Panic World - How to deal with rage bait

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

Politics has always been an ugly game, but with Trump’s return to the White House and the proliferation of AI, we’re a far cry from the days when wearing a beige suit caused controversy. Today, we’re talking about how Trump is using the federal government’s massive communications apparatus into a rage bait factory — from immigrants to trans people and the “Radical Left Democrats,” blaming anyone except billionaires, corporations, and bureaucratic sluggishness for all of the United States’s problems today. Congressman Maxwell Frost joins us to talk about our troll-in-chief and how to fight back against his flirtation with fascism. You can follow Maxwell Frost on X and Instagram @RepMaxwellFrost or on TikTok @MaxwellFrostFL. This episode is sponsored by NordVPN. Get your EXCLUSIVE NordVPN deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/panicworld — try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to the Discord? Sign up for a membership at: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I want to open up with just like a question about your experience with rage bait, either personally or professionally. What was the first time you ever raged out at something online? Huh. Like, rage bait got me, like online? Yeah, like you got tricked or like, I guess you got like duped into being mad. Yeah. So I like when I was like in middle school and high school, I was very, very obsessed with the prank guys on YouTube.

Sure. I would watch like all the prank guys on YouTube and I was really into like content that was really stupid and people being messed with and stuff like that. So I feel like it's pretty hard to rage bait me. Interesting. I honestly can't think. I mean, I'm not saying like, yo, no one can trick me. That's good, though. That means you're the perfect person for today's episode.

I'm Ryan Broderick. With me always, the person who makes me the angriest, our producer Grant Irving, he'll be popping you from time to time. This is Panic World, the show about how the internet works. our minds, our culture, and eventually reality. And joining me today is, well, it's a little weird, wild to say this. Representative of Florida's 10th Congressional District, Maxwell Frost, thank you for coming on the show. Yeah, good to be on, man. Thanks for having me.

Today we're talking about something that I think we've all kind of noticed over the last few years, and it's definitely gotten worse since the start of Trump 2.0, which is crazy to think it's only been a year. We're going to be talking about how the White House has turned the federal government's comms apparatus us into a nonstop rage bait factory. Yep. So this is part two of a series that we're going to be doing, a three part, possibly four part series talking about how American politics has evolved to its current, rotted, insane state. And so this is part two.

You're going to hear us cover some slightly similar territory from our John Favreau episode, but we're going to go a little deeper and in a few different directions. Just to kick things off, like, how would you describe the trolling nature of the Trump administration right now? A few things. AI. It's almost exclusively AI generated content, which in it of it. Have they put you in a sombrero yet? They have not put me in a sombrero yet.

We'll see what they do. Yeah, it's exclusively AI, which to me, I don't know, that kind of look that comes from AI generated content, like annoys me. in it of itself. So actually, I'd like to answer your first question, like the last thing that, any kind of rage bait, anything that's AI generated, just that look really irks me, it makes me feel weird. Sure. That's one,

you know, check. The second check is it has to be like bigoted and very racist. You know, anything related to immigration. It's like a Mexican guy. It's a brown person with tattoos and a hoodie. If they post something that's like, come serve your country. It's never

like a black person or anything. It's like, you know, a white guy that like fits that profile exactly. So there's definitely like a racial bend to it for the people who are saying they don't want to see race or whatever. Of course. And then obviously it's always connected to either immigration or trans people or some sort of community. They want to blame the problems that we have because of the billionaires and corporations. They want us to blame other people. So everything is kind of based on that as well.

So I think those are like the three prerequisites for the Trump rage bait that we're seeing online I think that's exactly right and obviously there's a long history of let's call it like political trolling political rage bait But we're gonna start today's episode with the modern era and and I think the best articulation of the the ethos of this Was Adam Serwer's 2018 essay in the Atlantic the cruelty is the point have you have you read this essay? Just for our listeners, you might not be familiar. Here's a little section. The Trump era is such a whirlwind of cruelty that it can be hard to keep track. This week alone, the news broke that the Trump administration was seeking to ethnically cleanse

more than 193,000 American children of immigrants whose temporary protected status had been revoked by the administration. At a rally, a Mississippi crowd of Trump supporters cheered as the president mocked Christine Blazy Ford, the psychology professor who said that Brett Kavanaugh attempted to rape her when she was a teenager. And then the essay sort of lists all the cruelties of the first Trump administration. And I think it's a great place to start because this is sort of the world of politics that you entered into. And I wanted to talk to you a little bit about your own political awakening.

When did you first get involved with politics? Why did you first get involved with politics? People who don't know. And sort of what was happening online and also in the American political psyche at the time? So I got involved when I was 15 years old. I went to an arts middle school in high school. So I'm a drummer. My father's a musician.

That's what I wanted to do my whole life is be a drummer. So obviously something went wrong because I went to politics. And I played in the jazz band, which my school didn't have any sports. So like the jazz band was like the football team, you know. And we traveled for the school. We played all the time. Either way, before me jazz band concert, my best friends and I would go to this like Friday, it was a Fridays or Chili's Fridays across the street from my school.

And we just, there was a silence that fell out on the restaurant. We look at the television screen and we see, okay, somebody walked into an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut and murdered a bunch of teachers and children. And that had an impact on me. I mean, I remember I went back to the concert that night. I played the worst show my life. I kept rushing and dragging because I kept looking at the stage door backstage, scared somebody would walk in this place and kill everybody. And I couldn't shake it. Either way, I ended up becoming pen pals online with someone named Sarah Clements.

And her mother, Abby, was a teacher at Sandy Hook who survived the shooting. And Sarah invited me to go to D.C. for the memorial. And it wasn't just a memorial. It was like a three or four day trip where they'd advocate, they'd volunteer in D.C. public schools. And then there was the vigil. So I was 15. I was working at a shopping center here in Florida called Publix.

