Sam (2:31)

You're like, hey, hey, hey. Did you see this about clavicular? And you're like, honestly?

Will Sommer (2:36)

I was like, how do I use the code word? How do I explain to my wife, like, od, you know, without the kids picking up on it? But, yeah, I mean, you know, on one hand, I did miss it. But then in the evening, you know, that's when I catch up and I go, oh, my gosh, you know, why am I not at work? But so, so, so, you know, it's the yin and yang, you know, I'm back.

Sam (2:55)

I just. The image of you, a long day, you know, going on vacation with little kids is not actually vacation. So you're just exhausted. At the end of the day, you and the wife finally gets unwinding. You're just on your phone looking through.

Will Sommer (3:07)

Oh, no, that's completely it. That was completely it. I was like, oh, my gosh. Like, right. The clavicular thing happened, like, in the evening. I was like, oh, my gosh.

Sam (3:13)

Oh, man. Well, it's good to be back. I was monitoring it from afar, too. I saw the clavicular thing. I saw him being carried out. I thought of you. But then this weekend, really, I started, like, signing really back online and looking at what was happening on the Internet. And the one thing that just kept coming up, and it might have been my algorithm, who knows? But it was everywhere. Is the resurfacing, yet again, of these conspiracy theories around the Butler assassination attempt of Donald Trump back in the 2024. Now, just. Just to back up a little bit and set the stage, and then we can dive into this. And I guess I should probably preface this by. By acknowledging that, like, a lot of people in the comments and a lot of people online are, you know, credulous about this. They think that something did happen. They believe that it's worth a lot more scrutiny than it's received. They think there's a lot of suspicious, anecdotal stuff that hasn't been answered. And I don't want to be disrespectful of it. Like, I think I'm ultimately for more transparency, more investigated journalism. I, too, want to get more insight into what's going on. So I'm not disrespecting the conspiracies, I will be upfront about it. I don't believe them at this point. I'm not certainly prone to believe in conspiracy theories. That's just my nature. Like, I want to make sure, like, there's hard evidence before we start suggesting Israel's behind this or something else. But I also do acknowledge that, like, there is just a lot of chatter out there. So I want to be sort of respectful for the people who are curious, but just be honest about where I'm coming from. All right. So with the throat clearing out of the way this weekend, there were a number of conservatives out there raising the alarm bells about this stuff. And what's interesting is that if you Remember back in 2024, the first round of conspiracists were liberals. It was the Blue Anon crowd, as they were called, wondering why this happened, wondering about the protocols around it, suggesting that it might have been a false flag operation to gin up support for Donald Trump prior to the election. There were some conservatives at the time who were conspiracists, but they're coming at it from a different direction. So like Eli Crane, if you remember this thought that this was an attempt by the Secret Service and the Biden run FBI to kill Donald Trump. I mean, that that was basically his insinuation. Now it seems different. Now there are people out there who are wondering whether this was all staged to help Donald Trump, and they're coming from the conservative side as well. So you know Tim Dillon, obviously famous podcaster who's been more Trump skeptical of as of late, he said, quote, I think it may be staged. You have Tucker Carlson who says the FBI is covering it up. You have Joe Kent, obviously, who resigned and said he tried to investigate it but was stopped, although he offered no evidence. Let's put up the Marjorie Taylor Green tweet from this weekend. So this is just yesterday. I'm not calling the Butler assassination a hoax, but there are a lot of questions that deserve public answers. I'm asking why won't Trump release the information about Matthew Crooks? Matthew Crooks is the alleged killer. Did he actually act alone? If not, who was behind him and who helped him? Why the COVID up? So, will, what's going on here? Why are voices on the right suddenly coming at this from what seems to me to be a different direction than like the Eli Crane that they were trying to kill Trump and now they got caught?

Will Sommer (6:30)

Yeah, I mean, I think we're seeing here a lot of these people who are sort of dissident elements of maga, you know, whether it be Marjorie Taylor Greene or Tucker Carlson, have increasingly, in the past week or two, sort of embraced this idea that, you know, either there was a real attempt on Trump's life involving the deep state and Trump is now covering that up, or Cash Patel's FBI is covering it up, or that this was somehow staged, or that it was set up to make Trump look good. You know, on the other hand, which is kind of what Marjorie Taylor Greene is suggesting here. Right, so you're exactly right that this is from a different angle. It's sort of a. People have gotten so fed up with Trump that now they're just saying, well, I think he staged the assassination on himself.

Sam (7:09)

But why do you think they're doing it now? Is. Is it just like they're just disaffected with Trump, the Iran stuff? They need to find some other outlet to express their displeasure. They're just sort of inclined to believe conspiracies.

Will Sommer (7:21)

Yeah. I mean, essentially, yes. I mean, I think Joe Kent coming out has helped a lot with that. You know, it is pretty crazy that this guy who is like, a top counter terror official, was also kind of running a sideline in, like, you know, like, YouTube assassination investigation.

Sam (7:36)

Right.

