QAA Podcast - 2 Frenchmen at CPAC (Part One) (E313)

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

Welcome to the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center. Your companions are two Frenchmen: Julian Feeld and Anthony Mansuy. They attended the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) so you didn’t have to. Enjoy the CPAC International Summit where leaders like Liz Truss (UK), Eduardo Bolsonaro (Brazil), Morse Tan (South Korea), Steve Bannon (1933 Germany), and representatives from Japan, Australia, Hungary, Mexico, and Israel gathered to plot a far-right international coalition and whine about how their Big Beautiful Boys have been so poorly treated. Join Julian and Anthony as they run into JFK Jr (who is alive and well) as well as a whole lot of January 6 rioters, including one that still has a lot of love for QAnon. This is the first of a two-part episode based on our latest field reporting in Washington DC. Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: https://patreon.com/qaa Anthony Mansuy: https://x.com/AnthonyMansuy Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (https://instagram.com/theyylivve / https://sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (https://pedrocorrea.com) https://qaapodcast.com QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.

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Oh, Oh, Oh, If you're hearing this, well done, you've found a way to connect to the internet. Welcome to the QAA podcast, episode 313, two Frenchmen at CPAC, part one of two. As always, we are your host, Jake Rockatansky, Julian Fields, Anthony Monsui, and Travis Vieu. The Secret Service had tightened security, and we were stuck in the press pen at the back of the conference room with the rest of the haters and losers. Well, that's not entirely true.

There were a decent amount of right-wing media and content creators around us cheering the president's speech. Sitting to my left was an overweight man who looked to be in his late 50s and was breathing heavily. Instead of applauding the president's quips, the man drummed his fingers on the long, slim desk that extended across our row. He was here with his wife, presumably covering the conservative political action conference, or CPAC, for some obscure media outlet. In front of him on the desk was a small portable blood pressure monitor and a torn open candy wrapper labeled Sweet Stream I felt like shit. I was exhausted in the process of catching a cold and beaten down by four consecutive days of psychotic conservative rhetoric.

The only real time I spent away from CPAC was a stint at the Capitol where a conference was held by Enrique Tario, the leader of the proud boys, Stuart Rhodes, the founder of the Oathkeeper militia, and an assortment of other people who were prosecuted for the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot. It had involved a lot of loud screaming, the launch of a meme coin, and the eventual arrest of Tario. But we'll get to that.

The point is, I felt terrible. Enantoni, the French journalist and repeat guest writer on the podcast, with whom I was attending the conference, wasn't faring much better. He was fidgety, wild-eyed, and had sent me an extremely worrying voice message from the press pen just an hour previous. Let's fucking, like, hang myself. Please come back. I'm not going to survive this.

I urge you to come back. instantly please you put it in there motherfucker I can already tell you to come back instantly please that was that was the very last minute oh my god incredible stint if there's anybody on the podcast that understands your your mindset like and that tone of voice it is me brother I know exactly how you feel just surrounded by like the worst people. They're closing in. The anxiety is pitching up. You've got one friend in the world and he's not there and he's not picking up his phone.

He left for so long. He left for so fucking long. It was insane. There was nothing to do. Just wait for Trump to speak. Another bit that I really appreciate you, Anthony, for is having two phones and somehow keeping both of them at 1% the entire time. Like, I was always looking over and he'd have, like, a totally smash screen on a phone that, of a small size, a size I don't even think they make anymore.

And it always had, like, he'd be like, it's 1%. I'm like, how my phone when it's at 1% is, like, probably going to shut down. Like, it doesn't actually even ever say 1%. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, they changed. I think it's my conspiracy theory is basically Apple, like, killing your phone with updates so that the old phones, like, don't, don't function anymore. I can keep it for like three hours at one percent. I think this is the most mainstreamed and embraced conspiracy theory ever.

It's just a fact, I think. Three hours at one percent? That's like the candles burning for eight nights on Hanukkah. Well, his way of doing it is he also had a totally piece of shit like portable battery that he kind of plugged in intermittently, but also sucked shit. So it was just, it was amazing. It's like he's traveled, he's like traveled back from the future. with like just like horrible like future tech and like different machines to like keep it alive like

until he can make it back to the portal absolutely i was barely paying attention to what trump was saying knowing full well that the speech would be available online in the aftermath the idea was to soak up the vibes of the audience which would be hard to discern from the youtube video unsurprisingly the vibes were rancid the more i soaked up the worse i felt about the country myself and the world i desperately needed to get the the fuck out, but the doors were closed, and I knew that once I exited there would be no reentering until Trump had left the building. So I sat there despondent, with a hog to my left and a Frenchman to my right, slowly leaking sanity points. Then something finally happened. To the left of the press

pen were gathered a group of January Sixers, Proud Boys and Oathkeeper militiamen, bonded by their experiences of the riot, the prison time a lot of them served, and the full pardon they recently received from President Donald Trump. A few of them were carrying their federal prison IDs. Members of the press had converged on them after they'd started chanting, J6, J6, J6, early in Trump's speech when he was thanking various people. The J-Sixers would get a passing mention near the end of his 75-minute speech, but only as part of a list of, quote, political prisoners the president pardoned.

J-6 hostages, he called them, explaining that they were treated terribly for years. Trump has pardoned more than 1,500 J-Sixers, since taking office. I walked up to this small metal safety barrier separating the press pen from the general audience. One of the J-Sixers, Brian Mock, was holding a red Labrador puppy in a service dog coat. He explained that it was for emotional support. He had served time for assaulting multiple officers and even breaking a flagpole in half and hurling it like a spear at a line of police.

Quote, got sprayed directly three times, took a flashbang and took down at least six cops, he later wrote to a friend by text. He and other J-Sixers were talking to the press. attempting to communicate how unjustly they had been treated by the judicial system. One of the most vocal among them was Rachan Abuel Ragep, a single mother of two from New Jersey who had served two months of jail time and 36 months of probation. Quote, They destroyed my life and my kids' lives, she explained.

So fuck you, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Shifty Schiff, DOJ and FBI, we're going to get justice by law. Another female J-Sixer, who I was unable to identify, pointed her finger at the reporters, adding, the hunters will become the hunted now. Keep that in mind. I checked the time. I was going to have to leave for the airport soon.

Then a man thrust out his hand to give me his contact information. He had scrawled it on the back of his federal prison ID and smudged black ink a few moments prior. Aha, so his handwriting looks like slender man. Yeah, it's very, I mean, it's very hard to use a kind of ink pen on like a smooth plastic surface. So it's really is smudged to help.

But I noticed a word repeated a few times. It was his online username. Crum, it said, with a cue. Over the last four days, I had not seen a single overt reference to QAnon, not even a t-shirt or a sticker. There were some oblique references, sure, like Elon Musk saying that his mind felt like a storm or Steve Bannon referring to a Great Awakening, but this was the first time I saw a proper queue anywhere.