I hear it's very great. People seem to love publics. People love Publix. I did work there for two years. And so I went to this vigil and my whole life changed there. And honestly, a lot of it comes from the fact that I met people that were my age that lost other loved ones due to gun violence. And just meeting people that for the first two or three days, we were just kind of being teenagers and like telling jokes and having fun and running throughout the Capitol and delivering letters and doing meetings. It was the night of the vigil that we were at one of these hotels.

we were staying at. And it was like all the teenagers just waiting our feet in the water of some pool. And they all just started opening up their hearts about like who they lost and what they missed about them. And seeing that kind of pain in people my age is something I never experienced before. Wow. And that level of vulnerability. So I ran in my hotel room and I was crying and I called my mom and I was like, you know,

this is like, this is what I want to do. I want to fight to end gun violence. And I got back home and I started organizing. And that's what got me involved. into politics. What was going on the internet at that time? Well, I mean, at this time, I growing up, I was a troublemaker. So I always got in trouble. I was always in detention or something like that. And not, I wasn't like a bad kid in that. Like I wasn't like punching people and like getting in the fights. I just like to make people laugh and I talk too much, which is funny because

now my job is to talk to you. You could have become a podcaster. So honestly, you took the better route. Exactly. I had two options. I was like, I do talk too much and got in trouble. I could be a podcaster or a politician. Exactly. And now there's politicians with podcasts. So right. And kind of what I told you at the beginning, like, at least for me, my kind of what was going online for me was very narrow.

I was watching people doing pranks and I was watching stuff like that. And it wasn't until I, oh, and like the other online part for me was like at this time, I think I was playing a lot of Minecraft. And I used to play the chat room. games. Like, there's one called Haba Hotel that I played all. Have a hotel, of course. Yeah, you know, Haba Hotel. Honestly, that was my social media. It's fascinating that your political awakening is tied to Sandy Hook because across a lot of

episodes of this show, we've been trying to diagnose this thing, this, this larger than than you can sort of put your hands around idea, this vibe shift, if you will, that happened at some point between 2011 and 2015 something to explain the the road that we're down now friend of the show a friend of mine charler warzel you know once wrote that the sandy hook was the end of pretending we were going to change anything particularly for for people of the millennial and gen zin and gen alpha generation like that is the moment where the country said like this is the road we're on yeah and wherever this takes this is where we're going and politics gets uglier and almost immediately after in a lot of ways.

And so as as Trump is entering the White House in 2016, what was that political environment like for someone who's young and trying to make their way in politics? Like because in a lot of ways, I mean, is it fair to say that like you don't know another world? Like you are you're sort of a beast made of the Trump eras. So like what was that like? Yeah, almost. You know, I was because I was so involved in high school. and I would say like kind of my sophomore junior senior year

and I had volunteered for the Obama campaign. I was pretty immersed in the kind of Obama era, that kind of era of stuff that a lot of people like, you know, miss. But for me, the politics were pretty black and white at that point, but very hopeful. And along comes a guy named Bernie Sanders who became kind of my second big political inspiration after Obama. and Bernie was the one that really opened up my ideology, like figuring out like, oh, it's not so black and white.

And like, here are the things that I really believe in that might differ to other people who generally have the same values as me, which I think is really important too. And so I ended up my senior year high school volunteering on the Bernie campaign. And when I graduated high school, I was getting ready to go to college. And I get a call from someone I worked with on Bernie that said, Max, I got a job for you on the Hillary. campaign and I was like oh well you know I can't really volunteer right now I'm going to college and they were like no no no we want you to like come work on the campaign full time we're going to pay you you know I think it was like 1200 bucks a month for the full time job we need you to move to fort Myers and I was like 1200 bucks a month I'm going to be rich I was like let's go yeah that's good

yeah I was like let's go so I packed my bags and I went down to fort Myers um to do that job And that's when my like political career as an organizer started. Fresh 18, the youngest person there by far. But that was like when the era of Trump started. And I'll be honest, being on the campaign, like no one took him seriously. No one saw him as a real threat. It was kind of like a, you know, this guy's going to lose. Like a side show.

Yeah, like what the hell? And so I say all that to say like I've been doing most of my work during the Trump era the past 10 years. But because I worked a little before that, I got a taste. of like what it was before but for most people that are most gen z was it better was it better before yes i would say like yeah of course but and i think the world will be better when he is not on the political stage anymore he is a singular figure unfortunately and he does have a juice that like jd vance doesn't have so like when trump is not on the ballot his people don't show up the way they show up when

he's on the ballot even when he asked them to but i'd say the thing that's better now that is, I think at least in my party, as Democrats, we have more of a call to action and view on how we need to govern and what we need to do. And what I mean by that is the age of the neoliberal policies, which in many cases have brought us to this point where people feel like, well, you know, the Democrats don't, you know, don't do much when they get in the power. And then the Republicans come in and they mess everything up. and I don't like both. And you have this age of complacency where people feel like I can't trust either party

and wealth inequality is the worst it's ever been in our nation's history. And I think our party is waking up to that in a big way to say, wow, like I think we need to

have real bold transformational policies that will change people's lives. So I think in that aspect, things are better, but the general sense of politics is way worse. I want to talk about the Democratic response.

The shift from Trump one, you know, the age of the pepe, frog memes, which is very 4chan based, to the internet behavior they're doing now that they're back in power. And I want to talk about how this new strategy is helping accelerate the authoritarian takeover. So just like real quick, just for listeners you don't remember, because this is a lot that has happened in the last few months. On February 18th, the White House post a deportation ASMR video with like, you know, detainees in shackles. February 25th, Trump shares on Truth Social, the Gaza Resort, a.

video it has just been a nonstop barrage of this stuff and in March you know the Democrats tried to do like a first big push I would say of just like enough right they wear pink they hold signs they post TikTok videos and they get a lot of they get a lot of flack on social media like there's this one poster who wrote if you think Trump is a fascist like Hitler was then you have to accept that wearing pink is a ridiculous thing to do in response to Hitler's policies some members of the German left party war purple hats Do you see how stupid that sounds? And like you caught my eye because you were sort of one of the Democrats who was taking this seriously kind of from the jump.

