QAA Podcast - The Flabbergastingly Stupefying Confabulations of Victor Marx (E385)

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

Cajun karate black belt, ex-marine, gun disarm master, demon hunter, pedophile hunter, and Colorado gubernatorial candidate, Victor Marx (no relation), has a storied past that’s details have evolved with him over the years leading to, at times, more questions than answers. Was he a state champion trumpet player? Did he kill a man at 7 years old? And just how many demons has he exorcised? Today Travis breaks down Marx’s claims and as the stories get stranger, Julian and Jake also slowly break down until they grind to a halt on the side of the interstate. Later we are joined by the investigations editor for The American Prospect and senior fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project, Maureen Tkacik. Her June investigation, “Onward Christian Soldier,” examines Marx’s purported rescue work, the ministry and political networks surrounding him, and the making of his “hardcore pastor” persona. Onward Christian Soldier - The American Prospect https://prospect.org/2026/06/30/onward-christian-soldier-victor-marx-colorado/ Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: www.patreon.com/qaa Check out our new podcast series network Cursed Media! All episodes of Spectral Voyager Season 2 are out now! Binge the entirety of Truly Tradly Deeply by Annie Kelly and Megan Kelly as well as Science in Transition by Liv Agar and Spencer Barrows: cursedmedia.net Produced by Liv Agar & Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe and Jake Rockatansky. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (instagram.com/theyylivve / sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (pedrocorrea.com) qaapodcast.com QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.

Hearing this, well done, you found a way to connect to the internet. Welcome to the QAA podcast episode 385, the flabbergastingly stupefying confabulations of Victor Marx. As always, we are your host, Jake Rakatansky, Julian Field, and Travis View. So I think that from now on I'm going to keep doing all of our titles in like 19th century Carnival Barker style. I'm what do you think. Yeah, yeah, just give me that to read, Cole. Yeah, no problem. I didn't flub it this time, but next time you might not be so lucky, Corey.

You're in your PT Barnum era? Oh, yeah, every day, baby. We got to get some, we got to have some, like, custom PT Barnum, like clothes made for Travis, just like stuff that's like, it looks like a meme shirt that you would buy at, like, a souvenir shop, but all Barnum-related and one-of-a-kind. Well, I think his hairstyle would work. His hairstyle's not so far off the Barnum that they did in Deadwood. Now, today we're going to be talking about our own kind of like modern PT bardom, you know, the evangelical kind, a very special man with a very special story.

Because, you know, storytelling is a really core to why we even know about Victor Marx. Carl Marx's brother, probably. I've got a treat for you. You're going to look at this can be fun. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.

Oh, no. Oh, no. A threat. Yeah, he's threatening me. Yeah, in evangelical culture, a prime way of establishing your credibility in the church community is through your personal conversion testimony. This is your hero's journey detailing how you endured sin, pain, and the evils of this fallen world, and how you rose up out that darkness to a place of joy and noble service thanks to the healing grace of Jesus Christ. Now, there's no contest to evaluate the best conversion testimony. I think they should.

I think it'd be fun. I think they should annual contest. Everyone gives it up. And then there's one winner. There's one best personal testimony. You're right. It's kind of un-American that there isn't a competition. Oh, I would win this hands down.

You know, I've got like 17,000 reviews on Google reviews or something like that. Like, they email me all the time and they tell me like, you're a trusted guide, a city guy. Are you Google reviewing different profits or? No, mostly just local game shops. Oh, right. You know, guy who told me I didn't need to replace my entire phone screen, just the protector, you know, people that made me feel good. Yeah, as a reward. As a reward.

Yeah. Jesus. Made me come to him. Jesus. But if there was a contest, I think it would be won by Victor Marks, the current Republican candidate for governor of Colorado. In fact, I think Victor Mark's conversion testimony is even better than the one told by former My Pillow CEO, Mike Lindell, who happens to be running in Minnesota's. governor's race. What?

Yeah, right? Yeah. Oh, my God. I was not aware. Mr. Lindell. Yeah. Wow. Oh, well, I, well, time to throw in the towel and the slippers and the pill and

run for governor. I had a dream. Jesus came to me in a dream. Geez, I woke up pillowless. I can't believe, Travis, that you're telling me that this guy got addicted to cocaine and all this stuff and had to recover it, he's still not at the level of Victor Marks? Oh, no, no. In terms of like, you know, the darkness he had to climb out of in his testimony. Oh, Victor Marx is he's got a good story. Yeah. The testimony of Victor Marks is so

dramatic and to his followers inspiring that he's built a very successful career as a preacher and speaker on the back of it. Victor Marx describes a life born into constant physical and emotional abuse. As he immature, he initially dealt with the pain through substance abuse, but as an adult, he discovered discipline through joining the Marines and found an outlet for its rage through martial arts. He reconciled with his estranged father, converted to Christianity, and decided to dedicate himself to helping troubled children, offering words of hope and inspiration at juvenile detention centers. Oh my God. Eventually became what he describes as a high-risk humanitarian, and later founder of All Things Possible Ministries, which has grown from receiving $600,000 in 2011 to over

$7.5 million in 2024. Now, this story, this personal story of Victor Marks, is now the main credential that he boasts about in his gubernatorial bid. On his campaign website, he says this, I understand hardship because I've lived it. I understand leadership because I've practiced it in war zones, on rescue missions, and while rebuilding communities now taking on a new mission right here at home for the people I love. Hmm. Poignant. Since he's seeking a major political office, people are beginning to question some of the details of its extraordinary life story and the image he presents.

For example, some take issue with the claim that his stepfather forced him to kill a man at age seven. Wait. This is just something that stepfathers don't do anymore. Back in the day, you know, when it was your time, when, you know, you didn't read from the Torah, you didn't get a communion. It's your stepdad took you out back and taught you how to kill a man. Davey, Davy Crockett forced to kill a man at seven by his stepfather. He's like, can't I just go hunting for raccoons like everybody like all the other kids, dad? No.

He's like, no, son. You're going to kill a live human, just like my ox. stepdad made me and his this is such a crazy claim. The fact that this is contested is so nuts. It's like you better be real sure this happened if you start claiming it.

Well yeah, he, oh my stepdad held him down. Made me gut him like a fish. Can't wait to see like how this pans out. Others are a little uneasy about Victor Marx's claim to be both a pedophile hunter and a demon hunter. Wait a minute. Like

a K-pop type? He does look a little bit like that cat, you know, that's sort of the very popular cat from that series. It's really more Creole demon hunters than K-pop. Still others, like me, are skeptical regarding his claim to have turned down an opportunity to live in a Malibu mansion in order to teach karate to Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys. Well, now this I think is probably believable. This is the most believable claim so far. Yeah. It's only believable if he's still doing.

drugs. Here's the thing. The only thing that, I mean, we'll talk about it a little bit later, but it makes me skeptical because he turned it down. Why would you turn it down? Yeah. I wish they all could teach me karate. All right. All right. Yeah, this was Brian Wilson's only shot at getting out of depression. Oh, is there, ha. I don't even know if I could get that high. Let's try. I wish they all could teach me karate. It's funny that the syllables kind of work out, you know? Yeah, let's not do that again.

A lot of bits. That's not, come on. That didn't sound that bad. On key, you know. All right. Thanks, thanks in advance three Patreon commenters who go, I thought it the false, you have beautiful falsetto, Jake. I know and thank you.

You have beautiful falsetto. I wish they all could be. No, please. Mm-hmm. Travis really just, oh, man, how do I, how can we ever get this back on track? All right, we can and we will. So today we're going to talk about the extraordinary self-reported life of Victor Marks and how is coming under greater scrutiny since he's running for governor.

