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- [00:01]
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- [00:36]
Derek Barras
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- [00:43]
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- [01:17]
Derek Barras
One of my biggest frustrations about the current state of media and people's understanding of media is that the largest critics of journalism still rely on primary reporting done by journalists. It's one of the things I love about work, working with larger media organizations when I have a chance. On this podcast we do some primary reporting, but mostly we're working as analysts. We simply don't have the resources to travel around breaking stories, and so we need full time journalists to provide that important context for our work. Once in a while a story breaks that's not on our editorial schedule and we just need to drop it on our feed. Which brings us to this Friday drop. This week a new series, the Deep End with Brandy Zadrozny was released by Ms. Now. I had the pleasure of speaking with Brandy back when she was at NBC News and we've used her reporting on this podcast often as she specializes in radicalization, extreme extremism, and online disinformation. And she travels around talking to the people that we cover now at msnow. Her first deep end is called who Killed Charlie? Inside the Conspiracy Theory Fueling Magus Civil War. I got to watch it earlier this week and the 46 minute special hits all the high notes that conspirituality listeners will know and cherish. And by that I mean be absolutely infuriated by I'm Derek Barras and you're listening to the Conspirituality Podcast. As always, if you can support us, you can find us on patreon.com conspirituality or Apple Podcasts. You can to access our Monday bonus episodes and ad free listening. I'm grateful to Brandy for joining me today. So having spent 10 months working on this special, how's your mental health doing?
- [03:14]
Carvana Advertiser
Not good.
- [03:16]
Brandy Zadrozny
It's not good. I mean, I think it is sort of a luxury. Like you said, it's a real luxury to be able to sit with something for 10 months. When you look at that Charlie Kirk world and what he was to maga, it was sort of this moment in my beat that broke everything apart. It really broke people's brains, it broke apart alliances. It was just, it was everything. It was a really huge moment. And so I'm pretty lucky to get all that time to sit with it and sort of see what happens and see what people would make of it and how people would twist it for their own gains. And boy howdy, it's been a ride.
- [03:51]
Derek Barras
Yeah, I'm amazed by all the sort of factions that are emerging now. There's a lot of talk about Hassan on Piker and the ultra left and what they're doing to left of center voters. And of course in, in the MAGA world, there's been, I think a lot of ground wars going on for a while. But you can't tell this specific story about Charlie Kirk without doing a deep dive on Candace Owens, which you spend the whole almost third of this episode really setting up. And you've interviewed her before. So how much of this about Candace was new to you going into this specific angle about the Charlie Kirk conspiracy theor and why did you feel that you needed to like really do the groundwork on her, on her trajectory?
- [04:35]
Brandy Zadrozny
Yeah, because I think a question that, one of the central questions is why is this happening? To understand why it's happening, I really feel like you need to understand who Candace Owens is. Candace dropped on my radar in 2018. This was before she was hired to turning point where she was this youtuber called Red Pill Black. And she really popped out of nowhere. She got there basically because she had had a dust up with some victims. The Gamergate saga, which is for listeners who don't know, is it was a real turning point in the Internet and it was this moment where gamers and people in the gaming journalism industry were being harassed and in some cases targeted offline by basically these right wing nerds who didn't want their video games to be feminized, they didn't want women in their spaces. And so twisted this thing that happened into a big war against these women. And Candace ended up citing with the men, the right wing men at the time. She had a right wing boyfriend and it sort of like just immediately zapped her right wing she said. And so I was sort of fascinated with her at that moment. I thought that was a really interesting person. It was a weird thing on the Internet, which. That was my beat then. Weird things that happen on the Internet. Before I even reached out to her in 2018, I was just sort of like doing a little background, you know, journalism work. I think I texted someone who knew her, who was part of her marketing agency in New York and said, you know, I'd love to, to talk to you about Candace. Candace found out and went rip Shit. I don't know if I can curse.
- [06:06]
Derek Barras
Absolutely. She went rip shit. That's part of this podcast.
