It Could Happen Here - Florida’s Groyper Candidate for Governor

Episode Date: February 25, 2026

Garrison and James discuss the candidacy of James Fishback, his attempted rise through the New-Right, and how he’s using Nick Fuentes’ groyper fanbase to win the governor's race in Florida. Sources: https://x.com/j_fishback/status/2010445520595210449?s=20  https://x.com/j_fishback/status/1999836956654555541?s=20 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/polls/florida-governor-election-polls-2026.html https://x.com/j_fishback/status/2020585607702126836?s=20 https://www.jta.org/2026/02/10/politics/floridas-anti-israel-gop-candidate-james-fishback-is-railing-against-goyslop-what-is-he-talking-about https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/florida-school-gop-james-fishback-sexual-misconduct-allegations-rcna249963  https://floridapolitics.com/archives/768484-woman-says-james-fishback-dated-her-while-she-was-underage-then-harassed-her-after-breakup/  https://www.meteorwriting.com/post/james-fishback-says-florida-is-not-an-economic-zone-can-this-message-take-him-to-the-governor-s-sea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vtjidiZRTg https://x.com/emmawrightFL/status/2020643537075741085?s=20  https://bsky.app/profile/rightwingwatch.bsky.social/post/3m7q23qzp2c2e  https://floridapolitics.com/archives/781214-james-fishback-mingles-with-heil-hitler-influencers-during-miami-campaign-swing/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FE5vSbx-UbQ&t=2039s https://x.com/IAPolls2022/status/2026281095826690217?s=20 https://x.com/ByronDonalds/status/2025276128815185977?s=20See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to the A-building on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AllZone Media. Welcome to It Could Happen here. I'm Garrison Davis, joined by James Stout. Hello. Hi, Gah. What are we learning about today?

We are going to be learning about a man named James Fishback. Okay, good first name. Oh, yeah. I wanted to get someone kind of unbiased, but I now understand that you might be, might be just kind of, you know, drawn, drawn to him. Yeah, I've come here to defend the James name. I don't think that defense will last very long. Okay. James Fishback is a former hedge fund analyst who's been worming his way into the political world of the new right during the past two to three years.

Yeah, I'm giving up on that one already. got no interest in defending this guy. If you're active on, you know, any kind of political feeds, whether that's, you know, short, short form video, Blue Sky, Twitter, you've probably seen a video or two of James Fishback. But this episode, we're going to dive a little bit more into his background and his current political activities, which includes some things you probably haven't heard before.

So James Fishback has tried to attach himself to a lot of, you know, various aspects of the new right. He attempted to attach himself to the presidential campaign of Vivek Ramoswami back in the oldy days. Okay. Yeah. Remember when.

But he did so just by like showing up at campaign staff events. He wasn't a staffer. Like he just kept like appearing. He asked to like stay overnight at a hotel that the staff was all staying at for this campaign event in Florida and tried to build a personal rapport

with Vavec over a few months. And eventually, Fishback, Outstate is welcome. He then pivoted to becoming what I would call a D-tier right-wing commentator and an advocate of Doge. In 2025, Fishback was a frequent guest on, like, news networks, CNN, Fox, and others, speaking as a quote-unquote Doge advisor. Huh. A role that he never officially had. Great. Never actually work with Doge.

His quote-unquote advising was through adding. Elon Musk on Twitter with random suggestions. Just, yeah. He's literally in their comments online. Correct. Yeah. His Doge claim to fame is that he came up with this idea

of the Doge dividend, which is like a stimulus-type check that the government would send to people based on the savings that they found or created through slashing government agencies. Cool. So that was his idea that he added Elon Musk about and this idea gained some traction

and this kind of boosted his image as a quote-unquote Doge advisor and it helped him trick news agencies into boosting his public profile by associating him with Doge. Eventually, this led to Doge official Katie Miller, wife of Stephen Miller, having to clarify in July of 2025 that Fishback was not involved with Doge in any way. But he got a lot of traction off of this Doge advisor thing. Right.

back when Ramoswamy left Doge. Oh, yeah, I'd forgotten that he did. Wow, how time flies. Before the inauguration, because he was planning on, and is planning on running for governor of Ohio, Fishback tried to put his name in as like a, hey, all become the co-chair of Doge, Elon, since my pal Ramoswamy is going to be busy. That also, you know, did not work, obviously. Yeah. Good one needy guy.

