Ruby Cramer: The Power of MAHA

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. If you're looking for a bunch of politics, you can have that over on the Next Level feed. I just looked at our outline for today's Next Level show. We've got Trump madness, Hegseth madness, some new mads that we're going to discuss, so come hang out there. But on today's show, it's RFK madness that we're going to be talking about. I'm tickled to welcome, for a long overdue inaugural visit to the pod, an old friend. She's a staff writer at The New Yorker covering politics. She's at The Washington Post and BuzzFeed. She's got a new article out. The print edition is called The Scare. Online, you can find it as a Maha custody battle. It's Ruby Kramer. Thank you. What's up, Ruby? Hi, Tim. Nothing. I'm so happy to be here. Me too. You tell the story in this feature so elegantly as you do, and it's a story in West Virginia, my husband's home state, about a couple, Michael and Leah. But before we get to them, I just kind of want to do big picture here. You quoted a Democratic strategist that said about Maha, it's two truths and a lie, and that's how people get sucked in. And I just kind of wanted to hear from you kind of on the bigger picture, like what you discovered interviewing all these people and spending, it seems like spending a lot of time on. Yeah. On Maha message boards. Yes. The last four months of my life have basically been like endlessly doom scrolling on parenting Facebook groups. It was a really interesting project. I had never written anything about Maha. It was, you know, like, of course I followed it with a closely and I've been really interested in it. It's a political movement that sort of like defies expectations and stereotypes and crosses really interesting partisan lines and isn't very easily defined because it's so wide-ranging. It has so many different tenants, which also for Democrats makes it really hard to combat. And I think that's what the strategist was part of what they were getting at with this quote, which was one of the best sort of summaries I heard of the appeal of Maha and the way that people kind of become low hanging fruit for the Maha movement. This idea of it being two truths and a lie. So like, yes, it's true that chronic disease is an epidemic and is on the rise. One truth. It is true that ultra processed foods are potentially harming our bodies and make up more than half of our daily caloric intake, which is crazy. But like the lie that snuck in there is that like vaccines that have been standard care for children for decades are something that we should be studying for a potential link to autism, which is the main cause of the anti-vax movement that's been disproven again and again. So like these little sort of suspicious claims about the medical authorities in our country, like lying to us, like those are the things that kind of get snuck in into the movement that come alongside these like other, you know, arguably really good things that some of Maha has pointed our attention toward. Did you find yourself being sucked in at all? Reading the posts? Yeah. Are you worried about beef tallow? No, we're not worried about beef tallow. We like beef tallow. Are you attracted to anything? We like beef tallow and we don't like seed oils. You know, I found it a really compelling sort of like emotional atmosphere to live in for a while. Like I said, I was just kind of existing in these online spaces for a really long time as part of my research for the story. And you can see really easily how you kind of like get sucked in. Sucked into this idea that like basically something is poisoning our bodies. Like big pharma is like out for profits, not just our wellbeing. All these things, like this feeling that exists that kind of like undergirds all these online spaces. I understand. And it's really true. And it's easy to get kind of like sucked into that way of thinking. And while I didn't get fully Maha pilled, I definitely found the anxiety and the fear. Of these parents that are just trying to do the best they can and navigate different online spaces specifically, like really understandable and relatable. And it was easy to see how it gets taken to an extreme really, really quickly. RFK seems like such a unique figure in this as like a catalyst. And a lot of this stuff has been happening for a long time, you know, there, and it sort of gets really like kind of brought together, like in a way, kind of like based on his unique, like weird, like, weird, like, various beliefs. I remember people coming to John McCain town halls in 2008 concerned about the autism link, right? Like that existed. And, you know, there was like woo woo, you know, stuff that's existed for a while now, like in its own orbit and, you know, concerns about processed foods, right? Like, but it all has got blended together. Is it like, is it because of RFK or like, what's the chicken and the egg on that? Do you think? I think it's a really good question. I don't know the answer because, Kennedy has, I give him credit because he put words to these feelings that we've all felt and seen and that have been like proven time and time again by all the biggest storylines in our healthcare system over the past 10, 15 years. So the whole concept of healthcare being, you know, just disproportionately expensive in this country and everyone being saddled with like really incredible medical debt. He's talked about that. This idea that why are more and more people getting sick with chronic diseases? And we know that people are eating unhealthy foods and we know that sort of it's being driven by corporations that are out for profit. Like again, I guess I'm coming back to two truths in the light again. Like we know this is true. We know this is a feeling that people have and he put words to it for the first time. And it almost made me think like, as I was looking back on some of his messaging when he was running for president in 2024, and then later when he was sworn in, and also when he endorsed Trump after pulling out of the race, I was sort of marveling to myself that a politician or a leader in the political space didn't do this earlier. Like even the opioid epidemic, it's like all these things that have been swirling around in the atmosphere over the last 15 years that we know are so viscerally felt for families. No one was talking about it in this way. So I kind of give him credit for kind of like just taking existing pieces of these things and putting them into this declining trust. I think that's the main sort of like undercurrent and putting words to it. I'm reluctant to handing it to RFK. You know, it's kind of like the drill ISIS meme. I don't know if you have to hand it to him now that we're like, you know, not doing mRNA cancer studies since he's in there. But like the point of someone else could have grabbed this mantle in a way that focused more on the truths. I think that is right. And did it responsibly. Yeah. And particularly on the left. And this is, I wanted to get to Michael and Leah. There were two things that struck me. Like if I told you about these people and just gave you these generic descriptions, like 10 years ago, and you asked them which party they were in, everybody would