And so, you know, how do you navigate? And tell me if I'm wrong. Because from the outside, it seems like the Democrats as an institution like do not do not know how seriously to take this. Like what stage of red alert were in. So how do you combat the claim that the Democrats are being unserious about this stuff? Yeah. And speaking of red alert, that was one of my favorite games. Great game. Speaking from a very personal point of view,

sure. I'm in the state of Florida. I'm in a state where what I always tell people is Project 2025 is Florida 2020. So like all this stuff that people are surprised about that everyone's freaking out about, rightfully so. We've been dealing with here for a while and no one's given a shit about us, right? So like Ron DeSantis, her governor, if he disagrees with an elected official, He literally just takes him out of office, even if we voted them in.

I mean, it's insane. He did it to my state attorney here locally. He did the state attorney in Tampa. Just recently, he threatened to do it to our county mayor as it relates to the county working with ICE. Not just that, but you've heard, don't say gay bill, right, in our schools. Yeah. All this, like, he is an authoritarian, Ronda Sanchez.

I think Ron DeSantis says no juice. I don't think he'll ever be president. But I think the interesting thing is that things we're seeing Donald Trump do now and Project 2025 itself a lot of Project 2025 is based from a blueprint and that that blueprint is what these like far right authoritarian Republican governors have done in southern states and specifically in Florida and in Texas and yeah there was that whole uh slogan like make America Florida before that's what they're doing right now right and and a lot of it comes from my state. So I think because of that, I came into this like on day one with a heightened sense of

alert and kind of a plan on what we do locally and what we need to do nationally to fight back against this because I know, you know, you want to talk about being in the minority. I mean, in Florida, we're in the super minority, right? So like our tools are so limited. But you won't catch like a lot of local people saying, oh, my state legislator isn't doing anything, even though they can't pass the bills to change everything we want. A lot of people still feel that energy from a lot of our local electives, especially here in Orlando, Florida. You have to ask why.

And looking at what they've done, working collaboration with organizers, you see what's needed in this moment. And it's being loud as hell. It's when you see a good fight, you hop and jump in it, and you make sure the world hears about it. It's communicating relentlessly everywhere you can. And then it's using all the tools, you know, it's using all the tools in your toolbox, even when sometimes it doesn't work.

And honestly, this is something Trump gets in that he does. They just throw stuff at the wall. And like 95% of it doesn't stick. But at the end of the day, you heard about 100% of the things they tried to do. And they've given the impression of inevitability to the point where you think everything he says he's going to do that he's done or is happening when it's not true. But it doesn't matter because that's how authoritarian run things. They don't even have to do half the things they're saying.

They just need you so scared that you obey in advance. And I'm not saying we need to be authoritarian, but what I'm saying is to fight back against fascism and authoritarian government like that, you have to fight that same way, throw things at the wall, do everything you can do, get in every fight you can get into. You're not going to win all of them, but people are going to see that you're not just lying down

and letting these people walk on top of you. And then at the same time, we provide our vision of, like, what we're going to do and what we want to do as well. And I think you have to do both at the same time. So I want to drill down into this more because I think this is interesting. Because to kind of bring it back to the topic of rage bait and the sort of constant barrage, as you said, of things in the Trump administration meant to enrage you and piss you off and horrify you. A few more greatest hits just from the spring here.

March 15th, Trump uses the Alien Enemies Act to deport migrants to Seacot without trial. March 26th, Secretary Nome goes down to Seacot. does a little YouTube tour, March 27th, the White House account does a ghibly AI image of an arrested woman sobbing, right? And so, as you said, like, these are clearly meant to activate his base, to horrify and scandalize, but also trivialize the liberal response, the leftist response, right? Because if you're getting so worked up about an AI cartoon, you're inherently meeting them on the battlefield of stupidity that they've laid out. So before we go to, the break and we kind of talk about the further evolution of this in Trump's first year.

From your point of view, like, okay, say that you're a Democrat politician anywhere in the country and you're minding your own business and Trump puts an AI sombrero on your head and calls you a piece of shit on truth social. In that moment, what is a Democratic politician meant to do? Are they supposed to do what Gavin Newsom does and pretend to be Trump for weeks on end and like make fun of him? Are they supposed to be. be like Chuck Schumer and sit down and be like, things are exactly the way they were in 2003 and you can't convince you otherwise. Or is there some other, like, what is the playbook there in this type of information warfare?

My personal style, I mean, everyone, you know, is doing their own thing and figuring out the way they want to. What would you do if you got Cimbrero posted? Yeah, what would you do? I would do a couple things. I mean, the first thing is if I'm talking about it online, the president has obviously just kind of elevated me, right? to a level where he feels like he needs to make fun of me.

So I would take that opportunity to be on every, not just like mainstream corporate news network, but independent media, everything like that, to deliver a very simple message. Like, we're in a point in time where we have massive wealth inequality, where we have so little because billionaires and mega corporations have taken it all from us. Donald Trump is no different.

He is one of those people. And he wants me to be mad about the fact that he did a racist AI meme about me, which is despicable, but I'm even more. off about the fact that working people are getting the short end of this thing. And it's because of Donald Trump specifically. And I just think like tying it back to what people are going through, I think is really, really important, especially because part of the way that fascist authoritarians and oligarchs keep us from, you know, putting them in our, I want to use the right word here, keeping them in kind of our our sight as the person to blame for the issues that we're in and who to organize against

is if we're just like yelling at each other the whole time. And so I would never say that these things he's doing is a distraction because that means we shouldn't pay attention to it at all. I think it's worth acknowledging how stupid it is. But using that as a leaving pad that then talk about the stuff he doesn't want us to talk about, which is the fact that the reason you can't pay your rent has nothing to do with the trans person living next door to you, The fact that you are too poor to afford groceries is nothing to do with the immigrant who is next to you and everything to do with people like Donald Trump who have been ripping us off for generations. And that message is an existential threat to his power. Well, so yeah, so it kind of sounds like your mentality is like if the spotlight's put on you by the regime, like you kind of have to use it to the best of your ability.

That sort of sounds like what you're saying there. You know, because there's a lot of people who come up to me and said, why aren't Democrats doing a press conference every day? Someone asked me this in a event now. Why aren't they on, like out? Why aren't they out? Just like, I don't know. Like, I guess like, as an average person, I'm just like, I want Chuck Schumer or whoever, Hakeetim Jeffries laying on the steps of the Capitol and doing an Occupy Wall Street or something. Like, I don't know.

