The Daily Beast Podcast - FEVER DREAMS: Why QAnon Is So Bummed to See the Suez Ship Go Free

Episode Date: March 31, 2021

Did you know that everyone’s favorite Suez-Canal-blocking ship is now the subject of a QAnon conspiracy? The Daily Beast’s Asawin Suebsaeng and Will Sommer lay out why the adrenochrome set is convinced that the stuck ship’s cargo is full of trafficked children on the latest episode of our Fever Dreams podcast (Hint: it has to do with Hillary Clinton’s secret service code name—you guessed it, EVERGREEN.)  Speaking of Hillary conspiracies, Suebsaeng and Sommer discuss why the right just can’t seem to come up with a good Joe Biden conspiracy to smear the new president; Trump’s base seems more interested in reverting to their old hatreds of Clinton and Barack Obama. (As Suebsaeng points out, Biden quite simply is not Black or a woman, and so doesn’t inspire the same level of vitriol from the hardcore racist, misogynistic Trumpites.) Meanwhile, there’s a tug-of-war going on between those in the Trump administration who want the former president to receive “credit” for the COVID vaccine drive and the rightwing anti-government, anti-vaxx diehards who refuse to believe that their Emperor God actually wants them to get the shot. The tussle is crystallized in Trump’s former HHS staffer Michael Caputo, a “really brash, incredibly Trumpy longtime Republican operative” who has taken it upon himself to prosthelytize about the vaccine in biker bars among the “MAGA Sons of Anarchy”—and who’s running into a lot of resistance. Keep an eye out for the interview with The Daily Beast’s own Kelly Weill, who walks our hosts through the crazy cast of lawyers and faux-lawyers who have sprung up to defend the Capitol Rioters and anti-masker businesses—one of them quotes from Lord of the Rings, another has never actually passed the bar because he thinks it’s a British conspiracy.  And most importantly, we learn about Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes’ supervillain origin story, how Texas National Guard troops faced a hostage situation with Pizzagate overtones, and how Will Sommer is singlehandedly responsible for bringing the phrase “soy boy” out of the Internet swamp into the national spotlight. Listen to Fever Dreams on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, new abnormal listeners. What you're about to hear is the second episode of the Daily Beast's new podcast, Fever Dreams. The podcast takes you inside the rights push to retake power. From the conspiracy slingers to the MAGA acolytes to the straight-up grifters. Thought the Trump era was crazy? Wait till you hear what they have planned next. The show is hosted by Aswan Subisang and Will Summer. There's new episodes every Wednesday, and you could subscribe on your favorite podcast app today.

Again, that's fever dreams. I hope you enjoy this episode. Hi guys, this is Aswin Sub-Seng, but please call me Swin, and welcome to The Daily Beast Fever Dreams. Hi, I'm Will Summer, a politics reporter at The Daily Beast, where I dig into all the darkest recesses of American extremism and extremely online militants. I'm currently working on a book about QAnon and its disastrous impact on our society. I'm also a senior political reporter at The Beast and co-author of the book Sinking in the Swamp. I've spent years covering the intersection of entertainment and politics, and in the post-Trump era, seems like that's the only sensible way to cover politics

in this beautiful, hideously stupid country of ours. On this podcast, we're going to take you on deeply reported plunges into the sometimes hilarious, sometimes scary fanatics, who are infecting the way that millions of Americans view the world and how they vote. Even in the aftermath of the Trump administration, the energy of these conspiracy theorists, grifters, and influencers is still pushing our mainstream political landscape

closer and closer to a breaking point. We're here to help you better understand how and why this is happening, and who in the halls of power is letting us. it happened. Along the way, we'll also regularly bring on guests including political pros, hard-nosed reporters, and some influential voices from Hollywood. Every once in a while, you might also hear from some familiar faces from the trenches of Trump land and the veterans of the Democratic corridors of power. All right, Swin, I have a question for you. Shoot. Do you miss the boat? Which boat are you referring to? The boat that was blocking the Suez Canal that has now moved on and

robbed us of, I think, what was becoming a prime content opportunity. Ah, I've seen a meme or two about this on the internet, I regrettably inform you that I have not been super following this. So if you want to explain to me the boat, as if I'm a two-year-old, that would actually be super beneficial to me right now. It's not super complicated, right? I mean, it's a boat. It was a big boat, and it blocked the whole Suez Canal. And, you know, we loved the boat. How did it get there? I mean, it got stuck. I mean, there was wind, maybe. It kind of ran aground. You know, it was kind of a big moment, I think, in terms of, you know, we all love seeing a big boat. The tugboats were trying to move it. You know, they weren't getting much.

