Bulwark Takes - The Spectacularly Stupid Collapse of MAGA’s Talarico Conspiracy | MAGA Mondays

Episode Date: October 12, 2026

MAGA thought it had a career-ending scandal on James Talarico. Instead, it got a spectacular humiliation. Sam Stein and Will Sommer break down how the conspiracy unraveled, including the full phone call obtained by The Bulwark that exposed the holes in the story. Plus, the federal raid on Ilhan Omar’s home, Pete Hegseth’s public execution plans, and the latest MAGA infighting.Ready to reach your goals? Visit https://hims.com/bulwarktakes to get personalized, affordable care for weight loss, hair loss, sex, testosterone, and more.

Hey, everyone. It's Mag Mondays. I'm with Will Summer. I am Sam Stein. I think everyone knows why they're here this morning. If you were on the internet last night, there was a big blow-up involving James Tolerico, allegations that he went to in his same asylum in Ohio of all places. It quickly fell apart.

Will got some audio, did some reporting with Andrew Eger, I should say, that punctured the holes in this story. It is outrageous. We're going to go through it piece by piece. piece by piece. And I hope, I hope dramatic fashion. I hope will, will indulge me and just like, I don't know, play it up a little bit. But before we get to that, I have a little bit of a scheduling and promotional announcement. I want to stress. So if you're tuning in on this and you're from the Georgia or nearby Georgia area, you should be ashamed of yourself. Get tickets to Atlanta. Our show there, the bulwark.com slash events. We're going to be there on October 20th. We have a three

stop fall tour. Columbia, South Carolina, Charlotte, North Carolina, Atlanta, Georgia. Guess what, folks? Columbia sold out. Charlotte sold out. Atlanta, we got, we're getting there. I will say people have responded to my pleas by buying tickets, but we are not yet at sold out capacity. So you have to run if you're in the Atlanta area. Get your tickets. Go to the bulwark.com slash events, October 20th in Atlanta. Okay, well, enough for that. So this is, I just, as we dive into the Tala RICO stuff, I am so excited for all we have to discuss today. This is going to be like the most Maga Monday episode ever. You know, even obviously the Tala Rico stuff's the headline, but we're going to get into

the guts of stuff. We're going to get into stuff that even I am like, what's going on here? It's kind of floating all over the place. So yeah, so, so yeah, just let's kick off on Tala rica. Yeah, I will just say we're going to talk Ilhan Omar as well. She, her house in D.C. was raided by DHS officials this morning. And we had a report a couple weeks ago about how Mark Brian Mullen was under severe pressure for Omega World to do that.

But we just have to start with Talleyico. So, okay, long and short of it, yesterday, mid-afternoon, people are freaking up because two conservative operatives posted audio that they say they obtained from a mental health institute in Hamilton, Ohio, or nearby, that involves some woman there mysteriously saying that, yeah, someone just named James Tullerica was discharged on Saturday. people were figuring out the entire Magosphere, this was under the assumption that this was a game changer that Tala Rica was basically had to drop out.

I was suspicious to say the least. Maybe because I've seen this happen before where they throw some shit against the wall, act like it's a huge deal, and then you just give a little bit of scuriny and falls apart, but it did fall apart. So we'll walk us through exactly where this came from first and foremost because it didn't just start yesterday,

and then we could talk a little bit about how it all fell apart. Yeah, so, you know, Tala Rico supposedly had the flu, He had been off the campaign trail for, I think, eight days when last Thursday... Technically nine. Go ahead. Well, I think he returned on day nine. But yes, on Thursday was eight. So...

I don't want to fact-check you this entire episode, well, okay. Okay, all right. I'll hang on one of you. I'm not so good with the numbers. So basically, on Thursday, Sarah Gonzalez at the blaze, and I think a couple people around the same time, these right-wing influencers, start saying, I'm hearing that Tala Rico, the reason he's been off the campaign trail is so shocking. It will end his career. I'm working on it. I'm wondering if anyone else can confirm

this shocking tale. And so this idea, and certainly this got my attention. I think a lot of people have been kind of ignoring, you are like, all right, I guess he's sick, whatever. And then this really kind of focused it, and this got the rumor mill bubbling. And then on- Wait, can I stop you for a second? I don't want to deviate too much. But I do wonder, like, you're, at some point, you must be a little bit jaded by this. Like, what is the metric it has to hit to get your attention, right? Because I saw it, I was like, okay. here we go again. It's getting close to the election. They're doing some bullshit. I mean, obviously, I was interested, but it wasn't like, I didn't suspect it was going to be a big deal.

Well, I was sort of curious. I mean, occasionally, I mean, you know, sometimes people, you know, there is a scandal or something. I always kind of get at least like, what's it going to be? You know, what's the shape of this going to be? And is there even going to be an attempt to prove anything, or is Sarah Gonzalez? Because I think also part of the trick here was this effort to suddenly say, like, we've got the big scoop coming that sort of like focused attention on it and got people suddenly thinking something nefarious or something was being hidden about Talleyco state. So this rumor mill kind of bubbles over the weekend, everyone's saying, you know, if what I'm hearing is true, like the race is over, Tala RICO will drop out, whatever. And then on Sunday, Nick Sortor,

long time right-wing operative influencer. You know, he was known for his Portland Ice stuff, also taking money to tweet in favor of the big soda lobby, which sort of exploded in his face. So this is the kind of guy we're dealing with, I guess is my point. He tweets, me and this guy named, yes, here we go. Well, so initially he said, let's take that down for a second. Because initially he said, me and Ryan Amaker, this guy I had never heard of. This is Will here speaking, not quoting Nick.

We have this big thing, and James Hilariko has until 1 p.m. to come out with it, or, you know, it's over for him. And so then 1 PM rolls around and now let's throw that tweet up. Thank you. And he says, Nick says, Breaking Exclusive Ohio Mental Hospital confirms James Talarico was discharged from the facility earlier this week. The flu thing was a big fat lie.