The man holding out the card was Matthew Webler from Decatur, Georgia. In a security video from the Capitol on January 6, he could be spotted in a high-visibility jacket wearing a giant Q flag as a cape. Webler was eventually sentenced to 45 days in jail for his participation. When the feds raided his home, they found the gear he'd been wearing on January 6, but they also claimed to have discovered a few other items. Quote, a small amount of suspected methamphetamine, a homemade short-barrel rifle with a silencer attached to it, ammunition in two magazines, additional unregistered silencers, and other

firearm parts and tools. Because Webler had former convictions, including an aggravated assault from 20 years prior, he was prohibited from possessing firearms. Federal firearm charges added nearly five years to his jail sentence. By the time he was speaking to me in that CPAC crowd, Webler had served nearly four years of jail time. In the process of digging a bit deeper into him, I found a letter Webler wrote from jail. In it, he explains that, quote, because of Q, I am somewhat of a celebrity here, and get along with absolutely everyone. He was given a full pardon by Trump. And I knew this, because when we spoke, he was wearing a t-shirt that said, full pardon, January 6 Patriots, which he had purchased at CPAC.

Was anybody allowed to purchase those, or did you have to prove that you had gotten the full pardon? No, I think you're just, you know, you can be just like an ally. An ally? I asked Webler why his username spelled the word crumb with a cue. Crumb with a cue? Because I follow a cue. I don't post on it and stuff like that, but I follow Q. I took on that anon name, you know, just online. So I just changed it from a seat and took you.

Quram, quamra, quorum. I was interested to know what Webler thought about Q all these years later. Specifically, I wanted to know if he felt like QAnon's biggest promises, the storm and the Great Awakening had come to pass. Do you still sell a Q? He hasn't posted him forever. I'm too busy. I'm too busy just, I'm studying the Constitution, and right.

letters trying to unite my community and all that. I don't have time to be, you know. Do you think the storm is still coming? He's on the stage. He's on the stage. So at that moment, he was pointing to the tiny Donald Trump way far in the distance at the other side of the room. Still trusting the plan.

I continued asking questions. So do you think the Great Awakening worked? We are now able to have conversations with liberals, and they understand. And we're not screaming at each other anymore. They can actually see our side when they think we're crazy conspiracy theories. They're like, hold on, wait a minute. Actually, all this stuff is pretty well true. It may not all be true, but it's opening people's minds to being able to question, you know,

because nobody questioned. They just thought that the CDC cared about us. Wow, this is progress. To be fair, I was asking Webler about relatively vague concepts that could be generously interpreted. So I decided to ask him what he thought about the predictions contained in the very first cue drop from October of 2017. The first drop promised to put Hillary Clinton in jail or that she was going to be arrested within 48 hours. Do you think that's still happening?

I have no idea. When it comes to the drops and trying to interpret them, I don't, most of them I think it is to get you to start thinking and to start questioning things and figuring. bring things out and open your mind. As far as thinking that any of it was really going to happen, not on face value, none of it. Wow, not on face value, none of it, he said. I really had to get to the airport.

But before I left, Webler told me about his political plans. I'm planning on running for Congress in Congressional District Ford and Atlanta, Georgia. When are you going to put the papers in for that? I'm not sure yet. It's just the plan's just starting. So, and it's maybe this cycle, but maybe not until the next cycle. So we'll see what happens. As I sat in the back of my ride to the Ronald Reagan Airport,

I was amazed that I had at the very last minute found traces of QAnon at an otherwise sanitized CPAC. It felt quite good. Maybe the podcast hadn't sent me out here for nothing. I decided to visit Matthew Webler's substack and give send go on my phone just to see what he was saying online. Minutes later, I had an extremely queasy feeling for a variety of reasons that will become clear in a moment. His online writings point to a very online person. He refers to himself as anon and spells friends friends, F-R-E-N-S. He references the fact that he's been cued, which means

that a post he made on the chans was referenced in a cue drop, in this case a meme he posted. It's also clear that there's some mental illness at play. He refers to himself as we throughout his current writings and at one point states that he's going to explain, quote, who Mr. Webler was and who Crum is. It appears that Webleer now goes by Crum-led Bread and considers his original name a part of his past. This may be because Webler's life

as he once knew it is basically gone. Two weeks after his home was raided and he was arrested, the police returned with the Department of Family and Children's Services and removed their recently adopted son who was two months old from his mother's custody. In the aftermath, she called Webler in jail. He wrote about the incident.

That phone call was the absolute lowest point of my life. I had to stand there and listen to her screaming that they took her son, and it was all my fault. I couldn't say or do anything I could only listen. I wanted to wrap her up in my arms and assure her that it would all be okay, but I couldn't. I was helpless. A few months later, she filed for divorce. My entire world had been decimated in a few short months. I was completely defeated. What made me feel even worse was that Webler, in his writings, still supported Trump. Now, here I have to explain a very long passage in his writing where he basically posits that Trump sent a secret signal that day because at one point in his speech on January 6th, Trump told the people assembled that he was going to march on the Capitol with them to express their First Amendment rights. But then he just kept yapping.

He just was talking and talking. And Webler's theory has become that he did that on purpose because he knew that a bunch of bad elements like Antifa or the feds were there and that that that. would make them go immediately, but then he would keep people who wanted to listen to him like Webler behind and that this was a way of actually saving them from essentially being at the head of this fake riot, you know, this fedsurrection, as they call it. So here's Webler in an open letter to Trump that he posted online, explaining how he processed what happened that day. You knew that many of us were unknowingly marching off to become cannon fodder in a forlorn hope. It had to be one of the hardest things you have ever done.

It was more than likely the sole contributor to your reported foul words immediately after, and in the months following the 6th January, 2021. Sir, I am some of that cannon fodder. I lost everything. My wife, son, dog, everything. I want you to know that it is okay. I wouldn't change a thing. I would do it again a thousand times over.

this is not easy by any means we are often lonely and heartbroken sometimes we are just plain weary there have been many moments of anger as well i shamefully confess i have spent many moments railing at both you and our creator it is not anger over the loss but anger over being kept in the dark it is totally justifiable anger and is better to let out than to keep in but at the same time could have been addressed in a far better way i apologize for that sir despite wanting to many times we have neither quit nor turned our backs we get up every morning and soldier on we work to learn grow and better ourselves in every way we know so that when we soon rejoin the fray we will be far better equipped soldiers i mean just so he believes that trump

sent him off to have his life destroyed knowing on purpose essentially and he's apologizing to Trump for getting mad about this yeah this is like conversations with god when you're like Jesus, I cursed you and like, I'm sorry. By the time I had read through a couple of Webler's blog posts and letters, my trip to Washington, D.C. felt obscene. I was supposed to head home and create content from these broken lives, this grotesque and hollowed out culture. I put my phone away and stared blankly at the passing cityscape,

thinking back to just four days prior, when I was in a car heading in the opposite direction. Tuesday, February 18th, 2025. It was a cold Tuesday night and a day, dull moon reflected off the bay as my taxi crossed the bridge into Washington, D.C. I watched a small red light blink near the top of the floodlit Washington monument and thought about all the plane accidents that had been happening recently. A car just ahead of mine had a Harris-Waltz bumper sticker, an artifact from a different era,

a different reality. I dropped my bags in my hotel room and met Antoinie down in the lobby. He hadn't slept properly in days. His heart was freshly broken, and I would later find out he had a cold that he was about to transmit to me. Over fried chicken sandwiches, we discussed our mutual feeling that the gears of history were turning forward a notch and not in a good way. I felt like we were about to attend the funeral of liberalism, jettisoned by the American Imperial Project, its sheen no longer needed. Just a stepping

stone on the way to the grim, obvious conclusion of capitalism. That night I slept poorly, sweating in the starched, unfriendly sheets of the hotel bed. Wednesday, February 19th, 2025. The next morning, Altoni was waiting for me on the sidewalk in front of the hotel, smoking a cigarette and looking slightly fresher than he had the night before. It was snowing lightly and colder than ever. We called the car and drove south into Oxen Hill towards the Gaylord Resort and Convention Center. We had no idea what to expect. It was our first CPAC, just two French guys wandering into the rotten, beating heart of American conservatism.

