A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - Samantha Fulnecky Failed the Grift

Episode Date: December 15, 2025

When Samantha Fulnecky filed a religious discrimination complaint against her university after failing an essay assignment in which she only referenced the Bible, she was on a path to victory. Sure, the essay was a grammatical disaster and completely incoherent — not to mention offensive towards both her classmates and professors. Sure, the failing grade was deserved. But in the age of right-wing culture war domination, Samantha was poised to become a star. Her January 6th-loving mother, Turning Point USA (and their recent influx of cash), and the Oklahoma House of Representatives all threw their full weight behind her. Despite all this, Samantha Fulnecky became the last great joke of 2025. Today, Kat Tenbarge, Parker Molloy and I examine why she failed the grift (and the essay). Listen to bonus episodes on Patreon! Thanks to today’s sponsors! Get smarter about yours (and others!) news media consumption with Ground News at https://www.ground.news/fruity Get 15% off a cuter, more sustainable way to clean at https://www.blueland.com/fruity.  Subscribe to Kat Tenbarge’s work at Spitfire News. Follow Kat Tenbarge on Bluesky. Subscribe to Parker Molloy’s newsletter. Follow Parker Molloy on Bluesky. Find me on Instagram. Find A Bit Fruity on Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I am saddened that they're offended by the truth of the gospel and the truth that I wrote about in my assignment. And it saddens me to see that that offends them and upsets them the way it did. Jesus is always worth standing up for and... I just want to start by saying that if Samantha Fulnacki was a freshman in college, it would be like, okay, like, you're a freshman. man, all right, Samantha. But she's a junior. And I just think that by junior year, it's time to get your shit together. A bit fruity. I'm Matt Bernstein. And if you're watching the video version of this podcast and you're thinking, wow, Matt, that's a lot of makeup. You look even more like a cloud than usual. I submit to you that I am not about to talk about evangelical Christians

for two hours and not do my best Tammy Fay drag. think this is the first time I've worn false lashes on this podcast, and I'm really fucking excited. I feel like my face is about to fly away from itself. A few weeks ago, America reached a new low. You might think I'm referring to Trump getting rid of free National Park access on Martin Luther King Day and on June 10th, and instead offering free passes on his birthday. Or maybe you think I'm talking about CNN, officially partnering with Kalshi, the pocket casino, which preys on people's financial insecurity by allowing them to bet on anything.

and everything, develop gambling addictions, and go broke from the comfort of their homes. Side note, I was thinking about making an episode about that because it's like really driving me insane. Or perhaps you think I'm talking about Gwen Stefani once again partnering with Peter Thiel's anti-abortion prayer app tis the season. But no, my dear listener, you'd be wrong. It gets worse. I'm talking about Samantha Fulnecke, a junior at the University of Oklahoma, submitting a poorly written Bible sermon for an essay assignment in her psychology class and getting a zero on it. Can our great nation recover? Today on the show,

Oh, Matthew. Today on the show, we're going to be taking a sometimes excruciatingly close look at America's next top grifter. A white Christian college student who waged a culture war with her incredible ability. to do nothing particularly well and see what the reactions to Samantha Fulnecke, the institutional capitulation to yet another right-wing grievance campaign, the public mockery, and just the overall failure of the right to win this culture war gamble. What that all says about our current moment and perhaps the waning limits of people's patience when it comes to bullshit. To do that, we are joined by longtime friends.

of the show and writer at Spitfire News, Kat Tenbarge, and new friend of the show, Parker Malloy, who is a media critic and writer of the newsletter The Present Age. Parker and Kat, welcome to the show. Hello. Thanks for having us. How are you guys feeling about what we're going to talk about today? Because I know it sounds weird, but I actually feel kind of great about this story. And I think that there's an encouraging message, which is like not always the case on this podcast. Yeah. You know, as a trans person, I'm usually bracing myself for when these stories blow up. But this one, watching people just roast the essay instead of like rallying behind it, that felt kind of good.

The vibes are cautiously optimistic, I'd say. There was definitely a very palpable sense of like the backlash to the backlash this time, which is good to see because it's, I feel like it's kind of signaling a shift, which I know we're going to get into. We most certainly will. We're going to tell a story today. And I think we have to tell that story by introducing Samantha and Christy full-necke. I want to start off by saying that I stocked both of these women's social media profiles in a way that made me feel a little self-conscious and weird because I know it's not like a becoming activity to like stock strangers from Missouri on social media and like go years back in their Facebook accounts.

But listeners of this podcast know that my curiosity gets the best of me. And I do think when you become an active player in the witch hunt to shame queer people out of public life, you similarly open yourself up to scrutiny. Do you know what I mean? Like, do you think that's fair? And their Instagram's were public. And clearly, like, especially her mom as we're going to get into, there is a desire to be seen and be heard. Yes. Okay.

Do you both know about her mom? Yes. I feel like her mom's kind of one of those people who's trying to live vicariously through her child. Like she spent so much of her life trying to become this political figure. And now she's like, I have a daughter who can do it for me. Her whole story is amazing. That's one way to describe it for sure. So I think we should start with Samantha,

before we get to her mom. Samantha Fulnecke, the protagonist of the story we're telling today, the junior at University of Oklahoma, grew up in Springfield, Missouri. She went to a Catholic high school, and she's the daughter of a lawyer mother, who we're going to talk a lot about, and a physician father.

And so I think it's fair to say that this is someone who grew up with money. And I was looking not even at like a specific image on her Instagram profile, but just kind of the vibe you get from the whole thing, which is like not to make too many inferences about her, but you know, like this is a suburban girl that I grew up with. Yeah.

These photos are, they just scream visco to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like they are, these, these are visco filters. This is, this is the era from which it came from. I will add, like, looking at photos from her social media of her in high school made me sad. We talk about a lot of evil people on this podcast who do evil things and they're motivated for all sorts of different reasons. And to me, this is such a cut and dry case of, like, being indoctrinated into this, like,

sheltered religious Southern evangelical bigotry by your parents. I was looking at these pictures of her where she's like at prom and at the beach and like thanking God for graduating high school. And like I'm just reminded of every young suburban white person like the people I went to high school with who grow up thinking that like that tiny suburban world is the whole world and are raised by parents who never challenged that for them probably because the parents themselves don't challenge that. She also reminds me of like the girls in my school and guys who were part of

young life. What's young life? Young life is a like Christian youth organization that was really popular in suburban Cincinnati where I grew up and it's popular around the country. I'm pretty sure. It was a bunch of people who were popular kids in high school who were super privileged whose Instagrams looked something like this. And Christianity was kind of just part of their aesthetic.

this like sheen of like I'm so grateful to God that I graduated high school. It's like it's part of the vibe and it's part of the image that she wants to convey. And I think ultimately like the privilege that she wants to convey is like of this community and of this like style of engaging with Jesus. It's also just like when I see rich kids like thanking God for this or that and the other thing, I'm like God didn't with love, with love. God did not do that. Your mom's a lawyer and your dad's a doctor.

Like, that capitalism did that, you know. God did not create generational wealth for you. Samantha plays tennis throughout high school, which I also played tennis. Samantha, I am trying to build bridges with you. I'm an empath. We could settle all of this over, like, a quick game. Yeah. Samantha graduates in 2023.

She goes to University of Oklahoma, where she continues to play tennis and majors in psychology. One notable detail that I came across while scrolling Samantha Fulnecky's Instagram profile was that she attended and worked at some place called Kanakuk Camp, a Christian summer camp based in Missouri with a few locations in various southern states. First of all, they spell camp with a K to match the Kanakook, making it KK, which I'm not trying to say anything about this summer camp, But it is really fascinating. Like if I was starting a summer camp business, a Christian summer camp business in the South,

and the first word had a K, I don't think I would be like, you know, it would be great. If we added a second K to that, you know. Especially because it's like can a cook camp. It's like very heavy emphasis. Yeah, you kind of get the vibes of three K's. Yeah, 100%. A hundred percent. But more notably, the direct.

of Kanakak Camps, Peter Newman, was convicted in 2010 of sexually abusing boys at the camps and is currently serving two continuous life sentences. In the wake of Peter Newman's arrest, former Kanekook campers and families started speaking out about the culture of sexual abuse and covering up abuse at these Christian Bible camps. And a total of 12 employees have been formally alleged or convicted of sexual abuse. Some of them were terminated from Cana Cook for their behavior, but never reported by the camp to law enforcement. So they went on to reoffend elsewhere before they were formally reported and charged. All of this information, by the way, is available at Facts about Canacook.com, which is the second result when you Google the camp,

of course, just behind the camp's official website. None of this necessarily has anything to do with Samantha Fulnecki, though I'm sad that she was sent to a camp where this is the precedent. But this is to say that it's like, I'm like, oh, we're doing an episode about like a bunch of evangelical Christians who end up doing really bad things to queer people. And it's like, yep, there's, there's got to be sexual abuse in there. Mm-hmm. Yeah. 12 employees. At a certain point, that's not just like a few bad apples. That's like, oh, yeah, this is institutionally built that way, you know, to accommodate predators, basically. A hundred percent. And I think it's just so interesting that, you know, of course, you know, Samantha, her mother especially who we're about to talk about, you know, she's sending

her kids there while devoting her career and political life to like, in her eyes, combating the endangerment of children in the form of like queer people existing in public while, you know, sending your kid to Bible camp with institutionalized sexual abuse, you know. Should we talk about Christy? Yes. Please. So I want to start talking about Christy Fulneckee by sending each of you an image that I screen grabbed from her Facebook profile.

