Behind the Bastards - Qanon Grifter Bill Mitchell (A Crossover Episode)

Episode Date: October 3, 2019

Robert is joined by Qanon Anonymous for a crossover episode!FOOTNOTES:1. Why this Charlottean is getting retweeted by Donald Trump2. How Bill Mitchell Owned The Liberal Media3. Trump Pundit Bill Mitchell Burns His Life Down With Pepe Tweet4. FiveThirtyHate: Meet The Trump Movement's Post-Truth, Post-Math Anti-Nate Silver5. Why liberals love Bill Mitchell, Twitter’s most absurd Trump supporter6. Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos Are Scheduled to Speak at a Conference Organized by a QAnon Supporter7. Bill Mitchell Can Attest That ‘Racism Is Not a Huge Problem in America’8. Trump Superfan Bill Mitchell Raised Money to Move to D.C. He Moved to Miami Instead9. Bill Mitchell: Trust Q Because It’s Creating Confidence in Trump10. Bill Mitchell: Democrats ‘Really Have Become the Party of Satan’11. Bill Mitchell: The happiest guy at CPAC12. Who’s Influencing Election 2016? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science, and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated

two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's anonymous? My queues. I'm Robert Evans, host of Behind the Bastards, the podcast where you tell you everything you don't know about the worst people in all of history. And of course, today is a very special day. We are talking about QAnon, one of the bastards behind it. And I'm doing it with several co-hosts today, the collective who hosts the QAnon Anonymous podcast. You guys want to introduce yourselves? I'm Travis Vue. I am Jake Rakotansky. And Julian Field is the third wheel. Every car needs a third wheel. Otherwise, it would be a bicycle. You can be

our fourth, baby doll. And I will be the feet sticking through the floor propelling us. You were the second wheel, you dipshit. Well, I want to be the Flintstone feet now. Now that we're going with a fun car analogy, I want to do something better. Come on. Now, we have some weird similarities, which is that all of us are people who started paying attention to different sections of 8chan several years in the past for reasons that are difficult to explain to anyone, including ourselves, and then found our weird little obsession turn into meaningful news and suddenly had to field calls from the Washington Post and stuff. Super weird, isn't it? We were doing the fun Nazis and you were doing the real Nazis. Yeah, yeah, we were doing like the

the goofiest Nazis who believed in like, you know, underground tunnels and, you know, and coming military tribunals. It was fantastical. And the body count was relatively low. So that makes our work, I think, a little bit more entertaining. Yeah, imagine like a war where the only guy who died was a mob boss. Yeah. Pretty, pretty good. And in case some listeners don't know, both the the neo Nazis on 8chan who were responsible for all those mass shootings and the people who are kind of like driving the QAnon movement are were located on 8chan at different sections. There was the Q research board, which is obvious what that was. And then there's the the poll board, which is where all the Nazis were. There was a bit of cross

pollination, but not as much as some people think I know. Right. It was. It's like it's like those old Gary Larson cartoons where they would show, you know, it would be like the skydiving school and then like the crocodile farm right next to it. Yeah, for the for the real Nazis, they looked at the QAnon board and they're like, nah, that that looks like vulkish occultism, dude. We left that behind. Yeah, it's funny on the on the Q research board on every single thread, someone posted some like really heavily anti-semitic shit about like the Jewish question and stuff. And they actually wound up blaming me. They thought that I was sort of ceding this information to try to make them look more anti-semitic than they actually are. So were you? I was not clear.

Well, he's denied it. That's that's become a common theme. They also thought that we brought that we brought plants to the QAnon rally a couple weeks ago to make them to make them look stupider and and then they already are. My favorite is Joe Casabian of the Lions led by Donkeys podcast. He responded to our tweet where it was like me pictured with all these QAnon influencers. And he was like, did they know that like you were the host of QAnon anonymous and then one of the influencers answered, did they care? But it was too late. He had replied. So he clearly showed that he cared. So sad. And I was like, clearly they did. And no answer to that. That's adorable. Well, today we're here to talk about somebody who is not adorable. We're here

to talk about Bill Mitchell, who is a luminary of the of the Q movement. That's not the right term to use at all for Bill Mitchell. Nothing should describe him as a luminary. How would you describe Bill Mitchell? I think he's luminous. If you look at him, everything is just like a pale light. It just fucking blows out your eyes. He's the white wizard of MAGA, I think. Yeah, I once, I think I once described him as looking like a child who has a secret. Well, Bill is an interesting piece of shit. And we're going to have fun talking about him today. Okay. So William Mitchell, I've decided that's his real first name, because I can't find like a middle name or anything for him. So, so we're going to go with William was born in 1961 or

thereabouts somewhere in Germany. His father was an army colonel. His mother was a college professor. Now, on Twitter, Bill has claimed that his dad wound up working for the Joint Chiefs in the Pentagon at one point and served in Korea in Vietnam. It's possible this is true. It's also possible it's alive because Bill Mitchell lies constantly. There's really no way to know. Yeah. Yeah, as a general rule, I like to have as much info as I can about these people's early lives. And unfortunately, in Bill's case, there's not a lot of information to go on. There aren't any super detailed profiles that delve into his early life and background. And it kind of seems like he doesn't want to go into much detail about it, which is understandable. He graduated from the

University of Maryland in 1982 with a degree in accounting and finance and was apparently a big theater buff, which you can really see in his videos. Clearly, a guy who likes putting on a show. Jesus, I'm super stark on a guy. Yeah. Yeah. If you haven't looked at this dude, you owe it to yourself. He has like the perfect executive hair, like like this, this white bowl on his head, very distinguished looking. And he has a chin like Jean-Claude Van Damme, if he didn't exercise is how I would describe his chin, chiseled and flabby at the same time, which is very difficult to pull off. He looks like a fucking Borderlands character. I was going to say he looks like a like a character you might create in like GTA online. Like he looks like he looks like if you

played Fallout, the robot president who would like speak over the radio. If that guy was a person, he would look like Bill Mitchell. Yes. Yeah. Now, Bill, yeah, like I said, lifelong Republican. In the 1990s, he fell in love with Ross Perot. As a businessman, he himself, he liked the idea of having the country run by businessmen. And I think that that's a thing only businessmen think. I don't think members of other professions tend to think one of us should run the entire country. Yeah. Well, you're accustomed to telling other people what to do. If you're like a CEO, then that's like the president is just another variation of that, I guess. Yes. Yes. And clearly corporations and countries have the same goal. Maximizing shareholder value. Yeah. Now, for the most part,

politics played a fairly minor role in Bill's life. And he focused instead on his career, running an executive recruitment firm he founded. Bill has no wife or children. He threw everything into his work. Back when it still existed, his company website, executivedecision.biz. You've got to be kidding me..com not available. No, no, he couldn't get.biz, baby..biz. Yeah, the classiest domain. He bragged that his bold, proactive style, quote, empowers clients to acquire the finest staff on target on time every time. In a Buzzfeed profile in 2016, Charlie Warsall noted, quote, his Yahoo Answers profile stretching back more than a decade paints a fuller picture. Across hundreds of questions and answers, Mitchell reveals there was successful recovery from colon

cancer, a frequent desire for feedback on whether or not to color his graying hair, and endless mundane curiosities ranging from the silly, why do Jack Russell owners all look like they want to kill themselves? Would a bumblebee the size of a man be able to fly? To the more existential, what is intuition and how often is it correct? Why don't they create a condom that covers just the top inch of your penis? He's an inventor too. He and Matthew Whitaker should get together and team up. I love that the guy has never tried just not pulling it all the way down. You can test that out yourself, Bill. I love that you say that because it means that you and Bill had the exact same thought at some point, but you translated that thought into action.

That is slander, sir. I like to pull my condom all around my balls. Wait, these Yahoo Answers are like a treasure trope because I remember when I tried to do some dig up some research on Mitchell and the same thing. It was really hard to find, but hearing these answers, it's like looking at his like, okay, Cupid profile or something. I feel you could get to know the man. Yeah. Charlie Warzel is a good journalist and did a good job of digging into this guy. In the mid-auts, Bill moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. I said at Charlotte, which is very wrong. I don't know why. Charlotte, North Carolina. He was there in 2015 when Donald Trump, famous rapist slash casino owner, rode down the elevator of his skyscraper to announce the

start of a presidential campaign. Watching at home, Bill Mitchell saw an opportunity. He had no history in entertainment at this point or political journalism. His social media presence was minimal. He had less than a hundred followers, but Bill was inspired by Donald Trump and he had something that no real journalist or pundit could possibly have, a bone deep, perfect, almost religious certainty that Donald Trump was going to win the election. God, then it's chilling to see the parallels with Jake. Yeah. Now he has a platform and before 2016, nothing. My hair is going gray. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of us who are in vaguely similar boats to Bill just because we live in a hell age where all expertise has collapsed in on itself and so anybody who's

good at tweeting has to rule the world now. You can write Washington Post articles under a fake name. It's a whole new world. We are the news now, as QAnon likes to say. Okay. Yes. Yes. And it's nothing but positives to that being the case. So Bill started tweeting because what else are you going to do when you're certain of something that nobody else believes? He tweeted as hard and as fast as anyone has ever tweeted before. Over the course of the 2016 election, he posted an average of 270 times per day. What? Oh my God. Holy fuckers. How did you pull up these metrics? Charlie Warzell did put that together. I guess he... Oh my God. Yeah. That's so many tweets. We all spend too much time on Twitter. That is way too much.