Like, there's a frustration that I get when I think about, like, where is everybody? Well, what you're bringing up is actually, it was the point I was about to make that the first. the person asked me specifically, why aren't you doing a press conference every day? And I said, actually, people are doing press conferences every day. The problem is the way people consume media and the way you get attention is a lot different than it was 10 years ago. And so the fact of the matter is you can do a press conference every day, but it's really not going to get covered every day because the president of the United States naturally is going to have a bigger bullhorn than you. So the question is it, why aren't you doing press conferences every day? But it's like, what are you doing to get attention on what you're doing? And then in the cases where you're kind of lucky, and the president is giving you some attention and you have the opportunity to say something into his megaphone that's when we bring it back to that that core message which he used to win the election which is that working you know that all this ties back to the fact that they want to make more money that they want to make more money right they're greedy billionaires and that they want us to blame each other and i just think like that's the core message here and that message scares these

guys that's why they don't want us talking about anything having to do with that because it exposes how much full of shit they are. But the other thing that you brought up is figuring out how we bring attention to things. As I walk down the street and people are like, you know, Max, thanks for fighting right now. No one says like, oh, because you did the press conference and like, thank you for fighting. But they're like, thank you for that nice press release that you put out via email. And you know, the press release is, you know, all that.

We do all that, right? Like, you can still do that. Sure. You got to. Just do it all, like, at full force. And like, so people come up to me and say, I saw the video that you posted on TikTok from when you were at Alligator Alcatraz, right? The internment camp in the Everglades. Yeah.

And I've been keeping up with that. Thank you for physically going there. Like, I showed up to one place here. And I was outside. It was a ice, what's called ERO, which is like a field office. And I showed up and I was like, I'm here to conduct oversight. You know, just want to come in and look around. And then they go, okay, let me close the door and we'll get back with you.

And I put my foot and leg in the door. because and then they got all, you know, they were like, whoa, like, what are you doing? Like, oh, how dare you? And I'm like, I wouldn't come with this energy if I hadn't just seen 10 videos over the last month of members of Congress being pepper sprayed, cursed out, thrown out of buildings and stuff like that. So I have to obviously assert myself to you let me in the building. And then they let me in the building. But I promise you, if I didn't even just put my foot in the door, I wouldn't have been let in. But then capturing that and posting it online so people can see what's going on. is really important too.

So it's just like figuring out how to get attention, not for the sake of getting attention for Maxwell Frost, but to like show what's going on because we can't assume everyone's paying attention. So after the jump, we're gonna talk about how the use of rage bait, let's call it for simplicity's sake, has become more pronounced as ice has pointed its crosshairs at the American population.

Instead of outsourcing the Seacot, we are now seeing sort of, a larger ice presence here in the US, and we're going to get to Alligator Alcatraz. But first, a word from our sponsors. There are all kinds of forces right now trying to make it harder for you to access the open, free internet. If you don't have a VPN, you should definitely take a look at NordVPN. NorvVPN has 8,000 servers in 126 countries.

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So you try it out, see if you like it. That link is in this episode's description, so you can go to Norr's. NordVPN, N-O-R-D-V-P-N-O-D-V-P-N.com slash panic world and check it out. Just to rattle through a couple more greatest hits from this year, just so everyone can keep track of what's been happening over such a short amount of time here. April 25th, Wisconsin federal judge Hannah Dugan is arrested and fired theoretically for helping undocumented immigrants. May 8th, New Jersey Democrats, two of them are arrested for protesting in

immigration detention center. June 8th, following protests over ICE. raids in LA, Trump deploys the National Guard of the city. And that's when Gavin Newsom basically starts his like ongoing feud with Trump via troll posts and stuff like that. You talked about sort of like throwing everything you have at Trump when the spotlight hits you. I mean, from a from like an energy perspective, like how like how do you manage that? Because like effectively what you're describing, are you familiar with the concept of a DDoS attack? No. It's sort of like a, not like a hack per se, but it's like a cyber attack where you basically send thousands and thousands, hundreds of thousands of requests to a website to overload it and bring it down.

Oh, yes. Yep, yep. And I've often thought of Trump in general as a DDoS attack. The right wing sort of has adopted that strategy of like, like right now, you know, before the show, I was watching videos on right wing X accounts where they're targeting members of the armed service who don't want to shave their beards or cut their hair. because they've decided they're just going to swarm this idea. So, like, if you are at the center of a right-wing swarm, because let's say you were videotaped outside of an ICE detention center or that you've been singled out in a truth social post,

like, how from an organizational perspective, like how are you expected to handle that and also somehow come out of it, promoting an agenda and, you know, a political agenda and also like looking good. Like, it seems impossible. I don't think it's impossible. I think the first thing is realizing that when they do crazy stuff like that,

there's like 20 to 30% of this country that it's for. Sure. Most people don't like a lot of the kind of rage-based stuff that's being posted. So they do either one of two things. One, they haven't seen it or they've seen it and they just kind of brush it off like, oh, that's Trump, right? But they don't care for it. And then there's another group of people who actually get like pissed off about it and mad about it.

Those two groups of people are way, way, way larger than the group of people who see it and go like, yeah, that's my president. Sure. And I think like when you realize that, you feel a little less pressure in having to respond to the attack in a way that is defensive. Because most people, you don't have to defend yourself against that to most people because most people see it and it like rubs them the wrong way. So then you use the opportunity to talk about the thing you want to talk. talk about. Trump hasn't really called me out personally, but you go back to the beginning of the year and who was it for me? Elon Musk. I mean, Elon was calling me out online like every other week. He was saying I was a jackass. He was saying he's going to fund my primary opponent. And I use that

opportunity to talk about what's going on with these billionaires essentially running the entire country and taking away resources from working people and trying to screw over working people. And that was my message relentlessly. Did I troll him sometimes online? I'm sure. You know, when he said he was going to get someone to run against me, I, like, quote, tweeted and put the link where you sign up to run against me. Like, you know, little stuff like that. But I would, I garnered a lot of media attention from Elon Musk,