Describe what we're looking at. It appears to be a Facebook post posted on January 6th, 2024. It says happy insurrection day. And there are fireworks in the background. Like the clip art fireworks. This is someone who celebrates January 6th as a holiday, basically. Do you ever see those people right on Twitter, like, when they hear that like a Morgan Wallin song has been number one on the charts for 20?

weeks. They'll be like, wow, like, there's a whole other world out there. And I'm like, indeed, there is a whole other world out there of people who are like, happy Insurrection Day, y'all. Especially because the most common reaction on this post is just a simple thumbs up emoji. Like, people are laughing, people are loving. But most people are just sort of like, yep, yep, holiday, yep, insurrection day. Who is Christy Fullnecky? Well, Christy Fullnecky. is a woman whose career I can understand back about a decade. Well, first of all, she is the mother of Samantha and five other children.

She was elected to Springfield, Missouri City Council in 2015, and then resigned in disgrace in 2018 after three years of people petitioning for her to go because she had been running her law firm without a business license for seven years. Crazy. see. You know, honestly, I kind of respect that. I respect someone with like major skeletons in the closet running for local office. It's bold. Yeah, exactly. It's like it's, you know, Donald Trump did that on like a large scale. Like I like to hear the stories of the people who do that on the small local scale. And the fact that it took three years of people trying to get a remove. And when she was finally pushed out, she like didn't really concede anything.

she just bought a larger house in a neighboring county and said that she had to leave Springfield City limits because her family got too big. And because city officials of Springfield need to live in Springfield, she was like, well, I got this bigger house. So I guess I can't be on the city council anymore. It's awesome. Never concede. Never accept defeat. Little Trump's everywhere. While Christy Fulnecke was on the Springfield City Council, she unsuccessfully ran for mayor.

She's done a lot of things. And so the next thing I want to send you about Christy Fulnecki is the banner from her website, her Facebook page, her everything. So tell me what we're looking at. I love this so much. It is so funny to me. It's a picture of her and she is rocking the leopard print, long sleeve shirt, the bangles and the chunky rings. and of course just like tons of makeup like dark red lipstick incredible falsie game here um but my favorite part of how she describes herself is that she lists off her like titles and they are so funny

to me podcast host lawyer public figure and entrepreneur identifying professionally as a public figure is so funny i mean she is a public figure to me with the amount of space she's consumed in my brain over the last like two weeks. So she's not lying. But what do you get from this, right? It's like she's very clearly trying to be a celebrity and in particular like a right wing conservative podcast host type celebrity. She's like small town Ann Coulter. Yes. If Ann Coulter had had children or married, which she didn't. So it's like she's living out the I'm a mother. I'm like a homemaker like style of this. But it's also incredibly contradictory with like her supposed values. Because anytime someone claims to be like a traditional woman who upholds the biblical standards of femininity,

by definition, I should not know that you exist because you should be silent. You cannot be a female public figure and also be like, I believe in biblical femininity and like submissiveness to men. Well, it's the Erica Kirk thing. Right. Christy Fulenecki describes herself as a podcast host and she's not lying. She did a conservative podcast called Real Talk with Christy, which is also, by the way, why does everyone who starts a podcast, you don't have to call it Real Talk with your name. There's like a hundred real talk with, I could do, should I change it to Real Talk with Matt? I listened to this podcast, which was a really interesting thing to do on the subway home yesterday.

And one thing I will say about Christy is while I don't think she's a particularly entertaining orator, she does have. have a certain gift which allows her to talk by herself for 30 minutes, which I think is actually like kind of rare. Like she can just go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and flow effortlessly from one topic to another. The specific episode I listened to from 2021 was where she was mourning the death of Rush Limbaugh, where interestingly, she describes Rush Limbaugh as like her hero and the person who turned her conservative. I got the notification on my phone that Rush Limbaugh had died at the age of 70, and I started crying. I couldn't believe it.

I thought, I'm crying. I didn't even know the man, but we've been listening to him for 30 years, some people over 30 years, for myself. His ideas and what he built as a pioneer, he really had an impact of my life. And I've always talked about on the radio that, you know, I was pretty liberal when I was in high school and growing up. And when I went to college at University of Missouri, I started listening to him when I was a freshman. And I just turned him on and was like, well, who is this guy? He's pretty cool. And he was funny, great sense of humor.

You know, he's the reason I became conservative. And it does seem like she attempted to model her career after his. And like she's always wanted to break out of like local radio and like become this conservative news anchor type radio star. And clearly has never really been able to do it. With so much of this, the podcast and her legal work, it's so clear that she wants to be famous. And I think that unfortunately for her, it's like she's aged out of what makes for a good right-wing influencer type person. And that's why I think so much this is like her placing her expectations and her dreams on her daughter. A million percent.

It's funny because like her obsession with Rush Limbaugh and like, the style of her podcast is very reminiscent of like conservative talk radio. And I'm like, interestingly enough, she's trying to break into a very male dominated field. It's like she wants to be the voice in the ear of like people who are like truckers. Because there's such a huge culture around like listening to these conservative personalities when you have to drive really long distances for your job or when you have like a security position or something where you're like spending a lot of time like idly. but none of the audience in that demographic wants to listen to a woman, like speaking to them

about politics. So like she is so limited by virtue of her gender in like the field that she has selected. And I think by her age is such a great point. A lot of the, this demographic wants to look at a really attractive, like conventionally attractive, blonde young woman. But they view her, I imagine that a lot of this demographic she's trying to reach views her as a lot of like a mother. They're not going to like look to her as a source of authority. Right. You're, attempting to appeal to an audience of mostly men who don't respect or want to listen to women. And if they have to, they want it to be a woman who's like 20. And you know who's 20. Her daughter. Lastly, Christy Fulenecki has spent most of her time in recent years as a lawyer. And she's like with

everything else used law as a means of like becoming this conservative activist and tried to like leverage it for fame. There's you know various local masking ordinances and schools during the early days of COVID that she fought. She like fought tooth and nail for clients who were like put their life on the lines that they could like go into a government building without wearing a mask. And she also represented January 6th rioters. Happy insurrection day y'all. One other thing about her is that if you go to the Springfield, Missouri Reddit page and you search her name, there are like a dozen posts going back like nine years. She's hated. It's amazing.

The nine years ago, full neckie loses bigly nine years ago. Finally, a list of full neckies embarrassing actions for SGF nine years ago. Full neckie draws fire from Satanism supporters. It's, it's amazing. She's just, you know, and then it's just her increasing attempts to get attention. Branson Judge dismisses all of Full Necky's lawsuits against the city, you know, blocked on Facebook by Falnecke. Voter says his rights were violated. It's, it's great.

She is just this villain to her local community. That is so funny. And I feel like this is such a like parable of modern conservatism is like your real life neighbors hate you. Maybe even your own family like despises you. Like you are just flat out unpleasant to be around and you cause problems for everyone. But you can gain success and attention and validation for your bad behavior by like going online and reaching out to and connecting with this exact type of person in every other town. It's like everyone who we hate just like finds each other online and like gains power that way. The holidays are upon us.

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Just last month, Samantha Fulneckee, back to her, was tasked in a psychology class at the University of Oklahoma to write a 650-word response essay to an academic paper that the class had read called Relations Among Gender Typicality, Peer Relations, and Mental Health during early adolescence, which was a study about the effect of gender norms on the mental health of middle schoolers. Now, the specific points in the instruction were to discuss why the topic is important or worthy of study, demonstrate an application of the study or results to one's own experiences, show a clear tie-in to the assigned article, be clearly written, et cetera, et cetera.

So I've clipped, I would say I've clipped parts of the essay. This is honestly like two-thirds of it because I was reading it and I was like, this is so fucking good. I can't miss this. And I thought in true classroom fashion that we could read it popcorn style. Perfect. So here is what Samantha Fulnicki wrote. This article was very thought-provoking and caused me to thoroughly evaluate the idea of gender and the role it plays in our society.

Spoiler alert, it did not cause her to thoroughly evaluate anything. The article discussed peers using teasing as a way to enforce gender norms. I do not necessarily see this as a problem. You don't see teasing as... Okay. God made male and female. and made us differently from each other on purpose and for a purpose. Popcorn cat.

God is very intentional with what he makes, and I believe trying to change that would only do more harm. Gender roles and tendencies should not be considered stereotypes. Women naturally want to do womenly things, because God created us with those womanly desires in our hearts. The same goes for men. God created men in the image. image of his courage and strength, and he created women in the image of his beauty. He intentionally

created women differently than men, and we should live our lives with that in mind. The grammar is atrocious. Oh, yeah, Popcorn to Parker. It is perfectly normal for kids to follow gender stereotypes. In quotes. Because that is how God made us. The reason so many girls want to feel womanly and care for others in a motherly way is not because they feel pressured to fit into social norms. It is because God created and chose them to reflect his beauty and his compassion in that way. Popcorn Matt. God does not view women as less significant than men. He created us with such intentionally. He created us with such intentionally and care. And he made women in his image of being a helper and in the image of his beauty.