And so then he kind of goes on there. Oh, you know, it's too stressful being a senator. Talariko can't handle it. So let's take that down. But anyway, pull it back up for one second because there's a graph in there. While I sympathize with those dealing with mental health crises,

This man is clearly not suited to become a U.S. Senator. I feel like this part doesn't get appreciated and kind of bother me. Like, let's say he did have a mental health episode. Okay. Like, yeah, I mean, it's rough and I get it. But like, they were treating this as like a game changer. Tom Keene or whatever, Tim Keene or whatever the hell his name is in New Jersey was off for like four months from the campaign draft for mental health episode. And they're not, they don't give a shit about that.

John Federman had a stroke and was off the campaign trail. Now he's the bell of the ball for the right wing. So I always thought I just wanted to have a little aside. I feel like they were stigmatizing mental health issues. Not that it mattered because this really wasn't it. Now go ahead. Yeah, that's a fair point. I mean, they're acting like he's locked up in Arkham Asylum or something.

Like this was, you know, the idea that you could. Like eating his fingernails and shit. Yeah. The idea that like, you know, well, being a senator is just so difficult. You know, I mean, we saw Mitch Mitch McConnell obviously. disappeared for a month plus and is still a senator. And so, yeah, I mean, you're right on there. The other thing I would add just briefly as we dive into this is on Saturday,

there was a lot of focus about like flight logs and flight tracking because the backstory here is in 2023, this Lena Hidalgo, very prominent Houston Democrat, took mental leave. She was, you know, feeling suicidal, all this stuff. And she went to this mental health rehab in Ohio called the Lindner Center. And so basically, the Republican. Republicans now, cut to today, they're focused on like flights to Ohio. Oh, there was a private jet that went from Austin to essentially an airport outside of Cincinnati where this center is roughly located. And so they're saying, well, this is the jet. And so there's a lot of focus on this one particular Lindner Center. And so then Nick comes out with his audio. And he, just pause for a second. So because the audio, the decision to call the Lindner Center is sort of, is it really just they put the jet? Someone found a. jet flight and then the Hidalgo story from 2023 and they're like okay we think Tala rica was in

that plane and then went to the Lindner center that's right and yeah that's kind of why I needed to preface why they would be obsessed with this one place but there's no ties there's no democratic you know basically they believe this is kind of like the Democratic loony bin where if you're who pointed out the flight um now that might have been ticked I think Sarah Gonzalez at the Blaze was talking about it. There's this woman named Tickle who was like a prominent figure in this story. And basically, but there was just like a lot of talk about these flight logs. But again, this is, you know, it just strikes me like someone had to conjure up this idea that he left the state to go get mental health care.

You have to reverse, almost reverse engineer it. Like you have to come up with this idea that he had left the state. He didn't have the flu. He had left the state. All right. Why? Who knows? but like let's figure out how we can attach him to this place in Ohio.

Something's weird about this, obviously. I agree. I mean, I think there is sort of a just collective unconscious in the right wing media that like there's like a rumor bill. And I think someone, you know, someone from the Paxton, Paxton's office said, well, I heard from my friend that a doctor told her, it's how Eric goes in a straight jacket or whatever. And then you can see how that rumor might travel. So then this audio, it's very short clip. I think it's about 30 seconds. This Ryan Amaker guy who's like a much lower tier right wing influencer.

He says, he's on the call and he's talking to someone who's supposed to be a receptionist at this center. And he says, and basically the receptionist says, yeah, I guess he got discharged. This Talariko guy got discharged this evening. That's why I couldn't find any record of him. And so Ryan goes, so he got discharged. And she says, mm-hmm. And then he goes, fabulous. click.

Nick Sordor, get on the line. Yeah, so they published that audio. The right-wing internet goes crazy. Everyone is like, okay, Tala Rico's done. They have them dead to rights. And then it starts kind of falling apart pretty quickly. So people wonder, well, hold on a second. The dates don't quite line up.

That was the first kind of red flag, right? So in the audio, this person at the center says, yeah, I discharged him, what was it, like this afternoon or something like that? Yeah, this evening, yeah. This evening. So that, and Ryan had posted the call logs, which showed very clearly that he called them on Saturday. So what this lady was saying to him was, yeah, I discharged him this evening.

I, as in, I discharged him Saturday. Well, Tala Rica was in Texas on Friday, right? Yeah, so, I mean, right? Tala Rico had done sort of proof of life. He appeared at Austin City Limits on Friday. And then, also on Saturday, and then the next day on Saturday, he was at the Casey Musgraves concert. So the idea that he was discharged in the evening in Ohio didn't really make a lot of sense. Now, Ryan said, it made no sense.

Zero sense. Well, then he said, well, actually, like a lot of hospitals, sometimes the paperwork takes a while, like 24 hours to clear, which doesn't strike me as totally true. Now, we're going to enter a part of this story where we learn more about Ryan. And Ryan kind of rules because he was putting out a lot of his evidence, such as it is. And so you could do things like I did and say, hey, it seems like this call is weirdly short. Can you send me the whole call? And he said, oh, sure, why not? You know, and he sets it over.

I'm grateful. I'm grateful he did. Yeah, he's the man. I mean, but he also had posted initial calls he had made to try to like crack the, the, the, um, What are they, the sort of the human engineering of getting around this call system. Yeah, because you, just to be clear, you cannot reveal this is a HIPAA violation, obviously. You can't reveal patients who are there or when they're discharged or anything like that. So he had to sort of conjure up this lie that he was, what, a cousin?

