No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Stunning new midterm polls signal good news for Democrats

Episode Date: August 21, 2022

Brian discusses polling heading into midterms and what it means for Democrats. Brian interviews the hosts of the Qanon Anonymous podcast about what Qanon is and what it means that Republicans are embracing the conspiracy more and more. And Cristina Tzinzún Ramirez, the President of NextGen, the nation's largest youth vote mobilization organization, joins to discuss whether young people are coming back to Democrats as more legislation is being passed and what the best way to boost turnout would be.Donate to the "Don't Be A Mitch" fund: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/dontbeamitchShop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to talk about the polling heading into midterms and what it means for Democrats. I interview the hosts of the Q&N Anonymous podcast all about what Q&N is and what it means that Republicans are embracing the conspiracy more and more. And I'm joined by Christina Sinssoon Ramirez, the president of NextGen, the nation's largest youth vote mobilization organization, about whether young people are coming back to Democrats as more legislations being passed and what the best way to boost turnout would be. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen and you're listening to No Lie. Okay, so we all know how midterms work for the party in power. Republicans lost 31 seats in 2006 during George W. Bush's presidency. Democrats got crushed in 2010, losing 12 seats in the Senate and 64 in the House in 2010. And Republicans lost 41 seats in the House in the blue wave of 2018.

So for this year, given the fact that Democrats hold majorities in both chambers of Congress and the White House, plus the fact that Biden's approval rating is still underwater at about 40, 41 percent, it really shouldn't be close. But I want to go over some of the newest polls that we have that have come out lately. In Pennsylvania, Betterman is polling ahead of Oz by 18 points. 18. In Arizona, Mark Kelly's polling

eight points ahead of Blake Masters. In Georgia, Warnock's polling about a point ahead of Herschel Walker. In Ohio, Tim Ryan's about a point ahead of J.D. Vance. North Carolina, Sherry Beasley, is about tied with Ted Budd. In Nevada, Cortez Mastow is about a point ahead of Adam Laxalt.

in Wisconsin, Mandela Barnes is polling four points ahead of Ron Johnson. Of course, you know, things can change with every poll, but the point is that in an environment where history says the Democrats should be losing, they're very much in these races. And look, with all of that said, don't trust the polls. I think if there's anything that we've learned in the last few years, it's that polling kind of sucks. But at least we can take a bigger story from this, which is that, you know, on the right, When you have candidates like Herschel Walker, who makes Donald Trump sound like an oratory genius,

and Dr. Oz, whose idea of being an every man is walking into a grocery store whose name he doesn't know, free-handing a bunch of vegetables and calling it crudite, and Blake Masters, who's been embraced by white nationalists and who himself has embraced the white replacement theory. When you have candidates like that, who all appealed to the farthest fringes of the GOP in order to win their primaries, they're all making it really difficult to win their general election races, you know, being candidates like that. Add in the fact that the entirety of the Republican Party has been trying to one up each other

in terms of how restrictive their abortion bans can be and refusing to make exceptions in cases of rape or incest or the life of the mother. And they've turned what history says should be an easy win into a really, really competitive election. And just as importantly, you know, Democrats are showing up in a big way. And look, I was on this podcast, This past winter, basically mourning the fact that we squandered away our majority with, you know, a Rhodes bill.

But now, eight months later, we've passed the Inflation Reduction Act. That's the biggest climate bill in history that allows the governments and negotiate lower drug prices, shores up the ACA, caps costs for Medicare recipients. We passed the PACT Act and chips. We passed the infrastructure package and the American Rescue Plan. We passed the first gun safety legislation in decades. We recovered every single job lost during the pandemic and brought the unemployment rate down to a 50-year low. Gas prices and inflation are still high, but they're both on their way

down. I mean, you'd be kidding yourself if you didn't acknowledge that this has been a monumentally productive two years, like a historically productive two years, especially considering we're working with razor-thin margins. Kamala Harris has cast 26 tie-breaking votes. That's the third most in history. The Senate is also working on reforms to the Electoral Count Act. So this will be a productive Congress. And I think for people to see that a body that notoriously does nothing can actually get stuff done when you elect the right people, that makes a big difference. So look, as far as November goes, here's what's at stake. It's pretty simple. If we elects a couple more Democrats, which we can already do in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin alone,

and we hold our seats that are vulnerable, and we hold the House, we can eliminate the filibuster and codify Row. We can make gerrymandering illegal and finally, you know, eliminate the massive margin that we have to overcome to continue holding the House every cycle. we can take more aggressive action against fossil fuels in addition to the carrots that we have now for clean energy but if Republicans take control we're going to see legislation banning abortion at the federal level we're going to see a pullback in climate spending

no more judges will be confirmed and of course we'll be mired in investigations into Hunter Biden and whatever other bullshit that Republicans can cook up to appeal to whatever Fox News comment section they're performing for so you know I know I sound like a broken record but find people in your circle and make sure they're registered and have a plan to vote. Because judging by what we're seeing right now,

we are still very much in this race. So let's keep doing the work and bring it home. Next step is my interview with the host of the Q&Nan Anonymous podcast. Okay, now we've got Jake Rockatansky, Julian Field, and Travis View, the host of the Q&Nan Anonymous podcast. Thank you guys for coming on. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having us.