Our plan for the day was to get our press passes and scope the place out. As far as we could tell from the broken website, nothing would be kicking up. off until the next day. The very first person I recognized as we entered the lobby was Vincent Fusca. The first guy, some Q&N followers, decided was JFK Jr., back from the dead and in disguise. Fusca was impossible to miss. Black, straw-like hair down to his shoulders, glasses, facial hair that looked painted on, always in a suit and t-shirt, always wearing a fedora and a mischievous smile. He was chatting with a small group near the front desks. As I approached, a guy who had just walked up to them struck up a conversation.

Another insurrectionist, he said. Jay Sixer? The guy in the group asked. Yeah, man. I saw you get shot at. And that's how I learned that a sizable number of people who had participated in January 6th were present at CPAC. Like Coachella for guys who raided the Capitol. When you walked into that lobby and the first person you saw was Vincent Fusca, did you feel like you were

like dead or you were like, oh, like this is definitely a simulation, like if this is the first guy that I'm seeing when I walk into CPAC. Yeah, I was expecting to wake up in the hospital bed. a second later. Like, oh. He was everywhere. He always placed himself right where everybody could see him, you know, so he can get some love.

And lots of women were coming and hugging him and stuff. Oh, yeah, he knows his, he knows his, he knows where his bread and butter is. Yeah, yeah. I think over the course of four days, we bumped into him like dozens of times. Oh, my God. I have another exclusive information because when Fuska gave Julian his phone number, I actually could look at his contact list. And he's the kind of guy who puts you know, ones and aes before his friend's name so that, you know, they're higher up on the

contact list and they're easier to find. That's awesome. That's stupid information, but I could see it. Yeah, when I later got his number because I was trying to get this t-shirt, which I'll get into, I put his name in the phone and he was like in the middle of telling me his name and I just turn the phone. And he was so excited that a French journalist just knew. knew who he was. Just knew. Wow. His eyes just lit up under that fedora.

I actually met him last year in Philadelphia when I was making a profile of Air FK Jr. And, yeah, he gave me his phone number and he harassed me the next night to get drinks with me. I was like, shit, I don't want my last night to be with Vincent Fosca. Yeah, yeah. You don't know how long he'll keep you in a place. Do you guys think that the hair is attached to the hat and if you were to take it off? Yeah, maybe. They would just be bald underneath?

Yeah, maybe. The entire head might pop off He might be like some sort of Playmobile man That is what his beard always makes me think of Is like how like Lego figures Just have like the painted on Like facial hair The two J-6ers slapped each other on the back

And started chatting excitedly as I took a selfie with Fusca He was wearing a t-shirt that said Trump's Guardian Angel with a picture of what looked like the crowded bleachers of a political rally. I would find out more about it later. For the next three days, it felt like we could not escape him. Every time we'd turn a corner, there Vincent was. It was uncanny. The guy was some sort of magalepricon.

We descended an escalator towards the booth where press passes were being issued, and that's when I truly understood the scope of the venue. It was basically a geodome, a massive open structure flanked by multi-level hotel rooms on each side. One of its faces and the entire ceiling were made of gritted glass. During the day, natural light flooded the entire place. On the ground floor at the center was a giant pavilion that contained two standalone brick houses, trees, hedges, and a big food court. We were basically in an enormous terrarium covered by a glass firmament,

breathing rarefied, air-conditioned air. The place had multiple restaurants, ballrooms, convention floors, and even a built-in spa called relash, which roughly translates to leco or relax in French. Giant monitors and banners advertise CPAC and Newsmax everywhere. It felt totally surreal like a disnified fascist rally with treats and amenities for the business class. Altoni and I wandered around gawking at the place and marveling at what humanity had wrought. This Newsmax banner is so fucking melted.

It's like it says Newsmax. Real news for real people. Which is they couldn't be more wrong. it's fake news for imaginary people. Wow. Get them. Get them, King. Rachel Maddow over here. You know, when I walked into it, the first thing I saw, it was really disheartening was

probably underpaid people of color, telling fascists, you know, the directions to the rooms where they would meet together, you know, and work out how to better cut, you know, like Social Security and stuff. Oh, yeah, don't forget a person of color who was there available to shine people's boots. Just grim, grim stuff. We were a little early to pick up our press passes, but we headed to the booth anyway to see if they'd already started issuing them. And thank God we did, because we would have otherwise missed an event that we didn't even know was happening as part of CPAC, the International Summit. A stout blonde woman explained to us that we could get separate

passes for it if we had media accreditation, which we did, or so I thought. Altoni gave her his name and showed her his French press ID, and she gave him a lanyard. turning to me. I said I didn't have my press ID with me, but could provide photo ID and my name should be in her system. I had been approved under Altony's outlet, something CPAC had confirmed by email. The woman was too busy rounding up a small gaggle of media people to lead them to the summit, however, and she waved off my offer to provide photo ID. You're with him anyways, it's fine, she said, giving me a lanyard pass as well. I put it around my neck. I would only understand later how lucky I'd been to have things go down this way. We followed the woman up an escalator

towards a high-ceilinged conference room where rows of chairs had been installed for the audience. In the back of the room, in front of a row of flags from around the world, was a U-shaped table with printed nameplates for all the attendees. Matt Schlapp and his wife Mercedes would be in attendance, as well as ex-prime minister of the U.K. Liz Truss, Eduardo Bolsonaro, the son of Brazilian ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, the head of the Mexican far-right party, Eduardo Verastig, the chairman of the Japanese Conservative Union J. Abeba, as well as representatives of conservative organizations from Hungary, Korea, Australia, Italy, and Israel.

Presiding over them was Steve Bannon, founder of conservative outlet Breitbart, ex-chief strategist to Donald Trump, and host of the War Room podcast. I took photos of all the nameplates, noticing that they had misspelled Eduardo Bolsonaro's. So it says, Eudardo Bolsonaro. What an Eudardo. We milled around the room for a moment, briefly speaking with a fellow Media Pass Haver, a heavy set middle-aged dude in an end-child trafficking T-shirt. promoting an organization called Veterans for Child Rescue.

