Bulwark Takes - Major MAGA Figures Say Trump’s Assassination Attempt Was Staged | MAGA Monday

Episode Date: April 20, 2026

Sam Stein and Will Sommer went live to discuss the week's biggest developments in the right-wing fever swamp.Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial today at https://shopify.com/bulwarktakes.The Bulwark is headed to Southern California! Go to https://thebulwark.com/events to get your tickets for our LA and San Diego live shows.

All right, we're back. We are back, baby. So excited. Me and Will Summer, doing the Maga Mondays again. After a week off, we're looking both little tan. I'm a little redder, I got to be honest. This is what happens when you lay in the sun for four hours, seasick on a boat. You've put 50, whatever the thing is, 50 sunscreen.

FBI, yeah, and it just didn't work. I mean, I thought it was going to be fine, but I look terrible. You look great. How was your, how's your time off? Thank you. Yeah, I went to Mexico City with the fam, and, you know, maybe I didn't get a tan because, you know, last time in museums, restaurants. We were living good, and, but, but, you know, the other thing I wanted to add is, you know, a lot did happen. You know, we have a lot to dive into today, but also, gosh, you know, clavicle, ODD. Jordan Peterson's daughter says that he maybe has, like, come some kind of brain damage from his own benzodiazepic addiction. Okay.

So, you know, it's, there's been a lot going on. And, you know, I think there's a lot to impact today. Well, actually, sort of before we get into it, I do have a question about what it's like for you to go on vacation because, like, are you able to unplug or do you spend your time with your family on vacation just kind of strolling through the internet streams and figuring out what's going on? Well, you know, the good news is my kids are so young that they're constantly like trying to run into traffic and stuff. And so, like, I really just don't have time. Like, my screen time was way down. And I was like, oh, yeah, because I was like dragging these kids through the city being like, we got to get this street food or whatever. and they're like, oh, I want to jump into traffic.

You're like, hey, hey, did you see this about clavicular? And you're like, honestly, yes, I was like, how do I use the code word? How do I explain to my wife like, OD? You know, without the kids picking up on it. But yeah, I mean, you know, on one hand, I did miss it. But then in the evening, you know, that's when I catch up. And I go, oh, my gosh, you know, why am I not at work? But so, so, you know, it's the yin and the yang.

You know, I'm back. I just the image of you a long day, you know, going on a vacation with little kids is not. actually vacation. So you just exhausted at the end of the day. You and the wife finally gets unwinding. You're just on your phone looking through. Oh, no, that's completely it. I was completely it. I was like, oh my gosh. The clavicular thing happened like in the evening. I was like, oh, my gosh. Oh, man. Well, it's good to be back. I was monitoring it from afar to. I saw the clavicular thing. I saw it being carried out. I thought of you. But then this weekend really, I started like signing really back online and looking at what was happened on the internet. And the one thing that just kept

coming up and it might have been my algorithm, who knows, but it was everywhere, is the resurfacing, yet again, of these conspiracy theories around the Butler assassination attempt of Donald Trump back in the 2024 campaign. Now, just to back up a little bit and set the stage and then we can dive into this. And I guess I should probably preface this by acknowledging that, like, a lot of people in the comments and a lot of people online are, you know, credulous about this. They think something did happen. They believe that it's worth a lot more scrutiny than it's received. They think there's a lot of suspicious anecdotal stuff that hasn't been answered. And I don't want to be disrespectful of it. Like I think I'm ultimately for more transparency, more investigated

journalism. I too want to get more insight into what's going on. So I'm not disrespecting the conspiracies. I will be upfront about it. I don't believe. believe them at this point. I'm not certainly prone to believe in conspiracy theories. That's just my nature. I want to make sure there's hard evidence before we start suggesting Israel's behind this or something else. But I also do acknowledge that there is just a lot of chatter out there. So I want to be sort of respectful for the people who are curious, but just be honest about where I'm coming from. All right. So with the throat clearing out of the way, this weekend, there were a number of conservatives out there raising the alarm bells about this stuff.

And what's interesting is that if you remember back in 2024, the first round of conspiracists were liberal. So it was the blue anon crowd, as they were called, wondering why this happened, wondering about the protocols around it, suggesting that it might have been a false flag operation to gin up support for Donald Trump prior to the election. There were some conservatives at the time who were conspiracies, but they're coming out of it from a different direction. So like Eli Crane, if you remember this, thought that this was an attempt by the Secret Service and the Biden run FBI to kill Donald Trump. I mean, that was basically his insinuation.

