The Daily Beast Podcast - Vivek Ramaswamy Filled the Void Left by Trump at Republican Debate

Episode Date: August 25, 2023

On this week’s episode of The New Abnormal, hosts Andy and Levy and Danielle Moodie discuss the fallout from the first Republican primary debate of the 2024 election season. Plus! Author Dr. Steven Hassan stops by to talk to us about what he’s seeing change in the cult of Trump, and Amanda Moore, who infiltrated the MAGA movement—and wrote about it—shares her experience. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What an excellent show we have today.

Freedom of Mind Resource Center, Stephen Hassan, who's the author of the book The Cult of Trump, will stop by to talk to us about what he's seeing change in the cult of Trump. Then we'll talk to Amanda Moore, who wrote an incredible article in the nation this week about her time infiltrating the Maga Movement and how she's seen the people she met change and evolve into places of power. But first, let's have some fun. So Andy. Yes, Daniel. Since Fox News was your former home, I can't imagine that it's as comfortable and loving and embracing as our current home together.

But since it was the former place that you used to rest your head, I want to give you first dibs on how you think Fox did on their first circus. I mean debate, Republican debate, very serious debate that happened. happened this week. Let me answer that question with a tweet. And it's a tweet I sent, I think about three minutes into the coverage where I said, oh God, I can't watch this shit because they were playing that song for some reason, the Richmond, north of Richmond or whatever it is. And look, I have avoided that song, or at least I had until last night when I was non-consensually subjected to listening to a clip of it. Just, oh, my. My God, what? Look, we can get into the candidates and all of that, but Brett Baer and Martha

McCallum lost control fairly early. That seems to be the mode for Republican debates ever since Trump came on the scene. It's just nobody cares about the moderators. I thought the crowd was awful, not even halfway through the debate. I was like, can they do these without crowds? Oh, that would be amazing. I understand that you have a crowd there and it gives people energy and whatever. I get all that. But it was so damn obnoxious. And then to ask, a UFO question, like, really? Look, I think presidential debates are stupid. I rank them only slightly above the state of the union speech in actual importance. But this one was, even by presidential debate standards, I thought was particularly stupid. I mean, so here's my thing.

One, I did not get very far into the debate without feeling itchy. You know what I'm saying? like I needed to shower and I needed to wash out my eyes and my ears. I thought that was code for I need to grab a bottle. Yeah. To think that any of these people are serious about wanting to run the country, to think that any of those people are serious about wanting to represent 330 million plus people is wild to me. Because there wasn't a fucking person on that stage that was qualified,

let alone the lack of journalistic integrity or the lack of journalism that you see on that station and network as a whole. But it was the purpose of these debates are to give voters a window into how politicians think about certain issues, not necessarily how they're going to act when it is a real life scenario, but to give you a differentiating point on how they think about certain issues. What the fuck was differentiating about any of these people? Like you had Nikki Haley, that brought up a Margaret Thatcher quote, I'm certain that woman is rolling over in her grave. Like, keep my name out your mouth.

To talk about, oh, well, if you want things done, hand it over to a woman. What are you talking about, Nikki Haley? Do you know what party you are in? Also, do you know what complexion you are? I think you forget. They don't care about you being a powerful woman. They literally have taken over bodily audited.

autonomy over more than half of the fucking country. And I believe that Donald Trump may have said you don't have the right complexion to be vice president. Wake the fuck up. But I digress. Let me not dig in deep so far. But those are some things that stood out. Yeah.

The only person on that stage who differentiated himself, I think, was Chris Christie, which we expected. This is not even remotely any kind of endorsement for Chris Christie. But Christie and Asa Hutchinson were the only ones who didn't raise their hand. when they were asked to raise their hand if they would support Trump if he was the nominee. The worst part of that was watching Ron DeSantis look to his left and right to see what other people had done before he raised his hand. Seems pretty fucking accurate.

That couldn't have summed him up any better. And he was basically invisible on that stage. And, you know, there is absolutely no way that debate helped him at all. Look, we all had the same thought when we were watching that debate, which is that Vivek Ramaswamy, is the most annoying person in the world. And it was very clear that every other candidate on that stage just wanted to shove him into a locker and just be like, shut up, nerd.

But I also, I mean, as we record this, I don't know that we've seen, there haven't been any polls yet. I am absolutely positive that Ramoswami will see a bump in the polls. I'm thinking that he may have seen a bump before he went on stage. Well, there is that possibility, too. Although Don Jr. was there, so I don't think anyone else had even a chance to get their hands on stuff. You know, what got me about VEzek is one, you could tell by the way that the other Republican candidates were going after him, that they actually do see him as a threat.

That let's just be clear that if VEVEC had not been on stage last night, that the debates would have been an entire snooze spec. like there wasn't an interesting person on that stage. And I don't even say that Vivek is interesting. What I will say is that for the minutes that I could stomach the entirety of the debate is that he did what Donald Trump would do, entertained. He said, let's have fun up here. Because to him, it's all a reality TV show. And where did he learn that from? His mentor, Donald Trump.

Just because somebody has hundreds of millions of dollars. or a billion dollars does not make you smart and capable to run the country. But that's not really what Americans care about. Frankly, they care about wanting to have a drink with somebody or being able to, you know, aspire to a gold toilet too in their bathroom where documents are laid out on the floor. Like, this is the reality of reality TV politics is that Vivek Ramoswamy fit. He fit the shoes the other night of Donald Trump. He took shots. He had his super packed puppets. He said climate change is a hoax. He went off the rails, one to raise the voting age to 25. I mean, he was so right he was in a fucking circle.