I mean, one thing I've learned today is that God made women in the image of his beauty. I don't know what the fuck that means, but she said it like three times. It seems like God is kind of like having a transgressive gender himself. If leaning into that role means I am, quote, following gender stereotypes, then I am happy to be following a stereotype that alliance with the gifts and abilities God gave me as a woman. Popcorn Parker, I'm going the other direction. I do not think men and women are pressured to be more masculine or feminine. I strongly disagree with the idea from the article that encouraging acceptance of diverse gender expressions could improve students' confidence.

Society pushing the lie that there are multiple genders and everyone should be whatever they want to be is demonic and severely harms American youth. I do not want kids to be teased or bullied in school. However, pushing the lie that everyone has their own truth and everyone can do whatever they want and be whoever they want is not biblical whatsoever. Popcorn cat. My prayer for the world, and specifically for American society and youth, is that they would not believe the lies being spread from Satan that make them believe they are better off as another gender than what God made them. I pray that they feel God's love and acceptance as who he originally created them to. be. Amen. She didn't write amen. I said amen. All right. Here's our time to react. Okay. To start this off, one of my good friends printed out the article that Samantha was supposed

to be responding to and like went through and highlighted all the parts. Like she clearly did not read the source material at all because it has nothing to do with trans identity. It has nothing to do with what she's writing about. Obviously, like, she's contradicting herself throughout. Basically, what the piece is showing, what this study is showing, is that even girls and boys who do adhere to traditional gender stereotypes still experience mental health consequences because they never feel like they can live up to the full, like, view of what their gender should be. So, for example, in the study, they point out that girls who are athletic, like Samantha herself, girls who participate in sports, that is not a feminine trait. And so girls experience bullying and

teasing for being athletes, which is something that like Samantha herself engages in. So it's like, I'm not expecting a lot from this piece based on like clearly where her intentions lie. For anyone who thinks that this essay has anything to do with the article that it's supposed to be about, like just even skim the article and you will see they have nothing to do with each other. Yeah, this pretty clearly seemed like an excuse for her to just go on an anti-trans rant. As you said, the original article was not about trans people or trans kids or anything like that. She only references the article at the very beginning of the paper where she says, like, it made me think. It's like, did it though.

But my favorite part of this whole thing, of the whole article, society pushing the lie that there are, multiple genders. Yeah. There's only one. I mean, so there's one? You know, it's like conservatives went from saying there are only two genders. So now they're just like, it's just one. This kind of reflects on God's beauty. Like I'm like, do we all share one gender? You've kind of, they've beat my interest a little bit with that. Yeah, that's kind of beautiful. You know, conservatives in the fallout from this whole debacle are like, Samantha was given a failing grade because she referenced her the Bible. First of all, she didn't even quote the Bible. But second of all, they're like, she's been discriminated against for her beliefs.

There are many, not the majority of students in higher education, but there are many students who are religious and who are conservative and who express those beliefs in their academic work in college. Like, I went to college with some of these people and like they do well in school. And I don't agree with the things that they write. But there's a way. to articulate your conservative beliefs that follow academic principles and like citing sources and like backing up an argument she's just like well god and his beauty and his beauty and god and women belong in the kitchen and that's not a bad thing yeah no there are there are smart conservatives like there are conservatives can't send us together let's not get out of it say they were smart

I said that they followed the rules okay fair maybe like book smart like they can read they can cite they can annotate etc yeah I mean The only positive thing you can say about this essay is that it clearly was not written by chat GPT. You know? Because while chat GPT is repetitive and we'll just kind of keep spouting the same idea back at you, this was clearly some handcrafted work. Anti-AI activist Samantha Fulnecke. All right.

So the teaching assistant in charge of grading these papers, who happens to be trans, we'll get to that. Give Samantha a zero with the feedback, and I actually think it's important that we read this feedback, because if you only listen to Fox News, you would think that this faculty member spat on Samantha and called her a bigot. Mel Kerth, the teaching assistant who graded it, wrote, please note that I am not deducting points because you have certain beliefs, but instead I'm deducting points for you posting a reaction paper that does not answer the questions for this assignment, contradicts itself, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class, and is at times offensive. While you are entitled to your own personal beliefs,

there's an appropriate time or place to implement them in your reflections. I encourage all students to question or challenge the course material with other empirical findings or testable hypotheses. But using your own personal beliefs to argue against the findings of not only this article, but the findings of countless articles across psychology, biology, sociology, etc., is not best practice. You argue that abiding by normative gender roles is beneficial. It's perfectly fine to believe this, but to then say that everyone should act the same, while also saying that people aren't pressured into gendered expectations is contradictory, especially since your arguments reflect a religious pressure to act in certain gender stereotypical ways. You can say

that strict gender norms don't create gender stereotypes, but that is a very important. true by definition of what a stereotype is. She's being so nice about calling this girl an idiot. Please note that acknowledging gender stereotypes does not immediately denote a negative connotation. A nuanced this article discusses, if you're read it. Additionally, to call an entire group of people demonic is highly offensive, especially a minorized population. You are entitled to your own beliefs, but this isn't a vague narrative of, quote, society pushes lies. But instead, the result of countless years of developing psychological and scientific evidence for these claims and directly interacting with the communities involved.

I was reading this this morning and I was like, this is the softest criticism imaginable given what was submitted. Yeah. The whole essay was a passive aggressive personal attack on this TA. You know, there was another line in there that we didn't touch on that was, it is frustrating to me when I read articles like this and discussion posts from my classmates of so many people trying to conform to the same mundane opinion so they do not step on people's toes. I think that is a cowardly and insecure way to live. She doesn't know what mundane means, side note. No, that was just.

She's the most mundane person I've ever seen. It has sections like dumping on the teacher and then calling out all her classmates and not engage. with the material that she was supposed to talk about. It's rage bait disguised as an essay. And I also think it's interesting that like people have said, oh, well, she shouldn't have gotten a zero because at least she turned something in. I don't know when or where people went to college. But like I went to the other OU, Ohio University,

which was not a very hard school to get into. And people got zeros constantly in like level 1,000, level 2,000 classes. is if you turned in something that was bad or contained an error of fact or like, as you said, Parker in this case contained like numerous personal attacks, of course you would get a zero. You would be lucky to not be kicked out of the class. When I was in college, so I was taking a sociology class and there was one of my classmates who like blew up at the teacher because he got a zero on a paper because the teacher asked him to not call homeless people bums. Whoa. He was just like, this is not an appropriate term to use when discussing in the paper.

In his like, you know, research paper or whatever. And the teacher was just like, you got to do something. And he threw a little fit, but then like went back and, you know, because it was 2009, this kind of griff didn't exist yet. You know, he was upset and went back home and that was that, you know. These types of students, basically, what I'm saying, have been around forever. I had a professor in 2015, so definitely in the age of like TPSA already existed, like this type of stuff was starting to flourish. And I had a professor in a journalism class where if you had one error of fact in an article that you turned in, immediate zero.

And people hated him for it. People complained. People got their parents to call the school and complain. The department was like not happy with this policy. But like nonetheless, I feel like that is pretty commonplace. But a lot of the backlash also starts to make sense when you consider that, like, a significant portion of the modern conservative movement doesn't even think college should exist and thinks that, like, if you pay for a degree, you should be handed a degree and nothing in the middle of that matters.

Right. Right. To me, this whole assignment, you know, it's like if you were given a math assignment and in place of any numerical answer, you just wrote like, I love God, fuck trans people, like, you're going to get a zero. And that's effectively what happened here. Like her submitting something where there is writing on the paper, like it doesn't matter. It's not the you can't just, you can't just do that.

And people are also like, well, you know, doesn't her belief system matter? And you're in an institution of higher learning theoretically. Like this professor says, you have to include evidence for your argument that can't be women do womenly things. because God instilled in them those womanly desires. Similarly, like, this would do great in a church, right? Which is where I'm sure she got it from. If I went to a church and I said, like, I love having gay sex all day, they would be like, well, you're going to get a zero.

And I'd be like, well, fair enough. I submitted this in a fucking church. So I just don't know what you're expecting. Ironically, like, this is participation trophy logic. Is this idea that, like, if you show up and you, put in some effort, quote unquote, around effort, then you deserve, like, a passing grade or you deserve to even be, like, rewarded just because you, like, showed up. So in response to getting a zero, Samantha Fulnecke files a claim of religious discrimination,

which is amplified by Turning Point USA, and then further amplified by the Republican governor of Oklahoma, Kevin Stitt, who released a statement, quote, the situation at University of Oklahoma is deeply concerning. I'm calling, on the OU Regents to review the results of the investigation and ensure other students aren't unfairly penalized for their beliefs. The concept of a governor issuing a statement over a student's failing grade. Okay. Former Oklahoma superintendent of schools, Ryan Walter, called Samantha, quote,

An American Hero. Now, Ryan Walter, he's the guy who left his job because he got caught watching porn, right? Yeah. Wait, let's fact check that. Ryan Walter Ryan Walters. Ryan Walters. Porn.