success. Obviously, it has now moved on as of Sunday night here in the United States. But, you know, I don't know. I kind of liked the boat and I was sort of settling in for a long, kind of a long, saga. Is they, you know, there was talk, are they going to blow up the boat? Are they going to, you know, maybe build a ramp for the other boats to jump the boat? And of course, that does not come to pass. What was in the boat? Well, we don't know. I mean, containers. It's all kinds of things. I mean, probably. So are there any alternate theories floating around there about what was in the boat? Was the cargo weapons to Syria? Or was it just like things from the wig factory? Well, okay, so I mean, obviously it's a lot of things. But in terms of my characters, my beloved figures, my, my QAnon

people, my bleach people, the key thing to understand here is that Hillary Clinton's Secret Service code name, you know, it always goes back to her. Her Secret Service code name was Evergreen, which is also the name of the boat company. And so the boat had a big Evergreen on the side of it. This is really like horrendous luck on Hillary Clinton's part. but the so they were like oh you know maybe the boat was trafficking something on behalf of Hillary Clinton or maybe you know the captain ran at a ground as a signal and and so you know there's always grist in the mill you know that these people can can draw on and of course now you know it was like oh the boat's trafficking children whatever we got to save the boat but now that the boat's moved

on it's like okay moving on and it's like well I mean aren't you still interested in the boat you know but now it's out of the headlines we're done with the boat anybody I know who is making these claims about the boat. Also, the evergreen thing is really funny. I'm sorry. That is a classic coincidence. You know, I mean, just various unsavory characters. I mean, this wasn't like, you know, people in Congress were talking about this.

But, you know, so much of the conspiracy theories is believing that there isn't this random world where, I don't know, a boat got trapped or whatever. But that, you know, it's all part of this kind of grand plan. And so, of course, the boat, you know, as with everything, had to play into that. Okay. Speaking of Hillary Clinton conspiracy theories, there was something that I've been picking up on recently at the beginning of the Biden era in which the Biden-related conspiracy theories that you would see emerging in all these major influential sectors of the right-wing fever swamps of

the online or whatever. They are not nearly as potent as what you saw with Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or other major or even John Brennan, if we're talking about like B-grade cast members in these whole affairs. And when you talk to Republican operatives or Republican pollsters, they consistently, for these first couple of months or so of the Biden presidency, give you the exact same response. And this happened during the Biden campaign as well, where they were saying that, okay, among the Republican base, the Trump base, and GOP voters, a president Biden or a candidate Biden just does not inspire the same level of hatred or vitriol that you would see with a President Obama or a secretary of state Hillary Clinton. And I mean, when we're talking about

Biden compared to Obama. I mean, it's not a huge mystery why. We can talk more about that later. And there was this fascinating detail in this piece written by Washington Post reporter and our dear friend Dave Weigel while he was at the 2021 CPAC that was held recently in Florida where he was interviewing people who were selling merchandise. You know, at CPAC, all the halls are lined with people trying to hawk like right wing birch. And he reported that people were telling him that, oh, we can't even give the Biden merchandise away. trying and there's all this Joe Biden and Hunter Biden merchandise. But no, what people really want to buy and what is selling like hotcakes or something close to it is the Hillary Clinton merch, the Obama merch. So I'm wondering, well, does this bleed over into conspiracy theory land that you specialize in covering so well where it's just more, just so much more of a snore than it is when

you compare it to Hillary or Obama? Yeah, I mean, you know, people, they struggle to kind of figure out exactly what the deal with Biden is. I mean, the line is, you know, he's like senile, he's barely sentient, you know, as Donald Trump memorably said, he doesn't even know he's alive. And so it's just kind of like, what's Biden's deal? To the extent that like even some Q people after he was inaugurated, one of their, their sort of refuges was like, maybe Biden's working with Trump and their buddies. Last night, I was reading this document that was circulated amongst kind of Sidney Powell and Lynn Wood Associates that was, you know, alleging that there was this coup going on against Trump. and they needed to do all this stuff. And it said, this was kind of a high-ranking figure putting this

dossier together. And he said, you know, ultimately, Biden will step down, but not in favor of Kamala Harris. And then you wonder, you know, who could it be? Who's interesting enough to make this, this kind of nightmare vision of the world happen? And he said, that's right. Biden will be replaced by the communist leader himself, Barack Hussein Obama. And so, you know, they're kind of bringing them to dredge up the old characters. Because, you know, Biden, even as he's passing, you know, all these kind of mass of social programs, they just can't. get a can't get an angle on him. Right. Is that mainly just because they find him so personally boring? Like he doesn't look like a radical. He doesn't dress like a radical. It's harder for even