Will Sommer (7:36)

And, like, sleuthing, because he also famously, like, had looked after into the Charlie Kirk case and was told, like, what are you doing here? Back out? And so, you know, I do think there is. It's. The Butler assassination was so important to maga, and it was such a moment of like, oh, you know, Trump is at his apex. He's so powerful now, there's no stopping him. Literally, like an assassin can't stop him. And I think the fact that people are questioning that now really points to Trump's unpopularity on the right.

Sam (8:01)

Yeah. Does sort of undo a lot of the hagiography that they had engaged in earlier on.

Will Sommer (8:09)

Right.

Sam (8:09)

I mean, there was this almost religious element to what had happened. And I remember being at the convention hall, it was like, what was it like a couple days after the assassination attempt where everyone had the little bandages on the ears and they're talking about Trump. Yeah, they're talking about Trump in this kind of divine aura around him. And, you know, God had saved him, and now it's like, well, actually, maybe he did. You know, he orchestrated this whole thing. It's wild. Has the White House engaged this? I haven't been able to see if they're, like, engaged at all.

Will Sommer (8:39)

You know, here's something interesting, though, Sam. When I was doing research for this Segment, I remembered that back in I believe November, the FBI put out its own document trying to put a lot of these conspiracy theories to rest. So already we've seen the Trump administration kind of engage with this stuff in the same way that Bongino and Cash Patel came out and said, you know, Epstein killed himself last summer. Now last year they put out a document that said like, you know, we looked into it. This is crazy. They were like Thomas Matthew Crooks. He did not really use they, them pronouns, you know, and sort of all these things.

Sam (9:10)

That's what they looked into.

Will Sommer (9:14)

It was not a trans conspiracy. You know, I do think there's also this, speaking of, there's sort of this similarity between the conspiracy theories between about Charlie Kirk's assassination and the Trump assassination attempt where you have someone who's like, seems pretty believable as a suspect, as sort of a lone gunman type. But then people just like, they want this, you know, in the case of, you mentioned the kind of the, the earlier version of these conspiracy theories where it's like we want this deep state or this left wing cabal to be behind it and then people are really sort of left dissatisfied when that doesn't turn out to be the case.

Sam (9:47)

No, I like can acknowledge the dissatisfaction. Right. Like it doesn't, on the surface, it doesn't really makes sense that this 21, 20 year old kid who was kind of like a social outcast, suddenly got a football field away from the president with a rifle and no one saw him and got off a couple shots and killed someone. And like how, how could that even happen? And then you get an investigation into him and there's not like really an ideology here. He just seems to, I mean he's googled like both Biden's schedule and Trump schedule and it's like you want some sort of motive and you know, something similar to that effect. Remember the Las Vegas gunman who shot like killed 49 people at that show is awful. And, and just sort of, they looked into it. I mean, as far as we know, it's like I couldn't tell you what the motive was of that shooter. And it's deeply frustrating and troubling honestly, that you have these instances where it's incredibly violent, tragic loss of life and you don't have concrete answers that give you some sort of satisfaction that, yeah, this was for this reason. So I get it, like you want something bigger there, but sometimes it's just not the case. So.

Will Sommer (10:57)

Yeah, well, I was just gonna say, I mean, I think the idea of the MAGA people questioning this is sort of the, as we talked about, it's kind of crossing a line to suggest that, you know, Trump is such a bad guy to them now that he would not only stage an assassination, I mean, but obviously there was the guy who did die in the assassination so that, that he would have someone shot, you know, to help his political chances. I mean, that's really like a lot of these people, again, have already broken with Trump. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson. But I think it shows you how, you know, how irreconcilable they are with Trump at this point.

Sam (11:31)

Right. I want to get into some of the specifics around the conspiracy and to explain, I guess, in, in a way why I don't believe that there was a conspiracy. A couple things. One is the sort of 30,000 foot one. And just jump in when you have a thought here because I'm going to riff for a little bit, but I want you to jump in. One is like, this was the Biden led Justice Department Secret Service that was, you know, in charge of the security. Okay? So like, if your belief is that Trump now staged all this to benefit himself politically, it would have involved at least some buy in from the Biden Secret Service. Biden led Secret Service and Biden led Justice Department. Biden left FBI at the time. Okay? So that alone is, is pro, is difficult. There was a bipartisan congressional committee that did look into this after the fact, bipartisan being the key word here. And they, they, they did not come up with any rationale for this being a conspiracy. Trump, people forget about this. Trump went on Dr. Phil during the campaign and was asked about this stuff and he blamed the Biden led Secret Service for not staffing him well enough. So, you know, he also is adding to the idea that like, hey, you know, these people were partisan. If they were partisan, why would they, you know, why would they engage in this? And then there's the specific stuff. So among the other things, there's this, you know, one of the things is like, well, why did they rush all those photographers into place to get those iconic shots of Trump with his hand held high? And, you know, all that stuff. And if you look at the actual footage, I mean, and I did, they didn't rush the photographers into place. You look out, look at the whole footage. Trump actually goes down. The Secret Service keeps him down for like 45 seconds. And then if you hear the footage, you can hear someone scream out, all clear. Suspect is down or shot or killed or something like that. And it's only then that Trump gets up and does his thing. And it's only then that the photographers are ushered in by what looks like a youngish Secret Service person. The other thing is. And keep this photo up for a little bit. There's a lot of photos circulating this weekend of Trump's ear and it looks like it as it's not actually hit by a bullet. And it appears that that's an old photo or a wrongly presented photo because as you can see here very clearly, this is an AP photo. Trump's ear is bleeding. I mean, it's bleeding. It's right there, top of the ear. It's. That's blood. Now people say, well, it should have been way more damaged if it was, you know, a bullet of that caliber. So I can't speak to that. It's possible, I suppose everyone's posited that it could have been shattered glass from the teleprompter or something like that. But I think it's pretty evident from this photo right here that that ear is bloodied. Okay. I know people are going to say, well, he could have cut it himself. But we do know that a shot