So first off, you know, I feel like, I feel every day like I'm down some horrific rabbit hole. But I think that the rabbit hole that you guys are in is just way deeper. So first, let's get this part out of the way. And that is what Q&N is because when we hear about Q&N, you know, we meaning regular people like the layman out here, it's that there's this, you know, satanic cabal of Democrats operating a global child sex trafficking ring, all conspiring against Donald Trump. How much more than that is it? You know, yeah, I often describe Q&N as both a conspiracy theory and a online conspiracy theory movement that's sort of like, that's also a meta-narrative

that combines just every conspiracy theory trope that you ever heard of, like lizard people and flat earth and the idea that Donald Trump is secretly taking down this evil cabal of people who traffic children do other horrific things and drink their blood. So originally QAnon appeared on the 4chan image board, and actually the concept of Anon just comes from any poster that would post on these anonymous platforms would have anonymous as their name. And so a variety of different people were essentially role playing as people with insider information. And QAnon was just one of them. He went by Q or Q clearance Patriot. Didn't even use the term Q at the beginning or didn't sign his posts.

and very quickly, I think people, a combination of people on those boards who were maybe ironically boosting this and people who were really starting to believe it started to spread the idea that this person was actually a highly placed military source inside the Trump administration and he was giving secret information about what Trump was actually going to do behind the scenes to take care of what they perceived as, yes, a cabal of pedophiles, specifically child traffickers and a kind of satanic group of politicians that had, you know, for, you know, maybe hundreds of years tried to control the population. So it was kind of Alex Jones, if he were pretending to be inside, you know, the Trump administration. And very quickly, promises started coming out about this event called the storm, which would be the rounding up of all of these, you know, bad people and their punishment. So the idea is he's sending them to Guantanamo, maybe there's going to be military tribunals, possibly even executions. And all of this was occurring at a time where Trump was not necessarily coming through on some of the promises,

certainly not some of the more extreme promises that he had made during, you know, his campaign and the first year of his presidency. And so this really started to kind of create a brushfire of beliefs. So very quickly, this was taken up by YouTubers who wanted to red pill the Normies, as they see it, you know, kind of awaken them to this great awakening that they perceived. And this was the kind of introduction to a generation that maybe wasn't tech savvy enough to be on the Chan image board. So 4chan and then later 8chan. So this led to the spread of the belief system among people who maybe weren't as tech savvy, who maybe wouldn't be able to log in on 4chan or 8chan,

but they were capable of watching YouTube videos. They were on Facebook. They were on these bigger social media platforms, and there was these kind of intermediaries, or as they called themselves, bakers, who would take these cryptic posts by Q and would repost them through aggregators that were accessible on easy-to-find websites,

and would talk about them and decode them on YouTube. They would explain what the work, was happening on the chans, which was the work of essentially decrypting these very strange drops, as they started to be called. And so very quickly, a group of influencers kind of stepped in and started to spread this among the Normies. The Normies started spreading these memes on their own social media platforms, and it became a whole movement within the kind of MAGA fervor of Donald Trump's first year. And conveniently, of course, it explained. that a lot of these bloodthirsty wishes that these people have about their enemies and what's

going to happen and the justice that's coming, you know, it promised those things were actually happening behind the scenes, which is, I think, you know, a kind of alluring idea for people who've been waiting for politicians to do what they say they're going to do. Now, in this case, of course, you know, it was essentially executions, rounding up your enemies and revealing, declassifying information about a variety of different conspiracy theories. So anything from aliens to JFK's assassination. Okay, so I have a hundred questions, but I want to start with this. And this is what's given me the most trouble.

You know, if this thing is all predicated on cue, if this is all predicated on this idea that they're fighting back against, you know, a cabal of like child sex traffickers, how do they reconcile the fact that Donald Trump has history with someone like Jeffrey Epstein or that you have a guy like Matt Gates who's under investigation by the FBI for child sex trafficking. Like so much of what this entire movement is based upon the people who these Q-Non adherence champion are the ones mixed up in exactly the stuff that they purport to be fighting against. Yes, I think that that is kind of the point of the movement is to create a kind of cognitive dissonance where you're able to selectively target the people that you think are in charge of it.