hit, like, just talking about me week after week. But I didn't feel the need to defend myself personally to those attacks. I just felt the need to not make it about me, but make it about people watching at home. And I just, I think that's the way to go on this stuff. bringing up Elon Musk right now is is actually useful to think about because like I think in a lot of ways the end of second president Elon Musk's term his sort of friendship with Trump ending solidified the Trump social media response in a lot of ways like I see a direct line from the Pepe the Frog memes and the WWE gifts of the first Trump administration to Elon Musk being like a total client. on X. And when they sever that friendship, it changes. And you can see this in the timeline we put together for today's episode. Because not only does the, let's call it like the

national occupation of the Trump administration and ICE really, really heat up. You get in July 1st, Trump officially opening alligator Alcatraz, which is still blowing my mind that that's what they actually call it. They start. And then the Republicans, of course, sell merch because they know that like that's a really easy way to mess with people. And they start like, bragging about the hurricanes and the snakes that might hurt people. It's a real shift from the first half, let's call it, of the first year of the administration, where it's much more about like, you know, the perfect post, the perfect meme, whatever. It becomes a far more kind of multidimensional attack, you know, in the media.

And so a couple weeks later, you have the Department of Homeland Security's X account, post a painting with a 14 word caption and two capital H's. And then you have them doing like a Batman parody. Tell me if I'm right here, they've become more comfortable turning the entire Republican Party into like a troll farm. There was a switch over the summer. And I think it's Musk leaving where the Republican Party just goes, this is our thing now. How do you deal with those people? Like, how do you talk?

Like I saw a clip this morning of like Mike John. Johnson being like, sorry, Hicking Jeffrey's like, don't pay attention to the internet posts. And it's like, dude, they're coming from you guys. Like, like, so how do you seriously communicate with, with an opposition party like that? Yeah. I mean, I think I've never thought of it as the way you said it with Elon Musk leaving and it ramping up, which is very true. But I think another part of this is they get to spend a lot more time this year.

trolling people and this kind of thing. I think for many reasons, but I think the main reason has to do with the fact that the policy portion of what they're doing is already prescribed. Interesting.

Like Project 2025 is the prescription. So they're just following through a plan. I, for one, I think it's like Stephen Miller is really the president. I mean, he's the one who's putting through all the policy and pushing it through and saying the Russell Vaugh and a lot of the operators. And it seems like Trump is enjoying a lot different

of a role than he did in the first term take the government shut down for instance in the first term Trump would take to the road do rallies across the country to try to blame it on Democrats and like 100% yeah do that sort of thing I think one thing is he's just a lot older now and maybe he's not up to it but even we can't walk upstairs he's afraid of yeah exactly but even in that meeting with hakeem and schumer and them like a few days ago I was told that Trump was pretty silent the whole meeting like he said like a few things and that was it It was mainly the legislative leaders talking and him just kind of listening. Oh, that's not good.

That's scary. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. Okay. So, okay, this is actually a really interesting conflict at the heart of a lot of this stuff, which is that their information warfare, the memes, the trolling, the barrage of bad headlines and misinformation is all happening at a moment where they're also clearly no longer caring about remaining popular.

Oh, yeah. Like, the Trump 2020 hat. Like, like, they're, they're doing it out in the open. Yeah. It makes you wonder what it's for. So, for instance, you know, the Department of Homeland Security makes a Pokemon theme video edit of migrants being detained. Yep.

And it's like, why? Like, you don't actually have to, you could just be a shadowy authoritarian government. Like, why? I don't get it. Yeah, because, yeah, I mean, it's for the 20 or 30 percent of like that base and nothing else. Like, it's not Trump, and I've been saying this since the beginning. Trump, in his mind, he's already, like, his presidency is really two years in terms of like doings, all this stuff they want to do. That's why they've been working so quickly in Project 2025.

I think in his mind, he's already lost the midterms. And it's part of the reason they're doing the whole gerrymandering thing and why they're doing it so off, you know, in the open. Like, that's like the hell, hell Mary for trying to win the midterms. But he knows, like, we're not going to, you know, be in our total power much longer. And that's why they passed a big,

beautiful bill the way they did. Because these are like, you know, it's like fleeting time of, like, total power in the government. And he knows that. And the other thing is, you, you had brought up, we were talking about how the Republican Party's doing a lot of trolling and stuff. But the interesting thing about Trump is he didn't give a shit about a Republican

party. He didn't care about the Republican Party at all. No. He came in and used them as a vessel to get the power. When he's gone or, you know, when he's not in this position anymore, he's not going to do anything to help the Republican Party. And actually, this whole kind of democratic chaos people were talking about earlier in the year, I think what the Republicans are going to be in after the next presidential is going to be a lot worse, actually, because I think Trump is going to, unless he, you know, I think he is going to try to, run again or do something. Who knows? Last time he did an insurrection on our country,

so we'll see what he does the next time. But I do think he's going to subtract from that party, and I think he's just looking to make money for himself and enrich himself. You know, you have a lot of Republicans who say he doesn't have to be president. He was already rich. It's like, brother, do you know that his net worth is the highest it's ever been? Like running for president has been one of the most lucrative things Donald Trump has ever done for him and his family. And he made it lucrative. That's what a time. it's all about. And so I agree.

I don't think he cares to be popular because he doesn't, in his mind, he probably, you know, he knows I'm in my second term. I don't really care what people think about me. I'm just going to like do what I want to do and let my henchmen like execute the plan that they told me I should get behind to win the race. And I won the race. So I guess they should do the plan. And we'll do memes and make money in the meantime.

So you bring up like a good point. Something that I, again, conversations grant and I have. I go around in circles about this over and over and over again. I think I make myself sick about it, which is like, okay, so if the Republicans via Project 2025 have kind of already decided they've won the game. If they get through the midterms, like, games over, we get to do whatever we want, 100-year Reich, whatever they want to call it. And while that's happening, they've become way more aggressive about misinformation,

disinformation, meme warfare, and they're just like messing with people. as you said, probably to energize their base of like 20 to 30 percent of Americans or whatever. So in that environment, I look at the Democrats and I don't, I'm not, I'm not going to try to get you to, you know, talk shit on your colleagues unless you want to and then please, by all means. But I get frustrated, you know, when the government's shutting down and I go to Hakeem Jeffries live stream and it has like 125 people there. Or I get frustrated when I look at Chuck Schumer next to the 2028 hat, just allowing that photograph to be taken.