That is every five minutes, really. But that's if you did over 24 hours. You got to sleep, right? I mean, how does he keep his figure? I would imagine that he would look like the fat people strapped to the floating chairs in Wally, you know, just glued to his phone going like... I don't think he eats. I think he subsists entirely on the energy he gets from hot takes. Yeah. And cocaine. Yeah. Hot takes and cocaine. So some of his best takes collected by Mr. Warzell are as follows. You notice how close Trump stands to this black man as he listens to him? No racist would ever do that. If you think about it, Hillary putting women into baskets may be one of the most sexist things ever set in a political campaign. Trump's ground game isn't in a computer.

It's in our hearts. Imagine polls don't exist. Show me evidence Hillary is winning. Jesus was perfect in the media of his day had him crucified. What? Pontius Pilate was Rupert Murdoch. Yeah. Pontius Pilate was the Fox... Well, I guess CNN of... Yeah, King Herod was actually Jake Tapper. Well, now that's not even a conspiracy. Jake Tapper is eternal. Like we've all... Yeah, that is true. Yes, that's true. And Chris Cuomo is closing in slowly. He will be eternal soon. Yeah, the entire history of the world, it's like the Dark Tower series, but instead of those, the character Stephen King came up with is just Jake Tapper and fucking Geraldo Rivera,

like battling throughout time. Just two gods, muscles rippling, falling through clouds. Well, you know, if you trace back Mesopotamia, Jesus probably looked a lot more like Geraldo Rivera than he did Jake Tapper. Oddly enough, Jesus was also hit in the face with a chair during an episode of his talk show. A chair he built. So, Bill Mitchell started a podcast, Your Voice Radio, where he expanded upon his political theories and talked to other Trump world luminaries like Jack Pasobiec. In his interview with Buzzfeed, Bill described your voice as a number one political talk show, even though it only racked up a few thousand downloads per episode. I can't say precisely how popular it is now, but Sprieker,

which is a podcasting platform, says the whole series has about 581,000 total streams, which isn't bad, but is nowhere near number one, not even particularly close. We have double that on SoundCloud. Yeah, I get about that much in a week, and we're not a number one podcast. See, boys, I told you this was going to be a good collaboration. Meanwhile, Bill Mitchell's listening, he's like, oh, I thought I was pretty good. But there's only about 300,000 people in the world. Bill's social media presence quickly grew from the hundreds to the thousands, and then to the tens of thousands. And like, I think by the time that Buzzfeed article was done,

it like kind of near the end of the 2016 election, he had about 90,000 Twitter followers. Now, Bill's Twitter work was way more popular than his number one political talk show. In fact, he grew to become one of the single most influential people in the 2016 election, and I hate that I'm serious about that. The MIT Media Lab like crunched a bunch of numbers on it and found him to be the 26th most influential person on Twitter of the entire election. Accused of this by pedophiles, incredible. He's the highest ranked non-politician or journalist. To give you some idea of how good Bill was at Twitter, he wound up one place below Mitt Romney, one place above the official GOP Twitter account, two places above Megan Kelly,

three above the Drudge Report, four above Paul Ryan, and five above former President George W. Bush. So you gotta get, he's good at Twitter. Even though I owe my being able to do this podcast to Twitter, I because of stuff like that, I would not object to just burning Twitter to the ground. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Does Bill Mitchell even know these stats about himself? I mean, this is, I feel like he would be. Of course he does. Of course. Bill Mitchell wakes up every morning touching himself to these notes. So he credits his success at Twitter with his skill at using language. Quote, I've always been clever with words. As a recruiter, I make my living as a communicator. I'm good with word images and painting pictures with a short phrase here and

there that people can relate to. When asked how much time he spends making his tweets, he dismissed the idea that there's, you know, any planning behind them. I'm just firing the thoughts out as I come to them. I have an interesting take, you see. I delve into the internals and really tell people what's going on and it's given me some fame. Now, as absurd as Bill seems to most people, he clearly has a gift for communicating with a very specific segment of the American populace. By the last month of the election, he averaged 40,000 retweets and 10 million Twitter impressions per day. Yeah. Holy shit. Yeah. Yeah. That's terrifying. Yeah. And it's really evidence that the key is to just never stop posting. Yeah. Yeah. Never stop posting and never

always pander. Pander and post is the secret. Yeah. That's right. He actually spends all day just opening Chinese fortune cookies and just tweeting that out. Yeah. Yeah. That's actually really close to what he is. He also credited his success to the fact that he speaks for a chunk of the American populace that even the conservative media never let to speak. Quote, these are the people who call into Rush Limbaugh and who hold on the line and never get on air. My tweets cut on because I was saying out loud and using my talent for words to say what they wanted. I speak for the people that Rush Limbaugh is like, y'all are fucking nuts. Fuck, dude. Yes. The tweets you pull up while you're waiting for a fucking opioid addict

to answer the line. Oh, boy. So while most of Bill's followers seem to be committed Trump fans who appreciated his takes, a sizable number of them were liberal hate watchers, gleefully watching Bill's increasingly unhinged predictions and laughing at him. They took particular joy in mocking his attitude towards polls. Do you see what you did, Travis? Do you see what you've done to this country? Very funny looking at these guys and now they're president. Very funny. These guys, these guys who have no influence on my life until, until they do. Until they run the country. Yeah. This tweet is pretty emblematic of the kinds of things he was saying in the months leading up to the election. This is from August 2016.

A poll is a hypothesis. Rallies and social media presence are empirical evidence, a hypothesis unsupported by empirical evidence is wrong. Bernie Sanders 2020. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And you bring up Nate Silver. Absolutely beautiful. Just the guy, the data guy, data boy. The data man. Now, Nate Silver responded to this tweet with a tweet set to the tune of John Lennon's Imagine. Imagine there's no polls. It's easy if you try. No pure Quinnipiac on crowd size we rely, which is not, not a bad joke. But he's unironically right. Like I would love it if they fucking eliminated the polls and actually looked at the groundswell of people. Yeah. Yeah. Bill was actually way more in the

right than, than Nate on this one, which is weird. Um, like even as a guy who doesn't like Nate Silver, it's very unfortunate. Um, and in fact, Bill kind of developed a reputation for being the right wings. Nate Silver equivalent. Uh, while Nate was wonky, evidence focused and data driven, Bill Mitchell ran on pure gut instinct. The divide between the two men's methodologies embodied the divide between conservative and liberal in America. For his part, Bill attacked the polls for being fundamentally flawed and complained that they didn't really represent voters in the election. Since so many of Trump's voters had been apolitical before 2016, they weren't the sort of folks pollsters talked to. He argued that crowd size was a better predictor.

Quote, if you arrived here from Mars today and you didn't speak English, but you saw Trump every single day of the week at these rallies, he's dominating online. He's dominating yard signs and rallies and all the physical things we can see. You'd think this guy is winning. If it were up to me, I'd make polling illegal. This is just my dream world. What? Yeah. He's like, uh, polling doesn't matter. We should make it illegal. Yeah. Ban polls. Um, and I'm a fucking Martian that like came to like discovered a new fucking planet. And the first thing I do is like wander into a MAGA rally. Uh, he actually does look like a Martian wearing a skin suit. Yeah. And if, if a Martian wandered into a MAGA rally, oh boy. I don't know. Get him out of here. Get

him out of here. Who is he? He's a literal alien. He's a little illegal alien. Oh boy. Now Bill's level of connection to the Trump campaign was heavily debated. For his part, he claimed to be in regular contact with the Trump brothers and several other workers on the campaign. Wow. The digging done by BuzzFeed's Charlie Warzel indicated that this was not the case and instead suggested that most of the people close to Trump found him fundamentally irritating. Quote, he thought he was going to be in charge of a Trump group in North Carolina months ago. And when he got there, he found out he wasn't in left, deciding not to be apart, a source said. Mitchell plays this down, alleging that he volunteered to run social media for the campaign

in North Carolina, but quit after a few weeks. Deciding his personal account was more helpful to the campaign. Still, one source believes there's tension between Mitchell and the campaign, explaining that earlier this year, Trump advisor and social media director Dan Scavino unfollowed Mitchell after an incessant series of Twitter direct messages filled with pointers about how wrong they were doing social media. Yeah. I, you know, and I'm not going to say that Bill's wrong there. He might be better than so at social media than anyone Trump actually paid to do the job. But that's how politics works. I mean, Bill Mitchell is, is, is a never ending tweet storm. It's like if, if, if fucking Seth Abramson never took a breath, that would be Bill Mitchell.