He told me he'd been on a few operations to save kids in Tennessee and Texas, but explained that it ends up being a lot of research. Before I knew it, I was standing next to Liz Truss and Steve Bannon, taking pictures of them. They seemed delighted to hang out with each other. Steve had his customary three layers of clothes and three pens clipped to his shirt. Eventually, everybody took their seats and Matt Schlapp kicked things off. And before I play this clip,

I just want to mention that Matchlap has multiple sexual misconduct. and assault allegations, including one that he settled for $480,000 just last year, and a new one just a few days before CPAC kicked off. Both of these incidents involved groping men without their consent. The latest incident saw Matt Schlapp allegedly hover near a guy at a bar in Virginia, and when he was finally confronted by the dude, who was there with his girlfriend, Schlapp grabbed his genitals while staring him in the eyes. Jesus Christ!

Schlapp was escorted out of the venue by the manager, but he had forgotten to close his tab. So the night ended with the bartender repeatedly calling his name out. Matt Schlapp, Matt Schlapp, Matt Schlapp. But he was nowhere to be found because he'd been kicked out for grabbing a guy's dick. Awesome stuff. Anyways, here's the clip of him kicking it off. Okay, everyone. Thank you for being here to the official start of CPAC.

We did our first annual CPAC International Summit because, so many of you from around the world were RSVP incoming and I don't know, Mercy and I'd like to be good hosts and of course she said to me, what are you going to do with all these people that are showing up in our country? We need to all meet. And CPAC being CPAC, we knew it had to be substantive. We got to start talking about the problems that we all share

in each of our countries. With that, Schlapp got to the important things at hand. Sucking Trump off, Hungarian style. But is anybody in the room happy that Donald Trump won? We try to have fun with our sessions tomorrow. And my favorite title, because I came up with it, Meclos, is, what's Hungarian for Trump won and you know it? What is Hungarian for Trump won and you know it? The song?

You mean? No, no. How do you say it in Hungary? Trump won and you know it. Trump juzut and just you're perfect

I think it'll be on a t-shirt very soon and by the way the song that the Hungarian politician was referencing is this one by Natasha Owens Trump won and you know it Trump won and you know it

the big news won't ever show it because it's true Trump won and you know it We got dead people voting, drop boxes and dominion. I'm just glad that, like, a Hungarian politician knows that song. What a cool world. Listening, like, back to that now, because that came out, like, in 2020, right? Yeah, it was like an election denial thing.

Yeah. It sounds like a, like, a Saturday morning children's song. Like something that you would have, like, like, an animal, like, like, like, like, like, like, a man in an animal costume, like, with a bunch of, like, you know, toddlers sort of, like, you know, babbling around him, like, all singing together. Very, it has a very childish sort of quality to it. Oh, yes, or Christmas advertisement, you know, for toys, stuff like this. Yes, exactly.

Schlapp went on to blab in his zero charisma way about how many people around the world love Trump, how if we let the Marxist win in America, the world will be worse off for it. And finally, lauding Steve Bannon for the work he's. done, building an international right-wing movement, calling him a one-man political party. Then he addressed a pretty obvious contradiction in these efforts. How ironic it is, we hate the globalists, but strangely enough, we've built a global juggernaut. It's weird, but it is a fact. We're all working together to stop the global elites who want to destroy our civilization

as we know it. We've all worked together to stop the global elites who are. all sitting here in this room together. Yeah, it's, I mean, you can't, right, right wing talking points at this hour, at this late hour are so fucking melted and they're also full of like, I don't know, Alex Jones talking points and like online lingo. I mean, we are far gone, folks, very, very far gone. This globalist elite, Slap went on to explain, was attacking good, honest, far right politicians through lawfare. The two prime examples being Brazilian ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, recently indicted for a coup plot, and South Korean president Yunso Kyo, currently being

impeached for an attempted coup that saw him invoke martial law. I think that ended with him barricading himself in his home and like the police had to extract him. And there was like a whole booth, like a CPAC Korea booth that was all just like, you know, just complaining about this and They had books published about it already. Like, they desperately want it to be a thing, you know, that, that is included in the American conversation. Now, of course, for Americans and attendance, like, this shit is like, it's kind of like, okay, just play your role.

Say Trump is awesome. Say, we're just like you guys. We're having the same kind of problems and then move on. Anything more complicated than that. And they are going to lose attention. Like, they do not care. Like, you are just there as a kind of ornament to the American spectacle. Okay?

Get in line, folks. But anyways, Schlaab's point was that, like Trump, they were unfairly being prosecuted. Bolsonaro's son, Eduardo, and by the way, at some point they did replace his name plaque with one that was spelled correctly, tried to downplay his father's failed attempt at a coup. Yesterday, my father was indicted for a coup d'etat. We say that it's the Disneyland coup d'etat. So this is a great argument because he's basically saying that if his dad were a real dictator, he would have done a better job at taking over the government. Which is funny because it basically means that he was too incompetent to make it work, but also too incompetent to cover up his attempt, which checks out because, you know, in our episode, The Joker Bombs Brazil, which we did with Cayual Mendra and Andrew Fishman from the Intercept Brazil, you really kind of get a sense of like an entirely incompetent organization that printed their plans for a coup on like the office printer like that. Very messy. I would like to know what a Disneyland coup d'etat looks like. I mean, is it like the seven dwarfs sort of like charging the magic castle when you come in?

I mean, what does that look like? Pluto just like holding Mickey's severed head over the crowd. The blood of the bourgeois! At the end of his little speech, Eduardo Bolsonaro started complaining that there are laws in Brazil which allow a presidential candidate to be rendered non-eligible, which is very funny because, honestly, If we had that in the United States, I don't think we'd be quite in this mess. And you can hear Schlapp in this clip jumping in to bring up Trump at the end, despite the fact that Trump was not disqualified from running for a second term, even though he was convicted. So it's, you know, he basically after this, you won't hear it, but he changes the topic extremely fast and, like, moves to the next speaker because he realizes, oh, wait, I don't think I'm making the point that I want to make.

You don't have this law here that turned someone non-eligible. we have that in Brazil a court in Brazil can turn anyone in non-eligible person so you cannot run in the election well that's why they wanted to put down Trump in jail right yeah that's kind of a big talking point by the way now it's like yeah they tried to jail him so he couldn't run again and i mean i don't know we're just like floating in this kind of gray area where it's like yeah of course they wanted to prosecute trump for his crimes despite the fact that other politicians are constantly getting off scot-free, but also, like, we should do that.

We should do it for all these politicians. I mean, they would all be in jail. We wouldn't have to deal with any of these fucking people. Nancy Pelosi would be in fucking jail for insider trading. All these people would be in jail. Crimes against humanity. These guys, like, can't, they can't let go of the past. It's like, Trump won, like, kind of, in my opinion,

sort of against all odds, you know, two non-consecutive terms. And yet they're like, well, and they almost didn't. let him. You know what I mean? It's like, dude, like, you guys won, like, should be elated, but they're still, they can't let go of these past grievances because, like Julian was saying earlier, like trying to actually discuss and debate a current Republican, like, policy is, is impot. It's a soup. And so the only thing really to hold on to is your anger at the other party for their perceived aggression, you know, against your guy. the narrative has to contain victimhood, right? Because you want these people to keep

fighting. Yeah. And so there has to be like a strong opponent, right? Some evil force that continues to be powerful and work against you instead of like deeply cowardly jellyfish spined motherfuckers and or people on the verge of death who look like they're kind of peering from inside of their collar. Yeah, the way they constantly talk about themselves about how they're being an oppressed underdog, is just running into the fact that they won and control everything. They have total control over the federal government, but somehow they still have to whine about how they're being oppressed and not as powerful as they want to be. So it is a strange, incoherent soup.