Having said that, there is a kind of both sides element to this in that they, you know, much like Alex Jones, they hated George Bush. And they actually worshipped JFK. And JFK Jr., who they were later grew apart, part of them later grew convinced was actually coming back and was going to run with Trump in 2024. So it's a complex movement, but it's definitely one that as far as modern politicians and certainly as far as the 2016 election and onwards, very much targeted Democrats and anyone on the right that they thought were enabling this, you know, kind of agenda that they were putting in, this mind control agenda. And there's also, within the Q&N ideology, there's kind of a closed loop way of thinking that Q encourages based on certain drops, you know, not to trust the mainstream media,

you know, that when somebody attack somebody for something, it means that that they're actually projecting and they're accusing, you know, your heroes of the very thing that they are doing behind the shadows. So, you know, even though information comes out, you know, of Trump's relationship with Epstein, you know, there is built in mechanisms within the Q&ON beliefs that people can say, oh, well, but what Trump was doing was actually hunting him. You know, Trump was setting him up to take him down. He was pretending to be friends with Jeffrey Epstein so he could get all of the dirt on Bill and Hillary Clinton. It's all just like built in, like heads we win, tails you lose. There's always a convenient

way to explain away everything. In fact, there's the perfect thought terminating cliche that became kind of part of their catalog of them was think mirror, as in what you see is the exact opposite of what is actually happening. Right. So they can be accused of everything from here until the end of the earth and it'll never actually stick to them because, you know, it's not me, You. Like Matt Gates was supposed to be a deep state operation to take him out. It's not that he's actually one of the people that they would normally within their belief system put on the list of people they hate, right? Right. How convenient. I guess the question here is like, why did you guys start this podcast? You know, you've done around 400 episodes now. You've been featured

everywhere. I'm pretty sure you're the foremost experts on Q&ON. Why subject yourselves to something like this. I think all of us came at it from a different perspective. I mean, I was certainly interested in the post-truth era that we were shifting into and the kind of spectacle of American politics. Jake had a history with conspiracy theories that he enjoyed and he watched them slowly get polluted by anti-Semitism, satanic panic. And obviously there were elements of that maybe along the way, but there used to be, you know, a form of relatively harmless conspiracism that existed, you know, through things like Art Bells, coast to coast, and, you know, above top secret, websites like that. Yeah, what happened to me was I was, you know, our conspiracy lurker.

And I loved reading about aliens and ghosts and Loch Ness Monster and that sort of stuff. And what I noticed was that slowly, you know, around the end of 2017, that the posts in our conspiracy were, more and more frequently about this poster named Q. And to be perfectly honest, I was kind of into it, you know, as somebody that I would, I would, you know, categorize myself as, as, you know, pretty progressive person. And so the idea that there was corruption within the, you know, the federal law enforcement level, you know, I was, I was, you know, open to that idea. And what happened was when the QAnon board on Reddit got banned. I followed them over to another platform called Vote. And Vote is basically like, you know, a fake Reddit. It's very similar, you know, very

similar user flow, but it's all anonymous. And so I went over to see, okay, well, well, now that these people aren't attached to an email address or they're not attached to a username, what are they really saying? And I would say nine, nine out of ten posts were about Jews. And, you know, they would say the real truth about Jews or it's time, we can finally talk about the Jews. And as a Jewish person myself, I had, it was like the end of an M. Knight Sharmelon movie. I all of a sudden, everything kind of, you know, world into perspective. I'm going, oh, my God, you know, what these guys are doing are just perpetuating the same old, same old conspiracy theories that the new world order and the Jews, you know, the evil Jews run the world. And it's just packaged in this

very modern, you know, for the internet age sort of medium. Yeah, you know, I really came from the, I had a previous interest in young earth creationism and intelligent design and these sorts of nonsense that a lot of, basically like right wing people tried to push into public schools unsuccessfully, thankfully. I was also very online as a consequence of my day job. I worked in digital marketing. And I started, I didn't really think much of Q&N because it was just one another weird sort of Chan thing. Until I noticed that it started to be promoted by Charlie Kirk,

who was, you know, a pretty major conservative figure. I noticed that Charlie Kirk started boosting these bogus stats that came straight from QAnon. And that made me realize that wasn't a weird Chan thing that's going to stay in the battles of the internet is something that's going to affect, you know, really the highest realms of conservative media. While you've been doing this, has any part of this been scary or dangerous for you? Because, you know, you've basically been exposing the truth about a subset of the population

that already has a proclivity to act in a way that's not necessarily rational, right? And personally, I know the steps that I've had to take to keep myself safe in this digital world. Like, has that been an issue for you? Have you dealt with threats or violence or anything like that? I think one of the aspects that we very quickly noticed was that these are mostly keyboard warriors. You know, if you study the alt-right or, you know, militia movements or neo-Nazi movements, the risk of actual violence and organized violence is much, much higher. With, you know, these influencers, the Q people, very often it was just they love to make up words about us.

