MAGA Influencer Says GOP Early Vote Numbers Are Too Depressing to Share | MAGA Mondays

All right. Hello, everybody. It's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at The Bulwark, and I'm here with Will Sommer. We are back for another edition of MAGA Mondays. Will was very upset because we're one minute late. I apologize to Will. He's so punctual, this guy. But we're trying to go over the show map. Well, I know we were hammering it out. We got a big show, but I saw the clock tick over, and I thought, oh, my gosh, we got to go. Will's wearing his Sunday best. He looks really nice. I look like shit, but it's just Monday, and we're a week before the election, and I can't get bothered to get dressed up like you did, Will. You look really nice, though. Well, thank you. It's getting a little cold enough. I can bust out the shaggy dog sweaters. I've caught midterm fever, as we'll discuss. I'm midterms all the time now. Yeah, what's your Twitter feed like these days? Well, I love these pundits who are like the true MAGA guys who have become disillusioned, and they're now like, it's all over. Like Rich Barris, who Tim had on the pod last month, I think. These guys who are just like, the Republican Party will be destroyed. That's the kind of analysis I love to hear. Yeah, no, I bet your algorithm is really kicking. Data Republican, we're going to get into her in a little bit. But we got to start with a truly historical. moment in the presidency. We've never seen anything like this. Barack Obama never did it. George Bush never did it. Joe Biden certainly never did it. This is big. Donald Trump has put out the longest bleat in presidential history. He did it last night. There you see it. It's hard to read because, I kid you not, it's 1,324 words. It's like, I just. I just want people who aren't watching this, who are listening to this, this is a full screen. No, this isn't even a full screen grab. This is just the first three graphs of it. And you can't read it because it's so compressed. But this is what he was doing on Sunday afternoon, Sunday evening, about eight or nine days before the midterms. And it was an extraordinary thing, a real, you know, up there with the Gettysburg Address, I think, in terms of artifacts from the presidency. It was. I was joking to Will that we should read the whole thing, but I think it would take the entire show. So we're just going to read parts of it. And Will's going to jump in to offer his unvarnished thoughts when he has some. And then when we decide that this is truly boring material, we'll stop. But if you're in the comments right now, you can tell us to stop. Sorry, Matt. Producer Matt tells us it's only three graphs. So that's all of it. Again, it's over 1,300 words. I want to know. Andrew Carell at CNN noted that this is twice as long as the second biggest Trump tweet. Okay. And in the comments, Andrew Steele, 94, notes that the Gettysburg Address was only 272 words. So you can consider this something like five Gettysburg Addresses topped on top of each other. Oh, we're already getting stops. We're already getting stops. I knew as soon as you said it. But folks, this is about an important issue. Look, this country's facing a lot of challenges. It's got to be about how we're going to wind down the Iran war, how we're going to get diesel prices down, how we're going to rein in inflation. It's got to be something important, right? All right. Yeah, it's definitely important. So I'm going to start reading it. And I'm going to ignore the stops in the comments for a little bit, because we're going to be introduced to a new central character in the midterm election, someone who actually could sway the control of the Senate. Here we go. I'm going to try. Let's talk about this complete and total loser, Bill Maher. He's not the central character I'm talking about. Now, just a reminder, Bill Maher had dinner with Trump recently. Okay. Yes. Okay. He's got a low rated show on equally low rated HBO, which was once long ago, a network of quality and excitement. But that's all gone. Trump was a big Oz guy. That's all gone. It's not hot anymore. Maher's friend and business associate, Chuck LaBella. This is this is the new guy, guys. Chuck LaBella. Who's Chuck LaBella? We'll get to that. Chuck LaBella was also a friend of mine. He worked on the top hit show, The Apprentice, as a gopher because of the success of that show. Number one and top rated on many weeks. The finale being among the top shows of the year. He was automatically and quickly brought up through the ranks of NBC, along with everyone else associated with a historic happening. What does he mean by happening? The Apprentice. It's like, you know, you can only call it like the incident or whatever. It was such a it was such a big moment. Everything changed. It was a happening. That was a run on sentence. The success of The Apprentice was so great that everyone partook. It built many careers. And that is a wonderful thing. Some people say it even built my career because I became president. I would have won without it. In any event, over the last few years, LaBella would call me nonstop and say, Hello, be very nice and tell me how much Bill Maher loves and respects me and will constantly ask of me even before I was president for any form of meeting with Maher. And would I do his show? When I became president, I agreed to meet after the first one. And that was last one, but never agreed to do his show, which he wants me to do. Desperately, it won't happen. When I have watched the show, which isn't often, it always ends with dishonesty about me, at least. But who cares? Okay, let's stop for a second. He cares. All right, I'm going to skip a bunch here because I know people are getting really tired of this because there's more LaBella coming up. All right, where do I pick up? He talks about how great he is in the polls and yada, yada, yada, and the CNN polls and yada, yada, and Heron Enten, yada, yada, yada. Bill Maher lied, but he lies about everything. And I believe he lied to me when I asked him with all the applause and laughter he gets after almost everything he says about thing that aren't things he meant that aren't funny or even good. When laughter machine, what laughter machine does he use? I've been on Bill Maher. There's no laughter machine. I'll do a fact check on that one. People can't think he's funny. I didn't know Bill. He didn't know me. And that was okay. Then Chuck LaBella and my friend Kid Rock called me incessantly by meeting with Bill Maher. My first response was, fellas, this guy's a goofball. They said he wants to go down to the White House, be with you and talk. He said, you're very smart, but you're not into the liberal platform. Will you start thinking about it? He invited himself to the White House. We had our first meeting. Bill Maher said, I don't know. Bill was very nervous. He asked for a drink. He was very insecure. And he had seriously bruised eye and nose area as though someone had just beaten him up. But it wasn't me. He does still have a way with words sometimes. You hate to say it. I hate to see two real heroes fight. Heroes of mine. If folks have ever watched Club Random, Bill Maher's podcast, I