Or the bevy of other sort of like establishment Dems, let's call them, that don't seem, not only are they not like making a big, like you can talk all day about whether Gavin Newsom's like social media strategy is effective. It is petty and I do find that emotionally fulfilling. But to see establishment Dems both not going that direction, but also not going the direction that I think you and a lot of younger Dems go where it's just like, okay, we're going to just like go like Zoran Mondami. Great example where it's like we're going to go out. We're going to make sure we have cameras and know how to film it, know how to frame it. And we're going to make sure that people know we exist and we're going to meet them where they want to be met. But then there's this massive and it seems like it's massive chunk of the Democratic Party that doesn't seem to know how to do either. And maybe there's all kinds of closed doors stuff happening that like the average voter doesn't know about.

But like, I don't know. People seem really scared. And it's like I don't know what the problem is. Like what's the deal? I guess. I think part of the issue is, and you guys know it's very well, that the frontier of politics in this country and media in this country used to be television. Right. And I would say the last great national politician.

who dominated that frontier was Obama, right? And if you dominate that frontier, you dominate politics. And now it is a completely different frontier, right? And now it's social media, it's online, it's short-form video content, or very long-form video content, stuff in the middle doesn't do as well. And I just think a lot of people don't get that. And I think a lot of people's playbook on how we handle what's going on now is still based on an old frontier that we're not in.

anymore. And I'm not sure, and I'll speak generally, that the party as a totality, has the people, expertise, ideas, and creativity necessary to catch up with that in a way that allows us during a shutdown to give the message when I get out. And I'm not just saying that about like any specific group of people, just like in general. And it's a huge problem. And I, you know, I'm trying to do as much as I can in Congress to help a lot of my colleagues, you know, do better on that. And honestly, I've seen a huge difference from now versus like, you know, in January. And I think a lot of people are seeing that and they want to do more. But the problem is a lot of times people get a narrow sense of stuff. And I got to be honest, it's not just about like doing more

interviews or doing interviews that are not just corporate media or doing videos. Like, it's not just about that, but it's about the things you're saying. And the fact of the matter is that, it's not just that Democrats have a communications problem because when you say that it means you're saying we're doing everything right but not enough people are hearing about it I don't think that's the whole problem I think we have a doing problem too and as part of the reason I bring up like the politics and policy of everything as much as I can because you look at someone like Zoron what's the measure of the success there well he personally has a lot of juice right he's personally great but it's two other things right there's two other things number two he knows how to convey that through short-form video content, post, interviews, everything like that. Okay, but we're not done yet because there's a last thing that if you don't have this thing, the other two things might not matter as much, right? And that is the fact that he's giving real solutions to people, that when people hear him, they know, like this guy gets what I'm going through and he knows what to do about it.

And that, and honestly, and I'm not trying to compare him in Trump, because I'll throw myself in there with him that I try to like have joy in a lot of this work. is that's a similarity between what we're seeing with the administration, that their form of showing joy while they do their project is the memes and AI and everything like that. It's cruel. It's horrible. To us, it's horrible.

But to him and that subset of people that he cares about, that's the joy for them, which is horrible, right? They love it. Like, that is the version of, like, AOC's video of, like, dancing and, like, a small group of people being like, oh, my God, she's unqualified. be in Congress, but everyone else is like, oh, cool, she's a human, like, she's a person, right? And same thing with a lot of the, like, humor you see in Zoran's videos or even, like, community. When I go over in my community and I, like, go somewhere, they ask me to play drums and I play

the drums and people love it. Like, that is our form of their, like, stupid memes. Does that make sense what I'm trying to say? It does. And it is a perfect segue into the last section of today's episode, which we're going to talk about right after the break. We're going to be talking about how we fix everything. Seems simple. Should only take a few minutes, and we'll talk about that right after the break. We just did an episode with Crooked Media's John Favro. He and I were talking about the structural differences between the Democrats and the Republicans. And I wanted to float this theory by you to see what you think about it. From my point of view, the Republicans are extremely bottom up. Even though you have Trump at the center as this cult of personality, the Republicans

over the last 15 years have become very, very sophisticated. at using the worldwide web of neo-Nazis as their monkeys with typewriters to figure out like what they should do. And because it's the internet, there's a two-way street. So the cyber army is listening to Fox News and Trump and the heads of the administration. And I think a lot of times vice versa, especially vice president and super poster Joe Vance. They're very plugged in. And John Favreau from crooked media was saying that the Democrats are not that, that they

are extremely top down. And so first, like, my question is, do you think that's true? And then my second question would be, how do we fix that as fast as possible? And I guess the third question is, should we? Like, is that good for democracy as a whole? No, I think our party is very regimented. We are to top down, and it's a huge problem and look no further than what's going on in the New York's race, right?

Where because... Are you a Cuomo guy? Are you a Cuomo guy? Yeah, dude. But look no further than New York, right? And it's not even just about his politics, but it's about the way that he entered the scene, right? And like it defies a lot of what our party is about, which is that process and like kind of hierarchy that is set up. And how do we fix that as fast as possible by defying it and by winning as much as we can?

And as we do that, we change what people think is possible, which means more people try to do it and then more people do it. But we also change what our base and what Democratic voters are looking for. Because I think you could go back years ago, right, and you would say, well, people look for a specific type of person who have specific type of policy who maybe they've done the thing. But I think more and more what we're seeing from my race in 2022 to other races, zero. on Alexandria or a lot of other progress that you're like summer lee greccasar delir ramirez robert you know a lot of people doing this work you know robert garcia he's a second term congressman but he's running the oversight committee now for democrats that was not an easy thing for him to do and it defied a lot of what our party is about which is kind of that seniority model

yeah but he had to defy it to change it and now there's like brand new conversations in congress about what it means to lead democrats on a committee now for the first time get this now people are talking about term limits for chairs in the Democratic Party. Which no one talked about until a young guy won, but whatever. And at least they're talking about it. But by defying it, it's a big way that we should change things. I'll be honest, though. I think we're it.