Later, we'll be joined by Maureen Tossack from the American prospect to discuss her investigations into his background. Victor Marks has told his life story repeatedly in multiple formats. He has told it in his book, The Victor Marks Story, now in its third edition. He has told it in documentaries, lectures, and interviews. This is part of his pitch about his credibility. He says that I'm an open book. I've been talking about my life for decades, so I've got nothing to hide.

Victor Marks often talks about the sexual, physical, and psychological abuse he suffered as a child. Now, on this broad claim, I think there's no reason to doubt him. His older sister, Deborah, also describes growing up in the abuse of household. Victor Mark says that he was born in Louisiana in 1965 into an extraordinarily, unstable family. His biological father was Carl W. Marks Sr. Yes. His father was named Carl Marks. Come on. Same spelling, too, with a K. Yeah, that is so incredible. They haven't even Americanized it. Wow. So I'm assuming his grandfather or grandmother were, you know, fans of a certain Carl. I don't know. I have to say, I doubt it. That's a nutty coincidence.

It'd be funny if they didn't know. Yeah, yeah. Like young Carl growing up being like, all the teachers are smiling at me in school. I don't understand why. Only if your Cajun does this happen, by the way, accidentally having someone Carl Marx. Well, Marks is, of course, an old name from your grandmother's side.

And Carr, with a C is the name of your uncle, who I was quite fond of. Carl W. Mark Sr. initially rejected Victor, and is described as a violent street fighter involved in pimping drugs, insurance fraud, the Cajun Mafia, and later the occult. Oh, yes, of course. Ah, yes, the occult. Now, I mean, this is the Cajun Mafia and the cult.

So when I read this in his book, I was like, I sat up. It's like, wow, this is pretty exciting. Now, you might think that he offers up, you know, some details, some more explanation about what he means by these things, but he doesn't. So this sentence in his book is everything that Victor Mark says about. father's involvement in the Cajun Mafia. Eventually, he became involved with the Cajun Mafia. No more questions, Your Honor.

That's it. No elaboration. I rest my case. Oh, my God. And this single sentence is everything that Victor Mark says about his father's involvement with the occult. Later, he was deeply involved in the occult, becoming a warlock who dealt in some bad, scary stuff. Oh, no, not bad scary stuff.

from a warlock. Okay, so, I mean, we are dealing with a Cajun liar. It's kind of like an old tradition. This is a beautiful thing to see. This guy is like some version of Jack Gonsland, like some sort of evil Jack Gonsolin. That's true. This is a real Bayou storyteller here.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. I tried to find anywhere as many appearances and speeches. He might have offered some, like, more specifics about his father's involvement in the occult. And all I could find was a 2023 interview in which he also said that his father cast spells on people. Right. He was

a warlock. He was a practicing warlock. Casting spells on people, all public knowledge. And he was a bouncer and he was this karate guy, boxer. So he's just overall bad dude. So he was a practicing warlock,

not just some sort of secular warlock that doesn't attend like warlock temple. Oh yeah, real bad. Dude, I mean, this guy could, he was dismantling imps like you. You wouldn't even believe he was all sorts of spells he had unlocked. Yeah, because usually warlock dads, it'll just be more about the culture. You know, they'll have some posters, maybe a statuette or something. They'll get around with a couple other older guys, you know, and I don't know.

Yeah, they're not dragging you off to Warlock Temple. They're not telling you to pay attention. You know, they know that this is a fading tradition. But not so with a practicing warlock. That is scary stuff. Look, these guys, you know, they get together once a month. They light a couple candles and they throw those little poppers on the ground. You know what I'm talking about?

Yes, I do. But the real ones, I mean, these guys, they're open in portals. They're reaching in. They're pulling demons out of them. They're shoving them down the toilet in front of their sons. That's scary stuff. It's not one of these lapsed warlocks. No, he donates to his local coven, like clockwork every month.

Yeah. Nor is he a born-again warlock. which are like Johnny Cumb Lately's who are a little too intense with their words. He's got two slotted swords in his closet, all right? I'm going to let Victor Marks tell the story of his difficult origin and his own words from a 2015 interview.

So this is how he opened the interview to discuss, you know, the terrible situation he was born into. You know, I was born in the 60s and I had three siblings already. My mother, who was young, she had her first child at 16. their marriage didn't make it. They were divorced when I was born. My father actually, you know, became a drug dealing with a pimp

in the night that I was conceived. He actually put a gun to her head. Didn't claim me when she was pregnant. He actually told her, that ain't mine. Didn't even call me a kid. He said, that ain't mine. Because of, she had gone to other relationships already. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.

The night he was conceived, the guy, like, raped his mother and put a gun to her. her head and then went, that ain't mine? Like, that he knew he was leaving a child inside? To be clear, Jake, I think it was later that he said, that ain't mine. Yeah, yeah. There's just this incredible embellishment of, like, the night I was conceived, he held a gun to her head. No, I was like, I was like brought into this world of the night I was conceived in horrible abuse of violence. I didn't get a break even as a zygote is really the message here. So his mother, Rita, repeatedly married men who provided temporary security but often introduced new forms of danger.

Mark says that by his high school graduation, he had lived in 17 homes, attended 14 schools, and acquired several different father figures. The darkest portion of his personal story concerns Marx's allegations of very wretched childhood abuse. He says that a stepfather identified only as Mr. Kay severely abused him roughly between the ages of three and seven years old. Mark says that Mr. Kay tortured him by suffocating. him in the bathtub. Here's how he tells that story in a 2012 documentary, the Victor Mark story, when Impossible is the only way out. He dunked me in a tub one time, and bend me over a tub,

a water, and he's dunking me, and he'd hold me there, and he'd say, hold your breath, and pull me up, and I would have to count the 25, because that's when I know it was, that's how long I could hold my breath, and he held me down one time. Against the oxygen deprivation, and I passed out. I walk upon the floor looking up I'm not wet tile floor to him breathing in my mouth his first words were born

I'm the one that gives you life and I never forget wow this man is the quintessential American man he's got his he's got like those kind of reenactment scenes that are happening like while he's telling the story and everything I don't want to be dismissive

because obviously child abuse exists and perhaps this man went through it, but like, I guarantee you this is fucking highly probable to be completely insane claims that he's making to shore up his story. I mean, yeah, I mean, I really felt like the same way. Like the general, unstable, abusive environment in which he was raised, I had no reason to doubt that. But he's one of those things where, like, how much of it is, you know, literally true and how

much of it is, you know, something that he may have reconstructed later as he's trying to make sense of his horrible traumatic experiences as an adult. He has a bunch of other stories of abuse. For example, he describes being sexually abused by a farm worker at age five and then locked inside a commercial egg cooler where he nearly froze to death. He says that he was a groomed and molested by an older male acquaintance. He says that he had to fight off another drunken adult who allegedly attempted to molest him. And he was repeatedly exposed to domestic violence, alcoholism, and firearms. He claimed that Mr. Kay was especially skilled at instilling fear in people because he worked in military intelligence and was trained by government agencies.

Oh, my God. You see, he had a military background where he was in counterintelligence, and he said the NSA had trained him. So like these psychops type. And I just know this, he knew how to get into your head. He knew how to get into your head. So we lived in fear. You know what this actually reminds me of is that alien convention named Grafton,

where it was like really graphic child abuse stuff, but they went even further, and they're like, oh yeah, and then I was sent to the planet, whatever, and abducted by the CIA. I got that sense, too, yeah. But his story is too cool. Like, he says it with too much storytelling aplomb. Like, it just doesn't ring right to me. Something's wrong here.

