
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The fact of the crimes committed against indigenous children at residential schools over many decades does not automatically validate claims that hundreds of students were dumped into unmarked graves and Kamloops and other residential schools. That is an extraordinary assertion, one that requires proof the media, including the Globe and Mail, did not initially scrutinize, much less challenge that assertion. The initial headlines and stories in the media simply stated as fact that the remains of 215 children have been found. Good for them.
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Yeah. And as you can tell from that passage, they're not denying residential school abuses, but they admit that the media failed to do the necessary scrutiny, as did the government. I could have used a little introspection about why they failed to do their jobs. Like one line like, bro, it was 2021, everyone was doing it. We didn't want to get yelled at on Twitter. That would have been something. But this is a good starting point and I hope that other media, both in Canada and the U.S. inspect their coverage of this event. Links to both articles as well as some analysis by John K. In the show.
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Notes. Yeah, this one, this was wild. Canada. Canada. It's. It's like you think of them as a smaller, less hysterical country, but this can rival anything that happened here during the reckoning.
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Oh, yeah, I don't know that they're definitely.
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Maybe they're not. Maybe they're more hysterical.
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Yeah.
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On some stuff actually. They are on some political stuff. They are.
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I take.
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I take it back.
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All right, so, Jesse, onto the main event. A few weeks ago, we discussed a GOP hopeful named James Fishback, who, ha. Who, by the way, recently announced that he is. He just got married to someone he has known for, I believe, three months.
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Nice.
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You know, there are rumors that this guy is gay, but clearly he's a lesbian.
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Agreed.
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So Fishback is a character. This is a guy who reminds me of my racist neighbor, only without the excuse of age and cte. He's not, however, the only young and extremely online right winger entering politics. And today we're going to discuss another conservative, hopefully Lucian Wintrich, who is currently running for Congress in New York. Jesse, are you familiar with Lucian Wintrich?
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Not as familiar as I'm about to be. Katie.
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Yeah, so this is a guy I've been fascinated with for like 10 years now. I first heard about him in 2016 when he started a project called Twinks for Trump that may have been stolen from. The guy who did social media at Grist, where I worked at the time is my former colleague. His name was Cody. He started this joke Twitter account and website called Twinks for Trump in early 2016 after CNN did a story about gay Trump supporters. This story went viral. Cody saw it, he bought 2,000 Twitter followers and started tweeting. And it was just a complete joke. Like they joke, the joke being that any gay person would vote for Trump, much less a twink. And then later that summer, Lucian Wintridge started his own art project called Twinks for Trump. He says that Cody stole the idea from him. Regardless, there were two twinks for Trump, and Lucian premiered his at a 2016 RNC party. Where had you attended, and I suspect, Jesse, you did, you would have seen Milo Yiannopoulos, Chuck Johnson, and Richard Spencer, along with Lucian Wintrich's photos of half naked gay boys and red mega hats.
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So where, where did this guy come from? Like, what's his backstory?
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Yeah, so he was not raised conservative. The man now known as Lucian Baxter Wintritz the Fourth was born in Pittsburgh in 1988. He's actually from Squirrel Hill, which is where Barry Weiss is from. Mom is an artist, dad worked in advertising. And Lucian, while he was somewhat affluent, he's less affluent or less waspy than you might guess based on the name. He was actually born Lucian Baxter Einh, but he legally changed his last name to Wintrich at 18. He says it's a historic family, a historic fraternal Family surname. And then he added the four for kicks, despite there being no wintridges 1, 2, or 3.
A
Wait, he just Ford himself?
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Yes. You can do that? Apparently.
A
Wow. Okay.
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You should do it.
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Jesse, single, the 18th.
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Yeah. And Lucian, he's definitely elitist. He has been forever. So, like, as a senior in high school, he had a podcast called Acorns and Merlot, and he billed it as being, for the quote, adolescent aristocrat.
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I sound like bullying is so important sometimes. We've said that before. But just like in small doses directed at the right people, a few people need to be stuffed in the lockers. Come on. Acorns and Merlot for the adolescent aristocrat.
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So here's a passage from a 2007 article in the Pittsburgh Gazette about it. Acorns and Merlot is now being done as a live podcast, an Internet radio show where listeners call in while it's recording and take part in a live on online chat room through the website. The site also has a forum where listeners can post messages.
A
Huh. Crazy what technology can do.
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Yeah. So even from a young age, he was media savvy. And after high school, he went to college at Bard. And for non American, non elitist listeners, Bart is this very small, very expensive, sort of bohemian liberal arts school in the Hudson Valley outside New York. The people I know who went to Bard are composers and erotics, and it attracts wealthy New York and New England kids cosplaying as starving artists. Do you know Bard people?
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Do I know anyone who went to Bard? I must, but it's not coming to mind. I just googled it because the city. Since I got back to New York, I realized how disgusting every aspect of New York City is. Yeah, but the Hudson Valley is nice. And I just googled Bard. It's like right on the river. There's a waterfall there. Should we do a show there?
