What felt like the literal longest primary in human history is finally over.

Thank god. That shit was getting dark. I wonder if politicians have actually gotten more vicious in public or if it just feels that way because we’re seeing more of their viciousness on social media. It defined this Michigan Senate primary — to the benefit of one candidate and detriment of the other.

Haley Stevens became defined by the weirdness she projected online. She was basically “quirk” incarnate, to a point that it almost looped back around to likability. Almost. Her concession contained an endorsement of Abdul El-Sayed some didn’t think would come.

He’ll need all the unity a fractured party can muster to counter the Islamophobia that was already hovering by the exit at his election night party. If you’re wondering how much there possibly is to say about the name Abdul …. a lot. Like a lot, a lot. But he’s clearly ready to meet that head on:

“They’re gonna point at me, they’re gonna point at my name, like, ‘Wow, he’s different.’ That’s the best you got? You can’t actually talk about what you want to do? My name is not raising your gas prices. My name is not taking us to war. My name is not the reason you can'’ afford your groceries. You know what is? Their BS policies.”

His victory press conference reaffirmed a commitment he made clear to me when we chatted in April: He will find a way to rotate any line of attack back to the issues he is prioritizing. We’re revisiting my sitdown with El-Sayed from April — for free, below! But first, I haaaad to comb through the celebrations and crashouts.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

GW: So, there’s something that a lot of politicians are doing now, picking three things and hammering them in. How long did it take for you to pick your three things and how front of mind was digital and social media when you made that decision?

AES: You have to campaign in the language that people are talking. Digital is part of that language. And so you have to be able to give folks, sort of, architecture to hang what it is that you’re trying to do on. I’m somebody who spent a lot of my career writing policy, and so I like to think in comprehensive, you know, full-bow tied around policy. It’s just not how people are really engaging with their work.

And if you can know nothing else about me, I want you to know those three things: I want to get money out of politics, put money in our pocket, pass Medicare for All. My goal is, you want to pay attention to me because I want you to have health care. That’s it. Like if you know nothing else about me, I really want you to have health care.

The idea that in this country, you can’t go see a doctor and not have to worry about medical debt, should be insane to everyone. It’s truly insane to me. And I find it a slap in the face, as someone who gave a large part of my life to being able to heal people. To know that it was because of dollars and cents in the richest, most powerful country in the world that is now dropping bombs on other people’s children with the money that we should be spending on health care.

Update: The drink menu at his victory party featured drinks named after — you guessed it — his three things.

Has there ever been a piece of content of yours that somebody’s come up to you and said, “I watched this video that you made, and it changed my mind?”

Burger video.

Really?

Yeah. And I tried to eat the whole burger, and I couldn’t, of course. But, like, also … no billionaire’s gonna spend all their money. That’s the whole point. So, like, if you tax a billionaire at 10%, 8%, whatever it is, they’re still going to have a whole lot of burger, and they still won’t be able to eat it.

And like, it’s wild to me that you got a lot of folks who can’t even afford their life. They’re like, “yeah, but like, you know, billionaires got to eat, though.” I’m like, billionaires gonna eat. Billionaires’ kids, kids, kids, kids, kids are gonna eat. Question is, are you gonna eat? And so I’m just trying to get people to see that question.

So among all of this, you’ve had in the past couple weeks — not just from your own party — from the Republican side, just zeroing in on one single thing that you’re doing, which is walking around and advocating for what you believe in with Hasan Piker.

Apparently got framemogged by Hasan Piker too.

According to the Free Beacon.

I’m a healthy 5’9. You know what I mean?

Right, and you’re proud to say that.

I’m proud to say that. But, you know, I like to think that my personality’s a good 6’7.

Why not? It’s the size of the fight in the dog.

Sometimes it’s also the size of the dog.

That’s fair. But that’s what Hasan’s there for. … The NRSC has tweeted about you 11 times since March 30th. [RNC Research] has posted about you 16 times.

I welcome their hatred.

You do?

I don’t fucking back down. So part of me says, you know — you talk about the size of the fight in the dog — I was like bring it. I love that attention.

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Even if they’re pairing you with what people would describe as Hasan’s maybe more inflammatory beliefs? [Like] “oh, he was for 9/11.” “He’s an antisemite.” Even if you’re always going to be framed alongside those messages, it’s still worth it?

Here’s the thing about it. In our lives, everybody knows people with whom they agree on some things and disagree on others. It’s a crazy thing that, in our politics, we don’t do the normal human thing, which is to be like, “Hey, love some of the things you say, and don’t agree with others.”

It’s like, imagine you got a sibling. All of us have siblings, and if you have siblings, your siblings say some crazy shit sometimes. Doesn’t mean you’re like, “I’m so sorry. I can’t be seen with you at Thanksgiving.” You’re like, “That’s wild, let’s talk about that. Here’s where I agree, here’s where I don’t.” That’s normal human behavior.

Frankly, I don’t blame Republicans for doing this. Their whole job is to try and beat me in an election. What’s wild to me is that Democrats should know better. Because, did we not all live through the “Should Have Gone on Rogan” discourse? And also, do you know who was streaming live from the DNC? At the invite of Vice President Harris? Hasan Piker.

I was there. I saw him.

Now, there wasn’t a whole discourse about “how could you?”

So, I’m just not going to be held accountable for the craziest thing that somebody else said.

I love it when Ted Cruz shares my video, and people see in the background, like, “money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for All.” I’m like, “Yo, Ted Cruz did his own version of illegal immigration when he left you all in the cold during an ice storm to go and campaign in Cancun.” And then you got, like, the other Florida man, Rick Scott, right? Whose company was convicted of, like, the worst Medicare fraud ever. I’m like, you can have Medicare for fraud, or you can have Medicare for all. Like, which one would you like?

They’re setting it up for you.

Like, y’all just keep throwing me the ball. I keep alleyooping, right? Like, great! I’ll dunk again if you want me to. As long as you’re playing the game.

I just don’t take seriously the bad faith smears. I don’t take seriously the idea that we should be policing platforms. I don’t take seriously the idea that we’re gonna cancel people in the Year of our Lord 2026, because we should have learned more. It’s not difficult to call somebody who looks like me, who has a name like mine, who prays like I do, certain kinds of names.

And, you know, it was coming for me anyway. And at the end of the day, I’m not here to defend myself. My job is to defend folks who’ve gotten a bum deal from the system that is telling them that, somehow, conversations that I’m having are verboten, because they’re afraid that I’m coming for their house. You know what I mean? At the end of the day, I want people to have houses. And if that means coming for, like, the house of corporatism, so be it.

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In a video the other day, you said if Joe Rogan invited me on, I would go. Bill Maher invited me on, I would go. Hasan, etc. Do you change your approach to your central messaging depending on the audience? Or you believe that it can go wherever you need to go?

I’m okay with the fact that not everyone is going to agree with you. But I’m not okay with the fact that in our politics, too often politicians don’t care that people know what they believe. So I want you to know what I think and make a decision on it. So if you’re like, “I don’t actually want money out of politics, I don’t actually want money in my pocket. I don’t want Medicare for All.” I’ll be like, [I’m] not your guy. Go vote for someone else.” Which I’m totally fine with.

My job is not to... just do enough to get elected, and then fail you for six years in the Senate. My job is to tell you exactly what I’m gonna do, and then after six years of service in the Senate for you to be like, Damn, that guy did exactly what he said he was gonna do, right?

I’m perfectly happy to be like, I deeply disagree with you, and you deeply disagree with me, but there is gonna be somebody in that audience who’s listening to what I’m saying, like, “Damn, that guy actually persuaded me. He made some points.” So, this is the thing, I think Democrats sometimes have given up on persuasion. As if, like, you can’t actually change somebody’s mind. And I actually think you can, right?

In fact, I had a guy come up to me. [Conversation reformatted for readability]:

He said, “You know what? I don’t like you.”

“Okay, well, I like you.”

“But I’m gonna vote for you.”

“This is odd, explain.”

“I think you really want me to have health care.”

“I really want you to have health care.”

“And I want health care. So, I’m gonna vote for you. I don’t agree with you on a lot of other things, but I think you’re gonna fight like hell for my health care.”

“Because I am.”

“Got it.”

Turns out you can change minds, huh?

Yeah, it’s not that hard.

Who knew?

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LOOSE ENDS

📰 Something you should read today: A surfaced chapter from ’s book.

Humanism by Charlotte Alter

How Abdul El-Sayed Thinks

Eight years ago, I spent a LOT of time with both Haley Stevens and Abdul El-Sayed as they ran their respective 2018 races for Congress and Governor. As I wrote this week in the Wall Street Journal, Haley and Abdul haven’t changed much since back then. They’re the same candidates talking about the same issues in the same state; but…

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6 days ago · 14 likes · Charlotte Alter

🥹 Something to make you smile today: Here’s a video of Trixie Mattel asking about Mitch McConnell during a DJ gig. Allegedly he was just released from the hospital to recover at home. @TMZ ….. summer’s over. Get back to work.

Race, color, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability.

We have nine classes in America expressly protected against discrimination. A new demographic is angling to add a tenth: influencers. The most misunderstood, persecuted, disadvantaged group of people in our brutal world. If you still have an “I understand that I will never understand, but I stand” shirt from 2020, it’s time to break it out again.

Like all good American Horror Stories, this tale’s discoverability has largely been fueled by . And like almost all other pieces from The Cut, I find myself humming “what kind of fuckery is this,” in the style of Amy Winehouse’s “Me & Mr. Jones,” as I dig in. For those of you who have had the pleasure of escaping this discourse, I’ll sum it up briefly:

• Nantucket business that sells $1,000 hand-woven baskets hangs “no influencers” sign in store

• Wave of support from island locals who, too, are tired of tiny mics and ring lights

• A wave of Nantucket-familiar influencers take offense in comment sections and on Stories, led by Paige Paul (née Lorenze) and her 1.2M followers on Instagram

What could’ve — and arguably should’ve — been nothing more than a sip of tea and nibble of gossip among locals and seasonal visitors became a referendum on the content industry as a whole. Influencers sailed into the America’s Cup of internet victimhood.

“It’s discrimination … women hating” — said by an influencer who just appeared on Usha Vance’s podcast. “Overtures and overtones of misogyny” — said by an influencer who attached an ad to her video complaint. “Isn’t this literally discriminating against a group of people? I don’t understand” — commented by an influencer who offers 30-minute consultations to help people with their dating app profiles for $211.

Lifestyle influencer Levi Coralynn opened the door that hundreds of women poured through. Her video that opens with “I think hating influencers has become a socially acceptable way to hate women” has 5.2M views on Instagram. Comments have been limited. It has another 1.2M on TikTok. Comments have been turned off.

Right now is a really interesting time to take the “performative oppression” strategy for a spin, as powerful people innovate new ways to oppress women — in a real way — every day. Some examples, in case the influencer force field filters out this kind of negativity: women are hunger striking in ICE detention, we have the highest rate of maternal deaths of any high-income country, police are stalking women on Flock cameras, and a congressman accused of horrific domestic violence won’t resign.

I digress. No matter where you show up online and how many people you show up to, it’s a very weird time to be a woman on the internet right now. Do we want to see or be seen? Do we want our decisions to be the product of influence or the outcome of thought? Bear witness to the cruelty we face or escape from it? Be controlled or be free?

As algorithms play a bigger role in answering those questions for us, so too do the creators who know how to game the system to focus your attention on their goals.

Signgate in Nantucket to the OpenAI brand trip in Hudson to a huge tradwife pivot on “Call Her Daddy” — three implosions of influence show us how women consumers and creators are being squeezed by our economic and political reality, whether they like it or not.

OVERT INFLUENCE

“This is one of the first industries where women have been able to build enormous businesses without asking for permission, without having to ask for maternity leave … without venture capital funding which has overwhelmingly gone to male founders … Maybe your problem isn’t influencers, maybe your problem is women with influence.” — Gabriella McCoy, digital creator

Economic liberation is a fascinating element of the creator economy, considering women make up a vast majority of the industry. This is the point, more than any other, that women have made in videos defending influencers, their business, and culture. All of them are women, almost all of them are white, and many exist in tax brackets the average viewer is never going to reach.

While critics of their “woe is we” stance have made a strong showing — “getting flown out to Bali for a brand trip, like that’s not reeking of oppression to me” made me lol — this type of influencer is insulated from image injury by their success. Paige, who kicked this all off, is rumored to be worth upwards of $2.5M.1 She has an aspirational lifestyle brand, Dairy Boy, that has converted her followers into customers.

This economic tie builds a level of trust between influencer and audience in the (rare) moments where an opinion is shared. But even that opinion is curated, isn’t it? The response Paige offered didn’t alter the internet’s understanding of how she sees the world. She didn’t deviate from any norm. We could’ve predicted she’d feel this way.

That predictability, reliability, stability, whatever you want to call it, is something audiences love as our world becomes more and more erratic. Women are great messengers of these values. Food influencer and chef commented under Levi Coralynn’s criticizing influencers = hating women video:

“... women are better at cultivating trust,” but people try to “diminish a woman’s expertise or effort with the word ‘influencer.’”

What if — hear me out — women are perfectly capable of undermining their own effort and expertise themselves?

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TRANSITION LENSES

There is an extremely fine line between a) taking advantage of an opportunity and b) taking an opportunity to sell out. Some people just have quite an expansive tolerance for shilling. I am not one of them … even from influencers I, quote unquote, “trust.” If you ever hear me say I bought something on TikTok Shop, send me in the direction of the nearest hospital.

We’re in this middle ground, though, where “knowledge creators” are being activated as footsoldiers of corporations more often than ever before. These sorts of collaborations often allow creators to retain some agency and accommodate some range of opinions. The catch? There always is one, isn’t there?

Honesty or, god forbid, criticism, can jeopardize a creator’s ability to form a relationship with a brand. But inauthenticity is the unstoppable force to the immovable object that is audience trust — it can tear that relationship to shreds. And I’m seeing a lot of tatters on the timeline, I’ll tell you that.

“Come with me to OpenAI’s first-ever summer brand retreat.”

We are in hell. We are in hell. We are in hell. Why is this happening:

• Distrusted, despised tech giants try to tap the power of creators to curry favor with their fans

• Mid-tier tech creators, unlike the aforementioned lifestyle creators, are more economically reliant on opportunities like this to pay their bills

• Influencer-style trips help the narrative that tech is inextricable from lifestyle / travel / fashion / survival

I first saw the content from this trip through videos criticizing it, like the many posted by . I found it interesting that almost all of the call-out clips took a swing at women attendees, few fighting words for the men. My theory is that’s because the men focused more on the technical outcomes of a few days spent with ChatGPT’s team, less so on the “room tour” of it all.

That said, all of the attendees I identified got absolutely read for filth in their comments. As Meredith said, literally accepting a “fight for their lives” as the cost of admission. You can see in real time where the established trust shattered, in comments like: “Sick brand trip. Did they promise you access to the water supplies when we lose it?”

Mortgaging your expertise to the highest bidder is a choice that influencers have to make any time they get a brand deal. As tech gets more sinister, surveillance culture spreads, and appetites really sour on spreading their gospel, creators, especially women, will have to consider the risk of collaboration (audience destruction) versus the reward (a check).

People are starting to place a premium on that value alignment. And it’s causing some curious pivots we can read as predictive political indicators.

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COVERT INFLUENCE

“I’m not who you think I am, despite the fact that I have architected an entire persona and universe that would make any reasonable person think that is exactly who I am.” This is my best effort to summarize the energy of Mormon-fashion-cooking-parenting influencer Nara Smith basically begging people to believe that she is not, in fact, a tradwife.

Nevermind that creators allege she used to literally hashtag #tradwife on her old posts, this same plea is the actual title of the “Call Her Daddy” episode she appeared on last week. It has 1.6M views on YouTube. Millions more on clips. This felt like a shocking clarification from someone who curates every curl and measures every teaspoon of their image and output. Why?

As much as routine and repeat format can provide the stability audiences crave, there’s one thing they’re prioritizing more: relatability. Cooking dinner from scratch for your kids in a $15,000 couture Schiapparelli gown … in this economy … is about 30 lightyears outside the reach of the average viewer. Nara, as a branding and image professional, knows this.

Such a big influencer with such a clear identity would not take a rebrand lightly. But something in our sociopolitical culture is signaling to her that it’s the only option. Women are forced to contend with what longevity looks like for an influencer online (and I’m not even referring to age, that’s a whole other fuckin’ problem).

Nara Smith is telling us that she thinks association with “tradwife” content is starting to harm her brand, after years of seeing it boost her brand thanks to the proliferation and success of MAGA housewife influencers. Nara is hedging her bets to try to stay en vogue online. And she’s not the only one.

Young marriage advocate, host of the “Good Wife” podcast, and wearer of “normalize liking your husband” merch, Savanna Stone is also distancing herself from the “tradwife” moniker. Interesting. But I guess that renunciation is only as meaningful as the content made to prove it. Both Stone and Smith (to differing degrees) are still committed to projecting traditional (read: conservative) home and family values.