Yeah, I mean, we've seen this, obviously, is like, when a person takes control properly of a country and, like, just installs themselves forever, they are still constantly undermined by the secret threat of communism, you know, and this is used as an excuse to, like, you know, purge people of the federal government, of their jobs, and then eventually, I mean, you know, purge some, some people, you know, we don't want these, there's too many, there's too many of these people that don't like me around. Yeah, they can't say, all right, we won. So that, actually, you know what?

That means actually the system works and we take full responsibility for everything that happens from here on out. Yeah, no, of course not. Matchlap then turned to the Korean delegation, who were also complaining that their candidate was being unfairly attacked through their judicial system. In their opinion, his attempt at suspending parliament by instating martial law, which then led to his impeachment, was in fact the real coup. Apologies in advance for the crackling sound in parts of this clip.

A cameraman for a right-wing media outlet was unwrapping a chocolate bar right near the mic. Oh, my God. Come on. I know. I know. I know. I know. The treatlerite allegations are hard to beat.

Oh, my God. This man is trying to get podcast. content he's out here he's out here in the field trying to try to break you know get a real scoop and and he can't avoid the unwrapping of treat yeah so ambassador tan you know you're facing similar problems in korea where there's a lot of irregularities and it seems like a tool that's used in more countries is when you have a political disagreement with someone you impeach them, you prosecute them, you try to convict them. You're exactly right. It sounds like there's some common themes here across countries. And in South Korea, you have a coup in process,

an insurrection happening, where the rightfully elected president, President Yun, has been impeached and the used and mechanism inside of Korea that's only supposed to be used for things like treason, to arrest him, to throw him into solitary confinement, and now his case is before the constitutional court. And the person who wants to take over the country, I. Jiam, the head of the Democratic Party of Korea, he's a communist. He has allegedly been forking over millions of dollars to North Korea, wants to turn the country over towards the Chinese Communist Party as well, and what's very ironic is many times the things they accuse President Yunov are the very things they're doing themselves. They're saying he's an insurrectionist when they're trying to

topple him from the rightfully elected presidency. Okay, I couldn't understand anything that was happening in that clip because all I could listen for was the crink, okay, that clip was one minute and 26 seconds, and this man is fumbling with that candy. for the entire time. I could just imagine his sweaty, big fingers, you know, trying to be quiet. And he's like, but I really, I really need this snack. And I remember thinking to myself when you was talking that, like, everybody else around the table and in the audience checked out entirely because he spoke for like 80 seconds.

And that was way too long and way not interesting for them. Yeah. They don't fucking know the ins and outs of whatever the fuck is happening in Korea. Like, come on, just say you love Trump. Koreans love that. He did a good job. He did a good job mentioning North Korea because, like, everybody, like, paid attention. Yeah, wait, they're bad.

Oh, yeah, Chinese communist. Yeah, we know that. Bad, bad. That's bad. Yeah, I think that from now on, like, all right-wing talking points should have to have, like, a soundtrack of, like, someone, like, unwrapping and slurping on a little treat in the background. Just to, just to really kind of show people what this country's about. Yeah, like straw, like straw penetrating Capri's son. But, like, this is so funny.

Like, I wonder if when they're planning CPAC next year, they're like, ah, we forget the international, no, but that didn't do very well. Low attendance. People look bored. Like, because you're right. All they're there to do is to be like, we're winning. Go Trump. Everybody loves Trump.

Trump's so awesome that other countries don't even care about their own problems. They're worried about us and Trump and what's he going to do and they love them. Well, that's the thing about the International Summit is it wasn't really for people. Like some people did wander in and there was some audience, but it was more for like this immense amount of people that had traveled from all around the world. It was like every weird European crusty fascist, like smelling like piss and decaying. And just like young kind of Hitlerite types. Like everybody had really gathered there. I heard so many different languages.

In fact, I think there was a point in the food court where I believe like some Austrian guys were just. making fun of the place for being called Gaylord, which, you know, that's funny. But yeah, no, what's really happening here is the building of a kind of international coalition of far-right parties that, you know, to be fair, gaining a lot of ground. So I think that's the point. Like, yes, the Americans are checking out, but this was like a smaller room. It was before CPAC even officially started. And the general audience that wandered in, I mean, they were just kind of extra because the people really there were, I think, you know, kind of there in a way to, like, absorb how to win, you know. And I think that America's got a good blueprint now for some of these people and how to assert power in their own countries.

So that's how I felt this thing was, which is incredibly creepy and fucked because I guess this was like the first proper international summit as Matchlap discussed. Like, they had always had some international speakers, but this year, it really felt like, you know, a kind of coalition of different countries that could all basically agree on some of the most awful talking points. So after everybody agreed that this was very unfair and the poor Korean Trump was being treated very unfairly, it was time for Richard Grinnell to regale everybody with an incredibly drawn out story about flying to Venezuela to get American hostages released. And during his speech, you could tell Steve Bannon was bored out of his mind because the story basically amounted to, we flew to Venezuela, we picked up six Americans, and then we flew back. But he told it over 12 minutes as if it were like black hawk down, including a point where he hugged one of the released hostages and like cried, but he also had to be like, no homo, you know, you know, I'm a tough guy. But I still teared up. And I don't know. The whole thing just sucked so bad.

And it was clearly like Grinnell trying to sound like he was very cool and important because I guess he's going to be the guy who is sent out by Trump to like get back the hostages, which just involves usually following through on already agreed upon hostage exchanges and stuff like that. Anyways. When Grinnell was finally done, Bannon briefly made fun of him saying that he was three quarters of the way through the story and, quote, thought it was the takeover of the Kennedy Center, which didn't get many laughs because like not as many people are that tuned in. to like, I don't know, American crisis moments. And Bannon definitely, like, knows all of them has read a lot about these kinds of things. So he then shifted gears and used Grinnell's story as a jumping off point for his own alarming message.

And what that shows and what your story showed in the coup and Korea and what happened to Bolsonaro, I mean, we're at war. Bannon went on to explain that the opponents of the far right wanted jail and kill all their beautiful boys. Remember, if Donald Trump did not win on November 5th, they were going to drop a superseding indictment the next day.