Now it seems different. Now there are people out there who are wondering whether this was all staged to help Donald Trump. And they're coming from the conservative side as well. So, you know, Tim Dillon, obviously, famous podcaster who's been more Trump skeptical of us of late. He said, quote, I think he may be staged. You have Tucker Carlson who says the FBI is covering it up. You have Joe Kent, obviously, who resigned and said he tried to investigate it but was

stopped, although he offered no evidence. Let's put up the Marjor Taylor Green tweet from this weekend. So this is just yesterday. I'm not calling the Beller assassination a hoax, but there are a lot of questions that deserve public answers. I'm asking why won't Trump release the information about Matthew Crooks? Matthew Crooks is the alleged killer. Did he actually act alone? If not, who was behind him and who helped him?

Why the cover up? So, Will, what's going on here? Why are voices on the right suddenly coming at this from what seems to me to be a different direction than like the Eli Crane? They were trying to kill Trump and now they got caught. Yeah, I mean, I think we're seeing here a lot of these people who are sort of dissident elements of MAGA, you know, whether it be Marjorie, Taylor Green or Tucker Carlson, have increasingly, from the past week or two, sort of embraced this idea that, you know, either there was a real attempt on Trump's life involving. the deep state, and Trump is now covering that up or cash petals, FBI is covering it up, or that this was somehow staged or that it was set up to make Trump look good, you know, on the other hand, which is kind of what Marjorie Taylor Green is suggesting here. Right. So you're exactly right

that this is from a different angle. It's sort of a people have gotten so fed up with Trump that now they're just saying, well, I think he staged the assassination on himself. But why do you think they're doing it now? Is it just like they're just affected with Trump, the Iran stuff, they need to find some other outlet to express their displeasure. They're just sort of inclined to believe conspiracies. Yeah, I mean, essentially, yes. I mean, I think Joe Kent coming out has helped a lot with that. You know, it is pretty crazy that this guy who was like a top counterterror official

was also kind of running a sideline in like, you know, like YouTube assassination investigation. Right. And sleuthing because he also famously like had looked after into the Charlie Kirk case and was told like, what are you doing here back out? And so, you know, I do think. think there is, the Butler assassination was so important to MAGA. And it was such a moment of like, oh, you know, Trump is at his apex. He's so powerful now. There's no stopping him. Literally, like an assassin can't stop him. And I think the fact that people are questioning that now really

points to Trump's unpopularity on the right. Yeah. It does sort of undo a lot of the hagiography that they had engaged in earlier on. I mean, there was this almost religious element to what had happened. And I remember being at the convention hall. It was like, what was it? Like a couple days after the assassination temp where everyone had the little bandages on the ears and they're talking about Trump. Yeah, they're talking about Trump and this kind of divine aura around him and, you know, God had saved him. And now it's like, well, actually, maybe he did, you know, he orchestrated this whole thing. It's wild. As the White House engaged this, I haven't been able to see if they're like engaged at all in this. No, you know, here's something interesting though, Sam, when I was doing research

for this segment. I remember that back in, I believe November, the FBI put out its own document trying to put a lot of these conspiracy theories to rest. So already we've seen the Trump administration kind of engaged with this stuff in the same way that Bonino and Cash Patel came out and said, you know, Epstein killed himself last summer. Now, last year they put out a document that said like, you know, we looked into it. This is crazy. They were like Thomas Matthew Crooks. He did not really use they, them pronouns. You know, and sort of all these things. That's what they looked into. It was not a trans conspiracy. You know, I do think there's also this, speaking of, there's sort of this similarity between the conspiracy theories between Charlie Kirk's assassination and the Trump assassination attempt, where you have someone who's like, seems pretty believable as a suspect, as sort of a lone gunman type.

But then people just like, they want this, you know, in the case of, you mentioned the earlier version of these conspiracy theories, where it's like we want this deep state or this left-wing, cabal to be behind it. And then people are really sort of left dissatisfied when that doesn't turn out to be the case. No, and I can acknowledge the dissatisfaction, right? Like, it doesn't, on the surface, it doesn't really make sense that this 20-year-old kid who was kind of like a social outcast suddenly got a football field away from the president

with a rifle and no one saw him and got off a couple shots and killed someone. And like, how could that even happen? and then you get an investigation to him, and there's not like really an ideology here. He just seems to, I mean, he's Googled like both Biden's schedule and Trump's schedule. And it's like you want some sort of motive. And, you know, something similar to that effect. Remember the Las Vegas gunman who shot like killed 49 people at that show is awful. And just sort of they looked into it.

I mean, as far as we know, it's like, I couldn't tell you what the motive was of that shooter. And it's deeply frustrating and troubling. honestly, that you have these instances where it's incredibly violent, tragic loss of life, and you don't have concrete answers that give you some sort of satisfaction that, yeah, this was for this reason. So I get it. Like you want something bigger there, but sometimes it's just not the case. So, go ahead.

