Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng: The Groypers Have Taken over Trumpland

Hello, and welcome to the board podcast. I'm Will Summer, your host here today. Sitting in for Tim while he's beachside in Mexico. Tim is back next Monday. All right, today, I want to bring you a guest.

I'm close with, I've worked with before. It's also in Suebsang, he's a senior correspondent at Zadeo,

a contributing writer at Rolling Stone and co-author of the excellent first Trump administration

and sort of underworld book, sinking in the swamp. How Trump's minions and misfits, Poison Washington. He's as obsessed with the MAGA underbelly as I am. And most importantly, we used to host a podcast together called fever dreams. Right now, a couple of people am in demanding kind of a fever dreams reunion.

So we got, you know, against his better judgment. Tim has brought us back together. It's also in Suebsang, Sven, welcome back to the podcast. I'm incredibly touched that you're having me on right now. And it will be a break from our older days of podcast.

And together, when we talked about basically like the gateway pundit exclusively, maybe a little bit of the White House and Alex Jones,

“but not sure if Jim Hoff is coming up today, is he?”

Well, you know, this is part of what's fun about the second Trump administration,

or what's daunting about it to cover, is it's a whole new cast of characters. This is the swamp you, you swim in as it were. So let's dive right in this morning, New York Times magazine has a story about trouble at the Heritage Foundation, sort of the key. Think tank in the conservative movement, although, I don't know, maybe not anymore.

Given the trouble there, you know, folks may remember for a few months now, heritage has been roiled by drama fights over everything from, you know, evangelical Christianity versus Catholicism fights over Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, and how close, you know, heritage is going to be in support of that, the white nationalists, the grippers, swim, what do you make of this?

I mean, there's a lot of accusations that the riot and Trump world is sort of being infiltrated by these racist grippers. I mean, what are you seeing out there? Well, it's one of these things where we talk about is being infiltrated, could be infiltrated, there is a takeover going on.

“I mean, I think it's, we're way past the point of trying to talk about this as a”

hypothetical or something that's going on in my mind, basically already has happened, is like, is Donald Trump being the leader of the free world literally the same, as say someone like Nick Fuentes, being elected president of the United States, no, not entirely, not necessarily, but when you look at the people who are running the show right now, the Republican Party, and we can get to heritage specifically in a moment,

but because of how closely linked they are to the Trump White House, you have obviously Steven Miller just making policy, basically having a blank check to write domestic policy in the United States during the second Trump era, and you have Donald Trump up there doing two minutes hate some of the most blatantly racist things I've heard in my entire life, not even coded or dog whistle, just completely like balls to the wall, racist against some

alleys and people like that anytime he wants to to the cameras in the off-law office, we have kind of reached a point where in my mind, it's like, okay, has the gripperism, has the anime Nazi style racism of the quote unquote new right or the new new new right,

“whatever you want to call it, has that taken over the mainstream elite of the Republican Party?”

Of course it has, it's kind of immaterial to me if someone like Nick Fuentes is or isn't deputy Chief of Staff and White House, Steven Miller's there, that train is left the station. That's a good point, yes, at this point you don't really need Nick Fuentes in the administration itself. You know, it's article from Elizabeth Serowski gets into the solidest purges happening at the Heritage Foundation, I mean, I think the Nick Fuentes stuff got

a lot of attention, but with this article, points out is that there's kind of been trouble there beforehand, and because this is such a key part of the conservative movement, you know, typically like we wouldn't be like, oh, what's up with the shake up at the think tank, but this is really sort of, as you said, hand in hand with the Trump agenda. Let me read a quote from a former staffer. Someone says, people would just get disappeared. There would be a weekend where you'd

come in and be like, wait, I'm sorry, how many people are no longer here? Staff members called it the Heritage Hunger Games. I mean, this is cutthroat stuff. What do you make of this?

Well, I like how these things are always described by the right and also the media as Stalinist

purges. I sometimes make this mistake too, but it's as if this is not a thing that the right wing often does like disappearing their own people. For some reason, they have to link it to some sort of like mythical communist aggression or something, but I digress. This has been building for quite some time, because there's so many features within Heritage Land and other places of the conservative elite where there are a lot of like older types who are kind of trying to cling to this more

respectable kind of bigotry, where the veneer, the patina plausible liability, is still on there,

bookie man they want to cling to. They are constantly bumping up against these once in

“surgeons and now I would argue dominant figures who just think that, okay, we don't need any of”

that veneer. We don't need any of the plausible deniability when it comes to these things that you might consider gauche or bigoted or racist. We're just full throttle embracing it. So of course, they're going to be people picked off here and there when someone like Kevin Roberts, who is very attuned to where the conservative movement is headed. Whatever else you can say about his management style or his ideology or anything else, he is someone who understands where the energy,

particularly among young Republicans is. So that's mostly what I make of it when you hear about all of these quote unquote Stalinist purges. They are actively trying to backfill and get on board

with where the movement has already gone. Now, we can get more into specifics about this in

moment. Am I saying every single rank and file Republican voter or conservative movementarian is a die in the world, Nazi? No, of course, that's not what I'm saying. But they have reached a point where the overturned window has been so completely shifted on these issues of race, die, immigration, you can go down the entire list where, yeah, like, there's no need for