Back to choices influencers have to make: Both of these women could have doubled down on the tradwifery. As we know, there’s a solid sum of money to be made by moving right.

It comes back to these economic conditions women in this field are moving through:

• “Regular” lifestyle influencers attract viewers by touting economic freedom

• “Specialized” industry influencers piss off viewers out of economic necessity

• “Value”-promoting influencers comfort viewers by selling economic dependence

Of course, they can only sell you the safety and comfort of submission because they have a podcast mic to say it into. In a tradwife reality, that is obviously something they’d have to give up to collect the benefits of economic dependence. Revoking women’s right to vote, for instance, which Savanna Stone is well-known to support.

There are levels to this trad influencing: some like Nara sprinkle, others like Savanna spoon, and Rachel Jankovic HEAPS. gives us a look at that approach in a piece about the youngest daughter of Pastor Doug Wilson, who I’ve covered.

This puts into perspective that there are bigger risks to women than adopting the opinion that rich, hot influencers are getting the short end of the stick on vacation. But all of this movement and subsequent dissection tells us something — influencers are more responsive than ever to the political ground shifting underneath them (negatively and positively).

I found this amazing YouTube video by a creator named Ashley Embers. In it, she says: “Influencers are only as wealthy as their audience ‘cause brands expect sales. And the thing is, audiences are struggling these days.” The economic success of influencers is placed in the hands of the consumer … especially women.

The writing is on the wall. Read it!

🥹 Something to make you smile today 🥹

Why A Wisconsin Stranger Lent His SUV to a Stranded Heavy Metal Band, Saving Their Gig

“The Autumn Kings had just played Rock Fest Wisconsin in Chippewa Valley when their van broke down. The Detroit-based trio called every mechanic in the area, but were told the engine would take two days to fix.

The band had 10 hours to get to its next show, the Upheaval Festival in Grand Rapids, Michigan, about 500 miles away.

A stranger named Ernie stopped to ask if he could help. He ended up giving the band the keys to his Ford Explorer for several days, so they could drive more than 1,000 miles and finish the tour.

‘With all the things you hear, about how the world is always going to hell, there are truly generous human beings, beyond comprehension,’ said Jake Diab, guitarist and vocalist of the band.’”

Grace Note: I’ve actually been sitting writing this post for 112 hours and feel like the life has been sucked out of me … until I read this. Have never met a bad Ernie (Johnson, Sesame Street, now this)!

Extraditing Anthony Fauci? How ‘bout it? Any takers? Anyone?

There are all sorts of creative ideas being floated about what fate the nation’s former COVID adviser should face. I say creative because the doc’s opps have to work overtime around that pesky pre-emptive pardon that Biden … or his autopen (we’ll get to that) … gifted Fauci on the way out a yet-to-be gilded West Wing door in 2025.

Fauci — who, in spite of the compound interest his probable stress added to his aging, looks pretty good for 85 — was trotted out in front of the Senate Homeland Security Committee for what basically amounted to three hours of verbal Bart Simpson chalkboarding, pleading the Fifth over 100 times. Just two kooky guys trying to stay out of trouble.

The goal of the committee’s Republican flank was to press Fauci on what he knew about the genesis of COVID-19, when he knew it, and whether he covered it up. It’s lab leak this, wet market that, all in hopes of finding a hole to poke in an origin story that a large swath of Americans remain unsatisfied by.

(If Sen. Rand Paul is so committed to coverups perhaps he should direct some energy to the one involving the other half of Kentucky’s delegation in the Senate. Kentucky’s governor agrees.)

I think the majority of, you know, stable … well-adjusted people in this country did what they could to cope with the serious pandemic trauma we suffered, while also not confining themselves to that dark space in perpetuity. There are millions of other people who are still wounded by the COVID-era, but their commitment to it is animated by their paranoia about it. Paranoia that the White House is more than happy to feed into.

Fortunately, there are many online spaces where they can gather to validate each other’s experiences, emotions, and most extreme suspicions. The pre-eminent and original ordained minister of an internet congregation like this actually pooled her people right here on Substack. She gave conspiracy a chic new look.

has lived atop the Bestseller list since she launched House Inhabit in 2021. Add her committed Instagram following to the mix and we’re talking about almost 2M followers. She attached herself early, publicly, and loudly to RFK Jr. and his many crusades. Legacy media included, many would say MAHA’s origin story starts with her — but her origin story starts with COVID.

These days she spends the most time on Substack chat. I’m trying this strategy too (which you should upgrade to paid for). Maybe she’s onto something opening threads for only the wildest topics — UAP / alien disclosure, the JFK assassination, election fraud, all that jazz.

The “Fauci hearing” chat gave me an unobstructed view into the thought processes and emotional states of the people who have sat here stewing in hatred of Dr. Fauci for the past six years. Here’s what I saw.

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“HOBBIT MAFIA DON”

Broad view: JRK is in Italy, so she hoped this chat could fill her in on the hearing. She sent a number of vacay pics which felt like disjointed, but kinda funny, vibe interventions while her followers actively raged.

• Ratio: It’s like 95:5 women to men ratio, which is typical for these chats.

• Stream: “CHD” kept getting mentioned — finally clocked that it stands for Children’s Health Defense, the very controversial organization RFK formerly chaired. I looked for the stream they were referring to on YouTube only to discover CHD got banned in 2021 for vaccine misinformation, so everyone was watching on Rumble.

• Missing: Way less focus on the diary aspect of it all than I expected. This is the key disparity with the rest of the internet, bipartisan engagement too.

• Names: Here is a list of every name Fauci was called —

  • “Sniveling little coward”

  • “Little troll”

  • “Lying little troll”

  • “Shithead”

  • “Hobbit mafia don”

  • “Rat” + an AI image of him depicted as a rat

  • “The worst”

  • “Egomaniac”

The overall energy is “vengeance” — a word Kraus herself used. Another chatter said, “I hope he gets what he deserves.” This animus runs even deeper outside of the chat, where I saw repeated calls for Fauci to be put to death.

The biggest, most consistent areas of focus:

Pleading the Fifth — No surprise here, this move executed 111 times wasn’t loved by anyone, but was the biggest point of ire in the chat.

• A lot of back and forth on whether he was even legally allowed to P the 5 in his situation

• People repeatedly expressed they felt like he chose the Fifth purely to save his reputation and image, not for legal reasons

• Two off-shoot theories (that I’ve also seen elsewhere on social):

  • He’s pleading the Fifth because his pardon could get overturned if it was signed with an autopen (unlikely)

  • He’s pleading the Fifth to avoid committing perjury which would not be covered by his pardon

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Solicitation of Awards — I do think this point was sticky in the chat because Sen. Josh Hawley turned the dial all the way up in his monologue.

• The Hawley clip is one of the best performers on social across the board, which probably factored into his decision to introduce a bill to ban using federal resources to “solicit” cash prizes for bureaucrats

• Not illegal, but icky — chatters felt like Fauci got rich while they suffered

  • He’s “worth 12,000,000 all because of Covid”

• The InStyle Magazine cover didn’t help … lots of angry emoji reacts

Standout Stars — Rand Paul caught a lot of love but not the top spot.

• Hawley, who’s been sort of off the viral radar lately, really dazzled the chat, getting heart, fire, bullseye emojis, referenced as a “hero” and “rockstar”

• Adulation for Sen. Bernie Moreno … surprised me, because of the domestic violence accusation against his daughter’s husband (also in Congress)

  • Someone called him an “unsuspecting hero,” another thanked him for “saying what we all want to say”

• Sen. Andy Kim got the sole mention for Democrats, and it was just 🙄

• They really miss Tulsi Gabbard and regret that she resigned (very interesting to me!)

The biggest, cuckoo nonsense:

A genuine deliberation over whether he could be extradited: “Can other countries arrest Fauci - for crimes against humanity?”

• Some yeses, some nos, I don’t recall a source being cited aside from a Google summary

• One chatter E.K. claimed “some countries have already [tried to prosecute him], some are still pursuing” — I found nothing to support any of that

  • Then added: “nazi scientists were hunted and hung … for decades … for far less deaths” — first of all, it’s fewer … second of all, where does one even find information this wrong? I guess chats!

E.K. sent a number of interesting links and clips and photos to the group. This one interested me the most — 610k views, 45k likes. Shall we just go through it line-by-line?

1. Anthony Fauci was the first CEO of Moderna: ❌

   1. Stéphane Bancel was the first and is still the only CEO Moderna has had.

2. He graduated from Cornell where he was roommates with Bill Gates: ❌

   • Bill Gates entered college seven years after Fauci graduated. And at an entirely different school. Harvard.

3. At Cornell, Bill Gates designed and patented the RFID: ❌

   • Again, Gates didn’t go to Cornell and had nothing to do with inventing RFID.

4. Nazi George Soros acquired Nazi German company IG Farben, dissolved and sold its assets, and rebranded the company as Moderna: ❌

   • Please be serious. IG Farben was super evil and forced to liquidate in 1952, when Soros was a 22-year-old student. Moderna was founded in 2010.

5. Jeffrey Epstein was the primary Moderna stockholder until he died, which is how he made his fortune and connections: ❌

   • There’s no evidence of this and he was already rich by this time.

6. Need I go on to the rest of the Epstein-Maxwell random inclusions?

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The fun thing about this is I remember when this mindblowing information first came out and took over the internet … DURING COVID IN 2020. We are microwaving conspiracy leftovers that should have long been thrown out. Find some new material!

Harvey Levin had enough, too:

ALL THE CONTENT YOU DIDN’T SEE THIS WEEK

Now you get double the insights when you upgrade to paid and join our subscriber chat. I’ll be back in there Sunday hoping for more real life people who are not related to or dating me to join … be the first!

You’ll see whatever version of this comes out over the weekend:

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A face … a league … a (culture) war … a woman … a take … some kicks … to break the bonds of basketball.

What does it mean to be the face of something? How is a title like this decided? Why is this designation such a sign of respect in our culture? And have we, as a society, progressed past the ability to agree on who receives this honorific?

Try to conjure an image of the last person to be an undisputed face of a league, a movement, a genre, a philosophy. In politics, we fuss over this constantly. Float AOC as the face of the Democrats to a Blue Dog Dem and they’ll get madder than they do when the GOP tries to slash Medicaid. Position JD Vance as the face of MAGA post-Trump and you’ll get a lot of “hey nows” and “whoa nellys.”

It’s been no easier in sports. The face of men’s tennis out of the Big Three? Forget about it. Gun to my head I couldn’t tell you who’s the face of football. We’re on year 157 of debating whether MJ or Bron is the forever face of the NBA, and seemingly no closer to finding consensus. Ok … Simone Biles, Serena Williams, on those I think we can agree.

None of these titles, political or athletic, are given. To even be in the “FACE OF” conversation, you have to earn your keep. That is until social media came along, able to spread a face to billions of people, on millions of dedicated social channels, in hundreds of countries, in just a handful of seconds. The Caitlin Clark Effect: so real it has its own Wikipedia page.

What swirls around Caitlin Clark is a phenomenon unlike any that women’s basketball has ever seen, even around their many greats. But buzz, excitement, attention, obsession — do these automatically anoint you the face of a sports league? This debate rages on. Former NFL star RG III votes yes, with a nod to good stats on the court. Sports commentator Jemele Hill responds with a vote no, “She’s not the face because she’s not creating a new standard for winning (yet).”

This conversation and many others are being had in the space around Caitlin Clark, who at every chance she gets recently, has been trying to re-train social media’s focus onto the game she and 180 or so other women play. When politics comes knocking at her door, she defers. Now, CC is learning the hard way that diplomacy or neutrality leaves space for others to control your narrative for you.

Fame is an unfortunate, permanent side effect of Caitlin Clark’s love of basketball. Sophie Cunningham takes a more indulgent approach to fame and politics. This summer, the teammates are trying to figure out how to smooth a bumpy ride — moving between hero and villain, victim and perpetrator, social sensation and social outcast — in very different ways.

Caitlin has State Farm to keep her afloat, and now Sophie Cunningham is taking out an insurance policy of her own.

SOCIAL MEDIA TIMELINE

Here is as complete of a timeline as I could give you of the drama surrounding Indiana Fever teammates, Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham. Some things are left out because you all have a life you’ll eventually need to get back to.

🏀 May 8: The WNBA’s 30th season begins.

🤠 May 9: Caitlin Clark is the featured walk-out guest at controversial country singer Morgan Wallen’s concert, joining a host of fellow athletes also featured (Travis Kelce, Myles Garrett, etc). Instant backlash online because of Wallen’s history of affection for saying the n-word.

• An example from Substack: Akilah Cadet, Caitlin Clark Is Racist — “When you allow a narrative to happen even if you don’t identify as a racist, that is racist.”

🥣 May 16: It’s around this time I really started noticing unusual attention being paid to building narratives about women’s basketball from people who haven’t historically been interested. Right-wing commentators like Jon Root and Jason Whitlock start pushing a narrative that the Fever coach and the league have “severe … Caitlin Clark Derangement Syndrome.”

🫵 June 22: If you haven’t seen this meme, I might actually argue you need to spend more time online. Sophie Cunningham steps into the enforcer and agitator role in defense of Caitlin Clark, gets into it with PHX’s DeWanna Bonner who wags a finger at her, so Cunningham points right back. For 22 looong seconds. While the security guard following her tries his hardest not to laugh.

This is, comfortably, a hall of fame sports meme. The internet loved it — from the White House, to WNBA legend Candace Parker.1

👊 June 24: In an even more physical Fever-Mercury matchup, CC gets pinned to the floor under the basket with Alyssa Thomas’ fist to her throat. Clark writhes in pain, refs miss the call — a pattern the team, fans, and the star herself brought up repeatedly to start the season.

• The same day, the league releases their official 30th anniversary poster. One current or former player from each team, no Caitlin Clark. Amazing timing for instant rage. Clay Travis, founder of Fox-owned sports outlet OutKick, said: “The league got a golden goose and is doing everything they can to kill her.”2

🐘 June 25: Her cause is officially and fully adopted by right-wing influencers. Accusations of “reverse racism” take over internet discourse among a group of people with no history of an interest in women’s basketball. They argue Clark’s plight is worse than Black players integrating in 1940s baseball, Jackie Robinson included.

Grace Note: Over the next two weeks, every trooper in the take army unloads their clip on the latest culture war battlefront. wrote a great piece on June 29 tallying how many pieces Fox News published about CC in the six days following fistgate: 21.

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📋 July 1: Fever coach Stephanie White talks to the press and highlights the online vitriol that’s been directed toward Alyssa Thomas. Intervention from outside forces, uninvested in the league as a whole, does not go unnoticed: “I believe that this is people using our league, using our players to further divisive agendas.” (I’m impressed she clocked this, tbh.)

🚫 July 3: After being out with a back injury, Clark holds her first press scrum to offer her thoughts on the incident. She believes it was a flagrant foul, that reffing is an impossible job that should be paid more, that harassment and hate are not ok, and that it’s a “disservice to other teams” that we won’t move on from talking about what happened days before.

🐘 July 8: 10 GOP reps who make up the Republican Study Committee (whatever the fuck that is) post a letter addressed to WNBA Comissioner Cathy Engelbert threatening to get federal agencies involved if Caitlin Clark isn’t treated better. The Fever release a statement also being like “whatever the fuck this is,” no thanks.

🛑 July 12: Sophie Cunningham surprises UFC 329 viewers when she heads into the Octagon as a ring girl. The majority of backlash to this was delayed (see July 21), but focused on her apparent support of Conor McGregor, who was found liable of rape in a civil case in 2024.

⛹️‍♀️ July 18: Caitlin Clark scores a career-high and franchise-record 45 points, alongside 10 assists and six made threes in only 29 minutes.

📝 July 21: ESPN writer Hallie Grossman publishes a phenomenal profile of Sophie Cunningham. 100% worth a read. It provides clinician-level precision in dissecting her psyche — the why behind the who.

“...if Caitlin Clark is on the receiving end of an eye poke, after being on the receiving end of extra bumps and extra jawing and extra physicality that Cunningham thought should’ve warranted fouls but weren’t called as such all season long? That’s more than Cunningham’s call to action. By gawd, that’s Sophie Cunningham’s music.”

At the end of a checklist of titles Cunningham says she’s comfortable accepting — role model, authentic, even dirty — she resists on “MAGA Barbie,” before launching into a stump speech about her desire to dribble through the political middle. Here she decides, seemingly unprompted, to clarify her position on trans women in sports:

“I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”

⏮️ July 22: Cunningham expands on her worldview further during the team’s media availability: “I said what I said.” In a five minute video with 13M views, she fields a few clarifying questions. All of these statements are included in her response, in this order:

• “It’s really important to protect children”

• “I’m not a very political person”

• “I’ve never really even said anything about that”

• “I feel very strongly about [protecting young girls/women in sport]”

• “I think there is room for absolutely everyone here”

• “I’m also there to love biological women and their rights”

The online right flew off the bench to show support: the Dept. of Education photoshopped a crown on the point meme, Rep. Mike Lee called her a hero, Lara Logan and J.K. Rowling clapped it up, Ben Shapiro did his own point celly, ESPN hosts current (Stephen A. Smith) and former (Sage Steele) endorse. Riley Gaines? We’ll get to her in a moment.

