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A
Insurance isn't one size fits all. That's why customers have enjoyed Progressive's name your price tool for years now. With the name your price tool, you tell them what you want to pay and they'll show you options that fit your budget. So whether you're picking out your first policy or just looking for something that works better for you and your family, they make it easy to see your options. Visit progressive.com, find a rate that works for you with the name your price tool. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law.
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Foreign. A lot of people treat what's happening in the right wing media ecosystem as fringe that we don't need to pay attention to. Look who's president. We should pay attention to this. And there is a civil war happening in the MAGA influencer world. And we at I've had it are seated for all of the drama. And joining me today is one of my favorite journalists who covers all of this piping hot tea, Will Summer, a senior reporter at the Bulwark where he writes the the False Flag newsletter on right wing media and host the weekly Mega Monday live stream. Will, I'm going to play a clip for you. In case my listeners and viewers don't quite understand the psychology and the duplicity and the hypocrisy that you cover, here is Laura Limmer. Canisone is just this one resentful ghetto black bitch. Like, that's literally what she is. She, she's a racist too. Like you could listen to this and I'm not a racist person. Right? Like I don't hate black people, but I say she's a ghetto black because you have to listen to the way that she has so much resentment for white girls. Like white girls with blonde hair and blue eyes. And you know, I'm originally a blonde too. I blonde hair and blue eyes. Right. Maybe that's why Candace has so much resentment towards me. But I've heard enough. I've heard enough.
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She got, she got a kind of a crazy tan too. That's among other things.
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B
Okay, so Laura Loomer and Candace Owens have been going at it recently. What started the beef and where does it stand right now?
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A
Sure. So Candace Owens, you know, ever since Charlie Kirk's assassination has really been on the rampage and she's been saying, you know, implying that Israel did it, you know, Erica Kirk did it, all these other things. Laura Loomer is obviously very pro Israel. But more recently, Candace has really turned on Trump and sort of said, you know, Trump himself is this very evil figure kind of in the aftermath of the Iran war starting. So Laura has really weighed in here. She's, she dug up Candace's husband's DUI arrest, the mug shot, all this stuff. So things are really getting ugly.
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B
And I saw that the President retruthed a really racist, like, fake Time magazine image of Candace Owens where they tried to make her look like a, a rough, like, maybe gang like person. And I always say, and you, you, I don't always say this. I borrowed this from somebody. But like, women who carry the water for the patriarchy are the first to drown. And so I feel like Laura Loomer will drown with Trump. I think she'll just go down, rearrange the, rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic with him.
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A
Yeah. I mean, she's so devoted to him. She's maybe like the most devoted person, maybe more than Melania, more than, you know, family. I mean, she's talked about how, I mean, she's engaged now, but before she. Because people will always say to these women on the right, well, why don't you have kids or whatever, why aren't you married? And she would say, you know, I'm basically like, I've given up that to have to support Trump. So I mean, she really. And you know, to your point, over and over you see these right wing media women realizing, like, wait a minute, this movement that talks about hating women constantly, that includes me. They, they also see me as a woman.
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B
Exactly. All right, what is Candace claiming to hold over Laura? And what is Laura claiming to hold over Candace? They're always teasing these little tidbits that they're about to drop the big bomb.
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A
Yeah. So it's interesting, you know, there's on one hand, Laura has a, shall we say, a checkered past. You know, a lot of this stuff hasn't been verified. You have these other charact characters of sort of varying levels of credibility, people like Milo Yiannopoulos wading in all these kind of like Roger Stone associates in this case. You know, it's often been discussed Laura legally had issues getting a gun. And there were claims that, you know, she had basically been forced, put in a sort of sanatorium because of her of supposed mental illness. You know, I think Candace will refer to that. Meanwhile, Laura has teamed up with people like House Inhabit, who's a big kind of Maha Instagram influencer who hates Candace, and they dug up Candace's husband's DUI arrest. They seem to have, I mean, they seem to have done Some like, serious kind of reporting footwork here. It's up. I should have done. And they seem to have filed a Freedom of Information act request. They got his mug shot, the 911 called, pictures of this car that he allegedly ran into a ditch. I mean, his blood alcohol was like 0.26, which is like pretty high, you know, to be driving. And so, so now they're, they're really going to war at each other over this stuff that really is sort of like politically immaterial. But after Candace has been going after Erica Kirk for so long, it's like, look, no holds barred, you know, really nothing is off limits for this crew.