Yep. He called it a mishap. Hey, it happens. A mishap. You know, as one does. But it's the drag queens, right? The teaching assistant was put on leave by the university, which I actually think is like the most fucking dismal aspect of this entire story.

Like, I don't know. I think that what the fuck is the point of higher education if you bend to pressure in this way? Because like the crazy right wing bigoted turning point. tight people like they're going to exist, they're going to scream and shout, but they need institutions like this to bend the knee because it gives them validity. And I would be fucking pissed, by the way, if I was a student at the University of Oklahoma, because to me, like this, you have zero credibility as a university. It renders a degree from their useless, in my opinion. I mean, I know

I sound dramatic, but it's like if you as an institution of higher learning don't stand for any real fact and you're willing to cave to these bigots who just want white evangelical grievance politics to be flattered at all times, how do you have credibility as an academic institution? And also with this, after the teaching assistant was put on leave, there was a clip on Fox News because they covered it naturally where on their show outnumbered where a guest said, the fact that this graduate student was placed on administrative leave at all is a sign of how far we've come in this space to protect conservative views. Just a few years ago, that would not have happened.

And I think this person is absolutely correct. Just a few years ago, this would not have happened. But like, this is them really showing what this is all about, that this is about silencing voices they disagree with and running trans people out of jobs. The fact that the teaching assistant was trans, It was not a core part of this story, but yet that's what every right-wing outlet covering this was talking about, because that's what it's really about. The supervising professor, the actual professor for this class is a cis woman who concurred with the trans-teaching assistant and gave Samantha the same grade.

And all you hear is trans-teaching assistant, trans, trans, trans, trans, trans. Yes. Like that to me proves that it was about targeting this trans person and not the academics who agreed with her assessment. And I have like a relative who's a faculty member at a university. And that was something that really stood out to her was like this completely negates a lot of administrative processes at the university because you had two members of the staff agreeing that were usurped by like this student's complaint. And that is not how any disciplinary process is. is supposed to work. I highly doubt that's how the University of Oklahoma's like handbook says that these situations should be handled. But it's a sign of institutional capture and institutional capitulation. And also, universities almost never do this when like a teacher or professor or student is like credibly accused of harassment. Like title nine has been weaponized and reworked by the Trump administration to ensure that like these types of consequences don't happen. But in this case, you see like the immediate urgency, and that shows exactly where their priorities lie.

So Samantha Fulenecki jumps immediately into the right-wing grievance culture speaking circuit. I was first made aware of this entire situation, as were a lot of other people on Twitter, through a turning point USA post, which had a picture of Samantha with the big words, transgender professor fails student for quoting the Bible in her essay, which I repeat. the Bible was not quoted. Quoting and referencing are two different things. She speaks on Fox News, like within a day, which is so wild. But I want to play a little sizzle reel from that.

I am saddened that they're offended by the truth of the gospel and the truth that I wrote about in my assignment. And it saddens me to see that that offends them and upset them. them the way it did. Jesus is always worth standing up for and I just encourage those people that are dealing with something similar to push back against that kind of behavior. I would rather have my integrity and give my true opinion and get a zero on an assignment than have to lie about what I really believe. If you would rather take the zero than lie, then take the zero.

Why are we doing this? After all of this started, the school put out something saying that this grade won't count against her at all. Like they tried to diffuse it. Clearly, the school doesn't realize that this is not about her grade. It's like a classic case of an institution, like choosing to capitulate and not understanding that that is part of the playbook. And that as soon as the school is like, oh, we're sorry, we didn't mean that. like we'll do whatever you want, then it's going to get way worse. You know, I saw Samantha was getting slotted into these Fox News interviews and the turning

point USA speaking opportunities, which we're going to look at a clip in a second. And I was just like, for someone whose specific shortcoming is that they can't really write a complete sentence. Like, they're probably not going to be that great of a speaker either. And I will add that Fox News, that was a sizzle reel that Fox News made. Those were the most pertinent aspects of her interview clipped together with the least dead space possible. And we still got like eight ums. She doesn't even have like talking points. No.

No. I don't even know what she said in that. I blacked out. Samantha Fulnecke then gets, like I said, slotted into these Turning Point USA speaking gigs on campus. Here is a clip from her giving a speech. Um, you also said that I can't use my own personal audio.

to defend an opinion that goes against the consensus of every medical field and every medical association in the United States. They unfairly told me that I can't use my personal feelings to go against the medical consensus from every medical association in the United States. Like, Stamps Foot. In my science class. Literally. And also I'm a psychology major.

How do you say those words? out loud and then be like, I'm in the right. We need to bring back shame. Lastly, I want to show you a clip from an interview she did with local news because she was, she's, she's on a tear. She is on a tear. Does it work? Stay tuned to find out.

The demonic thing is that, I didn't mean for that to be offensive, but the truth will naturally offend people. And so I think that's why people are kind of. viewing that as offensive. Would you have a problem having a transgender teacher? I wouldn't. Not if they're able to separate their kind of beliefs in things from grading, then I don't, you know, really care who my professors are. It's so hard for her to reach an end of a sentence or articulate any sort of coherent idea,

which that's not everyone's strong suit. It's totally fine if she wasn't trying to, like, weaponize all of this in the most sinister way possible. But it does strike me that the thing that comes most naturally to her when she's speaking is using the they pronoun. Which is, which is correct for this particular professor. It's like the only thing that rolls off the tongue for her. Christy should have put her in voice lessons because she does not have the juice to be able to make these points in a way that is compelling. She's not like a fast speaker. It's like that nugget of, I'd be fine with having like a trans professor as long as it didn't impact their grading.

Like it took her so long to formulate that thought, even though that was clearly being drilled in as like, this is the core component of what we want you to say. Yeah, because she can't right away come out and be like, no, I would totally be against that. That would be bad. I would hate having a trans professor and I think they should all disappear. That was the messaging that her mom was on. Right. because her mom has been crusading for her. This is the biggest moment in Christy's life, I think.

Like she is living this. She was responding to people on social media being like, it's an opinion essay. It's fine. You don't need facts when you're writing an opinion essay. And also just retweeting people that were straight up calling for trans people to be just like driven out of society. Kat and I were texting about this yesterday.

And it reminds me so much we did an episode about this months and months ago. but their relationship reminds me of like a conservative grift version of like Jojo Siwa and Jessa Lynn, her mother. It means it's essentially just like a stage mom, but it's like what if you combined like all the worst aspects of like a stage mom a majeer with the worst aspects of like conservative grift like Fox News anchor aspirations? Now we're in now we're in hell. Now we're talking. Yes. And I feel like this is something we're going to be seeing more of because. Because Christy is of the Rush Limbaugh generation. And a lot of these like younger, more famous,

conservative media personalities, they have kids. Like a lot of the women who come to mind have like really young kids right now. But in another like 10, 15 years, they're going to be like Samantha aged. So I imagine that like, wow, this version of the Gryft is not going to be successful because Samantha doesn't have the juice. We're probably seeing the beginning of like a pattern being established here. I feel so badly for Riley Gaines's child. Who recently went to the White House? The baby? The baby. The baby went to the White House. Riley Gaines posted on social media about it. It was clear to say that the baby had been in the White House before, but not outside of the womb. Stardom young. It's also like you've seen, we've seen some examples of the opposite of this happening.

The one that comes to mind is Kellyanne Conway and Claudia Conway, where it's like the opposite of this where you have like mom is. is like a conservative driven, like, media personality. And the daughter is like, this is all BS. Like, I am not putting up with that. And you see, like, kind of the eruption that emerged within, like, that family dynamic when Claudia Conway was speaking out against her mother. I don't even know if we should get into it. But, like, her mom was cyberbullying her on Maine.

While they were, like, in the same house and Claudia was like, emancipate me internet. I'm begging to be emancipated. It was crazy. Yes. And in this case, you're seeing, like, Samantha's definitely doing. her mom wants her to do, what her mom has probably, like, raised her to do. Groomed. Dare I say groomed. Yep, but she's just not good at it. Right. Gabe Woolley, a member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives,

met with Samantha Fulneckie, and gave her a citation of recognition from the Oklahoma House of Representatives for her steadfast convictions, her commitment to speaking from a foundation of truth, and her courage in shining a light on serious concerns within Oklahoma's higher education system. The girl wrote a shit essay and she's getting recognition from the fucking state government. She should enjoy it while at last because in 10 years when she's trying to get a normal job and this is what comes up when you Google her name, that is not going to be a good look for her. These people are not going to survive the cultural shift. It kind of reminds me. So years ago, there was a story that was in the Wall Street Journal

and it was on the Today Show about a student who wrote an essay that was like to all the colleges who rejected me. And it was just this whiny screed. And it was by this, this woman named Susie Weiss, whose sister, Barry, got got her essay published in the Wall Street Journal where Barry was working at the time. and on the Today Show, it was clearly like trying to turn her into this like crusader. And she was just so bad on TV. Like her writing was so bad. Now she works at like CBS because she's Barry Weiss's sister. But yeah, the whole thing kind of reminded me of that story.