say, oh, those people are Democrats. Like Michael was a long hair, bell-bottom wearing, like musician, gig musician. And Leah was like into numerology, divine femininity. She thought she was receiving messages from the universe. She had a truth tattoo. These people seem like they could have been certainly gettable for Democrats in a different world. You know, when we talk about the groups, like there's all this talk, and I do it, like about the manosphere, about my people, like the former Republican college educated voter, the Bernie to Trump voter. Like this is a big demographic kind of of these people that are, you know, I think more whatever, naturalist, maybe a little conspiratorial minded. And, and like, they've not been Republicans, like until two minutes ago. Until two minutes ago. And even now they don't really fit. Like these, these two characters in particular don't even really fit our expectations of like what a MAGA Republican voter might look like now. And I intentionally kind of tried not to describe them in with political labels in the story because I wanted to show how little they fit into these boxes. And I think it's really, really indicative of the moment we're in. Where it's like nothing really quite makes sense in the way you expect it anymore. Everyone's mad about data centers. Everyone's upset about Jeffrey Epstein, like all these sort of things and feelings, again, are blurring political lines that existed even like two or three or four or five years ago. Well, their story is pretty sad, though. So buckle up. Well, I guess it's not the saddest. Nobody's dead yet. So that's good. I'm just gonna let people, you know, do a little trigger warning for people. But tell us about the kids are okay. Yeah. So they have three kids, as mentioned that the alt headline of a custody battle, it's literally centered around views over their treat medical treatment. Yes. And I will say to just like as a preamble to Michael and Leah, I interviewed so many different people who were in and around the MAGA movement, including like moms who had gone down the MAGA rabbit hole and really committed to the lifestyle and then came out of it. And we're sort of just trying to figure out what they believe. Again, I talked to people who are still in the movement. I talked to people that left it behind years and years ago. So Michael and Leah are two people who live in West Virginia. They met when they were really young. They met online. They got married. At the time they got married, neither one of them was particularly interested in healthcare or wellness. One thing that Leah knew for sure was that she wanted to be a mom. She wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, specifically too. And while I wouldn't necessarily describe her then as a conservative person, she was sort of rubbing up against this strain of mainstream feminism at the time. I guess like era of Hillary Clinton, lean in, girl boss type moment. And she's like, wait a second. I want to be a stay-at-home mom. I was born to be a mom. I've been dreaming of being a mom. This is my dream in life. It's the thing that matters most to me. And I'm kind of feeling like there are people in the world who look down on that. Cottagecore. I think we were calling it cottagecore back then. Cottagecore. Who knows? We were calling it back then. We don't like to remember those times. So I think that that becomes kind of an important thing for her experience later on too. So they get married. Two years later, she's pregnant and has her first child. And again, is not someone who's given a lot of thought to vaccines. The boy whose boy named Keith gets all standard vaccinations as a baby. He gets the vitamin K shot, which is another thing that's become suddenly controversial. Standard care for infants since 1961. He gets all the things. Then the pandemic comes and Leah's pregnant again, this time with her second son. And while she's pregnant, lockdowns are happening. Her husband, who, as you mentioned, was sort of like a bell-bottom wearing old school rock and roll fan. And I think by then was really kind of coming around to a more conservative way of thinking. He was a Trump voter. He works as a gas station sort of like technician. And his work wasn't impacted by lockdown. So he told me he gets most of his news from a conservative aggregator called Citizen Free Press. Are you familiar with this? Oh, I know about Citizen Free Press. I wasn't, but it kind of looks like Drudge kind of like it has just like links. It literally started because Drudge got too woke. Oh. And so there was a. There was a mega right Drudge competitor that was more Trump friendly and less, I don't know, gay or whatever the problem was with Drudge at that point. Right. Exactly. So I told you all you need to know. Okay. So for context, like this is what Michael's favorite news sources. Yeah. Alarming. Yeah. So he's reading about the virus on this site. He kind of thinks something's fishy with the pandemic. He's watching kind of in horror as people, you know, follow mask mandates. And like, as like these plastic barriers, you know, he was like describing with a great derision, the plastic barriers that went up around cash registers and stuff like that. So as the pandemic is unfolding, Leah's spending just like more and more time online, like many of us. And she sees people in her sort of Instagram community starting to fight about masks and vaccines. And she just kind of. Yeah. Yeah. She just kind of follows her curiosity. Like she described herself to me as a really open-minded person. And it was almost like when these views sort of entered her feed, she just, you know, accepted them into her life. And I know a lot of people might be like, oh, you've got to know better. But I think if you go back to that first year of COVID, such a vulnerable time, like so easy to just, yeah. I mean, I will say, look, with love, and obviously, these are the people that we're correct for the most part. But like, you know, and it's not that different from the Fauci candle instinct, right? I mean, like, it's a little different in that, like with Fauci, like you're trusting somebody who has like made a career of virology and has a long history. And so like putting your trust in that person, like makes more logical sense to us. But like, there was some illogic to it, right? There was like a cultishness to it. And like, there's this time of uncertainty and like people grabbed on to something. And like, I don't know, I don't know, that makes sense to me. Totally. And there was a lot of like weird public shaming around who wore a mask and who didn't and who was doing the vaccines and who wasn't. And I think she bristled at that. And it was also around this time that she began to sort of like position her status as a stay at home mom is like an act of defiance, you know, which I think goes hand in hand with some of this. So she's kind of starting to think about vaccines for the first time. She is a mom who, you know, on social media, a total stranger who tells her a horror story of a vaccine injury, which is the term of choice in the Maha world. Just to just let you know, vaccine injury and, you know, a child that had, you know, like a seizure, which these things do happen