Grace Note: In the middle of all this fanfare, a writer for USA Today decides to publish an article invoking the lynching of Emmett Till to make a point about Caitlin Clark’s flopping … how are the side plots of this saga this batshit?

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📣 July 23: The Indiana Fever release two statements. The first statement responds to former Fever player, Brianna Turner, alleging the team swept a real women’s safety issue under the rug last year when they fired a male staff member for sexual harassment. The second statement covers Cunningham, acknowledging their players are “thoughtful adults with their own perspectives and voices.”

• Meanwhile: Karoline Leavitt extends the president’s support to “Sophia” Cunningham from the podium at a White House press briefing.

👟 July 24: As fate would have it, this is the day Adidas drops the custom Sophie Cunningham colorway of their Crazy Energy sneaker. Within two hours, they’re sold out in men’s and women’s sizes. This is hailed as a decisive culture war victory and the end of cancel culture (for like the 87th time). Critics were quick to point out the shoes are the colors of the trans flag. lol.

Surely riding that sold out high, Cunningham posts an Instagram with the caption, “I said what I said🫡” — it’s closing in on 700k likes. Something to note that I haven’t seen elsewhere: Three of her teammates showed support in the comments: Kay Timpson, Grace VanSlooten, and beloved vet Kelsey Mitchell. Interesting.

🏆 July 24-26: All-Star weekend in Chicago arrives. Clark is due for her third appearance, Cunningham didn’t make the cut. In the rounds and rounds of press the players are forced to do, Caitlin Clark strikes a noticeably more emotional tone. She emphasizes:

• How out of touch the media can be with reality, how far some reports are from her true character, and how confusing that is for someone so young (24)

Here’s the best thing she said, on the fist-to-neck foul that kicked this drama into high gear:

“It’s basketball. When I walk out of the locker room, I shouldn’t be — not fearful of what the conversation is gonna be, but, you know, you just like, it’s emotionally exhausting. It’s draining [...] People don’t wanna talk about the basketball. They just wanna stir it up and make something else.”

In an environment of so much noise and so much political pawning, you’d understand if the last thing she’d want is another politician getting involved. But Barack Obama is retired from politics, so perhaps he gets a pass.

He finds her in a sea of women — and thankfully he’s mic’d up because we have an obstructed view — to say, “Don’t let all this nonsense get you down … don’t lose that joy.” It’s clear in her reflection about the moment that she really needed that. Even the right-aligned sports talking heads gave their props.

How a locker room gels (or completely shatters) in response to a player voluntarily opening a Pandora’s box of social issues, remains a huge part of my fascination with sports in the digital era.

While there may be no “I” in team, there’s definitely an “I” in pivot … in grift … opportunity … and OutKick.

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SIGNED TO THE ROSTER

The average career in the WNBA is 3.5 years. When you think about all the blood, sweat, tears, and years these women have put into getting there, it’s devastating. They’re forced to cultivate other skills off the court that a lot of men don’t have to. While I think that’s actually a good thing, I can imagine it’s insanely hard, when you’ve been literally conditioned for one thing for 20 odd years.

So, despite the league’s expansion in teams and viewership, the odds aren’t exactly favorable for those pushing 30, especially if you’re not a starter. This leaves you with a few options: play abroad, start at the bottom in coaching, or take the recently well-traveled media path. That third option used to guarantee even more competition for even slimmer pickings.

In the past decade, player-owned media popping up in and around women’s sports has exploded. We now have podcasts from Sue Bird, Candace Parker & Aliyah Boston, Stewie, Lisa Leslie, Angel Reese, Syd Colson & Theresa Plaisance, and more. The StudBudz did 72-hours of livestream content over All-Star weekend, for God’s sake.

Like every other vertical of digital media, it’s getting crowded. What if there was a team a player could join where they could finally retire from the fight for playing time? That place exists if they look juuuust to their right.

Sophie Cunningham looks primed to walk into right-wing media’s starting lineup.

She already has a successful podcast, she’s building broadcast muscle on USA’s sports channel this year, and she just recited the spell that made the prototype of this sports-to-media pivot not just rich, but incredibly famous. Riley Gaines clearly sees the resemblance: She’s posted or reposted 26 tweets about Sophie Cunningham in the past eight days.3

After a whirlwind year making trans women her entire personality, Gaines signed a deal with OutKick to host a podcast “Gaines for Girls” on the topic. She relaunched the podcast as “The Riley Gaines Show” at the beginning of this year after re-signing a multi-year deal. Her commitment to this bit has landed her millions of followers, recurring Fox News appearances, White House visits, conference speaking gigs, anti-trans clothing deals, etc.

She’s very lonely in this space, clearly, so she seems to be actively recruiting a partner to take heat from the left in tandem. She hopes Coco Gauff is next which … lol. But recruiting — in sports and media alike — starts at the top. The OutKick founder, Clay Travis, has also been all over Cunningham online. “Love all of this.” “Rock star.”

If I was a gambling woman, I’d bet that OutKick contract is already drafted, waiting for the day she exits the league. Whether she signs it, I guess, is a bigger gamble — but one I’d still make, in spite of her commitment to framing herself as not political. And it was actually really easy to come to that conclusion. All I had to do was look at who she follows on Instagram.

Non-political people don’t follow the sum total of Erika Kirk, Turning Point USA and Turning Point Action, The Daily Wire, Tucker Carlson, Officer Tatum, Becky Weiss, and more. If you showed this group’s content to a real non-political person, they’d be like get these freaks off my feed. Unless, of course, she’s supplementing her media diet elsewhere … outsourcing her left-wing content consumption to her podcast co-host, West Wilson … ew.

@westywilson @westywilson ♬ original sound - West Wilson

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LOOSE ENDS

📝 Word I learned today: pulchritude

physical comeliness — “Any high-pulchritude blonde woman who expresses views to the right of the extremist half of the Democratic Party is sure to be denounced as “MAGA Barbie.” (via Kyle Smith, )

🥹 From our friends at Goodable: something to make you smile 🥹

Stray Cat Rescued From Tornado Becomes Local News Station Mascot to Boost Adoption Chances

“Stray Rescue of St. Louis said it picked up an injured orange tabby during severe weather on April 27, when neighborhoods across the city were dealing with hail as large as golf balls in some areas and reports of tornadoes east of St. Louis…

The cat was named after Steve Templeton, chief meteorologist for KMOV-4, who reports the weather live on air every weekday evening from 5 to 10 p.m.

‘Our little Steve Templeton came in with a broken back leg that couldn’t be fixed, so he had his leg amputated…’”

Grace Note: Steve has been adopted, so happy for him. The same rescue has many other available animals eager to be adopted, if anyone is in the area! They have incredible names like Fresh Cracked Pepper, Lopsided Larry, Cyborg (one eye), Pterodactyl, Hurricane Tortilla, Snooze, and Frog Dog.

Ronald Reagan was wrong. The nine most terrifying words in the English language are:

“I’m from the government, and I’m doing Tiktok trends!”

Boy, would I kill to be a fly on the wall when some Gen Z staffer handed this social media mandate down in the Cabinet Room. I’m imagining room-wide adoption Scott Bessent’s trademarked blank stare, followed by reluctant agreement and panicked phone calls to their college-age children for advice.

Almost 20 new government TikTok accounts popped up this week. That may sound like a sophisticated, orchestrated launch, but “creation date” is pretty much where the coordination stops. Aesthetic similarities are limited to a shared addiction to adding a VHS-style filter on everything. The common format linking all channels can only be described as promotional highlight reel or dramatic infomercial.

(Of course, none of them are running their own accounts, but that only strengthens my desire to shell out thousands of dollars for a chance to see these secretaries record, edit, and post a video on their own.)

By the authority vested in me (from watching all 126 videos posted across these accounts so far), I’m releasing the official ranking of the 19 new government agency TikTok accounts.

First, some notes: This does not include pre-existing (@whitehouse, @cabinet) or personal accounts (RFK Jr., for example). Trump and Vance, also excluded. Also, I’m taking four of the new accounts out of the official ranking. Here’s why:

• @fbi — 2,830 followers, two posts: a horizontal clip of Kash Patel’s post-World Cup video + a clip of a Fox News appearance. Not taking it seriously right now.

• @justicedepartment — 31,000 followers, 10 posts: most of these videos are repurposed from other channels

• @hhsgov — 3,100 followers, 3 posts: low volume + RFK will come into play later

• @nasa — 46,000 followers, 9 posts: NASA has such a pre-existing fan base, not fighting in the content swamp like everyone else

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Also, while I don’t think that most of these agencies should be content farms, I especially believe that about the first two in the list above, due to the covert or private nature of their operations. The rest of these agencies are required, on some level, to be public-facing and should be encouraged to keep their mass communication consistent with the times.

I’d go so far as to say that meeting Americans where they are online — in an effort to make sure we can access the basic information we need — is a requirement of good governance these days. But utilizing TikTok only as an avenue to entertain erases its value as a mechanism to educate.

Two days in, the new government accounts are wholly missing their opportunity to enforce some narrative control over initiatives that have lost support, especially among their base. These TikTok accounts should, in practice, give them the opportunity to sell the administration’s initiatives ahead of the midterms. Does effective propaganda mean nothing anymore? I guess not, when everything is television.

FROM WORST TO BEST

15: Department of Education | 6,100 followers — 13 posts — 10,000 likes

What are we even still doing here? How is the DOE posting from beyond the grave? Has anyone told Linda McMahon what TikTok is? Does she think it’s a new clock-themed performer debuting at Wrestlemania? Possible! Looking at this account, there are more questions than answers.

• Tribute video count: Trump: 2 / Herself: 2

• Lowlight: AI slop of a french bulldog surfing, surrounded by flying turtles and dolphins (112 likes)

• Highlight: I guess the WWE-intro style videos promoting her and Trump are relevant to her brand?

14: Small Business Administration | 5,600 followers — 11 posts — 11,700 likes

Here’s the thing. Whoever is running this account for Kelly Loeffler is really trying. But one thing to know about Loeffler is that every attempt she’s made at being relatable has failed. It’s the reason she lost what people thought would be a shoo-in Senate race in GA back in 2021. It’s gonna be an uphill battle on the ~relatability~ app.

• Tribute video count: Trump: 2 / Herself: 3

• Lowlight: The autopopulated search recommendation on a video of her walking on stage to give a speech is: “Who is the woman in this video?” … yikes. One of the burdens of this role is that no one knows what it is. An introduction would be wise.

• Highlight: They’re at least trying to fit into the algo through popular references and trends — Netflix doc, Jimothy hype

13: Department of Energy | 6,800 followers — 9 posts — 14,600 likes

Another uphill battle, being a B-list secretary. Chris Wright, anyone familiar? Well, the strategy here seems to be to sell the secretary more than anything he’s working on. It’s very flattering. Perhaps too flattering. It will come in handy for whatever job he applies for next.

• Tribute video count: Trump: 2 / Himself: 3 / Coal: 2

• Lowlight: The debut video is set to “Power” by Kanye West, one of the more political songs in his entire discography. Maybe the most palpable lyric in the whole song: “No one man should have all that power.” Quite the oversight here!

• Highlight: A supercut of Donald Trump’s years-long personal vendetta against windmills and wind power. Love him or hate him, it’s a classic.

12: Department of Homeland Security | 14,500 followers — 14 posts — 19,000 likes

I don’t have a lot to say about this, because I’ve already written a lot about DHS content operations, as have many others. Their foray into TikTok is more of the same: staged raids, deportation clips, dramatic voiceovers, and nostalgia plays.

• Tribute video count: Trump: 1 / Himself: 0 (Sec. Mullin’s account comes up later)

• Lowlight: Americans are getting increasingly frustrated with ICE brutality, and masks remain a constant sticking point. Agents’ faces are blurred out in all posts, just gonna fuel that fire.

• Highlight: Being completely objective, they have created a very identifiable visual style that is easy to spot in an endless scroll feed.

11: Department of Labor | 4,400 followers — 7 posts — 6,100 likes

Sorry, I know it’s my job to know this, but even sometimes I’m like … who is that. Is this the first time in my life I’ve seen this man? Keith Sonderling? Sure!

• Tribute video count: Trump: 1 / Himself: 1

• Lowlight: None of the clips on his page use the same font, design, graphics, style anything. Very low vibrations, visually.

• Highlight: Going on a limb to say I think he’s never filmed a video like this before. He is thinking so hard about what word comes next, it’s almost worrisome. But that’s the spirit! His energy is high, he’s young, this could work.

10: Department of Transportation | 6,100 followers — 10 posts — 10,300 likes

Is it fair to say I was expecting more from someone who made a name for themselves in the wild west of MTV reality television?

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It’s summer. To-do lists are loose. Budgets are tight. And we’re all struggling to balance rage and relaxation. What if you had a place to channel that energy? A place that made you feel simultaneously in control of and free from the political circus?

This is the promise of the Who Broke It subscriber chat. If your news knowledge is measured in memes and loaded in laughs, you’ve just found a second home (tax haven status reached). Expect me to open threads twice a week, assuming all of our usual suspects behave which ... lol.

My goal here? I want you to get to know me, the guide you’ve chosen through this chaotic creator economy. And I’m beyond antsy to get on a first name basis with you all. Upgrading to paid and joining the chat is our way forward!

Tans fade.

So do discounts.

Take advantage of this offer for the next seven days as I surely embarrass myself in the chat, in hopes of getting it off the ground.

$20 off your sub, one week only!

(I’ve never felt more like Billy Mays here. RIP!)

(And I swear I’ll never hit you with three emails in a row ever again xo)

What is journalism if not an excuse to get involved in other people’s drama?

At least that’s my personal view. Come to think of it, maybe that’s why I didn’t excel in journalism school until my senior spring semester. I undertook a thesis-style exploration of Tom Wolfe’s shorter works, and in return, Wolfe offered me the blueprint for a type of journalism animated by love of gossip. We got an A+ for our respective outputs.

Covering politics is as much about wanting to brief the masses as it is about trying to satisfy my seemingly bottomless craving to know other people’s business. I’m sure my friends are very grateful that the never-ending pettiness of contemporary politics keeps me well-fed. How can I not be? When Cheesecake Factory-sized servings of scandal are served — for free — every day.

Niche internet drama scratches a particularly relentless itch of mine because I usually have no one to share it with. But every so often an under-the-radar, digital dustup serves as the perfect introduction to an incoming problem in our political culture. This tends to happen in the closing months of an election cycle, which, believe it or not, we’re entering now.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed … but Democrats have been in the throes of an identity crisis for almost two years (arguably more like four-six). There is pressure mounting on pretty much everyone who’s affixed a “D” to themselves:

• On party heads to step back

• On new candidates to pick an ideological lane

• On influencers to outmaneuver intraparty opponents

• On all the above to sell voters on their vision of the future of the Democratic Party

This isn’t a clean process with clear rules of engagement. It pushes a lot of people to show up in new places and practice making strong cases for themselves or the group they belong to — Hasan Piker keynoting at the College Democrats of America Convention, James Talarico facing serious criticism from Black voters in Texas, the co-chair of NYC’s DSA pulling up to Fox News, of all places.

There’s an understanding that, while things might get weird, if you hold on to your values, take criticism on the chin, and own your mistakes, you can weather any storm … right? What if you decide to buck convention, choose chaos, and invite depravity into your social media strategy instead?

How a Democratic countermovement to TPUSA ended up hosting the nation’s biggest bigot, why their leader doubled down in response to backlash, and what this drama reveals about the dangers of fragmented influence … all below!

MADE IN HIS IMAGE

“And I gotta give credit to this one young lady, she is very annoying. She follows me around the country … She has, more so than most, accurately depicted what we’ve been able to do here.”

This is how Charlie Kirk summed up the persistent presence of Zee Cohen-Sanchez back in a 2025 video titled, “Temu ‘Charlie Kirk’ Tries to Take Out the Original (MAJOR FAIL).” Zee launched the “Unfuck America Tour” in April of that year, with the stated intention of building a countermovement to Turning Point USA — “to reignite the Democratic youth vote, fight back against right-wing propaganda, and build real grassroots power on campuses.”

Zee mentioned in multiple early interviews that innovation was not the priority here: “We need to build the same thing he has.” Kirk pointed out in his segment that building the same thing required 300 days of travel, $100M in fundraising, and 500k donors per year. Almost one full year later, have the countermovement and its sister org, National Ground Game, even scraped the surface?

🥅 Goals for this election cycle 🥅

• 500+ new college chapters: ❌— eight current, seven “in progress”

• Catch up to GOP registration numbers: ❓— no data provided

• Infrastructure to take back youth vote: ❓— no details given

• Insert ourselves into “red pill” pipeline: ✅ — hold that thought

I’m never one to shade anyone else on missing target growth goals, as I sit here trying to figure out how the hell to scale this Substack. But I’m in the business of scouring social media to get a grip on just how influential these young “movements” really are. The activity of these college chapters proved a good gut check.