He's just... Very needy, very clingy. Yeah, yeah. He's very parasocial. Yes. And after Katie Miller released a statement being like,

this guy's not part of Doge, a fishback began lobbying Trump for the vacant seat on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Really, no shame. Based on his, you know, credentials as this like patriotic America first investor, right,

who's worked at a hedge fund or two and tried to get his way onto this vacant seat. When that didn't turn out, obviously, Fischbach set his sights on his home state of Florida, launching what I would call a Groyper-style campaign for governor. Cool. And this is what we're going to be discussing for the rest of this episode.

I'm not like intimately familiar with the Groyper space, but this seems to be like the most kind of like beta behavior to constantly like notice me, I forget what, that's a word that begins with S. Pick-mees? No, yeah, it could be pick-mee, I guess. It's like a notice-me-senpai or something that people say. I never expected you to say notice me-sem-bi.

Yeah, unfortunately, I've been on the internet, too. That's what he seems, right? He seems like extremely... Yes. Yeah, this is like, I think what would be coded as like beta behavior in the... Yeah, and now he's kind of trying to do this with Wentes and the Groyper's, although at... Oh, we see.

To this point, more successful, He's actually more successfully ingratiated himself with the Groyper space. On Tucker Carlson interview, he talked about how the Twitter account, sorry, X account, A.F. News or A.F. Post. It's America First Post, America First News, was a part of his, like, political radicalization towards the sort of Groyper style politics. This is like a news aggregation account that promotes far-right nationalist talking points through, and, like, framing. through various news stories. A lot of people used to share posts from this account,

not knowing its political orientation, just because it was very active as a news aggregation source. Yeah, there were a few of those on Twitter. BNO News is another one that just aggregates from repost stuff. And Fishback has pointed to this as being a part of his, like, a Groper-style red-pilling is the activity of this account. To get a sense of his kind of very Groyper online background, or at least like a place within the new redpillar,

right? I'm going to read a tweet of his from February 8th, 2026. Quote, as Florida governor, I will refuse to let subhuman gestures spike our collective cortisol, not even once, also no foids or e-girls, unquote. How much of that do you understand, James? I got cortisol. I'm familiar. All right. Okay. So, yeah, this is using the kind of currently trendy, like looks maxing terms, the, you know, jester, which is, been used a lot since Clivoculars stream with Fuentes and Sneco at that club where they played the

Kanye Hal Hitler's song. Spiking cortisol is a frequent way that people in the Luxemaking space will refer to your stress being raised, especially like through politics, like through politics raising your stress. And Foyds and E-Girls is just misogynistic ways to refer to women

coming out of like the in-cell space. So, you know, this post is, you know, kind of a joke, but it's also signaling to a certain type of person that, hey, I'm your guy. Yeah, I speak your language. And it's also just really annoying, right? He's trying to be off-putting on purpose

because that will drive attention to him from people who don't like him. And, you know, in trying to cover him in this episode, you know, I'm trying to like ride that line of not just unnecessarily giving him publicity because he says outrageous things. But then also framing his rising profile was in a certain, like, context,

which is Groyper candidates popping up more and more frequently across the United States. Yeah. So in terms of Florida, DeSantis can't run for another term. He is term limited. The clear frontrunner to succeed DeSantis is U.S. Representative from Florida, Byron Donalds. Who has Trump's endorsement? Last month, Lieutenant Governor J. Collins also announced to run for governor. But fishback is not a non-player in this race. And his candidacy displays attention within the Republican Party between the former like Tea Party and classical MAGA wing, which is now the effect of conservative establishment,

