The Bulwark Podcast - Ashley St. Clair and Cameron Kasky: Leaving the MAGA Cult

Episode Date: March 17, 2026

A former MAGA influencer who saw the underbelly of the immense power and wealth around this administration says never-Trumpers should show compassion for people who are now feeling betrayed by him—and who are starting to have second thoughts about the cult they joined. Ashley, who is the mother of one of Elon's kids, also tells Tim that an increasing number of MAGA women are waking up to the fact that they've been used as pawns in the movement. Plus, Ric Grenell's desperate effort to land a job with Trump, the role of AIPAC in Tuesday's Illinois Democratic primary, and a pending congressional resolution on the West Bank.Cam Kasky and Ashley St. Clair join Tim Miller.show notes FYPod on looksmaxxing in February 2025 FYPod's interview with Kat Abughazaleh  Tickets for our LIVE show in Austin on March 19: TheBulwark.com/Events. Exclusive $35-off Carver Mat at https://on.auraframes.com/BULWARK. Promo Code BULWARK Get 15% off OneSkin with the code BULWARK at https://www.oneskin.co/BULWARK #oneskinpod

The Bell Air Direct app includes crash assist, which detects an accident the moment it happens, and even offers you emergency assistance at the tap of a button. Okay, but what if I don't have an accident? Well, just keep on, keeping on. Bell Air Direct, insurance, simplified. Conditions apply. Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.

We have a double header for you today of former child activists or youth activists in politics. In segment two, it's my old buddy Kamkasky off the camp. pain trail. He's working on a bill in Congress. I want to talk to him about. But up first, she was a former right-wing influencer with TPSA and others and a writer. She's also the mother of one of the UNMUS children. It's Ashley St. Clair and who apparently watches the Bullwark podcast. And, you know, we're meeting now. This is our first meet. We've been DMing. How's it going, Ashley? It's going. My mother is also a big fan of the Bullwark podcast. Oh, really? Yes, she is. So I,

I appreciate you guys holding space for the more moderate. Where does she live? Where are you from? I don't actually even know. She's in Colorado now, but we are not from Colorado, but a lot of my family is out there. My people. Yeah. We're all transplants in Colorado.

She'll be seeing Erica Kirk visiting the Air Force Academy. Oh, Lord. Okay. Well, much to get into on TPA USA. For people who don't know, who are like, oh, my God, I just heard that introduction. I've never heard Ashley Sinclair's name. And we have viewers and listeners who are not on social media, you know, who are not following the influencer wars on the right. And so for those folks, like, give us the first date.

How did you emerge? What is your, what's your villain origin story? My villain origin story is I started really on campus with these campus groups like Young Americans for Liberty as soon as I got into college, freshly 18. And then I got involved with Turning Point and I was tweeting and it just kind of snowballed from there. It was within a few months that I was invited to my first turning point event, that I was meeting Charlie Kirk, that I was doing events in Colorado. And then it just snowballed. It snowballed. So where are we on campus? I was in Colorado, University of Colorado in Colorado Springs. So it was a smaller campus. And there was, you know, some appeal to the provocateur nature of rolling a free speech ball around campus.

Is that a lib campus? Colorado Springs, Colorado Springs is kind of conservative. More conservative, but the campus was definitely more liberal. Like all of the heads of the philosophy department when I first came there were petitioning for Donald Trump to not speak on campus, which, you know, in retrospect, they were probably correct about. But in that moment, I was like, this is philosophy. We're supposed to hold court for all opinions. So, yeah. So that was what appealed to you, kind of like contrarianism.

and, you know, sticking your finger in the eye of the, you know, professors that wanted to tell you to follow various woke pieties, or was there something else that appealed to you about it? Yeah, it was, you know, you're the token conservative in the class, which I found engaging to some respect. But it was also you're young and 18 and you get a lot of attention on social media by being provocative in some sense. So, like, how did that start? So, like, you started posting and then TPSA would like, just from like a process standpoint, because there's a lot of discussion about this, particularly on the left. And I went to the last, I didn't go this past year to America Fest because given after Charlie's killed and everything, it just was too much for me to take.

But this of the year before, I went to the Turning Point Festival at the end of the year. And I'd been going every year. And I wrote like a, you know, pretty mean assessment of the substance of what I was hearing at the festival. Was it mean or accurate? Accurate, mean and accurate, you know, accurately mean about the just hateful bullshit that was kind of from the stage. But before I did that, I started by just saying, like, you have to, you do have to give credit word to. Like, there is no version of this on the left. It kind of emerged from nothing.

Like it emerged from the ether, like the, you know, during the Obama era and the Bush era when I was on campus, like, was just a very lefty space. The college Republicans were very dorky and a very minority part of the campus. And TPSA, they changed that. And, like, they brought a lot of people there to the festival. Like, the crowd is huge. There are people that aren't particularly political who are young, who they had engaged. Like, as far as just their mission was concerned, it was a success, just looking at it. It was like a political organizing tool.

But one thing I don't have, like, visibility into is, like, how they, like, recruited ambassadors like you. Like, what was that process like? Was it organic? So I was just kind of shit posting online on Twitter. and then Mike Cernivik actually found me, and him and Jack Posobics started sharing my tweets, my periscopes, my lives, and it just, Twitter was very ripe for reply guy bullying in a way. So, you know, you're replying to AOC and replying to Elizabeth Warren. And it just kind of blows up in a way that you don't expect because you're 18 and nobody's listening to you. And suddenly you have 10,000, 40,000. You remember when you hit those milestones, you're, and you're 18. And you remember when you hit those milestones, you're, and you're 18. And you're 18. And nobody's listening to you. And you're. And you're. And you're. And and envisioning that many people in a room, you're like, oh, my goodness, all of these people are liking my things. They think I'm important.

They think I'm smart. And especially when you're just getting a sense of identity in your youth, like freshly 18, that was formative for me. So, like, were you monetizing it when you're in college? Not particularly. Eventually, I got into, I'll sell a T-shirt or this or that, but I didn't really monetize it in the same mode that a lot of us. other people did. I worked behind the scenes. So I also worked on campaigns at 18 and door knocking and

you know, cleaning up the door knocking data and donor events, that sort of thing. So primarily my mode of income was a bit different than most influencers. I kept normal jobs, um, as opposed to, uh, doing a podcast. So I was looking at some of your early material. And, uh, it's a lot of nut picking, you know. I mean, there's some nutty left. Um, I mean, there's some nutty left. Okay, don't get me wrong. But, you know, it's a lot of like Ashley St. Clair confronts deranged leftist. You know, that's like a lot of what it was. So, like, when you were doing that, was it, like, how much of it were you like, I really believe

this stuff? How much of it was like WWE? You know, just like talk about. I think it's very circular too because you're told that these things exist and that there's this caricature of the left and that they're all crazy and they're all deranged and they all up the purple hair and whatever. And then when you see it, you're like, I found it. It is real. Look, guys, it's real. So I think there's that where it kind of feeds into itself where you wanted to find it to show everyone that it's real. And then there is, you know, you have veterans who are

coming up to saying like, good job, Patriot. And that makes you feel a bit more important or like you're doing some real on the ground soldier work. People are thanking you, mostly men, I'm assuming. Yes, yes. Older men. Yes. Older men with vet hats on. Yeah.

So I could see how you would take that as like, wow. Like I am doing important work, actually. Yes. Yes. And the working question is tweeting. But in that moment, you think it's. You did some videos, you know, man on the street stuff. You know, I think I've put that away in my brain.