Yeah, just gave me the fear. Now, in that BuzzFeed article, Charlie declared Bill to be the post-truth, post-math, anti-nate silver. It was not an unfriendly depiction, but the clear implication was that he was a bit of a nut and November 2016 was going to prove all of his silly predictions wrong. And as we all know, that did not happen. Thursday after the election, Bill texted Charlie and asked, Hi, Charlie, will BuzzFeed be doing a post-truth followup article on me? Smiley face. Now to his credit, Charlie Warsall fessed up to being owned pretty hard by Bill Mitchell. He did in fact write a followup article, which revealed that Bill had spent election night alone in his home studio interacting with his Twitter followers,

who by that point numbered nearly 150,000. So because of his kind of relentless, uh, predictioning, I don't know what you want to call it, Bill was treated as sort of an oracle in the immediate wake of Trump's upset election victory. He took the opportunity to try to rebrand himself as a political pundit. He told Charlie Warsall that he thought Jared Kushner would hire him to work at Trump TV, which was the thing he thought would exist very soon. Bill raised $10,000 for his YouTube show and got his radio show syndicated on Cleveland AM radio. Since his first set of predictions had worked so well, he started making many, many more like this one. I think the wall will become the next great American monument like the Statue of Liberty.

The wall is a monument to our sovereignty. That's what I'd say if I were on his marketing team. That's amazing because that's like the great wall of China. If you couldn't walk on it. Yeah. Yeah. If it had like no aesthetic value and also wasn't an impressive technical creation. Now, you know, it is an impressive technical creation, guys. What? The products and services that support this podcast. You fucking waited for us to say what? This is incredible. And notice that Julian and Travis said nothing and me, the fucking like the village idiot was like, yes, well, down me more. Yeah. This is how we fucking sell some goddamn dick pills.

So congratulations. Y'all are now part of the erection industrial complex. I hope you're proud. Oh, I'm just glad this week it's dick pills. Hell's yeah. Yeah. Products. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI, sometimes you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in

Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy voiced cigar smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark and on the good badass way. And nasty sharks. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure, he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a

life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus. It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me

about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991. And that man Sergei Krekalev is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. Okay, we're still talking about Bill Mitch. Be Mitch. Oh, Bill, I can't come up with a good nickname for bitchel. Yeah, bitchel,

bitchel. Damn it. How did that not occur to me? I feel very ashamed of this fact. So a few months after the election, Bill showed up at CPAC and CNN declared him the happiest man at the convention, which was probably true. I'm going to quote from their article on him. I'm kind of a national figure now, Mitchell said in an interview over breakfast. Mitchell said he took a big pay cut to launch his radio show about six months ago. He's now in talks with a number of investor groups about syndicating the program, Your Voice Radio, which currently streams on YouTube. To me, I'm 56 years old, Mitchell said. This is a wonderful opportunity to self actualize, to do something that really matters. To him, he's 56. To us, he's 72.

But unfortunately for Bill and many other right wing grifters who hoped the Trump years would bring them tremendous wealth and power, he proved to be somewhat less adept once he moved on from simply cheerleading a Trump victory and tried to build a brand as a right wing thought leader. His first terrible mistake in January of 2017 was attacking Pepe. Yeah. Did you guys know Bill went to war with Pepe briefly? I did not. No. Yeah. He really gave away his sort of like, his boomer tendencies there. This is what happens when you give our topics to a real journalist. He explains to us. So he tweeted on January 2nd. You know what? I'm really sick of this damn green frog. Who the hell thought it was a good mascot? Yeah, the war on the mouse and not Chuck E.

Cheese. Yeah. Oh, Bill. Now, like anyone who attacks the kind of things that are popular with Channers, Bill was deluged in a flood of hateful comments. Channer started making fake Bill Mitchell tweets, which portrayed him as a Holocaust denier because that's like the only thing in their bag is like, well, let's make him into a Holocaust denier. Now, rather than, you know, analyze the movement he'd become a part of and acknowledge that it had a hateful side, Bill took a different tactic. He decided to bring Holocaust survivor George Soros for the fake accounts. I'm being attacked by thousands of accounts that didn't even exist during the election. Almost no followers. Astro-Turfed Soros BS. Incredible. Yeah. In another tweet, he called them Soros bots.

So yeah, very. So he decided to like counter accusations of being extremely anti-Semitic by being more dog whistly anti-Semitic. Yeah. Yeah. He sure did. Yeah. He sure did, which is a bold move. Yeah. Yeah. You got to respect the ability to zig and zag. Yeah. And you can see those, the non-tendencies starting to bubble to the surface. Yeah. Yeah. And he gets closer and closer to that as the years go on. As the last three years have played out, he's increasingly sort of sold himself to the most extreme chunks of the American right wing. In late 2017, he started tweeting about QAnon. Now, Bill has always seemed less enthralled with the specifics of the QAnon conspiracy or the individual Q drops than he was with

the cult's recklessly pro-Trump version of reality. On one episode of his radio show, he said this, what Q was trying to do is motivate and encourage the base by what is their hashtag, trust the plan. What's the alternative to that? Question in doubt, everything Donald Trump does? Constantly attack Donald Trump from all these different sides? Yeah. Every time he makes a move that you and your linear small mind don't understand, that he and his strategic mind is setting up the board for a win, but you don't get it. He sacrifices his night because he's planning on checkmating your king in five moves. But all of a sudden, you go out there and you're freaking out and pulling an Ann Coulter on him. Is that what we should be doing? What would make

it better? Would that be a better world? Would that make us more MAGA? What do you want? What do you want? They're like, oh, you're lulling us into a false sense of security by giving you confidence in Trump that Trump has got a plan to know what the hell he's doing and all this. How does that lull anyone into a false sense of confidence? That is the most idiotic thing I have ever heard in the world. I can't remember. He's successful because I can't remember the first sentence. Well, basically, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but basically, instead of when somebody says, trust the plan, instead of being like, well, what's the plan? He's like, well, he's like, what? I mean, what else are you going to do? Not trust it? Not trust the unknown plan?

What? You think he's just a senile boomer tweeting at random and yelling at people? What are you going to do? Analyze and try to parse him? What do you think? What do you think? There's not some sort of preordained celestial influence that's guiding all of this? Oh, geez. Yeah, it's quite something to watch. Now, in other tweets, Bill has described the QAnon movement as harmless fun and having no downside. And it's worth noting that both of those tweets were made after several separate QAnon believers committed murders or other attacks in Q's name. Just this last August, Bill tweeted, if QAnon is wrong, it's harmless fun. If QAnon is right, the deep state is screwed. I like those odds. To be fair to Mitchell, he only checks the news when

he's not tweeting, so he hasn't read the news in like 10 years. I also like that he's just more evidence he has no idea what odds are. Fundamentally, he doesn't understand what the word means. That makes him more powerful, though, unironically. Yeah, he's like Han Solo. Yeah, he's so dedicated to being the anti-nate silver. He doesn't even understand how numbers work. You know, if he really is the anti-nate silver, one of my goals for the next year, because I expect, albeit an event where both Bill Mitchell and Nate Silver are present, I want to try and mash them together. I think if they make physical contact, they might explode and destroy us all, save the greater universe. Yeah, that's my goal. Or create free energy for

all of us. Or create free energy. Yeah, that might be the solution to global warming, is just like tie Nate Silver and Bill Mitchell together and stick them in some sort of crude reactor. Yeah, it's like a positive and negative battery that you glue them together and stuff them under some sort of fission reactor. Yeah, this is the key to free energy. Nate Silver and Bill Mitchell mash together like fucking Reese's Pieces. 69, baby. Now, someone with a charitable opinion towards Bill might be inclined to suggest that he didn't believe all the media hype about the Q movement's increasingly violent rhetoric, but Bill's own rhetoric has grown increasingly violent in the years since Trump's election. This past May, on an episode of Your Voice America, he stated

that Democrats really have become the party of Satan. He asked his followers to pray for their president to have the wisdom of God as he fights against the demonic might of the Democratic Party. At this point, we are fighting against evil. He went on to add, this feels like the last day sometimes. It's because he's just alone in his basement with his run out of food. Yeah, it's remarkable. I love the idea that the Democrats are the party of the devil because it gives them so much power than they actually have as opposed to being like the party that roughly 40 people in the United States are passionate about and the rest are just like, well, they're not literal Nazis. I guess this is the best part. Yeah, it's if only. I wish

Nancy Pelosi would embrace Baphomet on an altar in front of the Senate. That would be such a great day. I'm here for that. Yeah, alas. She starts sacrificing chickens. Now, I'm going to quote from a right wing watch article on Bill now quote, Mitchell said the fact that he has repeatedly called Democrats the party of Satan on Twitter and no Democrats have replied to dispute the claim as evidence that he is right. Never once he said it's like in their contract, they're not allowed to deny it. I don't know. It's weird. Yeah, so weird that they don't admit they sacrificed children. Yeah, people with a contract with Satan can't lie about their contract with Satan.