“plausible deniability anymore. Does that make sense? Yeah, I mean, I think there's this challenge”

that the right faces, which is that they struggle to, or frankly, sometimes they don't care to, there's no way to like criticize people to the right without looking sensorious, like you're doing cancel culture. You know, we've seen this with people like Candace Owens, these people with crazy ideas, and then when Ben Shapiro gets up, and he says, I don't know if we should be implying Charlie Kirk's widow murdered him, or, you know, people like saying, I don't think we should

be getting into, you know, pizza gate type conspiracy theories, whatever, people say, well, you know what, you know, you're doing kind of like a PC cancel culture situation. And so, you know, I'll give you an example here. So, Heritage found this, it's helping this whole embryo after Tucker Carlson, you know, hosted Nick point his on his podcast last fall, and then they did this kind of weird thing where they like took down their page about sponsoring Tucker Carlson's podcasts,

“and then they put it back up, and they were like, actually, we love Tucker Carlson, we kind of”

come in Roberts, put out this weird video. By the way, I have to say Kevin Roberts, he has like a little like swagnier than the average think tank president in sort of like a maga code. In this article, he's wearing alligator cowboy boots, he's an interesting character. And so he's asked about this Fuente thing, and why he like kind of tied himself to Fuente's and Tucker in a way he didn't even really have to. And he says, you can't have a governing coalition if you're saying, I'm not

even going to talk to people who occasionally listen to a podcast by someone who's a total goofball. That doesn't mean that we endorse what that person says, we endorse trying to convince these people of what's right and what isn't right. So, you know, you can see this thing where he's he's like, I'm not platforming this guy, I'm not like welcoming him in, although you kind of are right when you're saying he's essentially part of this governing coalition. So it's his weird thing, and this is where

these these really like extremist elements get inside the party, and it seems like these guys don't really care, essentially. Now totally. And when you just go down the list of people who're serving in these elite positions, whether it's in Maga or right wing thing tank or all, or the Trump administration itself, like not just counting the big names, but the more obscure,

but but bizarrely powerful figures in Trumpland and in the federal government right now,

they are these type of people who might as well be edge lords on the internet. I mean, this is just one of many data points that I point to when I try to tell people how bad it is, what I'm constantly reporting on what's going on, the West Wing or what's going on in the bowels of DHS or wherever else in the government. More so than any other noun that I hear when I'm picking up a phone or messaging people working within the federal government right now, the number of times I have to

hear the R word on any given day or any given week is intense. Like I try to do my day today work as a political reporter without using it, even a censored version of it in my copy, they damn well make it near impossible because they're constantly using that not to mention other slurs. That's so interesting. That's very interesting. And I mean, just to be clear, I mean, you're talking about like retarded, right? Yes. Yes. Or yeah. So retarded. Retarded. Yeah.

You know, Ben Shapiro was getting into that risk just recently. He was saying, you know, if I'm calling you a retard, I'm not, you know, talking about, you know, disabled people. That's very interesting that you're just constantly encountering that in your reporting. Yeah. Yeah. The pension for vice-signaling with this version of the Republican Party, this iteration of the federal government is so repatious, so constant that is that a symptom

of the policies that are constantly opposing or does it feed into it and intensify it.

Well, you know, just before we move on to another topic here, let's give another couple examples. So you have this clash with the heritage foundation. You have these guys like from the 80s and 90s who are there to talk about trickle down economics. They're to put out white

“papers. And now they're encountering this new breed. And what has agadron these younger people?”

So we've got a former heritage analyst said he's willing to debate policy. What he wasn't willing to do was sit here and discuss whether the Holocaust happened or not. Oh, that's great. You know, he's talked about a new hire who claimed that Glenn Maxwell's father, the publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell, bought all the history books in the United States and put

in essentially a fake Holocaust story on them. So a little Holocaust denial there. And then finally,

debates over World War II became popular in heritage with a lot of quote rehashing and going through who is the bad guy and who are the good guys. We're getting this a lot on the right. You know, Tucker Carlson famously had the guy who was like Churchill was the ultimate villain of World War II. What's up with the rehashing of World War II? What do you think's going on there? I've the guy can guess, but I'd be at a roots of your perspective. First of all, before we get into that, I want

back into that a little bit because the former Harry jealous who's saying I will debate policy all day,

“but I won't debate these things. I have to quibble with that. What do you think they're talking about?”

What they're talking about is very policy related. All of these bigotries, all these insane conspiracy

theory, mongering things that they're floating out there, that doesn't just have a direct downstream

consequence to the policies that things like the Trump vancid administration are pumping out, including with its younger sex. That is the policy that translates into it. What is the fundamental or substantive difference between that level of conspiracy theory brain and what the federal government is doing in its entirety, under Donald Trump, to try to tilt elections in Donald Trump's favor and try to corrupt free and fair elections in the United States is all based on conspiracy theory

mongering and bullshit that just is as true as a lot of the other stuff that that heritage former heritage guy was sounding so distrustful of. So like, you know, please fucking spare me. But to your question about, okay, what do I make of all of this World War II revisionism? I don't know, man. Like you and I, we're little naive and a little lib-brained here. So we might consider the bad guys in World War II to be the Nazis, right? The fascists side. I don't know who are they going