I think this year has awakened something in like the base of our party and the party itself. That number one, I don't think there's an establishment anymore, really. I mean, what's an establishment? An establishment are like the top power. brokers and holders kind of marching towards the same goal and using their resources to get to that goal. And the fact of the matter is, after last election, there's so much frigging drama in the party between the power brokers under so many of these power brokers who really don't empower

anymore that there isn't really an establishment anymore, which means it's kind of up for grabs on who directs what this party is about. And that's why the midterms are really important because I think it's important we get like bold progressives elected and that helps shape the debate and show. shape things, but the most important one is going to be who we put forth as our primary nominee. And I hate to make everything about the presidency. Everything's not about the presidency. State and local office is really important. Who we send the Congress is important. But just looking at like, what's the fastest way we can drastically change the Democratic Party?

It's by putting forth someone who's drastically different to lead our party in not that long in like two and a half years, right? And if you look at the Republican Party, that's what Trump did. he defied the odds got through and became the leader of the party and has led the party for a decade and has made it in the way that he wants to make it and has changed it and broke that kind of hierarchy that they had set up it's going to have to be the same for us and i feel honestly very optimistic about it because people want fighters but not just fighters they want fighters who have bold progressive visions and i hear that from people who hated bernie in 2016 and then i saw them at the oligarchy tour. And I was like, wait, what are you like, what are you doing here? I thought you

hated my guy. And they're like, I just want a fighter and the progressives are the ones fighting. And my hope is we're not just looking for fighters because there's going to be a lot of corporate candidates who say they're fighters, but, you know, want to keep the status quo. But the question is like, how do you want to drastically change the country? Like, change it because that's what people are hungry for. So sorry, that was a long answer, but I'm actually pretty optimistic about it, to be honest. On the topic of fighters and sort of tone, if you dig deep into particularly like more hardcore leftist online spaces, I think you see a thing that come up a lot, which is take

this seriously and not only take this seriously, match aggression with aggression. And so one question, Mark, for me about sort of the future of the Democratic Party, as you said, that is it is clearly like there are young upstarts that are finding a footing and getting in. And I think pre-Zorin, I would have said, it's impossible to not be aggressive and do well. Zoran has sort of changed my thinking on this slightly because he is making me like peak millennial, like very sort of excited about like viral content and that energy, that very like 2012 energy that he has. Because it's authentic to him and it makes sense. But I guess like assuming the internet is going to be a big part of shaping the future of the Democratic Party, these young candidates

that are coming in and trying to figure out a way to just like shoot through the structural machinery of the party and make a name for themselves. What would you say to people online in particular that are like, yeah, well, you have to be as much of a giant asshole as the president is and you have to match aggression with aggression and no cheeky shit. Just like, I need you to be like wearing like a black mask and a Maltov cocktail. And like, that's what I want. out of my dad. I mean, would I love to see AOC throw a Molotov cocktail? Yeah, it would make me feel

great. But I'm wondering if that's the correct strategy here. Don't give Trump any AI meme ideas, okay? That one's definitely coming out. Um, no, 100%. And what I would say is what we should ask people, because I think sometimes people are even confused on what they're like what they're looking for. And it's like, do you mean aggression in the way that we communicate and talk about stuff? or do you mean like aggressive in the way that we govern for like our people? And I think to go back to Zeron, that's something that he exemplifies. Like he's a joyful warrior. He's aggressive in what he's fighting for.

That's what people are looking for. And then he does it in a way that's authentic to himself. Everyone's going to be different. That's something I try to tell people. And honestly, like to be very like straight up with you, social media was never something that was a big forte for me, right? You know, my thing is like music and live events. You had Habo Hotel. Hold on, wait. You had Habo Hotel.

You were big. Yeah. I mean, if Habo Hotel is still around, like, I'd be, you know, much bigger on Habo Hotel. But sometimes it takes you some, it takes you a little bit to figure out, like, what's the way that people resonate with me on the Internet? I'm in my second term, right? I'm two years in. I feel like, honestly, I'm just now starting to get a hold of the way that people connect with me online. And I didn't really get that the first two years. Fascinating. Yeah, the first two years of my term.

I was trying to figure it out. I was doing a lot of different stuff. It wasn't a huge priority for me personally because I'm just so like in person based that I realize that we're doing such cool stuff, like on the ground. Like I have a music festival here in Central Florida that's like a political thing. But we never really captured it in the right way to show the rest of the world what we were doing. And I feel like this year is the first year where I feel like,

oh, I get how people like to hear from me. Right. and everyone's content's different. Like I was for Alexandria, right? She doesn't do the like short form kind of videos like Zorundas. She does like long form lives that like tens of thousands of people get in and they like they clip those lives and they post that like that's her thing. And I've learned for me, a lot of it for me is like like kind of direct to camera like sitting

on my couch talking with people. And I'm just figuring that out. Like I just figured it out this year. So I encourage people to just like be authentic to yourself and not sure like don't try to copy somebody else. Like, do your thing, but be aggressive in what you believe in. It doesn't mean you're going to be, like, cursing into the thing. A lot of people think, like, just saying a bunch of curse words is what people are looking

for. And I think people are looking for something a lot deeper. And I say this is someone who curses it randomly. Let's get Chuck Schumer a ringlight. So my last question for you, and this has been a great, this has actually been so much more of an optimistic conversation than I expect. So, like, thank you for that. But, like, we've just come through, like, a major news cycle that I think was very clarifying for the political temperature of the country.

So, Jimmy Kimmel, he's forced into suspension. He's brought back. There's all kinds of First Amendment concerns. The country, it feels like actually, like the majority of the country for the first time actually kind of understood how scary things have become. Obviously, you know, it's great because, like, everyone knows Jimmy Kimmel. been on TV for 25 years or whatever, and you can understand that, like, the president is bullying Jimmy Kimmel off the year. But how do you, if you're being bombarded with memes and the old media world is decaying,

if not already dead, the press conference era is over, the TV era is practically over. You know, I can joke, like, get Chuck Schumer a ringlight, but, like, we are in this transitionary moment where the Democrats basically have to wait for primary season and wait for the midterms to really understand, like, what the shape of the, like, what the shape of the the party will look like. And not to be hyperbolic, if the party exists in a legal manner in the way that we've understood for the last 100, 200 years. So, like, this is a big deal.

