Ruby Cramer: The Power of MAHA

(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to the Bollard 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, Higgseth Madness. Some new ads. We're gonna discuss, so come hang out there. But on today's show, it's RFK Madness. So we're gonna 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 Crane. - Thank you. - What's up Ruby? - Why Tim? Nothing, I'm so happy to be here. - Me too. You tell the story in this feature, so eloquently as you do, and it's a story in West Virginia. My husband's home state about a couple of Michael and Leah. But before we get to them, I just kind of want to do a big picture here. You quoted a Democratic strategist that said about Maha. It's two truths in 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 of like what you discovered interviewing all these people and spending. It seems like spending a lot of time 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 it 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 and 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 in a lie. So like yes, it's true that chronic disease is an epidemic and is on the rise when 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, you know, we should be studying for a potential link to autism, which is like, you know, the main sort of crux 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 the Maha has pointed out our attention toward. - Did you find yourself being sucked in at all, reading the posts? - Did I get-- - Did I get-- - Yeah, are you worried about beeftall? Are you, no, we're not worried about beeftallos. We like beeftallos, are you attracted to anything? - We like beeftallos and we don't like seed oils. You know, I found it 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 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 guts 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, and it sort of gets really like kind of brought together, I can away kind of like based on his unique like weird 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? But it all has got blended together. Is it because of RFK or 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 Tuturus in the light again. Like this is true, we know this is a feeling that people have and he put words to it for the first time and almost maybe 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, of 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 M-R-N-A, 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 tritz. I think that is right. - 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. I guess 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 getable for Democrats. - 100% - In a different world. When we talk about the groups, 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, I think more whatever, naturalist, maybe a little conspiratorial-minded and they've not been Republicans until two minutes ago. - Until two minutes ago and even now, they don't really fit, like 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 and 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 and 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's 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, deal with trigger warning for people, but tell us about. - The kids are okay. - Yeah, so they have three kids. - Yeah, as mentioned, the all-todd line of a custody battle. It's literally centered around views over their treatment, 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 Maha movement, including like moms who had gone down the Maha 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. Let's talk to people who were 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 the Maha rabbit hole. 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, wellness. One thing that we knew for sure was that she wanted to be 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. - Cottage core. I think we're calling it cottage core back then. - Cottage core. Who knows who we're calling it back then? - We don't like to remember those times. So I think 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 who's 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 us? - Oh, I know that 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. And so there was a mega right drudge competitor that was more Trump friendly and less, I don't know, gay or whatever the problem was. - Okay, at that point. - Right, exactly. - So touch all you need to know. - Okay, so for context, like this is what Michael's favorite. - Yeah. - New sources. - 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 follow mask mandates and like as like these plastic bear, 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 spending just like more and more on 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 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 were 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 neurology 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. Like there was like a cultishness to it. And like there's this kind of uncertainty and like people grabbed on to something. And like I don't, 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 active defiance, you know, which I think goes hand-in-hand with some of this. - Right. - So she's kind of starting to think about vaccines for the first time. She meets 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 like, you know, a vaccine injury. And, you know, a child that had, you know, like a seizure which these things do happen. - Sure. - And was vomiting apparently after getting a 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 here's why and you know, who knows if this was apocryphal or what happened, but Leah is terrified by this story. And she asked Florida a couple months, her elderly grandmother after receiving two doses of the COVID vaccine passes away. She blames the vaccine. This is a perfect storm sort of coming together. And suddenly like, it really does not take long where she is considering herself a quote unquote, crunchy mama. And, you know, she's, she's no more red dyes in the house. Tim has his head in his hands at this point. No more red dyes, you know, no chemicals in the food. You know, and Michael who, I think like in many families in America had defer choices about like taking care of the kids to the mom was sort of like, uh, whatever. I'm just kind of pissed that 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. (laughing) - An helmet. - An helmet. - An helmet, sure. - No, I don't know. As a reader, I was kind of like, ah! - He loves, he loves this motorcycle. - I'm a little scared of that. But anyway, fast forward to the kids and not paying back. - Yeah, so the kids basically, as soon as she goes down as 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 atrophy, SMA, 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 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 on her phone more. And 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 spiritual guide, slash, she's paying in Bitcoin, and I just want to say one thing because 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, I know. There's some grifters in the mouth. 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's 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 gonna 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? Mm, no. Okay, well, that is like, if you wanted to, it's like the prestige movie horror film of March 2020 COVID era. Oh, right. I did see this. Sorry, I forget the name of things I watched. I did see this. - And there it is. 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 a bit of coin 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 her 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 the 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 running nose and a pink pink eye normal stuff Donnie the child with SNA starts to get get kind of like water eyes as well Michaels like 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 get sick as well. It's like a week of hospital visits and at one point Donnie breaks out in a rash of flat reds 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 a little mini stretcher and doctors and isolation that just nightmare true nightmare. 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. 