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B
So it's interesting to me, the right wing media ecosystem, how quickly they start cannibalizing each other. You know, I'm on the left or left adjacent. You are too. Ecosystem. And I have found ours to be so collaborative. Anybody I reach out to. Would you like to be on my pod? Yes. Will you be on mine? And we, we. I always want to promote, you know, the whole, the whole ecosystem on their side. It really seems like not only are they competing to see who can love Trump the most, but they're also competing to take each other out. Like, it's literally like a, that you could do a reality show like, remember Survivor when they're all out on the island. You could do like, who's going to survive in the right wing media ecosystem because the cannibalization is really quite delicious.
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A
Yeah. I mean, you know, this is what makes it so fun to cover, really. I mean, you know, as terrible as it is that these people are worth covering because they have so much power in our country now. I mean, right wing media attracts people, number one, who I think often have very kind of challenging personalities to deal with if you're trying to work with them. I mean, there are people who are like, often very kind of self promoting. They're constantly clashing with each other. And in this case, I mean, there's sort of like a real policy thing at stake here, ultimately, like Republican support for Israel. But in practice, I mean, these people just, they want to destroy each other. And this is things that they've tried to do to people on the left before. And now that Republicans are in power, they're sort of just, they're looking around and they're going after each other instead.
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B
It's crazy. How much influence do you think Laura Loomer really has over Trump?
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A
I think she has a lot of influence. I mean, just recently there was, there was, I mean, you know, obviously she purged the National Security Council last year. I mean, that's crazy. And this is someone who locked herself up to Twitter headquarters. This is someone who, eight years ago, like other Republican activists, other kind of crazies were like, whoa, she's a little embarrassing. I don't want to associate with her. And now this is someone who, Yeah, I mean, she got the State Department to ban Palestinian children from getting medical care in the United States. I mean, all of these crazy things. I mean, she got these Iranian women who were supposedly Kassem Soleimani's relatives arrested, by the way. Not true. The thing, Dropsite News has a story about how this was basically just totally cooked up. These were just two Iranian women living in the US and now they got arrested. And so, I mean, she. I think she has a lot of sway.
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B
I do, too. Do you think it's that she understands psychologically the same thing that, like, a Putin or a Netanyahu understand about Trump, which is whoever has his ear last and can effusively praise him, that's he's going to go that way. I. And I. You can maybe confirm this for me. But I remember during the debate with Kamala, she was on the plane with Trump on his way there, and she's the one who got him to say that the Haitians immigrants were eating cats and dogs. And so it's. You've always heard this about Trump, the last person in his ear. And if they're really complimentary, do you think she, like, maybe is it like her crazy, understands his crazy, and then they're just, like, uber simpatico. And then that's the first part of the question, the second part of the question, and you don't have to answer it or not, but I read online that, like, she's claiming she or somebody else is claiming that, like, she gave Trump the best blowjob he's ever had. I don't know if there's any veracity to that, but it's pretty titillating.
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A
Yeah. Right. Okay. So on the first count, yeah, there's a lot to get into on part two there.
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B
Okay.
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A
Yeah. I mean, I do think Trump's clearly, like, the thing he cares about most is this kind of, like, devotion that sort of, however committed you are to him and never criticizing him. And so I think in that way, like, you know, with QAnon, people said, well, what do you think of QAnon? And he said, well, they seem to like me a lot. So, you know, as far as I'm concerned, that's the end of it. And so I think Laura, you know, one time when he got the jet from Qatar, she said, oh, I don't, I don't know about this. You know, Qatar is not so nice to Israel. And then she was told, like, hey, you know, get in line. And she said, oh, never mind, actually, I love the jet. And so speaking of jets, you know, as, as to your second point, you know, this was widely rumored back in 2024. I think, you know, we have to take this with a grain of salt because, you know, again, a lot of these are also not very credible characters. This is a, you know, it is a den of vipers. But I will say, you know, after, and this got litigated in court because Bill Maher made this joke on hbo. He said, you know, Laura Loomer sleeping with Trump and then she sued him over it. And she claimed that basically because, in part because of this rumor that he helped, you know, promote, I guess in her point of view, she got basically banned from the plane. She got banished from Trump world. She said, I could have been like Caroline Levitt. I could have been the press secretary. And, and so, I mean, I think this really is like, whether true or not. And like, I, I don't think there's enough. I certainly wouldn't affirmatively say it. I think this rumor has really dogged her. And now we're seeing Candace dredge it back up.