Will Sommer (14:32)

was fired like a wrestler, like he had a little raz concealed.

Sam (14:36)

Yeah, well, you know, he's a WWE fan, so ketchup packet or something like that. But, you know, there was a person killed. Okay. Corey Compatur was killed. He was shot. He was killed. So clearly a bullet was fired. The most sort of. I, I mean, I can go on. On. Do you have any thoughts here before?

Will Sommer (14:58)

Two points to make. One is that, you know, this, this conspiracy has, has gathered a lot of characters. Now Marjorie Taylor GRE about Willie Tepes and now Willie Tepes. Willie Tepes kind of a. Or teepees, I guess, sort of a Kaiser Soze type name. Supposedly like I believe a Norwegian antifa who was supposedly in touch with Matthew Thomas Crooks and tagged him on YouTube. I don't know, the FBI said they don't really buy it. But so this, it's kind of created its own. It has its own universe of characters now and kind of the broader point about social Secret Service, you know, security. I would say this weekend we're seeing a real clear investigation story about a Secret Service agent having a relationship with, I believe an only fans creator who was like posting all his, you know, internal Secret Service documents. So maybe the opsec isn't that good in general.

Sam (15:48)

Is this a John Solomon joint or is this something.

Will Sommer (15:50)

No, no, I believe Crabtree.

Sam (15:53)

Okay, Crabtree got. Okay, yeah. Secret Service has not covered itself in glory on a number of fronts. So let's just state that a couple other data points again, we'll just jump in, please. Okay. There was this theory that he was shot in the chest because there's this kind of like shadow or hole in his. Have you seen this one? No. Okay. There's apparently a photo floating around. There's like a kind of a dark hole right here on Trump's suit. It looks dark compared to the rest of the suit. They did look into that, actually. It was just a fold in the jacket. There's other pictures without that little dark spot. I'm not really sure what the theory would be about the chest, but that's been floating around there. Former agents have told news sources that in fact the agents operating were keeping in protocol again with how they put Trump down, covered him, and only when it was all clear that they let him get up. A couple other things. Crooks. There was explosives found in his car. He had searched for the schedules of Trump and Biden. He had searched for info on both the Republican Democratic Convention. He had searched for how to make a bomb from fertilizer. So, you know, I don't know, you might say, well, that was just planning on his part to make sure he had a good cover. But it's there. He did the searches. Fox News had reported that the crooks's parents had called the police before the assassination, a couple hours before the assassination, to warn that their son might be about to do something troubling. Again, that's not something you would do or have done if you're trying to stage an assassination. Right. Like, your parents don't normally try to tip off the police in advance of it. Maybe they weren't in on it, I suppose. But again, I'm not trying to. Again, I'm not trying to be dismissive necessarily. Well, I guess I am being dismissive of the conspiracies. I'm trying to work through these and just sort of go through some of the points.

Will Sommer (17:51)

I mean, I think we could just forward this to Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker, and I think this should resolve the issue pretty quickly.

Sam (17:56)

Yeah, I'm sure they're going to be completely convinced. But the bit, the, the one that really stood out to me again is, and this, I, I want to give credit to this guy, Scott Carney, who was like a, a sleuthy investigative journalist who, who did this about eight months ago, he did a video. Again, this stuff pops up all the time. But what's different now is that it's the MAGA folks who are pushing it. But Scott Carney had this point about, about sort of the, the theatrics of this, the, the bigger planning of this, which is, if you think about it in just the broad scheme of things, if the idea is you want to stage an assassination attempt so that you can generate political sympathy for yourself, okay, and someone's gonna fire a real bullet or multiple bullets at you, okay, which happened. Right. I don't think anyone's saying Corey Competore was, you know, faking it. He was killed, okay? So real bullets were fired by Thomas Crooks. At the very minimum. I think everyone agrees with that. If you want to stage an assassination attempt, why would you let someone like Thomas Crooks, who had no history of being a good shot, take the shot at the President? I mean, that is highly reckless. So let's watch Scott Carney summarize it because he does much better than I do at unpacking how kind of difficult it is to believe the conspiracies to Slate.