Well, I was just going to say, I mean, I think the idea of the maggot people questioning this is sort of the, as we talked about, it's kind of crossing a line to suggest that, you know, Trump is such a bad guy to them now that he would not only stage an assassination. I mean, but obviously there was a guy who did die in the assassination so that that he would have someone shot, you know, to help his political chances. I mean, that's really like a lot of these people, again, I've already broken with Trump, Marjor Tiller Green, Tucker Carlson, but I think it shows you how, you know, how irreconcilable they are with Trump at this point. Right. I want to get into some of the specifics around the conspiracy. And to explain, I guess, in a way why I don't believe

that there was a conspiracy. A couple things. One is the sort of 30,000 foot one. And just jump in when you have a thought here because I'm going to riff for a little bit, but I want you to jump in. One is like, this was the Biden-led

Justice Department Secret Service that was in charge of the security. Okay? So like if your belief is that Trump now staged all this to benefit himself politically, it would have involved at least some buy-in from the Biden

Secret Service, Biden-led Secret Service, and Biden-led Justice Department and Biden-Lev FBI at the time. So that alone is difficult. There was a bipartisan congressional committee that did look into this after the fact, bipartisan being the keyword here, and they did not come up with any rationale for this being a conspiracy.

Trump, people forget about this. Trump went on Dr. Phil during the campaign and was asked about this stuff. And he blamed the Biden-led Secret Service for not staffing him well enough. So, you know, he also is adding to the idea that, like, hey, you know, these people were partisan. If they were partisan, why would they engage in this? And then there's the specific stuff. So among the other things, there's this, you know, one of the things is like, well,

why did they rush all those photographers into place to get those iconic shots of Trump with his hand held high and you know all that stuff and if you look at the actual footage i mean and i did they didn't rush the photographer's into place you got to look at the whole footage trump actually goes down the secret service keeps him down for like 45 seconds and then if you hear the footage you can hear someone scream out all clear uh suspect is down or shot or killed or something like that and it's only then that trump gets up and does his thing and it's only then that the photographers are ushered in by what looks like a youngish secret service person. The other thing is, and keep this photo up for a little bit, there's a lot of photo circulating

this weekend of Trump's ear, and it looks like it's not actually hit by a bullet. And it appears that that's an old photo or a wrongly presented photo, because as you can see here, very clearly, this is an AP photo. Trump's ear is bleeding. I mean, it's bleeding. It's right there, top of the ear. that's blood. Now people say, well, it should have been way more damaged if it was a, you know, a bullet of that caliber. So I can't speak to that. It's possible. I suppose everyone's posited that it could have been shattered glass from the teleprompter or something like that.

But I think it's pretty evident from this photo right here that that ear is bloodied. Okay. I know people are going to say, well, he could have cut it himself. But we do know that a shot was fired. Like a wrestler. Like a little razor concealed. Yeah. Well, you know, he's a WW. EFAN, so a little ketchup packet or something like that. But, you know, there was a person killed. Okay.

Corey Comptory was killed. He was shot. He was killed. So clearly a bullet was fired. The most sort of, I mean, I can go on. Do you have any thoughts here? I have two thoughts. Two points to make.

One is that, you know, this conspiracy has gathered a lot of characters now. Marjorie Taylor Green was saying, what about Willie Tepe's? And now Willie Tepe's. It's kind of a, or TEPES, I guess, sort of a Kaiser Soze type name. Supposedly, like I believe in Norwegian Antifa, who was supposedly in touch with Matthew Thomas Crooks and tagged him on YouTube.

I don't know. The FBI said they don't really buy it. But so it's kind of created its own, it has its own universe of characters now. And kind of the broader point about Secret Service, you know, security, I would say. This weekend we're seeing a real clear investigation story. about a Secret Service agent having a relationship with, I believe, an OnlyFans creator who was posting all his internal Secret Service documents. So maybe the OPSEC isn't that good in general. Is this a John Solomon Joint or is this something else?

No, no. I believe Crabtree. Okay, Crabtree got, okay. Yeah, Secret Service has not covered itself in glory on a number of fronts. So let's just state that. A couple other data points. Again, we'll just jump in, please. Okay, there was this theory that he was shot in the chest Because there was this kind of like shadow or a hole in his Have you seen this one? No, I have. Okay, there's apparently a photo floating around.

There's like a kind of a dark hole right here on Trump's suit. It looks dark compared to the rest of the suit. They did look into that actually. It was just a fold in the jacket. There's other pictures without that little dark spot. I'm not really sure what the theory would be about the chest, but that's been floating around there. Former agents have told news sources that, in fact, the agents operating were keeping in protocol,

again, with how they put Trump down, covered him, and only when it was all clear did they let him get up. A couple other things. Crooks, there was explosives found in his car. He had searched for the schedules of Trump and Biden. He had searched for info on both the Republican Democratic Convention. He had searched for how to make a bomb from fertilizer. So, you know, I don't know, you might say, well, that was just planning on his part to make sure he had a good cover. But it's there.