• The eight current college chapters all have Instagram accounts + one account created for a school “in progress” which has no posts yet

• Ohio State is the only consistently active chapter on social media

• University of Arizona last posted in June. Wisconsin, UC Berkeley, NCSU, and Ole Miss (who only posted once) haven’t posted since May. UCLA last posted in April. Arizona State’s one and only post was in March.

If the core of your commitment relies upon activating college-aged voters nationwide — an enormous challenge, no doubt — these numbers reveal some flaws in the strategy. Crunch some more numbers, like only six campus visits in over a year despite reporting almost $1M to the FEC, and you can color me confused.

It’s not until you frame that data against Unfuck America’s nearly 500k followers on Instagram and TikTok, that it all starts to look more like a purposeful pivot than a strategic flaw.

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LANGUISHING IN INFAMY

It should speak volumes to you that even I — a person who constantly exposes you to the nastiest warts attached to our political underbelly — have refused to cover Jake Lang. There are going to be few times when I’ll ever ask you to take my word for something. This is one of them. Take my word that he is as grotesque, immoral, and violent a shit-stirrer as they come. Not at all in the spirit of fun gossip ever. Ok?

To feature a person like this in any content exercise, in any capacity, for any length of time, broadcasts to the world that you care about views, not voters. A stance, might I add, that’s regularly rewarded in our culture when people are honest about it. So when Unfuck America posted a clip of Jake Lang walking onto their set with very warm welcomes, you can imagine how it went.

The comment section of the walk-up video is engulfed in fiery rage. Unfuck America’s parent org, National Ground Game, posted an unnecessarily long caption defending their decision to host the J6-pardoned, blackface-wearing, Nazi-saluting Lang. If that was all she wrote, I don’t think this would’ve exploded — like for fucks sake, the actual debate with the guy only has 27k views.

But Zee decided to put her spin on promoting the debate in a video that now has 5,000 comments compared to 3,000 likes. This is what the kids call a ratio. And a pretty bad one at that. Her video opens with: “ just platformed January 6er Jake Lang.” Rerouting the anger tossed at her, straight to the Senate hopeful from Michigan instead.

One absolutely enormous difference: Lang crashed the candidate’s event, only to be immediately and unceremoniously thrown out. The clip of this face-off and El-Sayed’s thoughtful comments that followed has 1.2M views.

“He hates the idea of what America was always supposed to be … He wants America to be small, he wants America to be like him, he wants America to be hateful, he wants America to be a place that does not include. Everyday when we go out there and we knock on these doors, we make an argument for what America actually is — an America that is bigger than his hate …”

To say El-Sayed is beloved among the progressive influencer set would be an understatement. And some huge names jumped at the chance to expose the false equivalence set up by Zee, who did compliment the candidate’s response.

• Ed Choi: “She decided to use a brown, Muslim man as a shield to deflect from the criticism that they’re getting.”

• Jolly Good Ginger: “You misrepresented his video stating he ‘platformed’ Jake Lang which is incorrect, but you used that language because THAT is the accusation against you.”

  • Zee’s replies to him are lowkey kinda crazy, calling him the morality police and demanding they debate: “I’m sorry but your lectures and weird protests are so cringe bro. Either have a debate or admit you will lose.”

• Slaythegop: “Debate is supposed to be a tool for persuasion, it’s supposed to challenge people who are actually open to changing their minds, not handing over a microphone and legitimacy to someone whose public record is extremist rhetoric and provocation.”

• Alex Cascio: “You invited him to sit down with him and willingly platformed him, do you seriously not see the difference?”

• : “The Unfuck America Tour is a grift and anybody involved with it should not be considered the left, or collaborated with, followed, or respected … No this is not leftist infighting. This is acknowledging the line in the sand that has been drawn along fucking time ago.”

The creators associated with Unfuck America and National Ground Game have not answered to any of the backlash. To some degree, I wonder if they are replicating PR strategies from Charlie Kirk and TPUSA, too. The one thing you never do after doubling down? Apologize.

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AMERICA’S NEXT TOP MOBILIZER

The Unfuck America Tour got a leg up in a crowded field of newly-formed, creator-led organizations scrambling to make an impact after Charlie Kirk was shot. I’ve started keeping a list that I wouldn’t be surprised to see double by Election Day:

• Pick Up The Mic (from TPUSA)

• The Unfuck America Tour (from National Ground Game)

• Uncensored America (from Myron Gaines)

• Take America Back Tour (from Digital Ground Game)

• Disrupt PAC (from my friend )

Timing is everything to get off the ground. But one year later, two years later, what does it mean to actually make an impact among young voters — outside views, debates, and trends? Does having a following mean literally anything if they’re not following you to the voting booth?

As factions of Democrats continue to ragebait each other into oblivion, sharing daily decrees of who’s in and who’s out, one member of their tribe is consistently insistent on the idea that none of this bitching and bickering, drama and division needs to even happen: Zohran Mamdani.

🥹 Something to make you smile today, brought to you by our friends at Goodable!

Erling Braut Haaland Donates Rare 1594 Viking Saga Book to Bryne Library to Inspire Young Readers

“World Cup breakout star Erling Haaland of Norway, recently sent a 1594 piece of Norwegian history home to Bryne, and he wants local children to pick up books because of it.

Haaland and his father, Alfie Haaland, have bought the only surviving privately owned copy of Mattis Størssøn’s 1594 edition of Snorri Sturluson’s royal sagas and given it to Time Municipality. The book will be displayed and made accessible to the public at the library in Bryne, where Haaland is from.

‘I want the book always to lie open so that people can read about those who came from where I come from, from Bryne and Jæren,’ Erling Braut Haaland says in a comment.

‘It’s easier to feel drawn to reading when you can recognise yourself in the people and places being written about.’”

Grace Note: This story isn’t exactly breaking news but I figured, in honor of Erling’s 26th birthday today, it would be worth resurfacing. As he would say … “nice 👍🏻”

When the Love Island USA cast was announced on May 28, I watched fans, in real time, spring into action to expose any secrets the newest islanders might be hiding. What followed was a steady drip of information, receipts, backlash, and ultimately multiple cast member removals from the show.

In one case, an islander was sent home before the show even aired, because a high-school-era video surfaced of her rapping the n-word along to a song. Yanked, expeditiously. It made me consider for the first time whether my generation — who has spent a higher percentage of our lives with social media than without it — can ever be 100% certain of how long our paper trail is … or what the hell is even in it? Ephemerality is a hoax, you know, when screenshots exist.

Graham Platner’s disruptive and destructive flameout further exposed the limitations of vetting in the digital era, including in the political arena. Only one name really ever came to mind to talk about this with, and that is Run For Something’s .

At the end of our gabfest, I asked for some Run For Something candidates who are putting out social content I should look into. So I took a little gander, and here’s what I liked:

Kenny Van Nguyen: I knew this name sounded familiar. I went and dug into my business card collection from the 2024 election and I have his card from his city councilman days. So cool to see how far he’s gone (with much more to come, I’m sure). Loved that he celebrated his primary win by opening a fresh Pokemon Card pack on video.

Maria Hinojos Pressey + Sara Duncan: They’re running as a slate in Oregon, which I’m betting will rise in popularity as more young people — who understand the value of linking and building — run. Both candidates made videos pushing back on a proposed data center in their community and both videos put up 2-5x times their average engagement or views!

Hannah Sabio-Howell: You can tell when someone is a student of the game (of progressive politics). All of the visual cues are there, plus her own spin. The “On Your Left” branding / catchphrase is pretty … genius. I have to be honest, I rarely complete a whole candidate video, but I watched this “pantry pasta” chop and talk all the way through.

ALL THE CONTENT YOU DIDN’T SEE THIS WEEK

You’ll continue to see me refine this section over time. The function and purpose will stay the same — a funny, readable overview of political content winners and losers — but the form and depth will evolve to make it even juicier.

For now, we’ll do that by adding a section on a social media trend dominating the algo this week, extra points if it’s not political in origin. And by making room for just a little extra gossip to close us out. There will never be a better time to become a paid subscriber. Trust me 🤐

TREND ALERT:

“Preparing for my Netflix documentary” has transcended the cultural and entered the political (which, of course, means it’s dead).

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“Cyclospora” sounds like the Final Boss monster Odysseus has to face before finally getting home.

She’s hidden, disguised in some of summer’s sweetest offerings. Then she’s dormant, her menacing presence only revealed when you think you’ve made it to safety. Suddenly your body is a temple no more. Destroyed from the inside out. Pain and suffering, just like Homer drew it up.

I wish I could tell you this terror is purely mythological. But the “cyclospora” I’m talking about is both in the room with us and wreaking the exact havoc I described. Before I get into what on earth is going on here and why content creators are being extra crazy about it, I’m actually including a content warning here for once:

You’re going to hear “explosive diarrhea” more times than you would like in this post (but fewer times than if you contracted this parasite yourself, trust me). This is not a creative choice by yours truly. “Explosive diarrhea” is the term journalists and medical professionals are using. Thank you, and I’m sorry.

Cyclosporiasis. What a beautiful name. This foodborne illness has seized the gastrointestinal tracts of 5,000 of Americans — that we know of — in 30+ states — that we know of. Mission: Impossible to know the real count. More than half of reported cases are in Michigan. As of writing this on the afternoon of July 14, the origin of this outbreak is still unknown.

No federal official has appeared in front of press to brief Americans on risks, tracing, or management of this outbreak or answer questions about it. RFK Jr., who helms HHS which oversees the CDC and the FDA, has not posted about this on social media. He has posted 12 #throwback photos on his personal and one AI image of him speaking to a bald eagle on his official government account.

told me moments like these require “leadership and guidance coming from the top.” A former FDA employee told Dr. Gounder, on background, that “RFK is kind of checked out” outside of his “pet issues.” So without any “clear information and leadership, you don’t have very good coordination,” which allows mis- and disinformation to proliferate.

But early revelations prompted by cyclosporiasis aren’t just medical and political — they’re cultural too. And on that front, let me just say, you’re all scaring me. Four social trends that actually worry me, how Taco Bell is going from zero to hero, and a real doctor’s orders … all below!

TRENDING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION

Normal, polite coverage? Of insurgent, explosive diarrhea? In this creator economy? Yeah, right. Almost all of the content that surfaced in my algorithm sent a shiver down my spine because of something it revealed about who we are as people and where we are as a country. I ranked four trends according to absurdity (and included my gripes with them all).

“They said” — 2/10 😅

Don’t mistake a low rating here for a belief that this isn’t a problem. It is. But “hearsay” content is not exclusive to this cyclospora outbreak. Once you tune your ears to it, you’ll notice it everywhere. In this case, here are some examples:

📲: @expenzive_talk | 230k likes, 4M views

• “They’re saying that you might need to stay away from berries … They’re saying that you might need to stay away from broccoli …”

📲: @enzi777777 | 67k likes, 1.2M views

• “I’ve also heard it’s not just limited to vegetables, it might be on some berries too.”

Grace Note: I’ll keep this simple, WHOOOOOO is saying that? WHEREEEE did you hear that? You should hear an internal bell ding on command whenever someone says this on the internet or to you in real life. Train the referee that lives in your head that these words should trigger an automatic review — even if what they are saying is later proven true.

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“Always be selling” — 4/10 😵‍💫

This one is a given at this point. If paranoia is building about an obscure health threat (real or fake), you can bet your ass the alternative health girlies are mobilizing and monetizing on that fear. I came across a dynamic duo who just so happen to have the perfect product for this moment. What are the chances of that!

🌸: @KaleBlossom | 740k followers

• Promoting an affiliate link (they make commission off of) for a parasite botanical cleanse … that’s 30% off.

• Para-Shield will run you $49 for less than one fluid ounce.

Grace Note: This behavior never exists in a vacuum — commerce is just one planet in the vast science-skeptical solar system, concentrated on Instagram. You can only scroll so far in their feed before you reach other known planets. The duo posted two videos with almost 1M views between them promoting a conspiracy theory that this parasite has been intentionally released (by whom, once again) to “scare people into wanting future” mRNA vaccine treatments.

What’s up, doc?

“I think a major red flag is if somebody’s selling you something … the narrative here is mainstream medicine, don’t trust them. It’s big pharma, don’t trust the FDA. But I have something that works. They’re not telling you. They won’t tell you, but I have something that works and pay me, buy it for me. And if it’s framed in that way, you can be a hundred percent sure that is disinformation.” —

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“How would I know?” — 8/10 🫣

Ok. On the scale of harm to our socio-political fabric, this ranks lower than the rest. But remember, we’re measuring on the scale of content that freaked me out most. I … never in a million years did I expect to open an app and see dozens of people announcing to millions of people that they suffer from explosive diarrhea regularly.

For the sake of readability I will be abbreviating the subject matter to “ex-dia” —

💩: It’s just ex-dia, I have ex-dia every day I will be fine, I’m so much less scared now

💩: I’m not even sure I would realize if I got the ex-dia parasite thing, that’s just Tuesday

💩: Sounds like a normal Tuesday for me (wtf is up with Tuesdays??)

💩: Lowkey would not know if I had the ex-dia parasite or not

💩: I’ve got ex-dia. I don’t need the parasite ... I’m already ex-dia-ing

Grace Note: ……………………… what is it that compels a person to get on the internet — in a video format, no less — and announce the intimate details of the extremely volatile state of their bowel activity to as many strangers as possible? I really do blame social media for the social acceptance of this kind of outburst.

I would prefer this specific type of “relatability” content stay in group chats where friends, family, or maybe even medical professionals have consented to hearing about your incurable, recurring diarrhea. And on that note, I hope everyone has scheduled a colonoscopy in the near future.

“Give it to me” — 11/10 🫥

This is where the social, medical, and emotional all meet. I wouldn’t say this is a novel trend, especially during summer months, but I would say this is the most saturated an extreme weight loss trend has become in so little time. People online are openly saying they want to contract cyclosporiasis.

🤦‍♂️: Yes there are men in the mix — like this one who bought raspberries to get the “shit your pants and lose 20 pounds virus” (500k likes), or this one who said “give it to me now … I’m tryna be snatched” (550k likes)

👭: Women are the key demographic fueling this trend:

• “I’m ready to risk it”

• It’s “the summer cleanse of your life”

• “​​losing a few pounds from a parasite doesn’t sound that bad right now”

• “When the berries start to look like losing 10 pounds”

• The most common format for this trend features a woman holding produce, hinting that she’s going to eat it: This TikTok has 360k likes.

  • Lettuce + “Me: after months of trying to lose these last 10 pounds” (140k)

  • At the grocery store + When “you need a jumpstart to your weight loss” (83k)

  • Raspberries + “Me: after trying to lose these last 10 pounds” (16k)

  • Strawberries + “I could mess with losing 10 pounds this week” (4k)

Grace Note: I’m gonna hold their hand while I say this (so I can’t use it to whack them across the head), this fucking blows. We’re already ducking “summer body” fitspo, GLP-1 TV ads, celebrities doing their best disappearing act, friends or family members we worry about, and the voice inside our own heads that is dedicated to chiming in at only the most inopportune times.

We’re going to add a parasite created from fecal matter to the ever-expanding list of things we’re willing to endure to potentially drop that last five? I’m like damn … we are really never gonna know peace.

MY ANTIHEROES

Every action has its equal and opposite reaction or whatever. There’s a funny force pushing back on the let-me-contract-a-parasite-to-be-skinny narrative above.

• Look at all these gals enjoying their (so-far-cyclospora-less) junkfood — gorg, stunning, 10/10, obsessed, fabulous, thank you

• This girl who said you know where you’re not gonna find that shit? “Inside of a salami … inside of a hot dog … goldfish crackers … Reese’s-filled peanut butter pretzels.” Say that.

• And I love all of these people saying “you know what never gave me a parasite?” Nerds Gummy Clusters. Red Wine. White Wine. Ice Cream. Diet Coke. Margarita.

Lastly: Taco Bell is somehow … maybe … going to come out on top? They preemptively took all their (micro bits) of produce off their menu because they have their suspicions about it. The official Democrats TikTok account said TB is “doing more to stop the diarrhea outbreak than the Trump admin.” I mean, true! So, they’re actually being celebrated for their efforts. The bar is very low when the government is doing absolutely nothing.

Taco Bell and Costco having more predictive intelligence than the CDC is crazy. Great point.

THE DOCTOR IS IN

While I had her on the line, I wanted to get the quickest possible education in what we should look for when evaluating social media content that looks like it’s from a doctor.

“This is one of the top trending topics on social media right now. So if you’re looking to grow your audience, you’re gonna pile on this cyclosporiasis conversation. And what you really need to look at is, not only, is that person a doctor? Do they have actual expertise in something like this? Do they have expertise in infectious diseases? Do they have epidemiology experience? Do they have public health experience? Those are sort of the key types of expertise you would be looking for. And unfortunately, I’d say most of the health influencers, including doctors who are speaking about this on social media right now, are not qualified to do so.”

If you made it this far, you’re deserve something extra good — from our friends at Goodable.