and this new America First Wing, which takes some of MAGA's originating principles to their far-right nationalist conclusion. I talked about this tension last year in the episodes about Nick Fuentes' interview with Tucker Carlson and this surge of Groyper-adjacent Gen Z staffers filling out the ranks of the Republican machine in D.C. Now, Fishback is one of the first candidates

to draw a lot of attention by essentially running as a Gryper candidate. Depending on how well he does, it could indicate how successful this politics can be when presented in front of Republican voters. The primary election isn't until August. There's not tons of polling yet on this race, let alone from established pollsters. But as of late January, Fishback's most favorable poll puts him 15 points behind frontrunner Byron Donald's, according to quote-unquote patriot polling. Meanwhile, Donald's own sponsored poll puts him upwards of 42 points ahead of Fishback around the new year. So all this stuff is really

out of date. And Fishback certainly has risen his profile since then, but we're still waiting on like reliable polls to come out. Yeah. But he's certainly getting a lot of headlines and is doing a successful job in raising his public profile. Now, a part of Fishback's strategy to raise his public profile and like name recognition, both in Florida and nationally, seems to be just through generating controversy, very similar to how Fuentes did this, or the more recent social ascension of the Lux Maxing streamer clavicular. Earlier this month, Fishback claimed that a fire was, quote, intentionally set in his side yard, prompting him to do a publicity stunt where he walked out of his porch,

holding an AR-15-style rifle above his head, promising to shoot anyone who attempts to harm him and his staff. I will share a clip. I've seen this one. I'm excited to watch it again there. If you come back to this home when our staff, our volunteers are working hard, we're not waiting for the police. We're going to shoot you with an AR-15, site-on-scene, 556.

Yeah! That's what we're going to do. It's very simple. shall not be infringed. It's just a bunch of words that he's saying, like, not in any particular order. 5.56. Yeah. It doesn't make much sense.

It doesn't, no. It's also 5.56. I guess people do call it 556, but yeah, fascinating. 2, 23, 30 round. Well, he doesn't actually have a magazine in there, I noticed. No, no magazine. The backside's folded down as well. It is, for those familiar with such things.

a straight out the box, Smith and Western M&P15. It looks like he may have bought it quite recently. So this is one such incident where he tried to generate some kind of publicity through this, you know, very provocative gesture. But he's also done this through the language he uses. Fishback refers to frontrunner Byronald's who is black as Byronerone, which is just not his name, and has said, quote, Byron wants to turn Florida into a Section 8 ghetto, unquote.

He's also used Charlemagne's nickname for Hakeem Jeffries, A-Pak Shakur, to refer to Donald's, and is called Donald's a, quote-unquote, slave to his donors. Jesus Christ. So, yeah, a lot of stuff like that. Yeah. Fishback has proposed a 50% income tax on only fans' creators, calling it a quote-unquote sin tax.

And one of his very first campaign videos, was titled, I'm running for Florida governor to make the trains run on time. Oh, cool. So this has not like generated tons of controversy and headlines. Yeah. It's, you know, caused some social media posters to be like, oh, look at this guy clearly doing a Nazi dog whistle. But then it's also signaled, you know, early, early in the campaign, signaled to, you know, grapers and people in the very, very far fringes of the right has signaled to them that, hey, I'm going to be your guy. Yeah.

which in part he's doing so that he can count on them to kind of do free, free publicity for him, right? He wants to activate a certain type of overly online young male to be like a public spokesperson to like to just to boost his name recognition. And even if he doesn't win in Florida in this race, it'll at least help his career like nationally in some way. So he's counting on this like a Groyper block to do a lot of heavy lifting. And that's part of why he does some of these very,

very, like, gross tongue-in-cheek stuff. Make the trains run on time. Come on, dude. Yeah, it's like a clumsy dog whistle, right? It's embarrassing. There's no, like, a slight of hand here or whatever, you know. He's just kind of blundering his way towards being, like, look at me Nazis. Yeah.

