Bulwark Takes - MAGA Media Is Cutting Trump Loose

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

Sam Stein, Will Sommer and Andrew Egger discuss the implosion of MAGA media as several top influencers appear to be turning on Trump. Plus, Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe has a new sting operation targeting Republicans.  Read More in Will Sommer's False Flag, "Right-Wing Media Starts Treating Trump Like a Lame Duck"

All right. Hey, guys, me Sam Stein back again with Andrew Eger and Will Sumner to talk about Maga Media and Trump and Epstein and all that jazz. The jumping off point here is going to be Will's piece from this morning, false flag, that looks at whether the right wing media is starting to look around the corner at a post-Trump GOP. Well, before I give my thoughts on it, why don't you kind of set the scene for what it is we're talking about here? Yeah, so the centerpiece here is the big drama this week between Alex Jones, who, of course, the infamous Info Wars host, a bellicose, big yelling guy. The next level's here.

And if you want to fight, you better believe you've got one. His protege, a guy named Owen Schroier, who's sort of the next generation of right-wing media figure, and he's got the January 6 prison time to prove it. So basically, on Monday, Owen went live on X, and he said, guys, I'm quitting InfoWars. I'm sick of Alex, busting onto my set and telling me to be nicer to Trump. Oh, Alex had been coming into my show and talking about how I'm negative and calling me a pessimist. And so then he said, Alex, you know, basically said, I never want to see you again. And this sparked this big feud.

And make no mistake, for 10 years, Owen Schroyer's been sucking off the Info Wars tit. And then you want to try to stab your mother in the back because you're a big boy leaving the nest. Well, guess what? You know what your mother is going to do? Piss on you. But it made me think more broadly, look. I mean, I love this kind of drama, but I said, does this mean anything good? And the answer is it kind of fits in with a trend I'm seeing on the right of people who I would

describe as like the most dynamic, the most kind of up-and-coming, the new generation of right-wing content creators saying, I don't want my content to be just about how great Trump is. I need to start looking for the next thing. So this is kind of the, I think Owen Shroyer's another example of that. What are the other examples? Well, one is Nick Fuentes, who's really pivoting, you know, the white nationalist podcaster who's really been on, I hate to say. This is really a cast of characters here for the future of Magamide. Yeah, to be clear, I'm not happy about it.

I mean, you know, a lot of these things, I don't think I included the newsletter, but I was like, but for some of these people, like Candace Owens, it means moving on from Trump to focus on trans murder cults that you have invented in France. Canis, do you think Trump told you to ease up a little because he knows Macron sells every important French industry. to the United States since 2014. I've thought a lot about that. But yeah, I mean, in this case, in Nick Fuentes, he's looking forward and we're already seeing kind of the stakes of 2028 shape up. He's saying, I'm not going to vote for J.D. Vance

because he's a palenteer, Peter Thiel Thug, whatever. Try, J.D. Vance. It's like, no, this is completely different. This guy's like a pawn of Silicon Valley. Like, he comes from this weird Peter Thiel connection. He's got this goofy family situation. he's a freak. And he's getting some pushback

from other people on the right. And so you can see people saying like, Trump, he's over. He's a lame duck. What's next? Right. I don't know. Andrew, do you agree with that?

I think it's absolutely happening. I've been very fascinated with this too. And I, in large part, because of the great stuff that Will surfaces all the time in this newsletter. We don't need to butter will up. We don't. No, I'm serious. It's a great.

I demanded to come on this video because I wanted to talk about this stuff. But I think if you think back just like a, few years, right? I mean, like, what is the currency of the realm in, like, authentic right-wing media all the time? It's, like, a certain kind of transgressiveness, right? You have to be, like, transgressing some supposed moral norm, right? And, like, a little while ago, that was, like, the woke pieties, right? It was, like, guys like Fuentes were establishing their bona fides by just being, like, the most grotesquely sort of racist and anti-Semitic and just, like, all these horrible things. Like, that was kind of how they got their, like, right-wing street cred. But,

like now everybody in right wing media has like done away with all those pieties and and you know like is is just kind of jockeying for that for that same sort of real estate and at the same time there's a new piety in right wing media which is that everybody just clings to Trump all the time no matter what like that's seen as like the safe thing to do and and you see this even in like these intra right wing fights where like the the group that is like less authentically like populist or less authentically America first wraps itself in the Trump. flag more, like, more aggressively, like as sort of like a defense mechanism against charges that they are like secret neocons or free traders or whatever. And so I think that like one thing