think a lot of this will ring true. The idea that Bill Maher comes off like a very weird guy. You know, he gets into Bill Maher being a marijuana addict. I think at least according to the president's estimation. I think he may be onto something here. No, Bill's just high as shit during those shows. So it gets a little weird. All right. I'm going to close up soon. No sooner had we had the first dinner at the White House, which is a very seductive and beautiful place. Oh my God. Do you think of the White House as seductive or no? Not, not anymore. You know, I might've found it seductive once, but, but all the gold fixtures and everything, I think are a little over the top. You don't think that's more seductive? What'd you think of Obama talking about, uh, the White House becoming Saddam Hussein doing Cheesecake Factory? Well, that caused a lot of drama, right? Because, you know, you had this, this kind of a Lindy Lee type figure, this, this former Democrat whose name escapes me at the moment, uh, who came out and said, you know, I think it is Lindy Lee. No, no, no, no, no. It's another woman. Oh yeah. Evan Baker. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. And so she said, you know, this is why Democrats lose. They disrespect Cheesecake Factory. The proles think Cheesecake Factory is heaven on earth. There's a lot of drama there. There was a lot of drama. Scott Jennings talking about how elitist Obama was for, for making fun of the Cheesecake Factory. He wasn't making fun of Cheesecake Factory. He was just saying that Saddam Hussein designed it. Uh, anyways. Okay. Bill want to come back on. The gopher called me multiple times saying how much that he respects me more than anybody and wants me to come back for a second meeting. After 10 calls from Chuck Labella, there's our boy Chuck. It seemed that these guys were serious and wanted to learn more because their policies are so bad. It's ridiculous. Also, I wanted to tell Bill that he's a major pothead. He's got to stop. It's very bad for his health. He looked like hell this time. Bill was drunk and had alcohol in his hand as he walked through the White House. Stephen A. Smith and Kid Rock came along with him. Overall, I thought it was a good meeting. It didn't last for hours. It lasted two hours, maybe less, and everybody was happy. We have the time stamps. I learned nothing and it felt it was a waste of time. Can you imagine being Bill Maher? You're stoned at the White House. You've got, you're kind of looking around in a haze and it's like, there's Donald Trump. Okay. I got to find someone to rest my eyes on. Who's not going to unnerve me. Oh, there's Stephen A. Smith. Oh, there's gotta be someone here. I could chill with. Oh, it's Kid Rock. What a, what a, what a group dinner. All right. I think we, oh wait, no, there's one more Chuck. There's more Chuck LaBelle here. Uh, Bill, as of Billy says, he's not a very nice guy and what he spouts isn't what he believes he has, uh, to cater to his base, which is mostly composed of losers and people who don't like working. It's why for so long, I didn't get another call from Chuck LaBelle and I didn't miss him one bit after the second time. dinner bill's show was far worse than the first he went crazy he's gutless because he enjoyed every minute also i'm not i am not a building i'm not building a swimming pool in the white house briefing room and never had any intention of doing so yada yada yada he does go on to compliment carolyn levy who was the guest on bill's show uh last weekend so or on friday i should say uh he says bill maher's not transformative he's a loser blah blah blah blah blah so look i didn't get through the whole thing i couldn't it's too much but this is ridiculous 1300 words how many how many drafts did he maybe he didn't do any dress maybe it's just stream of thought but lord what is going on yeah i mean i think he's crashing out you know i mean this is not the kind of like he's not keeping his eye on the ball i think if republicans were trying to really salvage the midterms here we want to put trump kind of lock him in a box keep him focused we want tweets very bland tweets about affordability but it's dead we're getting i mean i it's interesting to me that this is the people may say oh we've seen we've heard these kind of crazy trump stories before but it's interesting to me that this is the the longest tweet of trump bleat ever right and so this is like the the thing he is most focused on he's finally going to use his platform and it's to settle a score with bill maher i'm a little worried that he's going to get uh energized by the fact that he just hit the longest bleat ever and he's going to try to up it like the next one's got to be like over 1300 and 24 words just because you know he likes setting records so yeah watch out if you're a trump enemy voters could not care less about so if you are honestly that's a good idea get yeah were you really a gopher yeah what is a gopher again it's like somebody just does kind of like a boy friday you know kind of like a what you know like a boy friday like uh like what's a boy friday like a guy who kind of just does stuff for you that's a boy hold on one second where are you making these terms boy friday do people know this term oh yeah that's actually a term comes from a literal expression man friday from the daniel defoe's 1719 novel robinson caruso uh classic phrases girl friday referring to versatile young male assistant or gopher yeah okay wow you're so fucking smart will i i discourse recalls back to when i said fallacious like is will talking oh yeah i was like sam it's it's monday you know you know some days are hard man you're running around all day bring your kids to different sporting events it's time i'm just trying to get back into it um all right so that's trump that's how he spent his weekend he's been on the on the trail obviously is um we've been watching and in morning shots we talked about really coveting a lot of male physiques um like more so than ever um it's become a shtick and uh that i'm like a little bit weirded out by that but that's like the close of this election chuck labella and men's asses yeah it's very um you know he's an appreciator of men's bodies uh you know there's there's you know i obviously i i dabble in the weightlifting internet and you know there's a lot of debates online people are always like natty or not like is this guy on steroids right is this guy on gear and i i hopefully a little idea for trump might be the next rally up the ante by being like is john husted is he natty or not you know is he is is he taking roids we should call trump up this might this is this would kind of appeal to like the rogan verse you know these well i was kind of wondering that are like the are like is the manosphere kind of into it like you know they're sort of right on that line between homoerotic deadlift must be insane yeah exactly like yeah man this is ripped you trump was complimented rfk's body too the other day he's like he looks amazing and i was just like i'm i don't know does he look amazing he looks kind of leathery but trump's got a type um okay so you mentioned it um they're kind of crashing out yeah uh it