98-Year-Old Car Lover Hits 130 MPH on Racetrack, Fulfilling a Lifelong Dream

“Patricia Elliot is a lifelong enthusiast of sports cars and was driven in an Aston Martin at Thruxton Race Circuit in Andover.

The former British Aerospace employee and resident at Dower House care home in Winchester didn’t hesitate when offered the opportunity.

She said: ‘I don’t think we even had 130 mph on the speedometer in my day.’

‘I’ve been around for quite a long time now, but this is one of those memories that will really stick with me — it’s not something I’ll ever forget.’”

Me again: Patty, I expect to see you push Max Verstappen to his limit at Silverstone next year. We are all rooting for you.

In case you missed Who Broke It’s take on Lindsey Graham’s truly s h o c k i n g death:

Back to regularly scheduled programming tomorrow evening!

10 months later, we’ve entered a new phase of Charlie Kirk discourse … or have we?

The trial has officially started, but it doesn’t feel like resolution is coming to comfort those most afflicted by his death. I’ve periodically checked in with TPUSA and the main characters in the organization’s never-ending drama, but one thing is clear: the damage will be irreparable even if Tyler Robinson is convicted beyond all reasonable doubt.

A couple notes to add some color to these proceedings:

Nothing sums up the decline of interest and engagement with the TPUSA content arm more than this striking side-by-side. On the left: concurrent listeners on Twitter alone on day one of the trial. These are bigger numbers than the show has put up since the immediate aftermath of Kirk’s death. On the right: concurrent listeners by day four. Interest waned and listeners moved on, much like they have with the show as a whole.

A take from Jared Holt:

I’d say the most intriguing moment that’s come out of the preliminary hearings so far came from the judge, who had a very physical reaction himself to the clip of the shooting. I almost wonder if it was the first time he saw it. This one clip has 10M views alone. Other than that, I’m always on the lookout for an unusual perspective to add to the mix. Here’s one from a body language expert offering some color on the less visible reactions in the room.

Otherwise, everyone’s still in the places you left them. Andrew Kolvet trying to fill the content gaps his boss left behind (and struggling). Candace Owens going balls to the wall from dawn ‘til dusk. And the two of them ferociously mauling each other online for the rest of us to watch.

Kolvet: “Candace, you and Charlie were not friends. He managed you.” “You gave him anxiety whenever you called or texted asking (demanding) to speak at our events.” “You were not his friend. You are not his defender. You were his tormenter. And now you torment his wife and the organization he built.”

Owens: “I’m glad you finally came to the surface, rat.” “So was Charlie lying to his audience (and to his team in private conversations) weeks before he died, Andrew or are you simply a special kind of demon for attempting to rewrite history…”

Everybody grieves differently, I suppose.

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ALL THE CONTENT YOU DIDN’T SEE THIS WEEK

There are some weeks when lawmakers have extra twitchy Twitter fingers. My nascent theory is that their screen time spikes when they’re on recess, like the House is ‘til July 13. Clear flaw in this thinking is … c’mon, it’s not like they don’t have plenty of free time when they’re in session too. And yet, shockingly few have weighed in on a fatal shooting by ICE on Tuesday. Where y’all at?

Gonna run through lawmaker trends and tussles below and some bonus content. If your work is at all impacted by the whims of our nation’s politics and officials, you should be subscribed to our paid tier. And if you’re just here for the love of the game … seek help (and upgrade too).

Members Only

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I really have issues with making people famous against their will.

No, I’m not talking about an average Joe that participates in a man-on-the-street interview without knowing the TikToker gets millions of views. And I’m not talking about Twitter’s Main Character of the Day (and the perpetual goal “to never be it”).

You should always remember that in either of those scenarios — or any other involving social media — your participation alone demonstrates not only an awareness, but a willingness to go viral. Until recently, we had the luxury of controlling how much we were exposed to the world, how far an image of us could go.

Even photojournalism, which does not require your explicit consent in public, had its exposure limits (pun absolutely intended). If an outlet published a front page photo of you minding your business on public transit, its reach was limited to those who pay to receive it. Sure, the last remaining print-reading family member may call, but you could find solace in your shelf life being 24 hours.

We are three days into an exercise in making someone famous who, I’m guessing, doesn’t want to be famous. A Reuters photographer, Cheney Orr, shot this image on the Washington Metro on the Fourth of July, as the train shuttled a few dozen members of white supremacist group Patriot Front to their extremely fufu lameshit rally.

From what I can tell, posted the photo first, at 11:27 a.m. that day — which is closing in on 5M views today. ’ post an hour and 20 minutes later has over 12M. Within hours, I had been served 100+ posts about the image organically in my feeds, which means me and tens of millions of Americans suddenly made eye contact with the photo’s subject.

It’s a deeply evocative photo: The undeniable contrast between a bare-faced Black woman and the sea of white-masked, anonymous men around her. A natural vignette emerges via the shirts and the shadows. Powerful sight lines draw your vision slowly backward, making the scene feel eerily infinite. I see thematic parallels to Philip Guston’s paintings.

This is how we engage with a piece from an artistic perspective. But this isn’t “art” in the traditional sense. The statement a photojournalist tries to make — through their framing, composition, depth, etc. — is different from the conclusion a viewer comes to while looking at the work. Which is different, still, from the experience of the subject actually living it.

The woman captivating America’s attention online has not come forward to share her experience actually living this metro moment. But that hasn’t stopped people on both sides of the aisle from telling her story for her and making her a symbol of their political crusades.

What the left is projecting onto their latest hero, how the right is twisting the narrative to fit their fight, and who is driving the dumbest conspiracy … all below!

YOU ARE WHO WE SAY YOU ARE

The journalistic stars came into alignment as Jasmine Golden from The Washington Post published a piece (gift link) as I write this. She spoke to Paul Bowlding, the brother of Bernita, whose face has been plastered across the internet seemingly without her knowledge.

Projecting our own personal narratives, of any kind, onto a stranger is one of our default settings when we engage on social media. But projecting political narratives onto unsuspecting people in this volatile — and yes, sometimes violent — atmosphere carries way more risk.

Here’s some of the language used by the left while promoting the photo:

• Adam Mockler, 1.5M views: “You see the type of resistance, the type of defiance, from this sole Black woman that defines the struggle of America”

• Millennial Mia, 812k views: “Yes, she’s incredibly brave. But I know this is not the first time she has ever experienced something like this or had felt anything like this”

• Harry Sisson, 3.4M views: “And the fact that this woman is sitting on the metro surrounded by these freaks and she’s not moving, she’s not getting up, giving up her seat, is a beautiful, small act of resistance”

• I’ve Had It, 162k views: “Sometimes images really define an era … sitting there bravely among all of these people”

• Don Lemon, 120k views: (quote via his guest) “she is teaching a history lesson to anyone who is prepared to see it”

• Adam Kinzinger, 172k views: “She’s simply unintimidated, at least it appears so, and existing” + “by her silence … she is calling out the cowardice of these men”

I assume these are well-intentioned messages. But all of it is a projection: of feelings, of worldviews, of experiences, of aspirations onto a woman who has not spoken for herself. Bernita’s circumstance and her mental health struggles aside, I think it’s true that the average American doesn’t hope to be elected the next face of liberal resistance on their ride home either.

But this has become foundational to the current Democratic identity. A person who suffers from a psychological “hero complex” is addicted to finding problems (real or manufactured) for the sake of saying they provided a solution. What is it called when a massive group of people with a massive amount of influence forces other people to don a cape and tights?

It may be hard for them to believe, but not everyone gets on the train with the goal of landing a contributor deal with MS NOW or MeidasTouch. Not everyone wants to be the hero in your story.

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TWISTED FICTIONS

A hero’s welcome prompts a villain’s takedown. This is to be expected any time the left heralds the arrival of a new face of the movement — the right creeps close behind, frantically searching for any flaws, failures, or fuck-ups to test the person’s purity. That is how you get “Rosa Farts.” I know. It sucks.

The first wave of pushback came in the form of comparison. It was a lot of, “See how safe she was? See how nothing happened to her? The same can’t be said for Iryna Zarutska.” This is a race-based “whataboutism” using Zarutska (white) who was stabbed to death on public transportation by a man (Black) last year. That dominated conservative content bubbles all of July 5th.

A video surfaced at 1 a.m. on July 6th, providing a new angle.1 It’s rare that someone I’ve never heard of on the right starts a new fire that actually burns online. Ryan Sánchez, who has nothing but white supremacist content all over his feeds, shared a video of a woman on a train who appears to be Bowlding, pants down, but wearing the same shirt.

By morning, a mugshot had been found, shared, and spread like wildfire by marquee right-wing pot-stirrers like Libs of TikTok. On the other hand, I didn’t see many of said marquee right-wing pot-stirrers amplify the video, which is an immediate red flag to me. Add in the fact that the original poster didn’t claim credit, no one else came forward to take credit, and there were two different timelines argued for when the video was taken … I’m not buying it.

Lead Stories (who we love) fed the clip through Google Gemini’s video authenticator which determined it “was edited or generated using Google AI, as indicated by SynthID signals detected in both its visuals and audio.” The WaPo article confirms the arrest happened and the charges were dropped, but offered no added insight on the video.

FWIW, I think it’s fake. But that’s just my baseline mentality these days. I guess I’m not the only one.

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PATRIOT FRONT OR STUNT?

Someone who displays better judgment by not humiliating a random person online might still be eager to participate in other forms of narrative experimentation. For example, declaring something is “staged” will always be on the table. Entry-level theorizing.

• Gina Milan, Gunther Eagleman (three times), Vince Langman, Josie Glabach

• Catturd posted five separate tweets … like ok!!!!

• Someone made an entire infographic about its “staged” elements

Expert-level theorizing pushes psyop into psycho mode. Why not just call Patriot Front “antifa” and call it a day? This road is becoming well traveled. And it’s always a good indication of how deep this cohort is rolling when establishment normies are leading the charge. Like … Laura Ingraham “looks more like Antifa in costume.” Really? Lol.

• “Based” Sen. Mike Lee: “Brought to you by leftists who don’t know that patriots don’t wear masks.”

• Rep. Anna Paulina Luna: finds it “odd” that the Biden admin never investigated Patriot Front … suspicious!

• Benny Johnson: unintentionally (?) admits he actually does believe Patriot Front are federal agents

• It’s the SPLC: This conspiracy has shocking potency.

  • Here’s a video by @stevelovesammo explaining his theory that the Southern Poverty Law Center is funding Patriot Front like it funded the KKK.

  • Likely place for Elon Musk to be found, agreeing that “it’s just another SPLC false flag operation.”

My favorite piece of content came from Black Conservative Perspective on YouTube, who diligently tested all possible explanations in under 17 minutes.

• “Obviously fake psyop from Democrats, from the left, from the mainstream liberal media”

• “If you believe this is real [maniacal laughter], you’re a dumbass [maniacal laughter]”

• “Nobody knows who these people are”

• “Who am I to not question or not believe that this group is being funded by the left?”

• “They pop up every now and then, every time the mainstream liberal media needs a distraction”

• “Even if it is real … it’s free speech”

• “I don’t know who these people are, no one knows who these people are”

• “How is it that y’all [Dems] know so much about these people???”

Truly the Simone Biles of mental gymnastics. I sincerely thank him for the performance.

LOOSE ENDS

📺 Something you should watch today:

🕵️ Someone you should know today: This girl who looks exactly like Erling Haaland on IG … and she’s taking the absolute takeover of her comments surprisingly well. Emma, you’re a legend.

🥹 Something to make you smile today: Look at this comically cartoonish cherry!

He was already crushing it on YouTube as one of the fastest growing political channels on the platform. That was before he announced a partnership with to retool your grandparents’ idea of a Sunday show for the social media age.

The first five “On Sunday” episodes pulled in almost 4M views across MTN and Jack’s own page, featuring guests from and to and other creators. I knocked on his digital door to see if he’d be down to chop it up about the rollout process, his larger content philosophy, and an ill-fated NBA offseason. He graciously obliged.

Back when we chatted for that piece last year, I felt a sense that he was going to ramp up the agitator levels as his audience grew. Bullseye. Here’s a taste of what you’ll hear in the live on that gamble (and much more):

“I’ve been more antagonistic because I’m just, like, I don’t care at this point. And I shouldn’t care, and no one should care. And I want to be intellectually honest, and in a time in which nobody has a worldview and everyone’s just appealing to whatever is best for them at a given moment, I’m just like, “Here’s my worldview. Let’s lay it out. Let’s be honest.” I’m not gonna bullshit — whatever consequences come with it.”

Tune in to the next episode, 7/5, featuring — breaking news from our chat — Gov. .

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ALL THE CONTENT YOU DIDN’T SEE THIS WEEK

This section is for those who wish they had eyes everywhere but don’t. That’s what Who Broke It is here for. Whether you need to get a grip on the content landscape because you work in politics / media or you’re just a junkie itching for a fix, I’ve got you. Like did you know and joined Substack? Or that Kevin Spacey is getting IN on the America 250 grift? Betchya didn’t.

Idk what this is: Tucker Carlson teased his launch of a third-party this week in, of all places, the Columbia Journalism Review. He still says he’s “not “interested” in “running” for “office.” Sure, Jan.

And I also dk what this is: Kyle Rittenhouse and Lil Wayne? I will not be investigating further. Sorry, we all have our limits.

Left:

• AOSeeyathere: This clip made such a splash … like 17 million views kind of wave. And all AOC said was “I mean, umm, you know, uh, I hope he is.” The question asked what she thought about Vance saying she could be the 2028 nominee. Lol.

• Casa Amortifying: The official Democrats TikTok account posted a horny Love Island fan cam dedicated to . It only has 3,615 likes. It’s not too late to delete this!!

• The D&T 500: Yesterday, an account popped up announcing it would track and report on any of Trump’s stock trades. This is legal, ask Nancy Pelosi, whose portfolio has been religiously followed for years. By morning, X had suspended them. Thankfully, is here on Substack.

• Archie Flunker: Trump’s temporary triumphal arch is literally deteriorating before our eyes. Gone with the wind unfabulous. The content about it has been chef’s kiss. ’s entire feed is full of videos I’m begging you not to miss. Plus this investigative journalism from :

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Right:

• Endless Poso-bilities: Now tell me why tanking alternative news network correspondent Jack Posobiec is on the inaugural Qatar Force 1 flight with the president (sponsored by Patriot Mobile)? He didn’t even do a “come with me to see the new AF1” video. Negligence!

• Time Blindness: I guess if you have absolutely nothing to do this weekend you can watch all four hours and 44 minutes and 26 seconds of Shawn Ryan’s interview with Candace Owens. My prevailing sentiment is:

  

• Legally Yawned: Sen. Mike Lee really thought he ate with this: “If a woman gives birth at the Supreme Court, is her baby entitled to automatic status as a justice?” I’d give anything to read this post to Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

• Picture Worth 1000 Words: I really stopped, stared, and studied these images of Elon Musk’s LEGO rocketship birthday cakes for quite some time. My take away is this: I bet this goes hard if you’re 12. Too bad he’s 55!

“I was an underage girl by herself, I didn’t have security.”

Unless there’s a press pass around their neck, I’m almost never inclined to trust a man with a camera. Kylie Jenner submitted a notable example of this into the record during a recent appearance on the “Therapuss” podcast, hosted by famous friend-for-hire Jake Shane.

Jenner says she doesn’t leave the house much when she’s home in LA, crediting the invasive and predatory tactics used by paparazzi to provoke her through the years. She used the word “diabolical” to describe being called a “slut” by grown, camera-toting men surrounding her car when she was 16 years old.

Videos surfaced this week of Kylie’s 13-year-old niece, North West, at Paris Fashion Week, flanked by security guards and a woman who people speculate is her assistant. Notably absent: parents. She’s being filmed by a crowd, from multiple angles, sitting at the Vetements show. Two other, separate videos feature adult men hugging her.1

I couldn’t help but think about these two testimonies to the danger of being a girl or woman in the public eye … while I watched Kylie Jenner abandon her own testimonies to the danger of being a girl or woman in the public eye so she can promote a pair of sunglasses. The specs designed by the youngest Kardashian run for $399 a pop.

I’d love to know what price she set for her involvement in marketing a product that removes barriers to intrusive, non-consensual recording. Meta AI’s newest glasses would allow the types of men who swarmed Jenner’s car to achieve the same level of intimidation, without extending the same courtesy of letting their subjects know they’re even on camera at all.

No such things were up for discussion during the product release last week. Very Meta. We got an announcement video from Kylie’s perspective. (The quality of the ad makes me doubt it was filmed on the glasses). A blowout NYC bash. And an ELLE exclusive, where Kylie reflects on her deeply considered design philosophy: “Glasses have always been my thing.”

On the Zuck front, he sat for an IRL interview with Complex on launch day (30,000 views 🙂‍↔️) and did a paywalled text interview with using questions solicited from an audience under a gag-order preventing any criticism. Mine, asking why all the richest men in the world can’t buy better taste, was not chosen.

Sending the online speech police to erect rhetorical fencing around — let’s be clear what this is — a personal surveillance device you’re trying to sell … good luck. There are not enough Instagram comment moderators in the world to fight off the backlash unleashed this week.