Yeah, that happened. I watched some of them. And some of the leftists that were yelling at you were deranged, but I don't know what you were saying off camera. So anyway. I was very nice. In person. So then you drop out of school?

Yes, I dropped out. So it's like the classic conundrum of the whole Charlie Kirk thing is he was a college dropout also. Then he's organizing on college campuses. And then now it's like all the red states want to build statues to him on college campuses. And it's kind of like, see what you want about Charlie, like nice or otherwise. like the school part of it wasn't really the part that was being fostered. Sort of. And I do have regrets that I repeated those talking points that people shouldn't go to school

because I'm back in school now. And I have two kids. So it's a lot more difficult to do after you have children. But there's also something that's very similar to when you're in a relationship and the guy tells you, you know, quit your job and don't do this. But then if you want to leave, you don't have any mode. to make income. You don't have the same ability. And I think that's really similar on the right where they tell these kids, you know, you don't need to do that. You can make money in right-wing politics or start your own show or sell your own merch. But then if they leave, that source of income is gone. So it kind of keeps people within that cycle more than it would if they had a career or education outside of it. So that's what you did after you got out of it was just full-time influencer stuff.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So then during that part, were you like actually making money, like, you know, through your own content or like rich people like subsidizing you? It was decent money, but again, I wasn't making much money from my content. I was just working behind the scenes. So I worked on campaigns. I worked in fundraising. I worked in production doing Republican ads.

I always had a decent salary job that I was primarily. making income from. But that is a thing out there, right? Like there are some of these right influencers are like kind of subsidized by. Yes, very wealthy donors and where you can't really track the money. There's a lot of dark money groups on the right as well and influencer apparatuses where they will pay you just to put out messaging. And there's no rules right now to even put notification that it's an ad because it's just messaging. So there's a large portion of the right-wing influencer space is paid in one way or another for whether it's opinions or pushing certain cabinet picks.

They make money for all of it. Can I say this is going to be the story of the 2028 campaign, by the way, it's like paid influencers and AI influencers. And that is happening on the right is way ahead on that. But this is happening now on the left too. I don't talk to Cam about the Illinois primary in the second segment. but I saw like, you know, some influencer. It's like the woke ginger or something is like getting paid to support some candidate and it's not disclosed, you know, in the primary.

And I get people sending me all the time, like random influencers who are saying this and saying that. And like people have to be really careful out there. Like if you're just following a random person with an Instagram account, like maybe that person is just earnest and viral or like maybe not. Yes. Yeah. Back during the election, I was offered money to promote,

like Rick Grinnell for Secretary of State. I mean, they do all of this. I was like, no, thank you. But this was very much a thing. And they were offering a lot of money to. To promote Rick Grinnell for Secretary of State? Yes. Yes.

And as I'm given this offer, I see all of a sudden these people pushing Rick Grinnell for Secretary of State. I'm like, you're paid, you're paid. But this happens all the time with everything, from support for certain bills, to support for cabinet picks. And there is a lot of money that is difficult for many people to turn it down.

It's pretty delicious that people are trying to pay to get Rick Grinnell and Secretary of State. And instead, he got stereotyped and put as the gay in charge of the theater. And then he was fired from the theater for being too mean, too big of a dick. That's a shame. That's quite a negative trajectory for Rick Grinnell.

So let's do the Elon origin story. And I guess I should say before we get to this, you have an ongoing custody battle with the richest guy in the world, the second richest, whatever he is now. I obviously don't want to do anything that puts that in any jeopardy. And so anything that you can't say, please, no stress. Your original encounter with Elon, though, according to this article, was based on a gay best friend

who was showing you a lot of rocket videos. And I don't know. I think having a rocket gay as a friend was maybe your first mistake. But tell us about what happened. He loved the launches, the SpaceX launches. And you know, you're kind of exposed to them like throughout, because he was a very big, larger than life figure, Elon. So I was exposed through little things like that.

And obviously I had friends who liked Tesla and my Rocket Gay loved showing me launch videos. We're not going to go into psychology there. We're just going to move forward. No. So, but besides that, I didn't really have much interest in what he was doing until he was buying Twitter. And I was like, yes, free speech. Because I hated Jack Dorsey at the time.

So, like, how does one go about meeting Elon Musk? Like, I'm trying to think to myself, like, I don't even know how I would do that. Like, if I were to say a gay that, like, liked Peter Thiel instead of thinking that he was the Antichrist, I'm not exactly sure how I would go about that. Like, so what, how does that happen? He, uh, had reached out and, you know, asked if I was ever in San Francisco or Austin. And I had told him, you know, I'm in Austin quite a bit, but I'm supposed to be in San Francisco whenever you get back to Seth.

At the time was my boss, boss from the Babylon Bee about an interview date at Twitter headquarters. And within like a couple minutes, I'm getting a text from Seth saying, he long got back about the interview. We're going to go to San Francisco. in like 48 hours. Got it. So that's how I ended up meeting him. It's like how much time did you all spend together during that period?

A decent amount of time. Okay. And so there's a lot of discussion out there right now, Megan Kelly, talking about Mark Levins' micro penis. And I'm just wondering if there's any. I don't know anything about Mark. I don't know anything about Mark Levins penis. So you can't compare and contrast.

I can't compare and contrast. What is it? I guess I'm just like, what is it like putting it? Like, let's just put aside the politics or second. Like, he's constantly tweeting. He's just this figure over here for me. Like, I interviewed Walter Isaacson about this. It's kind of like, it doesn't seem like he sleeps. He's like tweeting all night. He's very manic. He has 13 children, multiple ex-wives. Like, I don't understand like how he, like, what is it like to be in his orbit? You know, when I first met him, I thought he was very interesting, especially I was 23, 24 at the time, and guys my age are not talking about philosophy or Schopenhauer or the Greeks. He's talking about Schopenhauer? Yes, to a degree. So, you know, finding someone who could speak about something. And at the time, you think this individual is a part of something so much bigger than themselves and they're fighting the good fight. you know, that's very intoxicating to a young girl who does not have fully developed prefrontal cortex at the time.

So I think there's been a difference in my view since I've developed that. And at some point during that, you had to be like, I'm in too deep on this thing. Yeah, you're kind of like I have girl boss way too close to the sun. And you start recognizing things again. And I can't speak too much about anything. Sure. Because there's probably four attorneys paid $2,000 an hour to watch this. But you see the red flags that you're like, uh-oh.

Yeah. I should probably protect myself. And it's also, there's red flags that you see that are not just personal relationship red flags, but red flags where you're like, this could harm a lot of people. This is a lot bigger than myself. These red flags are indicative of greater harm to a lot of people in the country, a lot of people in the world. So I think that was also an internal battle in my head where I'm like, am I reading too much into this? Or is this genuinely dangerous?

He is posting all night. He posts a lot. Yes, it's all him. All his posts are written by him. Yeah. You didn't get to ghost any of them during your? moments? You didn't get to take his phone from a moment? There were a couple that came out of my mouth and he was laughing and then typing them down. So he does have muses for some of his late night

replay. I did really love Grimes, I guess. I don't know her at all, but I liked her music and I liked her video about eating spaghetti. Do you guys have like a support network now? You know, I wish the, I wish the harem would unionize honestly, but At this point, but, you know, he's quite the union buster. I do, I feel deeply for Claire and Grimes, but I do love her music as well. Okay. Maybe we can get them all together. If you're out there, Grimes.