former President Trump to sell him as a quote unquote communist or socialist or whatever he would say over and over and over again. Even Donald Trump, who is devoid of self-awareness in so many ways, was aware enough to know that at a rally in tweets or whatever, he would have to message it as Joe Biden himself is not a socialist or whatever, but he will allow himself to be managed by, quote-unquote, socialist in his administration. Sure. I mean, you know, I mean, this is the whole idea, right, of the Biden candidacy was that he was kind of this boring old white guy who could sort of skate into office as we've seen. I mean, I do think, though, we're starting to see, particularly with the right way media kind of heating things up on the border. I mean, the idea is

that Biden's out to lunch, that he's incompetent. And then I think if you take this frame of this surge of people at the border, those mesh. And so I think we're going to see, you know, the immigration thing kind of continue to be, to be the main slam on Biden right now. And obviously, a big factor here is simply that Joe Biden is not black and or a woman. There's that. So, I mean, factor that into this as you will. So Swin, you've been doing some reporting on the fights within MAGA world over the vaccine. Obviously, you have some people who think, you know, Bill Gates has microchip the vaccine. And then you have people in the Trump administration who are proud of their work on the vaccine and want to tout that. How's that breaking down? Well, it's interesting

because there is a sort of turf battle over this at certain parts of the upper echelons of Trump world and the Trump world diaspora after Donald Trump left office. And it's interesting because, as you point out, this is largely comprised of people who want to constantly remind the American people how much, quote unquote, credit Donald Trump deserves for helping to shepherd us to this point. I mean, that's their framing, obviously not mine. And but also there's this large sector, including among the Republican and Trump base, which is anti-government, and has it almost built in with or without the pandemic, that they should be skeptical of things that the government is pushing,

especially if it has to do with a mass vaccination drive at this point headed by people like Joe Biden, who they might as well view as the devil. Now, one of the guys who is a veteran of the senior ranks of the Trump administration, is this guy named Michael Caputo. Listers might know him as this really brash, incredibly Trumpy, longtime Republican operative, who in the final year or so of the Trump era was tapped by then President Trump

to head up communications at HHS. He's a guy who'd known Donald Trump for a long while. He worked on the 2016 campaign as a advisor to Trump and as a communications operative, and he was someone who left the administration. in the fall of 2020, under this gigantic miasma of controversy in which he was a very public figure while the Trump administration was being hit with a negative story after negative story and was embroiled in COVID-related scandal after COVID-related scandal.

And one of his last things on the job was this widely circulated video that he did on Facebook where he accused CDC scientists of being seditionist. against Donald Trump and warning of far left hit squad, stuff like that. So he exited the administration on this really, really, really accelerated Trumpy turn. And at some point in September 2020, it was announced that he had also been diagnosed with a very serious case of cancer. So for that, he had to leave the administration. Okay, so, you know, Swin, when we were talking about this, you told me this crazy story about this biker bar where Caputo's been going. You know, tell me about that.

Oh, absolutely. He's, he was mentioning how on top of being on Facebook, and going to Republican committee meetings and doing Zoom calls, there was this biker hangout called KIPP, KIPP-S, near where he lives, that has these life-size cutouts of President Trump and Melania, where you can, you know, stand there and smile and take your photo. He described it as top-bottom Johnny Cash memorabilia in this biker hangout when it's not top-to-bottom Donald Trump memorabilia. And he talked about how he'd go there and have discussions with various people who,

invariably, many of them would be anti-vaccine. And he'd do what he could to tell them that the vaccine is safe. You should take it. It is part of Donald Trump's solution. The former president wants you to take it. And he would find himself, both at this biker hangout and elsewhere, including on Facebook, oftentimes meeting heavy resistance to the idea. He would run into people who, even when they were told that Donald Trump had said on stage at CPAC, on national television, during recent Fox News interviews as a post-president that the vaccine is a great thing and you should take it. They would argue that Donald Trump didn't actually mean that or that he was somehow forced into the situation and that someone or something is making Donald Trump do this.

And they would throw arguments back at Caputo. And I'm sure you've heard stuff like this a lot too, Will, that people will use the fact that Melania Trump and Donald Trump during the final days of his presidency got the coronavirus vaccine in secrecy. So, I mean, what's the reaction here? I mean, so he's talking to the sons of anarchy, and he's saying maybe the MAGA sons of anarchy here. I mean, he's in this biker bar.