Yeah, so initially he calls up and he either said he was his brother or his cousin. And they say, okay, great, well, what's your, what's the patient's PIN number so that you can, you know, you can show me you're authorized to have this information? And he goes, oh, hang up. And then he calls back later and he says, yeah, I'm a cousin. And he just makes up a PIN number. He says 2244. And so as we turn out, we find out once I got the full audio, basically the receptionist, there's a lot of her saying, Talariko?

No, no, no one has been here in this. It seems like there's kind of a specific list of like current patients. Okay, we have, we do have the call. Yeah. Well, actually, sorry, we have the old, let's do the earlier in the call so people can listen to it and they'll understand. it's another for James Talarico It looks Well

This is what it's today Looks like just this she was Just this jars this evening That's why I don't have it No no that's the old one That's got really one Yeah so this is the one that Who is this?

Oh my name's Tim I was turning to send a care package For my cousin But I think I Did I just talk to you like two minutes ago? Oh okay You have a code Yeah

Is it, it's 2244? Okay, what's the name? James Tellerico. I do not. Oh, he must have checked out then. I'm looking through my name, so let's just, let me double check. Okay. Okay, not there.

I do not see that name here. So maybe he's been discharged. Okay. Do you know what he got in? Do you know when he left? No, I don't. It's the last name is T-A-L-R-I-O. She has no evidence.

No, I don't have anyone by that name on my list. All right, we can stop it there. Yeah. So then ultimately she comes back and sort of says, again, the part that he played, which is ultimately sort of like, well, yeah, I guess he must have been discharged. And it's interesting, too, you can hear in that first call,

or the longer call, that he sort of incepts the idea that he was discharged. He says, oh, well, maybe he got discharged already. And, yeah, you know, so this idea clearly she's saying, no, no, no, he's not in the records. He's not in the records. He says, well, maybe he got discharged. And then at the end, she says, I guess he got discharged. Boom. Yeah, let's play that one.

So this is the one they actually did release. It's the 47 second one. So eventually he gets around to more or less persuading this woman that, in fact, his cousin was there, even though she doesn't have him in the system. And yeah, he must have been released. So let's play that. It's another for James Tilarico? Yes, it looks, well,

this is what it's today. It looks like she was just discharged this evening. That's why I don't have it. Oh, he was discharged then? Mm-hmm. Okay. And this is the Hope. They should be.

Okay. I'm sorry. This is, and let me try right, but this is Hope Linder. Yes, uh-huh. Okay. And you're in Hamilton, Ohio? No, we're not in Hamilton.

Oh. We're in Mason. Okay. So that's why he's done a system. He's been recent. Okay. All right. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you. Bye. Yeah, I mean, she's not exactly confident here. She said four or five times. We don't have them in the season. And then at some point she says she called Del Rico, she. Yeah.

So this is like these things where, if you were trying to nail this down, you might say, That was interesting. I guess they did say at one point he was discharged. Let's do a little more reporting. Instead, just throw it online. Yeah, well, they did give him until one o'clock to respond. Very public badgering. This is ridiculous.

Obviously, an outlet with any sort of institutional guardrails or editorial oversight would have been like, this is not enough. Well, and indeed, according to Rain, Ryan, whatever, the Daily Mail and the Blaze did turn it down. And so there's kind of like a funny side story here, which is that for several hours, Ryan was on this Twitter space with like a bunch of his like ideological cohorts.

And just like, he tweeted, you know, at one point he was like, I hit a home run first try. Ryan number one, baby. And so he's just accepting their plotts as this story is collapsing. And so at some point he's, you know, he's kind of just laying all this stuff out. Oh yeah.

The Blaze wanted it or didn't want it. The Daily Mail said it. They didn't want it. They didn't. And then he says, so I gave it to an influencer because they have lower standards. So he's laying this stuff all out. Yeah. So basically, just to recap, and then we're going to get to that Twitter spaces because it was pretty funny.

These two guys are convinced that through, because of flight logs and some weird history from 23 and that the fact that James Tellerick had been off the truck for nine days, that he actually had gone from Texas to Ohio, rather than any mental health facility in the state of Texas or even just seeing one at his home, he decided to leave the campaign trail secretively, get on a private plane, go to Ohio, check himself into this random center just because someone from Texas had done that three years ago, then secretly leave, leave, get back, lie about it all. and they found it out and they were going to end his campaign because they got on the phone with someone who had denied that he was there four times in a row and then finally was like, oh, yeah, we let him out last night. After two other conservative outlets said, actually this doesn't really quite pass the smell test. All right.

That's what we're dealing with here, which is not great. They then, I mean, it just starts falling apart so quickly. And I think a real important part of this story is how they kind of, move the goalposts very rapidly around whether or not it mattered, right? I mean, they literally were like, well, you know, he may not have gone there, but, you know, the fact that he did leave the campaign trail for nine days is problematic and so right. I don't know why.

The other one was, well, he said he had gone to his emergency care for the flu, but he actually saw a primary care physician, so he lied. which is like who gives a shit and then this one from the Twitter space is where they are talking about I don't know who grant who's Grant Cardone oh my god this is one of the most iconic characters in maga maga I haven't a chance to write about him he's a very prominent Scientologist big Scientology donor he um is facing numerous lawsuits over his business practices uh and he's a really rich guy in Florida and um but basically he popped into the Twitter space uh to say I'm excited he Oh, you're excited.

This Twitter space was like the school of Athens. All kinds of people were coming through and sharing their ideas, their beliefs. Give me some highlights. Give me some of the highlights before we get to Grant. Well, so there were a couple. So there were a couple reporters who were critical of this story, Tony Ortiz at Current Revolt and Jesse Singel, who were just asking like the most basic questions. They're like, okay, so Saturday is the day that comes after Friday in the week.