Just was such like a media creation to make an excuse for this unexceptional girl. Oh, all the Weisses are like that. Jesus. Yeah. All right. Well, now is the time where we talk about the theory that some people have that Samantha and her mother and Turning Point sort of manufacture this controversy from the very beginning. And Parker and I were messaging about this beforehand. The stage is yours.

So the Twitter account that first pushed this, the Turning Point USA underscore OU account. It had never posted before November 24th. And on November 24th at 106 a.m., they posted something about the University of Oklahoma putting tampons and pads and men's restrooms across campus. But the more interesting one to me is the second post that they have, which was posted a few minutes later. And it says, have you ever wondered why somebody went into college with conservative beliefs and came out identifying as LGBTQ and woke? Here is why. A student in elements of psychology expressed their concerns over the university making her learn these topics in order to pass the class. For our upcoming exam, I don't want to receive a bad grade if I answer honestly in my opinion, said the student.

This is unacceptable. These beliefs go directly against science. No students should be forced to learn or rewire their brain to believe that someone can change their gender. Oklahoma University president, please fix this. And it has screenshots of like some like online learning module that was like a video that was like the science of being transgender. And one example question on the test was someone who has ambiguous genitalia somewhere between female and male is blank while someone who changes their gender at some point during their lifetime is blank. And the correct answer was intersex and transgender. On the screenshot it says this is an example of a question that I disagreed with but had to answer to receive credit. Like this. This. person is very clearly Samantha Fulnecki. Samantha Fulnecki. I was going to say this is Samantha Fulnecki. It has to be.

So this is the second post that the Oklahoma University chapter of Turning Point USA ever made on Twitter, which was like how many days before the essay? Which was three days before the essay, which is this is kind of sad. The essay itself was posted in like the middle of the afternoon on Thanksgiving. It's like, don't you have something better to be doing right now. No, they don't. She was probably at the Thanksgiving table with Christy. And Christy was like, y'all better send that post right the fuck now.

Right now. It's all a little too perfect. So to clarify, your belief is one that they set this Twitter account up, knowing that they would attempt to manufacture some sort of controversy specifically around the psychology student, Samantha Fulneckee. And then within like days of making the Twitter, they had their thing. That's my guess. I think that makes a lot of sense. And it also strikes me that like they had these graphics ready to go. Like they had graphics with like the the best images of her possible very, very, very quickly.

And the other thing that struck me is like, Turning Point USA has a lot of different campus chapters. Turning Point USA was founded by Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk recently died. Turning Point USA has had this massive influx. Just kidding. Turning Point USA has had this massive influx of attention and resources and Erica Kirk is touring the country and lots of people are paying attention to these organizations. So it just made me think like I wonder if people involved, Samantha, Christy, any other members of the student chapter of Turning Point USA on this campus. And of course, Oklahoma's like notoriously like lives of TikTok adjacent educational system.

These are all entities that understand how social media network affects work. Like the modern anti-LGBQ hate movements are pretty well versed at like leveraging Twitter clout to get attention. So it's like it's way too coincidental. I think there was absolutely like some amount of pre-planning that went into this. The question for me is I'm curious, like, how far up the ladder it goes. Because maybe, like, the state level government officials just, like, took advantage of this rising opportunity. But I would also be curious if, like, it was something that they wanted to do for a while, find a case to go after the University of Oklahoma, an institution that I'm sure they were very eager to get to capitulate, like, to their agenda.

And this is just like, this is a whole playbook. Like you see it over and over and over again. Like the modern right is very transparent. What's the guy? Oh, I'm blinking. The anti-Claudeyne gay who tweeted out exactly what he was going to do. Chris Rufo. Oh, Chris Rufo has me blocked on Twitter.

I'm just like, after Chris Rufo tweeted out, like this is how we're going to combat higher education. Ever since then, I'm like, oh, yeah, they are very clear about planning all of this out. And this is all very intentional. I would just like to take a break from the show to give a shout out to Ground News for very kindly sponsoring this episode. A big part of my job is understanding people's information diet and how it informs the way that they think. And Ground News is a huge tool in helping me do that. For example, not everyone received this Samantha Full Necky story the way that I am telling it on this podcast. and while, of course, I think I'm telling it in a very honest way,

I'm aware that not everyone is a listener of a bit fruity, and that's okay. That is where Ground News comes in. Ground News is a website and app that aggregates all different articles from across the web about a single story. It organizes all of those articles into left, right, and center biases, gives you information about the owners of the outlets publishing the articles and any potential conflicts of interest there, and so many more transparency tools around media consumption that make it a lot easier to understand

not only your own information diet, but like your uncles, you know? So with this Samantha Fulneckee story, Ground News shows me that sources on the left, like the New Republic, are publishing articles like, state universities are scrambling to appease the bigoted MAGA regime. And I have to say, I agree. But on the right, we have one from O.A. One American News, trans instructor placed on leave after failing student who quoted Bible and expressed her belief in only two genders. Well, that's telling a very specific version of this story, isn't it? From Newsmax, we have Instructor on Leave after failing Bible-based essay on gender.

And here's another. Trans instructor fails students' gender essay that repeatedly cited Bible. There were no citations. Ground News has been a really singular and fascinating tool for me. As someone who is desperately trying to understand this fractured reality we all live in, if you would like to try out Ground News, listeners of a bit Frutie can get 40% off a vantage plan right now at ground. Dot News slash Fruity. That is ground.

Dot News slash fruity. Thank you so much to Ground News for being such a great. tool and for sponsoring this show. Now let's get back to it. I think before continuing on with the Samantha Fulnicki saga, we have to explain to the listener who might be unfamiliar what exactly Samantha is trying to do here by leveraging transphobia and white Christian grievance politics for her own benefit and these like speaking gigs and these interviews and the Fox News thing. And we can't do this without explaining, I think, in a little bit of meaningful detail what Riley Gaines has achieved. and the precedence that she has set.

Many of you might be familiar with Riley Gaines. I made a full episode about her last year, but the very brief explanation, if you are not familiar with her, is that she was a swimmer at the University of Kentucky a few years ago, who, in a single race, tied for fifth place with Leah Thomas,

a transgender swimmer. If you think that that's not a very exciting tale, you'd be right. But it is the best story, that they had at the time of how trans women in sports were like eating up all of the opportunities from cis women and you can't even stand on the podium that doesn't exist for fifth place anymore because you might tie with the trans women that you have to share that non-existent podium with. And anyway, Riley leveraged right-wing grievance and media outrage from this fifth place tie

into a multi-million dollar career. And she, you know, she's on Fox News all the time. time she is in the ear of the president. She's speaking at CPAC. She is everywhere. She's millions of followers across various platforms. She is a nemesis of mine. A lot of people might be familiar with this story, but I do want to mention here that Mother Jones and Pablo Torres recently published in extremely detailed investigation of Riley Gaines' career and financial ties. And I think we should talk about that a little bit so people can understand the very real material infrastructure that Samantha is trying to slot into here. You know, keep in mind, had Leah Thomas non-existed, Riley Gaines would have still come in fifth.

So literally nothing changed for her. But in this Mother Jones, Pablo Torre investigation, they find out that she's making, you know, the Leadership Institute, which is this right-wing group, like paid her more than $126,000. The Leadership Institute opened a project called the Riley Gaines Center. She has book deals. She has podcasts. She's just cashing in on this. And the really interesting thing about this is that if you look back to how Riley Gaines originally talked about this situation with Leah Thomas right after it happened, she does such a flip.

With the Daily Wire, she said, I am in full support of her and full support of her transition and her SWIFT and her SWIFT and her SWIFT. swimming career and everything like that because there's no doubt that she works hard to. And she's just abiding by the rules that the NCAA put in place and that's the issue. And you know what? I think that's a totally fine thing to say. If you think the rules are wrong and you think that it gives someone an unfair advantage, your issue should be, I think the NCAA should change its rules. Which they did, which is why they have to move on now to something else.

Yeah. In this Mother Jones piece, you know, they point out that yet the following spring, Riley Gaines tweets, he's an arrogant cheat who stole a national title from a hardworking, deserving woman. It's just the amount of hatred and anger. And she talks about wanting to take down the entire trans movement, you know, that this is just the house of cards and that it's going to fall and stuff like that. Just like social media incentivizes the most extreme opinions.

Like had she kept responding to things like she did in that original data? WIRE interview, she would not have become a whole thing. She needed to embrace this really hateful, really angry approach, which I think it'll be interesting to see if in a year Samantha Fulnecki is still saying, like, I'm fine with like having a trans teacher. Like that would be fine. Like, I feel like that's going to change very quickly for her if she wants to get the Riley Gaines, like, Gravy Train back on track for her. I mean, I'm interested if in a year we'll be hearing from Samantha Full Necky at all, but yes, point taken. Oh, hopefully she's just doing her own thing.