and was vomiting apparently after getting the vaccine. And in this story, sort of like menacingly the doctor pulls this woman aside and says, you know, vaccines aren't as safe as you think. And why? And, you know, who knows if this was apocryphal or what happened, but Leah is terrified by this story. And fast forward a couple months, her elderly grandmother, after receiving two doses of the COVID vaccine passes away. She blames the vaccine. This is perfect storm sort of coming together. And suddenly like, it really does not take long where she is considering herself a No more red dyes in the house. Tim has his head in his hands at this point. No more red dyes, you know, no, no chemicals in the food. Um, you know, and, and Michael, who I think like in many families in America had deferred choices about like taking care of the kids to the mom was sort of like, uh, whatever. I'm just kind of pissed that we're going to have organic groceries cost more. And like that, like really, like, he's like, I don't get why we're buying organic peanut butter. And she's like, this is what we're doing now. There's no replacing Jeff. There really is no replacing Jeff. Yeah. And I mean, Michael comes away as you get into this custody battle where he wants them to, you know, get vaccinated, et cetera, eventually after some sicknesses happen, which you can explain, like he has kind of the hero of the story in some ways, but also he's like, you know, taking them on motorcycle rides, which had me a little bit. I don't know. As a reader, I was kind of like, ah, I'm a little, I'm a little scared of that. Um, but anyway, fast forward to the, to the kids and not paying back. Yeah. So the kids basically, as soon as she goes down this rabbit hole, she decides no more vaccines. And one of the scary things about that in this family is her middle child. Donnie suffers from spinal muscular which is a genetic disease that weakens your muscles and leaves you basically more vulnerable to respiratory illnesses. So around the time that Donnie's diagnosed with SMA, Michael starts like kind of asking more questions for the first time of, of Leah about like, what's this vaccine thing all about? Like why, you know, should we be doing it? Should we not be doing it? I don't think this marriage was necessarily destined to work out, but it does come to a head sort of over these issues. In 2025, one night, Michael is seeing Leah, you know, she's, she's on her phone more and he, he thinks that she's cheating on him. And one day in dramatic fashion, he kind of grabs her phone and runs to the garage in the back of the house and starts looking through her messages, trying to see if she's cheating. And it turns out, no, she's not cheating. She is talking with a holistic person. And he's like, oh my God, she's cheating. And she's like, oh my God, she's cheating. And I just want to say one thing. Cause I know this is like head and hands moment. But what I learned in my research for this story is that this world and all the sort of like fringe diversions that are attached to it, so much of it revolves around like making a buck. Like, yeah, you don't say, yeah, there's some grifters in the Mahama. There are some grifters and they are out there. And I talked to some really smart people that were like, oops, I accidentally spent 10 years in a multi-level marketing company selling capsules of dried fruits and vegetables. And that became my whole world. And I went to conferences and I dedicated my life to selling these fruit and vegetable capsules. Smart people. Yeah, I know the story is about to get a little tragic. So I just want to sit on the humor for a second. It is a funny scene. Of like a prestige television show, like going to grab the phone, thinking that your wife is cheating on you and you're going to discover it. And then finding out she's sending Bitcoin to a holistic spiritual guide. It's very like HBO Max in five years. Yeah. Yeah. It's very like, did you see Eddington, the movie? No. Okay. Well, that is like, if you wanted to, it's like the prestige movie horror film of March, 2020 COVID era. I did see this. Sorry. I forget the name of things I watched. I did see this. It's excellent. there's like a fight over a data center that's kind of happening in the background of the film the whole time anyway this could be like a subplot of a movie like that spoiler the holistic healer she was paying in bitcoin did not heal the children and they get sick the kids got sick this spring and it was around the time where measles was on the rise south carolina was in the middle of the biggest outbreak that we've had since the virus was declared eliminated in 2000 other outbreaks were underway like in many states the thing about measles is it's like it's so incredibly contagious like we just don't now that these immunization levels have dropped below the threshold for herd immunity like we as a country just no longer have the ability to contain measles that that's sort of the consensus that i came to talking to medical experts and doctors right so measles was on the rise in the spring the kids are home with michael for spring break one of them has a runny nose and a pink pink eye normal stuff donnie the child with sma starts to get a get kind of like watery eyes as well michael's like ah this i don't know they they're sick a lot apparently over the course of the spring break they get sicker and sicker soon the youngest a girl gets sick as well i won't you know necessarily give everything away in the story although we've already talked about the spiritual healing you know it's like a week of hospital visits and at one point donnie breaks out in a rash of flat red blotches a very distinctive rash a rash that looks exactly like a measles rash and it just kicks off this sort of nightmarish week of hospital visits ambulances the youngest child who was three at the time is like hooked up to little tubes in her nose and is being tended to by doctors and i stretch her little mini stretcher and doctors and isolation mat just nightmare true nightmare the kids are okay now but it just in true like maha modern tale fashion you know all of this played out on facebook michael who you've referenced his motorcycle is sort of like a micro influencer in the motorcycle community in the mid-atlantic was posting about this in real time uya who's also a motorcycle influencer is sort of like a micro influencer in the motorcycle community in the mid-atlantic was posting about this in real time uya who's also sort of a micro influencer was seeing these posts and her mom was posting back on facebook and they were it was it became this very public fight that was playing out in facebook and if you looked in the comments you know little fights over vaccine safety would break out and it was just a mess but like all things related to maha like there's just a level of a level to which people are experiencing their lives online in a way that i don't think we're fully like reflecting on that was very evident in the sort of saga of this couple in the spirit of not giving everything away i'll let people read to see exactly how it finishes but i i want to just kind of pull apart we went down and visited and interviewed both of them michael and leah after you