appears you know you never know with these things because you don't want to just extrapolate from early uh vote data but it appears democrats are doing pretty well um the polling averages haven't really moved all that much despite all this onslaught of republican money and online the conversation among the voters so bad that they're not even showing the data to their followers yeah so this is this is our old friend data republican aka jennica pounds look this lady what can't she do right you know she's the republican data guru she's previously mapped all of the dsa connections to foreign terrorists according to her you know she was secretly a department of war employee she caught sarah rogers at the state department you know she thought trying to entrap her for treason i mean like was she the one who caught bill crystal taking usa money or was that someone else yeah i think she's the one who said bill the guantanamo so you know she's a jack of all trades and in this case um she tweeted i think on sunday she said i've been asked about early voting analysis the dilemma i have is that my platform is big enough such that being too blunt can have an effect on morale uh-oh bad sign i'll push out new states blah blah blah and she's i won't i won't announce them here on x um and she said basically she says you know come on go vote even texas is going to be a fight so she's saying she says here she's going to give her predictions to real germy carl is that the guy who was going to be a state employee but was like exposed as a white nationalist and i'm not sure i'm not sure about that the name sounds familiar it does sound familiar let's see if we can look that up i love the idea of like i will be giving my predictions in a sealed envelope you know a classic way to do that it's like the fucking oscars you can put it in the mail and get the times you can get the stamp on it right and i'll be sending that to jeremy carl and he will he will say whether data republican was right so basically she's saying now after i tweeted about this some republicans were saying well look data republican is a doofus whatever this does this is is not predictive of how the elections are going to go and i would agree with them what i'm saying is data republican is someone who is treated with a lot of respect on the right so much so that she was secretly employed by pete hegseth and the fact that she who i think is she's normally a hardcore trump person she's looking at this and saying these results are so bad i can't share them with my followers that's not good yeah but you know first of all it is the same jeremy carl who couldn't get confirmed by the senate i don't know why she's sharing it with him um her shit's so wrong all the time that i think this is the best news republicans have yes yes oh my god this is bad data republican thinks dems are gonna win that's shooing for ken paxton my lord so so let's so interesting it's a little weird because she says i'm not going to say it on twitter but i do have it on my website i'm not going to say it on my website i'm not going to say it on my website okay well so let's go to the data republican website let's throw up some of those screenshots we've got so here in north carolina she's predicting democrats plus 15 uh-oh uh and then let's show another one florida dems up nearly five 4.7 and you know i can't quite parse her numbers here i think they're probably you know foolishness anyway but this is this is what data republican is looking at so you know why did she post that why did she why would she post them to her website if she couldn't share them with the with her followers she was going to like this is kind of when it comes down to a lot of these figures i cover you know ultimately like we'll have a conversation about them and you say but wait there's kind of a logical flaw in their plan i know i know right they're like why would they do that this is so bad i can't share this with my followers i'm just going to post them to my website you A lot of the people that i've been talking about are people did people i mean ryan grimm found him within like two seconds yeah he went to data republican.com yeah alongside you know uh a list of people for the justice department to arrest for their foreign ties and you know her website has everything or is she the only one crashing out i feel like the the copium or the hopium or whatever you want is is not in great supply here i think it's running low i mean i i think um you know like i said i mean there are certain pollsters that are running low i mean there are certain pollsters that are running low i mean there are certain pollsters that are running low i mean there are certain pollsters that are running low i mean there are certain pollsters that are running low i mean there are certain pollsters that are running low i mean there are certain pollsters who are kind of maga pollsters who have sort of flipped and are saying you know i'm gonna predict a republican wipeout so you know at least i can salvage that you know if things go south um so you know for my reputation uh but overall i i would say like there's just a real energy of like please vote dan patrick the lieutenant governor of texas who played a crucial role in my my own decision to leave the republican party uh after he won a senate primary in my area tell the story oh yeah sure so basically um we were family friends with a state rap a guy named joe nixon shout out who was a republican my family kind of like business republicans you know kind of like fiscal whatever you present that way and so thank you and so i i was a very um you know i was a very young active young republican and in high school and so i worked on yeah what did you do when you say active what do you well actually this is funny because there's so much talk about texas i had another thought i was working a um i worked on a we had another friend who was a county judge who was running and so me and my friends at high school were at like kind of a high school republican confab in houston and rick perry was the governor at the time and i was like 16 and he kind of came down the line shaking everyone's hand and then he kind of after lunch he came back and they lined everyone up again to shake hands and i was like well i've already shook his hand but like i'm not gonna say refuse to shake the governor's i'm here and then he gets to me and my friends and he goes to his aid i've already shaken their hand so so that was one example but wow what a sliding door moment. If he had just shaken your hand a second time, you would not be sitting here. I was a little like, oh. okay fuck you rick high school student but that's all right um so then basically i was working on joe nixon state senate campaign against dan patrick who originally was 16 year old yes 17 maybe at that point did you have other hobbies you know video games um i was a cool guy uh high school newspapers certainly so basically uh the he was running against dan patrick at the time was like a wacky local talk radio baron uh and so dan patrick proceeded to totally thump our family friend and all the other republicans one in a very lopsided way and i was like dan patrick's nuts i