It was just like out of control. But he got the most applause. No, I agree. He's the only one on that stage that realized that it was a clown show and that what people want is to be entertained. And everyone else on that stage felt like they were living in a pre-2016 world. Because look, I'll say Mike Pence, he should not be anywhere near the office of the presidency of the United States. He is an unrepentant theocrat who just wants some kind of Christian rule in this country. All that said, he to me was the only one on that stage who I felt like, maybe with the exception of Christy, but who I felt like was his authentic self. Like, I believe that's truly who he is in real life, which is horrible.

Yes. But, you know, whatever. But I don't know. It gives him some kind of air. Again, this is just to me of at least authenticity. And everyone else on that stage, I don't think Nikki Haley believes half the things she's saying. Ronda Sant is not even worth talking about on this subject. Ramoswami, clearly, he changes his positions every couple months.

And just, and the list goes on. And Doug Bergam, who I thought, I don't know, for some reason I thought maybe he would be like one of those Republican governors who's kind of moderate and is just kind of a, yeah, I just, I get shit done. Watching that band, I'm thinking, you know, ABC gum is better than Bergum. Every one of those people on that stage, for the most part, seemed like they were playing a role, except for Mike Pence, who just seemed like I am a fascist. I'm a Christo-fascist. Offstage and on stage. I am the same person. But that is not what people want.

People want Ramoswami. Right. Republican voters in particular, that's what they want. You're absolutely right about that. They want fucking side show, Bob. Yeah. That's who the Republican Party is. It's like who can be the ringleader?

Who can be the circus ringleader? That's what they want. And of course, the vet, we haven't seen the polls, but of course you are going to see a bump because people are talking about him. We are talking about him. because he filled what we thought was going to be the vacuum left by Trump by not appearing at the debate and instead sitting down with Tucker Carlson. I know that we have this in clips, but like, for the love of God, Donald Trump has really lost his fucking mind. Like that is what I will say about the offering of that counter programming is that for everything that is said about Joe Biden, not enough of that.

attention is paid to the fact that I honestly believe that Donald Trump has lost his ship. And when you look at that stage and you say, so who is the heir apparent? I just want UFOs to come and take me. I want to be taken from this planet. If you had to pick Andy one of those people to be the heir apparent. Like, and there were no other choices. Like literally, I'm just going to put tinfoil on my fucking head, lay in a feet. old and wait to be taken. Gun to my head, if he said to me, one of these guys has to be the Republican nominee and you have to vote for them. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I guess it may be Hutchinson, but I wouldn't be happy about it, but I don't know. But my favorite part of the

debate was, and I will freely admit that I did not watch this because this was the post-debate spin room stuff, and I could not have changed the channel faster when this shit show ended. But reading today about how mad Donald Trump Jr., Marjorie Taylor Green, and a bunch of others were because they were blocked from being in the post-debate spin room. For people who don't know, the spin room is where the candidates and their surrogates go after the debate to talk to the press and explain why they won and everybody lost. It's insane and it's dumb and it's stupid to begin with. So Fox had made it clear that, like, hey, if Trump is not showing up to this, then his people are

coming into the spin room. We're not letting them in the spin room, which honestly seems super fair. I'm actually surprised that they apparently actually stuck to that because I assumed that they would buckle. But apparently they didn't. And they did not let Don Jr. in. They didn't let Marjorie Green in. She was going to talk about how great Trump was. And they threw the biggest hissy fit. Trump Jr. saying, this is why Trump was 100% right not to go to this debate. First of all, your dad, Trump is weird. Yeah, honestly. Because I'm like, isn't that your dad?

Yeah, it's just, that whole family's just, I don't know, man. You could pay a hundred psychiatrists' salaries for 50 years studying that family. But that aside, he's like, he said, this is why Trump was 100% right not to go to this debate. No, you have that backwards. He decided not to go to the debate,

therefore you are not allowed in the spin room. If he had gone to the debate, you would have walked right into the spin room. It's hilarious to watch them try to, well, spin this. Just the biggest cry babies in the world. It's a classic Trump privilege move. Like, oh, I don't have to show up to the debate, but my team should still be allowed in the spin room.

Like, no. No, bitch. That's not how it works. It's not how it fucking works. It really is. So I got such a kick. When I read that today, I just got such a kick out.

of that and it's now my favorite debate moment i mean you know i do want to go to some pieces of what we heard from every because you called mike pens rightfully a christophascist fanatic and he wants a theocracy mike pence very casually said on stage last night that consensus is not what leaders do and i'm just like uh in a democracy that's actually what we look for is consensus among our two-party system in order to move the country forward. You said once again, the quiet part through a bullhorn that you don't give a fuck about consensus. So that's number one.

Number two, you had Vivek Ramoswami talk about the fact after we're still looking for a thousand people, a thousand souls in Maui, devastated by the worst fire that we have ever seen in this country from. What climate change? Drier climates, drier air, just ripe ground for wildfires. Ramosami says, climate change is a hults.

