Bulwark Takes - MAGA Chaos: MAHA in Disarray with RFK Deserters, Project Veritas Leader Goes Off the Rails

Episode Date: May 28, 2025

Will Sommer joins Sonny Bunch to deep dive into all things MAGA chaos, from the growing rift within RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine movement to James O’Keefe’s chaotic fallout with Project Veritas including his self-produced documentary.  Read Will’s Newsletter False Flag, “MAHA in Disarray: Leading Anti-Vaxxer Parts Ways with RFK”

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just add a packet of Meow Greens. Welcome back to The Bullwork. I am Sonny Bunch. Of course, I'm very pleased to be joined by Will Summer talking about his latest false flag newsletter. Make sure you get Will's newsletter in your inbox. It's one of my favorite reads, two times a week. I cannot get enough.

Will, what is going on in Maha land? There's some drama between RFK Jr. and one of his big lieutenants, Del Bigtree. Yeah, so this is, you know, with Make America Healthy again, this is like, like kind of RFK's faction of MAGA. And there has been a lot of drama over the past few months. And this might be, you know, I don't know, maybe the biggest Del Bigtree, which what an evocative name, you know, looks kind of like a mountain man,

big beard. He is a guy who's maybe the most prominent anti-vaccine activist in the country besides RFK himself. They were very close. He was the the comms director for RFK's campaign. And so they're very tight. And then a few weeks ago, Del came out and said, I'm quitting the Make America Healthy Again organization, which had a pack and all this stuff. It was basically set up to promote the RFK agenda. So there seems to be some division there between RFK and sort of his top lieutenant. Yeah, and where does this division come from?

Because I mean, I think we all see what's happening with the world of vaccine and the anti-vaxxers. And we're kind of like, what is already happening is too much and too crazy. But it's not enough for his most vocal allies, right? Yeah, it's interesting. There's this sort of this division among RFK supporters between these sort of hardcore anti vaccine people, people who say vaccines cause autism, stuff like example, who say, well, maybe we should study vaccines. They're much more gentle with their approach to vaccines and are much more focused on getting food, diet of potato chips, stuff like that. And the vaccine people look

at them and say, we didn't, you know, go through all this to like clean up potato chips. I mean, they see vaccines as like a mortal threat. And so they think RFK has basically been distracted by the Make America Healthy Again people. Now, Del Bigtree is much more on the anti-vaccine side. And so him quitting and saying, in his resignation announcement, he said, cleaning up the food is fine, but we really need to focus on the vaccines.

And he specifically said he needed to quit so he could sue the administration when he needed to. I need to be able to sue the government, even if it's Robert Kennedy Jr. That's just how we're wired. I keep telling you. Yeah, it's interesting. He said, you know, I have this conflict of interest running this pro-RFK organization.

But you know, I have this other group that maybe we want to sue the administration over vaccines. You know, and maybe even I'll sue RFK. And so you think about that and he says, he also said, oh, I don't have any animosity towards RFK. I really support him. But at the same time, if you think back to the Biden administration, if Anita Dunn or Ron Klain

had quit and said, I might need to go sue Biden, you'd say, oh, I think there seems to be a divide here. Yeah, I mean, that seems pretty obvious. And it is, look, the world of the vaccine denialists, the anti-vax people, you know, have been around for a long time. And it's been interesting as a one-time Republican, as a one-time, you know, conservative magazine writer, et cetera, to watch this movement shift pretty, swing pretty

wide from, uh, we are, it's like the kind of nut nut nutty, the health nut left to the MAGA right, uh, in a way that I have in, in a way I have never experienced with any other kind of policy reversal. Yeah. I, it's, it's remarkable how, how much it has it has changed and how a lot of those people who were on maybe the crunchy left are now hardcore, maha, RFK people on the right. At the same time, you know, I mean, the whole Del Bigtree thing here sort of shows us a lot more on the food supply or what have you is because I think they realize that attacking vaccines, particularly once you go past the COVID vaccine is going to be, I think, politically pretty challenging. Yeah.

People don't like to die of measles, turns out. Let's shift gears slightly and turn our attention to Project Veritas and its founder, James'Keefe who is back in the news. You played film critic in your newsletter this week I first of all, you know, maybe to run that by me next time will but you you took you took a look at James O'Keefe's new documentary What's going on with mr. O'Keefe? Yeah, I mean, you know, I was going to say, Sonny, obviously, you're a movie guy. I mean, this is your territory. So it'd be interesting to get your thoughts. So James O'Keefe has kind of been in the wilderness. I mean, this is the guy from all the undercover videos. He's been in the wilderness for two years.

He got sort of pushed out of Project Veritas, the nonprofit he founded, that funded all of his activities and all of these sort of undercover journalists, such as they are targeting Democrats across the country. Um and then he came out with this uh this video last week that said it was called the truth inside Veritas. Uh he's been locked in a lawsuit with the the people who pushed him out. Uh and basically from their perspective, they say, well, I don't know, you were really

really out of control. You know, you were taking helicopter flights across the country. You know, he was spending all this donor money and what they thought was reckless ways, kind of like a lot of debauched stuff. At one point they found like women's underwear in his safe at work. You know, there was there was like these big parties, you know, one employee had a lawsuit saying they had a party pad and one of the employees overdosed. I mean, it was it was really like, you know, allegedly very kind of decadent scene.