was like the republican party is just gonna go crazy if this is the kind of people they're electing and i kind of had a crisis that night and i said like i can't be a republican anymore and that's kind of what began my journey wow so i owed all the dan patrick we should credit dan patrick for all this so he put out a video over the weekend that where he said he was like rural voters don't let blue cities control you please vote so that gives you a sense of how things are going yeah it's not going particularly we got another week though we'll see if it like turns around you know i'm one of these people i just like i try to just not get hyped on anything until you actually get the results but yeah look i mean it's like it's not just the data republican data uh that she posted or the vibes online i mean it's not just the data but it's it's not just the data but it's not just the data that's out there and i don't want to say like things happening internationally necessarily wrote you know matter to the united states but we did have like some significant international elections over the weekend that if you just look at it uh on face value it's a pushback against uh trumpism and authoritarianism abroad and uh this does relate to what we talk about here because the maga influence network was gearing up in each of these races uh so we're going to start with serbia um because we talked about this on the trio last week but for some inexplicable reason i didn't even realize honestly i'm going to admit it i'm an idiot but i didn't realize there's like an election this weekend yeah look i mean up until friday i was not aware of this election either but then as the maga influencers flooded in now i'm like a great supporter of the serbian student movement and as they say as they say in belgrade pump it that's their slogan so is that really it is a pump it do they do this pump it yeah exactly so so so shout out to the students so they had this big election coming up against the serbian strongman alexander vucic but did you know this when we were talking about it last week with tim no because i got fired up ever over the weekend because i basically like i was negatively polarized against alexander vucic because he was palling around with people like valentina gomez all these influencers and so i've done some research over the weekend okay tell us what's going on so basically the you know this is kind of long time 10 years president and there's this kind of student reformist movement that rose up um now inexplicably in the final days of the election maga and kind of like also sort of european maga aligned influencers flooded into serbia doing these very kind of like american inflected videos uh very strange they seem i i think there's probably some money involved here um but they got like obviously right like i was gonna ask you i don't want to interrupt so but i do want to know to the best of your knowledge like how does this work right like it to me it seems very clear that the serbian government was like we want you know we want to generate some you know publicity some goodwill we want to show off our connections to trump like let's you know let's reach out to this agency who can bring over these maga influencers they'll cut all these videos show how great life is in serbia how the bacon is moist all that stuff and like and then we'll have like a lot of what like good internet vibes and people will vote for us is that like how it works i just don't i wish i understood the no well you know once again sam the plan doesn't make sense i mean i i i think i actually think that maybe there's a theory here which is that there were because i think we can see as the election happened on sunday there there was sort of the initial feelings of like they were going to do a self coup like they were going to sort of the the police were flooding into like the radio stations kind of the key areas you might want to control if there was a close election that favored the students and then you wanted to sort of just you know deny the results of the election right as as it turned out the election was it was too big to rig folks the students won by like 11 um and so it seems as though perhaps if you're saying you know i might have to do a need to get the trump administration on my side so we're going to try to make this like a anti-muslim thing so they you think there's preemptive as opposed to maybe we can get these influencers here to talk about how great serbia is that's the only way that makes sense to me well hold on hold on because what if they what if the idea here is that we get these people here they talk about how white and lovely it is and how the bacon is you know again moist i don't have a better word people haven't seen the trio they had this polish woman who is visiting and she's like this is why serbia is so good the bacon is so moist and and the idea was that if they just get this out into the zeitgeist trump will see it and be like vote for this guy serbia looks awesome yeah like flood serbia with american web all this stuff yeah exactly and so uh obviously that didn't work out so let's play so we talked about this on friday since then several more american influencers so there's there's a couple characters javier negre um a spanish guy who's very tight with uh sarah meadow the guy who's who's involved with the whole murder for hire girlfriend plot in bolivia so he flooded i mean like none of these people cared about serbia until this week he flooded in and he was doing like a prouder type stuff where he would like go to a supporter of the student list and he would say like you know what do they really support and the person would be like i don't know i just like i don't like this dictator and he'd say these people are stupid you know and so then they had they had veronica by the way polls have informed me that even though her name is spelled veronica it's pronounced veronica sorry we're learning back on monday is also kind of like we learn about eastern europe every so often and so there's that we had valentina gomez of course joey manorino who is kind of a fascinating character we'll play a clip from her and she's like oh my god she's like oh my god i didn't realize he talked like this um and then uh ada luch she's spanish she's joey's ex-wife and so like these are these kind of characters who flood into belgrade let's play that uh joey manorino oh yeah wait man pump it in serbia women don't have to wear hijab women are beautiful and free there are 55 nations where you can wear it but serbia is a christian and european nation and let's keep it this way vote voltage so we shall see what happens a great experiment and if the people of serbia is happy this is after the election isn't this so much better than having to hear the allahu akbar chant so what is he church bells just went off you go other countries such as strasbourg france and you have to hear a lot of music sounds like a goat being taken apart by a muslim real nice guy here in serbia kids are running around feeling safe and she's my favorite you don't see transgender flags or pro-palestine demonstrations i like just how she she's she's wearing um she's wearing i believe