Something's deeply wrong with this man. Yeah, that little detail about, like, how his father was, like, trained by the NSA. I thought it was a weird one. Of all the intel agencies. That do psych, psychops. They do psychops. Yeah, exactly. So it's like, the one I wouldn't think about when doing that kind of work isn't the computer nerds at the NSA, you know, like CIA, military intelligence. Okay. The NSA, I don't know. Yeah, J-Socke, Army Intelligence, Special Forces, something. Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if this guy goes on to incorporate aliens into his stories. I think he's one, like, burst of excitement away. You know what I mean? Like, sometimes, like, you're in a public situation and, like, somebody, like, a bunch of people, like, laugh really hard at your story or whatever. You can.

tell that they're invested and you and you decide to kick it up a notch. I feel like this guy's right there almost. He's more than willing to go on all of these shows and talk about all of this stuff. You know, typically I feel like most people that go through this kind of insane abuse, usually, you know, they keep it hidden. He's a minister, so, you know, he has practice selling. Oh, well, yes, he must proselytize. Yes, yes, of course.

But like I said, this is what he's built his entire career on, is that I was raised in horrifying darkness and I was raised out of it. makes a story dramatic is the change between where he came from and where he is now. There's one claim from his childhood that's especially dark and weird. He says at the age of seven, he was forced to participate in Mr. K., murdering a man with a pistol. And the guy is semi-conscious, and he sees what's going on, because I think he thought this was what was going to happen to me, and now it's happening to him. And, you know, I have the pistol to the back of his head.

And I remember trying to pull the trigger and I couldn't and I don't know if it was the pounds per square inch You know seven and But I'm squeezing and I can't pull it and then I feel his hand come over and grab my wrist and then his right hand comes around And he slipped his finger over mine and he presses until the revolver goes off and when it fired it hit the guy in the back of his head and It killed him and then you know as he pushed his his body into the home. And they told him, boy, this you know, it's your first kill.

PBS, Hawaii, what is going on? Why is there a lady just nodding here? Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think that's a really good question. I don't know what the fuck happened. She goes, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, and the next part of the lie. He further claims that Mr. Kay

preserve the gun and told Victor that if he told anyone about what happened, his fingerprints would tie him to the murder weapon and he would be executed. Now, the first time he told the story was in that 2015 interview and is strangely absent from his 2010 biography or his 2012 documentary. Now, you might reason, you say, okay, well, it was so traumatic. He just was not prepared to share the story until he was much older. But that wouldn't explain why I was also

admitted from the 2017 third edition of his biography. Oh my God, he realized maybe it was too far. Yeah, it's funny. When he told the story again in a 2023 interview, uh, had picked up some extra details. He claimed that the man begged to not be shot. And he raised it to the back of this guy's head in this high. Now this guy's conscious and he's begging me. Please don't shoot me. Please don't shoot me. Please don't. Oh, there you go. This is a lie right here. I have watched enough police interrogation videos on YouTube to know that when you add a detail like this, come on, that should have been in the original story if he's begging. He also added more details about how this man died

and claimed that Mr. Kay smeared the man's blood against Victor Marks' face. Oh, Mike. He doesn't know where to stop. He's bleeding out. You know, that gurgle sounds at somebody's time? And he wiped his hand on the blood on the wood floor. And he slapped it in my face and mouth like they do

when you kill your first deer. And he says, boy, that's your first kill of a man. Another new detail. Another new detail. Yeah. Why didn't you remember this the first time? I mean, smearing the blood, your stepfather, smearing blood on your face. Like, that would be so traumatic.

Julian, I think you called it, what did you call this man, a Tennessee liar? Cajun liar. Yeah, Cajun liar. It's almost too trite. Like, it's too cliche. I love it. It's so rare in this world that something can be called exactly what they are. I mean, like, things are so often there's a gray area, you know, but this really, this really

suits a McCaachian liar. I mean, this is a trickster of old. Victor Mark said that years later, he reported the killing to the local sheriff's department, but when the outlet Axios inquired about this, the agency said that it had no record of the incident. When Victor Marks was asked about the story by 9 News anchor Kyle Clark, it led to this exchange, which went viral online. Your claim that your abusive stepfather forced you to kill a man when you were seven

years old. Is that the only person you've ever killed? Come on. Come on. Well, I would say as a child, yes. I mean, without question. Wow. But I've been in other situations where

possibly people or persons died as a result of me to defend myself and other countries. Other countries? There's no count on that, and there's no photos. But that was something as a kid without a doubt. Do you think that you've killed people as an adult?

Does it matter? Yeah, I'd say so. Killing somebody is a pretty weighty thing. If someone's trying to kill you or you're in combat, It's still a weighty thing to take somebody else's life. I mean, it could be self-defense, it could be justified, but it's still a weighty thing. So I'm just asking you, how many people have you killed? Well, if I did, I wouldn't be telling a reporter sitting here in my training center.

How about voters? Would you tell voters? There's no need. I don't think that's important. It's actually kind of, it's an odd question to me. I'm so busted. I mean, this is crazy. He's melting down.

He's incapable of continuing. You know, he's clearly somebody who, like, takes care to add the details in a certain measured way. But when you catch him on his, off his kind of turf, he even mentions his turf. He's like, right here in my training center. Like, what are you on about? Yeah, well, yeah, I've got a couple girlfriends that's overnight camp. Yeah, well, of course. I mean, I wouldn't tell you how many I've had, of course, you know, or how long we dated or how often we fornicated.

But let me tell you, my sleepaway camp girlfriends, they couldn't get enough. Yeah. I mean, like, he's treating it like a question about his, like, you know, his intimate personal life. Oh, this isn't relevant, but it's about how many people you've killed. It's like, this is the only murder you've personally been involved with or are there others? is hemming and hawing about this. What I find the most damning is there's no hauntedness. Like, he is not clearly there's just no, I don't know, there's just something missing there,

like that I think most people who've gone through this kind of thing and who've taken lives and all this stuff, like they treat it with a certain reverence or they get a distant look in their eye. This is not that. Yeah, yeah. Any, you know, professional murderer in an on-camera interview, like, worth their salt, would have been like, Oh, yeah, well, I was deployed in Afghanistan from 2011 to 2014. I do have on record over 12 confirmed kill. Like, you know, that's something that I feel like I've heard said on the news before.

Yeah, or say, I don't want to tell you how many people I killed, but I was deployed during this period and I did, it did involve that kind of thing. Anything. Anything that's a little more precise, because this is just so vague. Yeah, you can't just kind of clam up and then pretend like you're hiding a smile, a smirk, you know? This guy is like, man, yeah, he's just. He's just playing putsy, you know?

He's also like, listen, I did killings, obviously, as a child when you can't prosecute me for us. And also abroad when we're, you know, that's also very hard to check into or understand. And in certain situations where I might have had to defend myself overseas. Yeah. Overseas through a time machine. Yeah. At summer camp. Mm-hmm.

The other thing is that we'll get into it. We also, like, he built a career as a martial artist. I'm wondering if he's like sort of like almost protecting his, like, reputation as a badass. by leaving that question ambiguous. Yeah, yeah, I see what you mean. It says that the night that he and his mother finally escaped this abuse, happened on the night when his mother prayed for protection

against Mr. Kay, and it worked. He pulls out a pistol, that pistol, and he starts shooting out the lights on the outside of the house. The argument was based on the electricity bill was too high. So when he starts shooting, my mother runs, grabs us. We go into a closet in the back room, and she shuts the door, but leaves a crack so she can see the door.