Tell that to the fucking people that have been living in the southern regions of this country in triple digits the entire summer. Tell that to those of us who witnessed the sky turn a tinge yellow from wildfires in another, country that were affecting our air quality in June. You have them talking about abortion bans and

you see Ron DeSantis trying his best to not answer any question and just blame it on the media. Right. Oh, will you support an abortion, a national abortion ban the way that you have created an abortion ban in Florida? These people, each and every single one of them are telling you in their own ways that democracy is a thing of the past, civil rights they don't believe in, they're not trying to build government for and by the people, they alone can fix it. I mean, it was bullhorn whistle after bullhorn whistle after bullhorn whistle. So when folks want to sit back and say, oh, well, at least they're not Trump, they don't need to be Trump to embrace Trumpism. They don't need to be Trump to want to wrap their arms around Magadam and take the throne for

themselves. They all have the same sick, twisted, anti-patriotic, anti-democratic ideology. Yeah, and a lot of people are harping on the fact that Ramoswami took like the biggest shots, which is absolutely true. And Nikki Haley got off that good line when she said that he had no experience. She said, and it shows Mike Pence, you know, called him out and said he was a rookie who needed on-the-job training. Chris Christie compared him to chat GPT. What we need to understand is that Chris Christie, Mike Pence, and to a lesser but still big extent, are not liked by the Republican base. So you've got people who are disliked attacking a guy. What do they think that that's going to do?

All it's going to do is exactly what happens when the same people, when people attack Trump. It makes them like him more. Right. I think that's what we saw Wednesday night. Yes, the Nikki Haley line was great. but I saw people tweeting or whatever being like, oh, she just ended him. She really didn't.

No, she really did not. Again, just so people understand the zombie Trump thinking on that stage last night, when asked, if you become president of the United States, are you pardoning Donald Trump? A number one, that also signals the fact that you believe

that motherfucker's going to jail. Because again, we don't ask for pardons for people who are not convicted criminal. So that's just number one. Big slip by the Fox folks there. And then the show of hands, Andy, the show of fucking hands. I know. And Ramoswamy led the charge on the pardon thing. And again, that's exactly what the base wants to hear. The base doesn't want to hear Mike Pence's answer, which was much better where he said, look, you generally pardon someone who has been found guilty and has shown repentance. He said, so, you know, we'll get to that when we get to that. That was at. least, again, like a moderately, I don't want to say sane, because again, the only sane answer is hell no, I'm not pardoning him. But if you're going to take that off the table, then at least he gave, all right, a little bit of an answer. But the rest of these guys, and again, Christy and Hutchinson aside, because like them or not, they are the only ones who have the balls

to actually say that Donald Trump shouldn't be president. The rest of them, just including Nikki Halley, including Doug Bergam, they all were pretty clear that they think Trump is being treated unfairly and they're going to pardon him. And it was just, oh God, it was so obnoxious to watch. And it was just Ramoswami stole the show. He went from being a fringe candidate to the cringe candidate, but that's what they want. Folks, I am very excited to welcome to the new abnormal. the leading cult expert, Dr. Stephen Hassan, who wrote in 2019 the book The Cult of Trump. A leading cult expert explains how the president uses mind control. Let me just jump right in and say this.

For the last eight years, I have felt that the way the Republican Party and the former twice-impeached president of the United States is controlled. over that party has not been covered in the right way. Then I came across you and your book and watched a couple of clips of you on cable news talking exactly in the way that I have felt mainstream media has ignored what has been happening over the last eight years. So Dr. Hassan, give us a 50,000 foot view based on your own experience. and your own research into what we have been living through over the last eight plus years under Donald Trump? Sure.

Well, let me start by saying that I grew up in Flushing Queens, 1.3 miles from Donald Trump. So I grew up exposed to Donald Trump in the tabloids, et cetera, and watched at least 10 minutes of The Apprentice. But when I was asked by my book agent to do the cult of Trump, all I knew was. he was a malignant narcissist, which is the stereotypical profile of all cult leaders. In fact, in chapter three of my book, I compared him with Jim Jones, Sun Mung Moon, whose cult I was in for two and a half years recruited at Queens College, which is how I got interested in being a cult expert, was my own recovery. The bottom line is that Donald Trump has been used by authoritarian cults,

including Vladimir Putin, and I do think of Russia as a authoritarian cult, as I do China. I just did a podcast on China, Chinese netizens who were rebelled last year over the COVID lockdown, actually took my bite model of authoritarian control, translated it to Chinese, and they were all walking around with white paper protesting. So all I knew was Donald Trump had the profile of a cult leader, but then I learned that actually there's been at least 50 years of authoritarian, Christian nationalists, certainly Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and other enemies, Nazis, have been working to undermine America. and America's human rights and regulations over fossil fuel industries, for example. So my thesis is that we need to understand that there's an influence continuum, which is the name of my podcast, of ethical influence.

And yes, I think there can be ethical cults where you are loving a particular singer or band or sports team or, you know, A podcaster like yourself, Daniel, we have fans. But the point is authoritarian mind control cults control people's behavior, information, thoughts, and emotions. And now I'll put on my hat as a mental health expert. They created what's called a dissociative disorder. And the best way to explain it is in terms of my own cult experience when I was recruited by women flirting with me at the cafeteria at Queens College in 1974. The old Steve Hassan was replaced by a cult Steve Hassan in the image of Moon,

so that I was taught to think like Moon and feel like Moon and walk like Moon and talk like moon. And my real self was suppressed, not erased, but suppressed. And it was after a near fatal van crash where I fell asleep at the wheel of a Mooney fundraising van and drove into the back of it. attract their trailer truck in 1976 and was in a hospital away from the cult sleeping.

I should say I was sleeping three to four hours a night, seven days a week, and constant indoctrination in a bubble. This was way before the internet, but nevertheless, I was in that information bubble. Once I was away from the group sleeping,

that opened the door for me to call my sister. Not that I had any conscious doubts. Like, I was such a fanatic. I was a leader in the cult. But it led to a deprogramming where I learned about Chinese communist brainwashing techniques from the 50s by Robert J. Lifton, who wrote the classic text, thought reform, the psychology of totalism. And it was with these former Mooney's who were asking me questions and getting me to think about my experiences and parallel it with Chinese communist brainwashing that the light started turning on.