Like they would call groups of us with other journalists the Q-Man Centipede, or they made up a nickname for Travis, Tapwater Travis. So a lot of it for them is about posting and aesthetics and even showing up to these events, which we went to many, many times now, you know, I think the worst you're going to get is them saying, well, that wasn't very nice what you said about us on that episode,

or actually we wouldn't, you know, please don't attend or something like that. But the majority of QAnon people or followers of QAnon have an actual, interestingly, non-pessimistic and unoptimistic, I'd say outlook on life, you know, because they believe that actual justice is coming. So they don't have the frustrations of someone who, you know, perceives the system as broken and maybe not serving them. They think, oh, no, all this stuff is great. And also, you know, maybe they've lost a lot of family members or friends because

they were talking about this stuff too much. And so they're finally among people who understand them. And, you know, I think that here and there's been influencers who wanted to capture gotcha content on us, but we haven't experienced anything that I would describe as, you know, very dangerous. I think one time we went to a Save the Children rally, which was one of the rebrandings of QAnon, and it was in Los Angeles, and the security for the event were proud boys. Now, because it's not an open carry state, they were armed with knives, but the proud boys are much scarier to me than anybody who follows QAnon. You know, I think what taught the Q&N people is to be meme warriors. They are fighting an information warfare. They are

what they call digital soldiers, which was coined by Michael Flynn in one of his speeches. And so they perceive themselves that way. If you talk to them, they will tell you this is a nonviolent movement. They will go back home and they will go on YouTube and fantasize about the executions of their enemies, but they always imagine it through an external force. So the military is going to do this, you know, or Trump is going to take care of it. And I think there have been, obviously, outbreaks of violence among Q&N people, but they've often been people who were destabilized mentally or socioeconomically, and they don't necessarily represent what the majority of Q&N people would want to do, you know? Yeah, I would say that they are kind of in a unique position, even among a far-right belief groups. You'd alluded to this before, but so much of what we hear about Q&N is these grand hypotheses about how things are going to happen and then inevitably they don't happen.

There was this idea that Trump's second term was going to be, you know, when all of everything encompassed within the storm happens, you mentioned how Guantanamo is going to be expanded so that they can fill it with Democrats. How do people react when there's no payoff? Like there's no, there's no prophecy coming true, so why don't people just abandon it? And if I went to a fortune teller who just kept getting everything wrong, I'd stop going, right? I mean, yeah. I mean, there's a lot of research. There's a, there's a really great book by a sociologist named Leon Festinger called When Prophecy Fales, that explores this very question. And what people learn is that when people believe a prophecy, they've invested a lot in it.

They really, really believe it. And that prophecy fails, they double down. And this happens over and over and over again. And so, I mean, you know, one of a classic example is, you know, there was a millinarian cult, which believed that Jesus would return in like 1849. And it didn't happen. There was a cult called the Millerites. And they turned into the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which has millions of followers today.

So, you know, just because, you know, there's a promise of a, you know, of a, you know, of a coming up, you know, apocalypse, a promise of a coming golden age that is not fulfilled. That doesn't mean that the believers stop believing. They just believe that it's going to happen further in the future. It's just been delayed for some reason. This is just human nature, honestly. And like what Julian said earlier, you know, a lot of these folks have been isolated from family members, from their friends for believing in this. And so in a lot of ways, socially and community-wise, which I think we all strive to have for ourselves in this life, the only thing they have left are other Q&N believers. And it is. It's difficult. It's

difficult to go back to a family member that barred you from coming to, you know, Thanksgiving supper and saying, hey, you know, I was wrong. That was really stupid, you know, all the stuff that I was saying about JFK Jr. and the storm and all that stuff. I was wrong. And a lot of people don't realize that most, most family members would say, hey, great, awesome. Like, you know, let's talk about it. Let's, you know, that's great. But I think that there is, you know, there is an internal mechanism that keeps people from, you know, like Julian was saying, when you've, you know, invested so much time into something. In this case, you know, four years, potentially. It's a sunk cost fallacy, you know. Yeah, exactly. And what I will say is there were a handful of people,

Well, probably not as many, you know, not as many as we would have liked to see. But after January 6th who saw that and that was kind of, it provided an off-ramp. You know, January 6th, I think, was an off-ramp for a lot of Q&on believers because here were people wearing the merch, believing in the same things that they do, you know, causing violence to police officers, you know, attacking the Capitol, being very unpatriot-like. And I think there were a few things. did. That did exit. But the people who stayed on dug deeper and splintered off into different

sects of this Q&on movement. They simply blamed Antifa. They said these are Antifa. These are the feds actually doing a false flag. So like we mentioned earlier, there's always a mechanism to process, digest, and continue on your journey. So we had, you know, we've just spoken here about why people continue to believe it once they've been exposed to it. But how is someone susceptible to believing in something like this? Because there are people listening to this right now who know someone who fell into that rabbit hole, who believe this stuff earnestly.