And then we are entering, like, a very scary moment. And it is a little frustrating to think that, like, the average American, it took Jimmy Kimmel for them to be like, hey, Google AI search. What's fascism? Like, like, it's a little concerning. It's a little concerning. And so I guess, like, from your vantage point. not so much what you would do, but I guess like if you wanted, if you wanted to be a mouthpiece of the Democratic Party right now, how do you both calm people down, but also I think like treat it treat this seriously? Because like there is there's this is big. I don't want to be I don't want to be hysterical, but this feels big.

You're 100% right. And the thing I always tell people is the good news here is we do have history to look at other fascists and authoritarian leaders. And this guy's doing this. same exact thing. And that should concern you, obviously, but also gives us a roadmap. Because the fact of the matter is authoritarian leaders, they always, always, always, bank on having the impression of having much more power than they have and people complying in advance and believing them at their word. A lot of people have forgotten that Donald Trump is a liar. So just because he goes on the TV and says he's going to do this crazy thing, doesn't mean it's going to actually happen. And it also doesn't mean. that when he does it, that it's going to remain permanent.

You know, and something I always tell, but 45% of his executive orders have been overturned or stopped or pause by lawsuits or by like public opinion that has pushed them and people on the streets. So like the organizing and the work we're doing does work. But I'm not, I wouldn't tell people to calm down because we're staring literally down the bowel of fascism and authoritarianism. But it's all in service of enriching a few people in this country. enriching people and billionaires like Donald Trump at our expense.

And that's not a Democrat versus Republican thing. It's a people versus the problem thing. And my hope is we'll stop looking around at each other on who to blame for these issues and look up at people like him. Some people want us to see the authoritarianism and ICE and ripping apart institutions and like taking apart the First Amendment as one story and then taking away Medicaid and raising our prices and all this as another story. And they're two different stories.

These aren't two different stories. They're one story. Because the only way in this country that you do this to people, that you take away their health care, that you raise their prices, that you make life harder for them just to enrich billionaires, the only way you do that without feeling like you're going to feel the rap of the people, either at the ballot box or on the streets is when you do the- To clamp down. When you clamp down on them and you make them feel like there's nothing that they can do. You know, in history, when the opposition, a lot of times the opposition is the person who gives the person in power the power that they want. Let's not do that. So I wouldn't tell him to calm down, but I tell them to rev up and that we can actually

do something. And I say this to empower people, not to depress them. Thank you so much. This is great. Before you move, I think Grant has two quick pickups to grab and then we'll send you on your way. But thank you so much. Thank you so much. Ryan, I think you actually got out of it with the last question.

So Maxwell, if you, I'm going to say my piece. And if you say, yes, my answer to the last question is the answer I would give, then we can be on our way, but if there's something you want to add, great. Okay. I, you know, the other day, Trump told a bunch of people to open fire in American cities and that we've got to get the enemy from within. And I feel very frustrated that if you respond to that, you end up sounding hysterical and you sound like you're hyperbolic. If you're trying to be like, this is serious, this is scary. I hear what you're saying about getting back to you.

things that the overlying issue but I but like is there any way that you see of communicating about what we are about the cruelty and about the ideas that like we can just send in the national guard to American

cities that can get somebody who's not paying attention every single day to care about this in a way that doesn't make us sound like hysterical or overreacting yeah and this is you know something I was getting at too when I was talking about those two different stories is the fact that we have to talk about both things. And I think it's all connected to enriching billionaires. So I think the reason he's sending a National Guard to our cities, the reason he's using ICE to greatly grow the prison industrial complex, which is run by a lot of private prisons and people making money, is all for rich people to make money.

Now he's just using the government to speed that process up. And that's what this is all about in the end. but I do think it's important to talk about it and I get really, I get upset when I hear people say oh, don't talk about the National Guard thing like that's a distraction or like don't talk about this, that's a distraction. When you say something's a distraction,

you're implying that you shouldn't pay attention to it. We have to pay attention to it. I don't think we sound hyperbolic when we talk about it. I think we sound like we're meeting the moment and that we're actually seeing clear-eyed what's going on right now. The politicians in the opposition are not talking about the blatant,

law-breaking and authoritarianism with the president's doing, then who's going to do it? So I think we must talk about it. What I'm mainly saying, though, is we should always talk about it and then tie it back to this bigger class issue that's going on in this nation as well. And I deeply believe that both things are pretty deeply connected. And if you don't want to answer this one, I totally understand. But have you helped any of your colleagues rotate a PDF or, like, taught them how to, like, take a selfie properly.

Have you, you know, what it means to go live? Yes, I have. No, you'd be surprised. I get asked to do a lot of this stuff all the time or like,

I used to work on music festivals before I went for Congress. I worked for Coachella and I remember I was speaking to a group of my colleagues about it. And a group of them came to me after and they were like, what's Cockaroachella? What is that? Can you explain it? Oh, dude. Oh, no.

Oh, okay. The way I explained it is I was like, Um, it's like the Jim Clyburn fish fry, but like bigger and music. Incredible. I had to find a good example, you know. I want to thank you for coming on. This is a great conversation. If people want to follow you online, where can they do that?

Where are you most active? Are you a blue sky warrior? Are you still duking it out on X? TikTok? I'm still on X. Some people are going to disagree with me, but I believe on, I believe that politician should stay on X. You can follow me at Maxwell Frost, FM.

M-A-X-W-E-L, F-R-O-C-F-L. I'm on everything. And then on TikTok, it's Rep Maxwell Frost. If you want to follow me there, too, I'm pretty active there. Panic World is a production of Courier. It is written and produced by Grant Irving and hosted by me, Ryan Broderick. Josh Fielstead is our production coordinator. And our amazing researcher is Adam Bumis.

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