And the thing that literally woke me up was they handed me one of Moon's speeches to congressmen and senators. All they said is, what do you think about this? And I knew it had been published by the group. And he was talking about how much he respects Americans and how we surprised that any American could imagine that he, a Korean, could brainwash Americans. And I had heard him personally at least 100 times disAmericans. and talk about the Koreans as the master race. And it was that thought where I realized he's a liar. Then I thought, then I can't trust him.

Then he can't be a man of God. And it felt in my mind like a house of cards going plop, plop, plop, plop, plop, plop, because my entire indoctrination was based on the belief. He was the Messiah who was going to save the planet. I was like, what happened to me? I was an extra honor student. I threw out all my poetry. What did I do?

Who was I? Let me ask this, because I really like, and I particularly just like the mental image of a House of Cards coming in, and this idea that you literally had a crash, a physical crash, that would then open your mind to what has been happening over the last two years.

I think about the House of Cards image that you invoke, and this idea of how, Trump over the course of his lifetime, but really over the last eight years, has built himself up to be the white grievance king. I alone can fix it. I am your savior. I am your retribution. In all of these iterations over the last several years, we've watched his ego and his influence grow. And when cameras go into his rallies and they say to people, but here's these lists of

facts. Here's these list of lies. You can't penetrate the house of cards that are in their mind. So my question for you is, for you, it was a crash. Well, the crash led to me being away. So what would it take or what does it take to bring that mental house of cards down for those addicted to Donald Trump and Trumpism? The key point, And that's why I emphasize it's a dissociative disorder and the person's real self is not erased. You were bringing up in the introduction about how the media has gotten it wrong. The media keeps saying how people are morons and stupid and they'll never wake up. Those types of messages are counterproductive to what we're trying to do, which is get people to start reality testing.

So as a Mooney, I was trained to do thought stopping. I was so programmed that Satan was everywhere. I'm from a Jewish family. I didn't believe in Satan or evil spirits. But in the Mooney's cult, I was taken to see the Exorcist movie when it came out. And Moon said, God made this movie, and this is a prophecy about what happened to you. So what I'm trying to say is that when people are in, especially in Christian-esque brainwashing cults, like the new apostolic reformation, which I talk about in chapter 7 of the cult of Trump.

The mainstream media keeps saying they're evangelical Christians. These are cults where the leaders of these megachurches say, I'm a prophet or an apostle. I speak in tongues and I can cast out demons and do faith healing. And through my covering, I can protect you from evil satanic invasion. So when you talk to a cult member who's been programmed that way and you say, but he's a liar and he's a cheater and he's a this and he's a that. All they hear is Satan is trying to tempt me and they're chanting in their head to stay true to God to their prophet or their apostle doesn't work. What does work is a warm, respectful, curious interaction, especially with family members, friends, coworkers that the person had a relationship with before they got recruited and brainwashed into the cult of Trump. And beginning,

based on rapport and trust, asking questions, I'm curious. You're against traffickers and pimps, right? Oh, yes, we are. Tell me, what's your understanding of how a pimp or a trafficker grew rooms people and indoctrines them and gives them a new identity to become a slave for them, to sell their bodies or to sell their soul to a trafficker, asking a question. And then you can get into the behavior control, information control, thought control, and emotional control. You can explain phobia programming. And it's different from a legitimate fear where there's actual danger.

But the point is, is that my whole approach. isn't persuading people to get out. It's empowering them to think for themselves, appealing to their sense of intelligence, appealing to their sense of conscience and good values. And what's so wonderful right now is there's kind of a renaissance happening because of Trump, I think. There's so many now documentaries about cult mind control situations and podcasts. I'm with my friends saying, let's do an hashtag I Got Out movement, normalize the fact that intelligent, educated people can be brought into these types of authoritarian mind control cults and engage and start sharing stories because it will turn the lights on, but it's not going to be by calling names or attacking.

It's going to be by, hey, and I'm going to play a roleplay with you, Daniel. You know, hey, Danielle, you're an intelligent, educated person. I respect you so much. I'm curious. How did you first come to start believing that Donald Trump is God's agent on earth? You know, think back. I think back. Right.

Because when I ask people, what's your first memory of Donald Trump? They often say he was a dickhead or I saw him on the apprentice and I thought he was an asshole. Right. No kidding. But they're talking from their real self. not their cult self. And you're wanting them to go on a kind of mental journey. How did you move from this guy, from you thinking, oh, he's an asshole, to now thinking

that he's an agent of God? There is a long path that is in between. I want to ask you this question, too. Going back to, again, this dismantling of this House of Cards, this smoke and mirrors routine that Donald Trump has. And what we saw, so on January 6, 2021, the world watches with their eyes as thousands of people at the direction of Donald Trump and company stormed the Capitol building, which wasn't even breached in the Civil War, right? Yep. Storm the Capitol building.

And we're watching with our eyes. Every angle, officers being beat, windows being broken, bear spray, confiscation of. of materials, all of these things happen. On Earth 1, Stephen, we're watching it play out on mainstream news channels and all around the world and people are horrified. On Earth 2, the Fox News Network, we see initial outrage and then the big cover-up begins January 7th on. Yep.