And, like, this video, he just talked about trying to bring back the Amtrak to the Florida panhandle. It's like a one-minute video. Yeah, cool. It had nothing to do about actually, like, making trains run on time. It's about trying to return Amtrak to a certain section of Florida. Fischback has promised to, quote, divest every penny from Israel on day one, unquote, which would include $385 million in foreign bonds invested in by the state. And he's opposed to adopting anti-Semitism definitions in schools that make it, quote, unquote,

against the law to criticize Israel. Yeah, this is where the hard right and the soft right. I bet. I'm sure it's Israel you're concerned with here, buddy. Yeah, no, I bet. I'm sure. He's not doing this out of, you know, principled stances of Palestinian solidarity. Yeah, no, he just wants to do anti-Semitism like the old-fashioned way.

Yes. And this can be displayed during a campaign event at the University of Central Florida, where Fishback discussed how to make lunches in high school cafeterias more healthy. Important topic. What's with the Pop-Tarts in the Broward County Public Schools in the cafeteria? I'm not saying that the test scores are a result of the Pop-Tarts, but if you wanted kids to fail, if you wanted to set up our kids for failure, you would feed them the absolute goy-slop in our cafeteria.

And that, that is on Gentile, okay? Everyone's really excited to hear that, hey. Yep. Wow, yeah. I mean, the crowd is like, uh... They love it. Yeah, but it also looks like they just arrived from, like, a... Southern Florida be a Pong invitational tournament.

Like, it's a lot of, like, fratboy type. Yes. It's a lot of the people who are, who consumed, like, the Manosphere type content online. Short clips of Nick Fuentes probably aren't regularly tuning into his, like, three-hour live stream on Rumble, but engage with his content through short clips online. Yeah.

Same thing with, like, Sneco, Clivocular, right? It's this type of, this type of influencer, which has right-wing politics, but they aren't, like, super invested in, politics. It's this mix of like post-in-cell male influencers that combine right-wing politics. And it's a very common form of like entertainment for these people that we see in the background on this video, right? It's a lot of like college guys, 18 to 22. Yeah, it's like it's mostly white men, yeah, from like traditional college age. Speaking of schools, in 2022,

a Florida school district cut ties with fishbacks debate organization. after a female student came forward with allegations that Fishback, quote, initiated a romantic relationship, unquote, with her while she was working for his student debate organization when she was 17 years old, he was 27. Jesus. The student claimed in a protection order request that after joining the debate organization when she was 16, Fishback, quote unquote, systematically cultivated a relationship with her by increasing, quote unquote, opportunities for personal. interaction, and that Fishback later, quote-unquote, explicitly directed her to keep the relationship a secret while she was working for his school debate organization. Jesus.

After turning 18, she moved in with Fishback. The two were briefly engaged. Fishback denies the student's characterization of the relationship timeline. After the girl broke up with him, Fishback allegedly sent hundreds of unanswered text to her over several days. This information comes out of a harassment case that was later dismissed. The case wasn't about the legality of their relationship, importantly. It was about harassment after the two had broken up, where these details emerged.

Yeah. His debate organization, this is some kind of like plastic turning point. Yeah, but kind of, it was a Florida-based debate organization in high schools to encourage, encourage debate. It was active around 2022. It was bought

by another company a year or two ago, but in 2022, a district ended cooperation with this organization after news came out about this relationship.

Yeah. It is interesting considering the amount that Fishback and Fuentes and these guys will talk about the Epstein files and then have

this in your... Yeah, inappropriate relationships with underage women. Yeah. That work for you in your high school debate organization. Yeah, that gives me the ick in a substantial way. Also, kind of not that surprising from this kind of area of the right, but it's still gross.

Yeah, it's time for an ad break, but we will return to discuss fishbacks, reoccurring campaign rhetoric and his promises as governor. Canadian women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey.

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incentivize companies to hire Americans again. Here's a radio appearance where he discusses this. On the first day in office, I would fire every single H-1B, who works at a state agency. Number two, if you have a state contract with Tallahassee, I don't care if it's serving meals or serving up IT tech support. You have 24 hours to pick. As President Reagan said, Drew, now is the time for choosing.

