The Bulwark Podcast - Ruby Cramer: The Power of MAHA

Episode Date: September 1, 2026

Vaccine skepticism and distrust of pharmaceutical companies long predated RFK, Jr.'s 2024 presidential campaign. But the distrust of mainstream medical authority has now grown so deep that the United States can no longer contain the spread of measles. The country’s measles-vaccination rates have dropped below the threshold for herd immunity. Obviously, Trump’s misleading vax ruminations from the Oval Office have not helped the matter. The New Yorker’s Ruby Cramer discusses her reporting on one family’s frightening medical experience after one parent fell down the MAHA rabbit hole. Plus: The administration has given Big Ag a pass, Democrats should try recapturing health-conscious voters, the overlooked case of an American shot by immigration thugs, and the surprising backstory of Kari Lake becoming ambassador to Jamaica. Ruby Cramer joins Tim Miller.show notes: "The Next Level" pod will be out later today Ruby's New Yorker piece, "The MAHA Custody Battle" Ruby's reporting on the preschool worker who was shot by Border Patrol Ruby on the DNC's Ken Martin Eddington, the film Ruby referenced and Sonny recommends Bulwark LIVE: GOOD FIGHT TOUR with Tim, Sarah, Sam and JVL is coming to the Southeast in October. Tickets are on sale NOW. Head to TheBulwark.com/Events for details and to get your tickets.

And welcome to the Bullwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. If you're looking for a bunch of politics, you can have that over on the next level feed. I just looked at our outline for today's next level show. We've got Trump Madness, Hegg Seth Madness, some new ads that we're going to discuss. So come hang out there. But on today's show, it's RFK Madness. So we're going to be talking about. I'm tickled to welcome for a long overdue, inaugural visit to the pod. An old friend, she's a staff writer at the New Yorker covering politics. She's at the Washington Post and BuzzFeed. She's got a new article. out. The print edition is called The Scare. Online, you can find it as a Maha custody battle. It's Ruby. Thank you. What's up, Ruby? Hi, Tim. Nothing. I'm so happy to be here. Me too. You tell the story

in this feature so eloquently as you do, and it's a story in West Virginia, my husband's home state, about a couple Michael and Leah. But before we get to them, I just kind of want to do big picture here. You quoted a Democratic strategist that said about Maha. It's

It's two truths in a lie, and that's how people get sucked in. And I just kind of wanted to hear from you kind of on the bigger picture of what you discovered interviewing all these people and spending, it seems like spending a lot of time on Maha message boards. Yes. The last four months of my life, I've basically been like endlessly doom scrolling on parenting Facebook groups. It was a really interesting project. I had never written anything about Maha.

It was, you know, like, of course I followed it with it closely and I've been really interested in it. it's a political movement that sort of like defies expectations and stereotypes and crosses really interesting partisan lines and isn't very easily defined because it's so wide ranging and has so many different tenants, which also for Democrats makes it really hard to combat. And I think that's what the strategist was part of what they were getting at with this quote, which was one of the best sort of summaries I heard of the appeal of Maha and the way that people kind of become low-hanging fruit for the Maha movement,

this idea of it being two truths and a lie. So, like, yes, it's true that chronic disease is an epidemic and is on the rise, one truth. It is true that ultra-processed foods are potentially harming our bodies and make up more than half of our daily caloric intake, which is crazy. But, like, the lie that snuck in there is that, like, vaccines, that have been standard care for children for decades are something that, you know, we should be studying, you know, for a potential link to autism, which is like, you know,

the main sort of crux of the anti-Vax movement that's been disproven again and again. So like these little sort of suspicious claims about the medical authorities in our country like lying to us, like those are the things that kind of get snuck in into the movement. that come alongside these like other, you know, arguably really good things that some of Maha has pointed our attention toward. Did you find yourself being sucked in at all, reading the posts? Did I get, yeah, are you worried about beef tall? Are you, no, we're not worried about beef tallow.

We like beef tallow. Are you attracted to anything? We like beef tallow and we don't like seed oils. You know, I found it a really compelling sort of like emotional atmosphere to live in for a while. Like I said, I was just kind of existing in these online spaces for a really long time as part of my research for the story. And you can see really easily how you kind of like get sucked into this idea that like basically something is poisoning our bodies. Like Big Pharma is like out for profits, not just our well-being. All these things like this feeling that exists that kind of like undergirds all these online spaces.

I understand and it's really true. and it's easy to get kind of like sucked into that way of thinking. And while I didn't get fully Maha-Pilled, I definitely found the anxiety and the fear of these parents that are just trying to do the best they can and navigate different online spaces specifically, like really understandable and relatable. And it was easy to see how it gets taken to an extreme really, really quickly.

RFK seems like such a unique figure in this as like a catalyst. And a lot of this stuff has been happening for a long time. And it sort of gets really like kind of brought together. Like in a way kind of like based on his unique, like weird various beliefs. I remember people coming to John McCain town halls in 2008 concerned about the autism link. Right. Like that existed. And you know, there was like woo-woo, you know, stuff that's existed for a while now, like in its own orbit.

and, you know, concerns about processed foods, right? Like, but it all has got blended together. Is it because of RFK or, like, what's the chicken and the egg on that, do you think? I think it's a really good question. I don't know the answer because Kennedy has, I give him credit, because he put words to these feelings that we've all felt and seen and that have been, like, proven time and time again by all the biggest storylines in our health care system over the past 10, 15 years.

So the whole concept of healthcare being, you know, just disproportionately expensive in this country and everyone being saddled with like really incredible medical debt. He's talked about that. This idea that why are more and more people getting sick with chronic diseases and we know that people are eating unhealthy foods and we know that sort of it's being driven by corporations that are out for profit. Like, again, I got,

I guess I'm coming back to Two Truths in the Light again. Like, we know this is true. We know this is a feeling that people have. And he put words to it for the first time. And it almost made me think, like, as I was looking back on some of his messaging when he was running for president in 2024, and then later when he was sworn in. And also when he endorsed Trump after pulling out of the race, I was sort of marveling to myself that a politician or a leader in the political space didn't do this earlier. Like, even the opioid epidemic. It's like all these things that have been swirling around in the atmosphere over the last 15 years that we know are so viscerally felt for families.