know kind of this health scare for a variety of reasons leah is not like convinced that it was uh vaccine related there's something that david from said on this podcast like three years ago that always really stuck with me about about cults or about mlms or about anything which is like if you have a friend that gets duped in a scam and you figure it out you know whether that is whatever i've got a condo to sell you in the everglades or anything uh and you go and you tell them like hey you're getting duped like the friend is more likely to get mad at you right the friend is more likely to get mad at you than the person that duped you it's just like a human natural defense mechanism right and like this is kind of replete throughout your kind of reporting right which is just like the people who are really bought in on this like they feel talked down to if they get brought information to the contrary of what they know it kind of they dig in further not every character but like a lot of characters i'm just wondering like if there are any like lessons from that that you took as far as disentangling people from this like i don't know it's probably it's pretty it's pretty bleak to like look at this and be like her three children had you know this really horrible sickness and you still come out of it like not changing your mind not believing that vaccines are but like a good thing or necessary yeah i think one of the most interesting revelations i had in reporting this is i was talking to a non-partisan group in washington that was doing a study about maha they were just trying to understand like what is this beast what has it become and like you know what do we do about it um they in the course of the study through interviews with with moms in the movement found to your point that saying things like trust the science or follow the research or like trust experts it just translates to different versions of like you think i'm stupid yeah and i think that's basically true i mean i think people don't want to be told that they're doing the wrong thing for their kids and that anyone else knows better what the right thing to do for their kids is like it is true that as a parent nobody cares about your kids more than you do so who is to say that like some random person on facebook or a journalist or talking head on tv or you know like a future democratic head of hhs is gonna know better opposite probably honestly like at this point like yeah there are a lot of things a democrat could fix in 2029 but i don't know i read stories like yours and i'm like this one gets worse i think probably like you know because of the lack of trust the immigration system like there are other things i i don't know how you put this like back in the the toothpaste back in the tube or whatever like i think one of the things sadly that will do the most to sort of reverse views on this is the actual return of vaccine preventable diseases like measles is not going away whooping cough will come back like it already is polio vaccinations are dropping like there are going to be story after story of what happens when the sort of tenacity of belief and ideology meets a hard biological reality and i think for some moms i talked to who recently came out of the maha movement and sort of went into what one called their unlearning phase it happened because the anxiety of living with an unvaccinated chilled child as a virus like measles is re-emerging is so intense like one mom this wonderful woman named lindsey in virginia who who just just made an appointment for her daughter to get the mmr vaccine said that if you could imagine every step you take in life in the public having a nagging thought in the back of your head being like okay this is this is it it's happening measles is in the air the particles are in the air this is when my daughter is getting measles she said like anytime she went on a trip anytime she was in a rest stop anytime she was in a grocery store like those thoughts would occur to her and i think that that's an incredible amount of anxiety to live with kind of reminiscent for me of like the gay hiv experience like honestly yeah right like if you feel like it's always or uh you know not now anymore like thanks to prep and like these medical advances but like that's true that's why i don't know maybe that's like an apt parallel kind of the like there is a lot of uptake on the on prep and these kinds of drugs because like you don't want to feel like that yeah exactly like you it's it's just true peace of mind i guess and it's a matter of like okay what am i scared of more a potential adverse reaction from a vaccine or is it just a matter of like okay what am i scared of more a potential or the diseases that vaccines prevent and so i think that's one way like the pendulum can swing backward but i think in general so much trust has been lost and frankly like in four years i don't can't imagine the degree to which trump and rfk will have just like confused people yeah it's just like so much every day from both of them on this topic well is there anything else from the unlearning woman that you feel like you that struck you as far as like motivation or was it was fear really the motivation i think it was fear of the of the kids getting sick multiple moms i talked to just described like this anxiety and fear of being like is my kid gonna get sick because i've chosen not to vaccinate them and just having that nagging thought in your head be a really kind of like potential aha moment i feel like i'm deep in maga world like i knew citizens free press i i you know i get a lot of like maga content i don't get any maha content right like this is another universe for me like altogether so i'm just kind of curious like you've been spending a lot of time on it the last few months like is there anything like a sense of betrayal or like backlash to rfk because i mean he's doing what he said on the vaccine stuff but like not really on the food there's been like a lot of agricultural kind of discussion about how like the big ag companies won the internal dispute over, you know, Maha issues and the administration. I was kind of curious, like broadly, if there are any other like recent political developments you noticed. You know, it's interesting. I don't really see a ton of discussion in Maha spaces of RFK himself and like of what he's doing policy wise. And maybe I was in the wrong parenting groups or something, but I feel like in a way the entire movement and the coalition of Maha and the attitude and the sensibility and the lifestyle is bigger than Kennedy. Like, and I think it's so built on distrust of mainstream authorities that like there aren't any expectations in a sense for Kennedy to like, I don't know. I mean, that's my sense. My sense is not like people are like, okay, is Kennedy going to deliver? Of course for the true anti-vax heads, they're like, we need him to deliver on stuff. But I didn't even have too many conversations with people about Kennedy. You know, I know he's like in the atmosphere, like for example, like Leo was kind of constantly posting stuff to her Facebook, including some stuff about RFK and from Children's Defense Fund. But I didn't hear a lot of moms talk about what they expect from