after, man. Doing that whole thing. They don't like Churchill. They don't. Well, it kind of the argument briefly is that like it's sort of like, you know, if you only gave Hitler what he wanted, there wouldn't have been a World War II. What exactly was it that he wanted? So, you know, before we move on to it, I do want to say, obviously you've done a lot of elbows. Let's say at the Magabars. You've been out in the, you know, with these characters in the past. What is

the mood as, you know, as we were talking about, these heritage foundation kind of, Trump will characters, Trump will hangers on, you know, whatever. What is the mood in Maga D.C. these days in the second Trump administration? Well, before we end that, I don't want

any of your listeners or cues me of dodging a question. The answer is, those people don't

like Jews and they don't like Communists and they don't like minorities and they don't people like people, they labels communist. So, there you go. It's a pretty straightforward answer. They're not having an intelligent historical debate of like, was Stalin evil, did Churchill and the Bricks behave like the Nazis in India. They're not doing that. I guess that's

“number one. Did you have anything clever to add on that or does that mean something to all of?”

So, you know, you are familiar. You're someone who's been out in the Maga Nightlife. You know, these characters. What is the mood right now in, in sort of second Trump administration, Maga D.C. Well, the thing that looms larger than anything, I would have to say is Trump's illegal war on Iran right now. I'll put you here like this for so much of the past a couple of years, starting with the 2024 campaign, but also with the formation of the new Trump White House under

the watchful eye of chief of staff Susie Wiles. There was this sort of self-created myth apologizing that Trump would constantly put out including in the conversations with reporters, including but not limited of course to people like myself, where they would say it's like, okay, obviously there are leaks in this administration that happens with literally every federal government but compared to the arterial spray, the geyser of press leaks and backstabbing and backbiting

that you had with Trump term one, particularly within its earliest years. We're running a really tight ship here. Like the people here aren't gossiping as much on each other. There's more loyalty, there's more cohesion and look at this Trump White House. You know, Zee reporters, isn't it a lot harder to get good substantive, incredibly meaty, real-time leaks about this compared to when people like Steve Bennett and Redance pre-bus were running the show. For the majority of the past year and

half of Trump 2.0, that has been broadly correct. Yes, of course, there have been leaks,

things you're trying to sauce out, it has been significantly more difficult. For the majority,

“eye emphasize, of the past year and a half. The thing, not the only thing, the Epstein file”

stuff did have an effect on this, but the biggest thing that returned the quality and quantity

of leaks from senior officials to political reporters in a way that really does remind me of the first

year of Trump's first term is the Iran War, because it broke open features and tensions and disagreements within the upper upper echelons of the Trump administration that not even the Epstein files debacle did. It led to a lot more concerned about, is this the thing that actually brings down the second Trump presidency among the Krendelachrim. I'd tell you about like the upper across of Margalen. It led to more backstabbing and leaking against one another when people were

trying to say, "Oh, don't blame me, blame this guy." And that's continuing to this day. So it ramped up, not just among Trump, but many of his senior lieutenant's and cabinet officials, the amount of paranoia that it's kind of like, that was only gurgling beneath the surface, mostly the past

year and a half. And it's just brought it back in a way that it's like, "Yeah, okay,

yourself mythologizing about what a tight ship Susie Wilde is running." That is primarily out the fucking window. And it is made a lot of these guys super depressed. I know how much bull work, readers, and viewers care about the well-being and self-care and mental health of senior Trump officials. It has fucked them up in a way that is genuinely nudity of covering this for the past 18 months, however many months it is, to the point where, and I've done some

reporting about this at the tail and recent months, no matter how much public bravado these guys put on. If you talk to people like, say, Pete Hegse, or Steven Miller, or you talk to people who talk to them, if those guys are just going to lie to you through their teeth, those people will tell you in the privacy of their own phones, or homes, or whatever, that people like Hegsef, Miller, and other top-top senior officials are genuinely worried about accountability. If the Democrats

take back power, or once they're out of power and Trump is out of office, even if he gives them

“a whole raft of preemptive federal accordance, which I think we all know he's going to. He's already”

had conversations about it internally. They're worried about lawsuits. They're worried about capital investigations, local and state prosecutors. The list goes on. It is something they're viscerally worried about, and the Iran War is one of many components that have fed into that. This whole veneer of supposed invincibility that the Trump White House has been trying to put forward this swagger for the past almost a couple of years. It is built on fiction. Some of these

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You know, speaking of things Democrats might look into New York Magazine has a new article yesterday about trouble in the Trump family's crypto empire. We've got Justin Sun,

crypto company, featuring the Trump Suns, Zach Whitkoff, the son of Trump Middle East on voice Steve Whitkoff, a couple other interesting characters, guy named Chase Harrow, who is a self-described dirtbag. These are the kind of people you want in who president businesses, guy named Zach

“Zach Folkman, I believe, a former pickup artist. And so essentially what Justin Sun is”

alleging in his lawsuit here is that, see, Whitkoff's son and the pickup artist fellow, the dirtbag guy, they told them world liberty ahead of the election, they said, you know, we're going to make, you know, the Trump gets to be president, there's going to be an interesting investment opportunity. We're going to make this whole new financial system essentially for people who have been debanked, punished by the main banks for, let's say, involvement in things like January 6th. So little things.