Donald Trump, the indictments of Jack Smith came to 300 years in prison, and they wanted Donald Trump to die in prison, just like they want President Bolsonaro to die in prison, just like they want President Union to die in prison. The stakes were playing. Look at where they couldn't be playing for higher stakes, and they don't think they've lost yet. the deep state, the administrative state, what's happening in this very city. Next door, we have 600 volunteers

who are the tip of the spear of the precinct strategy and getting out the vote. And they're geared up. Why are they here a day early for CPAC, which is their big annual gathering? They understand we're still at war. This story is far from over. They indicted one of the best men in this world

yesterday in Brazil. on nothing, to send him to prison to die. Just like they want Trump to die, just like the Chinese Communist Party wants Yun to die. Moments before, Bannon was next door in another ballroom, speaking to his grassroots volunteers who continue working on what he calls the precinct strategy. This is his long game. So here is from a 2021 ProPublica article. When the January 6th insurrection failed, Bannon continued his campaigned for his former boss

by other means. On his War Room podcast, which has tens of millions of downloads, Bannon said President Trump lost because the Republican Party sold him out. Quote, this is your call to action, Bannon said in February a few weeks after Trump had pardoned him of federal fraud charges. The solution Bannon announced was to seize control of the GOP from the bottom up. Listeners should flood into the lowest wrong of the party structure, the precincts. It's going to be a fight, but this is the fight that must be won. We don't have an option, Bannon said on a show in May, we're going to take this back, village by village, precinct by precinct. Precinct officers are the worker bees of political parties, typically

responsible for routine tasks, like making phone calls or knocking on doors, but collectively they can influence how elections are run. In some states, they have a say in choosing poll workers, and others, they help pick members of boards that oversee elections. After Bannon's endorsement, the precinct strategy rocketed across far-right media. Post promoting the plan racked up millions of views on pro-Trump websites, talk radio, fringe social networks and message boards, and programs aligned with a Q&N conspiracy theory. Suddenly, people who had never before showed interest in party politics started calling the local GOP headquarters or crowding into county conventions, eager to enlist as precinct officers.

They show up in states Trump won and in states he lost, in deep red rural areas, in swing voting suburbs and in populous cities. So this technique continues to be his focus, and he continues to rally people to slowly kind of invade from the bottom, which is cool. And I mean, smart. This man has a will to power. Like, this man knows how to grassroots organize.

I don't think there's anything to learn from here. Bannon ended his speech at the CPAC International Summit by thanking Matt Slap for having Trump's back when the entire GOP establishment wanted to move on. after he lost the election to Joe Biden. People don't understand when you had CPAC down in Florida and did that during COVID and everything like that, there was all this back chat, right?

This is the dead enders, right? These are the dead enders on the Trump movement. Trump's finished, Trump's over. This is that grassroots. They've basically been destroyed. You know, we're going to have all these other candidates. It took courage. And it's that courage that, remember,

courage is that virtue upon all the other virtues rest. And I look in South Korea, I see courage. When I look at the Bolsonaro's, I see courage. When I see Rick Grinnell, I see courage. That's the defining thing. It's not policy. Is do you have the guts and the balls to sit there and go, we're going to win and you're not going to defeat us?

Throughout ban in speech, I was sitting next to an ancient European fascist who smelled like piss and kept jeering. A guy with a Make Europe Great Again polo shirt was directing his cameraman in the aisle. Another man had a tote bag celebrating Bolsonaro, Malay, and Trump, So it has the Brazilian flag and the Bolsonaro slogan, Deus, Patria, Familia, Libertagie, which is God, country, family, and liberty. Then there's Make America Great again, Trump and the American flag. And finally, there's the Argentine flag with Viva la Libertad Carajo by Javier Millet,

which is like, you know, long live liberty, damn it, or freedom. All the best slogans from all the best countries. Yeah. We then had to sit through a long discussion among the different European far-right factions about the evils of what they kept calling voc ideology, Marxists, and how Brussels was terrified of their coalition because it threatened the EU's liberal elites. The whole thing left me feeling pretty queasy. In some ways, Bannon was seeing his efforts yield real results. Europe's far right was ascendant. They've been winning. They really have. I mean, it is insanely worrying

how quickly votes are starting to trickle into far-right parties in a variety of countries. I know that in France, Altonia, the situation is pretty bad. I mean, do you want to speak on that for a moment? Oh, yeah, yeah. But last summer, we had parliamentary elections that were not on schedule because we had the European elections before all across the continent and the far right, the Front National, the national rally, had about like 35% of the vote, I think.

And it's a one-round election. so it can give you a sentiment of the electorate and this is the moment Macron decided to call for new unscheduled parliamentary elections which everyone thought would go the wrong way and in the first round they arrived first the far right but then there was kind of a coalition on the left which allowed the left to arrive first in the second round

and the far right became third which was a huge moment of relief for us but still we have presidential election in two years Macron will not be able to, because of term limits, he won't be able to present himself. So it's all up in the air, you know, like the civic discourse is more and more shaped, and media discord is more and more shaped by the far right. Every day is getting worse. So yeah, I don't know if this is Bannon's making, because, you know, we have our own problems,

but I guess there's a wave, you know, going through all of the West and more that we are not immune to. It doesn't help that, like, Michael went out of his way after the election to not make the left's victory integrated into the process, right? He was supposed to, by tradition, name a prime minister from that left coalition, and he's refused to do that, right? Yeah, because basically the parliament is split into three thirds. Like, you have the one third is the left, which is a coalition of the Greens, the quote unquote socialist party, which is a social liberal type party, like democratic party in the U.S. and the Francins-Sumis, which is the actual left-wing party. Then you have the center with like the coalition of parties around Macron, and then you have the far right.

And it's basically like, it's roughly like three-thirds, almost equally dispersed. And so you need to have a coalition to have a prime minister between two of these three-thirds. And Macron didn't want the left to govern because they campaigned on overturning most of the things he had done. So he turned to a coalition between the far-referring. right and the center, even though the left arrived first. And it lasted for about a couple of months. And then a new prime minister is now in power. And I think he's caught up in a scandal of

covering pedophile actions in a Catholic school in the south of France. So I think it's not going for very long. Yeah, covering up. And so yeah, yeah, that's a really weird situation. So there's a chance we might go back to the polls this summer. Damn, you hate to see the liberals decide to hand it to the right when, you know, faced with the decision between seating anything to the left and just basically saying, hey. This seems to happen over and over again, right? I don't know, man. Why did they do that?

I have no idea. Better not look into it. I was glad we'd arrived a day early to CPAC because it allowed us to attend this summit. Very few journalists were even aware it was happening. Only Politico has an article dedicated to this momentous gathering of ghouls. Here's what Ben Jacobs had to say. All speakers at the International Summit tried to tie their country's struggles to those conservatives say they face in the United States. Liz Trust, who was briefly British Prime Minister in 2022, complained about how unelected judges were ruining Great Britain.

Balas Orban, an aide to Hungarian strongman Victor Orban, said that the Hungarian leader's vision was the same as Trump's. No migration, no gender, and no war. No gender. I love the idea of just not having gender. No gender, we're all soup. doesn't even make sense. They've really gone off the rails with all the gender stuff. Like, it's insane. Like, the amount of times that I heard the word Vogue, because they can't pronounce Woke and cancel culture. Maybe it's because you want to say Volk.

Yeah, exactly. When they say, it does sound like they're saying Volk ideology, but then they actually do want Volk ideology. They don't want Vogue ideology. Orban also named enemies. Quote, the Vogue Hydra, USAID, Brussels, George Soros, the Rockefeller Fund, Gates Foundation, Hollywood, the whole network. This prompted Grinnell to jump back in and say that Elon Musk was cutting off all money going to left-wing NGOs and wokeness. He further praised Musk saying, thank God for Elon. He's saving our money and making the world better, which that checks out, right? That's what you found in your episode on him, right? Is that he's saving money and making the world better, right, Travis? No.