his administration. So I didn't see any, I didn't hear any backlash. Well, in some ways that's upsetting because I do think there is, some backlash from like the Maha activist group because they have actual things that they wanted, which is a different category of people than just Maha moms and Facebook chat groups, right? But like in other ways, I think that is, like again, like presents opportunity. It was not like an unnatural thing pre-COVID for a democratic politician to be out there being like, you know, we really shouldn't trust these big pesticide companies and the big pharma companies. Like we should make sure that there are rules around them and like we should really do healthy eating. A famous first lady did something around that, right? Like it feels like recapturable to me. Yeah. But maybe that's wrong. I don't know. Maybe it's not. No, I think that's right. I just struggle to imagine what it would look like and sound like, you know, like what would it mean for a Democrat to, as you say, recapture Maha? Marianne kind of. I had Marianne. I had Marianne on this show a couple months ago. Oh my gosh, I love Marianne. I know. Obviously, she has some things I really find a little kooky, but like, she was pretty good on this. I don't know. Really? What did she say? What was her main sort of like? I mean, her main thing was just talking about how the Democratic Party was like not listening to what, like to the real concerns that these moms had. And like, I don't know. I just, it was because RFK was so fucking pernicious on the vaccine stuff and because of like the way he went business. It was really hard. And you can relive history and say like, maybe Kamala or Biden should have tried to keep him in the tent. But I think it was going to be really hard to do it. People that say that I think miss the fact that he was already basically out of the tent by the time he was pretending like had they called him like it might have made a difference. Like I don't think I really don't think it would have. We'll never know. Yeah, maybe some people know. But RFK, uh, you could use that model and like incorporate someone who is more who is woohoo and be like, I'm not gonna. Put this person in charge of the nation's health, but like there are ways to engage. Yeah. Marianne had the like, crystal woohoo, like, I mean, the Iowa candidates, Rob Sand is really like, I don't know if this is true, right? Like, and so this is where I think it's maybe possible, like, like cancer. I know this is true. Cancer is really on the rise in Iowa disproportionately to other states. There's conversations about whether that's pesticides or whether that's the water, you know, getting in the water and all this stuff. And he's running on that and like, that's ma and that's. Scientifically based. I don't know. I feel like there are ways to do it. Agree. And I think even Bernie Sanders did a lot of this in like 2020 specifically in just highlighting stories of how people have been kind of like screwed over by, you know, the healthcare industry or the pharmaceutical industry in some way, which you would think it might be a little bit different after COVID, but I don't really recall it being a big issue in 2024 on the democratic side. Like I don't really remember Biden or Kamala going there. Yeah. Well, I mean, they'll say they did cause they did, they put out white papers and stuff, but like it wasn't, you know what I mean? It wasn't focused. All right. I want to talk about a couple of your other stories since you've been at the New Yorker. You're at the New Yorker now when I met you, you're a Buzzfeed girl. So, you know, it's a big, the authority to have you on the pod is I'm honored. But before we talk about a couple of your other stories really quick, I, there was one thing that, uh, gave me a little, what the fuck in this story that I just wanted you to tell people about, which are, you know, our agra hoods. I did not, I did not know about agra hoods. You don't like that. Agra hoods. You say that, you say the words so funny. And I said, I don't know how to pronounce it, but you're like agra hoods. Okay. So agra hoods are kind of like wellness minded communities where you can. Like it's literally a community, like a cul-de-sac. It is literally a neighborhood community. Kind of subdivision type deal. Like subdivision is, doesn't sound like a very Maha description, but for lack of a better term subdivision. Yeah. There's a couple, I tried to interview them for the, for my piece, but they didn't get back to me. So if you're listening, get back to me. They've been going around in an RV touring all of the agra hoods in America and like giving little videos, synopsis of like one for each. I think they all have a slightly different flavor. Like perhaps some are more quote unquote Maha traditional than the, than others. But yeah, you can buy a house and live and like do, you know, I don't know, natural cooking classes and have your kids be neighbors with other kids that are living in non-toxic homes. You know. What an amazing country. We live in a beautiful world. There's so much stuff out there I don't know anything about. Yes. You know. 31 flavors. The agra hood that I featured in the piece is called Saren B and it's right outside Atlanta and its founder recently claimed that none of the kids living at Saren B have asthma because they live this like non-toxic lifestyle. Like maybe, maybe none of them do have asthma. That's kind of interesting. I don't, couldn't that just be statistic, like random chance though? I don't know. It could be. It could also be like how hard are they checking. None of my cousins had asthma. Yeah. I also don't have asthma. So because of the Lebanese. Tim, you're in, did you grow up in a non-toxic household? No. I mean, you know, I mean, my mom cooked, which was nice. Real, we had real ingredients. But did she cook with like plastic spatulas? Cause that's a huge no-no. Oh, we definitely had plastic spatulas. Okay. So you've got microplastics in your body. I don't want to know where the microplastics are. I want to hard pivot to a couple of your other stories and then we're going to close by playing two truths and a lie ourselves. So get ready for that. Two of your other articles recently, one, I wanted to talk about because I just did talk about the scale of the ice operations. You were doing a lot of ice reporting like maybe six months ago before you moved into the Maha. And I feel like I talk about it as about as much as anybody or I try to because it's just, it is so fucking enraging to me. And yet, like I was going back to your old stories and you told the story of this Marimar Martinez, who I don't think I even mentioned, which I talked about kind of just there's like, it's hard to keep track of kind of the scope. Of what they're doing with the deportation campaign. But for folks that like me, like needed to be refreshed on that story, just want to give a brief synopsis of what happened with Marimar Martinez in Chicago. Yeah. So it's funny. Cause I wasn't as familiar with her story either, but it really set the playbook for everything that we saw in Minneapolis later with Alex Pretty and Renee Good. She was a woman in Chicago who was living in the South side in a community