And she just said, kids, don't, just got to be quiet. And then he starts yelling, where are y'all at? Where are y'all at? And he comes in the house looking for us. And again, he was demonically energized. And when people have evil in them or on them and driving them, they'll do anything. And he said, come out. I'm coming in.

And then my mom, she started saying, I plead the blood of Jesus over the door. I plead the blood of Jesus over the door. But sure enough, my stepfather couldn't come into the room. There was a physical barrier or some type of restraint. And he was growling and angry. And I remember thinking, oh, my gosh, he literally can't get in. And then he went, yeah, he wasn't passed out in his room. We escaped a little window in that room that night, never came back.

Off-camera voice. Wow. Incredible. Hey, Jamie, Jamie, can you look up protective barriers? My God. It's supernatural. It's full-on supernatural now. We don't have aliens, Jake.

Sorry, but we do have, like, essentially, like, energy barriers and Jesus protecting. Like a growling drunk stepdad. He started barking. What is he? I plead the blood of, I plead the blood of Jesus. I don't even know if that prayer makes. No, this is very, like, hardcore evangelical, like Pentecostal type shit. As an adolescent, Mark says that he became angry, violent, and reckless.

He drank, used drugs, stole. vandalized property, fought bullies, and spent one night in jail. Yet, he says, he also found aptitude as a trumpet player. He says he became Louisiana's state champion in a Christian school trumpet competition and competed in the national championship in Dallas. Bizarrely, I couldn't find any corroboration of this online. For the trumpet playing claim, he doesn't identify the specific contest, category, or date of this competition.

Like, which one of the competitions that happened in, like, the 80s are you talking about? It sounds like he might be referring to the Church of God Teen Talent Competition, which has a brass instrument category and a competition ladder that moves from regional estate to national. Its 1980 National Championship was held in Dallas, so that might be sort of the one in the year he's referring to. But a magazine from that year only listed the winners, and I couldn't find information about the state competition, Louisiana. So I don't know.

This one's guy of knowing. You did your best, dude. Yeah, so it was like, why would you lie about this? I was like, this is kind of like eating me up. I might go up to like deeper archives because this one's like why it's like if it's untrue, this is just one of those weird, weird lies. This is how fair Travis is that like after eight years of doing this thing, like I actually can tell in his voice like he might actually travel.

Like he might travel to sort of figure out. It's like, is there one fucking thing that this guy said that's like true and real? Like is there one like his little dumb trumpet competition that he's like, Oh, yeah, best player in my class. You know, from like eighth grade or whatever, the one thing he's holding on to, which, you know, as somebody, you know, with a lot of lost dreams like that, it's probably a trumpet competition that he almost entered, you know.

And it would have been amazing if he won. But it's so sweet that you want to actually, like, look up and see, like, did he do one thing that he said? He also says he dabbled in media, working at both a Christian radio station and a local NBC television affiliate. After barely graduating from high school, he spent several months partying in Alcapulco with the former stepfather he once fled. I don't know. It seems like I wouldn't hang out with that guy personally, but I don't know.

Different story. We parted later, you know. He made me kill several men, but we parted later pretty hard. We talked about those killings together and over a couple of beers, and we shook hands. And I told him, Papa, I forgive you. And he said, well, good, son, because I have another man for you to kill him. He then worked briefly as a bouncer and clothing salesman. By the way, this is also part of Mike Lindell's self-tellistment. He once worked at a bouncer in a bar.

When caught stealing from a store, Marks avoided prosecution by claiming that he was about to join the Marine Corps and then enlisted in order to make the claim true. The Marine Corps supplied Marx with discipline and a masculine identity. Mark says that he became proficient with rifles and pistols and pursued martial arts intensely. He also recounts a lucky escape. An unidentified crew chief allegedly ordered him off of the helicopter onto another shortly before the first aircraft crashed, killing everyone aboard. So, of course, this is one of these things where, again, he doesn't provide a lot of specifying details that allow us to track the specific, perhaps, like, news story related to this horrible multi-causalty incident. But he presents his evidence that, like God was preserving him for a future purpose.

Near the end of his enlistment, Mark received a letter from his estrust. biological father, who announced that he had become a born-again Christian. Visiting him while on Marine leave, Marks attended church and became a born-again Christian on June 22, 1986. He experienced God as a loving father, repented of his past, and reconciled with Carl. As it so happens, Victor Marx's father was also a martial artist. In fact, and this part is true, unbelievably. Carl Marx, Victor Marx's father, is a creator of a martial art system called Kichu-Doh,

or Kichu Raiu, also known as Cajun Karate. Okay. It's described as a hybrid system of karate, juditsu boxing, wrestling, weapons, and practical self-defense. And there are really records from the 70s which describe this Carl Marx

as teaching this martial art system in Louisiana. No drunken kungin kung fu, no transforming into a roo-roo. Cajun karate. We'll have to get Jack to do a deep dive into that. Uh-huh. Now, Victor Marks left the Marines in December of 1986,

joined Calvary Chapel and started working with young people. Up to this point, he had been living as Victor Kennedy, surname taken from one of his stepfathers. But he changed his surname to Marx as a gesture of reconciliation with Carl. In fact, he begins to train under his father and uses martial arts as his main evangelical tool. He eventually became what he says, a seventh-degree black belt in the martial art system that his father invented.

a warrior for God. He's like, It Man, but for Jesus. Yes, the seventh step is the Nutria. So it was during this time, he says he had his encounter with Brian Wilson. Now, I'd like to offer that story from his book in full.

I was working at the La Costa Spa and Resort in the summer of 1988 when Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys approached me and said, I'd like to take private karate lessons from you. So I gave Brian and his personal assistant, in a lesson that included various styles of fighting. A few days later, I received a phone call inquiring if I would be interested in moving to Brian Wilson's mansion in Malibu.

I would be paid a handsome salary in exchange for my karate instructions and, I guess, bodyguarding. Would I? I thought this is great. My friends were so excited. Wow, he's one of the beach boys. You can't pass that up. Eileen had just begun teaching her fitness.

classes in my karate school when I approached her with the news. I've been offered a job with Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. I'll have to move to Malibu, but it'll be cool. I was feeling pretty good about this offer. I'll never forget I'll lean's response. Why would you take it? Did God tell you to? Her question stopped me dead in my tracks. Was I taking the job simply because someone famous had asked me? Or was this really the right thing to do? Bullshit, by the way, because any time that something comes up, if you're a religious person, like this guy is religious, something comes up that you want to do. God told you to.

It's in God's plans. The thing doesn't come up and then you go, let me see what God's thinking on this. No, you go, oh, the fact that it came up and it's being offered to me is gods. So yet again, I think we've got another fib. After consulting with the Lord, I went back to Eileen. Thanks for getting in my face about that Brian Wilson. offer. God didn't tell me to take it. Yeah, Brian

didn't call you back, I'm guessing. So I'm turning it down. It just wasn't meant to be. So I told them I couldn't come. I'm very disappointed that Brian Wilson died last year, and so he's not able to comment on the story. Maybe if we comb through interviews and pages

of his diary, we can verify this. Did you ever want a Cajun liar to teach you karate? He's like, Brian, this move, this move right here, this move right here, it'll make women fall in love with you. But you gotta hit him in the right spot. In the heart? No, it's a nerve behind the right ear. Okay. To me, this is just a weird, like, weird eight-year-old boy style fib, you know? It's like, you know, my dad, you know,

he got an offer to teach one of the Beach Boys karate as mansion and then, like, be his bodyguard and live with him. But he said no. Yeah. I went to school with a guy in college who said he auditioned for Gambit. Oh, okay. Yes. That's, yes, that kind of like, like, oh, you're like, I had a, I had a brush with like greatness. I was, oh, but you know what? Wasn't, wasn't the right time. There isn't even a Gambit in the movies. Like, there, there wasn't a gamble. Like, Gambit's just kind of coming out now. Like, it was so, and he just said it like it was, like, true. I don't understand. I wish I could lie this effortlessly. Was he Cajun? Because Gambit is, right? He sure is. Yeah. He did kind of have it. I don't think he was Cajun, but he, he, you know,

He could probably put it on. It was believable enough. I don't know. And if he's a listener of this show and you did audition for Gambit, Alex, I'm really sorry, dude. Silence. Nobody laughed. Nobody chuckled. There's nothing funny about somebody not getting an audition.