He did the searches. Fox News had reported that the Crooks' parents had called the police before the assassination, a couple hours before the assassination to warn that their son might be about to do something troubling. Again, that's not something you would do or have done if you're trying to stage an assassination. right? Like your parents don't normally try to tip off the police in advance of it. Maybe they weren't in on it, I suppose. But again, I'm not trying to, again, I'm not trying to be dismissive necessarily. Well, I guess I am being dismisses of the conspiracies. I'm trying to work through these and just sort of go through some of the points. That all makes sense to me. I mean, I think we could just forward this to Marjor Taylor Green

and Tucker. And I think this should resolve the issue pretty quickly. Yeah, I'm sure they're going to be completely convinced. But the one that really stood out to me, again, is, and I want to give credit to this guy, Scott Carney, who was like a sleuthy investigative journalist who did this about eight months ago. He did a video on this. Again, this stuff popped up all the time. But what's different now is that it's the MAGA folks who are pushing it. But Scott Carney had this point about sort of the theatrics of this, the bigger planning of this,

which is if you think about it in just the broad scheme of things, if the idea is you want to stage an assassination attempt so that you can generate political sympathy for yourself, okay? And someone's going to fire a real bullet or multiple bullets at you, okay? Which happened, right? I don't think anyone's saying Corey Campitori was, you know, faking it. He was killed. Okay, so real bullets were fired by time.

Thomas Crooks, at the very minimum. I think everyone agrees with that. If you want a stage assassination attempt, why would you let someone like Thomas Crooks, who had no history of being a good shot, take the shot at the president? I mean, that is highly reckless. So let's watch Scott Carney summarizing,

because he does much better than I do at unpacking how kind of difficult it is to believe the conspiracies. To Slate, Crooks had no military training and was reportedly barred from his high school rifle team. He had such bad aim he was considered, quote, dangerous and a potential risk for accidentally harming his teammates. Now, this is not the sort of crack shooter that you're going to want to have performing a near miss on your head with a lethal round. While the results of the shooting ultimately helped Trump

in the subsequent election, proponents of the false flag hypothesis have to contend with a few very hard to stomach facts. The first and foremost is this. For it to work, Trump would have had to be so confident in the shooting skills of this would-be assassin that a shot could get close enough to potentially cause him actual damage. And also that the shooter would be willing to sacrifice their life for the president's plot. Frankly, that just seems crazy to me. And it frankly seems crazy to me. Can I leave you with something else to think about them? Yeah, please. Lee Harvey Oswald, also famously a poor marksman.

You know, so, you know, who's to say? Will, get the fuck. It's true. I'm kind of a Kennedy assassination guy. Are you? Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah. Mafia, Cuban exile, CIA, all of it. Really?

All working together, yeah. Okay, I didn't know that about you. This explains a bit, but you don't believe it here. No, not in this case, not in this case. Okay, well, hold on, hold on. That gives you credentials. Yeah, look. You're skinny here, yeah.

Yes, yes, yes. Go on. Come on, keep going. Oh, no, you know, I was just going to say that. The one thing I was going to say is, like, you really have to be bad to be kicked off of the school marksmanship team as a risk to your team. Like, is he aiming at a 90 degree angle or something? You know, what is, you know, that's crazy. It is crazy.

I mean, again, I just want to emphasize this. The idea is you gave. Someone went to this 20-year-old kid, troubled kid, they're like, this is our guy. I want you to climb upon this thing. You're probably going to die, okay, because they're going to shoot at you after you shoot at us. But we want you to climb up on this, whatever, this structure, the set of fist, about 300 feet away from the president. We want you to take a shot at him. But we want you to be really precise, okay?

We want you to shoot at him and just kind of graze him or near miss him. and you may kill someone in the audience, whatever. It's worth it. But whatever you don't hit Trump, like just don't do it. Good plan? And he's like, no. High risk. It's insane.

It's really insane. Good news, Trump. Yeah, Joe Biden just imploded on the debate stage. Now we got to do this totally insane. That's the other thing that people don't really. And I don't think that I'm going to backtrack in a little bit because, again, I don't want to offend. I'm not trying to be totally offensive to the people who are conspiracies here. But this happened like two days after Biden's debate. Okay. Like Trump is ascendant. Like this thing is

he's going to win at this point. Everything is like, wow, my opponent just had the most epic brain fart collapse in the history of politics in front of tens of millions of people. And it's absolutely all anyone can talk about. You know what we need to do? We need to go through with the plan for that fake assassination time. doesn't quite make any sense. Now, I will say that the conspiracists have argued that there might have been a second shooter, right? Like, that is one of the things that they were talking about, that Crooks wasn't up there firing. But there is evidence that he did fire.