I wish her well, you know, it's like, I hope she graduates and whatever she's, she's majoring in. And I hope that she finds a job and does that, you know, like Riley Gaines was apparently going to be like a dentist. Now she's just a full-time transphobe. They're going to dangle this carrot, I imagine, in front of Samantha. That's like, if you devote your life to this and you become the poster child, for trans people can't be teachers and trans people can't work at universities or in academic settings,

then like we will potentially offer you this lifestyle. And I also think it's really interesting, like the fact that the DeVos family has provided so much of the financial support for Riley Gaines's career. Yes. Yes, because the DeVos family donated the initial $100,000 to create the Riley Gaines Center, which promised to send Gaines to speak on college campuses. and recruit other student athletes who have been, quote, harmed by zealots of transgender ideology. There are a couple of interesting connections with that. One being that Betsy DeVos during Trump's first term, what's his appointee to lead the Department of Education. And one of her major missions was to rework Title IX to disadvantage victims of like any sort of sexual crime on campus.

But also what Title IX does is it creates the legal requirements. for women's sports. And they've worked to undermine that because basically what Title IX does is it prohibits like sex-based discrimination. So it requires that there be women's athletics in addition to men's athletics. And in more recent decades, it has provided these protections for students who are victims of gender-based violence. And it's interesting that like the DeVos family has done so much to undermine that. And that during Trump's term 2.0, the Department of Education has obviously been dismantled and Title IX has been weaponized against trans students and trans athletes in particular. The usage of like the white cis Christian woman as like the victim in these

scenarios is interesting because it plays well with sort of like the emotional fallacy and appeal at the heart of a lot of like anti-trans and anti-queer arguments. But it's also like I'm like women's participation in sports is endangered by these people like counter to their supposed of values. And I also would think that women's place in education is at risk because of these people because what they really want is for educational institutions to once again be the domain of almost entirely privileged white men. And I think that like when women advocate for these causes, it's like they're using their their privilege in that moment. But I think the ultimate goal here is also to like kind of reverse DEI because white women do academically outperform white men.

So that's not going to like fly for long either. So one thing about Riley Gaines that I learned in the, the Mother Jones piece, like in April 2023. So this was almost a year after the race. She was starting to kind of lose steam. She was, uh, she was doing turning point USA events, you know, giving speeches on college campuses. She went to give a speech at San Francisco State University. Mm-hmm.

And the students there protested. When the event finished, it's a, said, I'm reading from the piece. Then the classroom door was open. Protesters rushed towards games. She tweeted that she was assaulted by a man, a guy in a dress. She told Fox News that. Then, you know, campus security had to basically be like, that didn't happen. You know, we have, we have footage at multiple angles. You weren't, you weren't assaulted. You know, she said that protesters jokingly said, like, tell her to pay us 10 bucks each and we'll, and we'll all go home or something like that and she says she was held for ransom and yeah so so it said in the following

days and weeks she embarked on a media tour claiming she had been punched hit multiple times and held for ransom the next one she testified before the house homeland security committee and you know where she described the episode as kidnapping like this is this is reality does not matter at all to this world and Fox News will sit there and they will amplify it and they will make it a story. Like I feel so bad for Leah Thomas, the swimmer in this. Like she hasn't done, she hasn't done much since all of this. She's been very quiet, but she will forever be synonymous with like, look at that man and women's sports and she'll be hated by people. Like imagine being Leah Thomas and being like, I'm going to go Google my name today.

Like, you can't do that. And the same thing that happened to Leah Thomas is currently happening to the professor in this case. In this case, Melkirth, I think is her name. That's what sucks because Melkirth, she's not speaking up. They're not making comments. They're staying quiet as I'm sure the school is saying they have to at this point because they're still employed, but they're just on leave. And no matter what she does, you know, her whole life's going to be kind of a. you know, a total train rack from here on out because Samantha Fulnacki wanted to become famous.

And I mean, this is the playbook. It's like make people afraid to hold anyone accountable. Like the playbook here is like make anyone who is again like a minoritized group as she said in in the response to the essay. Like it's make people afraid to exist in public spaces. make trans people afraid to pursue these types of careers, like to exist in public life, and to like contest bigotry. Yeah. And the playbook, it's constantly being used. And it becomes clear what's happening very, very quickly.

You know, remember a few years back with the Dylan Mulvaney incident where basically Bud Light paid her to do an ad read on her Instagram and people freaked out. I'm trans. I run a newsletter. And I have to kind of wonder how many brands have looked at working with me, looked at advertising with me and quietly decided it just wasn't worth the risk of associating themselves with the trans person because there is no level of, oh, it's fine to work with the trans person unless, you know, like in the Dylan Mulvaney's situation, there wasn't even a, oh, here's this thing. Here's this thing she said that was offensive and inappropriate. And she needs to have her ads taken away or something like that. It was just. simply, this is a trans woman and we don't like that and we're not going to, you know, deal with that. You know, right now, as we're talking about this Oklahoma case, you know, the same playbook is being deployed. Yesterday, I checked, I looked over at Twitter and you've got, you've got libs of

TikTok and you've got all these other right-wingers who are freaking out because there's a Netflix movie called Queen of Cole, which is a Spanish language film, for one. It's a Spanish Argentine film based on the true story of Carla Antonela Rodriguez, the first trans woman to work in the coal mines in Patagonia. Lux Pascal, Pedro Pascal's sister is in it. And like that's the controversy that she's in it. Sorry, not to add some really insightful commentary there, but she's so pretty. I mean, I mean, she is. You know, but like you've got like right wing media are running stories calling it like Netflix's woken movie yet. They're trying to run the Dylan Mulvaney, Leah Thomas playbook, you know, generate enough outrage to pressure companies into pulling or apologizing or distancing themselves from a trans person.

You know, that's the point of these campaigns. You don't actually have to get everyone fired. You know, you don't have to successfully pressure every company. You just have to create enough ambient fear that people start making calculations on their own. It's a chilling effect that, you know, how many trans teachers are staying closeted right now because they watched what happened to Melkirth? How many companies passed on trans creators this year because they've been. saw what happened to Bud Light. Like, we'll never know. And that's the point. It's to instill fear.

These are fear-based campaigns. And I think there's this like attempt to retroactively like shoehorn a Leah Thomas thing onto Melkirth where like Samantha Fulnecke is Riley Gaines in this situation. The professor is Leah Thomas. The professor has robbed Samantha of her valor by existing in public life as a trans person, right? Like you have the media constant being like, trans professor took this great away. from this sweet little Christian girl. I think this is so indicative to me of like, I think that trans sports as a cultural war issue is losing steam. Like I think it's past its peak.

Very frankly, as we've said on this podcast many times, like that energy, they have to find a new place to channel it before people start looking at the actual powers that be in this country that are disenfranchising them, right? We have a president who claimed that eradicating trans athletes would improve their lives. That president is continuing to rob them of an affordable life,

health care, et cetera, by continuing to collude with billionaire tech oligarchs or destroying humanity. And I just think trans sports as a panic was never going to be a big enough issue on its own to sustain this cycle of outrage and white grievance. So now we need to do trans people in academia. Yeah.

And like these stories would kind of pop up every once in a while where there would be like a teacher at a school came out as trans people, and they should be fired. And there was this famous case in the UK. I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the teacher. More than 10 years ago, there was this teacher who came out as trans and people started a pressure campaign in the media to get her out of there.

And she ended up committing suicide. And like that's a victory for this movement. I feel like every trans person knows that at any given moment, a few powerful people on the right could decide to destroy their lives. Let's say, you know, if a trans woman is in public and goes to use the restroom and then gets confronted afterwards about it or something like that. Like you could have Fox News, you could have the Daily Wire, you could have the right-wing podcast ecosystem like coming down on you and basically just destroy your life. make you virtually unemployable, you know, make it almost impossible for you to exist in public. And these aren't people who are seeking to become famous.

You know, it's just, it just happens. And the people who make these arguments who try to drive trans people out of public life never actually make their arguments. They just go, that, I don't want that here. Get that person out of society, you know. There's nothing that trans people. people could do to defend against this, which is the scariest part. The world that these campaigns are building are one where trans people are too risky to hire, too controversial to the platform, and too dangerous to be seen with, not because of anything that we do, but because of who we are.

And that's what that's what scares me. Like I've had that worry. I'm like, oh, no, what if one of my articles escapes the bubble of where it usually, you know, the audience bubble and, And someone on the far right decides like, I'm going to take down this transfers. And like they could totally do that. And it would suck. I really like how you were describing like the chilling and the silencing effect, Parker, because it's like these campaigns can be so powerful even without like institutional support because fear is such like an effective weapon to control entire populations of people with.

And at the same time, we've seen in the U.S. and in the U.K., like these types of campaigns, can result in actual legislative force to push trans people out of public life. So it's like you have the cultural impact, the legislative impact, and then like the economic social impact. And it is such a like horrifying toolbox where as a conservative person, you really only within this like environment have something to gain. But as like a trans person or as a person who falls into any minority that's under attack, it's like you only have something to lose. I want to bring up here a term which I'm borrowing actually from Naomi Klein, but what I'm calling the mirror world, aka every accusation is a confession, I think so many parts

of this story support the idea that every conservative accusation is a confession, right? Conservatives always accuse progressives and especially queer people of indoctrinating their children into like being trans or whatever. When we just want to give our kids like the space to be whoever they are. And what we have here is a right-wing religious zealot mother, who's clearly indoctrinated her daughter into being a right-wing religious zealot with similar aspirations in right-wing entertainment. But also conservatives have spent the last couple years coasting on this fear of DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion, which broadly means for those of us who are still attached to reality, making sure that minorities are included

and respected in workplaces. But to conservatives, it's actually like a nefarious plot that our transgender overlords are going to dominate cis straight white people in public life. That trans people will be given the best grades and the best jobs and the most power in society by simple virtue of being trans and everyone is famously so nice to trans people in America.

