Loading summary
Transcript26 lines
- [00:00]
Sonny Bunch
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Bulwark. We've got a really great false flag discussion here with Will Sommer today. Will, thank you for joining me to talk about the second most amusing frankly internecine right wing fight in the MAGA sphere this week after the ladies having their throwdown. That was a great video with Tim and Sam. I was jealous to be on vacation to miss that one. But this is, this is also a very funny sort of cat fight.
- [00:33]
Will Sommer
Yeah, I mean look, yeah, folks want more on the ladies fight check. You know, go back a few days on the YouTube channel. I think it says like she did what? Or something like that. It says highly not safe for work, which I think is true. Yeah, in this case we have Tucker Carlson, you know, once the biggest name in right wing media. Now I think a little bit on the skids. I don't want to over exaggerated here, but things are looking a little rough versus Nick Fuentes, the white nationalist kind of Gen Z guy and leader of the groiper army. The kind of like Pepe the Frog types a lot of, I mean I think they would say it themselves, kind of like racist loser types, but yet ones that make up I think a pretty substantial portion of kind of the young MAGA base.
- [01:16]
Sonny Bunch
So let's, let's break down what actually happened here because as you mentioned, we've got Tucker Carlson who once upon a time most watched man in cable news at the head of Fox. He was in essentially, you know, I think, I don't think it would be a stretch to say he was largely in charge of the direction of the conservative movement for several years there in his perch at Fox. And now he's basically saying, well, well, Candace Owens, thank you for being on my podcast today. Isn't it, isn't it crazy how Nick Fuentes, this, this I, what does he describe him as? This weird little gay, he says like.
- [01:53]
Will Sommer
A gay child living in a basement.
- [01:56]
Sonny Bunch
Weird little basement dwelling gay child is also a fed. Which was probably the wrong tack for Tucker Carlson to take.
- [02:05]
Will Sommer
Yeah, I mean look, this is 2025. We're not going to have a dispute about policy in the MAGA movement. I mean this is going to be about who's secretly a CIA agent. So what happens here is to lay the groundwork for this feud is Candace Owens has a feud with Nick Fuentes because he goes on her show for what I think was supposed to be a sort of mutually clout enriching exercise and she says, you know Nick, you got to have a kid, you know, you're a bit of a weirdo, I would say. You should find love, have a kid. This will really advance how you understand the world. And he said, I don't want to hear about this from a woman. You know, who are you? You know, get out of my face. And so this is the kind of churlish, childish behavior we expect from Nick Fuentes. But also, that has really helped. I mean, look, this guy had dinner with Donald Trump once. This attitude has really helped him. And so then this comes up when Candace goes on Tucker's show and Tucker Carlson, I think, clearly has. It seems like he's kind of been looking for an opportunity to go after Nick Fuentes. I think he sees him as sort of an insurgent figure and, you know, frankly, one who's a lot less tied to sort of the media or the political establishment than Tucker is. And so he says, you know, Candace, you know, wouldn't you say that Nick Fuentes is probably the sort of. Sort of a federal agent? He doesn't say it in exactly those words, but he says, you know, he's. He's working, you know, as part of some scheme to take down real honest conservatives who are anti war, such as me. And a big piece of his evidence is that he says, you know, Nick Fuente said a few years ago that my dad, Tucker's dad, was a CIA agent or had the CIA connections. And I didn't know that until after my dad died. So how did Nick Fuentes know? With the implication being that, you know, at Langley they said, all right, Nick couple, let's let you in on the family jewels here. One of them being that the Tucker's dad is in the CIA.
- [03:50]
Sonny Bunch
Here's the knock list. Nick. Nick Fuentes. Here's, here's, here's who else? No, but this is, and this has long been, you know, kind of. I've heard this sort of thing about Nick Fuentes. You know, people like, oh, well, he was a snitch. You know, he. There's a reason he didn't get into any real trouble after January 6th or something. Like this is. This has been kind of circulating in that world for a while, and it feels like Tucker just kind of reached for it without understanding what he was getting himself into.
- [04:21]
Will Sommer
Yeah, I mean, I think this is. It's very common, sort of in Nick Fuente spheres to call people federal agents, call them ops, as it were. Like they're part of psychological operations. And it's also like in the sort of the white extremist world. Very common, because frankly, that world really is infiltrated with federal informants. And so, but it's not that common for Tucker Carlson to be accusing people of being ops. And so I think he's kind of like playing in some worlds he doesn't understand here. And so he says, you know, well, I implies basically Nick Fuentes is going after me, going after Candace Owens, going after Joe Kent, who is this kind of anti war guy who's now in the Trump administration because he's basically this bad faith actor who is working for intelligence agencies to undermine, you know, true, you know, anti war Republicans.