How do you explain this timeline? And then there would be people just going nuts on them, just saying, I bet, oh, you want that Talafriko in the Senate? Like, it was all these kind of these like, don't you think Ken Baxter would be a better candidate? There are also, I should say, there was this woman named Tickle. And this, I'm tickled by Tickle. Who is this person? Will, we lost your volume. Excuse me.

So Tickle, I got so excited about Tickle. So Tickle has been kind of like a side character in this whole story who claims. like she's the original inventor of the insane asylum theory. And so she's saying, well, whatever, Nick Sotor ripped me off or whatever. And so her, she has an AI generated picture of like a very lovely red-haired woman, probably in her 20s. And she claimed, and then people were like, wait, this is AI generated. How can we trust you? And she said, well, I do it to cover up my radiation scars. And then, I mean, to cut to the point, tickle is much, is like much older than that. So basically, but she's also like British, as was revealed on the Twitter space.

And so she's saying like, Oi, Calerico, you know, he skipped the state of Texas. So she's just a very untrust-ready character. Oy, oy! You always do that when you try to do British. Oy! It's all right. Will's got it. Will's clear in his throat, folks.

All right, let's get, it's okay. Let's get to this Twitter spaces, which seems insane to me. And it's one moment where Grant Cardone is talking about the story. and basically dismissing whether it even matters if he was there. Let's play the audio. Thanks for breaking the story. Whether it's true or not, people deserve to know the potential of this. What do you mean whether it's true or not?

Doesn't it matter? It is true because Ryan. Is that the end? Yeah. Whether it's true or not, who cares? This is such a funny space because, like, you have. had Ryan like incriminating himself in like federal felonies just like over and over. And then you had Grant Cardone being like, great job, young man.

Don't let him get you down. And then you had tickle. And then you have people like Tony Ortiz there saying, what do you mean whether it's true or not? And then people would just be like, mute him, mute him. I'm really upset. I missed this. That would have been so fun. And then someone said it with Jesse Singles said, hey, so is this being recorded?

Like, are you going to share a copy of this? And the guy's like, absolutely not. No one record this. Well, someone recorded. It's out there. I might just have to go and listen to it. All right. Well, it got to a point where, and this is prior to the Twitter spaces, I believe,

where the Linder Center Hope had to put out a tweet explaining that Tala Rico was not there. There it is. Representative James Tala Rico has never received treatment from Linder Center of Hope. We don't have the asset here, but Megan Kelly was like not. She just couldn't let go. She's like, when you said, never said, she was like, well, never received treatment doesn't mean he wasn't there. And she's like, can you put the person on who this poor receptionist who like was badgered

into saying he was discharged? Can you put her up in public and just have her take questions? Oh, yeah, that seems like a freaking good idea, this poor woman. Well, and, you know, this is something I run into a lot with these conspiracy theories. Like, I ran into this with comment ping pong where people suddenly are saying like they kind of, they brew over this. And then suddenly they're like, well, let's call them. Hey, hey, you got a sex dungeon in there.

Like, hey, you got Tala Rico in there. And, like, the place has caught really flat-footed. Because obviously, they don't have, like, a media strategy for dealing with these maniacs. And so it took, you know, till the relatively evening. I mean, they initially said, you know, we don't confirm or deny whether we have patient, which, you know. Our Andrew, Iger called them. And they were like, we would never confirm or deny if we have a patient here. And obviously, ultimately, they spoke to Tala Rico and he said, like, please do this, I would

assume. And, you know, now this is kind of the hot new cope, is that they are now saying, like, as of, as we were starting this filming, they're now saying, well, okay, the Linder Center for Hope, yes. But technically, their business registration is, like, Lindner Center for Hope 301 LLC. So he may have received treatment from the LLC because the true, it's almost like a sovereign citizen thing. The true corporation does not exist or blah, blah, blah. I cannot. You once told me that, I think I asked you, like, What's the best way, scientifically, according to literature, to get a conspiracy theorist,

or maybe it was a Q&N believer to, like, stop believing? And do you remember what you told me the answer? No. Change the subject. Yes, exactly. That's this. These people, they will, I mean, I don't think you're going to dissuade them. They'll find another reason to think that this is all just some of ruse, some cover-up.

And then, you know, maybe it wasn't the Linder Center for Hope. It was the Center for Linder. Hope or something. Well, in the, oh, well, you know, at minimum, you know, Tala Rico's too sick to be senator or what have you. You know, there's all these urgent care. No, he said primary care. Yes.

Arrest him. A couple, two things I want to hit before we move on. One is Nick Sortor promises more videos to come. Tickle says she or Tickle says she has some videos to drop. So this is really reminds me of a James O'Keefe operation in that like after it initially flops, people go, but there's, there's actually more. We're actually saving the way bigger one for later. It's like, well, why wouldn't you do that initially if you had that?

And speaking of James O'Kee, there have been a lot of, like, Project Veritas people who obviously got a lot of legal training and undercover operations. And they have been tweeting, they're like, yeah, this is not good. You don't, you should not call a place. And this is like a federal crime. We would not have done this. When Project Veritas is like, look, we've been there. They're like, this is an amateur operation. Let's try it.

Let the big boys take over. All right, we're going to end this. but before we do, we're going to go a quick commercial break, but before we do, we do have the tickle photos side by side. Yeah, so this is tickle. And, you know, folks may also note Ryan is in a very similar position, you know, just the similar kind of profile pick. That is not, that's not the same person.