So this is going to be a whole new banking universe. And so he puts all this money in, look, I don't think, I don't know, that Justin Sun's motives were entirely pure. He was just trying to, you know, be an honest financial investor here supposedly. So he says, today the thing I regret the most is not only that my money got stuck, but that my name is on the project. I believe many other people also got hard. Who the thought going into the business with Trump family, Steve Whitkoff,

might not work out so well. So essentially, here's the argument. He says they had this innovative

crypto company, this is how the crypto companies always go. And so instead, they take this money,

these innovations never come out. They launch a stable coin, which is a cryptocurrency pegged to a dollar. And, you know, the actual dollar is back in the stable coin, going to treasury bills. So the people running the company like Steve Whitkoff's son, they can essentially just reap the interest on the treasury bills, whereas the people like Justin Sun who had bought the coins, they get nothing. And so this money is stuck with Coff, et cetera, are just taking this money in.

What is it that drives people to invest in a business with the Trump family? Isn't it inevitable that they'll get burned? I love the way you ask these questions, as if you're like

“George Stephanopoulos. As if there isn't just one correct answer. No, you should show this much”

money. Okay. Something that kept recording me as I was reporting on this iteration of Trump's West wing, is that different aids and officials would tell some version of the same joke to me over the past. Let's just say 12ish months. They've been telling me, you know, a funny thing about this term, about Trump to point out, is that he will leave the White House. President Trump will leave the White House and be a real billionaire for the first time is in his entire life. Meaning

what they're referring to is all the different ways that he and his family have been allowing people

to, and also taking, honestly, let's just be clear, but also allowing so many different powerful

interests just to shove as much money as possible into their family coffers and in their pockets simply because of the Trump family's proximity to power of the most powerful man in the entire world and also just Trump just reveling in it. He has told people privately that he was stupid to have left so much money on the table when he was serving his first term. Everybody does it. What didn't you? There's nothing wrong with it. That's how he thinks. Because, of course, as we know

about Donald Trump, he doesn't really see a line between the public good and his own good. That's kind of like the morally-depraved capitalist we're working at with the game show aristocrat in power. So, there are a couple of things I think about constantly with all these people who are just rushing day in and day out to shove as much money into Trump's families. Pockets as possible.

“You remember that stupid meme coin was at the Trump meme coin, the Melania meme coin that he did”

right at the start of January 2025, basically. It was this thing where just in and of that one little coin, you talked to a lot of good government experts and they were not exaggerating when they say just that one action at the very very start of his second administration made him the most foreign way hands down corrupt president in American history. And that was literally one thing

he's done. There's been roughly a billion things in the cavalcade that's followed in the past

year and a half. I remember doing reporting on that coin where Trump was telling people at Marolago at that stage in the new Trump vansera. He was telling people including Republican lawmakers on capital Hill that you got to get in on this. It's all a scam. It's all a joke for these people and not only is Trump and his goons is family just robbing people blind. The scariest part of it is that I think the vast majority of robbing they're doing right now, these people are letting them do it.

They're happily doing it because if you get a chance to pay a bribe, why wouldn't you? I feel like over and over and this is especially the case in crypto, but kind of in Trump world more broadly. There are these people who kind of like get up to some scheme with someone in the administration or someone in Trump world and then they end up getting screwed and they're like "Wait a minute, we were supposed to be scheming together." I think of my mind instantly jumps

of course to the rapper, Boosey Badass, who supposedly paid extremely fringe, Trump World

You're wedding. You're saying where is my pardon? It's one of these things where it's like

“"Wait a minute, why you can't be buying a pardon in the first place. You're not supposed to be,”

but I'm sure in this world, you kind of can't." Okay, so this just in something. I thought this quote sounded up perfectly. So this is from the article. Outside investors, including son,

always seemed to lose while company insiders, always won. I thought surely these people would not

do what they did with such a public profile attached says son. Welcome to 2026, man. You know, the idea that like I surely thought someone associated with the Trump administration wouldn't do something shady for his own personal benefit. I thought the threat of a scandal would hold them off. This is just crazy stuff to me. Sorry, buddy. No, I mean, it's a perfect metaphor for all the other stuff where universities or different institutions or law firms try to cut deals with Trump

early on in this administration be like, "Oh, please leave me alone. We'll shove these millions of dollars into your fake stupid library fund or something else." And will you please just leave

“us alone? Let us get in on the con. That is the Trump vans era. And you know what Trump is doing”

with these guys? He's common after them anyways with the full weight of the federal government.

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he's sort of a, I described it in false flag this week as an idiosyncratic conservative colonist and J.D. Vance buddy. He has fallen out with J.D. Vance. Think we have a clip to play from the his appearance on the Jeremy boring show. I had hoped that J.D. Vance would be the guy. What do you mean Europe trends? For, yeah, it was an interview I did with him in 2016 for the American conservative that launched his political career. It was an accident, but it went mega viral

and boom. He was suddenly a bestselling author. We stayed friends after that. I don't know that we're friends anymore. He cut me off after I went to visit late last fall to talk to him about this very thing. Now, I'm not going to disclose our conversation, but I will just say that I pointed out to him these people, the flintest, the groy person who are going to destroy conservatism in the Republican Party. And I said to him, because of your background, because of your age,

your uniquely position to draw a red line there. Say, no, we are not going to accept that. And I asked him to do it. It's not my position to say what he said, but I will say firmly. Unequerically, I do not think J. D. V. Hans is an anti-Semite. I do not think he's a racist at all, but I've written a couple of things since and calling on him, please, he'll later take a stand. You know, take a stand for your own

Christian beliefs for your own wife, but he hasn't chosen to do it.