that you're starting to see now is that that sort of like reflexive deference to Trump is becoming less valuable, like in terms of like the actual street cred. And I think that Will is right to notice that like some of these guys who who really have their ear to the ground have detected that one way they can start distinguishing themselves is by doing that a little bit less. They're still insanely America first and jingoistic and xenophobic and doing all the bad stuff, but less, less some aggressively tying themselves to this one guy in a way that's interesting. Let me put out an idea and you can take it for what it's worth, but let's just compare it to Trump 1.0. And then I have another analogy, but for now it's just compared to Trump's first

term. Was right-wing media this obsequious or less obsequious? And if they were less, I'm sort of wondering if part of the issue here is that they don't have, to your point, about pieties and all that stuff. You know, back then it was like you could easily still, you could like Trump, but still have like Republican figures you could rail on, right? Like Mitch McConnell was in power and everyone hated Mitch McConnell or even Paul Ryan or, you know, the, whatever, the deep state. But now it's like Trump's got his people everywhere. He's purged the deep state, all that stuff. And so maybe there's just less targets within that tent to be railing against. and that's the issue here.

I think that's a good point, Sam. I mean, I think in the past we've seen this kind of like, oh, if only the president's troublesome advisors, or the viziers would not be misleading him. But I think now, you know, particularly with these people who are like really up and coming right wing media figures, I think they realize they need to be, have an authentic relationship with the audience

and this idea of just saying like, well, another one Trump doesn't know about. We can't be mad at him. I don't think that's going to work. That brings me to my second parallel, which is I guess, and this is just because I live this experience. but, you know, lefty media during, like, the Obama years, for instance, and I was at

Huff Post, and we were guilty of this for sure, but, like, part of the audience capture is, like, well, it's not capture, that's the wrong word. Part of the, you know, authenticity comes with just sort of like saying that, you know, the president's not, you know, living up to the standards that he said. Like, we spent a lot of time during those years just calling out Obama for failing on a variety of fronts. And there was certainly a lefty audience for it. And I wonder if that's kind of what we're seeing here.

Maybe to the degree the Epstein thing was a prison for this where it's like that was the first real break that you saw with writing media and Trump where they're like, actually, no, you did promise this and we were not going to like just go on. I think that's right. The Epstein thing obviously was the biggest thing. We've seen a couple other examples, the bombing of Iran, things like that. When we bomb Iran's nuclear sites, you know what happens the next day? Iran is going to drop missiles on American bases and American soldiers are going to die. I think they're just kind of starting to look at Trump. say, like, this guy, we're not getting what we wanted.

This guy's kind of a bummer. No, come on. They are. You really think they're not getting what they want? Candice Owens and Milo dressed in black and had a MAGA funeral. Do you want to know why? Because it feels like a MAGA funeral. We are both wearing black.

A lot has happened in the last 24 hours, really honestly, since Trump re-assumed office. They're starting to see Trump as like a George W. Bush second term figure. That's ridiculous. They crave more. Just because it's an affectation, Sam, like, I mean, a lot of it's an affectation. You know, the Trump embracing was an affectation. You know, all of this is sort of like triangulation to a certain extent off of trying to find

ways to distinguish themselves and ways to offer self-promotion. That differentiates. It's for audience share, right? I mean, it's like, yeah, like 100% for audience share. And I think because these people have such like radical views and radical, you know, stated beliefs, we assume that that means that they are incredibly sincere and everything that they do. But I mean, I've been following Nick Fuentes for like a long time and he has been obsessed with like preserving his brand and the brand of the Groyper's as opposed to like a bunch of other like right wing podcasters, you know, like for years and years and years. Like he would get up at Stop the Steel rallies in 2020. He would spend like minutes like rattling off like you can't trust Ben Shapiro and you can't trust Dan Crenshaw and you can't trust Charlie Kirk. And these are not like the most important people in actual like right wing politics. But they are important because they're competitors for eyeballs to his show, right? And I think there's a lot of that going on here.