Who the emerging demographic of this fascist fashion is, what it tells us about our growing surveillance culture, and how collective shaming online is making way for individual action offline … all below!

GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS

I, unrelated to this, just rewatched “The Social Network.” Something twerpy little freshman Mark learns quickly as he’s building The Facebook has clearly stuck with him after all these years: getting girls to notice you is the whole ball game. In college, it’s about sex. In business, it’s about money.

In my head, this is the reason Instagram has been optimized (my least favorite word in the English language) for commerce. I can’t hit three swipes through my feed without getting a shoppable ad. God forbid I ever see a photo of a friend. But who buys products via social media? Women. The interest and attention from women is the only thing that can take tech wearables out of dark, dank dorkiness and into the warmth of mass consumption.

Who better to light that fire and lead the way than “King Kylie,” whose talonesque nail extensions have guided the aesthetic and sartorial whims of hundreds of millions of women for over a decade. Mark Zuckerberg could, literally, never. What he does, literally, always is find vehicles through which he can launder his nerdiness and undersell the societal threat.

“It’s almost fashion first and technology second.”

This one line in a clip on the fifth slide of Zuck’s announcement Instagram dump gives the whole game away. This is “almost” exactly what Meta would like you to believe, and it’s definitely exactly why Meta carefully selected its promotional partners around Kylie. Almost all of the 30 or so featured creators are women or people of color.

On its surface, it makes for an easy sell on social. I saw so many video reviews of the product that made sure to mention how much the glasses don’t feel like tech. reveled in this adjustment:

“Whether it be Kylie’s influence or simply Meta’s shift in focus to a fashion-forward, feminine frame, the new released styles are exactly what I’ve been looking for” … “the first pair of Meta’s AI glasses that has felt designed for a female face.”

If you just saw content made by creators who got paid and the thirsty influencers who hope to be paid, you might say, “wow their plan really worked.” But one of the reasons I’m enjoying this timeline is that for every person desperate to sell out to tech oligarchs online, there are usually 10 more ready to shame and explain.

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SHAME

• When came on here touting her new accessory, she got summarily dragged

• Big tech influencer accounts taking a mix of strategies — just letting the criticism roll in the comments and act like nothing’s happening or (I suspect based on the other engagement metrics) deleting negative comments

• Looking at the official Meta partner posts: Haters have the top comment on posts from Calum Harper, Ava Black, Tabitha Mary, and more

  • 1,000+ likes on the top comment for Terrence O’Connor, Charli xcx collaborator and current it-boy: “Sometimes the bag isn’t worth it”

Love this from in :

“So, the shame hasn’t disappeared; I guess it’s just an operating expense of accumulating wealth and power for some. … sanding down your following’s inherent resistance to AI and surveillance tech. You’re a tool. And maybe that feels very close to being important and powerful and useful.”

EXPLAIN

This is where social media becomes a real value-add for all of us.

• A reel on why women shouldn’t fall for the “girlbossificaton of AI” (300k views)

• It’s at this moment we learn that “AI ethicist” is a job — one that’s needed to help us understand that tech like this has “been used for many years as a form of punishment for violence towards women and historically marginalized communities.”

• The peak of creator clarity comes from Dr. Sarah Saska (), in her post about the feminization of AI:

In the case of Meta’s new glasses, the advertised technology is framed as an afterthought — something women don’t need to concern themselves with. The implementation of their advertised technology will be bad. But it’s the recently discovered covert tech that stands to damage our society the most. Facial recognition … already embedded.

That non-consensual recording the Kardashian family knows all about? It’s already being brought upon unsuspecting young women thanks to the lowkey profile provided by Kylie’s wearable cameras. We’re already seeing an increase in viral content made by men filming unsuspecting women with the intention of embarrassing or harassing them in public.

Just last week, Meta requested to be shielded from penalties for child harm. Sounds like something innocent corporations definitely do … lol. Wishing for privacy while partnering with companies dead-set against protecting it is certainly a choice. Kim did it with Tesla. Now Kylie and Meta. What’s next? Kendall for Palantir?

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BIRDS OF A FEATHER

Rage against these machines is at an all-time high. Surveillance tech sentiment is in the shitter and I really don’t see a way out as long as tech leaders continue to give off movie villain vibes. Even the companies and products you don’t know about are breeding resistance online and in your communities.

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Donald Trump loves a musical concubine.

He’s been trotting out Lee Greenwood to sing his singular (as in only) hit “God Bless the USA” at every one of his events for as long as I can remember. It very much seems to be Lee Greenwood’s only job. Last night, at Trump’s rally to kick off the America 250 celebration after all the other musicians bailed, was no exception.

I have literally never heard this man sing anything else. We got the live version of Trump’s walkout song nightly at the RNC in 2024. He performed at both of Trump’s inaugurations, last year’s Army birthday celebration, and a tele-rally for Lindsey Graham earlier this month. The two even promoted and sold a co-branded bible together.

I’d really love to know the details of their arrangement and what the plan is for his release from captivity. At 83 years old, some of the high notes in his classic tune are becoming hard to find. But who could ever possibly replace the great Lee Greenwood? Naturally, I have some theories, pros, and cons.

1: Christopher Macchio, “America’s Tenor” — “Not since the legendary Luciano Pavarotti has there been such a voice!”

His 90s highlight tape (?), promo reel (?) on his website is honestly electric, despite the fact that it features more walking around than singing. His usage rate has skyrocketed since 2024 — got multiple songs in at the Butler tribute rally, a prime slot at Trump’s final MSG campaign rally, and natty anthem duty at the inauguration.

• Pros: Long Island Italian, committed to theatricality and drama, definitely has the pipes, can scratch Trump’s incurable operatic itch in the mother tongue, clearly wants the job, available

• Con: No political or social media clout to his name, no standout personal work, 890 monthly listeners on Spotify, maybe too available

2: Master Gunnery Sgt. Alan Prather — guitar soloist, “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band

This guy is on an all-time run right now, and surely a very influential fan in the Oval Office has something to do with it. I tapped in when he sang a mean cover of Johnny Cash’s “Ain’t No Grave” during Justin Gaethje’s UFC walkout. Sgt. Prather was also in the spotlight for Trump’s Rededicate 250 show back in May and, you guessed it, featured last night.

• Pros: Has to be wherever he’s assigned so can’t turn Trump down, vast stylistic range, randomly has so much aura, bonus points for instrument

• Cons: Maybe can’t sing in other languages? We don’t know. Also seemingly a regular person, which Trump is not known to love.

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I’m sure you’re like “Grace … why are you telling us this?” I want you to know just how far my brain wandered while Trump gave the most lackluster speech I’ve ever heard him give at what was supposed to be his “biggest rally ever.” My attention was not held — and judging by the inactivity on my MAGA feeds, theirs wasn’t either.

FREEDOM TWO FLOP-TY

“A very big hello to America” is quite an opener for the nation’s weeks-long birthday party when there were only 3,970 viewers on the official White House livestream on YouTube. Don’t worry, by the time Trump finished speaking — under 30 mins might be a new record in brevity — there were 7,500 of us. Where is everyone, I wondered.

I rounded up the overnight numbers from some of Trump’s most reliable content arms — everything from livestreams to clips. The numbers made me question whether MAGA faithful either didn’t know this was on their government-issued TV schedules or if everyone had something better to do.

Streams

Morning-after total viewership from Trump’s friendliest streaming channels:

• Right Side Broadcasting Network (RBSN): 174,584 — 12k watching live last night

• Freedom 250: 50,574

• The White House: 76,376

• Fox News: 265,348

  • Oddity here: the full livestream playback is “unlisted,” aka unsearchable, on Fox News’ YouTube page. They usually publish in full to their feed. Curious.

• Real America’s Voice (RAV): 4,101

  • They did a little better on Rumble across their channel (17.9k) and Steve Bannon’s (18k)

• One America News Network (OANN): 1,532 — they paywalled the stream!

WH Accounts

• White House livestream on X: 158,300

• White House posts on X: only one speech clip (300k impressions), no posts hit 1M

  • All other posts were still images, speech text, or flyover shots

• Rapid Response posts on X: 10 posts from the night, only one hit 250k, most others fizzled out between 70-90k

  • For the sake of comparison: two posts immediately following the rally coverage have more than double the views and way higher engagement: a screenshot of a Truth Social post about Venezuela (614k) and a quote tweet calling “one of the dumbest individuals to have ever existed” (671k)

• White House posts on IG: six posts from the night, five of them are about the flyover, zero clips of the speech

• Trump’s IG handles: nothing on @potus or @realdonaldtrump

Mouthpieces

Paid a visit to the six most reliable MAGA clippers out there. Overall: brutal.

• Eric Daugherty | 1.1M followers: five clips of Trump, best performer is a clip of the president dancing after (134k), rest stalled out at 60-75k

• Nick Sortor | 1.5M followers: had the benefit of being there so captured good content on the ground of the walk out and reflecting pool, one clip of speech went nowhere (58k)

• Gunther Eagleman | 1.7M followers: averaged about 50k on four posts

• Greg Price | 525k followers: only posted one single clip (of the band), spent the rest of the night posting old soundbites of recent NYC primary winners

• Mario Nawfal | 3.6M followers: posted nine clips, but barely cracking 100 likes per post (some didn’t)

• Frontlines TPUSA | 110k followers: four clips from the crowd got an abysmal 30.5k … total impressions

These are deeply alarming numbers for an administration that relies on content footsoldiers to farm engagement on their behalf. Not one clip from a half hour speech broke through. That has as much to do with the messaging being washed as it does with his loyal messengers not even bothering to share and spread it. Danger zone.

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FRESH FROM THE CONTENT MINES

Your weekly roundup of all the content and trends you wish you could stay on top of, if only you had the time. Luckily I do. This is essential reading for anyone who vaguely touches politics, media, culture, or the creator economy. Let’s start here: World Cup fan Freddy 🇩🇪 whose American experience everyone fell in love with? CIA plant accusations!!!!

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I’m sure it will shock you to hear that I was on the debate team in middle school.

Three person teams left us with lineup decisions that felt suffocatingly consequential at 12 years old. Second speaker? Worst option. Your contribution is more or less predetermined to be irrelevant before you’ve even made it to the podium. Again, you’re 12, so most of the argument here is a rehash of what your friend said five minutes earlier. Flop.

Final speaker … whew. This entire thing rests on your shoulders. You have to listen the most closely, take the most notes, refute the most arguments, clear the benches, drop the mic. Risk level: high. Payoff potential: legendary. This was an “I’ll do it if I have to” type of gig.

Most of the time, I wanted to go first. Set the tone, establish the vibes, charm the judges — forgoing the tête-à-tête combat asked of the second or third seat, and taking in the opposition’s case without the pressure of mounting a comeback. (Unless, of course, you were called by the divine to stand up, smack the table, and do some sanctioned interrupting.)

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Friends served as teammates, rival schools as opponents, and parents as judges. You can imagine the kind of chaos that wrought. I can actually close my eyes and see the room that played host to a particularly eventful round of one tournament. The subject? “The Olympics Do More Harm Than Good.” It’s seared into my memory for two reasons.

The physical memory is tied to my team being absolutely robbed from one of our most certain wins because of some judging fuckery. They shuffled the judges around wrong, and I think we ended up with someone who had a relationship to the other team. The parents got into it. Our coach popped tf off. Official complaints were filed. Foundational drama for me.

Existential torment defined the second memory. Getting the sides handed down, which launched me and my teammates into a 15-minute prep period, rocked my shit. I probably tried negotiating with a higher power to get the opposition side. My spirit is anchored — still! — by a belief that international sporting events unite cultures and heal our world.

The then-eighth grade mind cannot comprehend successfully persuading a judge of something they do not believe in. Facing a “Miracle”-level task when I had already retired from my acting career by then! But, going for gold requires emotional sacrifice.

Out of the ashes of my debate devastation came a lesson I still put into practice nearly every day of my professional life. I learned that I can temporarily sever the connection between me and my beliefs in order to test drive someone else’s worldview. And that doing so wouldn’t corrupt my own worldview. I fear the biggest proponents of our current “debate me” culture never learned this lesson.

Who is carrying the torch of social media debate, how it is spread and received, and why its actual values have been deprioritized by social media … all below!

A “MODERN AMERICAN PATRIOT”

“My name is Dean Withers. I’m a 19-year-old liberal. I do political debate for a living. And today, I’m surrounded by 20 Trump supporters.” — “Surrounded,” Sept. 20, 2024

“My name is Dean Withers. I’m a 21-year-old liberal. I do political debate for a living. And today, I’m surrounded by 20 Trump supporters again — but this time, they’re all women.” — “Surrounded,” June 21, 2026

Those are Dean’s opening lines in both of the appearances he’s made as the featured “one” against a hand-selected “many.” For the uninitiated, this is how all episodes of the “Surrounded” series open. The series premiered on YouTube in the lead up to the 2024 election, opening with none other than Charlie Kirk in the hot seat.

Before the invention of this show, I’d never really heard of anyone doing “political debate” for a living. After the success of this show — Jubilee’s YouTube channel has accumulated more than three billion views — I finally considered the possibility that someone could make a living from doing “political debate” on social media.

Dean has been a perpetual presence on Jubilee franchises, filling his time between appearances with four hours of livestreaming per day on his personal channels. When I hopped into his TikTok stream yesterday, I joined a sea of 16,000 viewers flooding the chat, some sending in-app gifts. How much real money is actually made from this, it’s hard to tell.

So, we’ll operate on clout. Dean gained a lot of clout very quickly, surging his followers by millions after his first “Surrounded” episode in 2024 came out. But maintaining relevance, especially as Trump came to power for a second time, is the central job requirement for someone who “does political debate for a living.” It’s an own-or-be-owned world.

Staying in the mix means pulling up to other Jubilee shows like “Roundtable” and “Face Off,” or heading out of neutral territory to debate Nick Fuentes in a duel hosted by Kick streamer Adin Ross. Despite frequently exposing the misery these experiences bring him — “dean here, thanks for having me on, filming this was honestly pretty terrible. absolute ragebait lol” — he keeps coming back for more.

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WITHERING HEIGHTS

The episode that premiered Sunday has 2.3M views on YouTube and it comes in at a nearly two-hour-long watchtime (I’d love to see what their completion rates look like). The actual debate and his performance in it are up to you to indulge in and judge if you’d like. I want to focus on its distribution and dissemination at large.

Dean’s clip service — most of his clips are collab posts from Jubilee

IG: 10 clips, 27.5M views | TT: 4 clips, 9.2M views

• Post-debate live on YouTube (451st episode) + follow-up solo debate on his channel

Jubilee’s clip service

IG: 13 clips, 28M views | TT: 13 clips, 14.2M views | YTS: 9 clips, 1.3M views

A deeper clip-tide

Now this is where it gets interesting. The clip service that non-participants provide is the difference between a splash and a tidal wave online.

1. Dean-centric clipping accounts: I monitored two fan accounts for their response. One, (@debateclips) who runs a dedicated Dean clips page, didn’t post.

   • @deanwithrsclips posted one clip and one edit, adding another million and a half views. Honestly, abdicating their duty! Surprising.

2. Hasan Piker’s livestream: He added live commentary while playing the video for two full hours without even finishing it. Multiple fan pages uploaded that full segment to YouTube, netting them hundreds of thousands of views.

   • Here’s the clip-ception: Some of the best performing posts about the Jubilee debate actually come as a result of dedicated Hasan fan accounts sharing moments from his stream to other platforms. A dream within a dream within a dream.

3. … Russia?: I’m not gonna go too deep into this because it’s just a whole other issue but I’m duty bound to mention that I found a ton of engagement farming being done by Russian bots on TikTok.

   • An account called curly_elistratova0 posted 30 clips cut from the episode, five of them have 100k+ views, two have over 1M

   • There are a handful of “curly elistratova” accounts, all started within the past month, all flooding their profiles with clips from a chosen podcast/social show

   • After some light Googling, I discovered the name is a reference to a popular Russian influencer known for her curly hair. Bizarre but not unusual!

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TRICKERY OF THE TRADE

So this is definitely a job, in the way that it takes the majority of the creators time and there are some reliable avenues for monetization that can pay bills. But is this a career? The audience appetite for debate on social media — in good faith or, arguably even more, in bad — seems to be impossible to satiate.

Charlie Kirk and Hasan Piker both flew overseas to participate in Cambridge University debates … shared to social media. Piers Morgan resuscitated his lifeless career by introducing a debate show … which gets more views on social than it does live. Dean is not the only Jubilee pupil to secure standalone success. Mat Nuclear, an opponent of Dean, just got a show with the Daily Wire.

But is this sustainable? Monetarily, I’m not sure. The first two links on Dean’s Linktree being his Venmo and his Cashapp raise some red flags (no pun intended). Mentally, I’m sure — it’s not sustainable. Dean recorded a video of himself two days after the taping:

“When I tell you that my mental and physical health have been so terrible over the last 48 hours, I mean it. … It was by far one of the most tiring things I’ve ever done in my life.”