- [05:08]
Sonny Bunch
So, so Nick Fuentes is secretly a tool of the neocons. Is that, is that my understanding of what I should.
- [05:14]
Will Sommer
Yeah, that's what he's saying. And he also says, you know, he, it's funny because Tucker's clearly been stewing about this up in the cabin in Maine and he's, he's kind of throws in these jabs. It's like, how does this gay child in the basement know about my dad? And you know, there's a lot of pathos there. I think you think of a gay child in a basement, you think, oh, you know, but, but I mean, the reality is, you know, like Nick Fuentes, his fans love that he's like a weird little guy. You know, he just recently I wrote about this. He, he hung out with a guy in the looks maxing community. A world where people, you know, they get the leg implants, they get their legs broken to be taller, they get the chin implants. And it was just like an incredibly weird little guy to be hanging out with. And Nick clearly was like very like in awe of him. But, you know, they, there are a lot of weird guys in the Maga movement and I think in the base and they, they adore that, that he's, he's, he's the Joker. Right? I mean, he's basically the Joker. And so, and so Tucker is basically declaring war here on the Groipers and Nick Fuentes and it does not go well for him.
- [06:15]
Sonny Bunch
See, now I, I used a different Batman analogy when I, when I tweeted out your story, because this really does feel like Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson feels like he is Batman in Dark Knight Returns and he's about to step in there with Bane.
- [06:30]
Will Sommer
Yes.
- [06:31]
Sonny Bunch
And he doesn't, he, he does not under. He does not fully understand what is, what is about to happen to him. What's the line? You, you merely adopted the dark. I was born in it. Nick Fuentes was born in this world of muck, in this world of like garbage Internet people. And Tucker Carlson was. Not a long time ago, Tucker Carlson was essentially working at intellectual publications like the Weekly Standard. He was writing long form reported pieces. He was going on C span. He had crossfire. Like he had a whole long kind of prestigious, interesting career before he decided, well, I guess my base is now the MAGA griper. Basement dwellers.
- [07:15]
Will Sommer
Yeah, I mean both Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, to varying degrees, I mean you can tell that they are out of their depths here. I mean Tucker, as you said, like his stepmom was in the. The. Is an heir to the Swansons frozen food fortune. His dad was an ambassador and very embedded in these kind of, you know, these post war institutions. The Candace Owens in her case really, despite being originally sort of an Internet character, very much came up within kind of conservative movement. Throw money at things. She was at the Daily Wire. I think there's a David Horowitz connection. There's all this stuff. Meanwhile, Nick Fuentes is a guy who's posting on Telegram, comes up very much like a 4chan kind of brained guy who's been through insane trials, often of his own D doing, you know, friendships with conservative activist Ali Alexander who had to apologize for sexting underage boys. You know, these, he was marched in Charlottesville. I mean, these sort of insane sagas that I mean, he's, he's gonna throw. He, you know, I think the Bane comparison is very apt. I mean he's more than willing to throw out just absolutely deranged muck at Tucker. And look, he has a lot less to lose than Tucker. I mean he's, yeah, at least as of recently was living with his parents. He's kind of, you know, he had this like triple murderer show up at his house with a gun to maybe kill him. I mean, it's this stuff that exists in a completely different world than Tucker. And so he comes back and he says, oh, Tucker, will you say I'm an op? Well, you know, here's this video of you saying your dad had CIA connections before he died. And so that contradicts what you were saying. And your dad was, was sort of mobbed up with all these Cold War institutions. And you know, oh, isn't that interesting, Tucker, that you were hanging out with the contras in the 80s in Nicaragua. How did you get down there? You know, where did you get a pass to do that? And like, ultimately I think the key thing here is I don't think either of these guys are CIA agents. But in this world that is taken as a very like serious accusation and one that you can. That. That even sort of a sliver of evidence proves it into their mind. And so here, I think we have to bestow the OP title much more on Tucker than Nick here. After this feud, if we're weighing who.
- [09:20]
Sonny Bunch
Is an OP and who is not, it feels, it feels like Tucker is got the. The. Is tipping the scale at this point.
- [09:26]
Will Sommer
And, and the thing I would add here, I mean, you know, besides just name calling, what have you, I mean, ultimately this is about, like, authenticity and ties to the audience. And Nick Fuentes is such a strange little guy who sort of seems to kind of come out of nowhere that I think he seems like a more authentic figure certainly than Tucker, who, I think it. It's fair to say, has sort of shifted with the winds and sort of saw that this kind of New Right MAGA thing was where the energy was and that should reposition himself.
- [09:52]
Sonny Bunch
Yeah, I want, I want to bring this up because there's a moment in your newsletter where you highlight something that Alex Jones said a while back about how the conservative movement audience has shifted. And say what you will about Alex Jones, a lot of crazy ideas, but I do think he has an understanding of where his audience is. And there's a lot of overlap between his audience and Fuentes's audience. And this is the audience that Tucker Carlson is now trying to poach. Can we just look at this video here for a second?