So talk to me about that, what many thought, including myself. was the House of Cards crumbling moment. They're going to see with their own eyes versus what has happened over the last two and a half years. So the critical thing is understanding we're human beings. We depend on information for our beliefs, for how to navigate. And if we're in a silo, whether it's Fox News or certain things, apps that we're on on our cell phone, 10 to 12 hours.

hours a day, we're going to be programmed to believe that versus mainstream media. And then you add politicians, Republican politicians, siding with Trump, right? So the appeal is emotional largely. It's not logical. And basically, people are, if they're in an NAR group or they're part of another authoritarian cult, like Jeffrey Charlotte wrote two books on the family. Emily did a Netflix five-part series, Opus Day is a right-wing Catholic cult that William Barr was associated with, Leonard Leo, and the Supreme Court justices. When you understand the mindset, again, the issue is if our goal is to get citizens to use our frontal cortexes and think analytically and look at data and evidence versus reacting. emotionally through fear and anger and disgust. It's a different process. So what I'm trying to convey is we have a mental health crisis because we see tens of millions of Americans and people around the world. And social media and AI is being tailored. Remember, Cambridge Analytica

hacked Facebook. We now know that there are 5,000 data. points in the dark web for every voting American. The bad actors can tailor a messages to you based on which buttons to push to nudge you in the direction they want. And what they want is chaos. They want to delegitimize our institutions. They want to delegitimize science. They want to delegitimize They want to distract us from the fact that we have a global climate crisis that is obvious, but nevertheless, all the fossil fuel corporations and Al Gore did a TED talk recently, just naming it, the Putin's, the Saudis. And they're doing what the tobacco industry did to say, no, it doesn't cause cancer. Let's hire actors who can wear doctors' clothing and smoke cigarettes on TV. But they knew they were killing people.

But for money, they would keep doing it. That's what we're dealing with now is a global disinformation system. Americans don't have data privacy legislation. We are so open. And then the free speech, yeah, we have to let free speech. excuse me, the UK, if you're a terrorist saying, let's go bomb, you know, some white people or some black people, you go to jail in the UK. But no, America, we have free speech. Excuse me. What about the public good? To your point and so many points that you have made, and I will tell you, Dr. Hassan, you have to come back again

because we don't have nearly enough time to dig into all of the pieces. But to your point, I think that the question is, is what about the public good? And how do our own laws and our own supposed values in this country, how are they fueling this rise of authoritarianism, the rise of cult leadership, and giving it the fertile ground that it requires in order to grow? And so we will leave it here today, but I really do hope that you will come back to the new abnormal and join us again. Appreciate you.

Oh, thank you. So please check out freedom of mind.com. and my podcast, The Influence Continuum, and the book Cult of Trump has 100% been validated. So check it out. Thank you, Daniel. Thank you. Amanda Moore spent almost a year undercover in the alt-right beginning in November of 2020 with the Stop the Steel rally in Washington, D.C. This week, she wrote about her experiences for the nation, and she's here to talk about them with us.

Amanda, thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Okay, so I want to start with two fairly basic questions. and the first one is why. What made you decide to insert yourself into this movement? That's like the hardest question. I'm not going to lie to you.

I'm sorry. The others are so much easier to answer. I grew up with an evangelical father. He's like my dad now. He's still his pastor, races people from the dead, that kind of thing. And so, yeah,

so my dad's really conservative. And then my mom is a two-time Obama voter who also voted for Trump twice. I was a libertarian for many, many years, because you don't really come out of that environment on the left, shockingly, before kind of making that transition over. So I've always had this interest in cults in right-wing extremism because there were so many parallels to my life. And so, you know, I had that background. I was monitoring things already. And then with the pandemic, my job was in live events. And obviously, we were the first industry to get completely nuked.

So didn't really have a lot going on in my day-to-day life. So, you know, I wanted to be like a writer or a journalist. But I, was not. I was like, well, I'll just go to these rallies and see what happens. And then it just kind of snowballed into all of a sudden, I'm hanging out with it on to. That's amazing. Considering you thought it was a tough question, that was a really good answer. Fortunately, I've had to answer this question, like maybe 10, 20,000 times. So I've gotten more succeed. But will the listeners find it satisfactory? I think so. He knows. All right. So the second basic question is how? How did you do it? Was it as simple as just showing up to meetings, rallies, conferences, et cetera, and pretending to share their beliefs? And to be clear, I don't mean to minimize what you did by asking

if it was that simple, because even if it was that simple, it must have been nerve-wracking as hell. But, you know, I'm just curious how you managed to do this. Yeah. I mean, at the rallies, it was, you know, it was pretty easy. There's a bunch of people all around. And then after January 6th, I bought a ticket to seatback. And, you know, I used to travel a lot for work at all these hotel points and air miles. And I was like, what's the worst that could happen? You know, like, probably other reporters aren't going to go

because their outlets won't let them because of COVID or they're personally worried about COVID or whatever. I didn't mean for it to happen the way it did. I literally just went to some Marjorie Chiller-Lewar-Paul Gosar like after event. And this guy asked for my phone number. And then two weeks later, he's asking me to meet with somebody from the Hungarian embassy to,

trade me to recruit Mac Jets to his caucus. Yeah, so when I say it's snow-walled, I mean, it really did. My approach is kind of just like sit at the bar then, so like wait for men to hit on me. It worked. It was pretty easy in that regard, yeah. That's amazing. So you just, basically for this period, but 10, 11 months, whatever it was, you managed to convince all these people that you shared their various little hateful ideologies. Yeah, yeah. So it's kind of like doing a dual track thing where another article I wrote about was about fascists. But when I was undercover, I had an anonymous Twitter account I was using, and I mostly posted about Q&O there, because I was also going to Q&on stuff. And that was, I mean, that was like, you're going to be a thousand dollars to get in the door.