that suits for the talking heads right like she has this like huge batted suit and like she she does this as you said like she's like in serbia very and then she she has like a flip a hair flip and um yeah i mean that's i agree with you veronica's my favorite she has the most character to her um but so the kind of the funny thing here is so that second one we saw what's that the funny thing was joey's voice yeah so it's almost like i guess it's like a little of a trump thing he's doing but like i'm trying to nail down what else like it really reminded me of somebody i couldn't quite figure it out it was just a little sort of like a goat yeah so you don't think these guys are experts in serbian politics and been studying up for this moment well no i don't especially like you know one funny thing about veronica there is that she's in front of this orthodox church and she's saying oh they don't have to wear the hijab women are beautiful and free well look you do have to veil in that church specifically people were saying so you know it's maybe not the best place if you're making a point about head coverings uh but so the um what's funny here is there's a second b oh i should say c cpac balkans was announced last week now we know cpac loves doing these little foreign adventures as well they announced last week that they're doing cpac balkans in like three weeks which is a weird one because you know if i wanted to attend cpac balkans that's a pretty quick turnaround and they were like it's all going to be under the great leadership of alexander vuchich and all this stuff but folks you know he's out so i i don't know what's going to happen to cpac balkans i mean they're going to go there and it's going to be depressing uh but you know those are just money for match lap right like they just do it yeah absolutely i mean so the the second funny beat here is that for whatever reason after the students won suddenly all these influencers are like bump it. They love the students now. And they're saying, Serbia is an amazing country. The opposition, they are so wise. Don't go woke. Why would they change their tune? I have a theory. I think the Serbian government didn't buy them tickets back. And I think they were like, I think the self-coup, the coup was falling apart. It's true. Why were they still there? And I feel like they told Joey and Valentina and everyone. I think they said, look, we're like shredding documents. We're fleeing the country. Ourselves. Good luck. You are now in the hands of the Serbian opposition. Find your own way home. You guys are great. We love you. Don't imprison us. I mean, don't they realize how conspicuous it is that they're all in Serbia just randomly? Just coincidentally. I mean, it's not like one of these countries where randomly it's like you might be in Paris or something. Just coincidentally, we're all in Belgrade. So ridiculous. All right. We're going to take a quick break. But when we get back, we're going to be talking about the other big international election that happened over the week. And we're talking, of course, about the election in Brazil. But first, word from a sponsor. This message is brought to you by Pendulum Metabolic Daily. If you ever feel like you're doing all the right things for your health, but you still find yourself battling cravings, you know, struggling with energy dips or just reaching for snacks throughout the day. I've been there. I was there today, honestly. Well, supporting your metabolic health and maintaining steady energy can be an important part of staying on track with your health goals. That's where Pendulum Metabolic Daily comes in. Metabolic Daily is a science-backed probiotic designed to support your body's natural GLP-1 response. It helps you feel fuller for longer and experience fewer cravings, thank the Lord. And it makes it easier to stay on track with your health goals. And trust me, during election season, I need all the help staying on track with my health goals. So just one capsule a day with food. That's it. Some customers report noticing fewer cravings and more energy in as little as one week, though individual results can vary. Right now, podcast listeners can save up to 48% off their first order at PendulumLife.com slash Bulwark Takes. By supporting healthy blood sugar and metabolic health, Metabolic Daily helps promote steadier energy throughout the day, so you're less likely to hit the afternoon crash that can lead to cravings and mindless snacking. That's PendulumLife.com slash Bulwark Takes to save up to 48% off your first order. Again, PendulumLife.com slash Bulwark Takes and get almost half off today. I could use a snack right now. It's only 1030, but I'm starving. All right. Brazil. This is a big one. Yes. So Lula, the incumbent president on the left, has prevailed over Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of the infamous Jair Bolsonaro. But for our purposes, it's interesting, because guess who found himself there? Nick Shirley. How did that happen? You know, a lot of people say Nick Shirley is an intelligence asset. You know, he goes to Cuba. He stays at a sanctioned. Was he in Cuba? He was in Cuba, and he was staying at a hotel that's sanctioned. Like, it would be illegal for me to, like, go and spend money there, because it's specifically, like, run by the Cuban government. However, Nick gets to go, doesn't face prosecution. You know, and now he's very close with the Bolsonaros, it would seem. Let's play that, uh, play that beautiful Nick Shirley footage. This is for him. These are crowds like I've never, ever, ever seen in my entire life. Look at this. The guy in the blue shirt is the presidential candidate. So Nick is, like, really in the mix there. That's insane. Why wasn't he wearing his famous hoodie? His quality leering education. Yeah. Handing that out to Bolsonaro. Um, yeah, again, it's like, these guys get their son. I just really wish we understood the sort of back channel here, how these guys get situated into these places. Obviously, it's like that, maybe it is the Sarah Rogers State Department, like, kind of just. Because she did talk a bit about creating your own, uh, information ecosystem, right? Yeah, exactly. And obviously, she's been very supportive of, you know, far-right groups. I mean, people like, um, you know, our friend Javier Negre, who we were just talking about in Serbia. He's very into the Latin American scene. I mean, there's clearly, like, a circuit. And, you know, on one hand, if you didn't have scruples, it's probably pretty fun to be told, hey, next week, we're flying you first class to a random country. I need you to interview voters and be really rude to them. But in all seriousness, like, in all seriousness, so, Nick, like, those other folks in Serbia are, um, you know, they're just MAGA personalities. Yeah. But Nick surely presents himself as a serious journalist who is beyond reproach and is just out there to cover corruption where he sees it. Who paid for him to go to Brazil? I'm dying to know. Was he paid? Did the State Department cover that travel? Did some MAGA donor or CPAC cover, pay for him? Because you can't do that. That's ethically dubious. Like, you cannot do that and