Is he getting the bum rush, or are they taking the vaccine? Well, he says that some of them have come around to his way of thinking, but others, whether he's arguing with them on Facebook or in person or wherever, will, according to Caputo, will sometimes ask him if he's been working for the pharmaceutical industry now and then unfriend him on Facebook. Look, I have to say there is sort of an irony here, right, which is that Michael Caputo, This guy who was promoting, you know, nonsense himself, is tight with Roger Stone. You know, suddenly he's basically coming face to face with what he helped create.

You know, he's going to this biker bar. You know, he's on this kind of one-man journey to get Republicans vaccinated. And then they're like, oh, no, you know, because we believe all these lies. So, you know, I mean, there is a certain irony here. Right. And when you're talking about people who are also close to Trump and friends with Trump, who stand on the exact opposite end of the vaccine spectrum of this, you got guys like, Mike Lindell, who of course is the My Pillow founder, who is a perfect avatar of the Maga

Diehard, will seemingly will never give up on the fiction that Donald Trump actually won the 2020 presidential election. And he is incredibly anti-vaccine. He's told us before that the social media website that he's trying to get off the ground, that he's launching it in large part because he wants it to be a quote-unquote free speech haven where people can flock to to denounce the vaccine. He's telling us things like, oh, the vaccine has the mark of the beast. I will never take it. It's against my religion. And then you have all these different people on Fox News, even when they're not blatantly spreading anti-vax misinformation or disinformation. They sort of front-loaded with saying, okay, well, you can take the vaccine, but also freedom in America's important. I just love this idea

of a particular, like, it's like, we got to reach out to the bikers. You know, Michael Caputo rolls up to the bandito's headquarters. He's got, like, CDC on the box. bottom rocker of his vest. This is really, you know, I think a very evocative imagery. So, Swin, I mean, you know, kind of pulling back the lens here, I mean, where do you think this, this larger effort to get Republicans, particularly, you know, big Trump support is vaccinated? I mean, where do you think this is headed? Well, I think it's headed to a point, and hopefully I'm wrong on this, that in order to make a significant dent in the national polling right now, in terms of Republican voters and Trump fans, who are either highly skeptical of coronavirus vaccines or

just outright saying, I do not want to take it. I don't want it anywhere near my family. You would have to have people like Donald Trump and Melania Trump mounting, if not PSA campaigns or video campaigns, but make a major messaging push. Sure. And, you know, the opposite of this is that people, often in cities who are looking for vaccines, know that they can go to red areas where there's a lot of surplus of vaccines because people aren't going for them. For example, I know in St. Louis, there's people who have been hunting out in the rural areas outside of St. Louis. I know here in D.C., there was a lot of talk about this town in Southern Virginia that was called the Danesville miracle because you could just drive out there and get a vaccine. And that's the world we're living in now. Something else I've been following recently that's been absolutely fascinating me is that if you read the granular details of these official court documents and records that have been coming out as the feds are charging and investigating more and more MAGA riders or insurrectionists or whatever you want to call them, is that just sounds so appallingly dumb that the little detail.

that they have to work into the footnotes of these documents and that they have to explain. Because when it comes to MAGA riders and their ilk, these are some of the biggest dumbasses who have ever set foot on the American Internet, and they frequently go out of their way to sound like it. So in some cases, the FBI is actually reduced to explaining in court and official documentation, the slang they use and the parlance of the MAGA Internet. And that includes one recent affidavit related to a capital rights. case that Huffington Post reporter Ryan J. Riley screenshotted recently on Twitter, and it caught my eye.

It reads, in which an FBI special agent who typically investigates violent gangs, explains what a quote, soy boy means in a capital case affidavit. Now, this apparently is on page 14 of the affidavit, and if you read the number six bullet point, it reads, your affian understands the term soyboy to be a derogatory term used by certain people to denigrate individuals they perceive as lacking masculine characteristics. Parentheses, because they drink soy milk instead of cow milk, end quote. Yeah, you know, this is just fabulous to me. So as perhaps the first reporter, to notice Soy Boy as an insult.