No one was talking about it in this way. So I kind of give him credit for kind of like just taking existing pieces of this declining trust. I think that's the main sort of like undercurrent and putting words to it. I'm reluctant to handing it to RFK. You know, it's kind of like the drill ISIS meme. I don't know if you have to hand it to them now that we're like, you know, You know, not doing, not doing MRNA cancer studies since he's in there. But like the point of someone else could have grabbed this mantle in a way that focused more on the truths.

I think that is right. And did it responsibly. Yeah. And particularly on the left. And this is, I wanted to get to Michael and Leah, there were two things that struck me. Like if I told you about these people and just gave you these generic descriptions like 10 years ago and you asked them which party they were in, like everybody would say, oh, those people are Democrats. Like Michael was a long hair, bell bottom wearing, like musician, gig musician. And Leah was like into numerology, divine femininity.

She thought she was receiving messages from the universe. She had a truth tattoo. These people seem like they could have been certainly getable for Democrats in a different world. You know, when we talk about the groups, like there's all this talk, and I do it, like about the manosphere, or about my people, like the former Republican college educated voter, or the Bernie to Trump voter. Like this is a big demographic kind of of of these people that are, you know, I think more whatever, naturalist, maybe a little conspiratorial minded.

And like, they've not been Republicans, like, until two minutes ago. Until two minutes ago. And even now, they don't really fit, like, these two characters in particular don't even really fit our expectations of, like, what a MAGA Republican voter might look like now. And I intentionally kind of tried not to describe them with political labels in the story because I wanted to show how little they fit into these boxes. And I think it's really, really indicative of the moment we're in where it's like nothing really quite makes sense in the way you expected anymore. Everyone's not about data centers. Everyone's upset about Jeffrey Epstein.

Like all these sort of things and feelings, again, are blurring. political lines that existed even like two or three or four or five years ago. Well, their story's pretty sad, though. So buckle it. Well, I guess it's not the saddest. Nobody's dead yet. So that's good. I'm just going to let people, you know, do a little trigger warning for people.

But tell us about. The kids are okay. Yeah. So they have three kids. The kids are okay. As mentioned, the alt-headline of a custody battle, it's literally centered around views over their medical treatment. Yes.

And I will say too, just like as a preamble to Michael and Leah, I interviewed so many different people who were in and around the Maha movement, including like moms who had gone down the Maha rabbit hole and really committed to the lifestyle and then came out of it and we're sort of just trying to figure out what they believe again. I talked to people who were still in the movement. I talked to people that left it behind years and years ago. So Michael and Lia are two people who live in West Virginia. They met when they were really young. They met online. they got married. At the time they got married, neither one of them was particularly interested in health care, wellness. One thing that Leah knew for sure

was that she wanted to be mom. She wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, specifically too. And while I wouldn't necessarily describe her then as a conservative person, she was sort of rubbing up against this strain of mainstream feminism at the time,

I guess like era of Hillary Clinton lean in girl boss type moment. And she's like, wait a second. Like I want to be a stay-at-home mom. I was born to be a mom. I've been dreaming of being a mom. This is my dream in life. It's the thing that matters most to me.

And I'm kind of feeling like there are people in the world who look down on that. Cottage core. I think we were calling it cottage core back then. Cottage core. Who knows what we were calling it back then? We don't like to remember those times. So I think that that becomes kind of an important thing for her experience later on. to. So they get married two years later. She's pregnant and has her first child. And again,

is not someone who's given a lot of thought to vaccines. The boy who's a boy named Keith gets all standard vaccinations as a baby. He gets the vitamin K shot, which is another thing that's become suddenly controversial standard care for infants since 1961. He gets all the things. Then the pandemic comes. And Leah's pregnant again. time with her second son. And while she's pregnant, lockdowns are happening. Her husband, who as you mentioned,

was sort of like a bell bottom wearing old school rock and roll fan. And I think by then was really kind of coming around to a more conservative way of thinking. He was a Trump voter. He works as a gas station sort of like technician. and his work wasn't impacted by lockdown. So he told me he gets most of his news from a conservative aggregator called Citizen Free Press.

Are you familiar with us? Oh, I know about Citizen Free Press. I wasn't, but it kind of looks like Drudge, kind of. Like it has just like links. It literally started because Drudge got too woke. And so there was a MAGA-Rite Drudge competitor that was more Trump-friendly and less, I don't know, gay. whatever the problem was with judge at that point. Right, exactly.

So I told you all you need to know. Okay, so for context, like this is what Michael's favorite news sources. Yeah, alarming. Yeah, so he's reading about the virus on this site. He kind of thinks something's fishy with the pandemic. He's watching kind of in horror as people, you know, follow mask mandates. And like, as like these plastic barriers, you know, he was like describing with a great derision, the plastic barriers that went up around cash registers.

and stuff like that. So as the pandemic is unfolding, Leah spending just more and more time online, like many of us. And she sees people in her sort of Instagram community starting to fight about masks and vaccines. And she just kind of follows her curiosity. Like she described herself to me as a really open-minded person.

And it was almost like when these views sort of entered her feed, she just, you know, accepted them into her life. And I know a lot of people might be like, oh, you've got to know better. But I think if you go back to that first year of COVID, such a vulnerable time, like so easy to just, yeah. I mean, I will say, look, with love and obviously these are the people that were correct for the most part, but like, you know, and it's not that different from the Fauci-Chi candle instinct, right? I mean, like, it's a little different in that Like with Fauci, like you're trusting somebody who has, like, made a career of virology and has a long history.