Well, no, Satan is commonly known as the Prince of Truth. Yeah, that's what everybody calls him. Yeah, it's like with cops. If you ask them, are you a cop? They have to say. And they have to tell you if they worship Satan. Yeah, exactly. Both of those things are true about cops. So less than a week before I wrote this article in September of 2019, Bill Mitchell started trying to sell Trump branded bullets to his 450,000 Twitter followers. He retweeted a link to the Republican legion store selling Punisher Trump branded nine millimeter hollow points. He wrote retweet if you believe in the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms right above a picture of the box, which of course features a Punisher skull with Donald

Trump's wig atop it. Is there anything that Donald Trump has ever fired a gun in his life? I kind of doubt it. I think he would be frightened and confused. Yeah, that's like a picture of Louis Farrakhan and just being like, retweet if you think black people should be equal. Yeah, it's amazing. The actual like tweet itself like in the link to the store, you can see like the first few words available on the store's website are if you want to ensure your Second Amendment rights remain intact, you're gonna need some ammunition, which is not at all a call for violence. Oh boy. Now this was a clear violation of Twitter's terms of service since you aren't

allowed to sell firearms and ammo via the site. But more to the point, it seems to be a pretty fucking clear call on Bill's part towards violence against the president's enemies. That Republican Legion website selling the bullet states America is on the verge of another civil war and warns that conservatives are facing economic terrorism from the left. Now that website, Republican Legion is registered to a guy named Richard Granville. Y'all know who Richard Granville is? Yes, he is the CEO of yippee.com. He sure is. Yeah, he's also Bill Mitchell's boss now. Yeah. See, while that sweet deal working for Jared Kushner never quite worked out, Bill was hired by Granville's company Yippee, which Bill's itself is essentially a

conservative alternative to Google. And this gig that Bill has now is evidence that Mitchell has fully embraced the tactic of shamelessly grifting his audience for as much cash as he can convince them to fork over. Those stupid Trump branded bullets, for instance, cost $44.95 for 50 rounds of nine millimeter, which is two to three times as expensive as comparative like high end ammunition. And like five times as expensive as like just normal rounds of nine millimeter, like I get them for like eight or nine bucks for a box of 50 for target rounds, like ridiculously overpriced. Just ice cube leaning in. Well, it appears this man just wanted to make America great again. Yeah, so in selling Donald Trump bullets is actually one of the least grifty

things Mitchell has gotten involved with over the last year. In May of 2019, he started to go fund me saying he wanted to move his online show to Washington DC. So he could talk with movers and shakers of the conservative movement on a regular basis. This is his best thing he's ever done. I love this so much. It's kind of brilliant. The money was billed as covering moving costs and helping him set up a high end studio in DC. On May 6th, he tweeted this, one great thing about living in DC will be that all my political friends from around the country all eventually go there. So I get to see everyone's smiley face. Now, Bill came very close to his $15,000 fundraising goal. He made $14,280 and then rather than moving to DC, he moved to Miami instead.

Fucking king, king, king. Yeah, he's a fucking legend. Mitchell 2020, baby. That's an incredible grift. Well, to be fair, those $700 extra would have made the difference. Yeah, everyone knows it takes $15,000 exactly to move to Washington DC. Yeah, and anything less. You're trying to get to DC, but you somehow just end up in Florida. It's like the price is right. If you overshoot, it's bad too, you know? Yeah, you overshoot, you end up in New York. So Bill winds up in Miami. In many of Bill's friends, other conservative pundits attacked him for this. The right-wing internet, it descended on Bill Mitchell to accuse him of grifting his fans. For his part, Bill expressed no contrition. I think he'd never explicitly seen it. He's totally shameless about

this. Again, he's as consistent about not giving a fuck that he grifted his fans as he was about claiming Trump was going to win the election. So at least he goes whole hog on all this shit. And he's a fucking business guy. You'd think he could just not take the $15,000. It just destroys his reputation for $15,000. You'd think he has a bit more disposable income than he could just return that money and be like, sorry, guys, I'm going to Florida instead. Julian, he sat there in front of his computer watching that little green bar just freeze at $1,402, just sweatin'. He's just watching Ethereum crash. He's like, fuck me. I'm going to have to keep these 15, huh? Miami's looking pretty good, boys. Yeah. Well, to be fair, he fucking went to Washington,

D.C. to like try to find a home. He tried the Coke and he was like, fuck this, boys. I'm going to Miami. Yeah. That's actually really close to what Bill claims. He claimed he'd never explicitly said on the GoFundMe that this was for a move to D.C., even though he tweeted constantly about that being the reason for the GoFundMe. That's right. And so since she hadn't written that into the GoFundMe itself, it was fine for him to use the money for whatever the fuck he wanted. When other conservatives dragged him on Twitter, he justified his decision by pointing out that Miami has better weather than D.C. D.C. gets maybe four nice months a year. Miami gets 10. For fuck's sake. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, Mima. You're completely correct.

Yeah. You kind of have to love that. I don't know. That just like shameless level of stealing from your fans. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Just total contempt for the people who support you. I mean, yeah. I mean, like all the sort of like the grifters have it, but to this level, where you just take money for one thing and just not do it all and just say, fuck you and just walk away with the cash and you still like a public figure. Yeah. He's a king. Absolutely. It's amazing. Actually, I'm not kidding. It makes me happy to think of this. Like I fucking love him for this. I think he's a positive force in the universe. More people on the right should take 15K to destroy their own reputation.

Absolutely. It's just beautiful. And I have no doubt that Bill spending it on a combination of nose candy and cryptocurrency is a better use for the money than, I don't know, his fans buying more Trump branded bullets with it. If you unscrew the top of the bullet, there's a special holder for your cocaine. Are you suggesting, sir, that Bill Mitchell has gotten into Brown Round? Yeah. No, no, no, no, no. I apologize. I take it back. I kind of think he might be. Now, Bill also claimed that for reasons he could not divulge, being based out of Miami would actually be better for his political journalism than being based in DC. He tweeted, this is a much better location for the show based upon too

many reasons to explain here. Better studio, much better distribution, far, far more reach, much more influence, wasn't even a close call. This is the MAGA spot. But he's fucking right. He's fucking right. Trump made Mar-a-Lago more central to the fucking country than Washington, DC. The Winter White House. Yeah, you can't say he's entirely off base in that, even though he is absolutely grifting his followers. Yeah, him and Jeffrey Epstein knew that this was a better place to own a mansion. Oh, Jebstein. Now, in another defensive tweet, Bill explained, during my work to relocate to DC several trips, I was made an offer which will position me to literally change the social media experience for everyone in the Trump family.