It's like, yeah, acting is a difficult profession, Jake. Thank you. I'm rooting for every one of them. That was funny. You made it funny. Thank you. With his wife, Victor Marks Operated Fitness and Karate's schools, briefly attempted to plant a Calvary Chapel Congregation, Louisiana, and then establish

successful schools in California and Hawaii. Marks portrays himself as a gifted instructor whose schools produce numerous national and world champions. After a severe hamstring injury, however, he develops depression, anxiety, panic attacks, suicidal thoughts, and what doctors diagnose as bipolar disorder. His marriage deteriorates, and Eileen eventually insists that he obtains serious psychological help. Now, his autobiography acknowledges extensive counseling and later credits a Christian trauma psychologist with helping him confront disassociated memories. In 2001, Marx left a prosperous life in Hawaii for a lower-paying public affairs position at Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs, the right-wing evangelical organization. He describes representing James Dobson's organization to

supporters, speaking at churches and schools, and combining testimony with dramatic weapons. demonstrations. In 2002, Marks founded all things possible ministries to help reach the youth. Its core work was visiting juvenile facilities and prisons, speaking in churches and schools, and distributing books and recordings of Mark's story. Okay. All righty. Nice. Now, his ministry involves martial arts demonstrations, including gun disarms. And researching this bit made me realize I have seen Victor Marks before. Many years ago on Reddit, I think, I saw this viral video of a man wearing a powder blue shirt demonstrating a dust. double gun disarm, what looks like a high school assembly and a basketball court.

Apparently, this is Victor Marks. So in the clip, he has one teenage boy stand in front of him and point a prop gun at his head, while a second teenage boy stands behind him and does the same. In one quick motion, he snatches the gun from the boy in front of him with his right hand and spins around to point the gun at the boy behind him while controlling that boy's gun with his left hand. Oh, my God. All right, so let me try this.

All right, y'all put that up there. Oh my God, I've seen this. Oh, my God. So self-satisfied. Yes, yes, yes. I mean, I mean, I get it. When you have a captive audience of a bunch of high schoolers, that can go wrong real fast.

So I think he's just happy he's happy it went okay. Yeah, and that he didn't drop the dummy gun and stuff. It looked cool. I remember thinking that was so cool. I remember thinking that could work if a gun ever was pulled on me, and then I could get the kind of accolade and sort of clout that he does in that video. because he looks like a nerd. Yeah, I mean, it's so funny because gun disarming videos are always like such prime huckster

material, pretending that you could like take on multiple people with arms. Yeah. Victor Marx has even previously claimed that he has the world's fastest gun disarm. Now, this is not recognized by Guinness World Records. He acquired this record by uploading a video of himself performing a 0.28 second disarm to the website record setter. This is a self-moderated. kind of like record catalog website.

However, even on that site, he was surpassed in 2016 with a disarm of 0.19 seconds. On Facebook, he once complained that Guinness won't even recognize a fastest gun disarm category. Guinness World Record will not sanction my fastest gun disarm is not politically correct. Too high risk for kids. That doesn't even make sense. There's like a category about how many cigarettes you can smoke at the same time. Oh, really? Yeah. He also claimed that he became so fast with a disarmes.

arm because of his childhood abuse. Oh, my God. My stepfather sat me in a chair when I was a kid and pulled out that gun, pulled the hammer back, put his finger on the trigger. I could see the rounds, and he would tap me to the side of my head.

And he would say, if you ever tell anybody what I've done, I'm going to blow your brains out. I'll put the gun next to you, call the police, and say you shot yourself playing with my gun. And I remember as a kid, I was seven at the time.

I never forget my brain saying one day, one day, I'll be so fast, no one will ever be able to hold a gun to me one day. And it sure enough happened. Well, not according to the Guinness Book of World Records, sir. One day, I decided that I was the fastest. And by the way, seventh-degree black belt in the special, kind of karate that my dad made up. You know what I mean?

It's like I got my black belt at camp. He's such an at camp guy. In 2014, his ministry took a pivot to what he calls high risk outreach. I mean, this is when he got into his Tim Ballard era. That year, he took a trip with the armed Christian humanitarian group, the Free Burma Rangers. Soon he says he was involved in rescuing a baby boy from ISIS and delivering stuffed animals to traumatize children. From ISIS.

Yep. Never happened. There's the time I rescued a baby boy from ISIS. They were trying to cut that little boy's head off. That's a great, that could be like a really great folksy song. Maybe I'll work on that for an auto tune. I mean, an auto cue, not auto tune. I will auto tune my voice, but.

Yeah. As years past, he started to claim that he was helping children and women in Christyne. from Iraq and Syria to Southeast Asia. In 2023, he leaned into this work by soliciting funds for what he calls the pedophile hunters fund. Everybody, Victor Marx, with all things possible, ministries. Today, we are telling you about a new initiative we're standing up called the pedophile hunters fund. And we need your help. Everyone knows it's time to start protecting our children.

And pedophiles are so aggressive, they're actually hunting our kids. They told us they were going to do it. it. And we've seen this on the rise and increase. So now we're going after them. I mean, this is great pitch. Yeah, it was like, pedophiles are actively hunting your children right now. And I'm going to stop them if you give me money. Hey, look outside your window. You got pedophiles running around. What are they doing? They're on all fours. They're hunting your children. I'm going to hand you a gun. Victor Marks also talks about demons with a surprising casualness in a 2023 interview.

He recounts how he straight up banished a. demons the day before while lounging by the pool. I said, I hunt pedophiles, but I also hunt demons. Oh, my gosh. So do one of y'all have an issue you need to be prayed for? And the girl goes, me, please pray for me. I went, fine. I sat down.

The dude is sitting there like, what? I said, I can tell you within five minutes if you have any demons that are assigned to you and will destroy them. Sure enough, found out within three minutes, within 10 minutes, she While in the jacuzzi got set free from five demons that have been assigned her and trying to kill her her whole life. We knew the lies. It's called retooling prayer. It is the most powerful thing we do.

She gets set free. She jumps out, hugs me. It's crying. Her face changes. It's soft. And my wife said, you know, Eileen was crying on the other side watching this. I was going to say, so Eileen's just like laying out by the pool watching all this go down. Yeah.

I mean, for her, it's like, it's another day. It's just another day. for us. Yeah. My God. I love this specificity. This woman had five demons aside to her. Not four, not six.

Five. It's really hard to relax in the jacuzzi when five demons are currently after you. Yeah. Is he sure she didn't like fart five times, you know, in the bubbles? You know, sort of came up and he's like, ah, there they are. It's the demons. They're escaping. I guess in a jacuzzi, there's already sort of like waves.

Okay, that doesn't make sense. Profoundly unrelated. Profoundly. We can cut that. And fart focused. No, no, no. I think we keep it in. We're so rarely fart focused.

Like we can really, I don't want to, I don't want to, yeah, we got to sell this one like a 2015 fart focus. Let that linger in the air. No. Yeah. So this is where we are now. Like I said, this guy's, his main qualification for his bid for governor is the stories that he's tell.