Good. By the time Amichikli, the Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs, started speaking, I had already grown restless and was walking around the room. Some of the most gung-ho CPAC attendees had slowly trickled in to check out the summit, including a group of five boomers in yellow sequin jackets with giant glittering red letters hanging around their necks. If you put the boomers in the right order next to each other, their outfits spelled out Trump, of course. And I imagine myself like holding them like the little guy in street view, just dropping them in the right order. There we go. Another woman was dressed as the Statue of Liberty with lettering on the back of her dress that said,

Trump tribe of Texas. Like I mentioned, the room was a real hodgepodge of Magafreeks, ancient European fascists, weird Latin American fascists and young strivers, like kind of trying to make their name in this, like, rising scene. The Israeli minister thanked Hungary for their immigration policies, basically not letting Muslim people in, because it made their capital what he called, one of the safest, least anti-Semitic cities in Europe. So that's really cool.

Israel's like so down. He explained that Israel was fighting a, quote, spiritual war against the evil terrorist, Hamas. This prompted matchlap to further compliment Israel and the Hungarian politician to explain that the left supported Islamism and anti-Semitism, which is something that you hear a lot in France as well, right? Like they have like a term in France, Islamo-Leftists, Islamogishists. Yeah, that's it.

Just insane. Just the new version, it's like the new version of, like, Judeo-Bolsheviks. But it's because of Israel, like, joining this coalition, they've managed to, like, flip it on its head. And it's like, well, yeah, okay, we're recreating, like, everything that Hitler stood for, but not against Jewish people because Israel is on our side, too, which really misses the point that, like, Israel is an insane fascist nation as well. And that they just want to do exactly the same thing, but to very, to different people.

Yeah, the Islamogist thing is, is, really. really real here. And it kind of contaminated the whole left, this accusation, because, you know, since there was a coalition last summer between the left and the social democrats, like all the center-right people have tried to, like, detach the social democrats from the left, from the France Insomis, saying that, you know, like, because of support from the Palestinian cause, they are anti-Semitic and basically to break the alliance and to allow for Macron or maybe the far right to win, you know, the next time. And so it's extremely problematic now for any alliance among the left.

Yeah, I mean, I think they learned from the Jeremy Corbyn thing. Like, this is how you cleanse the supposed left of any kind of actual left influences and just turn it into a kind of Keir-starmer-style centrist party that might as well be, Maikon, that, you know, that might as well be a right-wing party. It's insane. It's very, very sad what's happening. Um, also you, uh, briefly spoke with a French politician, right? And, uh, you described a moment where you both kind of went over the fact that like, spoilers, uh, you know, Steve Bannon during his speech on the main stage did a Hitler salute. And we'll get to that in part two of, of our adventures. But the point is that this obviously generated a lot of uncomfortable moments because there were tons of Israelis there, like wearing their keepas. Like there was a real kind of showing of people with like, uh, kind of outwardly. indicated Judaism.

So, yeah, can you kind of describe what happened when you spoke to the French politician in a cafe? So she's the number two in one of our two far right parties in France. So she's the co-leader of this movement, and she was there at CPAC. And so Steve Bannon, the previous day, had made a Nazi salute during his speech at the end of his speech. And so I was talking to her, like, how do you call what Steve Bannon did, right? And she said, I think it was a Nazi gesture, but it's not like something that sums up what CPAC is.

It's not all that CPAC is, so that's why I'm staying. And she said that in the context of Jordan Bardela, who's the leader of the national rally in France, the main far right party, and she's his competitor. So he's like, yeah, but whenever the media doesn't like something, which was a Nazi salute, he's trying to make appeals, like to be more pleasing to the media, so he's going to go in the direction of what the media wants. That's why he canceled his speech, because that's what he did. He canceled a speech. He was supposed to be giving the next day after a balanced salute. And so what, her name is Sarah Nafo.

She's a European parliament elected official. And she said that, you know, if Sipak was anti-Semitic, if Sipas was Nazi, do you think this guy and she pointed to Amichli, who's the Israeli minister of diaspora, he was entering the cafe we were in? And he's like, do you think he would be meeting, he would be staying here? And what happened was that Hamichai Shikli, actually was going to meet guys from the FPO. The FPO is the Austrian Far Right Party

founded by actual Nazis in the 50s. And whose president, I checked, whose president called himself last year the Volkskansas. Volkskansas, I mean, Chancellor of the People. And the only one person who ever used that name for himself was named Adolf Hitler. So straight up, it's like, would you think the Israelis would be here if it was? And he sits down with like the new head were from Austria.

It's so awesome. I don't like using gotchas on far-eyed people because it doesn't work, but this is a big one, right? That is an insane moment. Do you think that he, and then he sits down and shaves his beard into a little mustache? Oh, fuck, man. What a cursed world. Mercedes Schlapp then went on to praise an organization called Patriots for Europe. Their Hungarian vice president, King Gagal, was in attendance.

Their French president, Jordan Bardella, would cancel. his speech, as we mentioned, at CPAC, a few days later after Steve Bannon performed a Nazi salute during his speech on the main stage. But we're going to get to that a little bit deeper in the second part. You have an outsized role in this, right? That's right. I'm going to tease it. I'll tease the next episode in saying that I was the one who noticed it live. Some people did not believe me, including all Tunis. So I went and found the video as we were like in the cab going back home. And I was like, no, no, I'm going to find it and finally I found it and he was like oh yeah okay yeah that is and so I was the first

to post it online so all those fucking liberal accounts that circulated afterwards they had the exact same cut from the exact same video I'm gonna call you out for stealing my video okay this is about me not the Nazi threat not not a fascist take over the United States me me should the watermarked That's so true, just like a big, annoying watermark that just says Julian Field, like across it. That's right. Being a totally normal guy online. The main struggle of patriots for Europe is that the EU has a cordon sanitaire or sanitary cordon, which is essentially an agreement between centrist pro-European groups to deny the far right jobs, such as presidencies and vice-presidencies of the European Parliament's committees. So, of course, the far right wants this sanitary cordon cut.

This was brought up by another far-right politician in attendance, Carlo Fidanzah of Italy. By this point, the conversation had wandered too far into the weeds for most Americans who were slowly trickling out of the room. At one point, Mercedes Schlapp remarked, sounds like you need a doge in Europe, which just sent chills down my spine. Like, the last thing we need is the I am become meme guy to come and do his shit in Europe, like, just go back to fucking South Africa, specifically South African jail.

I'm looking into this, the Doge thing, and apparently you need to pronounce doggie. No. Yeah, yeah, apparently that's, yeah, you have to say doggie. I will not be saying that. That's how they call it, actually, among themselves. So this is like one piece of information that I want to, people to know and get crazy about. Censor him, please, censor him. After a painful speech by the head of CPAC Japan, which had to be live translated, the summit was finally over.