- [06:12]
Brandy Zadrozny
So she went wild and started attacking me on Twitter in this, like, what we now know to be very Candace Owens way. And it was sort of wild. And I decided, oh, my God, I really want to write a profile of this, like, very strange, you know, woman. Between the time I decided I wanted to write a profile and the time that that was published, she was scooped up by Turning Point. So I ended up going to a Turning Point event, talking with her and Charlie at Time. I was just. I thought that she was very of the moment in this way. That turned out to be very, very true. For the next 10 years, she has always been very of the moment. Again, to understand why she would do what she's doing to Charlie Kirk, to Charlie Kirk's legacy, to Charlie Kirk's business, to Charlie Kirk's widow, to Charlie Kirk's friends, I think you have to understand who she is. And the spoiler of who she is is that she is not only willing, but always in search of the ability to say what no one else will say. Differentiation is the key for her success. And she will go farther and further than anyone else and say it with conviction and say it very well, because she's an expert communicator for the Internet specifically. And she really is, and I don't say this lightly, like completely out for herself at every single moment of her career and has been just climbing that ladder. So, yeah, I thought it was really important to do a lot of the legwork and report her bio like that, because a lot of the people who are new to her don't understand her whole background just crashing through right wing media. And also it's a story about what right wing media has done. When I was profiling her in 2018, I called someone who is very anti Candace now, and I said to him, you know, what's with this person, like, you know, climbing the conservative media ladder? And they said, you know, Listen, she's young, she's black, she's pretty and she's a woman and she is stupid because she's all those other things and willing to say the MAGA stuff will let her in. And that person now, who I won't tell you who he is because this was not said, this was set on background. But the person who said those things is now very much in the crosshairs of Candace Owens and feels very responsible for the uplifting of her. And I think a lot of people feel that way, from, you know, people in the Kirk empire and TPUSA to people at Daily Wire to Dennis Prager and the list goes on and on and on.
- [08:28]
Derek Barras
Yeah, I don't know. Don't want to get too deep in her background because people should watch your video and I will link to it in the show notes. But there is a moment where she's at the daily wire and two days, I think after October 7th, she comes out with a very nuanced take on Israel, kind of playing both sides and saying, you know, we need to, we need to wait on this. And then very quickly it takes an anti Semitic turn which ends up breaking her relationship with Ben Shapiro. And I just feel like that's a really important hinge point for what ends up happening with Charlie Kirk. Would you agree?
- [09:07]
Brandy Zadrozny
Yeah. Again, Candace Owens has impeccable timing. There was this already natural shift and rift happening within MAGA between MAGA and America First. Right. You had the far right griper, Nick Fuentes crew, who had long been chipping away and getting, frankly, younger. Right. A younger generation of far right conservatives to come to his America first platforms, which basically meant we don't want anything to do with Israel. And a lot of those people, including Nick Fuentes, I would venture to say the majority of those America first people were leaning hard into anti Semitic tropes. It was not just about we have beef with a national security policy or we have beef with our reliance on Israel and the Middle East. It's not political. It's not a political argument. It's we hate Jews. And so there was a long rift already going on. And you had people like Marjorie Taylor Greene in that America first category that was, you know, breaking apart from Trump. Already, you had, it was already a rift. Tucker Carlson had been pushed away from Fox and apparently, you know, he was still friends with Charlie Kirk. And Charlie was for all the people that I talked to within MAGA circles, he really was a glue that sort of held everybody together. Like JD Vance suggests that he believes in this like, big tent, right? Where he wants everybody to be in the tent and nobody, no Republican should say a bad thing about another Republican. That was, you know, big thing for Charlie Kirk. But there's a danger with that. And I think without Charlie here now, there's no peacemaker to broker peace with Candace. A lot of this is also a story about a fractured right wing media. And so people are trying to retain their audiences as best they can.
- [10:48]
Derek Barras
Right. And you do a really good graphic in the video showing how Candace is the sun, which all of these other influences, you know, orbit around in terms of this specific Charlie Kirk conspiracy. Like he wasn't actually killed by Tyler Rogers. There's a whole lot we'll get into a couple of the other ones.