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That's A-U-R-A-Fra-Fra-R-A-Frams. Promote, Bullwork, support the show by mentioning us at checkout, terms and conditions upon. I want to go forward to kind of the news around what's happening on X and all that, but as it stands now, obviously, because I can't talk about the details,

but, like, you guys are still embroiled in a lawsuit where he's trying to... That's a... Yeah, multiple lawsuits. That's tough. I guess putting aside the specific of the Elon thing, Like that's like how do you like deal with that mentally? Like it's got to be tough to think like think about all of the assets and resources and friends that he has.

I don't know. That's got to be intimidating. It is. But I also think people need to fight back. I think it's very important to have that endurance, especially when it comes to legal fights. Half of the battle with a legal fight is just an endurance task. They try to run you out with these attorneys. But you too can read these.

laws in which they cite to you and half of the time they're incorrect. So I don't take them as seriously as they would like to be taken, which I think is helpful. And you're in law school now, right? I will be starting in the fall. Starting in the fall. Congrats. So you can go through the briefs yourself. If I if I have to be in court for this long, I might as well make sure 18 of them are with ESQ after my name. I love that. One of your suits not related to your kid is about what is happening on X with regards to porn. This is news also breaking this morning. There are multiple additional lawsuits from teen girls who were, I guess they had pictures

of themselves in clothes, posted on social media, and Grock took off their clothes and made it seem like they were nude pictures of them. That happened to you as well. Talk about what's happening with those suits and the status. So back in late December, Grock was unlady. onto the public with a new image generation manipulation feature in which it was able to undress women and children, and anybody really, but primarily women and children were targeted by this. And so myself, I found countless photos of me undressed, bent over, covered in white fluids.

And real life aspects of my life were in these photos as well. It had my real face. It had my real kids' items in the background. It had my home. And the only thing that was different was my clothes being removed or bent over or covered in whatever. So we're suing XAI now in New York for a variety of different issues. One is product liability because they shouldn't have released this product onto the public. Chat Chupit is not doing this.

I've not been victimized by Chachapout or Claude undressing me. And as you mentioned now, there's three teens suing. In that suit, they cite that one of the girls, two, of them are under 18 and one of them had their yearbook photo taken and undressed and Grock undressed this minor happened to me as well in some of these photos I was 14 years old and they undressed me. For everyone else it needs to be stopped but what I want people to understand is right now within our lawsuit against xAI first they they tried saying that we are bound by the X terms of service and that if we want to sue we have to go to this one rinky dink court in bumble fuck

Texas, or the only judge owns Tesla stocks. That didn't quite work. So now they're trying to hold me to the X terms of service. So if anybody has an X account, you need to know that you may be jeopardizing your chances at holding this company or any of its affiliates accountable because this is the game that they play. I have not used X since this lawsuit. Why would that jeopardize you?

So they claim within their very laborious terms of service. on X, they say that if you want to take action against X or any of its affiliates, which could be Elon Musk himself, it could be Tesla, it could be SpaceX. Who knows at this point? Doge, what have you. Your claims are limited to, I believe, $100 and you have to take it in the Northern District of Texas. So use of this platform, they are trying to claim that me even viewing the terms of service page is ascension to the terms of service. And there's, you know, like eight Harvard trained attorneys is trying to make this argument. So anyone who has an X account really needs to know what they're signing up for here.

And that if they want to take action, one, you should do it as a Jane Dow. And two, you should be deleting your account. Wow. And is this still, like, it's ongoing. Has Groch fixed this? Are people still being? To my knowledge, it's still happening. It's still happening, especially on the standalone Grok app and website.

They have not fixed these parameters to my knowledge. and there's still images of me circulating, but there's not really any good way for me to find every image that they have, unless, first of all, I can't go on the platform because they're suing me for $75,000 minimum. But it's, how do you even find them?

There's other porn on X, you know? And, like, Elon is branding the Grock as, you know, the AI that isn't going to be woke or whatever, you know? And so it doesn't, seem like it's an accident. I guess this is hopefully something we'd learn in your discovery, but it doesn't, you know, this doesn't seem like an oversight situation. No, because they could have, again, around when Linda Yakorina, the former CEO of X resigned, she amidst within the 24 to 48 hours that she resigned, she was the victim of rape fantasy. So was Will Stancel by Grock. And they didn't do anything.

And this was just text-based. So they were aware that these things were happening. And they did they did nothing. X-A-I has an issue because nobody really wanted to play with GROC. It was, you know, the odd kid on the playground that nobody really wanted to hang out with. Everyone else was surpassing X-A-I in terms of the AI race. And now all of a sudden, during this funding round, they have this feature unleashed in which usage spikes astronomically. And within this scandal, they raised, I think it was $20 billion from their funding round. as this was happening with the collateral of women and children being undressed. We'll keep monitoring those stories.

Like you said, so is it now, is there like a class now or are these all happening individually? I believe there's a class action in California happening right now. Mine is I'm the only plaintiff because this was for us the most effective way to go about it because it was, you know, me personally who's being defamed. and I've been at the end of rather intense targeted harassment on X for a variety of reasons, including the owner. That's fucking brutal. And I appreciate that it's just like on all this stuff. You don't have to be doing this.

You could have disappeared and taken the alimony. So I appreciate that you're out there doing this. I want to talk a little bit more about your kind of evolution. I went through this, having been a Republican, wrote about this a little bit. lot. People came to me and asked me to write a burn book. I'm sure you've gotten that request as well. I ended up writing like a half of burn book, I decided. You know, I was like, I was only going to do the burn book part if I talked about myself first and like my trajectory and my evolution and like what I thought I missed and why I got wrapped up in it. Like what could be learned from

that. So I'm wondering like how you kind of feel now, like looking back on that. I think it was very helpful for me to get off the internet for a while. There's a lot of echo chambers that everyone kind of ends up in there and your access to information and frankly lived reality is really important for having views outside of these things. While I was with in MAGA, I certainly had doubts. There were moments of free thinking that I had, but you're so wrapped up in it. And you're so wrapped up in it. And your whole identity is this, your whole source of income, your career, your, you know, especially when you have kids, you're like, what am I going to do if I blow up my life and attack these people who are not exactly stable? But again, I got involved very young.

It was this sense of belonging. And then I dropped out of college and I was in it. But I think especially recently, there's no way that you can watch what's happened. and not say something because it's so egregious. I think there's a lot of people, there's some people within my own family who voted for Trump and said, what is happening? You know, we did not vote for this. We did not anticipate this. And some people might call those who say those things, you know, stupid or, you know, we tried to warn you. But there was also a mass manipulation campaign going on. And I don't think that should be downplayed. I think people are being really manipulated

and deceived on social media as well. And as we know, there's more and more of these tech bros buying up our media platforms because it's so valuable to hold your attention and hold the keys to perception. What of the administration so far, like when you say what's happening is so egregious? Like, what are some examples of things that you find to be egregious? I think especially with ICE, I think what's happening with the economy, with foreign policy, that, you know, we're promised no new wars. and they are gleefully blowing up, capturing foreign leaders, using our tax dollars, and having these tech pros at the White House, the average everyday person has been left behind.

You know, we're having people who cared about immigration, and we have Trump gold cards, and normal people are being rounded up and sent to El Salvador. It's disgusting. We have American citizens being shot on the streets by I. And I'm not quite sure how even people that I knew can watch this and not think that this is going to come for them as well. As it relates to free speech, you have Brendan Carr threatening to revoke broadcaster licensing over what people say. That's not what any of these people that I knew supposedly signed up for. We're supposed to care about free speech. We're supposed to care about the sovereign rights of citizens.