That was you? Yeah, man, that was me. I invented it. No, it has been a true journey watching this grow. So I never thought I would see Soy Boy playing into, you know, a federal case about attempting to overthrow the government. So the idea here is cooked up around maybe 2017-ish on the right wing is this idea that, you know, these defeat liberals, they drink soy milk instead of cow milk. And as a result, these hormones and the soy have feminized them. And so then they start calling people soy boys. And this, you know, this plays out in so many different ways. They say, you know, there's the soy face, which is, you know, kind of a man with Apache beer getting excited because he, you know, got a Nintendo Switch or something like that. And so, yeah, I mean, it really has, you know, even gone, I think, from the right into our more general. internet discourse. Okay, as someone who obviously works with you and follows your work very closely,

I was not aware that the world knows about soy boys because of you. When did this happen and why? Yeah, I mean, well, this was pre-daily beast. I mean, this was maybe, you know, 2017 or 2018 early. And I realized that, you know, these guys were just going in. They were calling each other soy boys. Look, they were calling me a soy boy, right? And so I decided. Well, you do drink a lot of Well, yeah, I mean, you know, I decided to get into it. And then, you know, it's kind of like with a lot of these things where it's like, oh, how ridiculous. Soy, you know, it doesn't make you feminine. And then I would think, but maybe, I don't know. I mean, scientifically, we know that it doesn't. But, but, you know, why it kind of seeped enough into my head. But really Soy Boy, you know, as we saw here, has really become, you know, one of the key right-wing insults, you know, alongside, of course, cuck. And now I would say simp. So did people start going with soyboy because latte-sipping liberal was to, you know, one of the key, Pass A? I definitely think, you know, latte, you know, I mean, the kind of people they're going after, right, are they're imagining these kind of like these dudes who write for video game websites, perhaps, or, you know, post about social justice on Twitter. I mean, these are not people. Like a latte liberal, I think has it as, as implications of like this guy's like kind of rich and fancy, right? But in this case, I mean, these are people who are seen as like guzzing soy milk as very a feat, you know, perhaps an Antifa type. And so, yeah, I mean, look, I never said the insult made sense. I mean, you know, you know, But it's really, the other thing I would say is I love how in these federal documents related to the riot, and we can see this in other instances too, the FBI agents who are clearly just like really dreading having to go into parlor and gab.

And that they have to say to the judge, yeah, your honor, you know, yeah, this is what a soy boy is. God, I don't actually feel sorry for these federal agents and prosecutors who have to dig through all this like insipid idiocy. Because, you know, fascism is already incredibly dumb. It doesn't matter what decade you're in. But especially now, I mean, have they had to explain Pepe Frogs yet in, in, like, court filings? Because that would be yet another step beneath the floor to me if that ended up coming around. I mean, they definitely, I don't know if in the riot, I mean, I would be really surprised if Pepe hasn't come up somehow in federal court. And, you know, you've got other stuff like, of course, the boogaloo, right?

They've got to explain, oh, your honor, well, when they say big luau and they wear ho. They're talking about the boogaloo. Yeah, I mean, look, I mean, it's just another crossover between the internet and our increasingly crazed, internet crazed world, you know, which is what Fever Dreams is all about. Well, I wonder if they've had to yet explain where the name proud boys comes from. Because it's my understanding, and correct me here, Will, if I'm wrong, that it was derived by Gavin McGuinness or one of his cohorts from a deleted song from the animated film musical Aladdin. Yes, it's a song called Proud of Your Boy from, and I want to be clear here, not the animated Aladdin movie, but from the Aladdin musical. And so Gavin McGinnis, I believe, went to a recital at his son's elementary school or middle school, and he saw some kid performing proud of your boy. And this really, I mean, this is kind of like your super villain origin story, right? And so he sees this and he goes, how decadent and defeat I need to create a group that plays off of this, again, kind of an obscure song, even for Aladdin, if it's a little.

Senators. And we're going to play off of that. And so that is how we then ended up with groups allegedly plotting to overthrow our government. Imagine you're a federal prosecutor and you have to waltz into court and convince a judge or a grand jury about how what happened on January 6th and beyond was a grave threat to the American Democratic fabric. People died. Blood was spilled everywhere. And that these people are akin to your common terrorist. And you're trying to walk in there with this level of gravitas and urgency about how this is a danger to the Republic, and we need to address this as judiciously as possible. And then you spend half of your time explaining things like taffy duck memes. And now, we'd like to bring on a guest who is a fellow beast here.