It's not even. But I, you know, she might have her reasons, and I'm not going to, you know, hit her for that, but that's misleading. All right, let's take a quick commercial break. On the flip side, we are going to talk about Ilhan Omar, but we got to rush through because we have, five or six other topics we need to get to quickly yeah we got we got a lot all right quickly quick

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to let this go to ways. Yeah, I was like, I just spent some money on this and it's just staring at me. And yeah, there's a bite mark there, but if I eat it from the other ends, I'll be okay. Well, I just, I devoured some pizza this week. I'm not feeling great. I got to get my hymns going. All right, Ilhan Omar. So basic news here and then we'll get to sort of why matters. Well, matters for the news, obviously, but we're going to get to the MAGA implications here. Federal agents searched her D.C. home this morning. It's part of a criminal investigation that's according to the Associated Press. Justice Department said in a statement that HSI agents, that's Homeland Security Investigative Unit, I believe, executed a judicially authorized search warrant.

Secured by the Department in Washington, D.C. They didn't provide any other details. Oh, yeah. Homeland Security Investigations is the HSI. Anyway, there's one obvious, there's a couple obvious points here. One is she's long been to target. Laura Lumer was the first to break the news. Shocking, not shocking.

DOJ does have a policy, a longstanding policy that they will not take any actions like this 60 days before an election. She is a candidate for office, as is everyone who's running for house every two years. they did this clearly within the 60-day time frame. So that's, you know, something of no, just another norm that's just tossed. But I've initially bought back to your piece three weeks ago. So Mark Wade Mullen, head of Homeland Security, he's under some real pressure,

or was under some real pressure from Baghdad because of some lame answer he gave to Betty Johnson about why Illinois had been deported yet. He didn't investigate yet, deported yet. So why don't you bring us back? Yeah, so, right, this was at the RNC. And basically, the, Benny had said, hey, when are you guys going to finally deport Ilhan Omar for marrying her brother?

And there was a, this is kind of been bubbling along. J.D. Vance had been asked about this. Tom Homan was asked about it, I guess, later. And Markman-Mullin said, oh, yeah, we're looking at her. That's true. She did marry her brother. And then there was no action. So a lot of people were mad at Markman-Mollin.

You know, obviously they were calling you Markway Muslim, all that kind of stuff. And then so one wonders. you know, now this happens, right? Is it a coincidence? I don't think so. I don't think so. I really don't. Although, I will know, this isn't,

how did you know it's not about the brother? You said it was about her. Yeah, so Fox News reported this. And just an interesting note here, you mentioned Laura Lumerhead at first. The Fox News reporter on this was Peter DiBroska, who is like a relatively lesser known right-wing critter, I guess is how I describe him from the first Trump administration,

very tight with Laura. But basically, if I were to leave, leak information that was more aimed at like really making my base happy. I would give it to Peter Diabroska rather than. Why? Well, because he's just like one of these guys who's like very drenched in like the right wing alt-right internet. And so I think it was interesting that he got it first.

With that said, in the Fox News story, and maybe in some of the others, I know AP has this now, that this is actually not about the brother. It's about immigration paperwork, Omar's father, who's now dead. filled out when they were immigrating to the United States when Omar, I think, was 12. So this is like about like some kind of discrepancy in the paperwork. One imagines it could even be like a typo or something. And that is like the real origin of this. Now, why that would necessitate a raid on her house?

You know, it strikes me as it doesn't seem exactly that credible. No. I mean, I think this is, you know, if I had to guess, it's Mark Wen Mullen trying to like diminish the heat that he's facing around this stuff. They also just, these guys are kind of ham-fisted about it, right? Like, they probably think this is going to be a good election issue for them. If they can just get the attention on Ilhan Omar and put her in the spotlight and make every Democrat answer for her and make her the face of the party.

But you look like, I don't know, you look sort of fiscistic if you do that by sending agents into her home. So there's that risk. I'll just note, as of now, it's like 10.30 a.m. So it's not that lay. but Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader, has not commented on this. I'm curious what he will say. But yeah, we'll be monitoring that one. We have a lot of other stuff to get to this.

So we're going to move on quickly. All right. The live streamed execution of the Fort Hood shooter. Yes. So this one was kind of previewed by Heggseth, who seemed to have like, being your orgasming over it. To be the Jack Kosovic initially. Yeah, he was in a, in a,

state of bliss when he was talking about it. Let's just be real. But not everyone seems to share that fetish that Hexas does for killing people in public. Even Donald Trump seems to be a little bit queasy about it. Yeah, I mean, I think we're facing sort of a Republican congressional revolt. We've seen a lot of congressional Republicans in the Senate and the House say, oh, geez, you know, this guy's just definitely die and I'm cool with the firing squad, I guess, but I don't think we need to live stream it. And now Trump, you know, Trump says it'll happen. So I guess it will. But, but, I mean, even among Republicans, there's this effort to kind of distance themselves from it. Yeah, like, like Hymns is works for, you know, sex and erectile dysfunction for most men.

That's what public executions are for Pete Egg Seth. That's his hymns. I wonder, you know, I imagine, I assume this was thought out beforehand, but it did kind of seem like a thing where he's telling Pesobic like, it'll be a firing squad. And he's like, in his head like, yeah, what the hell? Let's say we're live streaming it. Because it just seems so crazy with the election coming up to be like, also, we're the party of public executions. Yeah. And like, if you go online and everyone's in the MAGA world is like, yeah, George Washington was for public executions. You know, it's like, yeah, they didn't fucking have live streaming technology back in 1776, man.

Like, it wasn't broadcast for little children to see on the internet, right? Like, but this isn't this isn't that complicated. Yeah, but Trump apparently is not into it. J.D. Vance, I should know. Also is like, I don't know. Like, I'm probably not going to watch that. What a wist. Come on, J.D. What a wuss. It's very like, I guess just like at a visceral level, it's kind of strike. I mean, we're going to, they're going to do that. That's crazy. Like, you know, are you like signing into Zoom? Like, you're like, oh, I can't wait. Well, I believe, you know, who's going to broadcast it. I think Nick Sortor said he's going to broadcast it. He said, he said, I, I, if. If no one else will do it, I vowed to post it on my ex-account. Oh, thank God for Nick Sordor. I thought you're going to say Trump TV. I mean, they need some content. Well, that's true.