- [10:22]
C
I mean, let me give you just a dead reckoning graph or overhead shot. Let's say here's 2018, when they're really pushing Shapiro with all the money to try to take over the conservative discussion. Let's say here's Shapiro right here. And let's just say here's a Nick Fuentes right here. Nick Fuentes, Shapiro, not the best graph here. And let's say kind of populist, conservative, common sense thought was about right here in 2018, a little bit more towards Ben Shapiro and his brand of synthetic fake conservatism. You know, take the shots, lockdowns are good. Censorship's okay.
- [11:18]
Will Sommer
Now.
- [11:20]
C
In 2025, people are not over here with Nick Fuentes. They're way down the road about 100 yards this way. So. So by 2024, most people were. Because I basically know everybody and can gauge things and know how to scan a lot of data. As you know, just about a year ago, the average person would say even they know who Nick Fuentes is. They're basically a Nick Fuentes. Well, now it's even more to the other Direction.
- [12:00]
Sonny Bunch
So I mean look, that, that line is moving, has moved far to the right, right? What do we call that? The Overton Window. The Overton window has shifted, has shifted very far to the right, certainly amongst this active, angry, very online base of audience. Right. And I, I do think you cannot understand why Tucker is going to fight Bane in his little hole if you don't understand that he has to chase that audience to maintain relevance and to maintain his, his, his grasp on power over, you know, the intellectual portion of the MAGA movement.
- [12:43]
Will Sommer
You know, I wrote about this back in, in May or June about how Charlie Kirk, someone who obviously the head of Turnpoint USA, big YouTube figure who, how Nick Fuente's fighting with him changed Charlie Kirk for the worse, I would say where, you know, this was a guy who was once like, you know, if you get a degree, let's say if you're a guy from India or wherever, if you get a degree in the U.S. let's give you a green card. We want to keep this talent here to then this year saying we, well essentially we need a ban on non white immigrations and we don't want immigration from third world countries. And that was basically, he had clashed with Nick Fuentes over this idea of non white immigration and then basically folded and capitulated to that Fuentes point of view. And so in the same way, I think Tucker Carlson is someone who's clearly being pulled really far right and who has to engage in this kind of knife fighting and show that he can hold his own in the Thunderdome of this kind of right wing audience. You know, I mean look, we can see the like DHS is posting memes about crying people getting deported, all this stuff. I mean the whole atmosphere is much nastier, it's much more racist. And so Tucker clearly I think has chosen to pursue that. You know, and I think if you're the average bulwark listener, if you're not trying to, you know, launch your own career as a right wing media fame ball, you might say, well why do I care? And I think the success of Nick Fuentes and sort of the failure of these relatively more mainstream figures like Tucker Carlson shows where the Republican Party is headed and where it's particularly young people who obviously will be the future of the Republican Party where they're headed. And the answer is nowhere good. And the one other thing I would say is like about how more powerful Nick Fuentes has become and more acceptable in the GOP. People may remember a woman named Ashley St. Clair who is sort of A young woman influencer who famously had a baby with Elon Musk. There was a time where she was linked up with Turning Point USA and she posed for a picture with Nick Fuentes at a party with like eight other people. It's not even the two of them. And I believe she lost her contributorship. She was definitely sort of exiled from that community because she was at a party with Nick Fuentes. Now you have people, Nick Fuentes going on Candace Owens show. You have him circulating much more in this right wing media world.
- [14:50]
Sonny Bunch
Yeah, no, it's, it is interesting and not in a good way like you want.
- [14:56]
Will Sommer
No, it's very ominous. I think it just shows, I mean the, I mean, look, I mean we've seen a lot of young people in the Trump administration exposed as sort of having Nick Fuentes in ideas and posting about like, you know, basically being gropers themselves.
- [15:10]
Sonny Bunch
Well, well, thanks for keeping an eye on this. Again. His newsletter is False flag@the bulwark.com Go sign up, go sign up for Bulwark Plus. You want to get everything, you want to get all the, the emails and the podcasts and the newsletters straight to your app and your inbox. And especially again, Will is, he's got his eye on, I think what is probably the most important part of the conservative intellectual movement right now, such as it is. It's, it's, it's bad times but somebody's got to, somebody's got to keep an eye on it and make sure you hit like and subscribe here. We want to make sure you get all of our Bulwark content at YouTube because that is where the people are.
- [15:51]
Will Sommer
Absolutely think. Thanks, Sonny. If you're alignment in charge of keeping the lights on, Grainger understands that you go to great lengths and sometimes heights to ensure the power is always flowing. Which is why you can count on Grainger for professional grade products and next day delivery. So you have everything you need to get the job done. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickgrainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.