that was sort of like on the watch for ice during the surge there. And this was in the fall of 20, 25. So, so yes. So a few months before the surge in Minneapolis, she had been sort of like following the ice surge there. Hadn't really gone to protest or done anything like that, but was sort of like on the watch in her neighborhood, trying to warn sort of neighbors to be on lookout for ice agents. By the way. And she's a young woman. She's 31. So she's driving one day, sees an unmarked Tahoe, knows immediately that it's DHS, starts following the Tahoe, honking her horn, rolls down their window, starts shouting, let me grow, let me grow to warn neighbors. And eventually like, as we've seen happen again and again, these car related incidents turn dangerous. They get into sort of like a tense kind of standoff in the road. They're going side by side. We know from body cam footage that there were three border patrol agents in the Tahoe that are feeling like they're getting quote unquote boxed in. And the two cars, I don't want to say collide because they really like sideswiped. But after contact is made, the border patrol agent driving the Tahoe, stops the car, gets out of his car and fires five times into Marimar Martinez's car. And she's shot. First off, she could have died easily. She didn't. But after this incident, she is almost immediately described by DHS, which at the time was still being run by Kristi Noem, as a domestic terrorist, and is smeared and charged with assaulting a federal officer. Which again, like, this is the playbook. Yeah, Trisha McLaughlin afterwards said that she was armed with a semi-automatic weapon. She had a pistol in her purse. I love that the Second Amendment people now, it's like, it's good for everybody to hold a weapon except for protesters protesting ICE. Yeah, she had a small handheld pistol in a pink holster at the bottom of her purse, which she carried everywhere with her. So as Trisha said, she was armed with a semi-automatic weapon. She's a domestic terrorist. She said that Martinez wrote a post that said, hey, to all my gang, let's fuck those motherfuckers up. Don't let them take anyone. That was not her. She'd mixed her up with another Latina woman, apparently. Kash Patel shared a video of a black SUV ramming an agent's truck, saying it was Martinez. That was not her. That was a different video. At the time that you wrote this article, all of those posts remained online. So like, that was just, again, a total preview of everything we saw with Good and Pretty. Like, a situation where it was totally unnecessary. Like, whatever you think about, Martinez's behavior, like an agent of the state, totally unnecessary and irresponsible to like fire the weapon five times. There's no need to do that. Like, that's not protocol. I've had FBI and law enforcement agents on to talk about that. And then, obviously, it's grotesque for then the government to lie and smear the person afterwards. But it's what, it's exactly what they did to Renee Good. Right. It's exactly what they did to Renee Good and Alex Pretty. I think the speed with which it happened in this particular, their case was really alarming. It was like hours, you know, without, of course, any investigation into what happened. I'm sure without all the evidence being collected in terms of like, well, we know that some of the agents hadn't, you know, fully been debriefed. So it's just like, this was a preview of what happened in Minneapolis. The difference with Martinez is she lived to tell the tale. And she found how, difficult it was to defend yourself when the federal government is coming with the full heft of the federal government at you. Not just with criminal charges, which were later dropped, but just in the court of public opinion. Like, it turns out it's really hard to defend yourself when, you know, people at the highest levels of government are calling you a domestic terrorist. This woman was a young preschool assistant teacher. Crazy. Crazy. The other thing that I just reread, reading it, I just, you can see how they've changed the tactics now, right? Like, that was the move in the fall, right? It was like very shock and awe, scare people. And then the government goes all out. They did the snuff films, right? And like, that was part of the effort to get people to self-deport, honestly. And it was part of the whole mission. And like, now, a year later, you know, there's still, as we've been reporting on a bunch the last couple weeks, like, still grabbing people, but they're doing it in like such a more low-key way to literally prevent this. Like, what they don't want anymore is the Mari Mar Martinez. They don't care that you get injured, but they don't want the, hey, I'm warning people in the neighborhood, da-da-da-da-da. Like, the tactic, it's a tactical change because it prevents what we saw in Chicago and Minneapolis. Like, community action is harder when it's happening kind of under the radar. So. Yeah, absolutely. You also did a Ken Martin takeout. A profile on my guy, Ken Martin, DNC chair. Some fine journalism. Did you call it a takedown? No, takeout. Takeout. Okay, I was like, geez. I don't know. Jon Favreau did the takedown, I think. Yeah, exactly. Which you reported on. Man, it's tough. I don't know. You know, I look at the Ken Martin thing and this is going to feel really mean to him because I do not mean this in about his morality or integrity. Okay, speak on it. He's rights. He's rights. Like, I worked for rights. And it's the same. He's just like a Democratic Reince Priebus and, like, obviously then Reince Priebus becomes an enabler to evil after I quit working for him. I'm not saying that that was why. But, I don't know. Maybe I've been a good influence. There's certainly some parallels. Yeah. I don't think Ken Martin would do that after this. But just in, like, in this modern day, it's different. Like, you talk about Terry McAuliffe and the different style of chair he is. Like, if Terry McAuliffe would do well in this day and age, I think in any day and age, it's like there was this old model of party chair that, like, they were the state party chair in some place in the country. And then they come to D.C. and they focus on the operations and they're behind the scenes and they're a pleaser. And everybody, you know, they do a good job of making all the activists happy. Like, it's just a different job now. And, um, I don't know. It's tough. It's not, not, doesn't seem fun. But, I don't know. I also think, like, everyone is very clear that things are not going well there. Yeah. So this is not to excuse Ken. Right. You know, no one's excusing Ken. But, I mean, there's no world in which this would ever make sense. But, like, if I were in that world, I would never do that job. Ever, ever, ever. Ever. Like, I used to cover the DNC a lot, which was a kind of cursed assignment because everyone, it was always sort of in chaos somehow. Which is, like, so, my impression, I've never covered the RNC, but you tell me. My impression was that, while the DNC was always, like, kind of floundering and behind in fundraising, but also, like, there was, like, some small scandal that was, like, threatening to upend their meetings and which were open press, the RNC was, like, top