Presumably, he wasn't born five hours ago. And we're not even talking about

like the new anime Nazis who are animating the current 17 to 22-year-old Amaga college grassroots or whatever. I'm talking about just like the more old school, quote unquote, conservative movement that he's been a part of, presumably for decades.

“Does he think any of these individuals are woke about Jews?”

Does he think the American conservative movement particularly likes American Jews, who are by and large supermajority, left wing, or left leaning? It astounds me whenever these guys go up to figures like J. D. Vance. It's like we need to draw a line and stand and have the conservative movement be super friendly and woke towards Judaism when literally everything else on the menu.

When you're talking about religion, ethnicities, minorities, everything is on the be as antagonistic or at least unfeeling as possible. Rapture is not even Jewish, right? Yeah, that's right. So if he doesn't want to hate Jews, I have a very few positive things to say about Roger, but that is objectively a good thing. What movement does he think he's been

“a part of for decades? Well, and you know, Rapture is an interesting guy. He's a guy who's down”

in Louisiana who's a sort of, you know, all these kind of like proto-fascist quasi-fascist movements have a sort of these eccentric intellectuals who end up, you know, kind of being horrified, you know, when the brown shirts take over and say, you know, Roger, he loved Victor Orban. He moved to Hungary. He had like a very kind of tortured personal saga with his wife because he moved to Hungary because he was, you know, Victor Orban's administration really embraced him.

You don't see it so much anymore that Victor Orban got thrown out, but Roger was really kind of the vanguard of like America should be like Hungary, which, you know, I don't think really caught on.

But basically he was living out there and, you know, again, I mean Victor Orban was this kind of

extreme nationalist kind of fascist figure. And now for Roger, he was enjoying the European life, the famous picture of him, you know, slurping up oysters, making the soy face where you go like, "Oh, you know, I love it." And now he's left Hungary, you know, there's a new administration. He's coming back to the US and sort of saying, "I don't really like what I, what I helped birth." He's the source of this figure that supposedly 20 to 30% of the young

GOP staffers or grippers. One thing I, you know, I want to talk about is the, what we talk about, like the rise of this racism, this kind of this Fuenteism, whatever, in the young GOP. It's not necessarily that all these people are watching Nick Fuente's every night that they're wearing the grippers shirts to bed or whatever. It's that, you know, there's this kind of like broader,

you know, you know, what is the Holocaust? Was that all, or those figures was six million,

really the figure, there's kind of this broader racism, you know, joking, plausible,

“deniability, anti-Semitism that I think is really called on. Right, to your point about someone”

like Roger, being like a polo by the brown shirts taking over, he just wants them to wear a lighter shade of brown, like he's been wearing for a long time. Like I, I don't see that many, the, the terrain of disagreement among these people is so vanishingly narrow, you can barely see it. But to your point about like, okay, when we try to talk more specifically and less in, I don't know if abstract is the right word here, but we talk about this kind of like intense,

not just anti-Semitism, but all kinds of tolerated bigotries, in this new kind of more in your face, Trump era form that has taken over elite institutions and sub-movements in the Republican Party and conservative movement. I completely agree with you that it's like, okay, are some of them like hardcore true believers on this stuff and that you or I or another reasonable person might characterize as, you're kind of like a national socialist here, sure,

of course. But I would wager that the vast majority of them sort of perform this sort of like footsie tolerance with it where they treat the occurrences of it as a college Republican back in the day, like decades ago, a millennia ago when you and I were high school or college age, where a college Republican chapter might have treated a catch on illegal immigrant or an illegal alien keger themed party during their time. You know, I mean like how people got in trouble for

that because obviously there was like an insane amount of racism to it or theme parties that might include someone slipping in in blackface. That person, whatever their politics would probably not be like, okay, yes, of course, I agree with all the politics of the original film, the birth of a nation, but there was a winking tolerance of that kind of hitchie racism where it was just like, this is, we're almost being ironic about it. Why are you being so politically correct? I'm just

where idiot young people come across with that. It's just that the problem is the overturned window

has been moved so far to the far right that their version of that is like floating with things like

“holocaust denial, which I think is a little bit different than cash and illegal immigrant”

keger parties as disgusting as those were. One of the Roger air thing I want to highlight from this interview, another figure he's fallen out with is Tucker Carlson and in part over demonic possession. Now, this is interesting stuff. So basically, Tucker famously claimed in 2024 that he had been attacked by a demon in the night, and he had woken up with scratches on his body. I think Tucker's skeptics say one of his many dogs just jumped on him, right? But he says he was wrestling with a demon,

and Roger air is very much like, that's real man, and so he had connected Tucker comes out that

he connected him with exorcists. Tucker said, you know, maybe I'll go down this road a little bit, you know, I'm too Protestant to get into exorcists. And Roger air is essentially said, don't worry, I got a Protestant exorcist for you too. Anyway, he didn't do the exorcism. And now, Rod is watching people like Nick Fuente is going on Tucker's show, and he's saying, you know, essentially like my god, the demon is taking root. And then Tucker talks about going hunting in spooky