And, you know, I know that for myself, for those people, like what we don't understand is how you get to the point where you can, I guess, fall for something like this. Yeah, I mean, there are lots of predictors of conspiracist belief. And one of them is a feeling of powerlessness, you know, if you feel like you really have no agency over your life, you are more likely to believe that, you know, the results of your life are the consequence of like elite puppet masters

controlling things behind the scenes. Another one is just isolation, the feeling like, you know, you don't, being unable to connect with anyone in like a healthy way, you're more likely to find like community in these conspiracies communities. But those and, I mean, so the other one is just,

needing to feel like you're like a hero. I mean, this really connects to the powerlessness thing. People in the Q&N community really believed that they were part of a movement that would change the world in a revolutionary way, like really profound changes. And so that, you know,

that really motivated them to, to believe this nonsense. Okay, so taking this stuff from the online into, you know, government, the stuff that I cover, you know, we've obviously got Republicans in office who believe in QAnon,

Marjorie Taylor Green, subscribe to it. I'm certain that we'll have more after this next round of midterms in November. What does it say that these Republicans are subscribing to something so crazy? I think that the GOP has had to contend with a part of their base believing in these things, and whether they've chosen to dog whistle to it or overtly support it is more of a question of tactics. We've seen someone like Joe Ray Perkins, for example, basically, you know, have their comms team tell them you know you need to knock it off with this extreme stuff and for a little while she she shows some self-control around it and then she makes a video going

you know what i'm sick of it i'm sick of being censored i'm gonna just come out of the closet you know what i do believe in q what are you going to do about it and so you know there is that that kind of interplay but i think among the kind of gop elite they are i think as usual with with with extreme beliefs, with, you know, militias, with far-right belief systems, white supremacists, et cetera, they want to find that clever balance of, we need the votes, and these people are galvanizing others, but, you know, this looks bad. But I think that's also eroding. I think that more and more, it doesn't really matter, because some of these beliefs have been stripped of the label queue and have been kind of evaporated and absorbed into the general

GOP belief system. So it's now very, very common to see satanic panic spread among the GOP, which, you know, there's been a big resurgence in that, the claim that your opponents are pedophiles or are grooming, you know, children or trafficking, etc. I think a lot of these talking points have migrated into the mainstream to such an extent that they no longer need to say, hey, this started with a cue drop or this is where I came across it. Do you think, like, when I hear this stuff, the rationale that I give it, like the explanation that I give it, when I hear these Republicans accusing Democrats of being pedophiles or being groomers or something, is that it's just, it actually fits into the Republican mindset

pretty neatly in the sense that Republicans have long been leaning on these techniques to fearmonger and they've been warning about, you know, the entire white race being replaced by immigrants, obviously, just leaning on this emotional fear. And so I think like that fits really neatly in because if you just accuse someone of being a pedophile, obviously that's a major charge to lob at somebody else. And so it doesn't have to be true in the same way that, you know, obviously Democrats aren't shipping in minority voters to replace white people in this country, but it kind of does like fit back into that mindset of just like raw emotional appeal in terms of just scaring older white voters who make up their base. Do you think, like,

Like, that has any, I guess, I guess how do you reconcile that idea of just fearmongering with, you know, their actual belief in any of this stuff? I think that the fearmongering definitely is an electoral strategy. I think that, for example, the Federalist Society, the Koch brothers and all of this, this dark money system is there to replace judges, is there to kind of do the infrastructural takeover that's necessary, whether it's taking over universities or seating books. or thinkers, you know, kind of whole wings sometimes of academic theory are seated by them. So the fear is really more of a galvanizing force that says go out and vote because they obviously are not happy with, you know, constantly losing the popular vote and then winning through the electoral college. So they do want the semblance of legitimacy on the voting side of things. Of course, they would not stop at, you know, at that.