It's just a huge, huge grift, yeah. It was a little bit jarred times to go back and forth, because when you're a Q&R world, there is no reality anymore. You're completely, you know, removed from the physical world, more or less. Donald Trump is a time traveler, and JFK Jr. is still alive. You know, Nazis don't fully bat at least. There's like, there's like a base line of like, we're on planet Earth. Right. But yeah, you know, I would just, I would try to match whatever people around me thought and said. And that's, you know, what I went there.

All right. So let's talk specifics. The subhead of your piece reads that you discovered a radical youth movement trying to infiltrate the Republican Party. So let's talk about who you're talking about here. And I guess let's start with Gavin Wax. Tell us about him. So Gavin Wax is the president of the New York Young Republicans Club. He took over the club a few years ago.

And obviously, as you can imagine, New York City Club used to be fairly moderate. I've talked to people within the New York GOP world. And they used to, you know, they say, oh, we used to be able to call on them. They were, you know, nice young kids. And they usually show up to help us knock on doors or whatever. And now they're lunatics. And we want nothing to do with them because he has just really amped up, you know, the magnetness of the organization, which is polarizing in general, but extremely polarizing in New York City.

But wax is well connected. He, many years ago, back in 2014, started a libertarian blog called Liberty Conservative. On that blog, he platformed James Alsup, who was a speaker at the rallies leading up to Charlottesville to unite the right in 2017. He's a neo-Nazi. And Wax was one of the first people to platform his writing. He's platformed crowd boys and members of Dindy Rope of. And so he's got this long background of doing that kind of stuff. But at the same time, his outlet was also scoring interviews.

He used to work for Ted Cruz. And so he's known a lot of politicians. and that's coming up now. Now he's got Marjorie Chila Green and Mac 8th is coming to his club's events. So he's kind of a perfect example of somebody who is peers to be well connected and normal on the surface, but, you know, is at the very least absolutely comfortable platforming and also. Yeah. Did you learn anything from him while you were undercover that just like was like, whoa, people need to know this?

Well, despite his meltdown on me when this article came out, we were both in Dallas at the the Young Republican National Convention when the article was released. He read it, didn't like it. Despite his public meltdown, we never met when I was on the cover. Okay, that's what I thought. Yeah, but, you know, because the person who introduced us, his name as Shane Trejo, is heavily featured in the piece. And Shane has known Gavin for a really long time.

And so Gavin's kind of been on my radar. He's kind of for a really long time. So I do know a lot about him and I've been writing about him. But yeah, we didn't know each other when I was undercover. He's just mad regardless. Okay, understood. All right. So let's talk about Shane Trejo because, as you say, he sort of features prominently in your article.

What is his deal and how did you befriend him? So the event I went to that had Marjorie Taylor Green, Paul Gosar and War Lumer, of all people speaking, across from CPAC in 2021, was organized by an organization called Republicans for National Renewal. Shane, Gavin, they're both. Gavin may not be a lot affiliated any longer. I'm not sure. But Shane is their grassroots director. So it was at that event where I met Shane.

You know, I'm told him, I'm going to give a speech. Can I get your number? And I was like, you're giving a speech. You can absolutely have my number. That is how we connected. But like Gavin, Shane has been in this kind of far right world for a very long time. And so he's been pretty well connected for years. And what did you gather from being with him and seeing him sort of in his unguarded moment? Something interesting about him is that he was at January 6. And something that we talked about was how, you know, it's kind of a bummer to see all these people say it was this Ed San Antisha when ostensibly an overthrow of the government is. is what he would have wanted, right? So I think, you know, kind of that. But he was also, he was the committee chairman for Michigan's 11th congressional district for the GOP, but he recently lost that position

to a convicted felon who took his place. Yeah, I don't know if it's a trade-up or trade-down. It's hard to say. And for years, Shane had published all of this writing that was just, like, absolutely disgusting, defending the marchers at Unite the Right. He, you know, called a gang rape of a woman in Pakistan and cultural enrichment, disgusting, sexist, racist stuff all over the place.

And yet he was still able to get elected into his local GOP. Yeah, it's frightening. And one last guy. Talk to me about the guy who told you that his vision for America was like a friendlier Nazi Germany. Because I don't even know what that means. Does it mean like you make one of the initials in SS stand for smiling? Yeah, right. Alexander Nelson, who also has gone by Lander Nelson, Alex Nelson, Danner Nelson,

A. Nelson, there's a whole slew of names that he's youth to kind of swindle young Republican organizations and various GOPs across the country. He worked for the Joe Kink campaign and they had to fire him because he was so racist. When he was talking to people, people stood up to wonder if maybe he was like a reporter or something because of how racist he was being. But no, that's just Nelson. That's just who he is. So, and he's been kicked out of multiple young Republican chapters, Washington State, you know, you know, kicked him out. And then I went, I was, as I said, I was at the Young Republican National because I mentioned this past weekend and multiple people from various chapters were like, oh, yeah, that asshole. Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. Oh, wow.