You got to pick. Do you want your $50 million a year state contract from Tallahassee? Or do you want your 50 or 100 H1Bs? You pick. You can't have both. There's no negotiating and you have 24 hours. That's how we create a culture that stands up for the dignity of American workers. That's an interesting approach.

You can't get H-1B jobs, not for the federal government, but for state government. I cannot imagine that especially in Florida, there are very many. Well, he's not just concerned about H-1Bs. Fishback is also railed against student visas as a threat to the American way of life and has falsely said that Trump plans to send 200,000 students from China to Florida's public universities,

which serve only about 430,000 students. So they'd be like 45%. It's not real. It's just not. That's just not true. This was proposed as an idea, not Florida specifically, but this was proposed in spring of 2025 as a negotiating tactic with China over tariffs.

This isn't a real thing. Since then, Fishback has promised to raise tuition on all foreign students to $1 million via executive order. The governor cannot legally raise state school tuition via executive order. These are just words that he's saying. Also, like a lot of these state schools, having a certain number of students who are paying

a higher fee, be that the non-US or out of state, like it's integral to their budgeting, right? Like, yeah, they're not making it on state tuition. Fishback has talked about all this in an interview on Tucker Carlson's internet show last month, where he said that a child, quote, from Shenzhen, who doesn't know what Florida orange juice tastes like, can't possibly, in an economic sense. But I think, I mean, not to sound gay, but in a spiritual sense does not represent our state and our heritage, unquote. Tucker replied, that's the opposite of gay, actually, unquote.

that's a hell of a exchange of words again like I'm like like a little lost here yeah this is this is a sizable faction of of the new right of the of the of the of the of the of the of the of the of the groupers who are filling staffer positions at heritage and in DC yeah like this is the sort of media environment like linguistic environment that that they that they are coming out of yeah and the pearl clutchy reaction is is not useful here right I'm not because like who cares right Right? This is obviously embarrassing. This is like a man in his 30s trying to sound like a kind of homophobic 18-year-old who's kind of only homophobic via linguistic reflux.

This is like embarrassing cosplay. Yeah, it's very cringe. I can't even find this stuff offensive. Like this is just, it's... No, it's sad. Like, the primary sentiment I feel is like vicarious shame. Yeah. For this guy and his like desperate search for attention.

Now, a core component of selling fascism to people is that they were promised a future that's now been taken away from them because of some group of people that are the enemy, right? This is like the dream of finding a subservient wife, a cushy, full-time job, buying a home, raising 2.5 kids in a safe and secure homeland. But because of, quote, unquote, them, this dream is no longer possible. Through the years, we've seen different versions of this, targeting Jews, feminists, Palestinians, Muslims, Mexicans, Central and South American immigrants. Now, during Fishback's Carlson interview, he elucidated on like an updated version of the, like, 21st century version of the American dream that was stolen from Gen Z. Gen Z was such an important part of the president's victory last year.

Yes. And they feel betrayed by a lot of these Trump advisors and what they've chosen to prioritize and not. I can see why. And when I've met them and I've met them where they are at their universities, whether it's UF a couple weeks ago, I'll be at FSU and just a couple weeks from now, their number one frustration is that, look, they don't want to be lectured anymore. They got a degree. They got good grades. They got good test scores. They didn't study gender studies or black intersectionality.

They did the STEM thing that Republicans told them to do. Yeah, learn to code. Learn to code. And now they say, you know what? Amazon, Google, FedEx? No, no, those jobs aren't available for you, you Pesky Americans. You want paid time off. You want to go to church on Sunday. We're going to give those jobs to an entire new class of foreign serfs known as the Indians and the Chinese. And we're not going to even interview you for those positions. They don't even pretend that the Chinese or the Indians are smarter. They're not. They're not at all. And so the issue then becomes, do we actually have a labor market that is. They don't speak our language. They're not smarter. They're not at all. And so the issue then becomes, do we actually have a labor market that, is utterly rigged against American citizens. The answer is yes. I think this is a really interesting exchange on a sort of slide that's happening on the right, beyond talking about, like, illegal immigrants.