not disclose. And that would be, one would say, corrupt. Yeah. And look, I mean, he's on the, he's probably going to win Citizen Journalist of the Year at the James O'Keefe Awards in Mar-a-Lago next week. I'm putting you up for, uh, there's a submission button you can do online. So I'm going to get you in there, but I don't think you have a chance. But seriously, like, this guy's just a scold for everybody and he's going after poor Somalis in Minneapolis and is he on the take? Is he getting money for this stuff? I would love to know. I think he deserves to tell us. Who paid for him to go and hang out with Bolsonaro and then promote how great it was to all his followers? Seems important to me. I agree. Thank you. Nick? Someone should, someone with a newsletter about right-wing media figures should write that up. You should ask. You honestly should ask him. I mean, he's not going to respond, but like, who paid for him? How long was he there for? Why was he there? Doesn't he have other stuff to cover in America? Isn't there elections happening? That's the other thing. Aren't there elections happening here? Why are they all overseas? Wouldn't they, wouldn't the administration want these guys in and around the country? Like, O'Keefe's the only one doing this type of, like, election fuckery that right-wing media usually does. Why aren't these guys doing it? That's a good point. Yeah, Nick surely should be, you know, talking to Tallarica voters and saying, like, don't you think Antifa rules or something? Like, getting those kind of, those kind of clips rather than, you know, going down to Brazil. But, on the other hand, if someone said to me, hey, Will, do you want to go to Ohio and mess with Sherrod Brown fans, or do you want to go down to Rio? You know, I know which choice I would make. Ohio, of course. All right, so the backstory here is that Bolsonaro won the first round, but it didn't, did not clear 50%, so it went to a runoff. And somehow, Lula ended up eking, not eking out, I mean, well, there's, so he won by a fair amount, like something like 4 million voters. It was a surprise, I would say, it's fair to say, prediction markets don't trust them, whatever, but they did have him losing, and then suddenly the lines went like this. And there were some issues that people were raising with whether they kept the voting open for an extra bit of time. And now every MAGA influencer is losing their mind over what happened in Brazil. We're going to put this up, but we're also going to play the Brazilian National Anthem while we read this. We're going to put the anthem a little bit low. Okay, let's play it. So we got Joey Manorino says, I'm devastated. Flavio, don't give up. True Brazilians are with you. Fine. Read the other one. He has two. So keep in mind, this is being tweeted from while, like, sheltering in Belgrade. Is he in Serbia tweeting this about Brazil? What is going on, Joey? It's time for President Trump to send in a team for Lula, just how he did for Maduro. What has been done tonight is unbelievable. The Brazilian people are being held hostage. I think you're, I think you've nailed his accent. It's amazing. All right. This Maduro thing became a kind of a trope here. So there's Alex Jones in the bottom left with a I didn't see the flag was changed to hammer and sickle, but all right. Alex Jones says it's time for Lula to get the Nicholas Maduro treatment. Brazil must be liberated. George Santos liberated himself says, fuck Lula. It's time that we give him the Maduro treatment. You can read the other ones. Now, Carrie Lake says Brazil's election reminds me of Arizona elections. She is literally she is the last person who cares about her race. And so, like, like, even you back that everyone was like, oh, yeah, Trump, you got robbed, man. And then people like Carrie Lake, who cares? Like, we don't like this. But the responses to her tweet were amazing. They're like, as in he lost as in Bolsonaro lost twice. And is refusing to admit reality. Like, literally, everyone was just saying the same thing. Yeah, Valentina Gomez again being evacuated by a Humvee from Serbia. It's always the leftists that demand for the vote to be extended. Lula, Maduro, it never ends up well for those countries. So, you know, Benny. We got Benny. Yeah, he says, Benny says, can you imagine the reaction from the left if Trump appointed his personal attorney to the Supreme Court? And then that justice closed polls in Dallas, Detroit, Columbus, Philadelphia, Milwaukee and Atlanta and let red country counties. Continue voting. That's what Lula just did in Brazil. I mean, like, quite literally, Trump appointed his personal attorney to be attorney general and they just filed a suit to, like, not allow the Alaska Senate results to count if this other Dan Sullivan gets votes. So I can imagine it, Benny. Not to say that I'm pro whatever happened. I don't really know what happened in all in to the degree I should. But the Maduro treatment, let's just kind of pause on that one. Yeah. So So they're just basically saying, right, like Trump should go in there. in a military operation and take it take out lula and and just let bolsonaro rule i mean that's it yeah it's interesting that old libertarian alex jones is literally calling for the black helicopters here i mean this is this is crazy this is crazy like do they not i mean obviously they they don't care but it's like you're really going to just go and install your chosen leader brazil i mean it was bad enough for venezuela but like this is a huge country massive country what are we doing yeah it's crazy i mean i i think you know the i i don't know what to say i mean these guys their their ideas aren't good and um but but it is interesting it is interesting seeing the sir the people who were in serbia pivot uh like really that night clearly they were like all right there's a little more juice in this idea that you know to be frank yeah yeah i could be people don't really care about alexander vucic we got to pivot to this is the one that's going to have legs well that's the and i think that's partly because and we mentioned cpac but like they the conservative mega movement is very much intertwined with the bolsonaros right like you have jason miller a very close uh aid to president trump who advises the bolsonaros matt schlapp um has made a huge cpac presence in brazil uh the bolsonaros i think have been a couple times at least so like they are very intertwined as political movements and i think also what happened after 2020 where bolsonaro and brazil uh disputed the election results tried to get them overturned and then he was jailed for that whereas trump as we know did not go to jail so i think they look at brazil as kind of a uh early barometer uh for what's happening with them and they got freaked out whereas with serbia like no one you know no one knows what the fuck's going on yeah i mean that whole thing started i believe with a collapse of like a train station in serbia so it's so it's a pretty unique case okay well let's keep our eyes on that i i i immediately saw three accounts saying the maduro treatment i was like oh my god this is going to become a thing um let's hope it doesn't because