And by the way, I later looked into this guy, Jay Abeba, and it turns out that's an entire rabbit hole in and of itself. So briefly, he's a member of a cult founded in the 1980s called Happy Science, and they are far-right nationalists, military expansionists, and historical revisionists. The guy behind it, Riuho Okawa, claims to be the incarnation of a supreme being. It seems that between Falun Gong, the Moonies, and Happy Science, Republicans will ally with absolutely any cult, as long as they hate them. the Chinese Communist Party. So anyways, happy science started a political party called the Happiness Realization Party, which Jay Abeba was the head of. And then the happiness realization party in turn founded the Japanese Conservative Union, which Jay Abeba is the chairman of, and Ayaba also runs CPAC Japan. So anyways, back to the story. Night had fallen over

the Gaylord Resort and Convention Center. Altoni had long since abandoned me to go interview a federal worker for his story about Elon Musk and Dogey. You happy? I love it. A piece of shit. I headed downstairs to get my media pass that would grant me access to the rest of the conference over the next three days. But while I'd been at the summit, a giant line had formed at the booth.

CPAC had granted media passes to 250 people, many of them fringe right-wing outlets. There had also been a glitch with their computers, slowing the entire process down further. I was looking at an extremely long wait. Towards the end of the line, I ran into friend of the show Dave Weigel and chatted with him for a bit, ultimately deciding that I'd just pick up my badge tomorrow when the weight would surely be much shorter. While I wandered around the Geodome, I spotted a couple of freaks we've covered on this podcast in the past, namely Jack Posobiak, who was chatting with some attendees in a hallway, and Mike Lindell, who was on the expo floor signing copies of What Are the Odds, his 2019 book about his journey, quote, from crack addict to CEO. And the cover is so awesome. It's one of those visual illusion, like, plastic-y things where if you kind of like tilt it one way, he's like his old crack self. No, no.

And then you tilt it again. And it's his new happy self. Yeah, I have this book, by the way. Oh, my God. It was free. You could just pick it up and get it for free. I have the book. I am very happy to say. And then I picked up next to that book when I went and picked it up for free because it was just sitting there.

I also got a T-shirt that you can see behind me that is the G.I. Joe logo. But instead of G. Joe, it says, uh, let's go Brandon. So another for my collection. Mm-hmm. Okay. The expo floor was clearly still getting set up for tomorrow, when the larger CPAC would be kicking off. A frail little old lady asked me to take a picture of her in front of a giant bus parked in the middle of the expo floor. Make sure Donald Trump is in it, she told me, referring to the enormous decal on the side of the vehicle. I politely complied and she

seemed satisfied. That night, back at the hotel, I couldn't sleep. I fantasized about moving back to Europe. Then I remembered Europe is going to shit too. So I fantasized about my skin splitting and my muscular structure shooting out of it like a rocket, shimmering slick and red as I rose high above the crust of the earth and exploded into liquid star dust. I thought of the tiny red droplets suspended in the vast, unknowable blackness. This did not help me sleep. So I played Marvel Snap on my phone until like 3 a.m. Nice. I've been there, dude. Sometimes when I'm lying awake at night thinking about all of the horrible futures that await me. I imagine a giant guillotine swinging down and severing my head so that I don't have to, I don't have to, it's like, oh, well, there's no

blood in your brain. You can't think about anything anymore. The next day, I'd find out my press pass had been disabled. What? The end. Wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Nope, that's it. I'm doing a, I'm doing a cliffhanger. Wait, so you're going to have to pull like a snake pliskin and and like break back into CPAC? I'm going to have to pull something. Oh, man. Wow. This is probably one of my favorite episodes we've done in a while.

This is fantastic, horrifying, but fantastic. Yeah. And Altunee will have to get you again on a time delay for the second one, which we'll record next week. I mean, this week has been a truly horrifying experience for me, being sick after returning from this awful conference and then having to write this. And I also wrote an article for Jacobin. By the way, please go check out my stuff.

on Jacobin. You can find it at my Twitter, Julian Field, F-E-E-E-L-D. But I wrote a very long article about Q-N-on and its legacy in culture and politics. But also very soon, I should have a piece coming out, a short piece coming out on CPAC that I wrote for Jacobin. So just as Mr. Musk is become meme, I am become journalist. Go check it out. It's a great, it's a great article. It's a, it's a good, it's a really, it's a really solid sort of, like, kind of like check in of like where we are, where QAnon is, how it's been folded into the general, you know, general republicanism, how conspiracy ideology has become mainstream. I mean, it's just, it's terrifying, but it's a really good sort of like, I don't know,

like, you know how, you know how when kids are growing up in movies, you'll see parents make a little tick on the wall, you know, to show how, you know, how tall they've gotten. This is, this is like that for like, conspiracy, like far right conspiracy. as they've kind of been folded into politics. Really good job, dude. I think it's also useful for people who just, like, have not followed QAnon at all. Like, you can send it to a total normie, and, like, I run through any concept you need along the way without, like, getting, you know, stuck in the weeds.

And, uh, yeah, that's it. Antony, um, thanks for the cold. It sucked. And, you know, I mean. But we're glad you guys had each other at least. It is, it is true that there were many moments where I was like, if Antony were around to at least like decompress after this with me I would fucking I would have been losing my mind way way worse I probably would have shut down after a couple of days just gone into some

sort of fugue state I spent three more days in DC after that and they were miserable I didn't want to tell you about this but yeah like very very bad yeah that city is horrible and I feel like that and just the kind of greater Virginia area if we can get like the Pentagon and the And like, all these things just kind of, if we could, Mr. G, please allow me to request a tactical intervention. All right. Well, that's it. And thank you for listening to another episode of the QAA podcast. Please do support us so we can do more of this.

Patreon.com slash QAA. You can just pay us five bucks a month, which is, you know, with Biden inflation, that's, I mean, that's not even a fucking beer. So go and sign up, and you'll get access to our entire archive of premium episodes. Antony, where can people find you online? They can find me on Twitter at Antony Monceau. And I write in print-only magazines, so unfortunately you won't be able to read me any anyway. Sad, sad, sad, sad, sad stuff. But yes, if you are French, go pick up a copy of society and read Antoni's great pieces,

a very, very good journalist. An aging art form, where ink printed on paper. A lot of people aren't doing it anymore. A lot of people don't know how to read, unless off a screen. I do like that, like, the American Press Ops woman called you Mansui. That is how it's spelled, M-A-N-S-U-Y for people. A new gender. Wow.

No gender. No gender. No gender. You're not allowed to have gender anymore. Gender is illegal. For everything else, we have a website, Q-A-A-A-Podcast.com. Listener until next week And may the deep dish bless you

And keep you Such a sultry beautiful voice Thank you Anthony Bye We got to send you some deep dishes Yeah thanks to you that I found out what it was Oh yeah I don't know if Lou Malnadi

delivers internationally I'll have to double check I don't think they do We have auto-keyed content based on your preferences. You know, they say in one of American traditions, the best shall be last. That's not a, it's actually the Bible,

but that's not meant to be an insult towards anyone. But Jay Aiba from, what you say? I was going to say it's the first shall be last. Oh, what did I say? I feel like Dan Quayle. It's kind of what they meant, though. Oh, I feel like Joe Lod. It's the best is yet to come, and the first shall be last.

Eating for coffee. That's right. That's right.