forests in Maine. And Rod is watching the Robert Eger's movie The Witch. And he's saying, oh my gosh, this is the same thing that's happening. The forest witches are coming out of the forest demons

and infesting or, you know, taking over Tucker. So he seems to, you know, for some of these people,

the demons are very real and Jeremy Barnes, like, oh, yeah, absolutely man. So what would you say the role of the demons be belief in demons plays in Trump world? But you're all true, all true. You said nothing there that I transact as a lot. Okay. I have to admit that in recent years, I have been sort of slow to catch onto the demon craze and the demon panic, which is kind of just feels like a new iteration of the, the or whatever, the kind of fake kind of not fake satanic

panic of like, was it the 1980s or whatever, it kind of feels like a newer Gen Z or millennial iteration of that. I was a little slow to catch onto it and rolled my eyes at it a little bit being like, okay, I don't think that many people think of this. They believe in a lot of kooky, fake, highly destructive and bigoted stuff. But the demons thing. Okay. That's just not. I, I don't

“need to pay attention to that too much. I, you tell me if I am correct in saying that I think I was”

a little bit wrong and naive about that. I think that there are way too many performative, professional, right wingers and commentators in the broader magas fear or hard right movements in the United States who throw around like demonic possession as like almost like a litmus test, like if you're speaking the right language in the same way that like ultra-lefty DSA communities in the United States use the word praxis. It is a thing, right? Like, I'm not wrong to say that.

I'm like, no, I think that's real. I think it's sort of a sign of, you know, like I'm really, you know, because it's because it's something that can be made fun of too. It's almost like saying like abolish the police or something. Like you're sort of, you're, you're putting up a table stake, right? Like, when Rod Dreyer says, I, I took the demon seriously and then, you know, Jeremy Warren says, oh, me too. And, you know, I think the demon thing also marked a new level for

Tucker. You know, taking it back to the physical realm. You know, we got a new proof of life supposedly on Mitch McConnell yesterday. We got a picture. Once again, if him in the hospital being kind of right next to his wife, you know, maybe some might say, propped up, mostly. Now, Kentucky Governor Andy Bashir is demanding verbal proof that Mitch McConnell has a capacity to serve as a senator or he's saying either, or he should resign. What do you think of the Mitch McConnell situation?

What do you believe about his physical status? What's going on here? Have you ever seen a movie dead silence? No, I haven't told me more. It's been out since like George W. Bush was an office. I think if I'm spoiling it for anybody right now, turn off the audio now. The twist climax at the end is like the old, elderly, desiccated father has been a puppet operated by his wife the whole time. And that's the twist at the end of the movie. So whether or not that is what's having reality right

“now. It's the only thing I think of when I see all of these stupid images and photos of Mitch”

McConnell who's clearly not going to be around with us for very much longer. Like, look, I will leave the Senate Parliamentarian or someone else who is more well versed in these rules than I am. Just talk about if what he's doing is or allegedly doing is procedurally savvy, but Mitch McConnell clinging on for dear life at the end just so procedurally and tactically. He can

way he could possibly go out if he is an indeed close to being on death store. The second thing

I'll say about it since you're just asking me about my rent and thoughts about this whole thing that's been going on. I haven't been thinking about that much and I am not in the business of celebrating

“anybody's death. All I'm saying is what I think will objectively transpire on the internet and elsewhere”

in the United States. When Mitch McConnell finally goes, it will be a dry run and a semi-alachron. It'll be a tiny taste of what it will be like. The roars you will be hearing when a certain sitting president of the United States finally passes away. You made from from their their critics from the left. I'm not sure we've were emotionally prepared for the cacophony that we're going to hear when it's finally announced that Mitch McConnell's past.

When it comes to Donald Trump, idiom mean lived to be like a thousand and two. So I have been long ago as a Donald Trump who I'll live with me. On the topic of Mitch McConnell, our colleague

Andrew Eger has a theory that is gaining some traction in people are saying that basically Mitch

McConnell maybe is just laying low until the fight over the save act blows over. He doesn't want to get caught up between John Thun, Donald Trump. What do you make of that theory? Well, I would like to think that I think Mitch McConnell is a grandfather. I would like to think that he'd be a good enough grandfather that if he had a choice between okay, my days and maybe even hours are limited, I'm going to spend it with the people who love me instead of kind of trying to

figure out with John Thun about it. Okay, how do we figuratively, I guess, stop the mad king from locking our heads off because we won't try to rig every single election in the United States to his liking. I would like to think he'd be good enough grandfather to make that choice. Oh, I think he'll be scheming till his last day. He loves it. You know, I'm sorry. I've got it.