that would be quite destabilizing and bad uh let's follow up on a couple stories that you have been monitoring uh samuel say yeah so this is a guy we talked about on the trio this guy is a big voice on sort of the evangelical right um he's he's kind of linked up very much with like jeremy boring the what are called babylon b conservatives now so people who are like very conservative generally pro-trump um but not groipers essentially and they are in a constant battle against people like candace owens and the groipers um and as we're saying he's he's he's from ghana so he's black so that also you know kind of the races don't like him uh so on friday the news broke that he had been seized by ice and was going to be deported he's ghanaian canadian so it's a little unclear where he'll be deported too um but basically this was like a big moment for the right i should say there's obviously a lot of dramatic irony here because samuel say is a big pro ice guy he was saying you know if you love god you have to support ice he was saying you know renee good you know caused her own death all this he had a lot of tweets not unlike milo yiannopoulos uh they were pro ice um and so he's been in in the clink uh and it was interesting to me i guess the the second part here the the news number one was like a lot of his allies in the babylon b world were saying um oh this is just a paperwork issue surely this will be resolved quickly and it's like i don't think ice does that anymore i don't think they say oh sorry uh like we'll let you out uh oh it seems like you're a good guy uh you know that that's kind of not the case you know at at uh you know where you might get taken to seek out or what have you um so it was interesting to see those people act like suddenly american immigration is just going to decide a guy's nice and let him out um and then dhs came out and said uh yeah this guy overstayed his visa for four years and so we he's agreed to be deported and so we're taking him out uh so yeah this is megan bosham who's kind of like another evangelical writer um so here's a statement from dhs they say on october 21st ice arrested samuel say uh an illegal alien from ghana at the columbus international airport he was by the way flying to be on jeremy's boring podcast uh say entered the united states legally in 2022 but admission by over four years in violation of our nation's laws uh and so so they say yeah they'll they will be deporting him um the you know this is cause there's a lot of drama on the evangelical right about this you have these kind of christian white nationalist guys who are who are saying oh this guy's here illegally get rid of him and again the people were saying this is just a simple misunderstanding does he have enemies like is it because he's not you know i don't know he's a he's a conservative like i don't think that maybe this is cut and dry or just like yeah he he was here over he overstayed his visa yeah i mean i don't think this is necessarily a case of like when laura's like yeah because with with milo it was like loomer had been like thirsting for him to get deported whereas i don't think that existed with sam say right yeah this wasn't a case where people were saying as far as i know like deport this guy you know hey at dhs at christy gnome whatever um you know it may just be that you know he kind of ran across their radar for other reasons but it is you know it's always um there obviously is a lot of people who are saying that they're in that like you know suddenly these people are saying wait a minute that guy's our friend you can't deport him well they are deporting him uh you want to there was another tweet but i think we covered it unless you want to put up the ally beth stucky tweet yeah sure so let's just throw that up i mean this is just sort of an example um you know she's saying ice did not come to his home this whole thing is a paperwork issue that they're working to resolve samuel say is a good man and you know this has not been good for his family and wife uh so i mean again i don't think a lot of good people have been picked up by ice and i did not see yeah with families by the way and children um and this is the first i've seen ally beth stucky uh complaining about it yeah i mean this is now like a tired you know genre but i it it has to be said again which is selective outrage over ice is ridiculous and preposterous and you you deserve to like not be taken seriously if the one person that you know who is affected by ice you're like oh but he's good he's got kids it's like yeah you know tens of thousands of these situations have happened prior to you noticing and you need to get a grip and understand that what's happening is much more comprehensive than what's happening to sam will say exactly and we can take that down but there's just a um a brief ally beth stucky thing she's also at the center of another controversy over the past week so she's like very like evangelical podcaster and she's been on she's launched a war on halloween and so she said this all started when she was like christians shouldn't want to be watch horror movies it's on it's satanic to watch horror movies and then since then this kind of like obviously a lot of people on the right you know that they like checking out uh uh you know the centibites and what have you and um you know the scary creatures um so then she kind of had a whole thing about halloween and she's like if you do give out trick-or-treats you better do a bible verse too you better give the kids a bible verse and you know for the people who are kind of like how can we reach out the midterms are coming up how can we not look like a bunch of ned flanders types they're just like this is this is optically disastrous we can't say like republicans can't participate in halloween republicans have become woke scolds they become scolds they can't take a joke about the cheesecake factory and they want to like you know make halloween religious more religious i don't know it's like seems they become the thing that they've lamented very sad to see you know when i was in when i was young and i was doing halloween you know i was doing halloween and i was like oh my god i don't know what to do i don't know what to do i don't know what to do i don't know what to do i don't know what to do i don't know what to do that would this would rank up there for me i'd be like i don't want your bible verse just give me okay just give me just give me my twigs or my reese's peanut butter cups i don't want this and i'm jewish by the way so this doesn't really work for me all right last topic newsmax you got you yes i did not know about this so this is all new to me okay okay so this one this has been out for a couple weeks now but we haven't talked about it on the show this is a show newsmax had this big show called uh the big beautiful trump show starring matthew foldy and matthew foldy is kind of one of these i think he ran for congress he runs the dc reporters yeah yeah i think so he ran for some office um he was like you know i think in his 30s um he's kind of from this school as far as i can he didn't work for the daily caller but it seems like he should have he's one of these