- [11:06]
Brandy Zadrozny
Tyler Robinson.
- [11:07]
Derek Barras
Tyler Robinson. Thank you. Thank you. For some reason, Aaron Rodgers is stuck in my head because I see him on my feed all the time with his crazy as well. So. But I want to ask one more question about Candace, but we can extrapolate out from there about some of these other influencers as well, because it's a question that I've received since starting conspirituality, which is intentionality. People regularly ask, do these, you know, does RFK Jr think that dropping methyl in blue actually does something for his health? And I've always had three buckets. I've always had the. Absolutely. They believe it.
- [11:44]
Carvana Advertiser
It.
- [11:44]
Derek Barras
No, they don't believe it. And they're just. They know where that's the monetization or the attention is over there. And then I think there's some self radicalization that happens where they're kind of like, I kind of believe it. But as they get the feedback from the audience, they're like, oh, wait, no, I actually do believe this. And they. They actually start to turn. And I'm wondering where, you know, and you might have other takes on that as well, but along that spectrum, where would you imagine Candace falls, as well as maybe some of the other people that you spotlight.
- [12:15]
Brandy Zadrozny
I'm obsessed with this question, and it's the same thing that everybody always asks me. I get the impulse to ask, the longer I've been on this beat, the less I think it matters. But I get the impulse because you want to know, like, what is in their hearts. Is it a grift or do they mean it? Because you almost feel like a sympathy. If they mean it. Okay. If an anti vaxxer thinks that they're saving babies, I get it. Right? You would want to protect them. But if it's just a grift, then that's evil. So are they evil or stupid? And I think, I think the answer with Candace is that Candace, and this is based on lots of her former employers that I've spoken to, people who know her very well. And my perception from interviewing her is that Candace believes in herself. She knows herself to be true. She goes on vibes a lot like if it feels true to her and so she will say it with conviction. When she says things, I think that conviction is real, not because she knows something to be true, but she believes so much in herself that she is willing to say those things with the surety that she says them with. I have reported that I've seen some communications between Candace Owens and people inside Turning Point between the time Charlie was killed and this moment. And I have seen an example of where Candace Owens comments on her viewers. Right. The people want to see. And so a lot of this is very much with audience in mind and what her viewers think. There is this point where she actually had a sit down with Erica Kirk. Erica Kirk, a new widow, whatever your politics are. When Candace started all this craziness, said, I will come, I will talk to you. Let's talk, let's do it at Turning Point usa. You can ask me any question you want. Candace basically made Erica come to her in Nashville. Erica sat down with her for hours and hours and they had this conversation. And the next day Candace had her podcast and she basically was like, she answered my questions. I don't really have much else to say. And all of the comments at the time were like, you can't let Erica get away with this. Their brains are fried looking for the evil. And by the next show, Candace had flipped and was willing to give it to them. And then went on this whole like six part series on Erica Kirk and went full in basically claiming that Erica murdered Charlie or had some hand in covering it up. So that sort of 180 sort of signifies to me that she believes in nothing but which way the wind is blowing and the feeling that she needs to be with that wind.
- [14:54]
Derek Barras
It's the one thing that makes this job the hardest for me. I believe covering online disinformation and misinformation. I, I don't like Charlie Kirk. I didn't like him. I don't like Erica Kirk. I don't like Turning Point usa. I don't like how Erica took advantage immediately and just took over everything and tried to shift it in a direction. But if someone just loses their life partner, a little bit of sympathy and understanding, a little bit of Empathy, I think, is called for. I don't care who it is. And that just gets lost in. In. In the comments. As you were saying now, when you first reached out to me about this story, this. I'm going to quote you, and I would like you to talk because you already said, you know, Erica had something, but this. This is what really jumped out at me from your text. The guy behind the exploding mike theory falls right into your wheelhouse. He's a kombucha brewer and beef towel renderer on a farm in Oklahoma, and in his spare time, expl loads pig carcasses in his shop. And even with that warning, when I was watching the video and the exploding pig carcasses came on, I texted you again, being like, I was not ready for that. Who is this guy and what is this theory?