And so, like, putting your trust in that person, like, makes more logical sense to us. But, like, there was some illogic to it. Like, there was, like, a cultishness to it. And, like, there's this time of uncertainty. And, like, people grabbed on to something. And, like, I don't, that makes sense to me. Totally. And there was a lot of, like, weird public shaming around who wore a mask and who didn't

and who was doing the vaccines. and who wasn't. And I think she bristled at that. And it was also around this time that she began to sort of like position her status as a stay-at-home mom as like an act of defiance, you know, which I think goes hand in hand with some of this.

Right. So she's kind of starting to think about vaccines for the first time. She meets a mom who, you know, on social media, a total stranger who tells her a horror story of a vaccine injury, which is the term of choice. in the Maha world.

Just let you know a vaccine injury. And, you know, a child that had, you know, like a seizure, which these things do happen. Sure. And was vomiting apparently after getting a vaccine. And in this story sort of like menacingly, the doctor pulls this woman aside and says, you know, vaccines aren't as safe as you think. And here's why. And, you know, who knows if this was apocryphal or what happened.

But Leah is terrified by this story. And fast forward a couple of months. months, her elderly grandmother after receiving two doses of the COVID vaccine passes away. She blames the vaccine. This is a perfect storm sort of coming together. And suddenly, like, it really does not take long where she is considering herself a quote-unquote crunchy mama. And, you know, she's no more red dies in the house. Tim has his head in his hands at this point.

No more red dies. you know, no chemicals in the food. You know, and Michael, who I think like in many families in America, had deferred choices about like taking care of the kids to the mom, was sort of like, whatever, I'm just kind of pissed that organic groceries cost more. And like, really, like he's like, I don't get why we're buying organic peanut butter. and she's like, this is what we're doing now. There's no replacing GIF.

There really is no replacing GIF. Yeah. And I mean, Michael comes away as you get into this custody battle where he wants them to, you know, get vaccinated, et cetera, eventually after some sicknesses happen,

which you can explain. He has kind of the hero of the story in some ways, but also he's like, you know, taking them on motorcycle rides, which had me a little bit. In helmets. In helmets,

sure. I don't know. As a reader, I was kind of like, I'm a little scared of that. But anyway, fast forward to the kids and not paying vaccines. Yeah, so the kids basically,

as soon as she goes down this rabbit hole, she decides no more vaccines. And one of the scary things about that in this family is her middle child, Donnie suffers from spinal muscular atrophy, SMA, which is a genetic disease that weakens your muscles and leaves you basically more vulnerable to respiratory illnesses.

So around the time that Donnie's diagnosed with SMA, Michael starts like kind of asking more questions for the first time of Leah about like, what's this vaccine thing all about? Like why, you know, should we be doing it? Should we not be doing it? I don't think this marriage was necessarily destined to work out, but it does come to a head sort of over these issues in 2025. One night, Michael is seeing Leah, you know,

she's on her phone more and he thinks that she's cheating on him. And one day in dramatic fashion, he kind of grabs her phone and runs to the garage in the back of the house and starts looking through her messages, trying to see if she's cheating. And it turns out, no, she's not cheating. She is talking with a holistic spiritual guide slash healer. That she's paying in Bitcoin. She's paying Bitcoin. And I just want to say one thing because I know this is like head and hands moment. But what I learned in my research for this story is that this world and all the sort of like fringe diversions that are attached to it, so much of it revolves around like making a buck.

Yeah, you don't say. Yeah, I know. There's some grifters and the ma-home are group. There are some crypters and they are out there. And I talked to some really. smart people that were like, oops, I accidentally spent 10 years in a multi-level marketing company selling capsules of dried fruits and vegetables. And that became my whole world and I went to conferences and I dedicated my life to selling these fruit and vegetable capsules. Smart people.

Yeah, I know. The story's about to get a little tragic. So I just want to sit on the humor for a second. It is a funny scene of like a prestige television show, like going to. grab the phone thinking that your wife is cheating on you and you're going to discover it and then finding out she's sending Bitcoin to a holistic spiritual guide. It's very like HBO Max in five years. Yeah. Yeah, it's very like, did you see Eddington the movie? No. Okay. Well, that is like if you wanted to, it's like the prestige movie horror film of March 2020

COVID era. Oh, right. I did see this. Sorry. I forget. I forget the name of it. of things I watched. I did see this. It's excellent. And there's like a fight over a data center that's kind of happening in the background

of the film the whole time. Anyway, this could be like a subplot of a movie like that. Spoiler. The holistic healer she was paying a Bitcoin did not heal the children and they get sick. The kids got sick this spring. And it was around the time where measles was on the rise. South Carolina was in the middle of the biggest outbreak that we've had since the virus was declared eliminated in 2000.

other outbreaks were underway, like, in many states. The thing about measles is it's like, it's so incredibly contagious. Like, we just don't, now that these immunization levels have dropped below the threshold for herd immunity, like we as a country just no longer have the ability to contain measles. That's sort of the consensus that I came to talking to medical experts and doctors. Right. So measles was on the rise in the spring. The kids are home with Michael for spring break. One of them has a runny nose and a pink pink eye, normal stuff.

Donnie, the child with SNA, starts to get kind of like watery eyes as well. Michael's like, I don't know, they're sick a lot, apparently. Over the course of the spring break, they get sicker and sicker. Soon the youngest, a girl gets sick as well. I won't, you know, necessarily give everything away in the story, although we've already talked about the spiritual healer. You know, it's like a week of hospital visits. And at one point, Donnie breaks out in a rash of flat red blotches,

a very distinctive rash, a rash that looks exactly like a measles rash. And it just kicks off this sort of nightmarish week of hospital visits, ambulances. The youngest child who was three at the time is like hooked up to the little tubes in her nose and is being tended to by doctors. A little mini stretcher. A little mini stretcher and doctors in isolation mat. Just nightmare. True nightmare.

The kids are okay now, but it just, in true like Maha, modern tale fashion, you know, all of this played out on Facebook. Michael, who you've referenced his motorcycle, is sort of like a micro-influencer in the motorcycle community in the Mid-Atlantic, was posting about this in real, time.