Her name is Kelly Weil. She is another reporter at The Daily Beast who also specializes in covering the same kinds of extremism and debauch to lunacy that our friend William Summer does. In February 2022, she'll be releasing her first book titled Off the Edge, which chronicles the bizarre flat earth movement. Off the Edge will be published by Algonquin Books. You can follow Kelly's work, of course, at the Daily Beast.com and also on Twitter at Kelly Wild. Kelly, welcome to your debut in the pod. How does it feel? Thanks for having me. Oh, frightening and terrifying and terrifying. I'm glad to be here. Excellent. That's exactly what we go for. We're an intense bunch. That's the kind of attitude to bring. So Kelly, you were a story for The Beast recently about this, this lawyer,

I don't know if I should even call him a lawyer, this gentleman who's been representing all of these businesses trying to flout COVID rules. Tell us more about that. Yeah. So this guy's name is Rick Martin. You can't legally call him a lawyer. That's actually the subject of a criminal case now in Michigan. They're coming for you next. No. So if you were following the cases of a few businesses across the country this summer. Barbershop in Washington's and restaurants in California and Michigan, they were trying to stay open against mask mandates and outdoor seating rules by saying that any kind of COVID measures were actually domestic terrorism by the government and therefore they were allowed to stay open under the Patriot Act. That's not to my knowledge at all how the

Patriot Act works, but you got a roll of them. So lo and behold, one of these cases did come to court, a restaurant got shut down because they followed this Patriot Act guidance a little too literally. This man, Rick Martin, comes into court says, I'm their lawyer. I'm going to protect him. Wait, his name is Ricky Martin? Just Rick. But I mean, listen, everyone's playing. So Ricky. You know he has to tell people so much. He has to be like, no, it's Rick. Has to clarify. There's, there's too many on that on that list. Yeah. And the judge pointed out that he is not a lawyer, that he's been passing himself off as such, and he and his client went to jail. I love it. Is this guy a sovereign citizen? He uses a lot of sovereign citizen, like, legal tactics.

I don't know if he explicitly calls himself that, but his whole theory is that the bar, you know, the law test that attorneys pass to get accredited, is actually a British conspiracy and that all accredited lawyers are actually loyal to the crown and therefore they don't have your interest in mind. And that, to me, it's extremely sobsit. So he says he's a constitutional attorney. And he's not loyal to the crown. He's loyal to you, the American citizen. But unfortunately, that does not mean he's a lawyer and does not mean he can pass himself off as such in court. Okay.

And lately, you have been covering not just this guy, but lawyers, generally speaking, in this world. And, I mean, I don't think it's a mystery to anybody listening. of this, why these guys can't seem to start getting better lawyers. But you've done some reporting recently on how the oath keeper's best new hope is a lawyer who cites Lord of the Rings. Can you tell us a little bit more about these Lord of the Ring references and what they have to do with this case, or if not the case, the lawyer himself or herself? Yeah. So the lawyer's name is Kelly Sorrell. She is one of the crew that kind of sprung up around the 2020 elections saying

that the results were fraudulent and that via an extremely arcane set of legal filing, she would overturn the government and dissolve Congress. How she and her colleague argued that was citing, you know, the elf story and I don't know about Lord of the Rings, okay? I just, you can't press me on the legal precedent from there, but they know it very well and said that there was like some Elf King who wasn't actually in line to the throne, so the throne was open and the Hobbit. So Donald Trump gets to be president now because of... Exactly. Yeah.

So because of the precedent set forth in Gondor law. In Lord of the Rings. Exactly. Got it. And they said it was a metaphor. But, you know, there's only so many pages of filing. You can really start offering before it. It's like, this isn't a metaphor, guys.

This is something deeply personal to you. Okay. So the name of this lawyer is Kelly Sorrell, if I'm pronoun. that correctly. And you described her as a failed Texas House candidate and a member of the group Lawyers for Trump. So how much, I don't really remember hearing much about her in that anti-democratic months-long blitz that Trump and Giuliani and those guys oversaw and the related efforts. How big a deal was she in that before she pivoted to being this oathkeeper's go-to? She was sort of the B-League, you know, the second string of the weird lawyers. I think the Sidney Powell's and the Lynn woods really sucked up all the oxygen. But she was trying for, you know, she was trying for her place there, filing some really weird stuff to try and keep up with the pack. She was around right after the election. And in fact, the night before the Capitol riot, she was in this infamous

video with the head of the oath keepers with this really fringe Virginia politician with the head of a pack that supports the pro boys and with this guy who was previously arrested for bringing an AR-15 and a katana to a Philadelphia vote count center. So she's around, you know, they network where they can. So these oathkeepers, I mean, they're facing like some pretty heavy charges. I mean, is Kelly Sorrell up to the up to the challenger? So it's entirely unclear to me what capacity she represents them in. She is, right now she's fundraising saying that she's a, um, an attorney for them. I don't think she's taking on any of their cases criminally, at least not in any filings I've seen, which for the oathkeeper's sake,