- [16:12]
Brandy Zadrozny
John Bray. John Bray. John Bray. John Bray, as you said, is a farmer. He's a farm store owner. I guess I should say it that way. So he and his wife and several children, they live on a farm in Oklahoma where they sell products. They brew kombucha. This guy, he calls himself a CO2 architect. I did a lot of Googling. That doesn't seem like a real title. He worked for a long time in Colorado. He did weed extraction, basically for CBD products. I don't really understand. I didn't do too deep of a dive on that. He's not a forensics anything. He's not an expert in any way. But he watched, as we all did on YouTube or on social, and saw Charlie Kirk's murder. And he says that he immediately thought, something's not right, something's weird. And within weeks, he had decided, you know, hey, remember Beepergate? Remember that operation that Mossad did where they put explosives in the beepers of Hezbollah fighters and blew them up all at the same time in Lebanon and Syria? Like, what if that happens? And I'm basing this all on what he said on podcasts. And so he fired up Claude and he fired up Grok and then fed them a bunch of. I guess he found, like, give me all of the papers of famous forensic whatevers and fed them all to Grok and Claude. And then he basically started running these, like, experiments saying, what else could it be? Could it have been an explosive device? The long and short of it is that he vibe coded this website to further a theory that Charlie Kirk was not killed by a rifle shot to the neck, as we all saw with our eyes, but instead he was killed by something called a shape charge. Basically, like A little rocket that was exploded from his wireless rode mic, like the one that I'm wearing right here. And that is what killed him. On its face. That's an insane thing to say. That's an insane theory. It makes no sense. It comes from nowhere. It doesn't. You can see, like, him shot. Why would they do it with a million cameras and then lie? You have this expert that's from this university in Bozeman, and news organizations use him for forensic analysis after shootings. He's come out and said, no, that's a rifle shot. It's a clear sound of a rifle. You have the atf, you have the prosecutors, you have everybody but John Bray saying that, you know, this is a gunshot. You have medical examiner's report saying it's a gunshot. So on its face, it's just. It's a really stupid theory. And like, this guy is. He might be very nice, and I'm sure he is. And I'm sure his kombucha is delicious, but he is in no way an expert in anything related to this case at all. He's just a guy, again, like Candace, willing to say something that Candace needs for her theories for her world building. And so this fella has been on podcasts and YouTube shows that get far more attention than I will ever get for anything that I do in my life. He has mastered this attention and gotten it. And even, you know, when you watch him again, might be a nice fellow, but clearly not an expert, not someone that we should be turning to and listening to for his expertise in this area. For some reason, this has done a number on me. I'm used to it. With anti vaxxers, I'm used to it. But why is anybody listening to this person? I just can't. I can't understand it. Of course, I forgot the part where he's, like, building little explosive devices in his shed and, like, putting him into pig carcasses and blowing them up. Like this is supposed to show me anything. It's bananas the way that these conspiracy theories are building and who. So millions of people are listening to.
- [20:10]
Derek Barras
Right. I want to ask a question about coherence, but I want to just touch on one more. I learned about a bunch of influencers like Coleman Hawkins, I think is one I didn't know about. And now I'm mad at you for making me. Okay, yeah, I knew. Yeah. Coleman Hawkins is a jazz. As a jazz artist, I'm sorry.
- [20:27]
Brandy Zadrozny
I wish.
- [20:31]
Derek Barras
So we'll get to coherence next, but there's one more I want to touch on. And so in my world with wellness, sometimes I see someone like a Candace Owens, and I'm like, I get it. I get why you. You're. You're charismatic. I. I get why people follow you, even though you're batshit crazy in what you're actually saying, which will get back to coherence. Like I said, one I've never understood and very much pops up because of Candace is Ian Carroll, and he's very much in this as well. What? Why. Why is this dude. Why is he just still around? He. He makes the worst content. He just walks around talking. He's not charismatic. He's goofy as hell, and yet people fucking love him.