And that to me has been very difficult to watch because I feel like I played a role in having that come to fruition. And I'm not quite sure the best way to help except, you know, speaking out now and saying this is wrong. And it shouldn't happen. I think some people would say particularly in the immigration thing. I think it's interesting you started with that with ICE. Like, I don't know, the Trump first term had Stephen Miller, those child separation. Like, isn't that kind of what people signed up for? at least on the ice part of it?

I did not. You know, there's also behind the scenes, there's these assurances like that would never happen. You know, of course, we're just going to get the criminals out. And you heard Trump repeat this over and over again. We're just going after the criminals, which, you know, obviously is a very small percentage of the population of immigrants that are here. But also just the cruelty of it is really difficult to watch. when I was down at the border, you see that there's obviously a national security issue with,

you don't know who's coming through the border. I saw burned IDs. I saw buried IDs. I saw people who were very obviously fleeing some sort of criminality in other countries. But that, again, was such a small percentage. And it doesn't seem like they're getting any of those people out of here. And I've always been very against the feds and law enforcement and authority in a way. but I can't understand why the Republicans think it's okay to say, well, you know, if you don't follow the law, you're going to get shot. But I do suppose we were warned about that in BLA and while we were making fun of all those people. Yeah, on the looting shots, the shooting starts. We have today, I think the first person to quit the administration and protest over one of these issues of the Iran war, Joe Kent.

he posts this. After much reflection, I've decided to resign from a position as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, effective today. I cannot get conscious support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it's clear that we started this war to depression from Israel and its powerful American lobby. I don't know. I look at that and I'm kind of of two minds about it. Like, in the one hand, it's like, well, all those things you just listed, like it is true. The Trump has betrayed his base in a lot of things. I think on foreign policy most clearly. In the other hand, you look at Joe Kent and he's somebody who's like done a lot of Groyper stuff and you see the Israel stuff in the statement and it's like, well, so I'm Marco's statement kind of complicates all this.

It's like Marco kind of said that this was what happened. But on the other hand, it's like, is Joe Kent quitting because he's, because, you know, his conspiracy theory view about Jews. And it's like, I don't know how to assess that. So it's good that I guess some people are seeing that Trump has betrayed them, Whether their motivations for that might be suspect, though.

I don't know. What did you make of Joe Kent? Whatever his motivations are, I think there's a lot of people, I think it's more of a bipartisan issue on both the left and the right, this support for Israel at all cost. And that we're going to get involved in any war. We're going to do whatever is in the best interest of Israel while there's people in America who can't, don't have health care. They don't have affordable housing. I think there, whether it was Israel or any other nation that we had a comparable relationship with to where, you know, the American people are being impacted by what this foreign nation wants. People are feeling that and they're not happy about it on both the left and the right.

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I'll talk a little bit about how hard this is to do what you're doing and maybe to a lesser extent what Joe Kent's doing. I was listening this weekend to Tim Dillon. He's a comedian. It's like sort of a nationalist comedian that I think he had dinner with J.D. Vance got kind of sucked into that kind of world like a lot of Manosphere guys did. He's very sympathetic to kind of America First worldview. And he was talking about the rally that Trump had in Kentucky

and how sad it was. And I want to play a little bit from that. I don't know what any of these people are getting out of it anymore. They elected this guy and then this guy is basically letting Jared Kushner and BB Netanyahu just carve out the Middle East, do whatever the hell they want, just make deals. And it's tough because I know it's really, really hard to admit you got God. It's really difficult to admit that.

Almost no one can admit it's very hard to admit you've been taken advantage of by someone that you respected. By someone that you liked and respected, this is actually a very difficult thing to do. it's easy to say you got scammed by some stranger. But someone that you trusted, respected, liked. And a lot of these people here, you know, in the back of their head, they can't admit it to themselves yet, but they feel like they've been taken advantage of. This is not about them anymore.

It's dawned on them. It's not really about us. I thought it to be kind of hard. I was listening to that thinking about talking to you on Tuesday. Like how hard was that for you? It's difficult, but I also am hopeful that there's more humility within the right and the left for anyone who was wrong about certain issues. Because it's okay to be wrong. We have this weird dichotomy in the internet where it's, you have kind of this permanent fixture of identity and you're never allowed to change your opinion because you're always fixed to past versions of yourself. But it's actually a good thing to grow and say, I was I was really wrong.

And I'm sorry. And let's all try to have a clear. clearer picture of what's happening right now. So I think Tim spot on. They got God and they were deceived and none of this is anything that he campaigned on, whether it's from the Epstein files to Israel to, you know, the big beautiful ballroom. This is all atrocious and it's the American people who are suffering. I assume you hear from people. Like do you hear from people that you knew from TPSA or Babylon B days or Maga days? Like what what do they think about all this? I do. And there's people that have espoused to me that they feel stuck. They know what's wrong and they feel stuck. And I will tell you that the right has a big issue with what's festering underneath in terms of

the sentiment against women. There are a lot of women from the right to still keep in communication with me and they see what's happening. And especially as it relates to the rhetoric against women on the right, they're not just turning a blind eye to this. And it's going to impact them, whether in the midterms or, you know, 2028, they're waking up to the fact that they've also been had, that they've been used as pawns within this fringe movement. How would you recommend people from the left or from the just broad anti-Trump movement, like talk to women like that? I'd communicate with them and try to find common ground with them because I do think that I assume the natural impulse of many listeners of myself.

It's like, oh, oh, oh, you're just waking up to the fact that the MAGA movement hates women, are you? It's like, you know, you're part of a cult for a man that was like has sexually assaulted multiple women and had three wives and called in the New York Post to talk about how great his sex with his mistress was. And it's like, I talked about grabbing women by the pussy. It's like, you're just seeing this now. And so that's the instinct, but we want to put that instinct aside over here in the box for a second and think about like, where are areas of common ground? Like, what are ways to communicate that are useful? It is a cult. And what you have to understand is in any abusive relationship, right, your access to other people, you're very isolated.

Your access to information is cut off. Your access to people who might have, you know, rational thoughts about what you're involved in. You're cut off from that as well. So what you have to understand is these people, you know, they're told it's fake news. All of this is fake news. The only thing you can trust is Twitter and truth social. And for better or worse, they actually believe that to an extent. They believe that these esteemed outlets are lying to them, that nothing they put out can be true.

So I think just little by little showing them that there's still space for them, it's not easy to do what I did and apologize for all of the things that I said. And really, you know, I'm on Matt Bernstein's podcast and all of these words that I had said, which were incredibly hurtful, are put up on the screen and read back to you. And that's really hard to do. But I think as long as there's space for these people to come back and say, hey, we understand that this is a whole new world in social media and the internet. and these Colts can grab you in on your phone. And nobody can ever see you again. I think that's the best way to do it is to be compassionate to some of these people,

even if they're not being very compassionate themselves right now. Maybe this is your job. I listen to that podcast that you're on with Matt. He's a nice guy, really left guy. And a lot of the conversation was about how you could make amends with the trans community and the LGBT community and all this. I don't know. How much value is there to having you put on your hair shirt and put up the rainbow flag?

It's fine. You can do all that. As a gay, I can be like, it's fine. I don't know. I kind of feel like your penance should be talking to the trap girls. Yeah. And communicating to them because they're not going to listen to Matt Bernstein. Like, they're not going to listen to Matt Bernstein.

They're probably not going to listen to me. And maybe they would listen to you. I think it's also very important to hold that space where you do hold accountability. because what I've realized leaving is that to ignore the issues from these, you know, the communities that the woke fixated for a while, these issues come back and affect all of us. Okay, the way in which the trans community is scapegoated, that impacts women and everyone else as well. The way in which BLM was scapegoated and demonized, they were warning about a lot of the issues that we're now facing with ICE right now. And so I do think it's also important to say, hey, here's what I missed. And here's why we should listen to those individuals.