It would be certainly the most viewers. I mean, I think it's, I guess we'll see if they end up doing it. But it seems like another mess. My guess is they pull, they don't do it. I think enough people are like, this is actually kind of gross and makes me uncomfortable. And, you know, these freaks online who think it's cool, they're freaks. But I don't know. Hakeseth really seems into it.

So we'll see. He kind of put himself out there. So it also seems like HECSeth announced it without kind of clearing it, right? Like that's pretty, that's a big fuck up if I were, if I were the defense secretary wouldn't have done that. All right. We're plowing through here. TPSA. Yes, this is interesting.

So last week. Is this the one Benny went to? No. So Benny, look, Benny is that all of them. Don't, don't. Hey, hey. Don't worry about Betty. He's getting the invite. But basically, Turning Point USA, their big annual conference, I believe is in December, America Fest. This is like, you know, where it's going down. This is where the influencers are hooking up in the lobby. This is the one you can't miss. Right. And so they announced the new lineup. People may remember the one last year, which was obviously three months after the Charlie Kirk assassination, was consumed with drama over Candace Owens' conspiracy theories and just kind of broader discontent over Israel. So you had Tucker Carlson, Megan Kelly versus Ben Shapiro.

And it kind of derailed the whole conference. So it was interesting to me. And so much of the, even the pre-Charlie Kirk, like the stuff about what Charlie Kirk was up to before his death was, will Tucker be invited to America Fest? The Jewish donors are mad about it. So it was interesting to me that at least the initial speakers lineup does not include. Let's put it up. Let's put it.

Yeah. Let's throw the bad boy up. All right. Here we go. So it does not include Ben Shapiro or Megan Kelly or Tucker. Parker Carlson. You know, you've got some care, you know, we got James O'Keefe. We got Jesse Waters.

We got Alex Clark, the Maha Lady. And, you know, to your point, we have Benny Johnson. So, now we have Jeremy Boring, who was kind of a Ben Shapiro friend turned enemy, you know, not enemies to lovers, but, you know, friends to enemies. And, you know, so we got kind of off-brand Nick Fuentes

there in John Doyle. He's kind of like the school safe, peanut-free Nick Fuentes. Who's your dark horse for one best speak like the most wild speaker on this list here they're all kind of classics yeah there yeah we got stebanon it's kind of i guess like if they were trying to purge it's interesting to me that spencer pratt and brandon gill are so high up on the lineup they're in the second row uh whereas beny ben carson uh third we got nick shirley that really is kind of a mark of nick shirley's

prominence. Matt Gates slum it in the fourth row with Emily Austin of Illinois, he's no longer in Congress. He's just a lowly TV guy. Who's that guy at the bottom? Matt Shaw, can you explain who that is?

Yeah, I think he's a representative. No, it says professional athlete. I think he's a football player. Yeah, once you get down here, it kind of like, I think Kristen Hawkins is kind of like a Christian wife influencer. Matt Shaw's on the Cubs.

Hold on. Matt Shaw Cubs. Yeah. What's he doing there? Yeah. The John Doyle one, you know, they call him John Goyle, like a Goy, you know, because he's so, you know, such a controversial figure. That's kind of funny, I guess. Matt Shaw among featured speaker at a conservative political event later this year. Cubs Utility Man, Matt Shaw's listed among the featured speakers as a conservative political event in December. Wow. So weird. So it seems like they purged a lot of controversy.

Like a lot of the idea. Oh, Shaw went, Shaw went to the Charlie Kirk Memorial Service. He left his team last September to do it. He'd become friends with Kirk. The two lived in the same apartment complex in Arizona, so that might be why. Okay, he's a Kirk friend. Interesting. Okay.

So, yeah. So, you know, there's kind of this sense of, like, who would triumph? A big deal if someone gets disdited from America Fest. But it seems like their response was like, look, neither the Ben Shapiro faction nor the Tucker. Yeah, just don't, let's just not deal with it. The Spencer Pratt thing is the most interesting. one to me. Spencer Brad,

by the way, big Talarico asylum booster. Yeah, he was like, I'm hearing the craziest stuff. Yeah, I mean,

Spencer Pratt basically, obviously we all knew this to be true when he was running for L.A. Mayor, the veils are off, right? Like,

he's obviously just a mega wacko. He wanted to present as an independent, but that was not the case. Okay. So, that's, but so if that's not the one

that Benny was at, because there was a great, there was one, well, I think Ben, Dancing. What was that? Yeah, I think that Benny clip is old.

The one of him, of him dancing around in a left can't meme shirt with pyrotechnics. And people were saying, you know, it's the straightest man in America or whatever. Do we have that big? Let's get the video ready. Let's just watch it anyway. They might not have it. Matt, do we have it? Can you let us know?

He does not have it. All right. While we talk, we're going to tease this. Let's get the video. I'm distraught. That thing was almost as viral as the James Taylor. Rico story. People just dunking on Benny's dancing and it was fun.

But that's really upsetting to know that that didn't happen. Well, it happened in the real life. In real life, yeah. Okay. Okay. Do you think these guys like ever get tired of doing the same circuit, the speaking circuit? Like, oh, man, we

just saw each other like three months ago. Not when it's, I mean, America Fest is the fun one though. You know, you can do all these others, but America Fest is it's not like Freedom Fest where your buddy, uh, buddy from the Kim Gilfoyle story,

whatever thing he was putting on, you know, uh, by the way, I mean, iconic video if people haven't seen it. Yeah. Yeah,

why is Dieter's not in that? Yeah, what did they put Dieter's on? I would, I would, I would, I would absolutely, bank roll.