And has any of this born out in him? Sadly, sadly no. I wish. There will always be people who, who believe like, oh, well, I could become more popular if I were trans. It's like, no, you, no. It's so awesome when you have, like, people, I don't know, like, I feel like Ben Shapiro or Bill Maher.

It's always, like, cis white men who are like, if you want to be cool now, you could just be trans. And I'm like, well, why don't you try and see how cool and how nice everyone treats you? But anyway, what we see here is the very people making these claims about DEI, trying to steamroll queer people. out of public life and get themselves to the top of the heap, despite being totally mediocre, simply by virtue of their white Christianity. It is white conservatives grooming their kids to be conservative and wanting DEI for themselves. Because the reality is, like, if there are no

efforts to balance, like the student population via admissions, then actually, like, white men, for example, are getting absolutely walloped by the competition. because their academic performance does not compare to, like, their peers. Oftentimes, like, women lead men. And oftentimes, like, it's the exact opposite where the balancing of these populations, the DEI efforts, were actually benefiting people who are undeserving who fall into these privileged categories. You know, every once in a while, I'll see some, like, conservative post something that's like, oh, look, 92% of humanities professors are liberal.

It's like, yeah, I don't know. Like, what do you want? And they're like, it needs to be 50, 50. Like, no, that's not how things work. Participation trophy. Now, my dear listener, if you've made it this far in the episode and you're wondering, Matt, didn't you say up front that this was a hopeful story? But now we're just talking about Christians weaponizing transphobia to create a world where

they can steamroll everyone out of public life that doesn't flatter their mediocrity. where's the optimism there? Well, my friend, we've arrived. We've arrived at the crux of the episode. Which is that none of this worked. It would have been really funny if right there you were just like, well, I have something to tell you about my worldview. I support that.

I think that that would be dark. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And this episode is brought to you by Rumble. No. No. No, the hope is that. despite all of the cards lined up perfectly for her, she had the wannabe grifter conservative activist radio host mom. She had the local chapter and then the national chapter of Turning Point USA on her side.

She had the governor of motherfucking Oklahoma. It didn't work. After some initial, you know, interview opportunities, speaking opportunities, and a clear attempt to turn. turned Samantha Fulnecke into a national, as Ryan Walters said, American hero, came a much bigger wave of mockery towards Samantha, her essay, and the whole situation that has grown every day for weeks. And if you were familiar with this story before coming into this podcast, it's probably because you've seen people online making fun of just how ridiculous and mediocre this person is and the situation is. I'm going to be very straightforward when I say

this, that girl Samantha from Oklahoma University 100% deserved to fail that assignment, and she should probably consider switching her major to something that is less academically challenging. God made man and woman. Man and woman are different. Man do man things. Women do woman things. If you do man things as woman, you are demon. I rewrote the Oklahoma girls essay with these same homophobic comments, but I actually made it passable this time. She's crying religious persecution and calling her essay the truth of the gospel. I agree, this is religious persecution of Christ, and she is the one doing it. I had no idea it was going to blow up like this.

I mean, all I did was immediately call the governor of my state, because that's what every normal college student does when they get a bad grade. Students at the University of Oklahoma held a huge walkout in support of the teaching assistant who was put on leave, shout out to the students of the students of the. at the University of Oklahoma. Something I found so striking is that Samantha Fulnecki's Instagram, which like I said, it's public. She has a collaborative post with Turning Point USA as her most recent post, clearly trying

to run the playbook for herself, draw a huge following. Riley Gaines has over a million Instagram followers. Weeks into this controversy, Samantha Fulnecki has 5,000 Instagram followers. Ooh. There's like girls I went to high school. who were just like popular in their like sorority that have more than 5,000 Instagram followers. And I don't see Instagram followers to be very clear about what I'm saying as any sort of measure of worth. But this is just to me such an indicator of like you failed.

You failed the essay. But then you also failed the Gryft. And I feel like one of the reasons why as this took off so much of why it was taking off was like backlash to the Gryft. It's like conservatives and I look at like the lives of TikTok grift. She was really good at kind of taking things out of context in a way where she was getting people's base impulses to react and like rage baiting and rage baiting and rage baiting. When the TPUSA chapter of OU like posted the actual essay in excerpts, this had kind of the opposite network effect where it's like people especially on Twitter love to dunk on other.

people's writing. Even if they themselves are like not good writers, it is such a thing on social media. Like if you put your writing out there, especially in this way, they literally broke it down into easily digestible chunks. And people were just like dunking on the quality of the writing. But that's the whole thing with these like conservative outrage machines too is that, and we've said this so many times on this podcast, it's all based on lies and misinformation and selective editing. that's what lives of TikTok did to your point. That's what Riley Gaines did when she was kidnapped at her university speaking gig. The grave error that they made here was showing the actual essay.

Because if you just read that headline, Samantha Fulnecke is failed for citing her religious beliefs. You might be like, huh, maybe there really is persecution against Christians on campus. But then they actually showed the actual essay, which as in all of these situations, when you actually show what the fuck is going on, a normal person is going to be like, yeah, no, I'm just not, I'm not, I'm not feeling this one, Diva. And like all, so many of the responses to that post with her essay were like, you should not have posted this. You failed propaganda 101.

Like, you would have been so much better off had you not told us what she actually said. And that's why I think it's interesting that, you know, when Fox News has been talking about about her. They haven't been showing people what the essay says. They didn't talk about how it's different than what the actual paper that she was supposed to have read. No, they just say she was, she was given a zero for citing the Bible. I feel like Turning Point USA really, you know, shot themselves in the foot. Oh, brutal metaphor. Brutal metaphor. Oh, no. Okay, I've also wanted to say that like, It's kind of funny that the first, like, big Turning Point USA story after Charlie Kirk died, like, has been about someone named Full Necky. Oh, wow.

It's almost too perfect. I am shocked that people have not put that together. Like, I think, come on. Oh, man. This is some real dirtbagging on this podcast that I normally don't do. Maybe God is not just beautiful, but also has an amazing sense of humor. I think Turning Point really fucked up by publishing the essay, but I also want to put forth another thesis that I have, which is really, I think, at the heart of why I'm optimistic,

which is that, like, I do think that there's been some level of, like, elevating the public consciousness enough to understand this grift in a way that is preventing it from being as successful as it was, for example, in writing. Gaines did it. Like, I think there's burnout. I really think there's burnout. If Erica Kirk was Erica Kirk a number of years ago, the most prominent sentiment around her would not be, why is this lady grifting off of her husband's death? Why is this lady putting on, like, her dragon costumes six times this week for Fox News? She's making six planned appearances on Fox News this week, including last night when she was promoting Charlie's book. The prevailing sentiment around Erica Kirk is like,

do you even, are you happy? Like what? Right. Yeah. And a certain number of years ago, it would be like sacrilegious to even point that out. And maybe I'm in my bubble. But I think there is such an awareness of like these grift machines now that people are seeing through it more than they used to. Erica Kirk received the Fox News Charlie Kirk Legacy Award, which like I understand that all awards are made up. But this has to win the award for like most made up award.

And people were very quick to point that out. Like what, you won the dead husband award for having the deadest husband? There is an oversaturation of bullshit. People's lives aren't getting better with the continued degradation of trans people and frankly all sorts of minorities around this country. And I don't know. How many more culture war bullshit panics that do nothing for anyone except enrich these people in media positions are people willing to participate in?

I feel like they've really overplayed their hand with a lot of things, but especially the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's death. Because the reaction from most people was like, that's horrible. Oh, my God. You know, no one should get shot. And then they go and throw a funeral where there's like fireworks and pyrotechnics and it's just like, what? It becomes this spectacle and you know, you're playing music and you've got Trump there. And it becomes clear that this was not about honoring his memory or anything like that.

And I watched so much of the Charlie Kirk funeral extravaganza. WWE Charlie Kirk Smackdown. Yeah, pretty much. But like, there was not a whole lot of talk about the good that he did in his life. And the things that he said, you know, his actual points of view, there was stuff about him being a father and a husband. Sure, that's great. But so much of the time during that ceremony was devoted to just like calling the left evil and raging. Like, I think a lot of people.

are starting to see through this, as you were saying, as just being inauthentic. Because it really feels inauthentic. There are situations where it's like you're going to have, you know, a trans teacher and a transphobic student and maybe they'll disagree and maybe the transphobic student has points. And maybe, you know, maybe there is some middle ground to be found on some of this stuff. But the fact that it's like the immediate impulses run to the news and start meeting with local legislators. Like, you're giving away the game. In the immediate weeks following Charlie Kirk's death, it was like, everyone needs to be really serious about this.