Lea, who's also sort of a micro-influencer, was seeing these posts and her mom was posting back on Facebook and they were, it was, it became this very public fight that was playing out in Facebook. And if you looked in the comments, you know, little fights over vaccine safety would break out. And it was just a mess. But like all things related to Ma, like, there's just a level of, a level to which people are experiencing their lives online. in a way that I don't think we're fully, like, reflecting on.

That was very evident in the sort of saga of this couple. In the spirit of not giving everything, well, let people read to see exactly how it finishes. But I want to just kind of pull apart. We went down and visited and interviewed both of them, Michael and Leah, after, you know,

kind of this health scare for a variety of reasons. Leah is not, like, convinced that it was vaccine-related. There's something that David Frum, said on this podcast like three years ago that always really stuck with me about cults or about MLMs or about anything which is like if you have a friend that gets duped in a scam

and you figure it out whether that is whatever I've got a condo to sell you in the Everglades or anything and you go and you tell them like hey you're getting duped like the friend is more likely to get mad at you right and the friend is more likely to get mad at you than the person

that duped them. It's just like like a human natural defense mechanism, right? And like this is kind of replete throughout your kind of reporting, right? Which is just like the people who are really bought in on this, like they feel talked down to. If they get brought information to the contrary of what they know, they dig in further. Not every character, but like a lot of characters. I'm just wondering like if there are any like lessons from that that you took as far as disentangling people from this. It's like, I don't know. It's pretty bleak to like look at this and be like her three children had, you know, this really horrible sickness and you still come out of it like not changing your mind.

Not believing that vaccines are like a good thing or necessary. Yeah. I think one of the most interesting revelations I had in reporting this is I was talking to a nonpartisan group in Washington that was doing a study about Maha. They were just trying to. to understand like what is this beast what has it become and like you know what do we do about it um they in the course of the study through interviews with with moms in the movement found to your point that saying things like trust the science or follow the research or like trust experts it just translates to different versions of like you think I'm stupid yeah and I think that's basically true. I mean, I think people don't want to be told that they're doing the wrong thing for their kids and that anyone else knows better what the right thing to do for their kids is. It is true that as a parent, nobody cares about your kids more than you do. So who is to say

that like some random person on Facebook or a journalist or talking out on TV or, you know, like a future Democratic head of HHS is going to know. better. Opposite, probably, honestly. Like, at this point, like, there are a lot of things a Democrat could fix in 2029, but I don't know. I read stories like yours. And I'm like, this one gets worse, I think, probably, like, you know, because there's a lack of trust. The immigration system, like, there are other things. I don't know how you put this, like, back in the, the toothpaste, back in the tube or whatever. Like, I think one of the things, sadly, that will do the most to sort of reverse views on this is the actual return of vaccine preventable diseases. Like, measles is not going away.

Whooping cough will come back. Like, it already is. Polio vaccinations are dropping. Like, there are going to be story after story of what happens when the sort of tenacity of belief and ideology meets a hard biological reality. And I think for some moms I talked to who recently came out of the Maha movement and sort of went into what one called their unlearning phase, it happened because the anxiety of living

with an unvaccinated child as a virus like measles is re-emerging is so intense. Like one mom, this wonderful woman named Lindsay in Virginia, who just, just, made an appointment for her daughter to get the MMR vaccine said that if you could imagine every step you take in life in the public, having a nagging thought in the back of your head, being like, okay, this is, this is it, it's happening, measles is in the air, the particles

are in the air, this is when my daughter is getting measles. She said, like, anytime she went on a trip, anytime she was in a rest stop, anytime she was in a grocery store, like those thoughts would occur to her. And I think that that's an incredible amount of anxiety to live with. It's kind of reminiscent for me of like the gay HIV experience like honestly, right? Like if you feels like it's always or, you know, not now anymore like thanks to prep and like these medical advances. But like that's true. That's why I don't know, maybe that's like an apt parallel kind of. There is a lot of uptake on the on prep and these kinds of drugs because like you don't want to feel like that. Yeah, exactly. Like you it's it's just true peace of mind, I guess.

And it's a matter of like, okay, what am I scared of more a potential adverse reaction from a vaccine or the diseases that vaccines prevent? And so I think that's one way like the pendulum can swing backward. But I think in general, so much trust has been lost. And frankly, like, in four years, I don't can't imagine the degree to which Trump and RFK will have just like confused people. Yeah. It's just like so much every day from both of them on this topic. Was there anything else from the unlearning woman that you feel like you, that struck you as far as like motivation or was it was fear really the motivation?

I think it was fear of the of the kids getting sick. Multiple moms I talked to just described like this anxiety and fear of being like, is my kid going to get sick because I've chosen not to vaccinate them? and just having that nagging thought in your head be a really kind of like potential aha moment. Maha, aha. I feel like I'm deep in Maga World. Like I knew Citizens Free Press.

I get a lot of like MAGA content. I don't get any MAHA content. This is another universe from me like altogether. So I'm just kind of curious, like you've been spending a lot of time out of the last few months. Like is there anything like a sense of betrayal? or like backlash to RFK because, I mean, he's doing what he said on the vaccine stuff, but like not really on the food.

There's been like a lot of agricultural kind of discussion about how like the big ag companies won the internal dispute over, you know, Maha issues and the administration. I was kind of curious like broadly if there are any other like recent political developments you noticed. You know what's interesting. I don't really see a ton of discussion in Maha spaces of RFK himself. and like of what he's doing policy-wise. And maybe I was in the wrong parenting groups or something. But I feel like in a way,

the entire movement and the coalition of Maha and the attitude and the sensibility and the lifestyle is bigger than Kennedy. Like, and I think it's so built on distrust of mainstream authorities that like there aren't any expectations in a sense for Kennedy to like, I don't know. I mean, that's my sense. My sense is not like, people are like, okay, is Kennedy going to deliver? Of course, for the true anti-Bax heads, they're like, we need him to deliver on stuff.