And so I just can't, I can't find myself to get, I can't get myself to the place where I believe this stuff. No, I think it makes a lot of sense. Okay. You know, what you're saying, not the. Thank you. I was just a cleverer. All right, we got to take a quick break for an ad because we don't do this stuff for free. I don't go through the archives and endure this stuff for free.

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I was wondering if I could get that plant in this background on Shopify. Shopify, man. Everyone should check it out. All right. Other big story from the weekend. Cash. I've been dying to get to this. I know. I know. And Tim talked about this a little bit. The Atlantic reported, I think it was Friday night. It was, or no, Saturday night, I think.

It was like one of those rare Saturday night drops of a story. That doesn't happen that often where you're like, we got the good. You know you have a good story, like a real explosive story when you're like, you know what? We can drop this at 8 p.m. on a Saturday. It's going to be fine. this thing's going to travel. And I think that's what they did. And yeah, the headline doesn't really give it credit because, like, it's about drinking.

Like, they should have flop. They should have swapped the deck in the head there. FBI director is MIA. I would have been like FBI director is accused of excessive drinking. You want to summarize this for us? Because you've been a hat on this one. Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, it does such a good story, such a good read.

Yeah, so this is about Cash Patel and it alleges that he's, you know, you know, Almost like, do we even need to say allege? Because famously we saw the video of him, you know, pounding bruise with the hockey team at the Olympics. Yeah. But basically it alleges that he has this, his drinking has become a problem at work, that people are have trouble locating him, have trouble. Like they, I believe the article says that they had to move meetings to later in the day. And at one point in the article, they're like, they had to do the door knockdown.

Yeah. Well, I was going to say, and I want to parse that part closely. But basically it says it was a little unclear to me, whether it was on a trip in a hotel room or if it was actually at FBI headquarters, which would seem even crazier to me. But basically that there was a point where they were like, well, we know he's behind this door and it's locked. And so we have to get like a SWAT team battering ram to get through and get it.

I mean, that's nuts. That's nuts. It's crazy. Yeah, I think people like are, you know, I don't think people are appreciating that it's the FBI director. It's like, you know, like we shouldn't be. First of all, we should not be talking about this guy ever. Like, the FBI director should be, like, in the background, not grabbing headlines,

not partying up with the boys at the Olympic Stadium, not traveling on his jet to go see his, what is the country music sensation? Yes. We use the word sensation here. You know, like, he's in the headlines all the time. And it's just abnormal for that to be the case. Then you add on the fact that there's now accusation of alcoholism. Look, I'm not going to suggest that no.

no FBI director has ever had problems before we had Jay Edgar Hoover, right? Like, you know, there's some real, real gems in there. But like, this is a lot of drama, public drama, I should say, for an FBI director. And now he's threatening to sue the Atlantic over this. Do we know if the suit's been filed? Well, so he said on Fox News on Sunday, he said it would be filed today. As of, you know, us sitting down this morning, I don't think it's been filed. This is interesting, though, because, you know, for me,

part of the story. I mean, obviously the drinking stuff, I think is very damaging to cash. But other parts of the story, you know, like him, you know, supposedly shutting down like the FBI merch store so and so he could shop privately and saying he wanted tougher merchandise. I think that's certainly interesting. But it's also kind of like part for the course for like a Trump administration story. That like his lawyer singled that out in a letter saying, you know, Atlanta, don't run this. Don't say cash, you know, messed with the merchandise store. So, you know, I guess what's interesting, there's the story itself and then there's a story around the story,

which is the huge pushback from MAGA, from people in the administration, people like Rick Grinnell, who obviously just recently left the Kennedy Center, people saying, you know, I can't believe this is the craziest thing that's ever been written. Meanwhile, there's all this reporting about like Trump bungling the Iran war, things that you might think would be a little more relevant. So I'm just curious about why Cash is so defensive about this one in particular. You think it's like a protest too much kind of thing? Well, I don't know. I mean, obviously people have said, you know, Trump obviously has this, you know, is very critical of people with drinking problems.

Although, you know, apparently he doesn't, I mean, Pete Higgs says hanging around. I mean, like all these other people who, you know, this issue has come up for them. So, you know, perhaps he's trying to, you know, I will note, cash seemed especially, you know, subservient to Trump in his Sunday Fox News appearance. He said, we're going to get to that, yeah. Yeah. Let's put it home before, before go, let's put the Grinnell tweet if we can because I think this gets at something larger. Okay, I asked this is Sarah Fitzpatrick is the author of the piece, who her editor was on that all anonymous hit piece that has been wildly discredited. She won't answer. She's nervous about the coming court action.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Just because she's not answering your email, Rick, doesn't mean she's nervous. Because it's clearly like, I want to tag your editor and scream at them too. Yeah, it's like, oh, okay, yeah. If you don't answer Rick, that means you're guilty. That's just not how it works. Oh, we have breaking news. He has sued.