That's exciting, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. You know what else is exciting? What? What? Oh, god damn it. Motherfucking ad pivots. This is how I grift my audience. So if you want to buy some, I don't know, Nancy Pelosi themed bullets, that might be the next ad, although almost certainly not. Daily cost just drops off 50,000 bullets. It's just, it's hard to make a good punisher skull out of her hairstyle. So yeah, the marketing teams really had trouble. Oddly enough, the Bernie Sanders AMO sells incredibly well. But yeah, there you go. So, products. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated

the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI, sometimes you gotta grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark, and not in the good, bad-ass way. And nasty sharks. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast,

or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus. It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the

iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me. About a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space,

313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back! Now, that offer, which Bill claimed was going to completely change the social media experience of the entire Trump family, was his new job with Yipi. And so far, the search engine has had zero discernible impact on the social media experience of the Trump family, or the wider internet. In fact, it's kind of hard to even figure out how to search with Yipi. It's not like using Yandex or something, where you just type it in. It seems to be a pain in the ass. We are going to look back on this era and be like, damn, it was crazy to watch the two big

entities, the two Titans, Yipi and Bing go head to head. Yipi is so small that even Bing gets to make fun of it. And Bing is just three guys in a basement in Redmond crying most of the day. Yeah. Now, back in August, Bill Mitchell was briefly booked to be a speaker at the Digital Soldiers Conference, a one-day QAnon event that was supposed to be held in Atlanta this September. It was Bill... RIP. RIP. It was billed as an event to help organize patriotic social media warriors for a digital civil war against censorship and suppression. The event was organized by Bill's boss, Richard Granville, who firmly denied the event was in any way tied to QAnon, despite the fact

that the logo for the event was literally an American flag with all of the stars shaped into a giant QAnon. Hey, Granville, we won our fucking thousand dollars back for our fucking plane tickets, asshole. Did you actually book plane tickets for that thing? No. No. We did. Solid griff. Oh, wow. Well, I hear Atlanta's lovely in September. Now, Granville claimed that the three stars making up Q's tail were actually a reference to Michael Flynn, a three-star general, and had nothing to do with QAnon, which is solid lie, man. Yeah, the filename on that image was Q-flag.jpg. Amazing. Amazing.

Yes, and I've heard the three stars stand for the Holy Trinity. Yeah, what are those again, Jake? The father, the son, and the Holy Ghost. Yeah. Dude, you did it, except isn't it Holy Spirit? No, the Holy Ghost. You're like a Catholic boy. Congratulations. Good job, buddy. You're not Jewish anymore. Now, thankfully, that event was canceled. And as of late, Bill seems to be making a moderately concerted effort to slightly distance himself from the Q movement. This may have something to do with all of the mass shooting spawned by 8chan,

the website which also hosted the Q research board. On September 18th, Bill tweeted this, The media loves to say I'm this big QAnon guy. I'm really not. I don't follow Q posts regularly and never have. I agree with their premise that we should trust the plan as it mirrors slow walker, hashtag slow walker in many ways. And the Q people I actually know love Trump. That's it. But you literally cannot read a media article about me that doesn't begin Bill Mitchell, major QAnon conspiracy theorist. It's comical because it's such bullshit. Q does Q, I do me. Now, have you all ever heard of hashtag slow walker? Oh, yes. I actually have not. Tell me about this.

Slow walker is essentially Bill Mitchell's bargain basement ripoff of QAnon. It's him trying to make his own QAnon. The basic idea is that Trump and Jeff Sessions were putting together a slow deliberate plan to unravel the deep state. And originally, Bill thought this was all going to come to fruition during the midterms. He came to have come up with this idea via quote, the Holmesian method of deduction. I do believe he was smoking a pipe of some sort when he came up with this idea. But I don't think it was tobacco. Now, when the midterms came and went and Jeff Sessions left, you may have expected Bill to have pulled back from his pet conspiracy theory. If so, you don't know Bill Mitchell. He never pulls back from any theory. In early

September 2019, he quote tweeted President Trump. Absolutely nothing is more important than going back and getting to the bottom of the origins of the investigation. We had an administration using America spying apparatus to spy on a political opponent at the height of a presidential election. So Mitchell says to this, President Trump says the Mueller investigation was one of my great achievements. And then he says this, I mean, could he foreshadow the closing act of this hashtag slow walker play any harder? Buckle up, Democrats. It gets rough from here. Based upon this statement, I am now more convinced that hashtag slow walker and hashtag trust the plan are 100% real. Else why would Trump call the in Mueller investigation

his greatest achievement? Jolt cola tastes really good as well as Coca-Cola. Yeah, it's amazing. It's just amazing. Now, there really is so much more I could say about Bill Mitchell, but I feel like the right place to end this little write up is by discussing what I think may be his very worst take of all time, which is there's a lot of competition for that. But this one is just staggeringly good. Back in February of this year on an episode of Your Voice America, Bill declared that racism was not a huge problem in America and said, white privilege does not exist. Now, he wasn't just saying that out of his ass. He had evidence for this statement. And his evidence was this deeply compelling anecdote about something he'd experienced

that very weekend. Quote, I stopped by the grocery store and did some grocery shopping. I went around, did some various things, drove around in the car so far and so forth, interacted with people. I saw black Americans. I saw Hispanic Americans. I saw Asian Americans. And you know what I didn't see all day? Not once, not one time. Racism. I saw no racism. I saw no black people being asked to get in the back of the line. I saw no Hispanic people being denied service. I saw no racism anywhere. You know why? Because racism is not a huge problem in America today. I'm sure some liberals heads are exploding asking, how could Bill Mitchell say that racism is not a huge problem in America? I'm saying it. Racism is not a huge problem in

America. They talk about white privilege. I'm still waiting to be able to cash in on my white privilege. Where is it? I haven't gotten anything in life that I didn't work hard for when I go to check at the... Yeah, it's fucking Bill. Except for the fucking 15 grand, you piece of shit. Guys, guys, I think this is a clear example of Blue's Clusian deduction. I mean, he tweeted 270 times a day to get that 15 grand. Yeah, his fingers are just a pulp. And that is my write-up of Bill Mitchell. Beautiful stuff. Wow, he is such a beautiful boy. I love him. Yeah, he's an incredible piece of shit. I mean, what stunts me most about is his trying to deny that he is a QAnon guy. I mean, he interviewed Praying Medic on his show. Yeah, you don't get more QAnon than that.

And he's basically come up with this like bullshit, like parallel theory that's exactly the same where he's like, he's like QAnon and a little too obscurity. And then he comes up with kind of like an off-brand Stephen King novel sort of title, like Slow Walker. It's just unbelievable bullshit. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. I don't even know what else to say. That's all I've got on fucking Bill Mitchell. I think that it's really... Bill Mitchell is like... The election of President Donald Trump was like the lamentation or the lament configuration was like solved and released all these demons into the media world. And Bill Mitchell is just one of those demons that are just still with us. Yeah, we opened Pandora's box and Bill Mitchell bled out into

the reality. And now we can't get rid of him until we build some sort of ghostbusters-like device to suck all of the pundits back up. Dude, I was literally about to make a reference of the roof of the firehouse blowing off after Walter Peck shuts down the... I was literally... I was waiting for everybody to stop talking to make a ghostbusters reference. Jake, you were going to make a reference to your favorite movie? We are Kindred Spirits, my friend. We both thought about ghostbusters at the same time. We both love Bill Mitchell. Oh boy. And fucking James Comey is absolutely Walter Peck. Not a doubt in my mind. Also, not a doubt in my mind that he has no dick. This man has no dick. Oh boy. All right, guys. Well, that's the behind the

bastard portion of this wonderful hybrid episode. Shall we move on to the QAnon anonymous portion? Yes. Absolutely. That was incredible. Jake is about to take you down a notch. Oh boy. Are we doing the story now? Mm-hmm. All right, let's do it. Jesus. Jesus God. All right. Well, let's explain what this is for my listeners who may not have listened to QAnon anonymous yet, but hopefully we'll be soon. Yeah. So Jake writes these radio plays. Now, I'm sure he would say that they're masterpieces. They are, in fact, just the demented product of a rotting mind. But they make us all giggle a lot. Yeah, I tend to usually write them at like two or three in the morning. Like Julian texted me yesterday and he was like, Hey, man, do you think we could lay the

story into the document so Robert could take a look at it before we kick off tomorrow? And I was like, Oh, it won't be completed till 3.34, possibly a.m. in the morning. And in your defense, I absolutely did not read it. I was too busy doing dangerous drugs last night. That's good. No, it's actually better for everybody if nobody knows what's coming in the story. It's the only really advantage that I have is the element of surprise. Yeah, yeah, I feel the same way about my episodes. I didn't I wanted to drop that Bill Mitchell selling bullets. Oh my God, she was amazing. That's great. What's great actually is some of the very things you've touched on in your portion make an appearance in this story in one way or another. So without

further ado, let's do it. Yeah, what's the name of the story? The title of this story is called the third meme war with Jesus Christ, Jake Rakitansky and Robert Evans. Good job. The third meme war. I say again, God, yeah, Robert is not responsible for this word. Yeah, Robert has nothing to do with this. I did not ask him if any of this was okay. He has he is free to delete it from any portion of his program. The grown heavy doors on the CH-47 woke Evans up from a shallow slumber based on the flaming projectiles rocketing past the windows. He knew they were close. The hull of the aircraft shuttered as he watched the soldiers on board check and double check their gear. It was the third meme war in about as many years.