Scott Carney (19:24)

Crooks had no military training and was reportedly barred from his high school rifle team. He had such bad aim, he was considered, quote, dangerous and a potential risk for accidentally harming his teammates. Now, this is not the sort of crack shooter that you are going to want to have performing a near miss on your head with a lethal round. While the results of the shooting ultimately helped Trump in the subsequent election, proponents of the false flag hypothesis have to contend with a few very hard to stomach facts. The first and foremost is this. For it to work, Trump would have had to be so confident in the shooting skills of this would be assassin that a shot could get close enough to potentially cause him actual damage. And also that the shooter would be willing to sacrifice their life for the President's plot. Frankly, that just seems crazy to me.

Sam (20:22)

And it frankly seems crazy to me.

Will Sommer (20:25)

Can I leave you with something else to think about though?

Sam (20:27)

Yeah, please.

Will Sommer (20:28)

Lee Harvey Oswald, also famously a poor marksman, you know, so, you know, who's

Sam (20:33)

to say will get the fuck?

Will Sommer (20:37)

It's true. I'm kind of a Kennedy assassination guy, you know? Yeah.

Sam (20:41)

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Will Sommer (20:42)

Mafia, Cuban, exile, CIA. All of it, really, all working together. Yep.

Sam (20:47)

Okay. I didn't know that about you. This explains a bit. But you don't believe it here.

Will Sommer (20:51)

No, not in this case. Not in this case.

Sam (20:54)

Okay, well, hold on. That gives you credentials.

Will Sommer (20:56)

Yeah. Look.

Sam (20:58)

Yeah.

Will Sommer (20:58)

Yes, yes.

Sam (21:01)

Go on. Come on, keep going.

Will Sommer (21:03)

Oh, no, you know, I, I was just gonna say that. The one thing I was gonna say is, like, you really have to be bad to be kicked off of the school marksmanship team as a risk to your teammates. Aiming at a 90 degree angle or something. You know what, what is. You know, that's great.

Sam (21:18)

It is crazy. I mean, again, I just want to emphasize this. The idea is you gave you. Someone went to this 20 year old kid, troubled kid. They're like, this is our guy. I want you to climb up on this thing. You're probably gonna die, okay? Because they're gonna shoot at you after you shoot at us. But we want you to climb up on this, whatever, this structure, this edifice about a foot, about 300ft away from the President. We want you to take a shot at him, but we want you to be really precise. Okay. We want you to shoot at him and just kind of graze him or near miss him. And you may kill someone in the audience. Whatever, it's worth it. But whatever you don't hit Trump, like, just don't do it. Good plan. And he's like, no.

Will Sommer (22:03)

High risk.

Sam (22:05)

It's insane. It's really insane.

Will Sommer (22:07)

Good news, Trump. Yeah. Joe Biden just imploded on the debate stage. Now we got to do this. Totally insane.

Sam (22:13)

Well, that's the. So that's the other thing that people don't really. And I don't think that I'm gonna, I'm gonna backtrack in a little bit because again, I don't want to offend. I'm not trying to be totally offensive to the people who are conspiracies here, but this happened like two days after Biden's debate. Okay? Like, Trump is ascendant. Like, this thing is he's gonna win. At this point, everything is like, wow, my opponent just had the most epic brain fart collapse in the history of politics in front of tens of millions of people. And it's absolutely all anyone can talk about. You know, we need to do, we need to go through with the plan for that fake assassination. Time doesn't quite make any sense. Now, I will say the, the conspiracists have, have argued that there might have been a second shooter. Right? Like, that's, that is one of the things that they're talking about, that crooks wasn't up there firing, but there is evidence that he did fire. And so I, I just can't. I can't find myself to get, I can't get myself to the place where I believe this stuff now.

Will Sommer (23:16)

I think it makes a lot of sense.

Sam (23:18)

Okay.

Will Sommer (23:18)

You know what you're saying? Not that.

Sam (23:20)

Thank you. I was Just Cliff. All right, we got to take a quick break for an ad because we don't do this stuff for free. I don't go through the archives and endure this stuff for free. Let's play a quick ad from Shopify. We'll come back and we're going to be talking about Cash Patel.

Shopify Announcer (23:34)

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Sam (24:56)

You know, I pretty much would buy anything that Andrew Egger promotes and use any product that Andrew Egger promotes. So I, I was actually during that just googling Shopify.

Will Sommer (25:06)

I was captivated by his performance.

Sam (25:09)

Yeah. And, and I, I will be on Shopify all day today. I was wondering if I could get that plant in his background on Shopify. Shopify, man. Everyone should check it out. All right. Other big story from the weekend. Cash.

Will Sommer (25:23)

I've been dying to get to this.

Sam (25:24)

I know, I know. And Tim talked about this a little bit. The Atlantic reported. I think it was Friday night. It was or no Saturday. I think it was like one of those rare Saturday night drops of a story that doesn't happen that often where you're like, we got the, you know, you have a good story, like a real explosive story when you're like, you know what? We can drop this at 8pm on a Saturday. It's gonna be fine. This thing's gonna travel. And I think that's what they did. And yeah, it. The. The headline doesn't really give it credit because, like, it's about drinking. Like, they should have flopped. They should have swapped the deck in the head there. FBI directors mia. I would have been like, FBI director is accused of excessive drinking. You want to summarize this for us? Because you, You, You. You've been a hot on this one.