All the things he's been through and all the things he's accomplished and all the things he says happened to him. This is what he's running on. And, I mean, we'll see how far his, like, his personal testimony takes him. Yeah, after Trump, I mean, I'm not going to make predictions about, you know, electoral, you know, success anymore. I mean, it would be really shocking if he's able to take this all this way to the governor's mansion. To help us make sense of the wild tales of Victor Marx,

we're joined by journalist Maureen Tosick. Maureen is an investigations editor at the American Prospect and a senior fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project. Her June investigation, Onward Christian Soldier, examines Mark's purported rescue work, the ministry and political networks surrounding him in the making of his hardcore pastor persona. Maureen, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me. What a topic. Yeah. What a Gallum offering. Yeah, as I said, we've been talking about him. It's like, yeah, Julian brought him a classic Cajun liar. It's like, you know. 100%.

Travis is on a quest to figure out if one thing he, said was true, which he's told so many lies now that I can't. This is like, I now understand why my father was so frustrated with me when I was like, you know, six or seven years old. Like, what were we trying to verify, Travis, that he won some kind of trumpet contest? He claimed that he, like, was a statewide champion in, like, a trumpet contest. And then he went to the nationals, but he didn't win there. I was, like, trying to figure out which one it was and whether or not he won. And it's like, I think I identified perhaps the contest he was talking about, but I couldn't tell whether or not he actually, uh, actually participated. That one's driving me a little nuts.

Wow. I didn't even know about this trumpeting. What a multi-talented man. Um, I, yeah, I mean, it is a good question to ask, though, you know, what isn't, you know, there are things that can be verified. Obviously, his father. I don't understand why his father's name was Carl Marx, other than that's a pretty great name to have. A lot of the damaging information and serious allegations about Victor Marks were actually assembled by right-wing activists doing opposition research on him. How did that happen? There is a woman, a former Moms for Liberty activist in Denver, or no, in Colorado Springs, sorry. Her name is Darcy, and she had like this visceral reaction to Victor Marx after Charlie Kirk died.

He, you know, the day after that, that week, and it might have been like the very next day after. after the assassination. He announced his that he was running for governor. And, you know, that it was basically that, like, Charlie had left him this, you know, duty. He had to do it for Charlie. You know, he was one of the first people that some posts went up on Instagram of him comforting Erica Kirk, you know, in the hours after the murder. So clearly, like, he was a person that she went straight to for, you know, a little helping hand.

some empathy. And yeah, and very soon thereafter, he announces he's running for governor. And this mom's for liberty activist told me she was just listening to the radio and she just hated this man. She's like he was just a grifter. Every misogynist man, every deadbeat ex-husband I'd ever, you know, he's just like combined into one. So it was really interesting. So, you know, from there on, this woman, Darcy, shaining, and a crew of sort of, you know, volunteer slews, some of whom had actually given him money, but had sort of decided that he was a grifter, started, you know, building up this dossier on this man, Victor Marx. And, you know, the longer it got, the crazier, like, there are whole chapters of Victor Marx's life that I just don't understand at all,

but that I, you know, that would probably be very illuminating. What's been funny to me is just everybody involved in the crowdsourced effort to kind of expose Victor Marx is conservative, is like the audience for, you know, what he's selling. And I think that it kind of, it also sort of highlights how the crazy and unprecedented extent to which right-wing propaganda is like backfiring on its audience and has been since the Charlie Kirk assassination. That's been spectacular to watch. How would you explain Victor Marks' personal testimony and how he promotes it? So I started talking to Darcy, Shaining, because I just thought, well, this guy is not somebody that you could make up.

You know, if you look up Victor Marks, I'm not sure if what happens if you Google him. But one of the first hits he'll get is his YouTube page where you can see that he produced a movie about himself called the Victor Mark's story, which is extremely entertaining for the first, like, five minutes. really disturbing reenactments in that one of child abuse yes it's one he goes back to his house so you i kind of assume like that that part was the must have been sort of based in reality because he does go back to supposedly his childhood house where he endured so much abuse from his stepfather who would electrocute him all the time he's like and i stood i stood right here with forest gump and i said a prayer a little song i said make me a bird, make me a bird so I can fly far, far away from here.

And they actually stole that and put it in the movie. Oh, my God. It's so good. I wish I could do his place. Yeah, he, at some point, his father, Carl, Marks, left his mom to go be a karate champion around the world. But also just in Louisiana, he had like a karate studio in Louisiana. And his mother moves in with this guy who is in military. intelligence, he says. And like I said, he would eventually be rotted out by his pilot. I guess he was,

he was trafficking marijuana from Jamaica to Louisiana and Alabama and Mississippi. And I guess the pilot crashed or something. And, and, you know, when he was found, he decided to kind of flip. So his brother, who was a lawyer for the trafficking organization and his stepdad and a whole lot of ancillary characters, you know, get charged and go on trial. And he at this point is like in in the Marines. So he was, he served, I think, three years, maybe a little less in the Marines. I'm not sure why it was such a short stint. But, you know, this is after sort of enduring this extremely abusive childhood where he claims his stepfather, you know, loved to find like random indigent people to sexually abuse him and watch. And

that one homeless guy that he, you know, took back to their place, didn't want to do it. And so he gave him his gun and said, son, you know, you've got to like kill this man now because he won't abuse you. And when he was five or seven years old, I'm forgetting, he's, it actually changes depending on, you know, and his father, like, you know, put his finger on the trigger and like helped him. But, like, he pulled the trigger and, and murdered this man. And then they buried him somewhere nearby. But, you know, no one knows where and they could never find the body. But that is one of his like, you know, earliest memories that he's shared a few times. With varying degrees of details, by the way, sometimes he tells more of the story and more

details about what the guy said to him. So good evidence that it is partially or mostly or all fabricated. I mean, you know, yeah, it doesn't, it sounds kind of crazy. See, at the same time, you know, I never want to, like, since, you know, I've looked at the Epstein files. Because I have done this story and I've probed the inner workings of a sex trafficking organization that may or may not be very closely linked to Tim Ballard's. Like, this stuff does happen. Like, there are, you know, really, like, abusive sadistic fucks out there doing terrible things. I agree.

I would never want to deny some. somebody's assault claim outright and absolutely this stuff does this stuff does happen happen and it's not to diminish the reality of those of those crimes for sure I just I just thought it was worth noting we watched a couple interviews with right he adds some details here and there but well yeah and the method of electrocution I never really like kind of understood how he was being electrocuted but like it's like for most people they'd be like he used to you know throw me in the bathtub and then throw what was it he like would throw like, you know, the radio in the bath to electrocute me or something, like some bizarre story along those lines, but he would, you know, repeatedly electrocute. And then he threw him in the

ice box, like in the walk-in refrigerator or something along those lines. So he endured, he's, he has a lot of different stories about the abuse. And it could just be the phenomenon of, yeah, you know, being electrocuted every week, like he used to sound pretty cool. But like, Now I've, you know, told the story so many times, you know, maybe I need to top myself or maybe I need to, you know, find a different story. Who knows? In any event, he, what Darcy thinks, which I think is kind of interesting, or was it, or one of her, one of her helpers was speculating that he tells these abuse stories just to put distance between him and his stepfather because his stepfather is, you know, an organized crime. So that could also be true. In any event, he reunites with his, Carl, Carl, Marks, who has a karate studio in California, and the karate studio, and Karl Marx is also, his karate studio is somehow affiliated with the Calvary Chapel in, I think, Ventura County.