- [21:14]
Brandy Zadrozny
It's so weird, isn't it? I think there are a lot of people in that bucket. I find Stu Peters to be grating and dumb. There's Jason Goodman, that weirdo who walks around New York City and just, like, is just the worst, right? And a lot of them are men. Yeah, almost all of them. I don't know why. I don't know how. Except there's a type, right? Like Ian Carroll. His type is for people who hate the Jews. You're gonna love Ian Carroll, and I think it's just because there are very few people who are doing this, actually. I know that there's a lot of influencers in the world, but I watched all of Candace Owens shows, and whenever she talked about someone or had someone on her show, I would sort of, like, put them on a spreadsheet. For months and months, I did this, and I created this, like, Candace score, which is, like, the number of times she references you on her podcast and just sort of, like, watched people's subscribers jump every single time, right? So, like, it was. It's very much a transactional sort of thing. When she mentions you, you stratospheric rise. There is kind of an easy. An easy on ramp here, I think, if you're willing to have a theory and that nobody else does and you have some sort of, like, narrative and way to push it forward, I think that you have a shot there. I don't know who watches this crap, though. So I've been on, like, Reddit forums that are devoted to these people. I want to talk to the people watch it. And specifically, not just Candace's, because Candace, she's watchable, she's funny. But these other folks who are just not, like, what. What do you get out of. Like, why do you watch it? Like, what are you. What are you doing all day? Like, why are you watching four hours
- [22:50]
Derek Barras
of Baron Coleman streams and Baron leaving his job as a lawyer and because he can now make enough money doing this. And then you, you show him getting donations and then replying to people as they're donating to him. I. That's exactly the thought of my head. Who are these people who are just sitting on their computer? I have the same thought about Hasan Piker. Like people who watch his live stream freight. I'm like, why does anyone watch anyone for hours on end all the time and then give them money? I. It's something that baffles me. I know it's part of the new media environment.
- [23:23]
Brandy Zadrozny
Well, you know what, I think about it a lot. Like my granny used to have on the religious shows all day long, Tammy Faye Baker, like those sort of. What is that? TNR or I think the religious network.
- [23:35]
Derek Barras
Yeah, yeah.
- [23:36]
Brandy Zadrozny
P L was that. It was like they had. There were several of them. But like these religious networks and like that's all it is all day long the same people saying the same things, just yakety, yakety, yakety. It's very much like that to me. It's like a new religion and these people are the prognosticators. It's truly, truly weird. And I don't think it's good for anybody.
- [23:56]
Derek Barras
No.
- [23:56]
Brandy Zadrozny
But like even Baron. Sorry, just to talk about like how we are in the wrong business. When I made the video, we finished the video a couple weeks ago and it's out tomorrow. In that time I said like he'd made $350,000 just on Super Chats already. Now it's over 400 grand. So like that's the speed at which these people earn money. And that's not counting merch. It's just his super chats alone. And so what you're seeing is really a multimillion dollar industry, a very. It's a cottage industry, very specifically of conspiracism just around the Charlie Kirk killing.
- [24:33]
Derek Barras
So to get back to coherence, one thing I've done on this pod number of times is I'll print out or, you know, just grab a transcript of Russell Brand and then actually read what he's saying. And you could do this. I've done this with Kennedy too. There's a number of people who can do it, especially the Gish gallopers.
- [24:50]
Brandy Zadrozny
Yeah.
- [24:51]
Derek Barras
Because when you actually see it on the screen, separated from their voice and read it, there's no logic whatsoever. It's often contradictory at sense to send sometimes. But it doesn't matter what is it about lack of coherence that again, earns someone. Because I did watch the Baron Coleman stuff. He's not a very coherent person. Why? What, in your estimation, having covered this for so long, what pulls people in when they actually logically make no sense?