The lawsuit has been filed as of this morning, you know, right before we went live today. It looks like the lawsuit has been filed against Sarah Fitzpatrick and the Atlantic. And, you know, cash is asking for, do we have a... 250 million. There you go. 250 mil. That's it. Didn't Trump want a billion from someone?

So, yeah. Just to be clear, she has two dozen. sources. Now, they're anonymous, as you can imagine, that's how it's going to work with this type of vindictive administration. It's not the thing here, and I think what you're getting is kind of notable. If this were a one-off, you know, you might have more suspicion about the story, but it's not like there hasn't been a succession of reporting about cash and sort of the bungling and the, you know, the silly stuff that he's doing and the use of the jets and, you know, the gym, like he had some gym video that he was putting out. And the story about like trying to find a jacket when he was going to Utah to deal with the Charlie Kirk thing. And he couldn't find one. He ended up with like a woman's jacket.

Yeah, because he was like a small size, I believe. Yeah. And then he was like looking for some velcro patch that made him look tough. Like it's all there. What's new about this story is the drinking stuff. But he, like you said, he's on videoed at the Olympic hockey pounded in a beer. So yeah, it's an embarrassing. story there is look at there he is classic who could say this guy who could say this guy is a drinking

issue uh actually i'm not going to say that i've chug beers too i'm not going to be sanctimonies about it anyways the other thing that was kind of notable is the lawyer he used uh i believe for for the lawsuit is the same one that mark robinson used yeah so this guy's named jesse binall this is a character i'm very familiar with as sort of the go-to defamation lawyer for maga figures um he the basically like you know he's also pretty close with cash i believe believe he's on the board of Cash's Foundation. And so this is a guy who, you know, if you're a right-wing person who's unhappy about a media article, you'll probably hire Jesse Bennell.

As you said, he represented Mark Robinson in the lawsuit against CNN over, you know, failed lawsuit over Mark Robinson's online sexual activity. So, you know, I don't know. It's not like Cash has hired Claire Locke or some other like super heavy duty defamation firm. This is kind of like someone you go to. I would say if you, you know, you want to. get out there that you're suing quickly, but not necessarily like you have the strongest case.

No. The Robinson one was a joke. You hinted at Cash is doing what you do when you're in trouble in the Trump administration. You need a distraction. You're worried about you're standing with the boss. You just go, you know, say you're digging up some shit about the election interference in 2020. So he went on Fox with Maria Bartrama on Sunday. Let's play the clip where they're talking about the investigations that are currently happening. And maybe we don't have the clip, in which case I will read it. He says, no, we don't have it.

It's fine. Basically, he says, okay, Maria, I'm happy to announce on the show that we are going to take this, we aren't going to take this lying down. You want to attack my character? Come at me, bring it on. I'll see you in court, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Okay, this is about suing for defamation. He then goes and he says, we are currently doing a suit and there's going to be arrests or more or less for interference in the 2020 election. first of all, you know, it seems conspicuously time. But secondly, it's like these guys, I was noting this, the Justice Department has a policy.

You're not supposed to talk about ongoing investigations until you need to talk about ongoing investigations. But it is sort of the same playbook that Tulsi used, right, where she was in a little bit trouble. She went down to Georgia. What did you make of it? Yeah. I mean, on one hand, it does seem kind of crazy to be like, yeah, we've been in office

for more than a year. But, you know, we might finally, like, if a presidential election was really stolen, I mean, you'd kind of want to get on that quickly. On the other hand, you know, you do think about, you know, clearly there's been some sort of, there's been reporting about, you know, U.S. attorneys being involved,

investigating the voting machines, you know. So maybe, I mean, you know, it doesn't seem impossible that there is some kind of arrest coming up. They just put out, the news yesterday was they, they, the DOJ had asked the city of Detroit for the 2024 for Macon County voting rolls, which didn't make really much sense to me because Trump won Michigan in 23 and 4.

So we'll see what comes to that. This is the actual quote from Cash, because I butchered it. I found and found it. Cash says, I'm never going to let go of this. They tried to throw out our elections and rig the entire system, and that is not something that I'm going to allow

on my watch, but you just have to remember. They built this disease temple over 20 and 30 years. What the fuck does that mean? We've got all the inference I can announce on your show that we've got all the information we need. We are going to be making arrests, and it's coming, and I promise you it's coming soon. This disease temple.