A war Evans would rather not have covered. But here he was watching Agent Posso and his ragtag group of wife and child strapped bandolas with rare paybies to their flak jacket. Forgive me. Forgive me, Robert. Robert. Hey, Bill Mitchell, I'll be your your handler once we hit the beach. Stick with me and you'll you'll you'll taste the sweet sweet smell of exercising your godgiven First Amendment freedom of speech. Mitchell leaned his head back and clucked towards the ceiling of the helicopter. Evans heart sunk into the bottom of his chest. Should have stayed in fucking Iraq. Evans muttered under his breath. Mitchell busied himself trying to load a large spy gate infographic into a giant bazooka. He wasn't having much success. Evans led on an audible

sigh. He should have never taken a gig. Everyone warned him not to. But somebody was paying big money to make a 360 degree documentary of the third meme war. Evans had initially thought the job was a hoax since memes are usually most effective in 2D. But after the first check cleared, he didn't ask any questions. Sometimes you take the job. Sometimes you take the paycheck. Plus the digital soldiers were up against a seemingly unstoppable yet fascinating foe. They called them the shadow bands. The shadow bands had emerged from caverns deep within the earth around November of 2016. Large, amalgamous creatures set to transcend time and space. No one knew how many there were or if they could be stopped at all. In three years, the best the digital soldiers could

do was attempt to fire their memes past the creatures. With patience and good aim, they had a chance at hitting a normie and redpilling them. Evans looked down at the small recorder in his hand. He pressed the small circular button and watched the levels begin to jump across the small orange screen. He extended his arm in Mitchell's direction. So what is it you're hoping to accomplish here today? Evans asked, ah, well, you see, I got all these spy gate posters, epic times, fantastic content. General Vanderstiel needs these memes to go viral. Charlie Company's trying to get it trending on Twitter and will be at the shores of Reddit in, uh, he glanced at his wrist, although as far as Evans could tell, Mitchell wasn't wearing a watch. 1800 hours.

Mitchell quipped happily. He looked like a child who had been told he could pick out one toy and toys for us. Melting, crying, slamming the table, pathetic. Evans watched his stuffed a handful of NPC memes into his pockets. Just in case. Mitchell shouted. A giant explosion rocked the helicopter. Evans shielded his eyes as a blinding spout of light poured through the damaged hull. Soldiers shrieked as they were sucked out into the soft orange clouds. Evans gripped his recorder tight. Eyes wide as he watched Agent Posso abandon his family and jacked himself from the rear of heavy. We've got a drop now. Mitchell screamed before snorting a giant rail of cocaine off the back of his hand. He clipped a large metal hook through a tether on Evans' utility belt,

and then they were in the air. It was chaos. Smoldering projectiles zipped by them as they tumbled through the air. See, it's a real war! Mitchell called out as nearby soldiers, also in freefall, made high-speed contact with debris and shrapnel. What? Screamed a perplexed Evans. Was this motherfucker really trying to argue some point as the pair hurtled towards a war zone on some Godforsaken message board? Bill Mitchell was no longer paying attention to him. Instead, he held his phone out in the air, playing the Your Voice America theme song as loud as the volume would go. Evans' stomach heaved as the jolt from the parachute shook its way through his bones. He gripped the ropes tightly and watched as the ground rushed towards him at an alarming speed.

The impact wasn't as bad as he feared. The shock from the descent made it hard to process anything, really. All around him, soldiers were hurling themselves through sands, firing off golden paybays, automatic downvote fire ricocheted off the ground beneath him. A hand reached out and grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. It was Mitchell. He was screaming in Evans' face, but he couldn't hear a word. Mitchell's breath smelled like cocaine and goldfish crackers. Finally, his ears began to adjust and the sounds of the battlefield came into focus. Do you want some cocaine? Mitchell yelled. But before Evans could answer, the sand beneath their feet began to quake. Waterfalls of sand poured into the ground under them and a giant, shimmery

creature on six legs scuttled to its feet, towering over the two men. Evans froze. Mitchell yelled. A couple soldiers nearby concentrated poorly written complaints toward the monster. When a handful of them made contact, Evans watched as their petty strawman arguments were absorbed directly into the monster's galactic-looking skin. Mitchell ran right towards the creature. This is very unfair. The creature immediately shredded Mitchell into a thousand pieces. Evans stared at the blood-sucked sand where Mitchell was standing just a moment ago as the monster approached him. The tentacles rippling. Then, blackness. The groan of the heavy doors on the CH-47 woke Evans up from a shallow slumber.

This time, he shot up and clutched his chest, fighting for quick shallow breaths. The hull of the aircraft shuddered as he watched the soldiers on board check and double-checked their gear. You okay? A familiar voice piped up. It was Mitchell, again struggling with the oversized spiky infographic. Agent Posso and his ragtag group of wife and child again strapped bandolas with rare pay-pays to their flak jackets. Evans couldn't believe it. He was staring at the surprisingly handsome man with thick silvery hair who, moments ago, had just been turned to pulp right before his eyes. Evans looked down at the small recorder in his hand. He pressed the circular button and watched the levels begin to jump on the orange screen. He extended his arm in Mitchell's

erection, again, his hand shaking a little. So, Bill, are you afraid of dying today? Evans asked. Bill stopped fiddling with the memes. He thought long and hard. Let me tell you something. Look, here's the deal. At one point in my life, yes, I might have feared death, but son, believe me when I tell you that that went away the day Donald J. Trump, my president, was elected into office. He is an extra celestial angel who will ride down on a cloud of matter and carry my wounded soul directly into the arms of Jesus Christ himself, and I will sing with the angels and kings from now until eternity. A giant explosion rocked the helicopter. Evans shielded his eyes again as a blinding spout of light poured in through the damaged hull.

Soldiers shrieked as they were sucked out in the soft orange clouds. Evans gripped his recorder tight. Eyes wide as he watched Agent Posso once again abandon his family and eject himself from the rear of the helicopter. It was all the same as before, the freefall, the parachute, the battlefield, like a bad case of deja vu. Again, the shadow band emerged from the blood-soaked sands. Evans watched as Mitchell once again attempted to argue with the creature. Evans snapped too. No, no, it kills you. He shouted towards Mitchell. Instinctively, Evans sprang to his feet and hooked a hand under one of Mitchell's elbows dragging him away from the creature who had turned its focus on other nearby soldiers trying to drop Moabs into our politics. Evans and Mitchell ducked

behind the wreckage of a fallen craft. Much of the hull was still intact and made for some good cover. Mitchell seemed perturbed. What are you doing? I was fully ready to sacrifice myself to the shadow band so that other conservative-minded thinkers would be able to post these very educational, epic times, infographics, or even links to some of our most popular YVA episodes. Evans dug into his pocket and produced a crumpled pack of cigarettes. He pinched one in between his teeth and pulled it out of the package. Unable to find his lighter, Evans held the cigarette next to a smoldering piece of melting steel and puffed until a cherry glowed red. He exhaled deeply and glanced incredulously at Mitchell.

So what's the deal with that, the whole Falun Gong thing? Mitchell smiled wide. Fallen Gah is the deal. It's the deal for everything. Just then, a group of normies ran past the wreckage, not noticing Mitchell. He sprang to his feet. Wait, wait! He shouted. The three turned around, not sure what to make of this middle-aged limo driver-looking guy aiming a large bazooka directly at them. The original content streaked through the air and deployed a couple of inches from the normies, reflecting a soft blue glow off their stunned faces. What the hell is this shit? Yeah, of course our law enforcement agencies are corrupt, but the fact that these people think Trump's the solution fucking blows my mind.

This is a very informative graphic. The three wandered away, heading towards various subreddits. One out of three ate bad. Mitchell shouted as he shimmied his shoulders and no one in particular. His nervous energy was giving Evans the fear. Come on, Mitchell yelled. We're not too far from the rally point. Camp Donald will regroup there. Evans gatted himself slowly. Death by shadow bands seemed preferable to spending any amount of time in the Donald, but with nowhere else to go, he began to reluctantly follow Bill off the beach. Come on, Slowpoke. I'm four times your age and I'm moving way faster than you, Bill smirked.

Evans blinked in a similar manner to a popular meme. What are you, like 128? Yes. Yes! Mitchell kiggled, his face resembling a plastic jack-o'-lantern. Evans rolled his eyes. Well, you're on a lot of cocaine. Mitchell's eyes lit up. That reminds me, he squacked. He reached into one of the vest pockets and produced a rather large baggie of cocaine. Oh, come on, man. Lamented Evans, but it was no use. Mitchell leaned over. Mitchell. Oh, God, dude, his face exploded. He's going to cry again.