down. Everything went how it was supposed to. No one was really allowed to access. No, there were no debates on the floor about, like, Israel or whatever. That is true, except for the tiny window where I was there, which we could blame on me. But in the Bush era, it was very tight. And then when Trump won. But in that inter-period where the party is having this tumult, the RNC was reflective of it. And I think that's what we're seeing with the DNC. And I remember being the spokesperson and being so mad. Because I had the opposite view during this tiny window of 2010, 2012, of, like, being so mad. Like, why are we doing open meetings where we discuss birthright citizenship or whether Obama was born in Kenya? And I was like, why don't we, like, tighten this fucker up a little bit? But, like, Reince wanted to appease everybody and please everybody. And so he wanted, you know, the crazy Ron Paul people to have a say. And so it's funny. I get. A little bit of trauma, like, watching the DNC meetings. Because it's what. It's what I was supposed to manage and fail. Like, it's tough. Like, and part of it is, I think Ken needs to tighten the ship up. Because it's like, people that have very strong views on this issue won't like this view. But it's like, the DNC delegate meeting is really not the place to discuss, like, the two-state solution. Like, it's like, it's not going to get resolved here. And, like, it only is going to enrage people who are on the opposite side of wherever you land. And so, like, why are you doing it? You know? But, like, they can't help themselves. They can't. They can't. And God bless. But, I mean, at a time when Trump is doing things that are theoretically enraging the entire Democratic Party, why is there not more energy and creativity around, like, how to respond to this moment? That's what. That's what puzzled me in dipping back into this world very briefly before extricating myself to go back to my parenting, Facebook chats. You previously, in a previous life at the Washington Post, wrote a great profile of my friend, Carrie Lake. Our friend. And our friend. We got to spend a lot of time together when we were in Arizona, which I miss. And one of the stories that you. I think, I believe, the headline or the lead of it was that, like, with Carrie Lake, the camera's always on because her husband was cameraing her. And subsequently to that, I had two encounters with her that shows you that Carrie Lake, the power of that strategy, where she secretly, secretly videotaped me. Oh, my God. But only released one of them because she was kind of drunk and it was embarrassing with the other one and she didn't really nail me. So that video remains on her husband's phone somewhere. But, like, the other one, there was, like, she released, like, a secret fishbowl camera of me. This is, like, a year after your article is out. I kind of remember this. This is so crazy. Like, what was she trying to. And it was found when she touched me. She touched me and I was like, please don't touch me. Yes, I remember. You were at, like, a convention or something. Yeah, she was speaking and we were in a side room. She sent us. She was like, I agree to do this if it's in the side room and I learned why because they had, like, rigged a camera system into the. Anyway, she's a kooky character. I don't know. Why don't you go to Jamaica and visit her? So, one fun fact about this. Yeah. Every person I talked to who was in Carrie Lake's previous life when she was a television anchor told me how much this woman loved Jamaica. No. Yes. I've been looking for a place to, like. Like, you know, no one tweets anymore. I'm scared of Twitter. So, I can't tweet this. I guess I can talk about it here. And you're reporting for the profile? Yes. I've talked to all of her former colleagues at this news station where she was working in Phoenix. You know, they all had really interesting stuff to say about Carrie, like. And one of the things that they told me, a lot of them brought it up, was that she was always kind of taking things off. and she would just like dissipate disappeared it made things people were kind of you know rolling their eyes about it like oh carrie's off on vacation and she would go to jamaica like she loved jamaica everyone referenced how much she loved jamaica i'm telling you so when i saw that why was it is it the weed is it the dance the music i don't know my impression my impression jaw was that my impression was like she and her husband just connected with the place i don't know if they have a familial connection i don't know if like there's any other connection other than they really liked jamaica but they were always on jamaica so when i saw that she was appointed an ambassador right she's an ambassador to jamaica yeah i was like you know what it all comes back so she asked for this she begged she went to mr trump and begged for instead of all the countries in the world i want jamaica okay to be clear i don't know if she asked but okay but i think so we i can we can impute that you're a journalist i'm a podcaster i haven't talked to carrie in a long time and yeah but seems like she seems like she went to mr trump and she begged like a dog to get the jamaica ambassador job that's my opinion i don't i don't you don't i don't know if anyone cares but like you know it would be interesting to ask but she loves jamaica so i was like oh you know you must be happy the new yorker should send you to absolutely not i don't know i feel like there was a moment where do it hi david i need this i need you to send ruby to jamaica yeah i'll go surprised it'll be like the jerry springer show that i pop up from the side the thing about you being secretly in her secretly videotaped by carrie lake and the difference between that and me being videotaped by carrie lake is so vast like you really held your own you were like don't touch me i would have been like i couldn't handle it i just like withered under this videotaping thing like we also went into a side quote-unquote side room for this interview and when we walked in she had cameras set up everywhere and i was like are you filming are you gonna film this i kind of asked in a sad way like do you really have to do we really have to do this like i'm not comfortable on camera yeah in that way you know i'm not like a i don't know you're right or clap backs i'm just trying to i'm just trying to do this story anyway it was wild but we love carrie and we had such a good time in arizona together she's a character i'd pitch them back when i was writing before i did a daily podcast i'd pitch them because we'd had so many back and forth so i was like it would be once it was over and i was like you won like she didn't win but like trump won again and i was like i want to do a story where i like sleep over at her house like not in her bedroom but like in a guest's room and i like i want to wake up and have breakfast with carrie and just be like are you like this yeah exactly like i want to know what she's like at breakfast like do you have the makeup on still and and are you and and they all assured me that like no at breakfast she is talking about election fraud i'm like maybe i don't know i'd like to know but i didn't have it carrie also i just want to