They don't, they don't, that's just essentially aesthetic cover. And, you know, if you look at, for example, the Brooks Brothers riot that Roger Stone was involved in, that made sure that the count, the recount stopped in Florida and made sure that Bush was seated. You know, these kind of dirty tactics that are on an institutional level or carried out by operators are possibly more crucial. But, you know, it never hurts to look like more people voted for you. And so voter suppression and all of these other tactics are definitely on the table. Brian, you brought up something, a point to that I think is worth talking about. Narrative-wise, people who believe in QAnon, they like it better when the crime that you're accusing your opponent of can't be proven immediately.

There's a reason that Q&ONB believers don't talk a lot about Jeffrey Epstein. They'll use the case of Jeffrey Epstein to say, well, because this is true, then Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton are also doing the same. But the problem is with real crimes and real cases, eventually there will potentially be a trial. Eventually, somebody will get sentenced to a prison sentence and then it's done. You know, I think one of the most fun things for people who believe in the Q&ONN narrative is that it never ends. You know, it's like an MMO. You can keep playing and keep playing, and the goal post can keep getting pushed down the line. And this very small time arrest is actually meaningless because what it's really setting the world up for is a massive arrest that's going to shock the world.

You know, QAnon, people who believe in Q&N have this fantasy of all of their liberal friends coming to them, hat in hand, you know, on their knees saying, I was so wrong. I was so wrong. please forgive me. I see the light now. That is a huge element of the of the wishcasting of QAnon is this idea that liberals will, oh, see the error of their ways once the major arrests start happening. And finally, that family member that said, you know, no, you can't talk about this at the dinner table or no, you can't come to this family gathering, goes, I was wrong and I am so sorry. Yeah, which is what makes it so much harder for them to do the same, right? To say, you know, what QAnon stuff hasn't come true. I'm sorry. But a lot of the people who do, you know, go through

that process, they latch on to major movements among the GOP now. So they have a kind of fallback that still allows them to continue, you know, carrying on the same political stance. One other aspect I think of this that's important is to look at the religious aspect of things. The idea that the end times are here, now, imminent, that the Antichrist has appeared. You know, this has been happening forever. And millinarianism within Protestantism in the United States and within far right and just broad right-wing movements has played an incredible role in galvanizing people to vote. And every four years, it's the same thing. Like, these are the end times and you can save us. You can help the process of defeating the Antichrist or whatever by voting,

et cetera. And so I think that it's just around the corner. I mean, that's just another another year down for them, you know? It's always almost coming. There's also this link to the Mike Pompeo evangelical wing of the Republican Party who thinks that the rapture is imminent, and so that all of their support for Israel is predicated on that, on the ultimate destruction of the people of Israel for themselves. So, yes, that whole whole right there. Yes, Israel's a wonderful landing pad.

They're like, we need to keep the landing pad in order because when Christ returns, You know, he's going to be landing there. Yeah, the flames from the rockets might, you know, burn a couple million Jews, but, you know, but we'll take a couple good ones with us. You know, you'll get to come. So let's finish off with this. You know, and you alluded to this point I'm going to make right here, but you've got this whole world of conspiracy theories that until recently existed only like in these darkest corners

of the internet. Obviously, we're now seeing a lot of this stuff manifest in real life. whether it's the political implications of it or these far-right militias or whatnot. So it would seem like the belief in Q&N is just a small part of a larger problem of online radicalization. So I guess the question is, has there been any effective means of deprogramming people who believed in Q&N? And could those solutions be replicated on a broader scale?

Yeah. He asked a huge question. I mean, that's really a mental health question. None of us are mental health professionals. I would say that the really the only effective means of helping someone climb out the rabbit hole. It usually has to be done by family members, friends, someone who's really close to the individual. So that makes it really hard to reproduce on a big scale. But I mean, I would say that, you know, there's the best thing you can do for someone is, you know, invite them back,

know that they won't be mocked or judged if they, you know, if they have a healthier media diet. if they approach reality in a healthier way. So, I mean, that's a really tough question. There are lots of people who are working on that problem. I just don't think we as podcasters are quite equipped to solve it. Well, I think, you know, I think your answer right there is pretty spot on. I would ask you guys, what's the best way, obviously, to hear more from you? You can search for QAnon Anonymous on any podcast platform.

And you can also, if you need links to listen or figure out, how to do that. You can go to QAnonanonymous.com. Awesome. Jake, Julian, and Travis, thank you guys so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it. And hang in there. I know it's a rough. It's a weird, it's a weird thing that you guys do every day. So we appreciate, we appreciate the insight. Great. Thank you so much. Thanks a lot, Brian. Now we've got the president of NextGen, the nation's largest youth vote mobilization organization, Christina Sinsoon Ramirez. Christina, thank you so much for coming on. Yeah, thanks for having me.