Now, that could very well be a big, icky promotional grift. Or it could be the exact and obvious byproduct of a culture we’ve created to entertain and enrage at any expense. Jubilee’s mission statement names “discomfort and conflict” as “pivotal forces.” In service of what? Views?

We’ve transitioned to living in a world where everything is up for dispute. It’s so fucking annoying and the popularization of “debate me” culture is to blame. Being in a perpetual defensive mindset has sabotaged our ability to seek out and recognize human connection. It breeds insecurity in our beliefs and opinions. It discourages the practice of admitting you haven’t made up your mind or don’t have enough information.

Because of this, you have to wonder what room “debate me” culture leaves for resolution. None. It’s not just deprioritized, it’s a nonfactor. That leaves both its viewers and its participants in a state of deep rage, kind of like the equivalent of being intellectually blue balled. It feels good to progress toward any kind of resolution, especially in politics.

This requires basic consideration that disingenuous, gang up formats don’t recognize. The exact type of consideration middle schoolers on the debate team are forced to practice when they prep for the side of a topic that conflicts with their adolescent opinions. I wonder if they are now judged on who owned their opponent harder instead of who made a more compelling argument.

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LOOSE ENDS

📰 Something you should read today: The Argument Culture: Agonism & the Common Good — Deborah Tannen

🕵️ Someone you should know today: right here on Substack. He’s the go-to guy when it comes to NYC’s electoral politics. He’s back with another block-by-block prediction of how the city’s primaries will go tonight. Give it a look!

The Narrative Wars

Predicting Every Block in New York City's Three Closest Congressional Races

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2 months ago · 125 likes · 28 comments · Michael Lange

🥹 Something to make you smile today: I’m a decade-plus-long fan of the French National Team (men, it’s obviously USWNT til death). That big blond blunt-force freak on Norway’s team is testing my loyalty. It helps that they have the absolute coolest fan celebration I have ever seen. Friday’s gonna be amazing.

I’d tell Peter Thiel to blink twice if he’s pissed, but I think they offloaded his human reaction functions like 12 system updates ago.

The Palantir-founding, antichrist-lecturing, maybe Argentina-moving tech billionaire is having what we call A Tough One™️. I personally feel like public displays of inspection into the shadowy billionaire and his growing empire are too few and far between.

On Tuesday, a post came up on my “For you” tab on Twitter from an account I had never seen, called: “maia arson crimew gay facts and tea.” You could consider the post contents both “gay facts” and “tea,” indeed. This user received a tip about a security flaw in the website of one of Thiel’s many extracurricular activities. What flowed from the spring?

113 names. The hacktivist wrapped the discovery in a thin layer of caution: It is “what seems to be a list of some members” of a much whispered about, invitation-only organization called Dialog. Thiel is the co-founder of the group, which has declined to publicize their membership list for two full decades.

WIRED verified the findings and reported on an additional list of 222 registrants for Dialog’s 2026 retreat this August in Ireland. They haven’t published it in full, but their reporting did include some of the panel offerings like “Money (Does?) Buy Happiness,” “How’s Your Sex Life?” and yes, “Build-a-Cult.”

This is the type of reporting that can, and does, fly under the radar far too regularly. Whether that’s due to technocrat stringpulling or an over-saturated news cycle, who’s to say.

But I’m seeing this story start to have legs with political content creators on the left and I have some theories about why.

Spend NYC primary night with four of the most interesting and hilarious people in the city. (No I did not make the list, yes I will be there). Drinks, a Founding Father, comedy, confessionals. This event has it all. RSVP here!

JUST A GIRL WITH A GRIPE

First, my forever nit that I’ll never not pick. Almost every liberal creator has played very fast and loose in designating this as an official “membership” list in a “secret society.” This is despite an added disclaimer from the OG hacker saying it is not clear if these are “Members or Speakers/Guests.” , a Dem organizer with an extremely engaged audience, actually got a rare community note on Instagram for the framing on her video with 4M views.

Listen, I’m just as inclined as the next guy to assume this is a nefarious intellectual circlejerk assembled to determine the fate of humanity. But that’s not explicit in the information we’ve received this week. That said, I feel like one of the few iron-clad truths in the political culture we’ve built is that if your name is on a list that was intended to be private … you got some ‘splaining to do.

A few of the figures whose names elicited a very loud “HUH???” reaction among list-readers quickly took to social media to do their ‘splaining. Maryland Gov. — huh? — clarified that he spoke at one event 13 years ago, never returned, and never met Thiel. Joseph Gordon-Levitt — HUH??? — called “some of the headlines and posts … alarming, if not bizarre.”

“I have been to two Dialog conferences. But, I do not know Peter Thiel. I’ve never met him. I’ve never spoken with him or his representatives. I’ve never seen him at an event. From what I’ve read about his views, we are political and ideological opposites.”

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Whether you want to take their word for it or not is your prerogative. I’d say Peter Thiel is punching air over these public denials, but that emote was also removed from his operating system. Here’s a word you should consider, if not take, from one of the most trusted voices on the left, :

• We knew that Dialog existed and some of the people who attended their events before

• We can see Thiel’s “paranoia” reflected in the workshops scheduled at the retreat

• got invited in the past, turned it down: “I didn’t want to be in a room with people I’m afraid of.”

  • And a reality check: “If somebody did go it doesn’t mean that they’re automatically bad or automatically evil.”

READING THE THIEL LEAVES

I’m gonna link to some of the wider content I’ve seen about this story in the past day. Almost all of these videos pull a unique thread in this story (listed), and yet, all of them are intentionally setting up an early argument about the 2028 election.

• , 500k views — highlights the leader of the “Build-A-Cult” workshop is the founder of Pray.com, “one of the top-five grossing lifestyle apps”

• , 130k views — one of a handful of creators to invoke George Carlin’s “it’s a big club, and you ain’t in it”

• Cheyenne Hunt, 150k views — “This is the oligarchy rigging the system against us while they’re on vacation”

• Philip DeFranco, 1.3M views — goes into the ethical problems with the regulators and who they regulate meeting in private, off-the-record

• Dave Neal, 500k — “This is why the issues in this world, they’re not left versus right, they’re up versus down.”

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NOT TOO LATE FOR 2028

There’s a reason Peter Thiel’s prodigal son — the actual vice president of the United States — has just been sent off on a doomed humanization tour around popular media. Though they cast themselves as visionaries, Thiel and his technocrat brethren are definitionally reactionaries.

The stickiest and most potent sentiment shared by Americans of all ideologies is this sense that the wealthy elite are plotting — without us and against us. Amplifying awareness of Dialog’s existence (and, for some, inflating the known details) further enriches that sentiment.

These creators on the left recognize that post-partisan appeal and have already started to direct their audiences’ attention toward it. Everything is a funnel, get in at the top.

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THINGS YOU DEFINITELY MISSED

Starting with the worst color-matched foundation humanity has ever seen:

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This is all Joan Rivers’ fault.

The Matron Saint of Shade wasn’t known for her restraint. She was the first woman I remember being elected to the formerly exclusive Society of People Who Could Say Anything and Get Away With It. The only thing she hated more than an apology was her original nose.

In July of 2014, an early prototype of a content creator asked Rivers on the street if we’ll ever have a gay president. She replied that “we already have it with Obama,” and added: “You know, Michelle is a trans.”

I still wonder if this was something fed to her by a 4chan-lurking employee or if this was just bigotry on the comedian’s own volition. This moment mainstreamed a conspiracy theory out of the deep, dark message boards it had been confined to since 2008. Much to Alex Jones’ excitement.

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In 2016, a New York co-chair of Trump’s presidential campaign, Carl Paladino, “accidentally” forwarded the conspiracy and other abhorrent statements about the Obama family to a local outlet. A sign of those times: The Trump transition team slammed Paladino’s comments as “absolutely reprehensible,” adding they have “no place in our public discourse.” Imagine that.

The theory respawned with fervor in 2023 — this time spurred on by the same cultural acceptance, casual acknowledgement, and outright insistence that delivered Trump the White House again in 2024. MAGA fitted the former first lady with a nickname I don’t feel the need to amplify. I’ve seen it thrown around regularly since then on my right-wing feeds.

Michelle Obama breathes or blinks or exists at all and it’s seen as an opportunity to sow seeds of doubt, watered with humiliation. Josh Hokit’s epilogue at UFC Freedom 250 was no exception. This junkie-like craving for viral fame remains a fixture of Gen Z men with brain damage. And there are millions who ate it up.

The morning after, Benny Johnson posted a YouTube video celebrating the “storybook” moment (unclear what storybooks he’s reading). I reluctantly flipped it on. Nothing to write home about, mostly BJ straining to laugh through a Joan Rivers-sized dose of Botox in his forehead. Then I saw the comments.

What I’ve uncovered about the next level of the Rivers-Obamas conspiracy, whether the left is fighting fire or spreading it, and how the UFC event’s social media impact got overshadowed by the weirdest controversies … all below!

NEWSFLASH: Major, major, major event for those in NYC next week. I’m hosting. A crazy lineup of comedians will be performing monologues. George Washington will be there.

RSVP here!

DENIAL IS A RIVER(S)

I’ll just get right to it: There are people walking among us who believe that the Obamas had Joan Rivers killed in September 2014 for her comments about them that July. As soon as I saw the comments on YouTube, I leapt over to Twitter. Here’s what I found:

• WallStreetApes | 1.3M followers: “At one point in time people were afraid of making this statement because they thought they could be killed. Now today, no one is afraid. We’ve come a long way.”

• Sassafrass84 | 634k followers: “Joan Rivers called it out first. … Weeks later, she’s dead after a ‘routine’ outpatient procedure. Crazy how that timing works, huh? You can’t make this stuff up. 👀”

• TheSCIF | 319k followers: “Joan Rivers confirmed the alleged rumor years ago and then passed away not too long after. There are no coincidences.”

• SmartassBrunette | 70k followers: “There are NO coincidence!” (sry, but lol) “It’s a FACT and Joan Rivers paid the ultimate price for telling the TRUTH!”

• There are many many many many more examples. Revisiting the 2023 wave of this conspiracy reminded me just how fucking zooted Donald Trump Jr. permanently looked during that era. (See above).

“Nothing is a coincidence” culture amazes me. As if it’s beyond the realm of possibility that an octogenarian with a well-documented plastic surgery obsession could die sixty days after making a comment to a camera (her lifelong profession) … hello???

I hesitated to even put this in front of you guys because this edged close to the line I try not to cross with Who Broke It: when raising mass awareness becomes risking mass appeal. These ideas take hold so much faster than we think, especially as media literacy craters and digital discernment is challenged in the age of AI. It’s a conundrum I don’t have an answer for, so let’s explore it a bit together.

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PRICE PER SHARE

Between the 10M Knicks fans lighting up the streets (and the internet) + the feel-good (and feel-bad) World Cup stories, the White House’s UFC event barely broke through my algorithm. I do blame Paramount’s paywall, but also the surprising lack of influencers credentialed to cover the event.1

Turning Point had a logo printed on the Octagon — but seemingly no one capturing content on the ground. This creates a ground war between clipaholics at home. Nick Sortor had one of the first Josh Hokit clips to pop off. His usual 🚨🤣💀 included. The Blaze followed one minute later, with 3x the views. Why?

’s “twilight of liberal democracy” repost is closing in on 14M hits. His take — and its offshoots from every influential liberal or leftist imaginable — injected the clip right into the timeline of every active Never Trumper. From there, creators chose one of two routes: condemnation with amplification or condemnation without it.

DOUBLED DOWN

The 8,000 reposts represent the conundrum I’m talking about. The left got legitimate kindling to light a fire under the base’s ass — flexing their protective muscles that have never been out of use long enough to atrophy thanks to the right’s unending fixation with the Obamas.

The inseparable other side of this coin, the gamble you make in sharing a clip like that with no edits, millions of times, is it will inevitably drop the conspiracy into thousands of minds primed to accept it, or at the very least, consider it.

LEFT OUT

No clip accompanying statements and commentary for this group. The unexpected: Dave Portnoy said the ‘de-rog-erty’ (derogatory) comment “has to be an immediate denounce.” Shane Gillis who peddled the conspiracy with Joe Rogan in 2023 said, “I don't like that shit.” UFC’s Dana White: “I hate that kind of nonsense.”

Then the athletes jumped in. Shannon Sharpe had an incredible (and for the most part, one-way) conversation with his “Nightcap” co-hosts. Fellow NFL alum Robert Griffin III called it a “disgrace … Especially with the history behind calling black women men.” WWE’s Titus O’Neil wrote a long tribute to Michelle. UFC’s own Derek Brunson (no relation to Jalen) deemed the stunt “super unnecessary.”

YouTuber @delamomanny had the funniest post I saw, with a good dose of perspective:

“That would be like Jalen Brunson when he won the finals MVP, he was like, ‘I’m so happy to bring the Knicks their first championship in over 50 years. Also, Nancy Reagan was a whore. Thank you, New York!’”

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PLUGGING LEAKS

Here’s the thing. Even if Josh Hokit hadn’t decided to use the one moment he could’ve gotten millions of new fans to be a troll, I still don’t feel certain Trump’s event would’ve gotten close to the “one billion” viewers they wanted to reach. Here’s a chart of total posts mentioning “UFC” across social media in the past 12 months, tracked by Junkipedia.

Here’s a chart of the total engagements on that same tracked content. That red line is TikTok engagement. They’re a ways away.

The UFC is the fifth most followed sports league across the big four platforms,2 according to Sportingpedia. It should be able to produce its biggest numbers ever for a once-in-a-lifetime gig like this. And that’s before considering the engagement the Trump admin, other sports outlets, and right-wing accounts can bring. But random chaos can strike at any time.

“So much for weather predicting”

The Rapid Response 47 account took issue with, of all things, a weather report, warning of “heavy downpours,” “brutal D.C. humidity,” and “massive swarms of mosquitos and gnats.” Getting mad because you feel like being mad. Been there.

put it nicely:

“The administration spent part of Flag Day attacking an accurate weather report and the person who delivered it for describing the sky. Then the sky did exactly what he said it would do. That is the whole presidency in a single morning. He can insult the forecast. He cannot move the clouds.”

Eric’s crypto-nite

Deleted tweets, tens of millions of views, and what briefly looked like a pending fraud investigation — what happened here? Former UFC champion “DC” posted some alleged DMs he exchanged with Eric Trump, who was hunting for inside information to place bets on some of the fights. Caption: “I’m probably going to get a lot of flak for bringing this to light.”

ET posted that the DMs were fake. Then, that post was scrubbed. Daniel Cormier tells a creator on his way to the White House that his account had been hacked. After he shares that he “got hacked or something,” a series of crypto promotions show up on his account. Those are later deleted.

I recognized one of the crypto links (pump.fun) immediately, thanks to an unbelievably disturbing piece I just read by . The full CNN article and its Substack supplement are essential reading.

“Pump.fun announced a new feature called Pump.fun GO, in which users could offer public bounties, payable in crypto, for people who complete various tasks. … In this case, leveraging the power of money seemed to mean convincing someone in a region where many laborers make less than $10 per day to permanently disfigure his own face.”

This is bizarre. Was this a crypto stunt by DC? Was Eric Trump actually on the other end of this? Are there connections here to shady bounty betting? I’m not sure which truth is more fucked up: that all of it is possible or that we’ll probably never know.

LOOSE ENDS

📺 Something you should watch today: A selection of great coverage of how Trump and the UFC are enriching themselves through this event!

• From : “How Dana White and Trump Cashed In”

• From : “We Investigated The Shady Business Behind The UFC”

• From : “The President is making a ton of money”

🕵️ Someone you should know today: For all the sports chatter lately, one thing I can all but promise you is that this Substack is never going to talk about baseball. Except for right now. Brent Suter of the Los Angeles Angels has undertaken the noble and massive task of pushing fossil fuel advertising out of sports. Great piece from .

🥹 Something to make you smile today: I took another woodworking class. What do we think Freud would have to say about my ash wood cutting board coming out looking exactly like a chicken wing?

“1, 2, 3, Vive L’Algerie and welcome to Kansas City!”

We’ve got an early contender for Official Phrase of the World Cup. We’re hearing all kinds of sentences that have never been uttered before. Example: “The Spain national football team has arrived in downtown Chattanooga for the FIFA World Cup.” The 18-year-old who’s first in line to be the next best player in the world suddenly finds himself melting in the 92-degree Tennessee heat? Hallmark is working on casting a love interest as we speak.

Outside of our homegrown squad, 47 teams planted new roots in an eclectic array of North American cities. Not all are living the Miller High Life. Actually, “cities” might be too generous a term for some. The Bosnian team is in Herriman, Utah. The Ghanaians? Smithfield, Rhode Island. White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, pop. 2,154, is Iraq’s temporary home.

These cultural collisions are nerve-wracking. They’re unpredictable. When the World Cup is anywhere else, that unpredictability is someone else’s problem. As of today, it’s ours. It feels kind of like bringing someone home during a particularly destructive bender. Your place has definitely seen better days, your guest regrets saying yes soon after they arrive, but your humiliation doesn’t set in until long after they’re gone.