Because he's just been changing his name and trying to sneak on it. And to different places, his goal is to work with politicians. He wants to infiltrate. He was very open about that with me. You wanted me to go to a young Republican meeting with him so that we could kind of market ourselves as nationalists and have the backing of, you know, well, you know, we look respectable. We're in a respectable place. It's okay to be a nationalist. You too can be an Ashland. Right. And a Republican. I want to point out that, you know, these are not exactly household names, but that seems to me to be the entire point of your piece, right? Like, these guys are working behind the scenes at the local levels, at the state levels of the GOP to try to get in, you know, and become sort of the

a part of these what have generally been mainstream apparatus. How successful have they been? How pervasive are they like within the Republican Party within our political system? Republicans for National Renewal, of which Shane is the Kresswoods director, of which Captain Wax used to be, or maybe still is, the national spokesman, and of which Alexander Nelson was the Oregon director. They are invited to fly out to Hungary for the U.S. elections. I mean, you know, is giving speeches to Orban at CPAC in Hungarian media and the English translation of Hungarian media, Wax was labeled as an organizer of CPAC, Hungary. And I don't know what extent that is true, but I know if Hungarian state-sponsored media,

where it said in English, it's for a reason, because they want an English-speaking audience to at least believe it or think it. The caucus that I was supposed to recruit MacGaids into was the America First Caucus, which somebody who was not me leaked it to the press in April of 2021. It was widely condemned. Marjorie Taylor Green and Paul Gosa, who knew about it, pretended they had never heard of it before. R&R was at least connected enough to a real ethic that this was something that they could do, and they actually had support of elected officials. They had these big parties, Attorney Point USA, James O'Keefe is there, and Jack Sobeak is there, and Anthony Sabatini, and elected officials come to their events. And it seems to be working. It seems like they are having some degree of success, because everybody kind of knows who they are. worried that they are toxic or too extreme. They're just accepted. Yeah, I mean, that's, I think,

the most frightening part of everything you've written is just how sort of, for the most part, except for the, you know, maybe like Alexander Nelson, but the rest of them are generally pretty much, they are sort of like becoming the new establishment. It almost feels like maybe that's overstating it, but it feels like we're going down that path a little bit. Yeah, I'll say when I was at the Republican Convention's past weekend, had to vote for their national positions and the Maga caucus lost, overwhelmingly so. That's good. Yeah.

And of course, some of those votes were political, just like they didn't like the girl who was running, you know. So we're maga people or, but in some cases it was also they're not extreme enough for us. So, you know, it kind of like it depends. Yeah, that was pretty rare though. But you know, a lot of people were upset. Carrie Lake was a speaker at the event. People were upset by that. Ukrainian immigrants, a lot of the vote Republican.

to have your party deny Ukraine's rate to exist is difficult. It's difficult to match that. Having Carrie Lake come in and talk about how she won her election and things were stolen from her, just falsehoods. People don't like it. They don't like to look crazy. As much success as these people are having, something has to split in the Republican Party. Something has to change because too many people are too unhappy with the section of the party that's just not living in this world. So I don't know. It's hard. It's hard. It's hard to say. Okay, yeah. I mean, look, that's at least a tiny bit encouraging, which I'm always, I'm always up for something like that. Since the article dropped, have you gotten any responses from the guys you wrote about? Well, Gavin yelled at me twice. He gave me twice. The other people who were talking to me at the Republican convention, he yelled at them. He said I was Antifa, that this was young Republicans, not young Antifa. I was not welcome. But, you know, no, and I've written about Shane in the past and Gavin as well, and they won't ever respond to requests for questions.

comment, not for me, not from an editor. And so, you know, I don't really expect that. Sometimes they'll do a little press release about me. New Yorker Republicans Club is that a press release is calling me a leftist troll. Shane, he still runs this little blog or whatever he does. And he'll write about me, you know, like I'm the Antifa, you know, collaborator or whatever he has to say. So I expect something like that will drop about me. But they are generally afraid to say anything to me, I think. I mean, certainly when I walked into the Waldorf, sat at a table with Nelson after I was docs and he knew who I was. I don't think he was expecting that. So they are not operating the same way that I am. Yeah. To be clear, are you denying that you are a high level,

covert operative, and possibly a board member of Antifa? Well, I can I confirm or deny that, to be honest to you. Oh, okay. All right. Fair enough. Fair enough. Now that I think about it, that was a, that was a silly question because of course you wouldn't be allowed to talk about it you were at january 6th right i sure was were you there undercover or were you just there more as like uh just at that point where you just like a journalist like wanting to see what was going to happen i got to one of the rallies and i like was recording the audio for a podcast that you know they were like oh i know you're crazy and you're going to go anyway can you just now we'll buy the off oh okay but like uh and they have been been very much this was in the december rally they'd been like you have to wear a bath and like an hour in

I'm like, bro, I can't wear a mask. Like, I'll get my ass beat. Like, this is not unsafe, you know. And so truly being undercover was probably the only way to be at the events without a lot of concern. So, yeah, I was, I bought a shirt because, you know, January 6 had merch tables. I set the 26 merch tank. I bought a Biden, not my president shirt because I was like, I can't bring myself to wear Trump stuff. But like, this is like, whatever I can do this. And, you know, I was wearing that. But yeah, I was recording everything. So it was kind of like a little bit of both. I thought I would just go and kind of be there and maybe write about it afterwards. They didn't really plan to interact with anybody directly.