So I'm really glad we're able to talk because, you know, what you're focused on right now is ground zero. Young voters are what's going to either make or break us on the left as we head into November. So first, what does NextGen do specifically? Like, what's your strategy to mobilize young voters? Yeah, so we've been around about 10 years and we started out actually to organize that we're going to address the climate crisis that we had to harness the power of young people. that was originally our first mission. And so we have figured out, last election, we helped get out one in nine of the young people that turned out.

We've registered 1.4 million people. We organize anywhere and everywhere young people are. So this election, we're in eight states targeting 9.6 million likely progressive voters. That means we're on 186 college and community college campuses. We're out in the community. And then we're organizing online. We have 25,000 volunteers that put in millions of dollars of sweat equity, each election, to send tens of millions of calls, texts,

and then also organize on video games and dating apps. We say there's nothing sexier than talking about democracy. And we, you know, because you can organize on dating apps by search by age, political persuasion, and geography. So it's a great organizing tool. So, you know, you mentioned one in nine voters. And I guess that points to the broader problem in terms of reaching young people is like if they were an older demographic,

those kind of numbers, that kind of percentage would, be considered unsuccessful. So what are we seeing like in terms of, in terms of these, the percentage of participation among young people. And I guess what is considered a success now? And what should we be aiming for? So I'm going to, I was listening to a different podcast you had where you said, you said, I consider myself a youngish person. That's right. Are you, what, I don't know what generation. I'm going to guess millennial. Millennial, yes. So, you know, since 2004, which was an election, I voted in as a young person, one, progressives have been winning the youth vote, and the youth vote share has been increasing. So the last two elections saw historical record turnout of young people. But young people,

we are now the largest generational voting block, if you count millennials plus gen Z. And it's the most consistently progressive voting block. So Republicans and Democrats used to pretty evenly split the youth vote, and now it is just overwhelmingly progressive. And so the, What we have to do, which is a cyclical problem is a lot of Democrats have said young people don't vote so they don't put them in their universe of who they go and talk to. And then young people will say, I didn't vote because I didn't even know there was election. And I didn't know who to vote for and round and round we go. And so part of our job at NextGen is getting Democratic candidates to wake up and understand that they have to invest and talk to the youth vote because I promise you anyone in

these competitive races, if they don't win 60%, especially in these Senate races of the youth vote, they're going to lose. So prior to Roe, there were some worrying signs from young people, I believe, you know, Biden got about 60% of the youth vote in this past election. And by July, his approval rating was around 37%. And I presume that was owed largely the fact that Democrats were pretty unable to pass any major legislation up to that point, you know, the whole ineffectiveness of the party. But since then, Democrats have passed chips, pact, gun legislation, the inflation reduction act. we also have, you know, infrastructure, we've recovered all the pandemic jobs that were lost. Are you seeing any recovery right now among young people?

And more broadly, are they salvageable or are they mostly just set in their opinions? I mean, what I like to remind people, because people always point to Biden's low approval numbers with young people is that Biden was never the youth vote candidate in 2020. That was Bernie Sanders. And then you still had record breaking turnout for young people for Biden. But Roe, we've seen a big increase in motivation to vote. So young people are on track to vote at the same numbers they voted in 2018 right now. Previous to Roe, there was a lot more excitement from young Republicans than young Democrats and

young progressives. And that started to shift. So people feel like my rights are being taken away. And now we actually can point to something that Democrats have done because it's not enough. Young people have been coming out and voting for Democrats. but what's important to know is they are voting for progressive policy change, not for the party. And so it's really, really critical that we're able to say the Inflation Reduction Act, which is the biggest historical investment ever to tackle the climate crisis, which we all

have to inherit and live with, has actually passed. And it's because of your vote and your power. And you had Chuck Schumer and many senators saying thank you to young people for pushing us to actually do this. Okay. So on that exact point about Biden's approval rating and whatnot, When we point to this stuff, it's like, okay, Biden might not be popular because he wasn't getting enough done, but that doesn't necessarily mean that young people are going to defer to Republicans whose agenda they overwhelmingly disagree with. So are we drawing too much of a conclusion from Biden's popularity numbers among young people who might still recognize that the alternative is a Republican Party that doesn't care about climate change and that thinks you shouldn't be

able to get an abortion? Yeah, I think that what Roe showed especially for a lot of folks was this is an extreme minority, right? People understood that a lot of people came out and voted against Trump, right? It was very clear that fascism versus democracy was on the line. And with taking a right, such a fundamental right, about what we can decide for our own bodies, our own health, our own futures, that has accelerated people as understanding that again, in 2022, that fascism is up for election and that there is an extreme right-wing minority that doesn't even really believe in democracy at this point that's trying to take control of our country. And their vision is a future where women don't get to decide what happens with their bodies. Gay marriage no longer exists. We're not going to tackle climate change. And we're going to build an economy that's just for the ultra, ultra wealthy. What would be most effective right now that the White House or Democrats could be doing to boost youth turnout? I mean, one of the other issues we have to look at is student debt. You know, there is a lot of young folks and folks that are even older that are carrying the burden of student debt. I think

the other things that we have to do that we didn't get in this piece of legislation, which the Inflation Reduction Act failed to do, was really core components to deal with people's economic livelihoods, right? I think people sometimes don't understand how deep and broad the economic pain is for young people. Young adults are the first generation in American history to be worse off than their parents. So many people I know feel like they can never afford to buy a house that they instead have a mortgage on their mind. They feel like they can't have kids.