What's really interesting to me is that, like, the first real immigration, like, restrictions that were part in the United States was the Chinese Exclusion Act, right? Yeah. And we have circled all the way back to essentially a very similar argument. Yeah, the slide from talking about illegal. immigrants in like the far right space to really honing in on on student visas foreign workers I think is an interesting pivot. And this new version of the American dream of like, you know,

STEM jobs, learn to code that's now been taken away that's no longer accessible because so many young Americans aren't getting hired because they're adamant about going to church on Sunday. Something that's not true. That's not real. Yeah, that's not a real thing. First of all, young Americans are not in large numbers going to church on Sunday, nor is their hiring discrimination because they don't want to work on Sundays. These things aren't real, but it taps into a certain feeling that someone in college might have right now, especially in the wake of like AI, vibe coding of they were told that there's this like life track where you can work in tech. And now there really isn't many tech jobs open to people. And they're trying to turn this

situation into this fight against legal immigration. Yeah, into fascism. It's, it's, funny to see Carlson repeating that the learn-to-code thing, as if that was like a serious piece of career advice given to people. That has been a meme for, I don't know, close to a decade. Yeah. Like, like, everybody knew there was bullshit. It's literally like that the phrase is a joke. Fishback later says after this little rant that, quote, our North Star should not be a free market, but a free people. He's okay if the market's not free. It's okay if we're going to be restricting which types of workers are allowed as long as we have a free American people. So his strategy for winning this race appears to be through appealing to homeowners and

prospective homeowners through tax cuts and down payment assistance. But then also really trying to engage Gen Z voters, looking at the success of previous politicians, including Trump and how much of his victory was related to the Gen Z vote. He's really, really honing in on trying to activate young voters in Florida. He's planning to visit every single state college and state university and talk about these issues. As a social media stunt, he's going on a statewide waffle house tour, visiting all the locations in the state. Great.

And through this, he continues to talk about these beliefs on legal immigration. In an interview with a local magazine, Fishback discussed his belief in the quote-unquote great replacement, stating, quote, you can't make America great again with Chinese, you can't make America great again with Indians. You can't make America great again with Haitians. So when I speak about the great replacement, I speak about legal immigration programs that for far too long have been overlooked. A legal immigration has been a primary concern for establishment Republicans, but each one of many legal immigration programs by definition take spots and slots, jobs, away from American citizens. My campaign is the one that stands up and says America is for Americans.

And so we have to stop apologizing for that. Yeah. A little slight move there with the America is for Americans. Yeah. In reference to Germany, Germany for the Germans. I'm sure he knows exactly what he's doing. Oh, most certainly. Yeah, like this is the obvious next place.

They have made so much political headway with racism. And like the obvious direction to keep going, therefore, or to be the one who's willing to lean a little bit further into racism, right? See if that can get you a little bit further, a little bit more popular. Yeah. It makes sense in that way. That's why I find his candidacy really interesting. Regardless of how well he's going to end up doing in the primary,

he is trying to Trojan horse something into, not even Trojan horse in a way, he's kind of just openly trying to pull something into Republican politics. Something that's been like festering in the sidelines for a while, you know, stuff that Nick's been advocating for a while. There was that fight around H-1B visas about a year ago. And he's really honing in on this as a potential future for the party. And we're going to see how successful this is, like in part, right? There could be other factors that make his campaign not do very well beyond these sorts of politics.

But this is the first time you've really seen these deployed at this scale, I think. And he's counting on the Groyper support. And this is what Nick's been talking about for a while, trying to run candidates like this as much as possible. in 2020. We'll talk more about Fishback's relationship with Fuentes and the groupers after this ad break. Canadian women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey. If you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.