And if you don't, it's going to come for you next. I think it's really important to hold space for how very small percentages of the population are used by political parties. I guess. I think that space is being held for those communities, though. I think it's your job to go down to the fucking DPSA events. and go up to the girls and be like, are you sure you want to be here? Are you sure? Like from White Lotus?

What are you doing with this middle-aged wheel? Are you sure that you want to do this? I think that's a better use of your skills. One man's opinion. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's important. Or the women inside the White House. I don't know.

The women inside this administration. Some of the women within the White House hold a degree of psychopathy that I'm not sure there's anything I could say that would be helpful. obviously at times I've lacked empathy when being in politics and the things I've said. But the women within the White House really scare me, to be honest. Yeah. So you sort of go through this transformation. You have this personal crisis that kind of precipitates that some of the views from your time in that world you have to maintain, right?

Or have to still have some resonance with you? Or do you look back at it and think that, God, I was just caught up in this and it was all a lie or are there some things. I don't know. I was like peeking at your Twitter and it seemed like right before you left X and it felt like there were still, you still had some views. You had some USAID views that I disagreed with that you were sharing. I don't know. Do you have other mega elements that you think still resonate with you? I would say no because, you know, my first instinct is to say yes because there's constitutional values that I hold, but that's not MAGA. That's just American. So what are some of those, though? Free speech, especially, especially with AI. I think

we're really, there's a lot of people who are going to be forgotten as like our general consciousness is aggregated and stolen from us. But there's also, people will say I made such a pivot because, you know, X, Y, Z or I'm grifting. But they don't consider what it's like to see the underbelly of such power and how close I saw it. saw such immense wealth and such immense power that it really kind of radicalizes you the other way because, you know, to be in the rooms with the wealthiest people in the world and they're talking about socialism being handouts is as a normal person whose mom didn't want to go to the hospital when she was having a heart attack because she wasn't insured, that kind of flips a switch in you

where you're like, oh, you guys all actually really suck. You might be ontologically evil. And so that's true. That's, yeah, I've had a hard flip the other way, especially as it relates to my views on capitalism. But it's, I saw something very ugly. When you see that they're evil, it's hard to say, well, I do have to hand it to them on the Jones Act. You know, and like, I deal with this as well. But how about maybe looking at it from this perspective rather than complimenting them?

if you're talking to Democrats, just practically speaking, somebody who, like, lived in that world and who, you know, had friends there, like, is there something that Democrats are doing that is blocking them from being able to reach those people? Are there things that you wish that they would do? Yes, they are incredibly lukewarm. Like, the Democratic Party is very lukewarm. I don't think they're speaking to any real issues that people are facing. People need health care. People need housing. They need a lot more than what the Democrat Party is saying that they support now and Gavin Newsom going out and saying,

we went too far with the trans stuff. Why even address it at all? This is a non-issue. I do believe like old woke is dead now. But it's these very lukewarm candidates who aren't offering accountability for the corporations and big tack and all of these people and entities that have pillaged America. there's nobody talking about AI governance whatsoever. And I think that's really harmful. I think if the Democrats want some sort of future, they do need to take a hard look and start offering more social programs in conjunction with really holding these corporations accountable.

I want you to let the dog out a little bit more. I'm giving you, I don't know, were you Catholic? What did you grow up? What was your evangelical? Jewish? Okay. Well, so I don't know. Maybe Frist or Katie can tell me.

me what Jewish people do in this situation. The Catholics, you know, I give you penance. You do 10 Hail Mary's and 10 Our Fathers and then you get to move forward. I want to give that to you in the Catholic spirit because you did this tweet right before you went dark. Ruben Gallego wrote, Trump wants to invade Panama, Greenland, and now Gaza. Trump is a warmonger. Credit to Rubin, he was right about that. You replied, your mom named you after a sandwich. That's funny. He was right. you were wrong, but I want you to use that skill set for good. I was right that his mom named him after a sandwich. And it's funny.

Look, there's no foreign policy take there whatsoever. One last try. Do you want to comment on Elon's microphalus? Or like just draw a picture of it or something? I am not at liberty to discuss that. Connerate's Pans tried getting me on that as well. The greatest journalist of our time, by the way, Connery's Pansch. I can't compete with him.

Is there anything like just, you know, like something in his, like in his bedtime drawer, he's got a little binky, you know, is there a little something? Does he sleep with a teddy bear or something? There's nothing, not one little thing. I will, I will respect his privacy in that regard. Lastly, give me a little kid talk. You got two kids now. Obviously, you want to respect their privacy, but just give us something about being a mom

that's been a blessing. Well, my older son is today's St. Patrick's, so he's dressed as a leprechaun in the full get-up. He's very excited. They are the best parts of my life, and it's all I focus on, you know, that's, boy, I'm, I go more dark now because they are so incredible. And I hope everyone at some point gets to experience that joy of parenthood. But it really makes you reflect on what your beliefs are, as you have to explain the world to these little, little beings who are going to grow into their own. own and I don't know. I hope that my motherhood will live forever through them and through their kids and I hope that it's impactful and meaningful and that I can make them proud. But they are, I love them both so much. I hope you can too. You're doing the right thing. You're doing really

well. I appreciate it. My daughter came downstairs today on a little little green hat that has the thing where you press the button and the ears go up as well as a shamrock necklace. And she looked at my husband and said, is this too much? It's like, that's the right amount. It's never too much, baby. That's the right amount for school today. My son has said that he has crabs in his pocket that he will throw at people if they're not wearing green. So the crabs are doing the pinching.

He's outsourced the pinching to his minion crabs. All right. Well, send me some kid pictures on the gram. I appreciate you so much, Ashley. Thanks for coming on the show. And take off the hair shirt and just go forth and do the right thing. All right, girl. Of course.

Thanks, Tim. I appreciate you so much. I'm next to my buddy Camcast. The Bell Air Direct app includes crash assist, which detects an accident the moment it happens and even offers you emergency assistance at the tap of a button. Okay, but what if I don't have an accident? Well, just keep on, keeping on. Bell Air Direct, insurance, simplified.

Conditions apply. We are back. He's my mini me. We used to do a podcast together. He was also a candidate for New York's 12th Congressional District and co-founder of March for Our Lives. He left the campaign to focus on a piece of human rights legislation that he's working on with Rokana. Because he's the person who cares. He's a person that does things and cares.

It's Cam Caskey. What's up, brother? The fuck is up, gang. We're back. How you been? How you been? I'm good. You know I'm good.

How are you doing? Are you vaping? You vaping? No, I did hookah recently. You hookah? It had been years since I had done nicotine. But then I was in an ancient. city called Sebastian. It's like a 3,000-year-old city. And the mayor offered me ahead of his hookah.

And I was like, well, am I going to do say no. But I hadn't eaten in like two days. So, and it had been I puked. I didn't puke, but I was like, it was like I just on crack. Like my entire body was buzzing. I could, I couldn't sit still. It was so, it was so, it was so, I hadn't slept. I was, I was overseas. I had never been overseas before. So I didn't really know what jet lag actually was. Jet lag actually was. Jet lag to me was like, going to L.A. and it's like, oh, you woke up an hour earlier this morning. So it was just a fucking mess. But anyway, wait a minute. Your trip to Israel and the West Bank was your first time ever leaving America? Yeah. Like you've never been to like Cancun? No. Not I haven't been to Tulum. I haven't been anywhere.