good for them. I don't want the Hobbit lawyer, uh, arguing my sedition case in court. But she is, yeah, she's going on like Gateway Pundit and all these fundraising sites representing herself as their lawyer. So Kelly, obviously a lot of us saw the proud boys getting involved in the January 6th insurrection. But you have some reporting recently that the proud boys, after going a little undercover amid a federal pressure, are now back in the mix. Tell me more. Yeah. So the proud boys actually took a beat after the Capitol riot. They kind of off the streets for a little bit, you know, just kind of posting away from, uh, from the safety of their phones. They're starting to come back out, you know, I don't know if it's

the nice weather or the distance from the Capitol riots, but they're not advertising many of their own events. Instead, they are just hijacking, uh, weird little regional things. They showed up at an anti-gay churches like straight pride party. They showed up at some failed. There was this event, uh, was it two weekends ago that it was like, patriots around the world will rise up in their respective cities. And it turned out to be like 50 people standing around in a North Carolina parking lot. So they were there, you know. And they were actually just this past weekend out in Salem, Oregon at the capital.

So they're kind of starting to dip their toe back in. But not always in the boldface way that they used to. What's the proud boys game here? I mean, like, you know, their chairmen facing a felony charge in D.C. Some of their other top leaders have been arrested regarding the riot. I mean, what's the next step for them, do you think? I mean, they do not really seem cowed by all this. And that kind of makes sense.

Their whole ethos is that they're, you know, ready to brawl. They don't really care about the law. So I think they're going to stick it out. They're going to still be in the streets. But, I mean, anyone with any sense would stay 10 miles away from them. I mean, they're riddled with informants. They turn on each other. It's really just a one-way ticket to jail.

You mentioned a while ago this capital rioter and this straight pride guy who recently stiffed their lawyer. Who was the attorney and what was the response to this? So the accused fellow here is Marksaheati. He's kind of infamous around Boston for hosting these, quote, straight pride events. That's just an inflammatory title for the whole banner of awful reactionaries that show up. you know, neo-Nazis, regular, just more low-profile racist. Some guys who just love being straight. Absolutely. You know, what's wrong with being a proud boy?

So he and another associate organized 11 buses to the Capitol Riot. So they were pretty involved. And of course, you know, they're busted like everyone else on charges, I think, of entering the building. He obtained a lawyer. And one of the conditions for his bond release is there, like, okay, buddy, you can go back outside, but you can't go to any more riots. Well, what do you know, like two weekends ago? He's out there again. Not only is he out there at one of these, like, these far right events, but they introduce him. They give him the microphone. They're like,

do you guys want to meet a domestic terrorist? Mark, get on up here. And it's like, you couldn't stay inside for a weekend, man. Like, it's not even, it's Boston. You don't need to go outside. So my colleague called up his lawyer to, you know, see like, hey, do you think this violates his bond conditions? And his lawyer is like, don't ask me about this guy. He hasn't paid me. I know he has the money. He's just not talking to me or giving me any money. What was he expected?

You know, listen, everyone's got the right to an attorney. But at a certain point, you do have to pay them or answer their emails or at least abide by the conditions of your, you know, bond release and not show up to. an event calling yourself a domestic terrorist when you're kind of on trial for that sort of thing. The guy doesn't respect the basic tenets of American democracy and republicanism. He's not going to respect a contract where it says, oh, you have to pay me this or here's my retainer. Can I just say that that straight pride bit is one of the dullest bits out there for those guys. I mean, I was at a Trump rally in December and I saw this big flag and I was like, oh man, we got a new movement on the loose. I'm pumped. And so I went over to interview.

Oman, and he's like, ah, yeah, it's straight pride. I was like, ugh, this stinks. I'm out of here. So, you know, I mean, they have been riding this thing for several years, and now, I don't know, possibly facing, you know, some serious consequences. Yeah, man, would I not be mad at all to see that go way? Because they do it, because they get a rise out of

people, people like, you can't have a straight pride parade and they're like, ha-ha, triggered the left. Yeah, I mean, they get a lot of pick. I mean, that's the, it gets so much pickup on Twitter, because people are like, what straight pride? And it's like, folks, calm down. It's three people. It's three people facing, like a collective like 175 years in prison. It's, you know, not worth your afternoon.