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Yeah, let's. Let's go do a tour at Bard.
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Sweet.
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So, like a lot of young men, like for instance, Dick Fuentes, Wintrich felt stifled by the PC culture at Bard. And he thought that what was cool, hip, transgressive, was no longer the political left, but the political right. He also was just naturally something of a shit stir. And I imagine there was no better way to aggravate people at Bard than to be conservative. So while he was at college, he started a blog called the Bard Tribune as this sort of anti college paper. Not anti college, like anti college paper. Does that make sense?
A
Like a college newspaper, but the opposite.
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Yes. Yes. So all the writers Use synonyms. It was very early vice, like from when vice was more rapey, less scoldy. The website is long gone, but I found an old archive, and there's a section called Boobs at Bard and another called Cox on Campus, which was. Yes, titty pics and dick pics.
A
Nice.
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So that was Lucian in college. Can you imagine that happening today? I don't think it would happen today.
A
No, I don't think it would.
B
So that was Lucian in college. And his later project, Twinks for Trump, was a continuation of that ethos. Edgy, provocative, designed to piss off the squares. So in 2017, the New Yorkers, Andrew Morantz, he profiled Winch. This was after the Trump inauguration. And Lucian said, this good art should be transgressive. These days, it seems the best way to be transgressive is simply to be a white male, proudly pro American conservative. And, you know, that might be true at Bard or Twitter in 2017, but in regular America, that's just about the most average thing you can possibly be. Like huge swaths of America, drive big ass trucks, and love the flag. It's transgressive.
A
It's not actually that. Well, it's transgressive in that subculture.
B
Yes, for sure. Yeah. And despite the fact that Lucian now has political ambitions, which we will get to, he strikes me as someone who is really not that political. Like, he seems way more driven by the need to push boundaries and get attention than to drive policy. And in that way, he's like Trump. And when Trump was inaugurated in 2017, Lucian was hired by the Gateway Pundit to join the White House press corps. Jesse is a very respectable, classically trained journalist with a little press badge on your fedora that you're wearing right now. How does that make you feel?
A
I mean, upset. Like, you know, the Gateway Pundit spends years building up its reputation as like a. As a highly professional news source, and then this Lucian kid comes in and ruins it.
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Yeah, it was him. So no surprise, Lucian treated the whole thing as a joke. Jesse, I want you to read this passage about Wintrich and Jim Hoff. He's the founder of Gateway Pundit. This was about their first trip to the White house. From that 2017 New Yorker profile, they
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stood behind the lectern with the official White House seal in the background and posed for photo, both wearing half grins and making okay hand gestures. When they sat down again, Wintridge posted the photo on Facebook, captioning it with two emojis, an American flag, and a frog. In some Corners of the Internet. The okay gestures associated with Pepe the Frog, a once harmless cartoon that was co opted by the alt right. About an hour later, Media Matters, a left wing nonprofit devoted to, quote, correcting conservative misinformation in the US Media, end quote, published the photo along with a lengthy blog post about Wintridge headlined, a dangerous troll is now reporting from the White House.
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So it was this toxic symbiotic relationship where Wintrich would do something outrageous, provoke an outraged reaction, and then turn liberal media and advocacy groups would take the bait and Lucian would get attention.
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Yeah, and this is like a pretty well worn formula at this point.
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These groups need each other, or these people in these groups need each other.
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Yeah.
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And another example of this trolling happened in November 2017. So Lucian gave a speech at the University of Connecticut. The College Republicans had invited him to give a talk called it's okay to be white. UMass Boston had tried to host this, but they asked him to change the title and he refused. So he went to Yukon, and the night of the talk, about 100 people showed up, many of them protesters. They're chanting go home, Nazi and Black Lives Matter throughout the speech. And then a 33 year old woman named Catherine Gregory, who, it turned out, wasn't a UConn student, she was. She worked at a local community college. She walks up to the podium, takes his speech off the lectern and starts walking away. Winch loses it. He runs up the steps after her, grabs her, there's a scuffle, the police lead him out, he's arrested and charged with misdemeanor breach of peace. He spent a night in jail, gets released on $1,000 bond. And then two weeks later, a prosecutor drops the charges against Winch and instead arrests Catherine Gregory and charges her with attempted larceny and disorderly conduct.
A
And what happened to her?
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She was put on leave at work after her office got. Got inundated with calls and threats. And then later, prosecutors dropped the charges and she was banned from the UConn campus for a year. So no major punishment. But for Lucian, this was a victory. So he dined out on this for a while, but his time as a White House correspondent was not notable at all. So he'd made this big show about how he was going to be trolling the press, but he never asked a single question at the press briefings. And it makes me wonder if he knew he was in over his head. And at the time this was happening, I found it egregious that this troll, you know, this poser was allowed anywhere near the White House. Now it. Honestly, it seems kind of quaint.
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Yeah.