But because conservatives weren't serious about it, now it's like the polar opposite where everyone is singing the AI, We Are Charlie Kirk's song. It's a banger. It is. What has happened here is that the conservative. conservative online right has actually given everyone permission to not take the conservative right seriously and to actually like mock the conservative right. And I think you see that with like the Charlie Kirk stuff. And I think you're also seeing it with the Samantha Fulnecki stuff in that it's also running up against kind of like a parallel culture war, which is that people across the

spectrum are like kids these days are so stupid like college education means nothing anymore. And so this was like an attempt to be like look how serious like an essay that is supposedly rooted in biblical values is that line of rhetoric can't work anymore and I think that's super interesting because it shows how like the worst excesses of the right over the past decade may ultimately be like quite like a sword in the side of their movement and I think you know there's this joke online that it's so unimaginably easy to become a right wing grifter. And I think that that was the case. And I think that there's definitely, like, at this point, an extremely defined and

identifiable playbook for how to become a right-wing grifter. But it's actually no longer as true as people might think because so many people have tried to do it. And there is a finite well of attention and money to be given to these people, which, frankly, Riley Gaines has consumed a ton of. But even like Maya poet comes to mind who is another one of these grifter types that I made an episode about. Her whole thing was like, I am a detransitioned grifter who also survived October 7th. And like she was in Israel on October 7th, but like not where the attacks happened, which was just like a really incredible griff.

Like in the sense that we all survived October 7th because like we all did live through that day. Start calling myself a 9-11 survivor being in Illinois. I'm like. Exactly. But Maya poet is another, by the way, Nepo Grifter, whose mom runs in anti-trans organization and still was never really able to go above like, I think, 20,000 Twitter followers because there is a finite well of resources. And I don't think it's that easy to be a conservative grifter anymore, not because there isn't a playbook, but because it's been played out. Ooh. Ooh.

I also just think it takes a certain level of charisma and, like, work ethic to pull this off. And going back to the, like, Jessel and JoJo Siwa comparison with the Fulnuckies, when you go back to the Toddos and Tiara's era, which is where I think Jojo Siwa made maybe her first TV appearance, there were a lot of pageant moms and a lot of pageant girls who had a brief flash in the limelight but could not sustain that. how did Jojo Siwa become who she is today by like having actual authentic whether you'd love it or hate it like you know who that is and you are going to feel some type of way about it when you see Jojo Siwa do like a ridiculous dance like she is out there every day triggering people making people have a reaction for ultimately like being an entertainer and not everyone has the stamina or the charisma or even the desire to go out and do that every day and we're not seeing that. that with Samantha Fulnke.

Yeah. And like Riley Gaines, you know, she had to up her story. Mm-hmm. She had to become the Jojo Siwa of victimhood, you know, and talk about being kidnapped and and beaten when even the cops were like, this didn't happen. I think what's happened and what's going to happen can continue to happen is as the right wing grifter space is limited. It's, there's only so much attention to go around.

you're going to start to see, I think, more extreme versions of college students trying to, like, get on video in a confrontation with their teacher. You know, we didn't talk about it, but there was another one in, in Texas, like a month or two ago where a teacher mentioned trans people and a student stood up and was like, I don't believe in this. And they got the teacher temporarily fired or something along those lines. And, of course, a camera was running the whole time. I think we're going to see more of that, more of these sort of stunts of people trying to get themselves in the news. Who knows if it'll be successful? Maybe the public's just starting to get fed up with it. There's only so much whining that people want to listen to.

Even if you're right, even if the thing that you've dealt with is genuinely unfair. If every day I go online and I just talk about how bad things are for trans people, I could do that and document every single. time someone sends me a mean message or something like that. I wouldn't be wrong, but I don't think a lot of people would be drawn to me because it's, it's so whiny. That's what the right-wing grifter movement is. It's very whiny. Yeah. Yes. Do you hear the heater? Yes. I love New York. We'll wait for it to pass. So I want to bring this home with what I think is a deeply under-discussed story right now. And that is how Republicans just got crushed in school board elections across Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, where in the years since COVID, groups like moms for liberty have reigned supreme by waging culture war issues like banning trans kids from using bathrooms and playing sports, the critical race theory panic, et cetera, et cetera. and that was all prepped up on culture war momentum that they had built in 2020 when they waged the anti-masking war in schools.

But people are losing interest in this crap. Voters are communicating that they're losing interest in this. Politico shared analysis from the Cato Institute that showed interest in public school culture war issues peaked in 20203 and has steadily declined since then. And then just last month, Republicans lost dozens of school board seats in these states to Democrats. who ran on things like test scores, bus safety, issues that normal people can identify and understand the material consequences of Democrat Abigail Spanberger just won the Virginia governor race against her Republican opponent who ran with transgender issues being the foremost part of her campaign. She was essentially the anti-trans candidate. And it wasn't even close.

Spamberger won 57 to 42. And so I guess what I'm trying to say is, is woke coming back? That's stupid, but you understand what I'm trying to say. I feel like the public was never as anti-woke as Republicans want them to be. Like, people generally just don't care about trans issues. And after everyone decided last year that Democrats lost because Harris talked too much about trans issues, which she literally never talked about, that Republicans like went all in on this that for the past year, like, I don't think people care if all the anti-trans policies get implemented places. I don't think people are opposed to that. Like if Republicans

got everything and they want it, I think the public would be mostly be like, okay, like that's fine. I don't care what happens to trans people. They're more apathetic than they are, you know, anything else. But I think it's getting to the point where the right wing obsession with trans stuff and with these weird culture, or stories they kind of like go with, I think people are just starting to look at them and be like, you're so detached from reality. You're so detached from the actual issues that are at play here. You've got, you know, inflation and you've job losses and this and that, all these things that actually affect people's lives in real ways. And you've got the candidate from Virginia spending unbelievable amounts of money yelling about trans kids.

It makes them seem out of touch. I think that people are going to maybe realize that it's not the end of the world if they have to sit through a training once in a while that says, like, don't sexually harass your coworkers, you know, instead of acting like that's like the world's biggest issue. I agree. And I feel like particularly right after the 2024 election, there was so much like punditry hand-wringing where it was like, we have to come up with a better reason that Kamala lost, besides that people were unhappy, so they voted for Trump. And the reality is, I think a lot

of people just weren't happy. Like, I think that the American elector is so hard to understand, and you can't make, like, these blanket statements that pundits love to make. And I think what we're seeing right now is people are even more unhappy. So now they're like, wait a minute, every, like, even though we knew this like eight years ago and now we're remembering again that, like, Republicans in office doesn't go well for like the average person in the country. And so all of this stuff that they're obsessed with also is bad because of its association with like how bad the economy is, how bad and how little has changed or how much things have gotten worse for like the average person in this country like under Trump 2.0. And I also, and I always say this to Matt,

like I feel like the pendulum swing of woke is kind of like a recession where it's like you're not allowed to say that it's happening until you can clearly measure that it's happened. But I think a lot of people in like the mainstream celebrity space, in the influencer space, in like the media space generally are sort of like late to the game where they're like, oh, Trump won again. So I got to be really anti-woke. But we've already kind of experienced a shift. The shift happens faster than like the reaction to it. So now you're going to have all these people trying to like make bank on like Trump 2.0 style like anti-identity politics. And I'm like, Like, I really think people are already done with that.

It's already like we're seeing a reaction to the reaction. Yes, 1,000%. Samantha Fulnecke, you are late. If you are trying to cash in on anti-woke sentiment at the dawn of 2026, you're late. And I forgot to say this last episode that we did about Jeffrey Starr, but I meant to add this there. Jeffrey Starr now trying to do this post-Charlie Kirk right-wing pivot where he's doing all these crazy woke people and he's doing all the right-wing podcast. You're late. You are late, which I think in the case of Jeffrey Starr, especially as someone who was once very much ahead of the curve and understanding trends and building wealth off of that, you're late. You're late. And that's the optimism. That, my friend, is the optimism. Christy, Fulnecki, maybe you'll have a granddaughter and you can try again.

But for now, in terms of generational right-wing grifting in the Fulnecky family, you're O for two! Oh, I love that score. Kat and Parker, thank you so much for joining me today. Where can people find more of both of your excellent work? You can find my newsletter at the present age at Read TPA. com. I'm also on Patreon. So patreon.com slash Parker Malloy. As far as social media is concerned, I mostly post on Blue Sky. I'll occasionally post on Twitter. But it's just my name. Come find me.

Say hi. And then I'm at SpitfireNews.com. By the time this episode comes out, my sale will have started. So you can get an annual subscription for $10 off. And I am also largely on Blue Sky and Instagram, both at Cat Tembarge. Thank you so much for joining this episode. I have, wow, that wasn't a sentence. Thank you so much for joining this episode. I've been recording for two and a half hours. Thank you so much for listening today. If you have made it this far in the episode, I am so grateful. I'm so appreciative. Happy holidays. Don't download Gwen Stefani Peter Thiel's right-wing prayer app. Any other notices to flag for the holidays? Don't watch Sydney Sweeney's new movie Punisher. Fixed emotion smoothing on your parents' television. I love you so much. I will see you next time.

And until then, stay fruity.