Well, hey, Kelly, thanks so much for joining us. Where can people find you? I'm on the Daily Beast.com and on Twitter under my own name and, you know, just walking around New York if you want to find me. What are you on Gab? I will never disclose that. I had my parlor up my name and that it was just like a torrent of abuse. So I had to change that to something else. great. Well, Kelly, thanks again for coming on. Thanks for having me, guys. All right, welcome now to Fresh Hell, the segment where we talk about some new nightmarish

thing in our reality. And today for Fresh Hell, I have one that I think may have gone a little under the radar, at least for a little how crazy it was. Last week, some National Guard soldiers outside in the Dallas area were transporting vaccines in what was expected to be a, you know, a relatively mundane job. And then suddenly a man, you know, comes out of nowhere in a car and starts trying to run the National Guard troops off the road. And he succeeds and he jumps out with a gun. And he says he's a detective. You know, he's not a really detective.

And that he was convinced that these vaccine transports were being used to, to transport, in fact, sex traffic children. Jesus. Okay. So was anybody hurt? No. No, surprisingly. I mean, truly a bizarre instance here.

Because this is a guy, Larry Lee Harris, allegedly, out of Arizona, big beard. this guy who seems to have taken some sort of vigilante action based on his own ideas. You know, he basically takes these guard members hostage until the actual police arrive. And then he goes, you know, I guess I was wrong. It's kind of reminiscent of the Pizagate gunman who, after he was busted, said, oh, I guess there's no kids in there. So I told the cops, oh, well. And so in this case, yeah, I mean, this guy is crazy. I mean, you have a guy who, you know, run some soldiers off the road.

and is we don't have an official Q&on connection here, but I kind of have to suspect there's one in the offing. I asked the sheriff's department in this kind of small area outside of Dallas that was involved in this case. They seemed pretty baffled. They said they kind of have no idea why this guy did this, besides the fact that he was very amped up on internet tales about sex traffic kids. So it's the exact language of Q&ON, even if the letter Q never came up in his literature.

That's exactly right. And I mean, you know, this kind of gets into a pet peeve of mine, which is when there seems to be a Q&N, or other kind of one of these crimes, and you want to say, you know, the cops are then like, all right, book them. And it's like, well, ask him why he did it, you know. And, you know, maybe write it down in a way that I can report on. Right.

And there's this parsing among some people where they try to deny that stuff like this is necessarily QAnon per se. But at the same time, like, if a guy is caught like shooting up a bunch of people and says he is not a fascist, but he believes the undesirable should be exterminated. is really into the Turner Diaries and the protocols of the elders of Zion. Of course, the dude is fascistic in many ways. And I don't see how you look at a case like this and not see like the markings of QAnon rotting your brain, just completely all over it.

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, you know, whether or not he's a specific Q guy or if he's into other kind of similar stuff, I think more broadly, like this is, you know, this is something we're seeing more and more of is this kind of weird, just really weird violence coming out of the conspiracy theory internet. You know, just recently the FBI issued their report on the Nashville Christmas bombing, which turned out to be, you know, essentially it was just like, well, I don't know. The guy was really amped up on conspiracy theory, so he decided to build a car bomb. We're seeing more and more of this stuff.

Again, a lot of it's Q&N related, not all of it. You know, unfortunately, I think it's something that we will only be seeing more of. And also, a lot of guys like this, like the guy you were talking about who held up 11 National Guard soldiers, they also don't just seem like they were infected the really deep online. but also they are still treating real life as if they are doing nothing more than simply posting on the internet, something that is generally consequence free. I mean, how do you hold up a bunch of national guardsmen with a, what I'm assuming, Will, was a loaded firearm, and then kind of shrug it off and think, oh, I guess I was wrong. I had good intentions. Do I get like a speeding ticket now or something like that? It's like, no. Right. I mean, it's sort of the same thing we saw with the riot, right?

Where, I mean, if you were actually consciously, like, I am committing a felony, you would not constantly be posting a about it and then arguing on Facebook when people say Antifa did it, you'd be like, no, it was me, it was me. You know, or, you know, just recently we had one of the alleged rioters who was arrested wearing a shirt that said, like, I was there January 6th. And so, yeah, I mean, there is this sense that I think that it is bleeding over, like, or people just aren't, it's just like, like, you're just making another internet post. And then, of course, there is also, I think, with a lot of these kind of Q and on or

Q-related crime, there is this idea, it's almost like you're playing a video game where it's like, I'll take matters into my own hands. Right, except in a video game, you don't necessarily. get 10 years in a maximum security lockup. Well, on that note, let's wrap up this episode of fever dreams from the Daily Beast. In future installments, we'll also be speaking to some awesome reporters and some other colleagues at the Daily Beast and beyond, from politics, popular culture, and other overfed underdeveloped institutions. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your preferred podcasting app and share the show on social media and with your friends.

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