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Anyway, Lucian was not long for the White House press Corps, so in 2018, he left Gateway Pundit. And the rumor at the time this was spread by people like Jared Holt from Right Wing Watch. The rumor was that Lucian was fired for appearing on Nick Fuente's podcast. Now, Lucian told me that's not true. He said he left on his own because Gateway Pundit became too toxic. And that was kind of unexpected. So when I asked him to explain what he meant, he said that he was doxed by antifa. Someone left salsa and pudding in his mailbox. So he's blaming the left for that kind of direct personal attacks. No surprise there. But he also said that the Gateway Pundit audience was too racist for him. He said he'd do some story about some event, and if any of the characters in the story were black, the comments section just became this cesspool of racism, which, like, yeah, this is Gateway Pundit. This is what you signed up for.
A
So you. So you talked to him?
B
Yeah, I did. And he. And he wasn't really what I expected. Like, he's a seasoned troll. Right. I expected him to be a bit more like Nick Fuentes and James Fishback, guys who I think are really damaging the culture, but who. I. I have to admit, they have some charm. Like Fuentes in particular. He can be really funny, especially when he's shit talking. The mouth breathers who listen to his own show. Let's. I genuinely think that's very funny. But Lucian Wintrich, surprisingly inarticulate. I actually felt kind of bad for him. He seemed extremely nervous and out of place when we were talking.
A
Where did he land after Gateway Pundit?
B
So he wasn't in the public eye much after that. He. He says that he works in pr, but he kind of disappeared. And I really heard nothing about the. This guy for years. He did pop up for a moment in March 2020, though. So. Jesse, click that link there. This is a New York Post article.
A
This is by John Levine. New Yorkers are throwing Corona potlucks and visiting speakeasies.
B
Yeah. So this was March 2020, and Lucian was one of those New Yorkers throwing Corona parties. So here's a quote from John's piece. They can't diagnose at all, reads the invite Wintritz sent to a select group for the March 14 gathering. Don't wash your hands. Bring your fave dish. The Tongue in Cheek advert also included an image of A boy covered in chickenpox and a fork digging into a coronavirus spore.
A
Not great.
B
So that was the March 2020. The very beginning of the pandemic. And look, considering everything we know about COVID yeah, probably fine. At least for the people who attended the party who were young and probably not spend much time with their grandparents. But this is. This is clearly a fuck you to authorities and the pieties of the progressive class. And that's the kind of guy Lucian is. And while the moment right now is right for guys like that, he hasn't been able to seize the current vibe shift for himself. That said, he's currently in the news again for a couple of reasons. So, one, as I mentioned, he's running for Congress in New York. We'll get to that shortly. But he also has had a very dramatic breakup with the New York Young Republicans, where he served as the chair of their press committee from 2022 to late 2025. And this one is way more entertaining than his political ambitions. So, Jesse, do you know anything about the New York Young Republicans Club?
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I cannot say I do, Katie. That's it? That's all you get, you freeloader. If you want to hear the whole thing, go to blocktremported.org and become a premium subscriber. Thank you, and I hope you enjoyed the preview.
Date: June 4, 2026
Hosts: Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal
In this premium episode preview, Katie and Jesse dive deep into two internet dumpster fires: first, a detailed exploration of the Canadian Indigenous Graves scandal and the ensuing fallout in the Canadian media, and second, an in-depth profile of Lucian Wintrich—infamous for founding (or stealing) "Twinks for Trump" and recently reemerging in the public eye as a would-be conservative politician and right-wing troll. The discussion is both incisive and irreverent, punctuated by snarky asides and moments of honest curiosity.
Timestamps: [00:33]–[06:45]
Timestamps: [06:45]–[18:32]
| Timestamp | Segment | |------------|------------------------------------------------------------| | [00:33]–[06:45] | Canadian Indigenous Grave Scandal: Myth-making & Media Fumbles | | [06:45]–[08:26] | Introduction to Lucian Wintrich & the “Twinks for Trump” Origin | | [08:26]–[12:44] | Wintrich’s High School & College Years, Attention-Seeking Methods | | [12:44]–[13:59] | Twinks for Trump Goes to Washington: Press Corps Days | | [13:59]–[15:32] | Yukon Speech Incident: Trolling and Fallout | | [15:32]–[16:58] | Post-Gateway Pundit, Doxxing, and Impressions of Wintrich | | [17:15]–[17:45] | Lucian’s COVID Era Antics: “Corona Potlucks” | | [17:45]–[18:32] | Congressional Run & Young Republicans Drama |
Katie and Jesse balance incisive critique with irreverent humor, approaching even years-old controversies with fresh eyes and a refusal to let the absurdity of online life go unremarked. Both take mainstream media to task for their failures, but maintain a clear-eyed skepticism toward online right-wing provocateurs. This episode is particularly insightful for anyone interested in how tabloid weirdness and online antagonism repeatedly shape the news cycle, often with consequences far beyond the joke.
To hear the full episode and all updates on Lucian Wintrich’s campaign, subscribe at blockedandreported.org.