Montreal? No, I don't. Really, that is fascinating. That kind of makes you more like the median American than I realized. I am the median American. Are you kidding me? Like, I don't have any culture. My family history is like, oh, we moved to Florida in 1997. Like, that's what I got. I was going to talk to you about Ashley St. Clair.

We'll save that for the end. We'll save that for dessert. We'll talk about the serious stuff first. The trip where you hook it in the ancient city, your first trip abroad, was, I guess, this legislation came out of that. So talk to us about your trip and what you saw. Sure. So, you know, I was running for Congress in New York 12, which everybody at the bulwark is doing these days. And Palestine was a huge issue of mine. So a lot of people in my district were saying, well, if you care so much about the people over in Palestine, why don't you go over there and see how they feel about you, Jewish boy? So I went over there and it turns out they like me way more than they like me in my congressional district. It isn't even close. Like I would have a much better chance. Did you do a poll? If there was, I would have a much better chance winning over there than I would in New York 12. I disagree. I think your chance to know if 12 was better than you thought. But we'll say that for another day.

I mean, we'll see. Listen, there was a poll that got leaked to Jewish insider in an article where they were trying to rat fuck me. And it was like, yeah, Kasky's unpromising polling showed him at 8% with nobody over 20. And I was like, you know that that's like a dramatic over performance, right? Like I would not have guessed that at all. I would have put myself in maybe have. 8%. 8% with nobody over 20. better than Jeb? Well, you know, it's not a competition. It's a different situation. But no, so point is, I go overseas. Again, I'd never been there before. I have to make up a fake reason that I'm going to get through Israeli customs. Because if you tell the Israeli airport that you're going to the occupied West Bank,

they'll interrogate you. They might just turn you away. In 2022, a law got passed where Israel can just not let you in if they don't want to. There doesn't need to be any sort of. alignment between you and any violent rhetoric or language or strong borders. It's just like, they could just not like your vibe and be like, okay, get the fuck out because it's the only democracy in the Middle East. So I put together this elaborate plan to get through customs, got through customs, went right to the West Bank. I went to Batesahur, which is

the city where the shepherds found out about the birth of Jesus. And then they went over to Bethlehem, which I also went to. I went to the Church of Nativity. And I did that thing where you get on your knees, like right where Jesus was born and you do a little prayer. And I was like, I mean, I've read revelations. So I've got that going for me in the Christian world. That's crazy. It was the vibe like at the Church of the Nativity. It was Christmas week. I was in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve. So it was kind of crazy. I was like, whoa. I'm leading a peace march in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve. Like, if I were Christian, this would probably be the coolest thing in the world. But again, almost everything I know about the Bible is the book of revelations and the

book of revelations is wild. It's like it makes Genesis look like a children's book. It's like, the Bible is these allegories and these stories about temptation and the human nature. And then Revelations is like, all right, guys, there's going to be a giant snake made out of fire that's going to eat the entire world. I digress. I go around the West Bank and it's a very interesting situation because I'm in all these different sorts of life. I'm in these urban population centers and then these Bedouin villages and these more suburban areas and everything. And the life that they experience there, there's all these different sorts of struggle that they go through. Because in some places, you see these military checkpoints where people cannot walk home because they just

get turned away by the Israeli army. And what should be a seven-minute walk back to their house, ends up taking them 90-plus minutes. And then there's other places where settler militias will just raid villages and shoot people point-blank and broad daylight. This happened to my friend's husband who was murdered last year by a guy named Yunon Levy, who not only faced no criminal consequences, he also regularly comes back to the village to harass people to this day. And it's just all these different things. Like in Gaza, you have this very clear picture of this war and this bombing and this constant barrage of drone strikes and bullets.

In the West Bank, it's very much death by a thousand cuts. And it's a slower, more meticulous process that involves going after the water sources, energy grids, all these different things, economic collective punishment. It's a very complex. situation. And, you know, I'm a dipshit layman. I'd never left the country before. So it was just a weird experience for me. How long were you there? I was there for a week. I would have stayed longer if I weren't, you know, running a congressional campaign. What about the playing with the kids? Talk to me about shooting hoops. Oh, my, well, the kids were so cute. There was one little girl who

I scared. She was probably about four years old. And I was going up to her brothers in Hebron to play football with them. That's what they call it football. It's this word for soccer that people use. And she saw me and she kind of jumped for a second. And I realized this girl was probably like three or four years old. The tourism industry in the West Bank, which is like what keeps the West Bank alive, has just disappeared since October 7th. I might have been the first white person she has ever seen that was not a settler trying to harass her family. And then I just gave her candy and she was chill. The kids, they go crazy for candy.

And I went to this village called Umahir, where I brought bags of candy. My friend Jasper, who's a journalist, told me to do it. And the kids would just swarm me. But then when I ran out of candy, I did not know the Arabic to tell them that I didn't have candy. So they thought that I was just like playing a game with them. And they kept them being like, candy, candy.

I was like, guys, guys, I actually don't have any more. I'm sorry. I was like going over to different villagers who spoke English. I was like, can you guys tell them in Arabic that I don't have candy anymore? Universal experience. The kid will love you until the second that you don't give them exactly what they're hoping for. And then all of a sudden, you're worthless, totally useless. Yeah.

So you come back, decide to get out of the race. We'll get to that in a sec. You go down to D.C. You talk to Roe, Kana, and others about doing some legislation. Like what are you, what are you guys asking for? I mean, everything that happens in the West Bank, we fund. And a lot of people in the, you know, liberal Zionist world who are ultimately supportive of Israel agree that the West Bank operation is something that must be stopped at all costs. Like even people who will totally defend Israel and are ultimately considered themselves allies of Israel, they're against the West Bank stuff.

But there's this big misunderstanding that the West Bank. West Bank settlements are something that happen in spite of Israeli policy and not as the direct result of Israeli policy. But there is a guy named Bezal Smoltrich, the finance minister of Israel, who Netanyahu is placed in charge of the occupied West Bank. Smutrich was a wanted terrorist in Israel. He was somebody that even the Israeli government said, we need to put this guy behind bars only maybe, let's say, 20 years ago. Now he's in charge of the West Bank. And since October 7th, kind of under the cover of Gaza, the West Bank settler violence, settlement expansions, it is all just, it's been on fast forward. I mean, right when I got back, like the day my flight

landed, and we'll talk about the girl who docks to me in the airport, I don't know if you saw that. Oh, yeah. But the day that I landed, 19 new settlements just got approved. And they're choking these people out. So I said to Roe, we can't just, you know, talk about how the settler violence is bad. just demand investigations into the killings of American citizens who are killed in the West Bank. I mean, just stop and think about that for a second. American citizens are killed by Israelis in the West Bank. And they're studying from Philadelphia a couple weeks ago. Yeah, and of course, John Federman didn't have a word to say about it. But we can't just look at the settler violence as if the settlements themselves are not the reason this is happening. And as if the state of Israel,

itself is not allowing these settlements to happen. I mean, again, people will act like the settlements are like acne and they just kind of pop up out of nowhere. But it's the Israeli military that accompanies the settlers to go kill these people. And it's not just the Israeli military. It's also the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian Authority that governs the West Bank will just stand there while an Israeli military officer or an Israeli settler kills a Palestinian. And the PA just sits there, does nothing, if not actively participates. So it's this very complex situation. And what I said to Roe was, we need a resolution that is going to shine a light on all the different tactics that Israel is using in the West Bank because every area you go to, they're doing different things.