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B
And how out of all of the people in the right wing media ecosystem, who, who is the biggest, who is their biggest star? Is it Tucker?
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A
You know, I think it's probably Tucker, Megyn Kelly, you know, Candace Owens, I mean, you know, in a way, like, we're kind of leaving Fox News aside here. But I mean, obviously those are the people with the biggest audience. But I think in terms of like, driving the agenda, Fox is pretty irrelevant now. I mean, they're just going to say whatever Trump likes and, and, you know, sort of bolster that. But I think in terms of like, who's looking at the post Trump Future, what is 2028 going to look like? I think, unfortunately, it's these really, like, kind of dissident, often racist or anti semitic people. Also Nick Fuentes. These are the people, I think, who have kind of like the dynamism and the energy behind them.
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B
I think that Tucker Carlson is in this mode of cult capturing and he's trying to capture the cult. And I think he scares the shit out of me because he's a lot more clever than Trump is and he's a lot Better liar than Trump is. And I saw this New York Times interview with Tucker where he's dying for the interviewer to ask him, you know, who's worse, Ted Cruz or Nick Fuentes? And so he asked the interviewer and of course she flips it right back to him and he goes, oh, of course, Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz. It's not even close. And I appreciate Tucker's hatred for Ted Cruz. I do appreciate anybody who hates Ted Cruz. But he, he and the Vice president, the president, everybody always runs cover for Nick Fuentes. It's fascinating to me that they don't just objectively say we have no room for neo Nazis in our party. They always provide. He's just a kid, he doesn't have any power. And you know, Donald Trump had dinner with Nick Fuentes. How big do you think this groiper thing is? And comment about how has anybody in Republican Party really said that's a power player in MAGA spoken out against Nick Fuentes who is a self confessed neo Nazi?
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A
Yeah, I mean, to your question, no, I don't think so. I mean maybe a senator or a member of Congress or something, but really, certainly no one in the administration has come out and just said, you know, as you said, there is no room for this in the party. When we saw this late last year when Tucker interviewed Nick Fuentes, I mean, the Heritage foundation, right. I mean, as sort of a big pillar of the Republican Party, they tied themselves up in not saying, you know, we still support Tucker after this interview. We were saying, well, like really this one where he sort of just, you know, it plays around with Nick Fuentes. Oh yeah, we still, we still like him and obviously that caused a lot of resignations there. So I think there's this, there's just sort of a sense of like what no one is standing up to him, as you said. And I think it's because they recognize that for young Republicans, you know, this kind of racism, anti Semitism is a huge thing. I mean this is. Even after Charlottesville, Alex Perrine wrote an article that was like, you know, young people are not being drawn to the party because, because of like they want lower taxes or they want tariffs or whatever. I mean this is the draw is the racism, the white nationalism.
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B
It's fascinating. I remember seeing this clip of like Nick Fuentes and these other like, I guess male MAGA influencers singing Kanye West's song Heil Hitler. And like somebody went through each person and if they were alive during, in Hitler's Germany, they would all be sent to camps, they would all qualify as people that would be sent to camps. And it's fascinating, even the Vice president, you remember those Nazi chats, that he refused to condemn those. So it seems to me that the Republican Party is really trying to make a big tent of bigots, because nobody really condemns this. They keep making space for this movement. What do you make of. Of Tucker kind of rebranding right now? And, like, you know, I. I'm gonna have to apologize for it. I didn't see what was coming with Trump, even though we know from the Fox lawsuit he couldn't stand him. And I think he's in his, like, cult capture era. I always go back to this with Tucker, that he says that he was attacked by demons while he was sleeping. You know, like, that somebody who says that I was sleeping with my four dogs, and also these demons woke me up in the middle of the night and scratched me and beat me up, should be sent off to, like, mental institution land. But because Trump has normalized crazy so much, he could very easily be the nominee in 28.