“That's a very sweet thought. That's why I think it is a hypothetical man. I think I'm more”

on your side on this, but good luck to you, McConnell. Sure. So on another topic, Andrew and Tristan Tate, the infamous man is for your figures. I know guys who inspired you a lot. They're no, I shouldn't say that. But they are currently in jail in Florida, you know, they're facing sex trafficking charges, rape charges, you know, even extreme pornography charges. All this stuff is a weight extradition to the UK. These are guys who, you know, twisted way, you know, had a friendship

with Baron Trump, with Dom Jr. They've talked to them positively. The Trump administration has intervened on their behalf in the past. Now, their lawyers are hoping that the Trump administration of Marco Rubio, who's kind of involved here, because it's an extradition, will step in and save them. So when what are you hearing if anything? I mean, you know, the administration's been saying, you know, they're essentially going to throw the tates under the bus and I'm going to help them

“on this one. What are you thinking is going to happen here? I think there's a very high probability”

that they do do that. I mean, they've got a lot of stuff going on, a lot of alleged in real crimes to cover up for, I think this ranks pretty low on the purer, you listen, at least right now. But we'll see what happens. I'm willing to eat my hat on that prediction. I think the scandal is too full that they already reportedly intervened on these guys's behalf.

Like, so significantly powerful offices in Trump's federal government. This wasn't like a little

thing that was done in the past. I don't think we have time to rehash the TikTok of that right now, but it's it's truly appalling. I encourage your readers to look it up. And I mean, I think we can get into it. I mean, basically, they're Paul and Gracie. They're former lawyer is a guy who's in the Trump administration of various roles. He also had a, you know, a speaking of gripperism, kind of a a pro Hitler text message leak that gotched his Senate confirmation to a role, but he's still around.

And, you know, he had intervened to get them their devices back after they were seized last year when they went to Florida. So they've helped them in small ways. But I guess you're saying that you think, you know, stepping in on an extra dish and it's probably going to be too much. Sure. But now the more I say it, the more I'm reminded myself of every time I say, oh, there's no way present Trump or this gang will do a thing. Probably eight to nine out ten times. I'm proven wrong.

I'm like, why did I ever, you know, fucking say that? But look, whatever they do what don't do, the scandal has already occurred. And it's too full because number one, then lifting a finger at all for these guys in the crops measly maga way that they did. It's both completely shocking and completely in keeping with the pattern of everything that the Trump vans administration does basically every minute of every day. And I think the other side of the coin at the scandal is that

I guarantee it that as plugged into politics as your subscribers are that there's a good chance many of them, if not most of them don't really know what we're talking about or haven't really heard of it. That's largely because in national media, it has gotten a shockingly thin amount of

thing, which I think would have overrun the priorities and agenda of basically any other administration.

It'd be broadcast on cable news constantly. It'd be a massive potentially White House doing scandal. It's just another day ending in why, another minute ending in the letter E. You can say that about so many outrageous and abuses and policy debocals of this administration, where you and I can just go down the list and be like, how is this not leading the networks and the paper every single day? Oh, that's because it's very under a mountain of literally dozens of

“objectively far worse things. And whenever I think of the Trump administration and the tastes,”

it's definitely falls into that category for me and think about it when we were working together at the Daily Beast in Washington, DC covering the first Trump administration. Don't you think you and I would be talking about this and be invited to talk about this on CNN or MSNBC a lot more than we have been. If this happened, didn't like 2018, it's just remarkable. It is striking that, I mean, these are like, you know, in the New Yorker or New York Times, it don't a lot of reporting on this

relationship. You know, they is striking. These guys are like the worst of the worst, really. You know, you're among, you know, all these allegations. I mean, these are rape allegations, you know, choking women into a pass-out and raping. I mean, twisted, truly twisted stuff. And yet, the administration has helped them, you know, Rick Granale spoke to Romani officials, suddenly the tastes were allowed to leave Romania. I mean, really vile people with, you know,

who are getting help from the administration, you would think it would be a bigger scandal. But as you said, there's so much going on, I'm going to talk about the tweets Andrews Tate has supposedly been

“sending from jail. I don't look. I think someone is kind of freelancing these tweets for him.”

I don't think he has a phone in there. He claims he's in jail next to a cannibal. Seems a little, no, seems a little untrue. I know, I know. I know, poor cannibal. Is the guy hungry? Yes, exactly. Oh, you know what? Then this other one had me cracking up on Monday. He said, for the people holding signs outside the jail, it's very high up here and the smaller signs are hard to read. I can feel every word. Thank you. You know, as though number one, it's a little like,

uh, thanks for showing up with the signs, but could you make them a little bigger? Kind of, could we get a couple people to hold a big sign so I can see it? But what striking here is, in fact, there was one guy, one, you know, that tweet would suggest for the mobs of fans. Am I read that? I thought, really? Is there a big contingent? No, there's not. There's one guy. I think his sign says that Tate's are heroes. And even then Andrew Tate's like,

your signs a little bait at that buddy. You know this world better than I do. What could the Trump administration beyond just a parent vice signaling, which is perhaps their top policy concern nowadays? Besides that, what could they possibly have gotten for kind of hitching themselves to the Tate brothers wagon and doing them any favors? In past eras and administrations, like when the Reagan administration did horrific things covering for like the butchers and

serial killer style generals of like Al Salvador, that was horrifying, but made sense because they got something out of it. There was a policy move in that part of the world where they wanted

“them to help the cons may, what do they possibly get this administration looking out for the Tate brothers?”