So he somehow, you know, starts up his own karate studio that also has this element of Christianity to it. At this point, he gets, like, ordained, but the Calvary Chapel, like, there's really no standards for ordaining their ministers. So he goes back and forth over as to whether he is or isn't, like a true pastor. But my understanding of the way that the Calvary Chapel works is that, like, they don't really have any standards. It's kind of like, you know, whatever certification you need to marry somebody, for instance. So he does that and then somehow he ends up in Honolulu with a karate studio out there and meets his beautiful wife, who is a fitness pageant queen. I think she was like, Miss Hawaii Fitness, 1985 or something. But that's, you know, certainly don't quote me in on that.

that she just had some sort of title like that. And she starts a kickboxing studio and they get, you know, these people, wherever they go, they get a lot of, you know, newspaper clips about, you know, oh, everybody loves this guy's karate studio. They move back to California and then they go to Waco, Texas, where on a mission from Focus on the Family, the evangelical organization.

And he is supposed to set up a ministry and a kind of like alternative to, incarceration program in Waco. And at this point, by this point, he's sort of marketing himself as like a bad kid done good story, you know, like a sort of a mentor to at-risk teens trying to teach these kids karate. But it's something, you know, the community doesn't like the idea of having this juvie in the middle of their neighborhood.

And I don't think that like he makes it. And then he goes back to California and then ultimately ends up in Colorado Springs. So, which is really like, like they call it the evangelical Vatican. It is like the, you know, ground zero of like this, you know, churches with really, you know, intense elaborate musical programs. And I like I don't even, you know, like fireworks churches or churches with, you know, sequin churches. And like this is all really, it's all the various foreign world to me. But this is kind of what rules the roost in in Colorado Springs. And so he comes at some point, you know, they put out this movie. I guess they put out the movie back when he was still in California, the Victor Mark's story. And that is like a biopic of him where he talks about how he needed to kind of come to terms with his abuse because he was like starting to be verbally abusive to his family. And in fact, there are like his daughter, I think, had a lot of abuse allegations that she leveled at one point. And then she shut right up after he.

announced his gubernatorial bed. You know, and the Victor Mark story depicts him as this, again, just this like sort of heroic, ideal role model for troubled teens or at-risk kids and shows him like, you know, teaching karate moves to, you know, a bunch of laughing black kids. And, you know, that's kind of the image that he has. And like, you know, he can do some cool, like,

his gun disarm is a pretty cool move. I'm not gonna like lie. Like, I couldn't, you know. Yeah, we talked about it's viral. double gun disarm that, like, you know, was very popular a few years ago. You know, it's like, I think it's cool. I don't know. I don't know how practical it is. That doesn't matter. It looks very cool the way he executes it. Yeah, no. I mean, again, like, I don't know how it would hold up in real life. But, you know, I'm not 100% sure that it wouldn't work unless you were dealing with,

you know, especially, there's usually some, I've never been, look, I've never had anyone tried to shoot me. But anyway, so he makes this movie, which is, you know, highly entertaining and clearly they put some money into it. I'm not exactly sure what the purpose was. But then he gets involved with this group called the Free Burma Rangers, which is like another Christian group. They're based in Myanmar, but they are a high, they call themselves high risk humanitarian. And they, I'm, you know, not exactly sure what, like, you know, how they first sort of got into, like, I don't really understand the geopolitics of like what, you know, the Free Burma Rangers were doing or, you know, who they were protecting in in Myanmar, no doubt some, you know, rebel groups, but they are needed

in Iraq and Syria to fight ISIS. And so during these years, the all things possible ministries, which is Victor Marx's like church, their revenue like balloons and goes from like, you know, a million dollars to like $13 million, you know, pretty quickly in a pretty compressed period of time. And I'm not exactly sure what they were doing, but during this time, you know, they are making a lot of videos that suggest that they are involved in the business of like rescuing, you know, women and children from ISIS. And, you know, they kind of talk a lot about their videos. And then at the same time, his wife starts up this business that's basically, you know, distributing like they make stuffed animals that play a soothing song when you, you know, touch the tummy.

And these are supposed to be like soothing trauma tools for traumatized children in these you know, war-torn countries. You know, I don't know when the whole rescue narrative started, but it was definitely, you know, something that kind of came up with Tim Ballard and that whole crew, because there were others. There was a guy who ran for Senate in Alabama. He almost won his primary. There was a guy who just lost the gubernatorial primary in Michigan, the Democrat. You know, all these guys are involved in this sort of Navy SEAL sex trafficking rescue business. Some of the most explosive allegations you discuss in your piece come from a gun inventor and

manufacturer who you describe as a former disciple of Victor Marx. One of his former disciples, a guy named Corby Hall, who runs a gun manufacturer called Fold A.R., which designed a gun, which invented a special gun, specifically for school resource officers to avoid school shootings or to shoot school shooters. very interesting business model, another semi-dubious character. Well, what did it do? It, like, heat-sinking to, like,

it figured out if they had, like, doom-loaded on their computer or something. No, I mean, that would be pretty cool. No, it just folds up into a backpack. So it folds up into this backpack. So I guess the idea is that it looks sort of innocent. But I don't know why you would want to give a school resource officer a concealed weapon that looked like a backpack.

You could just be like, well, why is our cop? wearing a backpack. Like, that's, that's just a little strange. He's like, I got an idea. I'm going to stop school shooting. I'm going to invent a gun that's easier to smuggle into schools. It's like the most. Insane. It's the most absurd. Like, and this is like, you know, it's, it's the universe of people that have come out of the woodwork to talk about Victor Marks is unique and interesting and special. And that is like a Corby Hall is definitely one of the, the weird because he does a very good job convincing people that all he wants is to like protect the children. His ex-wife sort of has another story.

But in any case, he says that Victor Marks was his spiritual mentor, you know, that like he, you know, sort of, you know, brought him to Christ. But he believes that he abused that relationship in order to try and secure basically, try and take over his company on the cheap. And what he wanted to do with his company, his gun manufacturing, was supply weapons. First to unclear, you know, mercenaries in Haiti.

And second to the IDF. So that is another sort of like, you know, sort of wrinkle that this takes is that supposedly there was an orphanage in Port-au-Prince that, and this is in 2024, that all things possible ministries

was charged with protecting an orphanage, protecting. And Victor, you know, wanted 50 of these concealable ARs to take to Haiti. And Corby was a little bit confused as to why he needed so many guns just to protect an orphanage. And Victor said, well, you know, if you really want to know, like, I need to like assassinate

this guy Jimmy Barbecue. And Corby supposedly like, yeah, yeah. His name is Jimmy Barbecue. That's his street name, I'm guessing, right? Jimmy Barbecue. Oh. Yeah, I forget what his whole name is. He has a really, he has a normal name.

a normal location sounding name that I'm going to get wrong, but that is his street name, Jimmy Barbecue. He's a former cop who's basically become like the sort of preeminent warlord of Haiti. And he, you know, in as much as like there is like any sort of like leadership of Porte Prince, I think that he kind of runs whole sections of Porte of Prince. So initially, supposedly Victor was hell-bent on assassinating Jimmy Barbecue. then on Corby Hall's advice, he decides that he's just going to try and make peace with Jimmy Barbecue. So they invite the Christian Broadcasting Network to come and film this moment where Victor Mark is actually praying with Jimmy Barbecue in the middle of this very war-torn-looking Port-au-Prince neighborhood.