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A
Sorry, my cat was just getting out there. I think that's right. I mean, I think we're looking at this issue, whether it's Nick Fuentes or Tucker, we're looking at something very similar to Trump originally, where you have this Republican Party that's not willing to stand up at all to this day. And there's everyone saying, I don't want to be the one to ruin my career fighting this, so I'm just gonna. I hope someone else deals with it. Now, what we're looking at is that, you know, we're looking at really the same thing where these. They don't want to fight the gripers. People don't want to stand up to Tucker. I mean, he's obviously very tied to J.D. vance already. So I think this is something that, like, you know, they're. They're just. They're not willing to take over. And just like with Trump, it's actually going to cannibalize the party. I mean, you have. You said how many. How big is. Are the gripers? I mean, certainly within sort of the DC Young political operative class, whether these people maybe individually don't like Nick Fuentes, but in terms of their ideas, in terms of the idea that, like, yes, we need to restrict immigration, kind of the Stephen Miller thought, like, we need a white country. I mean, I think that's hugely popular.
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B
You know, I always say, like, the Tea Party incubated maga. And what is MAGA incubating? And I think we're getting a glimpse it's going to be worse. And the Bulwark did a focus group on Americans who voted for sharing for Trump at least twice and a majority believed that the White House correspondents dinner shooting was staged. These are two time Trump voters. What did you hear from these people?
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I mean these, these are people who thought, you know, they are, as you said, they voted for Trump at least twice now. They disapprove of him. But often it's not that they disapprove of him because gas prices are up or anything else. I mean it's because they think he's covering up the Charlie Kirk shooting. It's because, you know, all of these other reasons that are kind of crazy. But what was interest about this focus group as you mentioned, is that they, you know, I think liberals have taken a lot of heat for, you know, saying it's a false flag or whatever. But I think increasingly Republicans, you know, who are already sort of in this conspiracy theory stew beforehand, they're saying, oh yeah, that's clearly staged. You know, Trump did that to get the ballroom. Or, you know, this was somehow a setup to make Trump look better because he's unpopular.
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B
Yeah, it's wild, it's, I find myself, I'm not a conspiracy theorist at all, but I find myself even falling prey to some of it because we live in such a post truth era where the President gaslights and lies all the time. Oh, you know, we're open the straight in two weeks and the war's over, we're at war again and the war's not that long. It's just, you know, batshit crazy stuff all day, every day. So originally on like Butler, I think because I, I as a liberal wanted to think, oh, the right wingers are such conspiracy theorists. I thought there's no way it was staged. And then as time's gone on with it, I'm like, like maybe it was. And then I'm like, am I a nut? Am I a conspiracy theorist? It seems like the, the erosion of the truth when you don't have government agencies that are reporting facts from people that are non biased government workers. The erosion of the truth I think is expanding far beyond MAGA into, you know, there's blue and on, you know, there's people, I believe the results of the 2024 election, but there's a whole group of people online lib that think that Elon Musk hacked the voting machines. And so there's conspiracy. Conspiracy theories seem to be ubiquitous no matter what Political party people are in right now.
- [18:04]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think there's sort of two things going on. On one practically. I mean, we know this administration will lie about anything. I mean, they lie constantly. And so I think people say, well, you know, in the past maybe I would have taken the government's point of view and said, you know, that's probably true, you know, barring other evidence. And now it's just like, well, you know, who knows what they would do. And I think emotionally, I think for liberals, you can look at the right where anything politically unfavorable that happens to Trump, they'll say it's the deep state. Or, you know, California wildfires were caused by satellites shooting lasers down to trick everyone about global warming and the Marjorie Taylor Greene thing, I mean, there's so many. Every time anything happens. And so then you look and you say, well, why should I have to grapple with, you know, what this, what this means, that there are all these assassination attempts on Trump or something that's politically unfavorable to me, maybe I should just dismiss it too, as a, you know, a false flag back.