Will Sommer (26:06)

Yeah. So, I mean, yeah. Such a good story, such a good read. Yeah. So this is about Cash Patel. And it alleges that he's, you know. You know, almost like, do we even need to say alleged? Because famously, we saw the video of him, you know, pounding bruise with the hockey team at the Olympics.

Sam (26:21)

Yeah.

Will Sommer (26:21)

But basically, it alle. He has this. His drinking has become a problem at work that people are. Have trouble locating him. Have trouble. Like, I believe the article says that they had to move meetings to later in the day.

Sam (26:33)

There's one point in the article, they're like, they had to do the door knockdown.

Will Sommer (26:37)

Yeah, Well, I was going to say, and I want to parse that part closely, but basically it says, it was a little unclear to me whether it was on a trip in a hotel room or if it was actually at FBI headquarters, which would seem even crazier to me, but basically that there was a point where they were like, well, we know he's behind this door and it's locked. And so we have to get like a SWAT team battering ram to get through and get him.

Sam (26:59)

I mean, that's nuts. That's nice. Yeah. I think people like, you know, I don't think people are appreciating that it's the FBI director. It's like, you know, like, we shouldn't be. First of all, we should not be talking about this guy ever. Like, the FBI director should be, like, in the background, not grabbing headlines, not parting up with the boys at the Olympic stadium, not traveling on his jet to go see his. What is the country music sensation. Yes, we use the word sensation here. You know, like he's in the headlines all the time, and it's just abnormal for that to be the case. Then you add on the fact that there's now accusation of alcoholism. Look, I'm not. I'm not gonna suggest that no FBI director has ever had problems before. We had J. Edgar Hoover Right. Like, you know, there's some real, real gems in there, but, like, this is a lot of drama, public drama, I should say, for an FBI director. And now he's threatening to sue the Atlantic over this. Do we know if the suit's been filed?

Will Sommer (28:04)

Well, so he said on Fox News on Sunday. He said it would be filed today. As of, you know, us sitting down this morning, I don't think it's been filed. This is interesting, though, because, you know, for me, part of the story, I mean, obviously the drinking stuff I think is very damaging to Cash. But other parts of the story, you know, like him, you know, supposedly shutting down, like, the FBI merch store, so and so he could shop privately and saying he wanted tougher merchandise. I think that's certainly interesting. But it's also kind of like par for the course for like, a Trump administration story that, like, his lawyer singled that out in a letter saying, you know, Atlantic don't run this, don't say Cash, you know, messed with the merchandise store. So, you know, I guess what's interesting, sort of the, there's the story itself and then there's the story around the story, which is the huge pushback from maga, from people in the administration, people like Rick Grinnell, who obviously just recently left the Kennedy center, people saying, you know, I can't believe this is the craziest thing that's ever been written. Meanwhile, there's all this reporting about, like, Trump bungling the Iran war, things that you might think would be a little more relevant. So I'm just curious about why Cash is so defensive about this one in particular.

Sam (29:12)

You think it's like you protest too much kind of thing?

Will Sommer (29:15)

Well, I, I don't know. I mean, obviously people have said, you know, Trump obviously has this, you know, is very critical of people with drinking problems, although, you know, apparently he doesn't. I mean, Pete Hegset's hanging around. I mean, like all these other people who, you know, this, this issue has come up for them. So, you know, perhaps he's trying to, you know, I will note Cash seemed especially, you know, subservient to Trump in his Sunday Fox News appearance. He said, we're going to get to that.

Sam (29:38)

Yeah, yeah, let's put on before, let's put the Grinnell tweet, if we can, because I think this gets at something larger. Okay. I asked, this is Sarah Fitzpatrick is the author of the piece who her editor was on that all anonymous hit piece that has been widely discredited. She won't answer. She's Nervous about the coming court action. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Just because she's not answering your email, Rick, doesn't mean she's nervous because it's

Will Sommer (30:04)

clearly like, I want to tag your editor and scream at them too.

Sam (30:07)

Yeah, it's like, oh, okay. Yeah. If you don't answer Rick, that means you're guilty. That's just not how it works. Oh. Oh. We have breaking news. He has sued.

Will Sommer (30:17)

The lawsuit has been filed as of this morning. You know, right before we went live today, it looks like the, the lawsuit has been filed against Sarah Patrick Fitzpatrick in the Atlantic and you know, cash is asking for. Do we have a 250?

Sam (30:31)

250 million.

Will Sommer (30:32)

There you go.