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The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, doubt the case of Lucy Lettby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it, to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Lettby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level of the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back. In my episode last year about the right-wing fallout of Nick Fuentes and Dr. Carlson's brief friendship,

I discussed how Fuentes was making threats and promises to, deploy his Gryper fan base to influence elections both in 2026 and then in the Republican presidential primary in 28. And after that news cycle had peaked, Fuentes continued to really hammer down his promise and threat to various candidates that if they do not adopt sufficient America first messaging, he will deploy his fan base across many different primary states to influence the election through support and harassment. And I believe that Fishback is attempting to hold Nick to this promise. On a podcast appearance last year,

Fishback said that Nick Fuentes, quote unquote, broke the internet by speaking truth to the deranged maniac, Pierce Morgan, in an interview. I do love how Pierce Morgan is now like an avatar of woke for the, like American, right? The biggest interview of the year, Nick Fuentes and Pierce Morgan were Nick made very, very clear. We are done with the pearl clutching.

We are done with the white guilt. We are done with this pseudo religion that attacks us for just wanting to exist in our own country, to buy a home, to get a job and to benefit from all the things that we were promised. There he is again, talking about all the things that we were promised. Yeah. And us, right? Like, he's a 30-year-old hedge fund guy. Yeah. Like, he got all the things.

No, he did get the dream that he is saying no longer exists. Like, that has been his life. Yeah, yeah. And he's just trying to cash in on it now. No, but through this interview, he just keeps talking about Fuentes and glowingly refers to the Gryper fan base. I'll tell you the truth. I found the audience of young men who follow and watch Nick Fuentes to be actually incredibly informed and insightful and very patriotic young men.

I'm going to be completely honest. I probably shouldn't say this. but I think Nick's following is actually really impressive. There's a lot of young men who are patriotic who are well-informed, who know our history, which is why they are so frightened by the current path that we are on. Having a candidate talk openly about the Groyper's in this way, I think is super interesting. This is one of the first cases, and I don't think it'll be the last, where Nick's fans and Nick himself are, like, openly referred to in a race like this.

Yeah, it's interesting, again, like super duper surprising to me, how easily the Overton window is moved to the right right now. And there's a whole like network of these like short form, a long form video places to do that, right? That are kind of set up to incentivize that almost. He doesn't have any particular genius that allows him to do it, right? Like there is a system in place both with like Fuentes kind of outside of the, electoral politics

Overton window and then all these places that straddle the lie, right? Like Tucker Carlson, etc., etc., where, that exist to bring these further right discourses into the admissible discourse of electoral politics in this country. Yeah, and a fishback as a largely

unremarkable candidate is counting on a group of probably hundreds to thousands of young men to do free campaign work for him by telling them that they're good, smart little boys. By complimenting them, he is counting on his success

being contingent on this graper army of Gen Z internet users. To him, these are like a valuable political block. And like, that's the thing that I find interesting about this. Yeah. They used to be like pure poison, right? Yeah, yeah.

But now they're seen as like a possible asset. Yeah. And Fishback knows that there could be some drawbacks by going this extreme. A few days ago, Fishback walked through Miami's nightlife on stream with Manosphere influencer Sneiko, who asked Nick Fuentes if he would endorse Fishback as governor.

What do you say? Oh, he said yes. Nick Fuentes has endorsed James Fishback for Governor of Florida. Oh, gee, that'll really help. Let's go. Wait, it won't. Never mind. He's voting for Byron.

No, Nick Fuentes is voting for Byron Donald's. That's a bad name. Byron Donald's? Does that even sound like he could be a governor? So there, you can see that he knows that it could have some possible negative effects, but he's willing to play in this, like, irony, irony zone, while still very clearly embracing Fuentes and the Groypers. And, like, on this stream with Sneakos is, like, indicative of a few things.

After Fishback talked about Goyslop at that school event, you know, he said afterwards, like, he wasn't aware of, like, the offensive connotations. Where the fuck else is he getting that word from? Which is ludicrous. It's not true, right? This has been, like, a 4chan. term forever to talk about how like the Jews are poisoning Gentiles with food to make them like subservient, right? That's what the term means. He knows that. And he continued to use the

goyslop term on Sneco's stream. And after jaywalking on this stream, fishback joked, quote, the headline will read tomorrow, Florida gubernatorial candidate breaks the law with Hitler sympathizer, referring to Sneco. Great. And based on the most recent polling, we have, on this race, Fishback's youth-centric strategy does seem to be getting its intended results. In a University of North Florida Public Opinion Research Lab poll from the middle of February, Byron Donald's is up 31% to James Fishback at 6%. About a 25% gap, which is kind of in between the more fishback-friendly Patriot polling numbers and Byron Donald's own internal polling.