But I didn't even have too many conversations with people about Kennedy. You know, I know he's like in the atmosphere. Like, for example, like Leo was kind of constantly posting stuff to her Facebook, including some stuff about RFK and from Children's Defense Fund. But I didn't hear a lot of moms talk about what they expect. from his administration. So I didn't see any, I didn't hear any backlash. Well,

in some ways that's upsetting. Because I do think there is some backlash in the MAHA activist group because they have actual things that they wanted, which is a different category of people than just MAHA moms and Facebook chat groups, right? But like in other ways, I think that is,

again, like presents opportunity. It was not like an unnatural thing pre-COVID for a democratic politician to be out there being like, you know, we really shouldn't trust these big pesticide companies and the big pharma companies. Like, we should make sure that there are rules around them and like we should really do healthy eating. A famous first lady did something around that.

Right, like, it feels like recapturable to me. Yeah. But maybe that's wrong. I don't know. Maybe it's not. No, I think that's right. I just struggle to imagine what it would look like can sound like, you know, like, what would it mean for a Democrat to, as you say,

recapture Maha? Mary Ann, kind of. I had Marianne on this show a couple months ago. Oh, my gosh. I know. Obviously, she has some things I really found a little kooky. But, like, she was pretty good on this. I don't know.

Really? What did she say? What was her main thing was just talking about how the Democratic Party was, like, not listening to what, like, to the real concerns that these moms. And like, I don't know. I just, it was because RFK was so fucking pernicious on the vaccine stuff and because of like the way he went around about business, it was really hard. And you can relive history and say like maybe Kamala or Biden should have tried to keep

him in the tent. But I think it was going to be really hard to do it. People that say that I think missed the fact that he was already basically out of the tent by the time he was pretending like had they called him. Like it might have made a difference. Like I don't think, I really don't think it would have. We'll never know. Yeah.

Maybe some people know. But RFK, you could use that model and, like, incorporate someone who is more, who is woo-hoo and be like, I'm not going to put this person in charge of the nation's health, but like there are ways to engage. Yeah. Marianne had the like crystal woo-woo. Yeah, right. I mean, the Iowa candidates, Rob Sand is really, like, I don't know if this is true, right? And so this is where I think it's maybe possible. Like, cancer, I know this is true.

Cancer is really on the rise in Iowa disproportionately to other states. There's conversations about whether that's pesticides or whether that's the water, you know, getting in the water and all this stuff. And he's running on that. And like that's maha and that's scientifically based. I don't know. It feels like there are ways to do it. I agree. And I think even Bernie Sanders did a lot of this in like

2020 specifically in just highlighting stories of how people have been kind of like screwed over by you know, the healthcare industry or the pharmaceutical industry in some way. which you would think it might be a little bit different after COVID, but I don't really recall it being a big issue in 2024 on the Democratic side. Like I don't really remember Biden or Kamala going there. Well, I mean, they'll say they did because they did. They put out white papers and stuff.

But like it wasn't. You know what I mean? You wasn't focused. All right. I want to talk about a couple of your other stories since you've been at the New Yorker. You're at the New Yorker now. When I met you're a BuzzFeed girl. So, you know, it's a big authority to have you on the podcast.

odd is I'm honored. But before we talk about a couple of other stories really quick, there was one thing that gave me a little what the fuck in this story that I just wanted you to tell people about, which are agri-hoods. I did not know about agro-hoods. You don't like that. What's up with that? You say the words.

You say the words so funny. I don't know how to pronounce it. But you're like agri-hoods. Okay, so agri-hoods are kind of like wellness-minded communities where you can live. Like it's literally a community like a cul-de-sac? It is literally a neighborhood community kind of subdivision type deal. Like subdivision doesn't sound like a very maha description, but

for lack of a better term, subdivision. Yeah, there's a couple. I tried to interview them for my piece, but they didn't get back to me. So if you're listening, get back to me. They've been going around. in an RV touring all of the agrihoods in America and like giving little video synopsis like one for each. I think they all have a slightly different flavor like perhaps some are more quote unquote maha traditional than they than others but yeah you can buy a house and live and like do you know I don't know natural cooking classes and have your kids be neighbors with other kids that are living in non-toxic homes, you know.

What an amazing country. We live in a beautiful world. I don't know anything about, you know, 31 flavors. The agrihood that I featured in the piece is called Sarin B. And it's right outside Atlanta. And its founder recently claimed that none of the kids living at Saran B have asthma because they live this like non-toxic lifestyle. Like maybe, maybe none of them do have asthma.

That's kind of interesting. I don't, I couldn't that just be statistical, like random chance, so I don't know. It could be, it could also be like, none of my cousins had asthma. Yeah, I also don't have asthma. So because of the Lebanese, did you grow up in a non-toxic household? I know, I mean, you know, I mean, my mom cooked, which is nice. We had real ingredients. But did she cook with like plastic spatulas?

Because that's a huge no-no. Oh, we definitely had plastic spatulas. Okay. So you've got microplastics in your body. I don't want to know where the microplastics are. I want to hard pivot to a couple of your other stories. And then we're going to close by playing two truths and a lie ourselves. Okay.

So get ready for that. Two of your other articles recently. One, I wanted to talk about because I just did talk about the scale of the ice operations. You were doing a lot of ice reporting like maybe six months ago before we moved into the Maha. And I feel like I'd talk about it as about as much as anybody or I try to because it's just, it is so fucking enraging to me. And yet, like I was going back to your old stories

and you told the story of this Marimar Martinez, but I don't think I even mentioned, which I talks about kind of just there's, like, it's hard to keep track of kind of the scope of what they're doing with the deportation campaign. But for folks that like me, like, needed to be refreshed on that story, just want to give a brief synopsis of what happened with Marimar Martinez in Chicago.