Sam (30:33)

250 mil. That's it. Didn't Trump want a billion from someone? So, yeah, just to be clear, she has two dozen sources now. They're anonymous. As you can imagine. That's how it's going to work with this type of vindictive administration. It's not the thing here. And I think what you're getting is kind of notable. If this were a one off, I, you know, you might have more suspicion about the story. But it's not like there hasn't been a succession of reporting about cash and sort of the bungling and the, you know, the silly stuff that he's doing and the use of the jets and you know, the, the gym. Like he had some gym video that he was putting out and the story about like trying to find a jacket when he was going to Utah to deal with the Charlie Kirk thing and he couldn't find one. He ended up with like a woman's jacket. Yeah.

Will Sommer (31:28)

Small size, I believe. Yes. Yeah.

Sam (31:29)

And then he was like looking some Velcro patch that made him look tough. Like it's all there. What's new about this story is the drinking stuff. But he, like you said, he's on videoed at the Olympic hockey pounding a beer. So yeah, it's, it's an embarrassing story. There is, look at, there he is.

Will Sommer (31:44)

Classic.

Sam (31:45)

Say this guy. Who, who could say this guy has a drinking issue? Actually, I'm not going to say that. I've chug beers too. I'm not going to be sanctimonious about it. Anyways, the other thing that was kind of notable is the lawyer he used, I believe for, for the lawsuit is the same one that Mark Robinson used to.

Will Sommer (32:00)

Yeah. So this guy's named Jesse Binnell. This is a character I'm very familiar with as sort of the go to defamation lawyer for Maga figures he the basically like, you know, he's also pretty close with Cash. I believe he's on the board of Cash's foundation. And so this is a guy who, you know, if you're a right wing person who's unhappy about a media article, you'll probably hire Jesse Binnell. As you said, he represented Mark Robinson in the lawsuit against CNN over, you know, failed lawsuit over Robinson's online sexual activity. So, you know, I don't know. It's not, it's not like Cash has hired Clairlock or some other like, super heavy duty defamation firm. This is kind of like someone you go to. I would say if you, you know, you want to get out there, that you're suing quickly, but not necessarily like you have the strongest case.

Sam (32:48)

No, the Robinson one was a joke. You, you, you hinted at Cash is doing what you do. When you're in trouble in the Trump administration, you need a distraction. You're worried about you're standing with the boss. You just go, you know, say you're digging up some about the election interference in 2020. So he went on Fox with Maria Bartaroma on Sunday. Let's play the clip where they're talking about the investigations that are currently happening and maybe we don't have the clip, in which case I will read it. He says, no, we don't have, it's fine. Basically, he says, okay, Maria, I'm happy to announce on the show that we are going to, to take this, we aren't going to take this lying down. You want to talk my character, come at me. Bring it on. I'll see you in court. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, this is about suing for defamation. He then goes and he says, we are currently doing a suit and there's going to be arrests or more or less for interference in 2020 election. First of all, I, you know, it seems conspicuously time, but secondly, it's like these guys. I was noting this. The Justice Department has policy. You're not supposed to talk about ongoing investigations until you need to talk about ongoing investigations. But it is sort of the same playbook that Tulsa used. Right. Where she was in, in a little bit of trouble, she went down to Georgia. What did you make of it?

Will Sommer (34:09)

Yeah, I mean, on one hand, it does seem kind of crazy to be like, yeah, we've been in office for more than a year, but, you know, we might finally like if a presidential election was really stolen, I mean, you'd kind of want to get on that quickly. On the other hand, you know, you do think about, you know, clearly there's been some sort of, there's been reporting about, you know, U.S. attorneys being involved, investigating the voting machines. You know, so maybe, I mean, you know, it doesn't seem impossible that they, that there is some kind of arrest coming up.

Sam (34:35)

They just put out the news yesterday was they, they, they, the DOJ had asked the city of Detroit for the 2024 Macon county voting rolls, which didn't make really much sense to me because Trump won Michigan in 2024. So we'll see what comes that. This is the actual quote from Cash because I butchered it. I finally found it. Cash says, I'm never going to let go of this. They tried to thwart our elections and rigged the entire system. And that is not something that I'm going to allow on my watch. But you just have to remember they built this disease temple over 20 and 30 years. What the does that mean? We've got all the inference. I can announce on your show that we've got all the information we need. We are going to be making arrests and it's coming and I promise you it's coming soon.

Will Sommer (35:20)

This disease temple. Yes. He kind of recalls the, the language of kind of like the tech monarchists who talk about like the cathedral, you know, controlling American life. Yeah. It is funny that suddenly he's like, oh, my gosh. You know, FBI directors are, you know, to your earlier point, they are allowed to comment on investigations if the FBI director is on the verge of being fired. And so, you know, that's a famous caveat.

Sam (35:43)

Yes, one, exactly. Okay, last bit. Unless you have anything more you want to say about Cash.

Will Sommer (35:48)

No, no, no, let's get to this one. Yeah. Quickly. Yeah.

Sam (35:51)

Well, actually, before we get to Ashley Sinclair, which is a good one, can you talk about Jordan Peterson? Because you referenced it earlier and it's sort of like jarring. What's going on?