They're placing demolition orders on community centers. They are in Sebastian, for example, the place I hit the hookah, they are using archaeology as an excuse to steal land from Palestinians. So Israeli officials will basically submit a picture of like broken clay pots and say, oh, this is actually an archaeological site. We need to make sure Palestinians can't build anything here. We need to confiscate it for ourselves, actually. So they'll obviously burn down all the Palestinians, olive groves. Everywhere you go, you can point to all these different things.

And if you look at the resolution that Roe introduced that we worked very hard on, You can see we cover a lot of different things from a lot of different angles because the West Bank operation is very complex. For dummies like me, just the nuts of it, the nuts of the resolution is what? Like they ask is what? Demanding an end to a lifting of the demolition orders on buildings in. And then we list all the different villages where that's happening. And then to the archaeological land confiscation in places like Sebastian. there's a lot of roads that are getting built that are cutting Palestinian villages off from one another

because they will be building infrastructure for Israeli settlements. And in doing so, just cut off Palestinians' ability to reach their water supply, to reach their electricity. And just a lot of different things like that, we're working on something in the near future to look at the fact that we are offering U.S. Embassy services in the occupied way. West Bank, which, by the way, according to the Oslo Accords, according to the agreed-upon international law, the Israeli settlements in the West Bank are a huge human rights violation. I see this to people pretty frequently. Even if you just completely took Gaza out of the equation, even if you acted as though there

was absolutely nothing going on there, the West Bank occupation is still one of the biggest human rights violations happening in the world right now. But there's a difference between the West Bank and Sudan and the gang wars in Haiti and Ukraine. There's a very important distinction to make here, which is that the American taxpayer is not subsidizing the RSF and Sudan. I mean, I think we need to be placing harder sanctions on the United Arab Emirates who are armed with the RSF. Yeah, we're doing deals with the UAE that's subsidizing them. So, you know, a little bit of a bank shop. But, yeah.

Sure. But like every single bullet that is being fired by Israeli forces, whether that's children in Lebanon, whether that's all, we're all chipping into that. You know, and I can't say the same thing about barbecues gang in Porto Prince. The Bel Air Direct app includes crash assist, which detects an accident the moment it happens, and even offers you emergency assistance at the tap of a button. Okay, but what if I don't have an accident? Well, just keep on, keeping on.

Bell Air Direct, insurance, simplified, conditions apply. I want to move on and talk about the primary stuff since you were in a primary race. We got a primary tonight? I wasn't a primary race. We do. There's a bunch of races in Illinois. The Senate race has been interesting. I think the lieutenant governor there.

Is the Senate race close? It is. Yeah. A lot of these races, like the degree to which APAC has played such a big role in all these races is like pretty insane actually because like in the Senate race in Illinois, it's like everybody's accusing everybody else of being the APAC candidate. And like that's the thing that I'm seeing the most. It's like fucking wild.

But Julianna Stratton's lieutenant governor, she was losing the polls. Raja, I don't want to butcher his name. Congressman Raja was winning the polls. But Stratton seems to be, you know, kind of have the momentum. We'll see how it shakes out tonight. But then there are a bunch of congressional races, including the one that's gotten the most attention is one of our former FY podcast, Kat Abrazaela. It was like the kind of lefty online candidate against Daniel Biss, who's more of like a, I guess, liberal left. traditional candidate, and then there is an actual APAC candidate in that race.

Then I think there's another leftist candidate. It's kind of a four-way race. Cat and Biss seem to be the two most likely to win. I mean, you've been monitoring that. You have any hot takes on it? I've seen some tweets from you in that race. It'll be very interesting to see. I mean, you're right to say it's going to be Biss or Kat.

And either way, I mean, the way that I put it is like, if Cat comes in third place, that is still a dramatic overperformance. considering like her youth her narcolepsy her radical left positions well she again she's not even the radical leftist in the

race there's a there's a girl who's running against her from the left so this is this is how weird the APAC world has gotten this is how strange the puzzle of like AAC science has gotten there's a candidate named Bushra who is to the left of cat

and has a lot of of community ties that are sort of, you know, people around her who are telling her, no, you can actually win, no, you can actually win. I've noticed from my experience as a candidate that that's something that happens a lot with candidates. Like a lot of the candidates who stay in races, and I'm sure you've seen this a million times, a lot of the candidates where you're like, oh, the only reason they're staying in is because they're trying to make a point or because, you know, they, there's some sort of endgame here. It's so hard to believe that some people can actually be convinced that somehow,

even though they're polling at 0.05%, they can make it happen. No, a lot of these people are just surrounded by enough people being like, no, no, no, you got it. You had to experience it. Was it weird being a candidate? Did people treat you different? Like when you were a candidate for a couple months? Did you notice people being like, a little nicer to you or a little bit more excited to

see you? buttering you up a little more? Yeah, I guess. I don't know. I very deliberately surround myself with a specific type of person, generally speaking, because the way my brain works, I just constantly need to be around people who are telling me that I'm full of shit. But no, I definitely had some people around me from my team, maybe not on the higher levels of my team, but, you know, in sort of like the middle management side of my team, who just thought I could do no wrong and everything.

and I was like, okay, calm down. Like, hey, hey, I'm not even professing to be as smart as you're treating me right now. Like, I'm running as a dipshit layman. I'm just running as a dipshit. But you do get a lot of people telling you there for you, you know, which makes you feel like you could win. This is like the anecdote. People I come to you, like, yeah, I'm for you. That's like, are you even in my district?

Yeah. That's one of the big things. Yeah, it's like, oh, my God, I would have been so much more effective as a national candidate than as a New York 12 candidate. I could have gone to Wisconsin and talked about my fucking baseball team the whole time and immediately won the state. Back to Bushra. Yeah, with the cat race. So you've got Bushra and she's running to the left of Cat and APEC through one of their many shell companies has been releasing pro-Bushera ads to explain why Bushra is actually the right choice. They did this in New Jersey.

And in New Jersey, they ended up with like a leftist congressperson beat Tom Malenowski. They were attacking. Yeah, it was more of like a bulwurkey Democrat. And because Melanowski, like, had criticized Israel. And so, like, now they ended up with, like, a squad member. This happened. The other thing is, like, Daniel Biss, who I don't think is, like, bad, by the way. I don't, I prefer a cap, but I don't, I don't think Biss is like some rotten piece of shit.

But Daniel Biss, from what I understand, tried to get the A PAC endorsement, didn't get the A PAC endorsement, and is now, like, I'm not bought off by. A-PAC. And it's like, yeah, they didn't want you, bro. Like, sorry. So A-PAC chess has just gotten so complex now that they're spending money on the candidates that were that candidate, someone who actually has a shot, they would be doing everything they possibly can to stop. And it's just very strange. But then you saw there was a report. And MSNBC, I think they're the ones who broke this. There were influencers getting paid $1,500 per post to shit talk. Yeah. And it's not just APEC. There's a fuckload of crypto and AI money in Illinois as well. Like the amount of- This is happening in your race too. There's like a pro-AI candidate.

They're trying to destroy Alex Boris. The two guys like who were the traditional New York candidates here because you know, George Conway is a special case. Jack Schlossberg is a special case. Alex Boris and Michael Lasher are like the expected guys here. The machine candidates here. I mean, Alex Boras literally, because AI is his primary focus, but Alex and Micah, from a policy perspective, are almost indistinguishable from one another. But AI is spending millions already to stop Alex for like some fairly regular AI takes. Like my AI take is basically destroy every AI data center. Unplugged the server. Yeah.