And it's not really clear what's happening. But also Victor Mark seems like really, really like high or drunk like on this. He's kind of like slurring his words throughout the whole thing. It's something. It's something to watch. So anyway, so he makes peace with Jimmy Barbecue. And, you know, it's really unclear what happens. His translator is this other guy named Zeke Petri who was trying to explain to me what happened. He's like a friend of Jimmy's. He thinks like Jimmy's like, you know, sort of like a populist champion. Most people just think Jimmy's like a mafia boss. It's really hard to know. But anyway, after this happens, Corby says that like, you know, Victor Marx gets much more interested in. trying to take take over his business. And then he wants something like 50,000 guns for Israel. And he says, Victor, according to Corby, there's only 3,700 schools in Israel. Why do you need 50,000 guns?

And Victor admits that he needs them for Gaza and Syria and Lebanon, that the IDF needs them. So then Corby says, well, that's not cool. And, you know, but then he discovers a lot of his guns are missing, guns that he gave to, like, you know, that he thinks that Victor Marx might have made off with, you know, some of his prototypes. So it's very unclear. Victor Marx is a licensed gun dealer. So, you know, he is perfectly, I guess, within his rights to be, you know, sending guns to

the IDF or, you know, Al-Shabaab or whoever they're arming in Gaza and Syria and Lebanon, but not to Haiti because they're sexually sanctioned. So even absent Corby Hall's allegations, it's fair to say that Victor Marks, has his fingers in a lot of pies. So Victor has this life. He's a pastor. He has this ministry. They have a vitamin business.

It's a multi-level marketing business. They have this stuffed animal business that brings stuffed animals to children in traumatic situations. They have these plunge pools. They apparently do sort of like manliness food camp at the Colorado Springs compound. They do some real estate deals. Like I think that he's like sold his ministry. like pieces of land that he owns for like very significant markups. And now, you know, he wants to be

governor. And Victor Marx has been successful throughout his career in raising money from true believers and the like. So that is one of his, one of his many skills, disarming guns and raising money, exercising demons. He claims to be one of his skills. I haven't, you know, I've seen less evidence. that he has any efficacy in that realm. Victor Marx was also involved in religious initiatives from Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA. What I sort of gather happened is that when Jerry Falwell Jr. had his big sex scandal,

all I remember is that it involved his wife and some pool boy and, like, naughty pictures in Miami or something like that. But anyway, this was a big scandal. Jerry Falwell Jr. had to step away. And what I gather is that, like, Charlie Kirk somehow sort of inherited this like massive umbrella organization of evangelical church stuff. Because you see in the 990s of Turning Point USA, you see suddenly like in 2022 or something like that, this thing called TP USA appears in the documents. And they say the mission of TP faith

is to eradicate whokeness from the church. So there you have it. Like that is so there, it's the anti-woke church, Christianity without Christ. And it claims that it has like 3,600 affiliated pastors. So it's a very large universe of guys like Victor Marks. And there's a lot of them who were in, you know, who were there when Charlie Kirk was assassinated. There's a guy named Rob McCoy whose like son was like Charlie's assistant and he was like, you know, right there. And he's sort of taken a lead and sort of trying to promote the TPSA version of events. But Rob McCoy was, you know, deeply involved. And there's all there's all of these other kind of Christian influencers type characters that were sort of hanging around TPUSA and making TPPUSA into this kind of financial

juggernaut. Another thing that they were doing that was pretty controversial was that they were getting in the people's caregivers, the caregivers of very old people and convincing somehow old people to sign over basically their estates to TPSA. And they got sued in Arizona for actually doing this. But this is kind of like, you know, this is like not something you're, Like the Heritage Foundation isn't doing that. You know what I'm saying? I mean, who knows? They might like, but like, this is not your average sort of advocacy organization is not

doing stuff like that. That is like some special church cult stuff. I mean, yeah, it's a nine-figure operation. So like they need to get constant funds. Yeah. And, and, you know, just the like unbelievable array of talents that Victor Marks has and realms in which he was sort of, you know, brokering, gives you an idea, like, there's a little military,

there's a little finance. I mean, there might be a little bit of money laundering. Maybe there's a little sex trafficking, you know, but it's quite, it's not just information warfare. It might be, you know, real warfare. That was the other thing. I forgot. This is my favorite thing.

He taught, like, porn addiction, like, recovery class for Turning Point, USA. So, like, all the porn addicts in the turn. turning point orbit come together i mean maybe it was on zoom i'm not sure in the orbit of victor marks like and this is the other thing this is like about forby hall you know corby hall like the full day are entrepreneur there is this thing where you know i think that he might be a clearing house of fucked up people on the right you know he does this thing called a retooling prayer he claims to be something like of an amateur like exorcist but like he convinces these people that you know they're going to be saved if they, you know, do everything that he says. And he is, can be very kind of dictatorial in

those settings. So I think that like it's like probably in operation. And they come to him for this, you know, these manliness class classes with this cold plunge pool and everything like that. I think that there's probably a lot of utility for the organized right. And there are, you know, many different scams to having these sort of vulnerable pools of like kind of fucked up, maybe substance abuser, porn addict people, sort of, you know, ready to like run through fire for them. And like these people for Victor Marx and for a lot of his followers, they kind of viewed him as like their portal to God. And like that's a really, really, you know, convenient place to be. Like, that's where you want to be, right? Like the gatekeeper to God, you know, if you are a right wing,

you know, if you're trying to sell some right wing agenda or if you're trying to, move some guns or whatever you're trying to do. And I think that, like, you know, that is this sort of, like, you will see a lot more of this coming up. They're, you know, they're really, really going hard. But I just, I don't think, I don't think it's working. Yeah. The report is called Onward Christian Soldier.

It's super fascinating. She put the guy out a lot of interesting information about, like, the kind of activities that Victor Marks is up to and the general unreliability of his personal story. Maureen, where can people go to read more of your work? Just prospect.org, or if you look at Twitter, whatever you want to call Twitter, Motasic, M-O-E-T-A-C-I-K-I-K-I-K-E. You'll find my stuff. I wish I was more prolific. The other thing that I'll say is the Democratic candidate for governor in Colorado.

That was like, I think that was a surprise. But he's a really good guy. That night, you know, when I was hoping for, you know, Victor Marks to win the nomination, you know, I was assuming that I think Michael Bennett was also running for it. And then he got just blown out of the water. Very surprising to a lot of like, you know, regular people. So that's a nice thing. You know, again, like all of these people are Phil Weiser, the former attorney general. So, so, you know, not all is lost. He's going to be Victor Marks and maybe indict him after that. Oh, well, one can help. All right. Thank you so much for coming on, Maureen. Thank you, Maureen. Thanks a lot.

Thanks for listening to another episode of the QAA podcast. You can go to patreon.com slash QAA. Get a whole second episode for every single free one that we put out. We've also got a website, QAAApodcast.com, listener. Until next week. May the sons of Karl Marx's bless you and become ultra-a-a-law. a capitalist. We have auto-kewed content based on your preferences.

My name is Jimmy Barbecue Sheri Zee. I want to thank Victor Max for coming to meet me and praying for me. We both care about children and a better Haiti. There's so much corruption and evil that causes suffering. that only God can make the changes needed. I'm publicly letting everyone know that I have agreed with Victor Max that no violence against children, often ages, American missionaries, and any Asian that help them will be tolerated by Vivison. Thank you.

Pray God as He surrenders more and more to you, Jesus, and sees everything as a spiritual war. He'd open his eyes. Pray you to protect them from the wicked ones. I pray God angels will be around this all. Pray you fill them with your spirit, God. Give him your eyes and heart. Increase his capacity for love, more than even himself with that coming from him. Let him know how many believers are praying for Him.

May justice come to this area and to this nation. And we thank you, Father, God. Amen. So he found this one in the trash. About two weeks old. How old is it not? How old is you know. What you guys are going?

It's nine months. Get to you how little. Say-hu.