Yeah. So it's funny because I wasn't as familiar with her story either, but it really set the, a playbook for everything that we saw in Minneapolis later with Alex Pruddy and Renee Good. She was a woman in Chicago who was living in the South Side in a community that was sort of like on the watch for ice during the surge there. And this was in the fall of 2025. So, so yes, so a few months before the surge of Minneapolis, she had been sort of like following the ice surge there, hadn't really gone to protest or done anything like that, but was sort of like on the

watch in her neighborhood trying to warn sort of neighbors to be on lookout for ICE agents. She's American citizen, by the way, and she's a young woman. She's 31. So she's driving one day, sees an unmarked Tahoe, knows immediately that it's DHS, starts following the Tahoe, honking her horn, and rolls down their window, starts shouting, let me grow, let me grow to warn neighbors. And eventually, like, as we've seen happen again and again, these car-related incidents turned dangerous. They get into sort of like a tense kind of standoff in the road.

They're going side by side. We know from body cam and footage that there were three border patrol agents in the Tahoe that are feeling like they're getting. getting quote unquote boxed in. And the two cars, I don't want to say collide because they really like sideswiked. But after contact is made, the Border Patrol agent driving the Tahoe stops the car, gets out of his car, and fires five times into Marimar Martinez's car. And she shot.

First off, she could have died easily. She didn't. but after this incident, she is almost immediately described by DHS, which at the time was still being run by Chrissy Nome as a domestic terrorist and is smeared and charged with assaulting a federal officer.

Which again, like this is the playbook. Yeah, Trisha McLaughlin afterwards said that she was armed with a semi-automatic weapon. She had a pistol in her car, in her purse. I love that the Second Amendment people now. It's good for everybody to hold a weapon except for protesters protesting ice. Yeah, she had a small handheld pistol in a pink holster at the bottom of her purse, which she carried everywhere with her. So as Trisha said, she was armed with a semi-automatic weapon.

She's a domestic terrorist. She said that Martinez wrote a post that said, hey, to all my gang, let's fuck those motherfuckers up. Don't let them take anyone. That was not her. She'd mixed her up with another Latino woman, apparently. Cash Patel. shared a video of a black SUV ramming an agent's truck saying it was Martinez, that was not her. It was a different video at the time that you wrote this article.

All of those posts remained online. So, like, that was just, again, a total preview of everything we saw with good and pretty, like a situation where it was totally unnecessary. Like, whatever you think about Martinez's behavior, like an agent of the state totally unnecessary and irresponsible to like fire the weapon five times. There's no need to do that. Like, that's not protocol. I've had.

FBI and law enforcement agents on to talk about that. And then obviously it's it's grotesque for then the government to lie and smear the person afterwards. But it's what it's exactly what they did to Renee Good then. Right. It's exactly what they did to Renee Good and Alex Brody. I think the speed with which had happened in this particular case was really alarming. It was like ours, you know, without, of course, any investigation into what happened.

I'm sure without all the evidence being collected in terms of like, well, we know some of the agents hadn't, you know, fully been debriefed. So it's just like this was a preview of what happened in Minneapolis. The difference with Martinez is she lived to tell the tale. And she found how difficult it was to defend yourself when the federal government is coming with the full heft of the federal government at you, not just with criminal charges, which were later dropped, but just in the court of public opinion, like it turns out it's really hard to defend yourself

when, you know, people at the highest levels of government are calling you a domestic terrorist. This woman was a young preschool assistant teacher. Crazy. Crazy. The other thing that I just rereading it, I just, you can see how they've changed the tactics now, right? Like, that was the move in the fall, right?

It was like very shock and awe, scare people. And then the government goes all out. They did the snuff films, right? And like that was part of the effort to get people to self-deport, honestly. And it was part of the whole mission. And like now a year later, you know, they're still, as we've been reporting on a bunch the last couple weeks, like still grabbing people, but they're doing it in like such a more low-key way to literally prevent this. Like what they don't want anymore is the Marie Mar-Mar Martinez.

They don't care that you get injured, but they don't want the, hey, I'm warning people in the neighborhood. It's a tactical change because it prevents what we saw in Chicago and Minneapolis. Like community action is harder when it's happening kind of under the radar. Yeah, absolutely. You also did a Ken Martin takeout, a profile on my guy, Ken Martin, DNC chair. Some fine journalism. Do you go in a take down? No, take out.

Take out. I was like, geez. I don't know. John Fabro did to take down, I think, which you reported on. Man, it's tough. I don't know. You know, I look at the Ken Martin thing, and this is going to feel really mean to him because I do not mean this about his morality or integrity.

Okay. Speak on it. He's rights. He's rights. Like, I worked for rights. And it's the same. He's just like a Democratic Reince Prevus. And, like, obviously then writes through his becomes an enable to evil after I quit working for him.

I'm not saying that that was why. But I don't know, maybe I've had a good influence. There's certainly some parallels. Yeah. I don't think Ken Martin would do that after this. But just in like in this modern day, it's different. Like you talk about Terry McCullough with a different style of cherry is. Like if Terry McCallup would do well in this day and age, I think in any day and age,

it's like there was this old model of party chair that like they were the state party chair in some place in the country. And then they come to D.C. And they focus on the operations. and they're behind the scenes and they're a pleaser and they do a good job of making all the activists happy. Like, it's just a different job now. And I don't know. It's tough.