I mean, basically, you know, I think probably there is a shared misogyny as you said. I mean,

there is as you said, there is no true policy benefit, let's say. But I mean, I think there is the administration clearly has an interest in like promoting like a culture of impunity, when it comes to crimes against women, or, you know, sort of the idea that, you know, certain people are above the law. I think we've seen that with the pardons. We've seen the obviously Donald Trump's face sexual assault rate delegations. It doesn't really make sense, but and yet they've

done it before. I think also there's kind of a unique thing going on here with the UK where for so long there's this obviously very close relationship with the American and British right. And there's this sense that the UK justice system is like illegitimate somehow, like they didn't look into and off the, you know, immigrant sex crimes and that they they punish free speech and all this. So I think kind of specific to the UK, I mean, we've seen this Republican congressman

Abe Hameday from Arizona, the fellow with the, the very fancy office and the photo shoots with his interns. I think he's headed for a couple more, you know, interested in storylines. He came out. He's close with Rick Grinnell. He said, you know, the tates are, you know, we have to have this presumption of innocence, Paul and Gracia. Currently in the administration came out and said, you know, we've got to, you know, we have this presumption of innocence. We can't expedite these guys.

I guess the links are a lot more than you would like to see even if even if Rubio ultimately doesn't

step in here. I like it where the presumption of innocence is deployed when it comes to the Trump event administration. Like the people for which they're like, oh, that would be presumed to innocent do pass this. For some reason, it exists for basically no one else, especially if you've pissed off or annoyed Donald Trump. But, oh, for the tape brothers, if you're a guy on a boat in the Caribbean, you know, it's shoot on site. But for the tape brothers who have had literally, you know,

kind of if you're a trial in the UK. You know, on another note, you've recently posted on blue sky where

“you're active about a guy named a mom, I'm on solely mom who the Trump administration tried to”

disappear. Tell me about that story. Okay. So he was a guy who, by the way, I live in the Cincinnati Metropolitan area, go Bearcats. And this was a guy who worked at Cincinnati's Children Hospital for quite some time as a Muslim chapter. And he had a reputation in the area over years for being someone where people worked at the hospital, people worked in different communities, you know, faith, et cetera, et cetera. They would constantly say, this guy is the real deal. He's there

for parents and people, you know, oftentimes they're very worse situation when it comes to their children's or babies at Children's Hospital. Like, I would talk to people about this and so many

different people would say, like he's a living second. You know, they would use extreme terms like that.

So in 2025, and an ice facility that I can know is basically walking distance from where I'm

“sitting right now. He went in for regular check-in. They gave him no opportunity to appeal or deal”

within a ways that other governments and other administrations definitely would have given the situation you was dealing with. I don't have to rehash it now. I've got to take too much time. But basically, they just said, okay, now we're taking you to Butler County jail, which is a somewhat nearby Ohio jail and keep it there because they can't say it in these terms, but all of these different ice offices have their orders from Washington. They have their orders for Steven Miller's quotas

and their arrest quotas, they got taken in. So the community or certain communities, I don't know why I speak about it as if it's a monolith, but in the Cincinnati area, so many ordinary people organized constantly to stand up to the Trump administration's efforts to try to disappear this guy back to Egypt saying, here's someone we consider even a pillar of our community. We love him. You are not taking him without a fight. And the fight went on for quite some time. He was jailed

“at Butler County for extended period time. I think it was about two months. I forget exactly”

how many weeks congressman Greg's landsmen and people like that were looped in and did get involved pretty behind the scenes on this. And this was a guy who the Trump administration via their public communications from the Department of Homeland Security and also their arguments that are laughable, shitty, thinly sourced arguments in court. We're throwing so much at this guy, trying to paint him as a terrorist or terrorist sympathizer and as someone who needs to be cleansed

from the United States, they put a lot of effort and legal and political resources into getting this guy out. But the backlash in the resistance from ordinary Ohioans and others was so sustained and so strong that the administration did cry on coal. I'm not saying they might not come back to him later. But as of right now, he's been a free man for several months. And he told me last night that as of April of this year, he has been working again as a chaplain for try health doing what

he loves doing what he thinks that his faith and his God has put him on this planet to do. So the reason I've been following and reporting on this story so closely because it is just one of so many instances across this country, the vast majority of which we're you and I are probably

never going to hear about showing that resistance works. Trump, JD Vans, Malcolm Rubio, all those

guys control the federal government. They're going to win a lot of bounce. But it is an example of how when ordinary people just stand up across the country and say you will not get away with this without a fucking fight. It can work and it does work and it's it's such an interesting story of how community when they come up and stand up for each other every once in a while you can beat back the fascist behavior, whether briefly or permanently. You know what? I would love to just kind of

end it on there. You're a rare bit of good news. I was a happy story here and thank you for your reporting on it. You know, Swin can you tell people where to find you? I am very active on BlueSky. I don't tweet anymore. My k-hound is kind of on Twitter, X, whatever, zombified. But at Swin 24, you can find me on BlueSky. I post way too much there about the off-campus TV and book series. So come come for the Trump hell world reporting, stay for the the OC stuff as I like to call it.

And at zakao.com, where I'm the senior political correspondent, you can find my reporting there and the rest of the great work from Medi Hassan and the rest of the zakao crew. And of course, you can find me on my revamped version of fever dreams, which I'm plotting to cut will summer out entirely. Just to see, I'm going to see if I can host it with with Tom Hanks instead of Wilson. Wow. Well, that would certainly outshine me and star power. Well, thank you so much for joining us and

The board podcast is brought to you. Thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Lutz and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.