The Daily Signal - BONUS | Brandon Straka Explains Why Americans Are 'Walking Away' From Democrat Party

Episode Date: March 6, 2023

Brandon Straka is the founder of the #WalkAway Campaign. Straka joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" from the Conservative Political Action Conference to explain why he and many other Americans have made the decision to leave the Democrat party. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Walkaway is a movement of people who have woken up to the lies and deceptions of the liberal left of the Democratic Party and we're walking away. This is a daily signal bonus episode. My name is Jared Steppman. You just heard me speak to branded Straca of the hashtag walkaway project here at the CPAC conference in Washington, D.C. Straka, of course, has founded a social media group for former liberals and canceled Americans so they can gather together and talk about the issues that really matter. Stay tuned for my conversation with Brandon Straca right after this. Looking for quick conservative policy solutions to current issues from America's outpost here in Washington, sign up for Heritage's weekly newsletter, The Agenda.

You'll get top conservative research, a rundown of important events happening here at Heritage that you can watch online and hot takes from our experts. Sign up at heritage.org slash agenda or at the link in the show notes. Hello, this is Jarrett Stepman with The Daily Signal. I'm here with Brandon Straca, who is the founder of the hashtag walkaway campaign. And here at CPAC, they're going to be doing a relaunch of the hashtag walkaway campaign. Brandon, can you explain what this is? I know it's an organization devoted toward transitioning many liberals to conservative views, so to speak.

Can you explain what this is and how you're helping many former liberals transition? Yeah, we're, yes, we're providing affirmative care for people who are transitioning. Yeah, no, it's not that type of transition, actually. Walkaway is a movement of people who have woken up to the lies and deceptions of the liberal left, of the Democratic Party, and we're walking away. And we're not doing it quietly. We're doing it very loudly. And we're encouraging other people to do the same. And so I launched it in 2018, which was about a year.

after I walked away myself. And when I walked away in 2017, the one thing that really just sort of struck me and shocked me a little bit was there was no community of support. It was really rough. I mean, I lost most of my friends. I lost job opportunities. I lost family.

I lost all sorts of stuff. And I thought, I can't be the only person going through this. And like, why has nobody brought people together to support each other? And so in 2018, I created a Facebook group called hashtag walkaway campaign. I put out a video talking about all the reasons why I was walking away. And then I encouraged other people to make their own videos and upload them to the group and tell their stories. And two and a half years later, we'd grown to 510,000 people and tens of thousands of videos and written testimonials. And then in January of 2021, Facebook banned the walkaway campaign.

And so what we're doing right now is literally yesterday, we launched our own social. social media platform. This is something I've been working on for two years. It's been really exhausting and really soul-crushing, but we launched a walk-away social yesterday. And so this is basically an autonomous social platform that we own. It functions very similarly to Facebook and that people can create a profile and upload videos and written posts and long-form videos. They can join groups, and so they can come on our platform and join the testimonial group. their state groups, discussion groups, and different communities,

and they can once again upload their video testimonials and their written testimonials telling their stories. And, I mean, this is a very soft launch because we're here at CPAC. I'm going to start doing media. Well, I guess I'm doing it now. But I'm going to start, like, really doing press releases and stuff next week. But we already had over 1,000 people sign up yesterday, and we have lots of people already making videos.

So we're off to the races. That's wonderful. What do you find to be the thing that has pushed the most people? people. Where are the common stories you're hearing from people who were liberals who decided this ideology isn't for me? What do you find to be, is there any common trends or themes with these people? Hands down, 1,000% the media. It's not, that's not the only reason. And I'll give you some other examples, but overwhelmingly, the common threat is the media that people realize that they've been lied to, manipulated, exploited, betrayed. And that's a huge thing,

this feeling of betrayal once people realize that the media that they trusted has been using them and lying to them and deceiving them and manipulating them. And so that is kind of like the biggest catalyst, I would say. But then as the campaign was unfolding over the two and a half years before we were banned, it was interesting to watch how different waves of current, of social events and current events were influencing people's decisions. For instance, when the Democrats were going after Brett Kavanaugh, during the time when he was, you know, going to be confirmed. That brought, and sometimes you can't even explain why, but that brought a wave of people

who had been lifelong Democrats for a lot. I mean, we had a woman who was 93 years old, and she made a testimonial, and she said, I've been volunteering for the Democrat Party since I was 13 years old, and she said, I'm walking away. She was like, I see so clearly with this Kavanaugh thing that this is not the party from my childhood, you know, this party has changed and got on. off the rails. Then in 2020, when Black Lives Matter decided it was a good idea to burn the country to the ground, and the government decided it was a good idea to shut down everybody's

businesses and destroy everyone's lives, that brought this enormous wave of young people, particularly BLM. We started getting a lot of videos and written testimonials from people 24, 25, 26 years old, which is always very encouraging to see. And it's hard to know sometimes, like, why one would attract an older demographic or a younger demographic or maybe a black and Hispanic demographic. But it's just fascinating to watch as people tell their stories. Absolutely. I like your idea, you said, of creating a community for people so people feel like I have something I could go to because there may be very personal consequences for people choosing to walk away from the Democrat Party or walk away from their liberal views.