It's not, doesn't seem fun. But I don't know. I also think, like, everyone is very clear that things are not going well there. So this is not to excuse Ken. Right. You know, no one's excusing Ken. But, I mean, there's no world in which this would ever make sense. but like if I were in that world,

I would never do that job, ever, ever, ever, ever. Like I used to cover the DNC a lot, which was a kind of cursed assignment because everyone was always sort of in chaos somehow, which is like so, my impression, I've never covered the RNC, but you tell me, my impression was that while the DNC was always like kind of floundering and behind in fundraising,

but also like there was some small scandal that was like threatening to upend their meetings and which were open press, the RNC was like top down everything went how it was supposed to no one was really allowed to access no there were no debates on the floor about like Israel that is true except for the tiny window where I was there which we could blame on me but in the Bush era it was very tight and then in Trump but in that inter period where the party is having this tumult the RNC was reflective of it and I think that's what we're seeing with the DNC and I remember being the spokesperson and being so mad because I had the opposite

you during this tiny window of 2010, 2012, of, like, being so mad. Like, why are we doing open meetings where we discuss birthright citizenship or whether Obama was born in Kenya? And I was like, why don't we, like, tighten this fuck gear up a little bit? But, like, Reince wanted to appease everybody and please everybody. And so he wanted, you know, the crazy Ron Paul people to have a say. And so it's funny, I get a little bit of trauma, like, watching the DNC meetings because it's what, it's what I was supposed to manage and fail.

Like, it's tough. Like, and part of it is, I think Ken needs to tighten the ship up because it's like people that have very strong views on this issue won't like this view, but it's like the DNC delegate meeting is really not the place to discuss like the two-state solution. Like, it's like, it's not going to get resolved here. And like, it only is going to enrage people who are on the opposite side of wherever you land. And so, like, why are you doing it?

You know, but like they can't help them. They can't. They can't. And God bless. But I mean, at a time when Trump is doing things that are theoretically enraging the entire Democratic Party, why is there not more energy and creativity around like how to respond to this moment? That's what that's what puzzled me in dipping back into this world very briefly before extracreating myself to go back to my parenting Facebook chats. You previously in a previous life at the Washington Post wrote a great profile of my friend, Carrie Lake.

Our friend. And our friend. We got to spend a lot of time together and we were in Arizona, which I miss. And one of the stories that you, I think, I believe the headline or the lead of it was that like, with Carrie Lake, the camera's always on because our husband was cameraing her. And subsequently to that, I had two encounters with her, which shows you at the Carrie Lake, the power of that strategy, where she secretly videotaped. taped me. But only released one of them because she was, because she was kind of drunk and it

was embarrassing with the other one and she didn't really nail me. So that video remains on her husband's phone somewhere. But like the other one, there was like, she released like a secret fishbowl camera of me. This is like a year after your article is out. I kind of remember this. This is so crazy. Like, yeah. And it was time when she touched me. She touched me. And I was like, please don't touch me. Yes. I remember. You were at like a convention or something. Yeah, she was speaking and we're in a side room. She was like, I agree to do this if it's in the side room.

And now I learned why because they had like rigged a camera system into the... Anyway, she's a kooky character. I don't know. Why don't you go to Jamaica and visit her? So one fun fact about this. Yeah. Every person I talked to who was in Carrie Leight's previous life when she was a television anchor, told me how much this woman loved Jamaica.

No. Yes. I've been looking for a place to like, like, you know, no one tweets anymore. I'm scared of Twitter, so I can't tweet this. I guess I can talk about it here. And you're reporting for the profile?

Yes. I've talked to all of her former colleagues at this news station where she was working in Phoenix. You know, they all had really interesting stuff to say about Carrie. Like, and one of the things that they told me, a lot of them brought it up, was that she was always kind of taking vacation and she would just like disappear

and it made things, people were kind of, you know, rolling their eyes about it like, oh, Carrie's off in vacation and she would go to Jamaica. Like she loved Jamaica. Everyone referenced how much she loved Jamaica. I'm telling you. So when I saw that... Why? Was it, is it the weed?

Is it the dance, the music? I don't know. My impression, my impression. Jaw? Was that... My impression was like she and her husband just connected with the place. I don't know if they have a familial connection.

I don't know if like there's any other connection other than they really liked Jamaica. But they were always on Jamaica. So when I saw that she was appointed ambassador, right? She's ambassador to Jamaica. Yeah. I was like, you know what? It all comes back.

So she asked for this. She begged. She went to Mr. Trump and begged instead of all the countries in the world, I want Jamaica. No, okay, to be clear, I don't know if she asked. Okay. I think so. We can impute that.

You're a journalist. I'm a podcaster. I haven't talked to Kerry Lake in a long time. Yeah. But. Seems like she went to Mr. Trump and she begged like a dog to get the Jamaica. I can't pass her job. That's my opinion.

I don't, you don't have that reporting. I don't know if anyone cares. But like, you know, it would be interesting to ask. But she loves Jamaica. So I was like, oh, you know, she must be happy. The New Yorker should send you to Jamaica. Absolutely not. I don't know.

I feel like. There was a moment where... Do it. Hi, David. I need this. I need you to send Ruby to Jamaica. Yeah, I'll go. Surprise.

It'll be like the Jerry Springer show. Or two favorite people. That I pop up from the side. The thing about you being secretly videotaped by Carrie Lake and the difference between that and me being videotaped by Carrie Lake is so vast. Like, you really held your own. You were like, don't touch me. I would have been like, I would have been like, I, I,

couldn't handle it. I just like withered under this videotaping thing. Like we also went into a side quote unquote side room for this interview. And when we walked in she had cameras set up everywhere and I was like are you film are you going to film this? I kind of asked in a sad way like do you really have to do we really have to do this? I'm not comfortable on camera. Yeah. In that way you know I'm not like a I don't know you're right or clapbacks. I'm just trying to long form. I'm just

trying to do this story. Anyway, it was wild. But we love Carrie and we had such a good time in Arizona together. She's a character. I'd pitch them back when I was writing before I did do a daily podcast. I'd pitch them because we'd had somebody back and forth. I was like, it would be once it was over. And I was like, you won. Like she didn't win. But like Trump won again. And I was like, I want to do a story where I like sleep over at her house, like not in her bedroom, but like in a guest's room. And like, I want to wake up and have breakfast with Carrie and just be like, are you like this? Yeah, exactly. At breakfast?