And then the board stepped in and this kind of created this clash where he eventually quit. So now he has this one hour documentary or so called. You got paid 10 bucks. I ponied up for it, you know, for the Bulwark audience because we have to know these things. And this is the sort of the most self pitying thing. He's basically trying to make the point that, you know, everyone there was out to get him. And I believe it. You know, I see it, but it seems like they just really found it very annoying and rude. You know, he has all these things where he says, you know, this employee sent me a picture of my face Photoshopped next to a dildo.

Now, this other employee sent me a picture of me eating a cum sandwich. I mean, I am not I am not making this up. This is like verbatim, essentially what he says. And if you just imagine an hour of a guy saying this stuff, I mean, it's it's a feat a feat of cinema. I gotta say, as somebody you know, I've never had such awful things sent to me, but I spent a lot of time online. And if I just spent all of my time cataloging the ways people were mean to me, we'd never get anything else done.

I guess it's different though, because he was working with these people, right? He was, you know, theoretically their boss at Project Veritas, but they were still sending this stuff to him? Well, this is kind of, I think, when it was all collapsing. I mean, it's interesting. This is not a group of, you know, people who I think are unnecessarily prone towards, like, workers' rights or workplace unionizing.

I think it says a lot that it got so bad that they all had to sort of team up and complain about his behavior. He does admit he was a difficult guy to work for. At one point, he plays the audio of his apology to the board. But what I found fascinating here, in terms of just how pitying he is about how he was treated, it's illustrated with, it's just audio. And then in the backdrop, they have these kind of like Renaissance historical paintings. And it's like, you know, an old man crying.

At one point, he has a painting of John the Baptist getting his head cut off. And it's like, I guess James O'Keefe here is the guy getting decapitated. So, I mean, he's obviously taking this all very seriously. That is amazing. I will not be watching this documentary, Will, but I am glad that you highlighted it. Now he says, James O'Keefe says he's gonna be back. He's gonna be back in Project Veritas that he is gonna recapture his throne and start running stings again,

sending pimps and underage prostitutes to acorn offices all over the country once again. Acorn doesn't exist anymore, I guess, but that sort of thing. Well, you know, he he's been running Sting still, I mean, around kind of fascinatingly, he runs Sting's around DC often with himself, as like he'll go on. He's big into like, entrapping people on Tinder or hinge or grinder or whatever. And so sometimes he'll be the bait. And then you're like, kind of screaming at this Democratic staffer like, that's James Hokeem. Like, what are you doing? But anyway, so he's trying to this documentary is kind of part of this weird campaign. He's running where he's claiming I'm in talks to retake Project Veritas.

And he does his videos now in front of the Project Veritas logo. But I actually since the newsletter came out, I talked to someone at Project Veritas who said, that's not true. Like he's not going to retake it. And I mean, basically at this point, he might as well, because it's, you know, it's nothing without him. Sort of as everyone expected, it's sort of a shell of itself. But they said, no, he's not about to take over. And so we don't know why he's going on Laura Loomer show, Tim Poole show, all these right wing shows and saying, you know, it's about to happen gang. I mean, I think sort of in business negotiations, typically this this is not the kind of thing if you actually were about to retake your old

organization, you wouldn't be out there saying, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. So yeah. And the I mean, again, the kind of interesting thing about this is that Veritas itself was the James O'Keefe show. Like there was there is no I guess they they have tried to do things since, but like, whatever you wanna say about James O'Keefe, he does have that kind of deranged, mad genius element of like getting out there and actually making something happen.

Yeah, and he's a showman, right? And they have the tens of thousands of, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars they spent supporting his performance in the musical Oklahoma to prove it You know, I mean he's a he's a he's a he's a performer. I was gonna say is he the greatest showman? He's he certainly feels that way No that the whole musical theater aspect of this really ties a lot of different threads together Frankly in the the James O'Keefe story, him spending company. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but my understanding was he

spent company money to put on a production of Oklahoma with him as the star. He was not paying for the whole production, but it was covering a lot of his expenses. A lot of Project Veritas people had to then live with him in Virginia or around him to support him. And all this money, To be clear, you said company. That would be one thing. This is a non-profit. And this is what made the board go so crazy is, I mean, the vibe you get from all this, because he shows a lot of their depositions from this lawsuit, the vibe you get is like, they had such a good thing going. You know, we could, they could have just done it forever, but it was getting so bad, you know, in their account did the the misspending the treatment of employees,

they were like, I mean, we could be indicted for for for how this money is being spent if we don't step in here. Yeah, that's a it's never a situation you want to find yourself in at a nonprofit for sure. No. Well, thank you for filling us in on all of the details in the world of the right wing information swamp. filling us in on all of the details in the world of the right-wing information swamp. Always. I mean there's so much to cover.