Will Sommer (36:00)

So Jordan Peterson had a benzodiazepine dependence, I believe, clonazepam. And so people, this is several years ago. This was like right before the start of the pandemic. I think people may remember that Jordan Peterson was kind of like just really on top of the world as this kind of like right wing intellectual. He told young men to make their beds, all this stuff. And then he sort of disappeared. And then my understanding is basically he ended up in, I believe, a Russian sanatorium where he was put into a coma as he went into a benzo withdrawal. And this was all kind of like his daughter was involved, Michaela Peterson. She was palling around with Andrew Tate in Eastern Europe, all this stuff. So then he comes back and he had like, I think like 20, 24, he was kind of back in and then he had this new recurrence of a medical issue that they initially said was like a mold allergy. And then yesterday, you know, his daughter has occasionally been popping up to provide evidence or updates. And then this time she said, well, he seems to have like, I believe it's called Akanathisia, but basically it's this kind of like here it is a cave. Akathisia. And so essentially, so she says it was caused by mold and. But basically she's claimed this was like kind of pharmaceutical industry damage because of his benzos. So, you know, it does seem like Jordan Peterson is kind of, kind of going to be out of the picture for, you know, at least a while. It's a sad story. And I think also you know, just sort of a, you know, a kind of a bizarre one.

Sam (37:30)

Kind of. Yeah, it's very bizarre. Akathisia, according to AI is a distressing neuropsychiatric syndrome and a movement disorder characterized by an uncontrollable intense inner restlessness and a compelling need to move, often manifesting itself as pacing, rocking and shifting weight. That's. That doesn't sound fun. Although I feel like I kind of sometimes suffer from it. All right, Ashley Sinclair, this one, you know, we had, we had Ashley on the pod. Tim had her on the pod. People need to. For those who don't know Ashley Sinclair, she conservative influencer, she came up through the TPUSA pipeline, right?

Will Sommer (38:10)

Yeah. So Ashley Sinclair was a sort of, you know, right wing Internet E girl, perhaps you might say. You know, initially she used the colorful screen name sex laptop. So that's kind of, I think there sort of sums up where she was coming from.

Sam (38:24)

And then.

Will Sommer (38:25)

So she's kind of like a cute girl.

Sam (38:27)

Sex laptop.

Will Sommer (38:28)

Laptop. Yeah. So this was, this was sort of before she got politicized and she was just kind of like an attractive woman, young woman online. And then she got into the TPUSA pipeline and then she was fired from that for taking a picture with Nick Fuentes. And so anyways, cut to, you know, I think a year or two ago in, you know, one of my favorite stories to ever emerge from right wing media, she had a child with Elon Musk. And then there's kind of like an ugly custody battle over it. And now she's sort of restyling herself as like this person who's like, I've Been inside right wing media and I'm going to tell you how sick it is and how twisted it is.

Sam (39:02)

I thought the t. I don't know if you saw the tin Potter, watched it or heard it. I thought it was really interesting. Like, you know, I thought her sort of recounting of that journey she had and sort of how the system worked, whether or not it was, you know, trying to make, you know, her situation better and it was just sort of, you know, glossing over some of the mistakes she made and not taking full accountability. You can, you can judge it however you want. I came away from it thinking like, you know, this was, you know, a good bit of introspection and someone who actually, you know, had a fairly clear view of, you know, the problems of the right wing Internet culture and the incentives that are put in place. Not just, I guess, right wing, but Internet culture writ large. You know, I, I thought she was, you know, are pretty damn articulated about it. So I, you know, yeah, maybe some of it's just, you know, covering her own ass. But like, no, no, I don't mean

Will Sommer (40:00)

to sound cynical about it. I mean, I, I do think like if she wanted to maximize the amount of money she was making, she would still be on the right. You know, sometimes I, I just kind of like summing up these people's careers flippantly.

Sam (40:10)

Yeah, well, when you start being called sex laptop. Yeah, it's an interesting starting point. All right, so what, what actually happened over the weekend with her and Ben?

Will Sommer (40:20)

Sure. So, you know, Ashley over the past week or so has been on this campaign and she's putting out these TikTok videos, get ready With Me videos. Maybe we should start doing our videos like this, you know, where you're kind of putting on your makeup for the day and telling a story. And it started, she started saying, well,

Sam (40:35)

I'll do that only for the paid subscribers, but go ahead.

Will Sommer (40:38)

So she started saying, well, you know, you know, there's all this money in right wing media, you know, as we've reported on here at the Bulwark about, you know, these here's 500 bucks to post about how bad, you know, how good soda is for people on EBT or whatever, these kind of things that I've covered. And then this kind of started people on the right saying, you know, attacking her. Benny Johnson said, you know, because Ashley wrote a children's book that was very like anti trans children, you know, back when she was on the right, she since disowned it. And this has kind of created this Idea on the right that she's going to make her child with Elon Musk Trans. Which, you know, I don't think there's any evidence for. So then, you know, Benny joins in this and she sees this as sort of like, you know, fine Benny, you know, cards are off the table or, you know, no rules now regarding you.

Sam (41:23)

Can we play it?

Will Sommer (41:23)

Goes after Benny.

Sam (41:24)

Yes, let's play it.