Yeah. They destroy it all, build affordable housing over them. Alex Boris is like, make sure that, you know, you're. children aren't making child porn on AI. Just like very basic things like that. And apparently he's just like this huge fucking threat to them. But I said privately to Alex, I'm like, dude, you need to keep reminding people that it's the worst people in the world who are trying to stop you.

That's your best weapon here. Judge me by my enemies. Like that, you know, there's AI execs who tweet things like, I want to destroy the world. Like, you know, immigrants are destroying the country. and I want to use AI to purify our nation. Yeah, all those guys are spending against Boris. And it's interesting because you've got A-PAC, which is this big new boogeyman, and then you've got AI packs.

And it can get a little confusing. I don't know if those are the two interest groups we wanted to making choices in Democratic primaries, but that's where we're at right now. That's maybe a conversation for a longer day. I have one other primary I want to get your, have you endorsed anybody actually in your old race yet? Have you endorsed anybody yet? No, I don't. Maybe I will. Maybe I won't. I'm not sure. You made my life a lot easier because I'm for George.

I'd only donated to you, I will say, but now I get to before George. I haven't actually wrote the checkbook yet. Hopefully he's not listening to the podcast. I'm going to get a text after this asking for my contribution. You had publicly endorsed me on our last FYPod episode and you had said I endorsed Cam. You couldn't take it back. Correct. And I was going to make an endorsement section of our website. And it was just going to be you and Miss Rachel. who's going to be endorsed by Tim Miller and Miss Rachel.

I'm fucking pissed at you. You didn't do that. There's an ad out today from Janet Mills attacking Graham Platner on this. The ad is women looking at an iPad reading his write-up posts where he says that women who get assaulted should act like adults, then they should not get so fucked up. I got to just say, this is the thing you're not supposed to say as a podcaster, as a commentator on all this. I have no idea whether that will work. I truly don't.

Like, I think that in some, like in a different world, I think those are some pretty bad Reddit posts. And Democratic primary voters who are very me too oriented and friendly would reject a male, white male straight that had posted stuff like that. In this day and age, after the Biden thing, after just the disappointment with the establishment, I don't know. I think I'm not sure it's going to work.

You're just more in touch with the, you know, progressive. I was interested in what you thought about that. I think the progressive id, I said this about me recently because I had made some comments in the past that were by really any measure just outright Islamophobic. And I was talking to people about it because it was being called into question the sincerity of the dedication that I have to human rights in the Middle East North Africa region. And I said, you know, it's kind of one of the most classic themes in a story of all time is can a man change? Like if you go through all of literature, fables, tales, dating back to ancient times, one of the most common themes you'll see is, can a man change?

And you'll notice that all of the happy stories end with the answer, yes, and all of the tragedies end with no. And I think that a lot of people want to believe in the redemptive power of the human spirit. And a lot of people also recognize that it's not like this was someone who was a business leader posting this shit from his C-suite, you know, executive first-class airplane seat. This was somebody who had just come back from war. So somebody who just came back from, by the way, the same type of war that everybody is outraged about right now. and people see these comments as something that were being made by somebody who was dejected and felt like the American experiment politically and socially had left him behind. And now what is he doing with his life?

Is he continuing to stew about in the dark, or is he trying to do something to help people? So I think that this would have been a very different story if Graham Platner was running against John Ossoff or Raphael Warnock, but he's running against an extremely weak candidate. I think Ossoff and Warnock or Elizabeth Warren even, somebody with some juice, it would be a different story. But Janet Mills doesn't have any juice. That's really powerful what you said there about the fables and the redemptive spirit. It's tied to what we talked about in the first segment. You know, like talked about this with Ashley and she's obviously grappling with this and, you know, what she needs to do to like redeem herself, which is kind of a crazy thing to grapple with as a 26th.

old single mother of two, but like that's what she has to kind of think about, like, what is valuable for her to do. She's 26. Yeah. We talked about Joe Kent. Yeah, with two kids. We could, we could really speed run your trip to parenthood. I was going to say, put us in a group text.

Okay, we'll put you in a group text after this. Also not blonde. The, um, the other thing we were talking about was Joe Kent on, on, on, on, that show, Joe Kent resigned today. And it's like, Joe Kent did a bunch of anti-Semitic shit in the past. And he resigned over the Iran war. And it's like, well, did he resign over the Iran war because he's anti-Semitic or resigned over the Iran war because it's like corrupt and wrong.

And it goes against like what he believed as a former soldier who thought that we weren't going to get into stupid wars anymore. And it's like, and the same thing with Platner. And it's like, I think people assess all of these people, whether it'd be like, Ashley or Joe or Platner. And they're like, or me, for that matter. and like try to decide like am I being snowed by this person, you know, or is this person demonstrating that they are redeemable

and that they want to be redeemed and that they're earnest? And it might be different in different of those cases. But like my view on the Platner thing is like, all you can do is judge them by what they're doing now. And maybe you end up getting snowed sometimes, but you can judge them by what they're saying and doing now. And I would rather someone try to redeem themselves and be imperfect than the opposite.

You know, if we were all defined by our lowest moments, we would not be in good positions, right? Like, anybody listening to this can think of the worst decisions that you've ever made, the worst beliefs you've ever had, the worst things you've ever said. And if somebody tried to say, that's you, that's who you are, you would say absolutely not. That was so.

Or maybe kind of. Or maybe it's part of who I am and it's what I'm grappling with. Like, everybody has demons, you know? You know what I mean? Like, that's also part of it. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't have any demons. You have no demons?

Well, I don't have any demons. If you go into my brain, it's just angels floating around with harps. We all got demons, baby. Yeah, I don't know. Let's go out to the old Hillary thing.

Everybody obsessed over her saying that the magas were deplorable. And I was like, that wasn't the problem. So she said they're irredeemable. And I don't know. We'll see if any of these people earn their redemption. Cam, we were supposed to talk about looks maxing.

We're like an hour over the length of how long this podcast is going to be. So we're going to do, like, we'll just very quick. We're going to brag on this. Everybody's talking about clavicular now. Clavicular won't come on the bulwark because he doesn't think it's maugable, which is wrong, which is wrong. It's not muggable. Cameron and I, podcast one, go to the FIYPod archives.

It wasn't even really the first episode. It was a trial to see if this project could work. Oops. And it was about fucking looks maxing. We were doing the shit. We're doing the shit over a year ago. Like, get mugged everybody. get mocked. That's Cameron Caskey. I appreciate the work you're doing, brother. Let's stay in touch, all right.

What do mean, let's stay in touch every day. All right. We do talk a lot. Yeah, let's stay in touch. Email me. Yeah, you're right. What the fuck was I saying? I don't know, man. It just was like, I was just like, talk to me, babe. Talk to me. I just want your attention. Sorry. I'll see you at the fucking wedding that we're going to together. I'm Cameron's plus one for a wedding soon. Everybody, thank you, Ashley St. Carr, thank you to Cameron. Up tomorrow. We have another friend of Cameron's, I think, who's going to be on the pod. this is a little teaser for that. So we'll see you back here. Then we'll see you in Texas. Come to the Austin events.

Way up in the balcony. There are a couple seats left. You'll be able to see me with your binoculars. Feed by tickets right now, the blog.com slash events. And we'll see all you'll soon. Bye, Cameron. Won't you help to sing these songs of freedom?

It's all a redemption song. Redemption song. The Borg podcast is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, Associate producer Anzley Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Lutz, and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown. The Bell Air Direct app includes crash assist, which detects an accident the moment it happens,

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