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B
A final question. These fissures that you cover in the MAGA movement, what is your take? Is it that the strong man who 18 months ago, two years ago, the image was fight, fight, fight. You know, he's this, you know, and everybody has the maxi pads on their ear and he, you know, Jesus guided the bullet away so he could serve it, you know, quote unquote, third term. And then, and, and now the images of him are him totally REM behind the Oval where people are conducting meetings and he's sitting there sawing logs. He's got, you know, caked on makeup on his hands. Do you think the Tucker Carlson's are financial Darwinists that they see that this thing is fubar, this MAGA movement is fubar and they're going to be the first to jump off?
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A
Yeah, I think that's essentially what's going on. I mean, I do think there are some ideological goals here. Like, I do think that Trump is, or Tucker is actually, you know, more of an isolationist than, than say Laura Loomer or Donald Trump. But I do think that people like Tucker, Megyn Kelly, I mean, these are like really mercenary people and they're seeing which way the wind is blowing and they're saying, you know, at this Trump thing, this guy's looking like a lame duck. He's really unpopular. I don't see it getting better. And so at least for now, I'm going To start saying, you know, I love Joe Kent, I love, you know, who, who's going to be my new candidate and really sort of distancing themselves from, from the Trump president because, you know, you can look at someone like Ben Shapiro who's really stuck with Trump, you know, because he's so supportive of Israel. Then he's looking around and saying, saying, you know, he's seeing his views go down, all this stuff because you're, you're tied to these unpopular issues.
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B
Yeah, that's been wild. I know I just said final question. But I do think that's something to point out that Ben Shapiro, his views have completely fallen off a cliff because he is rearranging the deck chairs with Trump. Whereas these others that have broken off with Trump on certain issues, the war, America first stuff, they're actually growing and still some of the top, top ranked channels, is that correct?
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A
Yeah. And they're breaking out into, I would say like sort of beyond the MAGA audience too. I mean, you know, Candace Owens is conspiracy theories and she gets into like the Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni lawsuit, all these different things, you know, that, that grows into more of a mainstream audience. I mean, I'll just be out and about with people who are liberals and they say, you know, I think Candace Owens makes some good points about these things. Oh my God. You know, but I mean that is the, they're breaking out into new, new spaces. Whereas these kind of traditional, your Mark Levins, your Ben Shapiro's, they're stuck. And the, the going down.
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B
Like you, I have had friends that are really upset about the Democrats positioning in calling out Israel. And they will say to me, I'll tell you what, I'm starting to really like Tucker Carlson because they hear him in a 45 second clip makes sense. And even Nick Fuentes in a 30 second clip can say something that you might agree. And it's a really dangerous time because I always have to remind these liberals, I'm like, he is a racist and he says F A G G O T with reckless abandon. Tucker Carlson, a total homophobe, bigot of the highest order, Andy thinks demons attacked him in the middle of the night. So it's really terrifying when these clips, these kind of crazy people, conspiracy theorists that are bigots to their core, demagogues to their core, are getting people on board via these short form clips
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A
completely. I mean, and as you said, I think people see this and they go, oh, well, you know, maybe I don't disagree with them about everything, you know, and that's really how it starts. And unfortunately, as you said, I think because Democrats are not always offering this sort of Israel critical perspective at a moment when I think more and more people are just saying this just isn't right, you know, that I think that provides an opening for these, these kind of radical figures.
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B
Okay. This is why I think listener that Will Sommers work is so important because the we never treated Rush Limbaugh right wing media ecosystem legitimately. And even the Republican Party in 2016 rejected the fringe movement that is MAGA and they got two terms. So I think although this journalism is so delicious, I think it is so important that we know what the opposition is doing and we highlight just how batshit crazy they are. So thank you, Will, for joining me. I always enjoy it so much and thank you for all the work you do.
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A
Well, thank you so much for having me.
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B
Sam.