Yes, it kind of recalls the language of kind of like the tech monarchists who talk about like the cathedral, you know, controlling American life. Yeah, it is funny that suddenly he's like, oh my gosh, you know, FBI directors are, you know, to your earlier point, they are allowed to comment on investigations if the FBI director is on the verge of being fired. And so, you know, that's a famous caveat. Yes, one, exactly. Okay. Last bit, unless you have anything more you want to say about cash. No, no, no, no. Let's get to this one. Yeah, quickly, yeah. Well, actually, before we get to Ashley Sinclair, which is a good one, can you talk

about Jordan Peterson? Because you referenced it earlier and it was sort of like, John. Yeah, what's going on? So Jordan Peterson had a benzodiazepine dependence. I believe clonazepan. And so people, this is several years ago. This was like right before the start of the pandemic, I think. People may remember that Jordan Peterson was kind of like just really on top of the world as this kind of like right wing intellectual. He told young men to make their beds, all this stuff. And then he sort of disappeared. And then my understanding is basically he ended up in, I believe, a Russian sanatorium where he was put into a coma as he went into a benzodia withdrawal. And this was all kind of like his daughter was involved, Michaela Peterson.

She was paling around with Andrew Tade in Eastern Europe, all this stuff. So then he comes back. And he had like, I think like 2024, he was kind of back in. And then he had this new recurrence of a medical issue that they initially said was like a mold allergy. And then yesterday, you know, his daughter has occasionally been popping up to provide evidence or updates. And then this time she said, well, he seems to have like, I believe it's called acanathesia. But basically it's this kind of like, here it is. Acathia.

Yeah. And so essentially, so she says it was caused by mold, but basically she's claims this was like kind of pharmaceutical industry damage because of his benzos. So, you know, it does seem like Jordan Peterson is kind of going to be out of the picture for, you know, at least a while. It's a sad story. And I think also, you know, just sort of a, you know, kind of a bizarre one. Kind of? Yeah. It's very bizarre. Acathia, according to AI. is a distressing neuropsychiatric syndrome and a movement disorder characterized by an uncontrollable, intense inner restlessness and a compelling need to move, often manifesting itself as pacing, rocking, and shifting weight. That doesn't sound fun, although I feel like I kind of sometimes suffer from it. All right, Ashley St. Clair. This one, you know, we had Ashley on the pod, Tim had her on the pod. people need to, for those who don't know Ashley Sinclair, she, a conservative influencer, she came up through the TPSA pipeline, right?

Yeah, so Ashley Sinclair was a sort of, you know, right-wing internet e-girl, perhaps you might say. You know, initially she used the colorful screen name sex laptop. So that's kind of, I think, sort of sums up where she was coming from. And then, so she's kind of like a cute girl. Sex laptop? Laptop, yeah. So this was sort of before she got politicized.

and she was just kind of like an attractive woman, young woman online. And then she got into the TPSA pipeline. And then she was fired from that for taking a picture with Nick Fuentes. And so anyways, cut to, you know, I think a year or two ago in, you know, one of my favorite stories to ever emerge from right wing media. She had a child with Elon Musk. And then there's kind of like an ugly custody battle over it. And now she's sort of restiling herself as like this person who's like, I've been inside right wing media and I'm going to tell you how sick it is and how twisted it is. I thought the Tim Pot, I don't know if you saw the Tim Potter, watched it or heard it, I thought it was really interesting.

Like, you know, I thought her sort of recounting of that journey she had and sort of how the system worked, whether or not it was, you know, trying to make, you know, her situation better. And it was just sort of, you know, glossing over some of the stakes she made and not taking full account. But you can judge it however you want. I came away from it thinking, like, you know, this was, you know, a good bit of introspection and someone who actually, you know, had a fairly clear view of, you know, the problems of the right-wing internet culture and the incentives that are put in place. Not just, I guess, bright-wing, but internet culture writ large. You know, I thought she was, you know, are pretty damn articulated about it.

So, you know, yeah, maybe some of it's just, you know, covering her own ass, but like, No, no, I don't mean to sound cynical about it. I mean, I do think, like, if she wanted to maximize the amount of money she was making, she would still be on the right. Sometimes I just kind of, like, summing up these people's careers flipping. Yeah, well, when you start being called sex laptop, yeah, it's an interesting starting point. All right, so what actually happened over the weekend with her and Benny? Sure.

So, you know, Ashley over the past week or so has been on this campaign. And she's putting out these TikTok videos, get ready with me, video. maybe we should start doing our videos like this, you know, where you're kind of putting on your makeup for the day and telling a story. And it started, she started saying, well, I'll do that only for the paid subscribers, but go ahead. So she started saying, well, you know, there's all this money in right wing media, you know, as we've reported on here at the bulwark about, you know, these, here's 500 bucks to post about how bad, you know, how good soda is for people on EBT or whatever, these kind of things that I've covered. And then this kind of started people on the right saying, you know, attacking her.