Gotcha. But all these guys that were talking about, the Treyhos, the Nelson's, whatever, what did they have to say about that day? Because I found that interesting. January 6th was a real 1776 shit. That's what it was. That's what Shane said. And Nelson and I talked about how it was so sad because he really had these people were going to re-rich themselves. He thought when, like, feds come to arrest him that they were all going to stand.

their ground the way that they had stood their ground on the six. Of course, that is not what happened. To be clear, he wanted them to Ruby Ridge themselves. Oh, yeah. He said he called his parents that night. It was like, this is what's going to happen. It's going to be great. Yeah. And so that was, I guess, a bummer for him. Of course, he did not go inside the Capitol as far as I'm aware. When I went to Portland to watch the Proud Boys ride with him, he did tell me, like, these are the foot soldiers, the Proud Boys. They're supposed to sacrifice their bones and bodies for us, the Anglos. And that would have been, you know, how we found about January 6 as well. Like, these are the people who, this is their role or they're the useful idiots that go inside and

they do it for us, but we're the ones who are actually going to be in charge. Amazing. Amanda, thanks so much for being here. Everybody check out her piece at the nation where she writes about this and keep an eye on all these names that she's mentioned because, unfortunately, at least in the case of some of them, we haven't heard the last of them. Amanda, thanks again for being here. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Danielle Moody? Andy Levy.

So, all right, let's close out this lovely debate week. Who is your fuck that guy? Well, it is a favorite of the show and of mine, and by favorite, I mean, I hate her. Marjorie Taylor Green. And I know, Andy, you're going to think, what did she do this time? You can't imagine, and that's pretty much how I feel.

But Marjorie Taylor Green, according to the Guardian, says that she, quote, knows. Her name is on, quote, on a list of possible picks as vice president and Donald Trump should he win the Republican nomination next year. Is she written on the list in crayon? Is it an invisible ink? Is it in catch up, you think? How does Marjorie Taylor Green, the tin foil princess herself, find herself on this list? Here's how. She has waited on tarmacs for Donald Trump and been asked rightfully by after standing on a tarmac for hours. She kisses his ass anywhere that it shows itself and it shows itself.

She ushered in Kevin McCarthy to be the Fisher Price Speaker of the House by holding up a telephone with Donald Trump on it on the other end on the floor. She is the Maga Handmaiden doing the bidding of the Grand Wizard Donald Trump. And so is it shocking to anyone that she may be on the short list? Does anyone believe that Marjorie Taylor Green should be anywhere near anybody's oval office instead of a padded room? No, they absolutely don't. And I think that if Donald Trump, who I believe is just, you know, sunseting,

if he actually believes that putting Marjorie Taylor Green is going to be what puts him over the edge, he's right, the edge of a fucking cliff. The woman is an anvil. So one can only hope. He ties it tight to his ankles. This is where I sort of get into that. Be careful what you wish for mode. Because part of me is like, oh man, I hope he picks her.

Because I think, yes, she's popular with the same people he's popular with. So that's a wash. Right. It gets you nothing. It gets you nothing. And it probably turns off people who, for some reason, aren't even convinced. I'm talking about like some sort of moderate who isn't convinced that Trump is worse than Joe Biden, but would look at a Marjorie Taylor Green and be like, okay, this woman is just straight up crazy.

So part of me wants that. And then the other part of me is like, again, be careful what you wish for. This was a thing a lot of Democrats tried in 2016 when they were like, oh, please dominate Donald Trump because he'll never win. So yeah, I think the country's probably better off if she is never of Isis. presidential nominee. But I don't know. I'd go back and forth on it. But either way, fuck that guy. Fuck her. Fuck that guy. Fuck all of them. So as we close out this glorious mug shock week, fucking debate week, just the end of summer, the end of democracy, whatever you want to pick. Andy, who is your fuck that guy to close out this good, good week? So you touched on it a little bit when we were talking about the debate, but Donald Trump did his

little counter-programming Wednesday night. On Tucker Carlson's Twitter show, are we calling it a show? Feels weird. Webcast. But Tucker Carlson's been doing these little interviews using Twitter to host his video. So that was Trump's counter-programming. And I will straight up say I did not watch it. Because no offense to The Daily Beast, I don't get paid enough to watch that. Nobody in the world gets paid enough to watch Tucker Carlson sit down with Donald Trump. So that aired. I was reading through Nikki Ramirez's piece at Rolling Stone, Tucker's first question for Donald Trump, who's running for president, was, do you think Epstein killed himself? Eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh. I was like, really? That's your first question? And then as Ramirez reports,

Carlson insinuated that Bill Barr, who was Trump's attorney general, had some kind of role in covering up Epstein's assassination. By her account, it went downhill from there. And then today, Trump comes out and says that the interview got over 100 million viewers. I forget his exact quote. He said, looks like the Tucker Carlson interview will end up with an over 100 number. Wow. Let me explain why that's not true.

I know you're going to be shocked to hear that that's not true. But it's not true. The video itself has, it does have 150 million views. How many of those are from Don Jr.? Just, okay. Well, we have to understand that that number refers to anyone who saw a tweet. that had that video linked to. So you could just be innocently scrolling through Twitter,

although these days there's nothing innocent about scrolling through Twitter, but you could just be minding your own business scrolling through Twitter, and a tweet comes through whether it was Tucker's original tweet or from someone else giving the link. They count that as a view. So obviously, let's not pretend that everyone who saw that tweet watch the video. Let's not pretend that 5% of the people that saw that tweet watch that video. And as Forbes reported, as of Thursday morning, the video itself had 148,000 retweets and a half million likes, which is if 150 million people watch that, those numbers are pathetic.

So let's assume that this number was nowhere near 150 million, and probably I'm going to say was nowhere near the number of people who watched the actual debate last night. So my fuck that guy goes to Tucker Carlson and it also goes to Donald John Trump. And yeah, I think that pretty much sums it up. Their equivalent of tens of millions or hundreds of millions of views is Donald Trump telling the rest of us that there were millions of people at his inauguration. Yeah, exactly. Right. We all have eyes, Donald. Fuck those guys. Fuck them.

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