I forgot that I wrote this part. He's going to cry again. Mitchell leaned over and picked up a large seashell and used it to scoop a healthy portion of cocaine out of the bag. He then lifted the shell to his nose and inhaled deeply. At first, a look of pure ecstasy rushed across his face, but it quickly turned to horror. Mitchell clutched his chest. Mitchell clutched his chest. Too much cocaine. He collapsed face first into the sand. Dead. Before Evans could even process what he'd witnessed, let alone comprehend that he'd also recorded it all of it in 360 degrees. A small platoon was on him. Hey, this guy killed Captain Bill. Hey, hands where I can see him.

Evans calmly tried to explain to the frightened soldiers what had happened. Look, guys, I didn't touch him at all. He overdosed on drugs. Check his pockets. But the guys weren't even listening. They had their rifles raised, their trigger fingers shaking. Come on, Chet, let's dox this fool, man. He killed Bill. Fine, let's waste them, black. The gunshots seemed to echo off into eternity. Then, blackness. The groan of the heavy doors on the CH-47 woke Evans up from a shallow slumber. The hull of the aircraft shuddered as he watched the soldiers on board check and double-check their gear. You okay? A familiar voice piped up. It was Mitchell, again struggling with the

oversized spy gate infographic. Evans' mind raced. His eyes darted around the hull of the CH-47. Again, he watched as Agent Posso asked his wife to take a picture of him holding a gun. Before Evans realized it, he was shouting above the roar of the churning rotors. We gotta abort. We're about to get hit. Mitchell and Posso looked at him like he was crazy. Evans decided to go for broke. Look, I'm living this day over and over again. At first, I thought maybe it was a dream or some shit, but it's not. It's exactly like Groundhog Day. The holiday? Asked Bill Mitchell. Evans looked exasperated. No, the Bill Murray movie. Have you not seen it?

All three shook their heads, no. Evans reeled. What about Edge of Tomorrow with Tom Cruise? Have you seen that? All three knotted excitedly, muttering praises of the film and Cruise's natural knack for comedy. Boom! A giant explosion rocked the helicopter. Evans shielded his eyes as a blinding spout of light poured in through the damaged hull. Soldiers shrieked as they were sucked down in the clouds. Evans scripted for quarter-tight as he watched Agent Posso abandon his family a third time and eject himself from the rear of the helicopter. Everything was the same, but different. This time, Evans moved with ease. With one hand on the camera and one planted firmly

on Mitchell's shoulder, he guided them past the roving shadow bands and armies of bots armed to the teeth with Russian propaganda. It was the perfect take. After some time, Mitchell and Evans arrived at Camp Underscore Donald. Evans immediately noticed the three young soldiers who'd murdered him just moments ago. They were quietly stacking boxes of ammunition with Sunday Gunday pictures and build-a-wall memes. Mitchell was yammering on excitedly. So you see, the Fallen Gong religion, the human soul can actually, and I know this sounds unbelievable, but I've seen it, it can travel back in time and inhabit the consciousness of its past self, a shorter cosmic loophole, if you will. Evans slumped down next to a pile of coats and bricks

and lit up a cigarette. Mitchell sat down next to him. Maybe that's what's happening to you. The same thing happened to me a couple months ago, except for me. I had to relive a torrid love affair with Anne Van Der Steele for three whole days in a hotel room. Evans unscrewed his camera from its mount. He reached in his bag and pulled out a dusty laptop. He began to scrub through the footage. It came out perfect. Spicy memes streaking across the chaotic beach as digital soldiers were picked off in the dozens by large shapeshifting creatures. Rad. All of a sudden a voice shouted, throwing the entire camp in a panic. Air strike! Everyone ran for cover, ducking under large tubs filled with videos of Joe Biden touching young girls, climate change

denial flags, and large wooden crates bursting with vaguely anti-Semitic rounds. From behind a tent, Evans watched as a large bomber, flown by Seth Abramson, rained down a 437 thread tweet storm. The digital soldiers watched in horror as the normies wrapped their arms around the tweets and proudly showed them to their friends. In the distance, the shadow bands were spinning rapidly toward the camp. The Donald had become overrun. The last thing Evans saw was Bill Mitchell, holding his phone to his ear, trying to listen to the Your Voice America theme song one last time. However, the signal wasn't great and it appeared that Mitchell's final pleasure would be plagued by buffering issues. Blackness. The groan of the computer fans woke Evans up from his deep slumber.

He glanced around his apartment. His eyes landed on the digital clock display near the bottom of his laptop screen. 3.43 a.m. Shit! It was way too late. He had to record some weird QAnon podcasts at 11 a.m. That was only six hours from now. He glanced down at the keyboard. He had dozed off with his hand pressed firmly on the mouse pad. On the screen, www.reddit.com was refreshing over and over and over again. The end. Just you've outdone yourself, son. It's beautiful. I say again, God. What a travesty. What a travest underscore view. I do always like hearing the phrase spicy memes.

Especially when I've turned them into some sort of ammunition is to be fired. And Evans was definitely the one who fell asleep at his keyboard last night at 3.40 a.m. Trying to write something for today's podcast. There's always, look, there's always a little bit of truth in everything that I write. Robert, you are the first non-QAA host to play somebody, let alone yourself, in one of Jake's stories. How does it feel? It feels like being Tom Cruise, which feels vaguely like living inside of a carburetor. Yeah. That's how I would describe it. Yeah. Well, we look forward to your appearance on Oprah where you jump to your feet on a couch and try to explain Falun Gong to the audience.

I'm looking forward to that too, actually. Travis, you have some serious questions that you wanted to spearhead with your friend Robert. Yeah. I wanted to ask about how you covered the Portland, Oregon protests and counter protests last month on August 17th. What was the QAnon presence there like? This was the first one of them where I actually saw some. I think because it was a larger demonstration, but there were a number of people with QAnon shirts and several QAnon signs. There was a guy with a QAnon patch on his body armor. Yeah. There was definitely a lot of people trusting the plan there that day. Do you think there's any cross-pollination between QAnon and other sort of broad, sort of like far-right kind of organizations or movements?

Yeah. It kind of depends. I think that the actual like neo-Nazi and fascist far-right tends to view the QAnoners as goofy, kind of like cannon fodder. Like they're just useful idiots. They're not thought of highly. Yeah. But there's also this kind of understanding that they're kind of useful idiots and some of them can be, I don't know, the term they use is usually like Jew piled or something like that, convinced that this deep state is really just the collective Jewish race. So there's that sort of attitude. There's also this like, yeah, it's generally pretty dismissive. And I think there's a lot more cube believers among like the Proud Boy Patriot prayer set because they're sort of less into the Nazi shit.

But again, like they're all kind of useful idiots to the Nazis. You know, it's a constellation of idiots who mostly act as like ablative armor for the hardcore of actual fascists. Whoa. Yeah. Beautiful. I love that. And it does, it does really fit with the idea that QAnon is a grift and a belief system with very little intent. Yeah. That they are basically Nazis without even knowing it. Yeah, I don't think, I think a lot of them don't even come into it from like a bad place. They just, I can't get into the head of someone who gets drawn into it, but it's like a cult. You know, once you, once you get pulled into that, like it becomes your entire media ecosystem and eventually your family stops talking to you. And then you kind of have

nothing else but this stuff. And so like, there's a mix in the Q community of like people I would describe as like cultists who had a lot of sympathy for because they're clearly have been pulled into something bad that's ruining their lives. And then there's the grifters who are profiting off of them. And then sort of behind the grifters are the people who I think recognize this movement as an opportunity to further their much more radical goals. So yeah, it's a complicated melange of gross bullshit. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. I also want to ask about your podcast. It could happen here, which is excellent. If you, if any listener hasn't heard it yet, you should go check it out. And it's about the possibility of a second American civil war.

And although that podcast mostly focuses on rural Americans and the militia movement, do you think that QAnon might have a role in sparking like a serious domestic conflict? Yeah, I think like any cult, and I do consider it a cult, like there's a significant chance for much more violence than we've seen. There's already been a couple of cases that you could sort of call an insurgent attack, you know, the guy parking his fucking armored truck on the Hoover Dam. That could have very easily been a much more serious incident. Like that's, there's a lot of people who like, I'll say this, one of the positive things about the QAnon as a cult is that it's not as inherently nihilistic as like what the guys on eight chance poleboard believe that sort of like,

like, like exterminationist fascist ideology. Like there's obviously little strains of that through corners of the community. But mostly these people, they don't want the world to end. They just believe in this sort of like magical period of American renewal that Donald Trump is going to bring on. So I think at this point, you're less likely to see outright violent attacks on them. Most of the attacks are going to be based on people trying to like fulfill some aspect of the conspiracy or like do something like that guy who shot the mob boss thinking that it would like that guy was like what he was basically like thought he was. He thought he was deep state. He tried before. I did this as a rest of it. It turned bad wound up shooting and killing him.