- [25:25]
Brandy Zadrozny
I really don't know. And it's. Listen, I'm a former English teacher and librarian. I think a close reading of a text is just really gratifying and important to be able to do. It's an important skill. I've been doing this beat for so long now, and so have you at this point. I fight feeling sad sometimes, especially like I was just at the Charlie Kirk hearing, the hearing for Tyler Robinson, and talked to a lot of people outside that watch this stuff a lot and just really believe it. And when I ask, well, which theory, you know, really, they all say like, well, they're asking important questions like, which question is the most. When you interrogate their ideas a little bit fall apart too. I think people are probably watching it not closely, not thoughtfully, just sort of taking it in as infotainment that makes them feel away. It's like a soap opera. It's like they're not like really invested in the case. They're not reading the court documents themselves. I guess it's just thinking about it lightly.
- [26:31]
Derek Barras
Yeah, it's background noise and emotionally gratifying. Well, well, one more question. Congratulations on the video. And again, it's in the show notes. Everyone should watch it. I look forward to more episodes and maybe you'll come back because I'm sure you'll cross over into our beat again. But near the end, you. I know this was off the record. You say it in the video, so I'm not saying anything new. You go and you meet with Erica Kirk and Turning Point usa. They agreed to meet with you to talk, but it couldn't again be on the record. But. But from whatever you can say about it, how do you feel about the direction of Turning Point usa? How do you feel about the people behind it and where do you think it's going to go from here?
- [27:12]
Brandy Zadrozny
They did invite me there. Thought I was going to go for like maybe an hour. I'd get an hour. And I spoke with Erica and some other folks inside Turning Point for almost five hours. We sat and talked. There was nothing that I couldn't ask. The reason, just the reason that it was off the record, which I think is important, is they have come to the conclusion that the only way they can win is if they don't play right. The game of Conspiracy theories and being inside of one, there's no way to win whatever they do on tape, especially if it's with Ms. Now. Right. We're a progressive news agency and news network and they are one of the farthest right wing groups in the country. I don't think it doesn't serve their purposes. But because they've been on this beat for so long and because I've written so much about it, they wanted to give me time and I appreciated it. I asked how the conspiracy theories were affecting them. I saw Erica Kirk cry a lot. I saw somebody trying to navigate an impossible situation. You know, her husband had just been killed. If you know Charlie at all, which I did a little talking about. True believers, true believer, true believer in the president, true believer in his far right ideology, far right Christianity, true believer in that. And Erica is as well. And so she feels the weight of continuing that on her shoulders. However, will she be able to continue it? I don't know, because for all of its money, Turning Point brought in Some, I think $85 million, the last in 2024. They just filed their new 990s. They brought in 115 million last year. No doubt part in the wake of his death. But like, how do you sustain something that was so much a cult of personality, you know, Turning Point actions, their ballot initiatives, really, whether that really swayed an election for Trump is like, hard to say. What I think is clear is that Charlie's presence on social media, his podcast, like that, actually changed ideas, his work gluing MAGA together, getting support for the president, even among people who are breaking with him on his stance on Israel and other things. I think that that's a real thing. And that was Charlie the man. It wasn't Turning Point, the organization so much. So how do you continue without it? I don't know if she can. And I think that there's a heavy weight to do so. And I just. Who knows? I think something would have to change. And I think the rift between MAGA and America first is so large right now, it's hard to see how they continue on the trajectory that Charlie has. But they've got a lot of money, so, you know, anything's possible, I guess. And the empathy portion of it. I have covered the far right for so long, and so I often have people saying, you know, that I'm being too kind to Erica, you know, that I should hold some of that empathy. And I have covered every major shooting in this country and other ones. You know, I have watched how disinformation leads to violence. And I don't want to see that. I don't like it. I don't want it to happen. And I will never see people only as their political ideology again. Like, I work for a progressive news organization. I've covered the far right with, I think, the aggressiveness that it deserves for years and years. But this is a person that's hurting and someone was murdered, and that's bad. And I think that when we start, when we lose that ability to say that and draw that clear line, I don't want to live in a lot like that.