Sometimes the most unexpected people look past our flaws and see us for who we are. Maybe they’re backwards enough to actually enjoy some exposure to our chaos. This type of inexplicable, serendipitous connection is exactly what social media is allowing us to witness all over America right now. And nowhere is it stronger than Lawrence, Kansas.

A DoubleTree Hotel smack dab in between Kansas City and Topeka is serving as the backdrop to what I believe will be the greatest relationship development of 2026. Even more significant than a potential Chalamet-Jenner playoff baby. Here’s how the relationship is developing:

The first thing I noticed was the fedora. The second thing I noticed was that the fedora was bedazzled. It wasn’t until later, given an alternate angle in a different video, that I noticed the wearer of said bedazzled fedora also had a ponytail. Should’ve assumed as much. An off-camera reporter from sports channel El Heddaf asks what the man thinks about Algeria.

“I wanna say thank you to team Algeria for choosing our home town Lawrence, Kansas … I was so happy that they chose our town for their base camp.”

He adds that he doesn’t know much about the country other than it was a French colony, it touches the Mediterranean in the north, and the Sahara Desert in the south. A woman next to him closes out the clip by saying “1, 2, 3, Vive L’Algerie” to the best of her linguistic ability. This became the first cross-platform viral clip of the 2026 World Cup. And it was just the tip of the fedora.

How short-form video content made Lawrence of Algeria the example of global unity, why it makes me so emo, and what the European mind can and can’t comprehend … all below!

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YES WE KANSAS

Social media allows me to satiate my most ravenous curiosities. Was it just the spirit of one bedazzled fedorable man unknowingly raising Lawrence’s profile? Or was he part of a community-wide effort to make these foreign footballers and their fans feel welcome?

The Algerian team arrived three days ago. With them came a swarm of die-hard supporters, lots of honking in traffic, tons of flags, and even a few Arabic-speaking journalists. What us media consumers, poisoned by cynicism, would have assumed is this would be perfect Fox News fodder for their ever-enlarging portfolio of alleged invasions in America.

Instead, the clips of the welcome celebration outside the DoubleTree would most certainly be left on their cutting room floor. El Heddaf interviewed a broccoli-haired teenage boy who said, “We love them, we support them, we want them to win.” Millions more views. An Algerian digital outlet, Le Lien, popped up with a ton of videos of their own:

• Video: Another teenager waving the Algerian flag over a crowd of fans, saying, “I never thought I’d see anything like this.”

  • In a second video, he says, “I felt like I was from Algeria for a little bit there. … Everybody is so welcoming.”

• Video: The crowd somehow gets two police officers to say: “1, 2, 3, Vive L’Algerie!”

• Video: A mom and her two young daughters announcing, “We’re so glad you’re here.”

• Video: A young man drove up from Texas to catch a glimpse of his favorite player and team captain, Riyad Mahrez.

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YES WE PLAN

At this point, I’m half-laughing, half-crying with every new video I’m coming across. Things are veering into the absurd in ways my brain cannot imagine. I’m watching a kid donning an SEC hat (the sports conference, not the government agency) bouncing gleefully to the beat of massive and ornate drums, in a crowd belting Algerian harmonies. So much dancing.

It feels too good to be true in this timeline, where our civility gets spooked and peace flees in an instant. I am speaking directly to those Knicks fans who attacked a Spurs fan. But the further I dove in, the more random Lawrence profiles I clicked on, the more intentional that warm welcome felt.

🦊 The staff at Johnny’s Tavern gathered for their welcome video in English, Arabic, and French. One held a fennec fox plushy in reference to the team’s nickname, Les Fennecs.

🪻 A local flowershop, Verdant, built a new window installation out of irises, the country’s national flower, in celebration of “the spirit of community that brings us together.” Why am I crying!

🪕 A band at a restaurant put their spin on an (allegedly very famous) Algerian song, “Zwit Rwit,” with the addition of a banjo.

📽️ A local film festival scheduled screenings of two films honoring Algerian culture — including one of the most respected war movies ever made, “The Battle of Algiers” (1966).

👕 Eccentricity boutique collaborated with Needle & Ink screenprinters on a merch collection putting the community’s pride in hosting on display. (The idea of a white Kansas mom walking around her suburb in an Algerian flag is just so good.)

All of this takes time and consideration, planning and preparation. In a world of such hollow honorifics, the depth of one community’s commitment truly moves me. It’s necessary to stop for a moment and recognize that everything I just put in front of you exists in complete contradiction to what we’ve been made to believe this country stands for.

Sports always serve as a reminder that we don’t have to sacrifice anything to let these bonds form. I’ll definitely have more to say on this as the games get going. Expect it.

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THE EUROPEAN MIND

Because I think we all deserve to have a top-to-bottom feel-good newsletter for once, I’m gonna drop some people to keep an eye on. I’m not sure who has broken containment, and if they have, how far they’ve gotten. So I hope I am putting you on to some joy you deserve.

We have four breakout stars at the start of these games — all Europeans, all being bamboozled by every turn they take in their visit to this great country.

Freddy | 400k followers in the blink of an eye

German roadtripping through the American South, eating whatever American trans fats he can get his hands on, and loving every second of it.

• Could not believe Auburn Stadium, including the “war eagle” that flies around before games

• Panicking at how many Sprite options there are

• Stumbles upon Bass Pro Shops, says it’s “surreal” they sell rifles there

• NFL legend J.J. Watt wants to meet up with him in Houston (Freddy didn’t know who he was)

Fiago | 140k followers

Also German but mostly making vertical video content, has been enchanted by Chicago, is devastated FIFA banned tailgating

• Like most people, is obsessed with the Wilco Towers

• Could not believe pre-game flyovers

• Doing amazing PR for the friendliness level of Americans

• I’m particularly humored by the answers to this post he put out asking what underrated U.S. cities he should go to next. They are certifiable.

Elsa | 120k followers

Swedish, is obsessed with Indiana, saw an Amish person, was never the same

• European discovers ranch dressing will never not make me lol (bacon-wrapped tater tots with ranch broke her)

• Disappointed to see products in Walgreens behind bars — we are too, sis

• Openly looking for a green card after one week

And one who has bamboozled me in ways I could have never imagined:

Sometimes all it takes to fall back in love with something is to see it through another person’s eyes. This is our chance, America! Let’s take it!!!*

*I do not mean the USMNT, this is simply their chance to make it out of the knockouts.

This is going to be the most important piece I’ve ever written.

Not because I got a career-defining scoop or uncovered a massive scandal or landed my holy-grail interview, though any of those would be nice. It’s important because today I can finally put to rest my eight-month-long, (and until now) fruitless pursuit … of finding a way to talk about the NBA in a politics-focused Substack publication. Deliverance is sweet.

The first piece of video content I ever produced for The Recount five and half years ago was a product of the same persistent basketball mania I suffer from today. The WNBA’s Atlanta Dream put the clamps on their owner’s bid for Congress (she now heads the Small Business Administration in the Trump admin).

I don’t see eye-to-eye with people who take politics to be an invasive species in sports, especially basketball. There are political forces underlying box scores, conference records, trades, and triumphs — from Michael Jordan’s infamous “Republicans buy sneakers too” quip to Steph Curry’s freshly inked $400M Chinese shoe deal.

Ultra-crazed basketball fans on the internet behave in a similar manner to the average Swiftie: sniffing out the most covert hints at a player’s ideology, worldview, or party preference from the stockpile of content available. Listen, it’s a long season. We have weird ways of trying to keep ourselves sane. Almost none of them work.

That’s how you end up with a flourishing ecosystem of creators producing an abundance of communist NBA memes on social media. The casual fan might point to LeBron James’ 2019 critical comments about Hong Kong free speech protests (and the subsequent trolling) as the origin point of this trend. Fortunately, I am no casual fan.

In 2018, “Weird Celtics Twitter” started to tickle the curiosity of NBA bloggers, in part because of its very bold, repetitious “Marxist” motifs and “Soviet-style propaganda.” I scrolled for way too long trying to find examples from way back when, but most of the pioneers’ accounts are no longer with us. Only one that I know of is still going strong.

But these left-of-center teachings and traditions have survived long enough to find a newer, younger, brighter, bigger host. One who is willing to offer a more overt declaration over that pesky covert hinting I previously mentioned.

Whether it’s an IG post in front of that famous portrait in Tiananmen Square or selecting George Orwell’s “1984” as his pregame accessoire du jour, one thing’s for sure: Victor “WembanyaMAO” is becoming a political torchbearer for leftist NBA fans. Whether he wants to be or not.

How the new face of the NBA got sucked into commie content, who framed the Knicks and Mamdani as the socialist counter, and why Trump’s unwelcome MSG sleepover awakened fans to class struggle on display at the NBA Finals … all below!

THE SPUR AND HAMMER

To the untrained eye, 7’5”, 22-year-old Victor gives off anthropomorphized Gumby energy, making the nickname Wemby a thrilling and fortunate fit. He vaporizes this cuteification attempt as soon as he steps on a basketball court — a skill he honed after two weeks of training with Shaolin monks in the mountains of central China last June. Based.

I came across my first WembanyaMAO edit on TikTok a month after, in July of 2025. I threw it into my saved folder in case it became more than a one-off — a skill I’ve honed after years of developing my internet trend radar. In January of this year, I noticed the pace of these edits picked up after Wemby was one of the only NBA stars to share his horror in response to ICE’s “murder of civilians” in Minnesota. Tens of millions of views across social.

A nameless, faceless Twitter user called “Wemby Central” fuels a significant amount of the memes and discourse. The account’s bio reads:

The PRSA? Y’all are in-fucking-sane.

When the Spurs reached the Western Conference Finals,1 consider the political-ideological fever pitch reached. I thought I was a genius when I said to friends that the best repellant to the steady creep of fascism in America would be the Spurs beating the Oklahoma City Thunder. Shocked to learn I’m not a genius and I wasn’t having an original thought. In fact, people were posting the historic “Hitler is dead” photo immediately in celebration.

An Instagram Reel with more than 50,000 likes delivers this message: “The most leftist, radical thing you can do right now is support Maoist Victor Wembanyama combat the forces of capitalistic, greedy evil of the Oklahoma City Thunder.” A tweet deemed this effort “a civilizational struggle between Wembanyama Enlightenment and the petrofascism of the American heartland.”

Again, you people are crazy … but as far as unhinged fanbases are concerned, New York will always have something to say.

NOW ENTERING MAMDANISTAN

On the day of Game 1 of the NBA Finals, June 3rd, a 100% heavyweight cotton diptych came across my feed. Means Workwear’s tagline for the t-shirt face-off: “Are you with Chairman Wemby or do you see Mamdanistan on the horizon?”

Naturally, I had to reach out. I chatted with the Creative Director of the Means Cooperative and self-described “full-blown communist” James Harr, who bravely admitted to me he didn’t know who Wemby was until three weeks ago. Comedian Kal Penn had just shared a Mamdanistan tee fit pic to his 423,000 Instagram followers.

The company has received “thousands” of pre-orders for shirts, with Comrade Wemby outselling its Knicks counterpart by more than 2x. I asked if buzz has converted to followers. James reports a gain of around 2,000, “really solid.”

“It’s really easy as a political content creator to get views and engagement because of the nature of the types of content that we put out. But, you know, when you see a music person or a comedy person, there’s a sense of being like, ‘I want more of this,’ and I don’t think anyone really wants more politics in their life right now. So, gaining followers as a lefty content creator is harder.”

Even if followers aren’t converting, which I can say first hand he’s dead on about, does he see the content and the clothing as an unexpected way to get good PR for the socialist or communist cause? I’ve never asked a question like that before. How exciting. He said:

“I think that it creates this very sort of funny and approachable moment for less political people [...] to have like a lighthearted touch point with it that makes it safer to engage with that.

For the broader American public — which is, like, pretty openly hostile to a lot of socialist iconography, history, whatever — I think it softens their relationship with it in a way that I think is largely positive for the movement as a whole.”

He and his crew are offering a rendition of choose your own adventure, in the form of a viral meme placing Jalen Brunson + Zohran on one side under “reform” and Wemby + Mao on the other under “revolution.” This is a boomer Republican’s literal worst nightmare, but James is right — it does feel like a lighthearted touch point through social media content, more than toxic, infectious exposure to radical ideas.

Now … I don’t know if you’ve heard … but Zohran Mamdani … is actually … a literal … Democratic Socialist.

And let me be the first to say, he is putting his whole ass into the NYC propaganda during these ongoing NBA Finals and upcoming World Cup.2

1. Repealed bedtime for kids to be able to watch the games: 14.3M views on X, 1M likes on IG

2. Premiered a basketball-themed campaign ad for primary candidates he’s endorsing: 4M views on IG

3. Dropped a Finals hype video, featuring and endorsed by the preeminent Knicks postgame content collective, Sidetalk — whose nine clips of the mayor during the playoffs have netted over 7M views.

   

This has paid off in dividends (is that the right finance term? idek). The biggest viral moment of these playoffs so far permanently enshrines him at the peak of this rare form of New York happiness: My mayor Muslim / my bagel Jewish / my Christian Dior / Knicks in 4. I am physically incapable of totalling the engagement on the Knicks in 4 (RIP) chant. Gave up in the hundreds of millions, including offshoots, copycats, and revisions.

All of this has led me to conclude that this was, indeed, the wokest NBA Finals ever. Until Trump came to town.

TAKING A BITE OUT OF THE BIG APPLE

I’m going to hand over my playbook to you, the way no good coach ever would. But I want you to see the volume of what we’re dealing with here. Behold: My spreadsheet of 160+ pieces of content that I consider “viral” related to the politics of the playoffs. Mostly Trump.

My top takeaways:

• Sleeping and booing dominated all platforms last night. No matter how many times different posts came across peoples’ feeds, they were smashing that like button like Chairman Wemby was overseeing them in the content mines.

  • 34 posts came up in my feeds authentically (no search), the tweets totaled 71M views when I gathered the numbers this morning, which means they’re out of date. Conservatively speaking, I think we could safely double it.

  • Total likes adding Instagram in the mix: 1.2M. Again, double it.

• Other high-concentration subjects:

  • Missing Don Jr.’s wedding but making time for NBA games

  • He’s “ruining” the “vibes” for everyone” — “ruining bucket list experiences,” “ruining the experience,” “all time great vibes … coming to fuck it up,” “absolute vibe squasher,” “atrocious vibe shift”

    • My favorite:

    

  • Epstein focus, calling on Benson and Stabler sitting courtside to get the “pedophile” in the building

  • What if “it happens,” will Mike Breen on the broadcast do a “single or a double bang”

The sentiment was overwhelmingly that “the standing fascist regime is in the house,” as fanatical Knicks fan, William D. Hendrix, put it to me over DM. As I zig-zagged through thousands of line-waiters and half a dozen police barricades by MSG before Game 3, I could palpably feel the vibe shift from the consistent blissed-out hum of the week before.

When I yelled out to the (mostly older white men) ticketholders if anyone wanted to talk about the gargantuan elephant shacking up in their team owner’s box, they were mum as fuck. Then it clicked, these aren’t the people you see in video content, tearing up the sidewalks in an almost psychoactive frenzy. All the regular degulars, as halftime performer Cardi B would say, were priced out.

Access — what it costs, what it gets you, which of your values you may have to compromise to get it — of put that word in my head thanks to a viral tweet he wrote about it. So, I gave him a call too. This is the most talking on the phone I’ve ever done. Shutting down the watch party, he said, was “particularly distasteful.”

That upper echelon of wealth and power removes you from awareness of the inconvenience you’re causing — a word Spurs player De’Aaron Fox used. Tommy said:

“I joked with my wife. It’s the person who gets engaged at your wedding, you know? You spend time and energy and thought and, you know, it’s the biggest day of your life and somebody is so … doesn’t have the social graces or the empathy to understand, “okay, I’m going to take a step back.”

Of course, the president left the game with seven minutes to go in the fourth quarter. They say the camera adds 10 pounds — the many viral clips of him gobbling down french fries and pizza show he’s making quick work of it.

LOOSE ENDS

📰 Something you should read today: ‘The whole of New York is stressed right now’: how Knicks finals fever reached Rikers Island — Bryan Armen Graham, The Guardian

🕵️ Someone you should know today: Gonna add some comments to this post tomorrow from a personal favorite prolific poster of mine . She is religiously committed to bringing us all the best insight, analysis, and humor when it comes to the game we love and the culture around it. I’m saying thank you in advance!

🥹 Something to make you smile today: Just to make sure you all know my close-out game is not to be messed with, I’m gonna beat the dead horse here. Who knows when I’ll get to again. Do you know how lucky we are that two men who front these two teams are extremely committed to honoring their emotions in public? They might double-handedly save despairing young men. KAT talking at length, multiple times, postgame about feeling the presence of his mother he lost due to COVID. Wemby, shedding tears about his former coach, weeks after declaring, “Personally, I refuse to carry the burden of having to hide my emotions.” I feel euphoric levels of hope when I think about this.