A sizable gap, to be sure, but not one that is. insurmountable. What's really interesting about this poll, though, is the youth numbers. For ages 18 to 34, James Fishback is at 32%, whereas Byron Donald's is at 8%. He's massively ahead among youth. Meanwhile, Byron Donald's tactics to address Fishback's connection to the Groyper's has been a little odd. I'm going to read a statement from last week, quote, Dear James Fishback, I heard you crashed out when I told the truth about your stupid, anti-Semitic BDS plan that you stole from Kamala Harris, just like you stole your whole gimmick from Nick Fuentes and Zoron Mamdani.

You're no racist, you're no Groyper, you're no anti-Semite, you're what people hate about politics, performative slop, unquote. So Byron Donald's approach to addressing Fishback ties to the groipers are not to actually attack him for these ties, but to say that he's a fake groeper, that he's not actually one of them, that he's stealing his policy ideas from Kamala Harris and stealing his gimmick from Fuentes and Zoran Mamdani, quote unquote, you're no anti-Semite, you're no racist. So basically attacking fishback for not being a real enough racist. And Donald isn't the only one linking fishback to Zoran Mamdani. The conservative magazine, The Spectator,

released a positive profile on Fishback last week with the headline, is James Fishback the right's answer to Zoran Mamdani? The similarities seemingly being that he's behind in the polls in a race that could be very influential for the future of the Republican Party, while gaining a lot of traction among youth and having a savvy online element of the campaign. And so Byron Donald's response to Fishback's popularity online, the popularity among young voters, is to compare him to Kamala Harris and Zoran Mamdani

and claim that he's not actually a real racist, that he's not actually a real groiper. I do not believe this is going to be an effective line of attack or damage his numbers among the young, especially male supporters that he has. Because Fishback already knows that he has the Groyper base in his pocket. And that's why he's able to make jokes with Sneco about how, no, no, no, Nick Fuentes is actually supporting the other guy.

He is secure enough in his Groyper support to jokingly distance himself from Fwentes as a strategic move. Because he knows the Grypers are already going to be doing free labor for him to boost his chance of winning. He already has them. Cool. Yeah, that makes sense. Like, he's relying on, like, social media exposure from them, and then he can even say other stuff to conventional media,

and it probably won't matter that much. Yeah, yeah. And, I mean, he's still getting profiled by major outlets, like, every week. And it's, it's going to be a long race. He wants to eventually debate Donald's, like, in a televised debate. Unclear if that's going to happen. Yeah.

But as of now, that's kind of the current state, of his candidacy, his strategy to overcome the gap in polls. And I will be keeping an eye on this race, specifically because it does relate to what I was talking about last year, in terms of this wave of Groyper-friendly candidates, expected to try to get into the Republican Party in the next two to four years. Yeah. The election is November of this year. November is the general. August is the primary. Okay. Yeah. So I guess the kind of Republican primary in Georgia, is the big deal. I mean, Florida, sorry.

Yeah, yeah. The primary race in Florida is going to be the one that I'm keeping the most track of. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, don't be surprised if you start seeing fishback pop up in more stuff in the next few weeks. Yeah, great. Well, that does it for us today at It Could Happen Here. Yeah. Now it's time to end the podcast to lower the collective cortisol.

It Could Happen Here is a production of Coolzone Media. For more podcasts from Coolzone Media, visit our website, Coolzone Media. or check us out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for it could happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security,

one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS, and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its fault of secrets. Listen to the sixth bureau on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Joe Interesting, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And today, I'm talking with my dear friend, Krista Williams. It can change you in the best way possible. dance with the change, dance with the breakdowns,

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The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? Oh my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Lettby, on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 1969, Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. At a Morehouse College, the students make their move.

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