Like, I want to know what she's like at breakfast. Like, do you have the makeup on still? And are you, and they all assured me that like, no, at breakfast, she is talking about election broad. And I'm like, maybe. I'd like to know, but I didn't have it. I didn't agree to it. Carrie also, I just want to add one more thing about Carrie Lake, is that it was, she had

this like cadre of young men around her working for her. Do you remember them? Yeah. Yeah. And in. in an effort to immerse myself in the world.

I went out with them one night to just try to like, you know. I was trying to negotiate this interview that then happened in the side room. These kids, I've never seen vaping, zins. I tried a zen for the first time.

I almost fainted in the back of the Uber on the way back to my hotel from the zen. Don't try Zin for the first time in an uncomfortable thing. I'm no stranger to nicotine. Sure. But I was like, whoa.

I don't even think it was, I don't even think it was Zen. I think it was off market, you know, like gas stations in or something. Well, it was wild anyway. So maybe we can, yeah, we can replay that in Jamaica. I'd love to do that. We're closing with two truths and a lie. This is what we call. We're bringing closure to the podcast.

You know, we started and we're closing with two truths and all right. Would you like to go first or me? I'll go first. Okay. It's a maha themed two truths. It's Maha themed. So I have ordered natural all-cure-style supplements served to me via Instagram ads. Okay.

I have watched every documentary available on all streaming platforms about Twin Flame Unions. I know that doesn't sound Maha theme, but it is because one of the characters in the Maha custody piece, is a expert on twin flames. So I have watched all twin flame documentaries, and I have consumed raw milk. How many twin flame documentaries are there? There are a lot. I think there are at least,

there are definitely two main ones, but there might be a third somewhere out there. The question is, have you consumed raw milk for a story, or did you actually get the natural supplements for Instagram? That seems to be the crux of the question for me. Wow, how dare you? I think that you have not done raw milk. You're correct.

Yes. I would try it, though, for sure. Have you tried it? I don't even know what the vibe is. Okay. Freaked me out when I first saw it. I first learned about a libertarian New Hampshire when I was out there working for John Huntsman. And we were driving around to the other.

There was somebody doing raw milk on the side of the road. I thought up until that moment, I believed milk to be raw. I'm not a farmer. Okay? I grew up in the suburbs. You and John Huntsman just finding out. Yeah, and he was explaining it to me. Oh, he knew.

He knew about it. And I was just like, oh, that's weird as fuck. But he's like, those are our people. So anyway, here's mine. Okay. I didn't take the flu shot for many years because one year, it seemed to make me sick. Okay. So I was a little bit of a flu shot, anti-vexer.

Totally get that. I was one of the first 1,200 people in the world to get monkeypox. My daughter's only trip to the emergency room is putting a bead up her nose. And that happened during COVID. A bee? A bead. Oh, a bead. Ouch.

Up the nose. And during COVID, we had to mask go in and get the doctor to pry it out. We got it out first. Good. Okay, well, you've used a lot of detail there, so I know that happened. I think the monkey, I don't know enough about Muncie. to know if this is even plausible. And I'm scared that that could be true.

I don't know, but I'm also scared to reveal my ignorance on monkeypox. So I'm leveling with you on that. And then what was the first one? Flu shot. Oh. Flew shot anti-vax. The monkeypox thing has to be fake. That has to be the lie.

That has to be the lie. I mean, I do like to party and have a good time. But it was a friend of mine that actually was one of the first 1,200. people in the world to get monkey box. And it's one of my favorite facts about him. And we won't out him, but God love him. It was a lie. Okay. Is he okay?

He's great. Yeah, whatever. Monkeypox vaccine is great. One of my other besties is an infectious disease doctor. He got on that motherfucker. And he was one that was texting me. And like, have you got your shot yet? I don't know what you've been doing out there, but he's like, get your shot.

He's like, I've been seeing. So I've got, I had a lot of connections to early monkeypox diagnoses from the doctor and patient. side. But you, but you, you freak, you freaks yourself out a little bit about the flu shot. I did. I, I, and I, my husband hated, hates it. Like, but I don't lie. The flu shot, I think, gave me the flu. Like, I got it one year and I felt awful afterwards. And I was like, why am I doing this? I'm not going to die from flu. I understand why not. But I wanted to offer that as kind of a peace offering to the maha people. Absolutely. Like, I get it. I get it. I totally get it too.

I mean, it gets a little kooky, you know, when you're. kids have the measles. But like, you know, I get the mindset. So it's like, come back for the brink, baby, unlearn. My whole thing, I just want to say one thing also kind of like in defense of Maha is once people get there, once they go down what someone in the story terms, the radicalization funnel, it's like, look at the environment we're in. Look at the way social media is like permeating our lives. Look at how easy it is to Google something out of fear or anxiety about your kid and then like end up two hours later or deep on a Reddit board or something. Look at what Trump is saying from the Oval Office about that's a vaccine and how children's

bodies are being quote unquote pumped with vaccine, you know, all these like really disgusting medicine language terms to discuss vaccine. Look at what RFK is doing. How are we expecting people to act or think any differently? I'm just like, I do not. It's kind of a wonder that more people aren't. Yeah, I'm not mad at them. I mean, once of the kids are tough.

The small kids are tough. But that's why I feel like the unlearning question is such the key point. Because it's like, and I do, I understand. It's just like, I feel like I say this lot, but like everyone can relate to this in any situation in their personal life. Like we've all been duped or like got our mindset on something that isn't true or had a girlfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend that was a manipulative. or whatever and like had somebody tell you that and you get mad like you get your backup like i get that like i get that and so i understand why trust the science like it doesn't work but like something's got to work because it's rough out there all right that's ruby kramer what a delight

thank you for coming on the podcast thank you um and i i'm looking forward to whatever you're doing next we'll do it again thanks awesome all right everybody else go listen to the next level if you more politicking and we'll be back tomorrow with a bit of a doublehead or it's going to be a good one to see all then. The Bullwork Daily is brought to you thanks for the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Dante DeChico and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brough.