VRBO Announcer (41:25)

You see, Benny, it's really easy for anyone to admit that they have sex with men outside of marriage. We all like to get our whistle wet. Okay, I'm less interested in that though. I'm very, I think everyone will be very interested in your financials and the story of how Benny Johnson came to be in the first place. Tdfn.

Will Sommer (41:51)

So she has kind of an interesting. She's almost like a Joan Rivers type character. Like she's, she's doing like little like bits and you know, she has a. But, but basically she used to work for Benny at his sort of Republican strategy group. And so I think it's pretty believable that she knows where some bodies are buried. I mean, Benny, obviously, other right wing figures and people who worked with him at buzzfeed have accused, have said they, you know, he's gay, that they've hooked up with him in some. Famously, a few months ago, Milo Yiannopoulos was saying this and Benny and his wife put out like a very intense statement that was like, we must defend the honor of our family and suggested that they would sue. Milo, I will say I checked again. This comes up pretty regularly on MAGA Monday. I think I did check literally every mega Monday. You've mentioned this lawsuit still has not been filed. In the video, she calls him, you know, Benjamin Grinder Johnson, as though that's his middle name. You know, it's, it's interesting. I mean, I always love when these right wing media figures like kind of defect and then they say, you know, it's time to drop everything. Like she was making. Not regarding Benny, but she was saying various people were, you know, running honeypot schemes on each other and amassing all this blackmail material on each other. So it's kind of things we've always suspected, but it's interesting to see it confirmed, you know, in the case of this blackmail.

Sam (42:59)

Yeah, first things first. We have no problem if Benny is on Grindr or if he's gay. All the love, all the best to him and we would support, no matter what, what he wants to do in his private life. But how much do you think there's Like, I mean, I'm looking at the comments right now and everyone's just like, spill the beans. Is it true? It's like, is it true? I mean, it's just, they're just. Or are they just throwing around? Because I feel like that's half of the Internet these days is people being like, I'm gonna expose you for this or I'm gonna expose you for that. And then they never follow up and give the goods.

Will Sommer (43:32)

Well, you know, in some cases, you know, Ashley does. She, she made some pretty specific allegations on her TikTok about Benny's business partner, someone who, whose name I don't even remember. But she also, you know, she accused Madison Cawthorn of sort of groping her while in a car. So, you know, I do think there are. I tend to agree with you. I'm sort of at this stage with a lot of these right wing media figures. There's a lot of like, you guys won't believe the ultimate dossier I had that's going to come out. I was like, all right, you know, either come out with it or give Will a call, you know, and we can talk about it. So, you know, and sometimes people do that, which is great.

Sam (44:04)

Do we have the Madison Cawthorn? Let's do that one if we have it. Because, because you just referenced it. That's the other Ashley Sinclair clip.

Will Sommer (44:12)

Maybe we don't have that. No. Yeah.

Sam (44:14)

Okay.

Will Sommer (44:14)

Basically she says she was in a car with him and she was working for Benny's firm at the time. And Madison said, you know, well, just be aware, like I have no control, you know, over my core essentially. And then he was kind of like grabbing her thigh. And you know, other women have made allegations against Madison as well, so.

Sam (44:29)

Yeah. I don't know if you saw the Lauren Boebert viral clip about everyone being horny up on the hill. Did you see that one? Yes, that was about Eric Swallow. But it's, it's true. There's just a lot of horned dogs around, I guess. All right, man, well, look, I think we could leave it there. It's been a good 45 minutes or so. I feel like that's an appropriate amount of MAGA Monday and I got other shit to do. Right.

Spinquest Announcer (44:50)

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Will Sommer (44:50)

Well, thanks everyone for joining us.

Sam (44:52)

Yeah, let me before we go, first of all, it's great to be back. I miss you guys. Miss Will specifically tremendously. And I really appreciate diving right back into it. It's like a real jolt to be back into it, doing Mega Mondays, if you like. What You've watch. We need your support. Like this is kind of. This is the game. We need subscribers. We need people to, you know, subscribe just on YouTube but also on substack. Become a paid subscriber. Support the mission of the Bulwark where we can do this stuff for you. It's really important that we get subscribers. The other thing that I want to announce is that we are hitting the road again. Bork's gonna go out west. I'm actually gonna. I'm doing this. I'm going out west. I convinced my wife to let me do this. Gonna go to San Diego. We're gonna be in LA and there are tickets for next month are available. So if you, if you are in and around San Diego or Los Angeles, you can get tickets for our May shows just go to the bulwark.com events. That's the bulwark.com events. I've done a couple of these shows. It's someone. I'm just laughing at the comments. Someone says Sam needs aloe money. I do. I'm too red. I've been. I've done a couple of these shows. They're awesome. They're such a fun time. Great audience experience. We talk, take your questions. A lot of interactions. Gonna be great. So if you're in the area, LA or San Diego, come get tickets. TheBullWerk.com events will thank you for doing this, everyone. Thanks for tuning in. Sorry I'm so red. Talk to you next Monday for Maga Mondays.

Will Sommer (46:25)

Thanks everyone.

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