add one more thing about carrie lake is that it was she had this like cadre of young men around her working for her do you remember them yeah yeah and in it in an effort to immerse myself in the world like i went out with them one night to just try to like you know yeah i was trying to negotiate this interview that then happened in the side room these kids i've never seen vaping zins i tried a zin for the first time i almost fainted in the back of the uber on the way back to my hotel from the zin don't try it for the first time i'm no stranger to nicotine like but i was like whoa i don't even i think it was i don't even think it was in i think it was off market you know like gas stations in or something well not it was wild anyway so maybe we can yeah we can replay that in jamaica i'd love to do that we're closing with two truths and a lie it's uh this is what we call we're bringing closure to the podcast you know we started and we're closing with two truths and i would you like to go first or me um i'll go first okay it's a maha themed two truths it's maha themed so i have ordered natural all cure style supplements served to me via instagram ads okay i have watched every documentary available on all streaming platforms about twin flame unions i know that doesn't sound maha theme but it is because one of the characters in the maha custody piece is a maha custody piece and it's a maha custody piece and it's a maha custody is a like expert on twin flames so i have watched all twin flame documentaries and i have consumed raw milk how many twin flame documentaries there are a lot i think there are at least there are definitely two main ones but i there might be a third somewhere out there i the question is have you consumed raw milk for a story or did you actually get the natural supplements for instagram that seems to be the crux of the question for me wow how dare you i think that you have not done raw milk you're correct yes i would try it though for sure have you tried it i don't even know what the vibe is okay freaked me out when i first saw it i first learned about it in new ham libertarian new hampshire when i was out there working for john huntsman and we're driving around to the other some guy i'm doing raw milk on the side of the road i was like what i thought up until that moment i i believed milk to be raw i don't i'm not a farmer okay i'm not a farmer i'm not a farmer i grew up in the suburbs you and john huntsman just finding out yeah he was explaining it to me and i was just like oh that's weird as fuck but he's like those are our people so anyway um here's mine okay i didn't take the flu shot for many years because one year it seemed to make me sick okay so i was a little bit of a flu shot anti-vaxxer totally get that i was one of the 1200 people in the world to get monkey pox my daughter's only trip to the emergency room is putting a bead up her nose and that happened during covid a b a bead oh a bead ouch up the nose and during covid we had to mast go in and get the doctor did it go down pry it out we got it out first good okay well you've used a lot of detail there so i know that happened i think the monk i don't know enough about monkey pox to know if this is even plausible and i'm scared that that could be true yeah i don't know but i'm also scared to reveal my ignorance on monkey pox so i'm leveling with you on that and then what was the first one flu shot oh okay anti-vaxxer the monkey pox thing has to be fake that has to be the lie that has to be the lie i mean i do like to party and have a good time but it was a friend of mine that actually was one of the first 1200 people in the world to get monkey pox and it's one of my favorite facts about him and uh we won't out him but god love him it was a lie okay is he okay he's great yeah whatever monkey pox vaccine is great one of my other besties is a is a infectious disease doctor we got he got on that motherfucker and he was the one that was texting me and like have you got your shot yet i don't know what you've been doing out there but he's like get your shot he's like i've been seeing so i've got i had a lot of i had a lot of connections to early monkey pox diagnoses one from the doctor and patient side but you but you i was you freaked yourself out a little bit about the flu shot i did i i and i my husband hated it hates it like but i don't like the flu shot i think gave me the flu like i got it one year and i felt awful afterwards and i was like why am i doing this i'm not gonna die from flu i understand why not but i i wanted to offer that as a kind of a peace offering to the maha people absolutely it's like i get it i i get why i totally get it too i mean it gets a little kooky you know when your kids have the measles but like you know i get the mindset so it's like come back from the brink baby unlearn my whole thing i just want to say one thing also kind of like in defense of maha is once people get there once they go down what someone in the story terms the radicalization funnel it's like look at the environment we're in look at the way social media is like permeating our lives look at how easy it is to google something out of fear anxiety about your kid and then like end up two hours later or deep on a reddit board or something like look at what trump is saying from the oval office about that's a vaccine and how children's bodies are being quote-unquote pumped with vaccine you know all these like really disgusting medicine language terms to discuss vaccine look at what rfk is doing how are we expecting people to act or think any differently i'm just like i do not it's kind of a wonder that more people aren't so i'm not mad at them i mean once the kids are tough the small kids are tough but um i'm with you i like that's why i feel like the unlearning question is the so it's such the key point because it's i and i do i understand it's just like i feel like i say this a lot but like everyone can relate to this in any situation in their personal life like we've all been duped or like got our mindset on something that isn't true and we're like we're not going to do it again we're not going to do it again we're not going to do it again we're not going to do it again we're not going to do it again we're not going to have a girlfriend boyfriend that was a manipulator or whatever and like had somebody tell you that and you get mad like you get you get your backup like i get that like i get that and so i understand why trust the science like it doesn't work but like something's got to work because it's rough out there all right that's ruby kramer what a delight thank you for coming on the podcast thank you um and i i'm looking forward to whatever you're doing next we'll do it again thanks awesome all right everybody else go listen to the next level if you want more politicking and we'll be back tomorrow with a bit of a double header it's gonna be a good one see y'all then doctor doctor won't you let me be please don't you play those evil tricks on me something now and i'm sure i know it's you the bulwark daily is brought to you thanks for the work of lead producer katie cooper associate producer ansley skipper and with video editing by dante de chico and audio engineering and editing by jason brown