kind of like bourbon bastard conservatives you know good guy like you know give me the big stogie whatever uh so he now runs the washington reporter which was supposed to be the big stogie and he's supposed to be kind of like you know really we're going to be like serious conservative reporters i don't think it's gone very well i don't hear much about them but now he has a new endeavor which is this new this show and i was eager to watch this because the initial set stuff from this show it's just like covered in trump hats oh there it is beautiful thank you matt he's got a dark maga is that matthew foldy that's that's okay no that's not an intern who snuck on set taking a picture to send back home you got straight straight in your tie man okay that says, I guess America kind of looks like it says Erica from the picture, but it's America. He's got the bobble heads. You know, look, this is the best time to be getting in on the Trump stuff. The Trump stuff is only going up. This brand is only going to get more popular. So, so this show has been running for two weeks now, but what's fascinating about it, I thought it was going to be, I don't know, like a straightforward news show, but, but what's fascinating about it to me is it's like, he plays, I guess, cause there's like a shortage of Epic Trump moments. Now he plays like old Trump stuff. Like he plays Trump stuff from like a year ago. I do. like so so he comments on it yeah so he'll play like a trump press conference from like 2025 when he met putin in alaska and then there's kind of like some repartee and he goes okay now that is simply epic and and i was watching this and i was like wait a minute did i has this show been running for a year oh no it's like they had when um you know jd vance yelled at zielinski about not wearing a suit they played that and it's like that's the whole show it's like um a sports show where they just show like classic games but they have someone talking about specific moments of the games and analyzing them is that sort of a good analogy yeah so let's let's play the clip we have and most of the show again is just like press conference clips but i was able to find uh you know one example well the alaska summit's results may have been a bit thin you But Putin dropped this unexpected banger and basically handed Trump the ultimate, I told you so. He dropped this unexpected banger. What was the banger? Do we know? W for Trump. What was the banger that Putin dropped that I don't even remember? Oh, I think it's something like basically like Putin says, maybe next time we'll do this meeting in Moscow. And then Trump says, that might get me in trouble with the press. Like, that's the banger. Bump it. Bump it. But I just felt like, again, I felt like, you know, a Rip Van Winkle. I was dislocated from time because I was watching this in the background and I was like, wait a minute. What the heck? They're not talking about anything that's happened in the past like 18 months. Oh, my God. I kind of want to watch now. How do you think they – they're not like 24 – this is just a YouTube show and they're putting up like what, videos? Like, how does it work? Yeah, and so I think it's on some theme. So I think this one was like epic Trump foreign policy moments. And then, you know, the next one is probably like triggered. It lives and, you know, what have you. But, I mean, it really – I guess for me as someone who – Matt says it's Newsmax on Sunday nights. How long do these shows last? Like an hour? Are they just going through old speeches and being like – Well, they are putting it online. So it's kind of hard for me to find because, you know, they're not putting it online because this is like primo content I'm assuming. This is the stuff you got to pay for. They don't even post it online? No, not on YouTube right now. Who the hell is watching this at Sunday night? I mean that's a good time slot, right? Sunday night. It's Sunday at 9 p.m. You're going to tune into Newsmax to watch a recap of Trump's meeting with Putin. Remember this thing that happened a year ago? Well – Total bangers. Bangers everywhere. I don't know if this show is going to last. Maybe there's enough people out there who just want to relive the glory days and they'll go back. But like at a certain point you run out. Also, it's very duplicative of Trump TV if you think about it because Trump TV is just replaying all the old hits. Yeah, it's just like Trump TV. Yeah, except this one has Matthew Foley. They're being like, nailed it. Yeah, because each segment of Matthew Foley is like three seconds because like they'll play a clip and then he's like, oh, like that's epic, sir. Here's what I would do. I would do it but like you know how like again, borrowing a sports analogy, how like they can have like a little – you can like write on the teleprompter – not the teleprompter. You can write on the screen and like diagram a play and you're like, then he went there, then he went there. I would like have Matthew like kind of do that and be like – and like point little things out in the screen and like kind of dive in a little bit deeper. Yeah. To give you some sort of real analysis. Otherwise, it's just going to get stale very quickly. I think that's right. Yeah. Or maybe I just cancel the show because it seems stupid. Watching this – oh, I think I'd cancel the show. Watching this, I'm like, can we get a Greg Kelly rerun? Can we get Eric Bolling? How long do you think – we should put the over-under on. How long has it been going on for? Did you say that? I think it launched on the 12th. October 12th. Yes. They didn't announce it. It just showed up. Oh, no. There was a big run-up to it. That's why I was excited. Oh, you did? I was like, this is going to be the new face of conservative media. I think I support like millennials getting involved in conservative media. I thought this – I was interested to see what Matthew Foley had to offer. So I was disappointed to hear that it was literally year-old canned clips. All right. How long do you think it lasts? I don't think it will last – I think it's over by the end of November. That's not a long runway. That's like – that's a month and a half. Surely they – They have more than six episodes in them. Come on. You don't think so? No. I'm an astute observer of conservative media. I think they give the show to a data Republican after that. But she can't tell anything or else she'll depress her followers. She'll just sit there and be like, I can't tell you what I want to say. Oh, it's looking bad. It's looking bad. It's looking bad, but don't check my website, whatever you do. All right. We're going to leave it there. Cue the music for our outro, please. Oh, I think we can't hear you, Sam. Oh, that's too bad. That's too bad. All right. That's Will Summer. I'm Sam Stein. Thank you, everyone. This is another edition of MAGA Monday. Hey, folks, if you love this music, if you don't – if you're just tired of watching old Trump clips on Newsmax as Matthew Foldy tells you what great bangers were delivered, if you want some fresher content, subscribe to the feed. We'll be back next Monday. Pre-election MAGA Monday. Peace. It's going to be a good one. Thank you.