Benny Johnson said, you know, because Ashley wrote a children's book that was very like anti-trans children, you know, back when she was on the right. She since disowned it. And this has kind of created this idea on the right that she's going to make her child with Elon Musk, trans, which, you know, I don't think there's any evidence for. So then, you know, Benny joins in this. And she sees this as sort of like, you know, fine, Benny, you know, cards are off the tail or, you know, no rules now regarding you. Can we play it? goes after Benny. Yes. Let's play it. You see,

Benny, it's really easy for anyone to admit that they have sex with men outside of marriage. We all like to get our whistle wet, okay? I'm less interested in that, though. I'm very, I think everyone will be very interested in your financials

and the story of how Benny Johnson came to be in the first place. TdFN. So she has kind of an interesting, she's almost like a Joan Rivers type character. Like she's doing like little like bits and you know, she has a, but, but basically she used to work for Benny at his sort of Republican strategy group.

And so I think it's pretty believable that she knows where some bodies are buried. I mean, Benny, obviously other right-wing figures and people who worked with him at BuzzFeed have accused have said they, you know, he's gay, that they've hooked up with him in some cases. famously a few months ago, Milo Unopoulos was saying this. And Benny and his wife put out like a very intense statement that was like, we must defend the honor of our family and suggested that they would sue Milo. I will say I checked again. This comes up pretty regularly on Maga Monday, I think.

I did check. Yes, literally every Maga Monday you mentioned. This lawsuit still has not been filed in the video. She calls him, you know, Benjamin Grindr Johnson, as though that's his middle name. You know, it's interesting. I mean, I always love when these right wing media figures, like, kind of defect, and then they say, you know, it's time to drop everything. Like, she was making, not regarding Benny, but she was saying various people were, you know, running honeypot schemes on each other and amassing all this black. mail material on each other.

So it's kind of things we've always suspected, but it's interesting to see it confirmed, you know, in the case of this blackmail. Yeah. First things first, we have no problem if Benny is on Grindr or if he's gay. All the love, all the best to him. And we would support no matter what, what he wants to do in his private life. But how much do you think there's like, I mean, I'm looking at the comments right now and everyone's just like, spill the beans, is it true?

It's like, is it true? I mean, it's just, they're just, or are they just throwing around shit? because I feel like that's half of the internet these days. As people have been like, I'm going to expose you for this. I'm going to expose you for that. And then they never follow up and give the goods. Well, you know, in some cases, you know, Ashley does. She made some pretty specific allegations on her TikTok about Benny's business partner or someone

whose name I don't even remember. But she also, you know, she accused Madison Cothorn of sort of groping her while in a car. So, you know, I do think there are, I tend to agree with you. I'm sort of at this stage with a lot of these right-wing media figures. There's a lot of like, you guys won't believe the ultimate dossier I had this going to come out. And it's like, all right, you know, either come out with it or give Will a call, you know, and we can talk about it. So, you know, and sometimes you will do that, which is great. Do we have the Madison Cawthorne?

Let's do that one if we have it, because you just referenced it. That's the other Ashley St. Clair clip. Maybe we don't have that. No, yeah. Okay. Basically, she says she was in a car with him and she was working for Benny's firm at the time. And Madison said, you know, well, just be aware, like I have no control, you know, over my core, essentially, and then he was kind of like grabbing her thigh.

And, you know, other women have made allegations against Madison as well. Yeah, I don't know if you saw the Lauren Bobert viral clip about everyone being horny up on the hill. Did you see that one? Yes. That was about Eric Swallow. But it's true. There's just a lot of horn dogs around, I guess. All right, man.

Well, look, I think we could leave it there. It's been a good 45 minutes or so. I feel like that's an appropriate amount of Maga Monday. And I got other shit to do, right? Yeah, well, thanks, everyone for joining us. Yeah, let me, before we go, first of all, it's great to be back. I miss you guys, Miss Will specifically tremendously. And I really appreciate diving right back into it.

It's like a real jolt to be back into it doing Mega Mondays. If you like what you've watched, we need your support. Like, this is kind of, this is the game. We need subscribers. We need people to, you know, subscribe to us on YouTube, but also on Substack. Become the paid subscriber. Support the mission of the bulwark where we can do this stuff for you. It's really important that we get subscribers.

The other thing that I want to announce is that we are hitting the road again. Bork's going to go out west. I'm actually going to, I'm doing this. I'm going out west. I convinced my wife to let me do this. I'm going to go to San Diego. We're going to be in L.A. And there are tickets for next month's show that are available.

So if you are in and around San Diego or Los Angeles, you can get tickets for our May shows. Just go to the bulwark.com slash events. That's the bulwark. dot com slash events. I've done a couple of these shows. It's someone, I'm just laughing at the comments. Someone says,

Sam needs alo money. I do. I'm too red. I've done a couple of these shows. They're awesome. They're such a fun time. Great audience experience. We talk, take your questions,

a lot of interactions. It's going to be great. So if you're in the area, L.A. or San Diego, come get tickets. Theboolwork.com slash events. Will, thank you for doing this. everyone, thank you for tuning in. Sorry I'm so rad.

Talk to you next Monday for Maga Mondays. Thanks, everyone.