That guy was the man. I got more people hitting me up by the Deeters interview from weird parts of my life than I could possibly imagine. Like old college buddies who I haven't spoken to in five years were like, yo, just saw that weird interview. What's that guy on? I don't know.

This is natural state of being. All right, we do have the Benny video now. This was not over the weekend. Everyone acted like something had happened. The reason everyone acted like something had happened because there's so many of these conferences and they all feature the same exact 15 people, they're like, oh, yeah.

And they all have like power with techniques and walk out music and it's the same speeches over and over. It's like, are you not bored of the same shit? Like, I'm going on tour with a bunch of board people, including you. I'm bored. We do that. No, I'm joking. It's great.

Anyway, but this is boring. And here is this video went ricocheting around the internet. And let's just watch it for some giggles. Oh, man. What up turning point. I think Benny's kind of on like, we're in a new like Benny era now. That was what taught me that, you know, convinced me that it wasn't for. him this weekend because Benny now would appear, you know, he's like dad maxing.

He's kind of like, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know. Kind of being confronted by what's his fate, but Crawley or Patrick Crawley or whatever his name? Yeah, I think after all these people are like, hey, Benny, you're gay, right? Like, I feel like he's not popping up anymore being like, hello. Wait up.

All right. Moving on. A lot of happening in Ohio, by the way. not just people go into mental health facilities. There's a governor's race there involving Vivek Ramaswami and the Groypers. As we knew, we knew this. But, yeah, Nick Fuentes does not like Vivek. I wonder why.

Anyways, Nick Fuentes endorsed the Democrat in the race, Amy Acton, and encouraged all the Groypers to go and vote very quickly for Amy Acton. I don't know if I'd want that in my coalition. Sometimes the tent's a little too big. You know, maybe cut the tent off a little bit quickly. But what's going on? Yeah, I mean, it is sort of, they've been kind of pushing this for a little bit, but I think it's back of the news as the election approaches.

They've been, Nick Fuentes has been attacking Vivek. I mean, they obviously, they don't like him because he's Indian, but also I think they don't like him because he has this kind of, he's made some remarks about sort of like, you know, traditional Americans or, you know, being being lazy or what have you, and he's bringing kind of like a vitality. And so that makes them mad. And so they've really been latching on to Amy Acton. They were posting like, oh, how hot is she?

she got she's got me amy actin up uh no early yeah here's really tweet yep he says early voting has begun in ohio vote amy acton for governor so i mean ultimately i don't know is this worth 30 votes you know it i don't think it's going to sway the election but i think it's nevertheless you think it's only worth 30 votes maybe maybe i mean i think it probably depresses some voters you know too getting more you think absolutely yeah more than that i mean i don't want to think it's that much much more, but I think it's, I don't think it's insignificant. Yeah. I mean, it's very depressing.

Yeah. Has Amy Acton said anything? Or she's just being like, oh. Well, you know, this is the thing. There was something a little fallacious going around. There was this idea that, because her Twitter pick, it kind of looks like griper. Because it's, you know. No.

What? So she's sitting here kind of like this. Is that the frog? Like, basically, she's, for folks who are listening, she's like kind of tenting her hands under her chin. and kind of like one of the original Groyper pictures is of course this obese toad doing that, the same thing.

And so people were saying, she's signaling to the Groyper's, you know, she's changed it, but in fact she's had it for a couple months. I think you said fallacious. Did you mean salacious or did you mean fallacio? Well, I think fallacious means like false, right? It does it? I'm looking it up.

How do you spell it? F-A-L-C-I-O-U-S. Oh, fallacious. I thought you said fallacious. I know. It was kind of a $10 word. You know, the longer, longer words gives me a little more time to think of what I'm going to say next. Okay, okay. You're very, very big word there, well. They said salacious. Well, it was salacious, too, because the idea that, you know, she signalling to her. The comments are wondering exactly what was going on there. That's why I was going with this.

Someone's fallacious. All right. Moving on. Unless you have anything more to say. No, I think that's about it on that one, yeah. Okay, fine. But she did not change it to the Groyper picture, as funny as that might be. Okay, yeah, it would not be funny, actually. Draco Malfoy, what the fuck? Yeah, all right, folks. Put your waiters on.

We're going in deep water here. So over the weekend, a lot of right-wing Twitter was delighted by the concept of a female Draco Malfoy that they called Malfoy. Now, folks may remember from clavicular time that often people in the kind of manosphere called women call women femoids and they shorten this to foids. Oh my God, I'm already fucking lost. So if you imagine instead of Malfoy, they call it, they call female Draco Malfoy Malfoyd. And so they started doing this, these AI generated videos of like female Draco Malfoy

falling in love with Harry. And the idea was like, this is the kind of like, what if Draco Malfoy was a girl and also like my trad wife? And there were hundreds of thousands. I'm not kidding, hundreds of thousands of tweets about this. And they were writing fan fiction, all this stuff. And then there was, can we throw up the one tweet? We have a couple tweets, I think.

I'm so lost. What the fuck? Okay. So we have this guy who's a science fiction writer. And so he's reacting to a New Yorker poem by Anne Carson, who just won the Nobel Prize and literature. And he posts a picture of female Draco, Malfoy, aka Malfoyd. And he says there are about two dozen people who blew it out of the water with their Malfoyd fan fiction.

and each of them not only deserved the Nobel Prize more, but also contributed more to humanity than both of these and Carson poems combined. Well, I honestly couldn't follow any of that. Really? Yeah. Their right-wing Twitter is getting into imagining that Draco Malfoy was a girl. They call her Malfoyd, and they want to marry her.

Okay. Whatever floats their boat? That's a weird one. Okay. I don't know. We have one or two more, but I feel like we've done well. Let me hit you with one more.