or if they have kids, they feel like they can't afford to have them. And so we need to make sure that we're looking at things again in pushing on universal pre-K, on paid parental leave. These are things that really transform people's lives that are working class and middle class young people. If you could have any wish granted in terms of voter mobilization, what would it be? Like Ariana Grande doing 10 TikToks in a row telling every single one of her followers to vote?

Oh, I was like, get money out of politics. that's something that could something that could that's feasible but no matter how how big it is but something that's feasible that could that could drive youth voter turnout I mean what I think about is how many young people are organized online right like we organized with a lot of influencers but Megan the Stallion if you are listening Lizzo or Bad Bunny we would love to do some events with you because you are cultural leaders for millions and millions of young people and working with them to use their platforms. And Megan Sallion has done so much already just talking about hot girls are ready to mobilize, right? And that being as angry and pissed off seeing what's happening

in her home state, which is my home state of Texas. But I mean, like, you know, some of that was facetious. But at the same time, like, would getting these huge stars or like people that have major audiences among young people, like would getting them talking directly to their audiences, would that be the number one driver? Would that be a major driver of like youth voter turnout that we hadn't seen before? Is that what these mega influencers, mega celebrities and singers and actors would, is that what would be most helpful? I think that we need to do that. But then also everyone needs to realize we're all influencers. And the way we get people out to vote is actually saying, I'm voting and here's why I'm voting. And here's who I'm voting for. I ran an organization

in Texas that mobilized young Latino voters. And one of the things that I love the young people we worked with is they started making their own, um, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, lists of who they were voting for and sharing that with their peers. And that helps so many people because so many people don't show up because they only know who the president is. They don't know who their senator or governor or congressional rep is. And so someone else that they trust, that's another young individual saying, this is my voter guide. Here's who I'm voting for. That's realizing that we all influence our friends, our family, and using our own social media platforms to share that is a huge tool we have. That's a great point. You had mentioned number one in

at the beginning of this interview. What numbers are you striving for this go-around? I mean, we are working really hard right now across the states that we're in with our field and our organizing and distributed teams. Our goal is we're trying to talk to 9.6 million likely progressives in those states. And our goal is to turn out at least 2.3 million of them, which is pretty on par with 2018 turnout. We know that this election is not just about 2022. It is also is still about 2024, and that especially in states where secretaries of state races or governor's races are up, that Republicans are looking at about how they can install people in those positions that would refuse to certify an election if it was not in the favor of their candidate.

And so that's why it's so critical in these critical states of like Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, and Wisconsin that young people realize this is also about the presidential race. And we're trying to make that clear to them. Right. And for those same people who know that they're going to be. going to go out in 2024 and vote anyway in those presidential elections, voting right now is going to be what it takes to, like, validate that next vote that you're going to have. So if you don't want your own vote to be undermined, then this election coming up in November is going to be

just as important as that next election that you're going to come out and vote in anyway. With that said, Christina, how can we best help? One, you obviously, Brian, thanks for sharing our work and talking about the power of young people, but also people can volunteer from anywhere. you're in the great state of California. There are many great local races. But if you also want to go, we have to protect the House and the Senate and you want to be involved in some key Senate races or in Michigan and Wisconsin. Go to our website and join our volunteer team.

Also go to our website and check your registration if you're a young person listening and post it on social media and ask and encourage other people to check their registration and make sure they're registered or if they're not, they can get registered online in states that allow it. So please everyone make sure and talk to three friends. about midterms, never talk down to people, people are busy with their lives. It's about letting them know the power they have in a midterm and who they should vote for and why. I love that so much.

That three-person thing has been my mantra forever, just find three people in your circle. Christina, thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it. Thanks so much, Brian. Thanks again to Christina. That's it for this episode. Talk to you next week. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen.

Produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, interviews captured and edited for YouTube and Facebook by Nicholas Nicotera, and recorded in Los Angeles, California. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app. Feel free to leave a five-star rating and a review, and check out briantylercoen.com for links to all of my other channels.