I wanted to make one point on the Israel-Iran thing, too, because I just was thinking about a lot of this very same stuff. When I was at Nat-Con yesterday, they had a debate about Israel-Iran. You should tell people what NACON is because, although you think everyone knows they don't. The National Conservatism Political Conference that was happening in D.C. this week, it's sort of like, it's a policy gathering for a lot of the, like, wanks of quote-unquote intellectual MAGA. How do they feel about you being there? they were very polite. I was polite to them.

They were polite to me. They know, they're pros, whatever. They seemed a little like, you're going to write a fair piece? And I was like, I'll try. I haven't actually circled around to see whether they liked it. But there was this debate, right, about Israel in particular. And it was Kurt Mills, who runs PaleoCon magazine, the American conservative, on one side, very anti-Israel, very anti-U.S. sort of allegiance to Israel.

Allegiance isn't right. Allyship with Israel. And on the other side, this political science professor, Max Abrams, who, you know, very much more pro-Israel, very much, you know, sort of anti-Neocon, but, like, thinks that that Israel is, is a useful regional ally for fighting terrorism abroad. Whatever. Abrams, throughout this whole talk, was constantly, you know, distancing himself from the people who, you know, up until five minutes ago would have been more on his side of this talk, you know, the neo-conservatives, constantly railing against the neocons, constantly just embracing Donald Trump and saying,

I love Donald Trump's foreign policy. I think Donald Trump's foreign policy is amazing. and you guys are the ones who are not real America firsters because you don't like what Donald Trump did here. And I think like for a lot of these people, if you're on the opposite side of that thing, if you are one of these sort of young Republicans who either because you're actually anti-Semitic or just because you don't share like the old conservative like allegiance to the state of Israel or whatever, just finds that not compelling, then it's very like it's an authentic move to just be like, well, forget that. Like let's talk about the actual thing here.

Like you're, you are the one who's making a move. because you're uncomfortable, like talking about the actual policy here, you're trying to do, like, a bit on me by saying, you know, I love Donald Trump so much. Right. Maybe people see through it, right? Yeah, I think there's, I think there's a real audience for that. Well, okay, I got to then do a segue to, like, the other thing that Will really wanted to do a separate video on, but I refuse to do.

Put in the comments, if you want another 15 minutes on this topic. I can't. I can't rationalize it. We can talk about it at the back end of this. James O'Keefe, the most trusted source of journalism out there, has a new sting operation. The reason that this fits in this conversation is that I can't ever recall O'Keefe putting our content that was not favorable to Trump. And in this case, we'll explain what exactly was produced today. Yeah, so this segment is called James O'Keefe woke now.

So here's what's going on. So James O'Keefe, he has been since Project Veritas, since they kind of, broke up two years ago. Why does he still do a thing in front of the Project Veritas logo? Well, check back to prior issues of false flag. Oh, yes. Where he's claimed he's taking it over, but they say he's not. Okay.

Sorry, go ahead. So basically, James O'Keefe since then has been mostly doing a thing in D.C. Where he has, him and like his sort of like minions, I think often attractive young women, go on hinge and they just swipe right on every man who lists government or journalists as their occupation. And they're casting a wide net. And they film these people. They say, oh, what do you think about your boss? Or don't you think media hates Trump or whatever? And they call it swiping. And so James O'Keefe has called his program American Swiper a little distasteful, given the because Kyle was murdered. But moving on. So his latest video, typically these are at

the deep state, whatever. This time, they got a guy who's a deputy chief in a section of the DOJ that seems to, like, handle a lot of, like, support functions, kind of give legal opinions. But the big deal is that he told this woman he thought he was on a date with that if the Justice Department does release any Epstein files, they would redact names of Republicans from it. A little embarrassing for the administration. They'll redact every Republican or conservative person in those files. Leave all the liberal, democratic people in those vows. And the administration has responded, I should say, DOJ has responded.

Not denying it. So first, it's interesting. They kind of do these little dances with people like Laura Lumer and James O'Keefe when they hit the administration. But they quoted James O'Keefe's tweet about this video. And they had an email from this, the guy who got caught saying, Dear Section Chief, I apologize for going on this date. I thought she was an opair named Skyler. Name Skyler.

I thought she was really, just really interested in my work deep in the Justice Department. She kept asking me questions. Kept to ask me questions about what's going on at D.J. And I just couldn't stop talking. Yeah. And they also put out a statement saying, this guy basically wouldn't know because he's not involved in the Epstein files at all. But, you know, it is embarrassing for the right.