Yeah, that's exactly the kind of attack we're going to see now. What worries me is that, you know, there's a decent chunk of these people that believe way too hard to give up when, you know, at some point, presumably Donald Trump will stop being present. He'll either lose the election or there'll be another election and he won't win. And, you know, obviously if Trump makes some sort of like dictator play to stay in power, these people would back him. But I think the more likely and worrying thing is that if Trump loses the election and decides to step down, you've got this sizable group of people who aren't going to understand what's happening and who then might actually be pushed into because like then their

lives will still be fucked. Like this beautiful, like there's a bunch of them who think they're going to get hired by the CIA or whatever. Like when Trump reveals that the plan has been real all along. Well, wait, wait, wait, Robert, because I spoke to Joe M and DMS and he says the CIA and the FBI will be dissolved, but that the NSA is working with the Q and on people. So they're very selective and CIA is clowns in America. They're the bad guys. Well, yeah, whatever, like whatever happens, it won't be these guys, like their lives won't change for the better. And I think there will never be this moment where like everything gets fixed for them, which is what a lot of them are hoping for. It's like this messianic kind of movement.

And when that collapses, assuming it collapses fully, then I think some of them might start, might be moved to violence. That's what I'm really worried about for Q. And I definitely think, you know, they would be part of any sort of insurgent movement if Donald Trump got unseated in the next election and it was like a contested sort of thing. Like I could very easily see a lot of these people, like they all have guns, like picking up weapons and becoming part of like a movement like that. Now, thankfully, a lot of them are boomers. And I don't think would make particularly potent infantry. But I think those would become like informants, they would be like telling on the neighbor that's hiding the illegal aliens, etc. Yeah, they definitely would. Or, you know,

you also have like a sizable chunk of people who might carry out attacks or something, if they really started to feel like that was the only way to save things. And I think it would probably be pretty targeted towards like democratic lawmakers or news, you know, journalists, stuff like that. Like, yeah, I very much worry about what could happen to this movement. It's really like a tiger by the tail. And obviously, the Trump administration hasn't even addressed any of this happening because they want these votes. They also know that it would be toxic to like their sane rational voters to like even address QAnon. So they're never going to disavow them. And yeah, I just don't know where all this can end without something terrifying happening. It's

very, it's very dangerous. I'll say that it's really dangerous. And I think like the number of people who are true believers in QAnon is way larger than anybody wants to give credit for at this point. Yeah, that's really my, you really talked about really my nightmare scenario. There's the psychiatrist, Robert J. Lifton in his book, Destroying the World to Save It, which is all about the Amisharikyo. He has this concept called Forcing the End. Yeah. Where basically this sort of cultish, apocalyptic movement, they get to a point where they're impatient about their prophecies being fulfilled. And so they take action to make it happen. And so really my nightmare scenario is the QAnon community, they get to that impatient

point where they stop trusting the plan, stop trusting that the white hats will take care of everything for them and they'll force at the end that they envision will happen. Right. They'll think that the deep state is one and that Q is actually the entire time been preparing them to take up arms and actually do battle on the streets of their suburb or whatever. Yeah. And that's that like, I think Aom Shinriko is a really good comparison to make. QAnon is like, Aom Shinriko was this Japanese cult that was made up of like a lot of scientists and like, like literal geniuses and stuff who like believed that, yeah, they kind of basically believed that like the world needed to be destroyed in order to bring on like sort of a utopian vision. And

they carried out a Seren gas attack, among other things in the Tokyo subway. And I think QAnon has a lot of similarities to Aom Shinriko. But I guess one of the saving graces is there's not a lot of genius physicists and chemists and engineers who are who are well, probably a lot of engineers actually. Yeah, probably a lot of people who could build fertilizer bombs, but not a lot of people who could synthesize Seren gas. So I guess we've got that going for us. Yes. I also want to talk about your writings about about 8chan. You've written some of the most thoughtful work I think about 8chan for Bellingcat. Now that 8chan is down, where do you think sort of like these on like these isolated neo-Nazis are going to do? Are they just going to congregate

another place or have they just been sort of just mostly neutered since since 8chan is offline? I think a significant chunk of them are going to move on to other things. One thing we know about sort of fringe sites like 8chan is when they get shut down, it does seem to have like a long-term impact on the total membership. There's a lot of people who are kind of more casual and who might have gotten pulled into like the more extreme parts of the kind of ideology there who I think might just find something else to do and maybe never get further radicalized. So I do think it's good that it stays down. That said, most of those people or at least a very sizable chunk of them like aren't just not Nazis anymore. They're just going and we've seen a diaspora to sites like

8chan and we've seen some of them filtering under Reddit and onto 4chan. Some of them made like fake mass shooting threats and I suspect we will continue to see that and I like it's it's not over by any means like they've been neo-Nazis on the internet have been trying to recruit people and like sort of convert large digital communities to their beliefs for a long time now and I don't think they're going to stop just because one of their more radical hubs got shut down. When we covered Turning Point USA, we noticed that some neo-Nazi organizations like Identity Europa, which is now rebranded as the American Identity Movement, they were talking about infiltrating Republican student organizations to better see their ideas and recruit people.

What are your thoughts on that? Well, this is again, this has been going on for a while. You know, if you look back to there's you've got two kind of strains of the white nationalist movement. There's the vanguardists and there's the mainstreamers and the the the mainstreamers who are kind of like one of their early leading dudes was a guy named Willis Cartot who formed a group called the Liberty Lobby and who like basically started off like this neo-Nazi group the National Alliance which like distributed the Turner Diaries and was like a big part of like seeding this most recent surge of Nazis got it start actually as a youth group for a Republican presidential candidate and it was then just over time converted into this more extremist force

and so like there's been a lot of like you know even going back to the days of George Lincoln Rockwell a lot of like a very clear concerted effort to try and like convert normal conservatives to more explicitly fascistic views. They definitely see that as like where they can pull people from so what aim slash identity Europa is trying to do with Turning Point USA like is nothing new. I do think that they've gotten better at it over time in large part by sort of like hiding their power level as they say it which is why I think the work of you know media collectives like unicorn riot of like leaking these groups internal chats and showing how they talk among themselves and how open they are about the Nazism when they're not out in public. I think that's very

important because it kind of makes it impossible if you do your research to believe the lies that these groups say. You know the problem is that like none of the mainstream media ever focused that much on any of this stuff and so they consistently get it all wrong but that's why a lot of us keep talking to them about like the nature of this kind of undercover effort to a red pill the normies. This meme war if you will. That's right. Okay cool that's really really interesting stuff. Well thanks so much for coming on our podcast and I guess we're thanking you for being on your podcast. These crossover episodes are so bizarre. I do like it though. It's a crossover. Infinite crossover. This has been Behind the Bastards slash the Behind the Bastards

QAnon Anonymous crossover episode. I have been Robert Evans. Now y'all want to plug your plugables before we we write out into the sunset. Absolutely you can find us QAnon Anonymous on any of your podcast platforms. You can also follow us on Twitter at QAnon Anonymous. You can follow me at travis underscore view. I'm at real Rakutansky and I'm at Julian Field with two E's. And you can find me on the the the Twitter's at I write okay. You can find this podcast online at Behind the Bastards dot com along with all those sources if you want to read about our good friend Bill Mitchell for yourself. You can find this podcast on Instagram and Twitter and at Bastards pod. And you can support this show by buying a t-shirt from T public. We also

sell of course our standard Pepperidge Farm branded pipe bombs. So check all that out at T public dot com both pipe bombs and shirts. Boom. Boom. Owned by logic and the explosion of a pipe bomb. So until next week. Do something besides listen to podcasts. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you hey let's start a coup. Back in the 1930s a marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the US and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French and I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sorted tale of ambition treason and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to let's start a coup on the I heart radio app

Apple podcast or wherever you find your favorite shows. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the I heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian trained astronaut that he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow hoping to become the youngest person to go to space. Well I ought to know because I'm Lance Bass and I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself

stuck in space with no country to bring him down with the Soviet Union collapsing around him. He orbited the earth for 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.