Doing the math on political gambles
Matt Walsh, Savanah Hernandez, and Graham Platner go all in
Do people ever really know if a political calculation is gonna pay off?
The formula is constantly changing and entirely dependent on which side you’re on right now. For example: Because of the community building the right has committed to in the past ten-ish years, MAGA’s strongest flag bearers show up for each other if someone is catching heat.
And that pays dividends beyond social media engagement and amplification. This week a creator took a major gamble trying to exchange some goodwill built with the Trump administration for actual action on the ground in New York City. That bet seemingly hit big time.
But what about personal, public accounting of a Senate candidate on the left? Will he, with no political safety net to fall back on, find a way to pay some serious karmic debt? Read on below, then drop a comment with your thoughts.
FROM THE RIGHT WING:
LOYAL TO A FAULT: This battle for the soul of the right continues to captivate me. The point of division is whether “unite the right” includes fusion with and acceptance of people with extremist (read: nazi-esque) beliefs and tendencies. The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh has been steadfast in his commitment to holding the umbrella of conservatism over any and everyone — Nick Fuentes, leaked texters, et al. And Brett Cooper, darling of the YouTube MAGAverse, has joined his side in the “civil war.” She frames his acceptance of others as a refusal “to betray his friends,” even when he may disagree with their views. If a friend were to disagree with him publicly, Cooper says, he would “consider it an unforgivable betrayal.”
This is where I feel like we open a new tab in this debate. Because what started as Matt Walsh’s argument for unity to defeat the left’s insanity, has turned into a referendum on friendship and loyalty. They are conflating the exclusion of radicals from the party with public disloyalty to your friends. And this is the conundrum we’re starting to see reveal itself on the right — a group so enmeshed with one another because of the deep, long-term networks they’ve created (ex: TPUSA) that simple ideological disagreement (good, normal) comes off as personal betrayal.
RAID IN MANHATTAN: Savanah Hernandez reports for Frontlines, a Turning Point offshoot featured at the recent antifa roundtable at the White House (where they spelled her name wrong). She’s in NYC and posted a video from the sidewalks of Canal Street, “filled with illegals.” Canal has a robust illicit economy. This isn’t news to anyone who has spent more than a day in the city in the past 30+ years. But repackaging the street’s state of affairs — optimized for social, with a focus on the migrants at the heart of it — presented quite the opportunity. And not just for her to go viral, which she did.
48 hours later, ICE swooped in to clear the area, allowing creators like Nick Shirley the opportunity to Portland-ize the Big Apple for some content. NYPD was quick to say they had no involvement in the very aggressive sweep and arrests. If this was all federal activity, it might be time to start asking whether these D.C.-level directives are actually trickling up from the influencers the admin regularly communicates with.
EMINENT DOMAIN: Emily Austin is one of the few loudly conservative women in the world of sports content. She just dropped a new show on YouTube, reaching across the aisle and featuring Andrew Cuomo as her first guest. The interview is three minutes and 35 seconds, mostly about safety in New York and his excitement about the Brooklyn Nets (which I have literally never heard anyone say). Her promo for the episode touts a new initiative she’s starting: Hot Girls for Cuomo. One itty bitty oversight though — no one on her team thought to buy the domain name, which currently redirects to a PDF of the 2021 investigation into Cuomo’s sexual harassment. We’ll call that an unforced error.
FROM THE LEFT WING:
BATTLE OF THE AGES: “You wanna dress up like a knight and play swords? Of course you do, you’re twelve” — this is the rhetorical formula of the left’s latest incendiary device in the Boom, Roasted war. From what I can tell this originated with Bluesky user Patrick Cosmos ruminating on “a new unified theory of american reality” called “‘everyone is twelve now.’” Six weeks later, it has picked up where Dems abandoned “Republicans are weird” in 2024: as a way to infantilize the GOP and condemn their content to internet loserdom.
Twitter user J.J. Ellis has collected 400,000 likes ratioing various government agencies using the “everyone is twelve now” theory, mainly targeting DHS and the wealth of imagery they publish every day. For now, this remains safe in the hands of the people, but I can just feel the Twitter fingers of octogenarian congressmen start to twitch.
SACRIFICIAL GRAHAM: I don’t know man, this Graham Platner situation is getting weirder every day. It moved quickly from anointing him the face and future of the Democratic Party, to debating whether a Nazi tattoo he covered (with other hideous ink) is disqualifying. Pod Save hosted the Maine U.S. Senate candidate for a long interview where he proactively divulged his baggage in an effort to preempt opposition research. They back off their hype a little in a follow up video. But across the internet, Dems are split. Kyle Kulinski used his unintentional Metallica tattoo to commiserate. Breaking Points questioned the logic of accusing Platner of being both antifa and fascist in the span of two days. But TYT’s Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian provide the best (and loudest) distillation of the two sides of this philosophical debate.
HITTING THE SPOT-IFY: Last week, I mentioned that voices on the socialist end of the left preferred a general economic strike over Saturday’s day of protest, while also noting a lack of visible effort to plan one. But an organizing group is starting to get attention, after a shout out from the mayor of Chicago and collab posts from a bunch of leftist accounts like Occupy Democrats and 50501 Movement. The General Strike has collected 400,000 signatures — out of a goal of 10.6M — committing to a mass labor strike. Dave Pakman is the biggest creator backing the cause, saying “it would force the people in power to come to the table to negotiate.”
Heather Cox Richardson takes the opposite view, arguing that “because this is such a big country, different people get badly hurt by their own allies.” She endorses targeted boycotts — and I’m seeing one start to gain steam after Spotify stood by airing ICE ads. There is a Google Doc circulating on steps to take for users engaging in the boycott.
LOOSE ENDS:
📝 Word I learned today: hirsute
1 : hairy — “A military veteran turned oysterman who looked the hirsute part, the Mainer’s populist candidacy seemed to be an immaculate conception.” (via Jonathan Martin, Politico)
🕵️ Someone you should know today: Did you know Marjorie Taylor Greene has a boyfriend? And he’s a chief White House correspondent? At MSNB— lol imagine … Just kidding. Brian Glenn is an on-air reporter with Real America’s Voice. And he’s blonde. And loves being a social media boyfriend.
🥹 Something to make you smile today: This might be somewhat controversial for me to say, but the best basketball player on earth is a 7’5 21-year-old French kid who spent the summer with Shaolin monks in China apparently learning to defy all the laws of nature. As Shea Serrano said, “I hope someone got them monks a TV,” because what Wemby did in the first game of the season opened a portal to another dimension.
Hey, great read as allways! Your calculus on this is spot on.
This is sooo good.