And it makes you wonder, why is James O'Keefe going after the Justice Department? Why is he? I have a theory about this. So James O'Keefe has really kind of over-indexed on the Epstein case. He has done a lot of Epstein videos. He got like really randomly these videos from Epstein Island that were like, was this sent to him by the Justice Department? I mean, he had like stuff like inside the Epstein compound and stuff. And so then I don't know if he's just really aggravated that they're now saying it's a hoax and everyone should move on.

I think the secondary possibility here is, as far as I know, this guy he caught is not a political appointee. I think he's just like a Justice Department bureaucrat. And I think he kind of is trying to get this guy fired as like a deep stater because he said, well, it seems like that guy must be a Democrat if he's saying we would edit out the Republicans. But I feel like also he couldn't, that was kind of a weird angle to take. So instead he's had to package it this way. That doesn't mean make sense. No, it doesn't. But I think he's just trying to get this guy in trouble, I think, is one possible motive.

But it sort of has spun out into being like, well, wait, this doesn't actually look that good for Trump. It's ops within ops, right? It's like this James O'Keefe is thinking that he's like revealing his plot. But actually this deep state Democrat maybe knows that he's on candid camera. And so he's going to say the things that would make the Republican Justice Department look bad. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, I don't know. It doesn't seem very likely to me.

I can't follow this. This is why this is not getting its own. video. I think James O'Keefe, if he's getting crosswise of the Justice Department, he might want to scale back his use of the Project Veritas logo. He's going to get, he's going to get the newly weaponized U.S. Copyright Office, like, on his case. Right. Well, that's a good, I was going to say, I mean, literally like a year or two ago, the FBI was kicking in his door and all this. So maybe he doesn't want to be setting off that hornets. Bill Polts will be investigating whether he committed mortgage fraud tomorrow. I guess I think there's some, enough of a path.

here where Maga Media has gone rogue a little bit, and they're willing to at least, you know, even loomer to a degree, although obviously she loves Trump, like her whole schick is causing problems for the administration. So there might be something there. Last question. How much of it is they just think Trump's, you know, actually going to leave office and he's certainly old and they just need to look around the corner a little bit. Yeah.

I mean, I think there, look, I mean, it's going to be a few years. And in less than that, we're going to have a primary race. I think everyone's going to start positioning themselves. And that's going to be interesting. right? Because it's like, who's going to take which candidate, who's going to get knifed when their candidate loses? Lots to look forward to. Yeah, the Maha faction, the Vance faction, the Don Jr. faction, the Don Jr. is it going to win at all? Yeah, that's what I said. The Maha faction. That's what I was saying. Andrew, what do you think? We got a little taste of that in

24. There were like some preliminary fights between the Trump camp and the Nassas camp. But the big dog was always in it. But that's what happened is Trump just steamrolled out to the inevitable lead so early in that primary that a lot of it went back underground. Like there were like a couple of prominent DeSantis figures who got, you know, hit pieces planted on them in Breitbart or whatever by Trump guys. But I think that pales in comparison to what we are likely to see in the after Trump because there will be no obvious sort of figurehead and the knives will have to come out and it will be open war.

And it's going to be a lot of this stuff. And it will be interesting to cover if nothing else. Okay. Well, we'll cover it. I guess we have to. And Gregor, Will Somer. Thanks a bunch, guys. Appreciate it.

We couldn't do a separate on James O'Keefe, but it feels like it was appropriate for this. Well, can I just issue one warning to the D.C. area? Look, folks, you work for the government. If you're in the media, whatever. If you're a middle-aged guy, you're going on hinge. I don't know. Maybe you're bouncing back from something. Who knows?

Just watch out for these much younger women, these opairs. There's a New York Times article. James O'Keefe is being sued about these tactics right now. So some of these guys have gone on dates with James O'Keefe himself, not in, like, prosthetics or anything. And then he's like, I'm James O'Keeve. You ever heard of me? So, guys, just watch out out there, okay? Look, I was targeted by James O'Keefe way back in the day. A scandal involving a White House correspondent at the Huffington Post. You got to keep your head on a swivel. You never know. All right. Thank you guys for watching.