Let's do the Groyper Employment Agency. Oh, my gosh. This is a funny one. So, you know, a lot of these right-wing Twitter guys, they're like, I can't find love, you know, I can't find love because I'm on, I can't marry Malfoyd because I'm unemployed. And so for a few weeks now,

this popular Twitter username, Fugitive Caesar, has been saying, you know, I have connections with government, with companies. and they'll hire, like, right-wing white guys. And so I'd like, which, by the way, not exactly legal, to say you're specifically looking for white guys.

But basically, I will connect you. And then the Groybirds got mad, and they basically believed, because a lot of this thing was like, I'll put you on an oil rig stuff. It was like, no, we want cushy office jobs. So people started messing with this guy. And this one guy messaged him and basically was trying to hire people for a drug cartel. And he said, I'll hire people to go from it was like Cinello. to Guinea Bissot, these like drug, drug trafficking hotspots.

And he's like, discretion is necessary. And the guy's like, okay, awesome, awesome. And he's like really buying into it. And he's like, and what's the pay? Oh, that's great pay. And he's like, yeah, my boss is in the Albanian mafia. And the guy's like, that's fine, that's fine. That's all good.

And finally, he's just like, and of course, like, you'll be killed if you betray us. And he's like, wait a minute. Like, is this. So the idea of being that this guy is. Can we put up the, we should have the screen grabs. Yeah. Oh, it's too hard to see. Scree a bit.

Broiper. I'll just read the table. he says, I was able to convince Fugitive Caesar to post a job offering from maritime work going from Panama to Guinea-Bissau, two well-known narco states. And he only caught on when I'd made it obvious. The guy isn't doing his due diligence and he's going to get someone killed. So then people just started posting all these pictures of like working my janitor job. Thank you, Fugitive Caesar, working in a mine. So it was a funny little bit.

Oh, and then just briefly, he then posted, someone connect me with Bronze Age Part So I can make this thing way bigger. And then Bronze Age Pervert was like, I don't know you, bro. There's got to be competitive. Just like the names itself. Fugitive Caesar and Bronze Age Perth. You guys are lucky the Tala Rico thing happened because otherwise we were going to do 30 minutes on Malfoy than this. I like this one better than Draco Malfoy.

The names are kind of hilarious. Do you think they like, there's got to be some like AI gen. We should, you know what we should do? We should create an ad, like a little AI generator bot for MAGA Twitter handles, like come up with the most ridiculous but probably conceivable. Yeah. Malfoyd Orelius or something like that. Malfoyd-Eleus, 69.

So you got to like send it. Yeah. Oh my God. All right. Well, folks, we don't do this because we love it. We do this because Will worships it. and this is his religion. Yes, this is Will's religion.

He was bathed in his. All right, buddy, this has been real. The Tala Rico story was the best, but a bunch of the stuff. We do have one last thing. I don't think we have video of her singing. I wish we probably should have pulled it. I don't know if we could, but apparently our favorite country music sensation, Alexis Wilkins, did get a big gig.

She performed the National Anthem at the Colts Steelers game. I did not tune in for it. Did you? No, I'm getting hammered in the Bullwark, the league. So I'm struggling to maintain my interest in the NFL. Yes. I'm not in that league. My colleagues have been mistreating me.

And so, but yeah, I mean, for our point here, I mean, Cash Patel's now fiancé, country music sensational Alexis Wilkins. Look, before she was doing these like off-brand wrestling matches, famously Cash flew to college, state college, Pennsylvania. you know but now i mean look she's singing at the nfl i wonder maybe there's like some kind of like social media metrics they're watching and they're like everyone's talking about this singer

alexis wilkins we got a booker or maybe cash was like look i'm going to investigate your look your finances are all dirty we're sending the feds in my girlfriend is available yeah the cults uh i think you violated the salary cap illegally and i'm going to put the feds on it unless Alexis Wilkins can get the, okay, fine, we'll give her that. Well, congrats to Alexis Wilkins. She is moving up, really proud of her. And if she ever wants to come on and perform for an edition of a Maga Monday. She could absolutely.

Yeah, I would absolutely do that. Lexus, if you're there, look, this is how we got Eric Dieters. We just asked, we said, hey, Eric, if you're around and listen to this report in the spy live stream, just come on. Then he reached out, and that was that. So, Alexis, if you're listening, please do come on. All right. Well, thanks a bunch, buddy.

You're off the hook for a newsletter tonight because you wrote an emergency one last night on that whole fiasco involving Tallarico. People can check it out, though, on Substack. It's great. By the way, we have a 30% off deal going on on Substack right now. You go in, you get the deal. You get 30% off at the bulwark.com slash surprise, 30% off for the full year if you do it now. The deal is not going to be unlimited. So you got it only a couple days to get it done.

And then a reminder to the good folks of Atlanta and Georgia. Just do it. The blog.com slash events. Buy the tickets. You're not going to regret it. It's a great show, actually. We got a huge, huge, huge amount of people coming to that one. Specifically, I'm going to pull it up.

Andrew Eger, Bill Crystal, Mark Hurtling, and Dr. Mimi from Bravo's Married to Medicine. Well, you got to be jealous about that one. Along with me, Tim, Sarah, and JVO, we will all be in. in Atlanta on the 20th, you all should come and get your tickets. It's at the Eastern October 20th in Atlanta. Hopefully we can see you there. Will, thanks a bunch, buddy, for your service.

I didn't know it was an option to get someone from Bravo. We could have gotten someone from Southern Charm for our Columbia show. But, you know, whatever. It's not too late. It's not too late, dude. I thought you're going to do like the Mormon wives one or whatever was, which is your favorite. Well, they're in Charleston. You know, they're close by in Southern Charms.

So Southern Charming, good point. But they'll come from. from they'll probably be in the audience i'm probably the whole whole gang coming i'm sure all right everyone thanks a bunch talk to you later see you on monday peace