It's going to be among their friends. Or it could even mean something like what you spoke about recently on Twitter, which is being effectively canceled by your hairstyles. Can you talk about that? Because it's scary stuff because Americans are thinking there could be something like a social credit score in the United States. If I don't have the right views, it's scary to talk about this. It sounds like we live under a tyrannical regime. Right. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing that your listener should know is that on January 6, 2021, I was outside of the Capitol. I was actually scheduled to be a speaker at a permitted event on Capitol grounds. And I started hearing on text messages and things that people were going inside the building, which sounded pretty unusual to me. So I started shooting a video. And I shot a video of myself walking up onto the Capitol grounds on the east side, not the west side, where people were breaking windows.

I was on the other side. And I walked up to the stairs of the east side. And when I got there, the doors were open. There was a crowd of people amassed outside. Some of them were trying to walk in, and the majority were standing there shooting a video. I never entered the Capitol on January 6th. I didn't break any windows or punch any police officers. In fact, I didn't even see any police officers.

Nonetheless, I uploaded the video that I had shot to Twitter. And two and a half weeks later, my apartment was stormed by the FBI. They got me out of bed, put me in handcuffs, and took me to jail. And I spent a year working my way through a criminal case. They charged me, I mean, they threatened to charge me with felony obstruction of Congress. I mean, I was looking at like 24 years worth of charges. And so I took the plea deal that they offered me to plead guilty to a misdemeanor. And so I pled guilty to a Class B misdemeanor for disorderly conduct.

I got house arrest and some probation. I have served every aspect of my sentence other than the remainder of my probation, which will be up in another year and a half plus. So for whatever my crime was, I think that I've sufficiently paid my debt to society. Nonetheless, I have been permanently banned by PayPal, Venmo, Stripe, Patreon, multiple email services. I was banned from Facebook, Instagram. I was banned from payment processors, donor portals. I mean, it's astounding.

And these are permanent bans for which you cannot appeal. I mean, they tell you, you're done for life. We're not going to change our mind. There's no conversation to be had. You're canceled permanently. So last week I went to book an appointment with my stylist at a hair salon, and the receptionist said, well, that's odd. I can't book your appointment. Now, I've been through this enough times in the last couple years.

I was like, you've got to be kidding me. You've got to be kidding me. And I knew very quickly what was going on because the previous appointment that I had had, my stylist wasn't available, so they sent me to a different stylist, a man. And we started getting into a conversation, what do you do for a living? And we started talking about politics. And he told me, you know, he's a liberal and he doesn't like Trump and all these things. And that's fine. I don't care.

I mean, whatever. He can think whatever he wants to think. And I thought the conversation was perfectly pleasant and reasonable. And I told him that I had been arrested for January 6th, that I had gotten a misdemeanor charge. And we talked about all that. And I thought, again, the conversation was very reasonable. next thing I know the hair salon tells me you're permanently banned, you're not allowed for the rest of your life to book an appointment at any of our locations. And so I think at that point I was like, you know, very soon it will be two and a half years since my Class B petty offense misdemeanor charge.

And at what point is there, do we move past this? Like at what point am I allowed to send and receive money or have a bank account or get my money? haircut because I stood outside of the Capitol shooting a video for eight minutes. Like this is insanity. I mean this is like Salem witch trial kind of insanity. Absolutely. And also the collusion between various companies, organizations, excluding you from the normal function of society. I mean, you can't do basic banking, how are you supposed to operate? How are you supposed to live? And I think especially as, you know, which I think is great work by your organization helping other people who may be in a similar situation to you

And there may be more of them very soon, helping people say, hey, I need a support network because nobody else is going to. I can't go to the banks. I can't go to anything else. And I think that's incredible work you're doing. Thank you very much. And I'm happy to see your relaunch, your organization. It sounds like you're helping a lot of people make this transition, as we said at the beginning.

So thank you very much for joining us on the Daily Signal podcast. You're welcome. And if I could tell your listeners that they can find it at walkawaysocial.com. They can go there, sign up, see what's going on. It's also available on the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. Google is dragging their feet, releasing the app, but we believe it'll be out anywhere between today and the end of the week. But get on there.

And even if you didn't walk away from the Democratic Party, we always encourage people who are supportive to those who are walking away. We call them hashtag walk with. And we love for the walk with people to come on and also make their testimonials and talk about your values. Why you never were a Democrat and why being a conservative is important to you, what your values are. So walkawaysocial.com. Excellent. Thank you so much, Brandon, for joining us

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