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 ma like there's just a level of a level of 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 well people read it see exactly how finishes but I wanted this kind of pull apart. We went down a visit 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 vaccine related there's something that David from said on this podcast like three years ago that always stuck with me about about cults or about MLM so about anything which is like. If you have a friend that gets duped in a scam and you figured out you know whether that is whatever I've got condo to sell you in the ever glades or anything 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 when the friend is more likely to get mad at you than the person that duped them it's just like a human natural defense mechanism right. And like he this is kind of replete throughout your kind of reporting right which is just like the people who are really but in on this like they feel talk down to. If they get brought information to the contrary of what they know 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 right it's pretty 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 the leading that vaccines are like a good thing or necessary yeah I think one of the most interesting revelations I add and 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 to interviews with with moms in the movement found to your point that same 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 going to 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 get worse I think probably yeah right the immigration system like there are other things I don't know how you put this like back in the like 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 face it happened because the anxiety of living with an unvaccinated child as. A virus like measles is reemerging is so intense like one mom this one wonderful woman named Lindsay and 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 isn't in the air the particles are in the air this is when my daughter is getting measles. She said like any time she went on a trip any time she was in a rest stop any time she was in grocery store like those thoughts would occur to her and I think that that's an incredible amount of anxiety to live with. It's kind of reminiscent for me of like the gay HIV experience like I'm yeah right like if you feel like it's always or 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 it 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 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 was 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 describe like this. Anxiety and fear of being like is my kid going to 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 aha be I feel like I'm deep in mega world like I knew citizens free press I you know I get a lot of like mega content I don't get any maha content like this is another universe from me like altogether so I'm just kind of curious so you've been spending a lot of time one of the last few months. Like is there anything like a sense of the trail 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 a lot of agricultural 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 sure, 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 and 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 on like the Maha activist group because they have actual things that they want it, which is a different category of people than just Maha moms and Facebook check groups. Right? But like, in other ways, I think that is, I can again, like, presents opportunity 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 on that, right? Like, it feels like recapturable to me, but maybe that's wrong. I don't know. Maybe it's not. No, I think that's right. I just struggled 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 or to have to? I had Mary Ann on the show a couple of months ago and she was, I know. It's like, obviously she has some things. I'm like, 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 mean? I mean, she, I mean, the 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, and because of like the way he went around about 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. I people that say that I think missed 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, you could use that model and like incorporate someone who is more, who is woo-woo and be like, I'm not going to put this person in charge of the nation's health, but like, there are ways to engage. Yeah. Marianne had the like crystal, woo-woo, like, I mean, I look candidates, where I'm saying it is really, like, I don't know if this is true, right? 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-ha, and that's scientifically based. I don't know. It feels like there are ways to do it. Absolutely. I 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. Well, I mean, don't say they did because they did, they put out white papers and stuff. Right. 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, here at the New Yorker now. And 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, there was one thing that gave me a little, what the fuck in this story that I just wanted you to tell people about, which are agra hoods. I did not, I did not know about agra hoods. You don't like to add, what's up with that? Agra hoods. You say those. You say the words so fine. That said, I don't know how to pronounce it, like agra hoods. Okay. So agra hoods are kind of like wellness-minded communities where you can literally a community, like a cul-de-sac. It is literally a neighborhood community kind of subdivision type deal. Like subdivision 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 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 others. But yeah, you can buy house and live and like do, you know, I don't know, natural cooking classes and have your kids being neighbors with other kids that are living in non-toxic homes. You know. We're an amazing country. There's so much stuff out there, I don't know anything about. Yes, the agra hoods. The agra hood that I featured in the piece called Saran B. And it's right outside Atlanta, and it's founder recently claimed that none of the kids living at Saran B have asthma because they lived this like non-toxic lifestyle, like maybe, maybe none of them do have asthma. That's kind of interesting. Yeah. I don't know. Because I couldn't just be just like random chance, though, I don't know. It could be. It could also be like. None of my cousins had asthma. Yeah. I also couldn't have asthma. So because of the 11 me. 10 me or something. Did you grow up in a non-toxic household? No. I mean, you know, I mean, my mom cooked, which is nice. Really, really. But did she cook with like plastic spatulas because that's a huge note? No. We definitely had plastic spatulas. Okay. So you've got microplastics in your body. Yes. 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 twists and a lie ourselves. Okay. So get ready for that. Two of your other articles recently, one, I wanted to talk about because I just just talked about the scale of the ice operations. You're doing a lot of ice reporting, like, maybe six months ago before you moved into the mom. And I feel like I talk about it as much as anybody I try to because it's just it's so fucking enraging to me. And yet, like I was going back to your old stories and you told the story of this Merrimar Martinez. Well, I don't think I even mentioned it, 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, what the deportation campaign, but for folks that like me, like, didn't need it to be refreshed on that story. Just want to give a brief synopsis of what happened to Merrimar Martinez in Chicago. Yeah. So it's funny because 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 Freddie 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 2025. 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 look out for ice agents. She's American citizen, by the way, and she's 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 windows, 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 side swept. 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 marijuana Martinez's car. And she 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 Chrissy Nome 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. Not, she had a pistol in her car, in her purse. I love that, I love that the second amendment people now, it's all, 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. Cash Patel shared a video of a black SUV ramming an agent's truck saying it was Martinez. That was not her. It was a different video. It's time that you had to start a call 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. Whatever you think about Martinez behavior, like an agent of the state totally unnecessary and irresponsible to fire the weapon five times there was no need to do that. 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 exactly what they did to Renee Good then. - Right, it's exactly what they did to Renee Good and Alex Freddie. I think the speed with which had happened in this particular case was really alarming. It was like hours without, of course, any investigation into what happened. I'm sure without all the evidence being collected in terms of like, well, we know some of the agents hadn't 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 with 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 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 rereading it, I just, you can see how they've changed the tactics now. 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 of 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 Murray-Mar Martinez, they don't care that you get injured, but they don't want the, hey, I'm warning people in the neighborhood, like the tactical, 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, do you wanna take down? - No, take out, take out. - Okay, I was like, jeez. - I don't know, John Favreau did to take down, I think. - That's right, that's right. - What you reported on, man, it's tough. I don't know, you know, I look at the Ken Martin thing, and this is gonna feel really mean to him because I do not mean this in about his morality or integrity. - Okay, speaking of it. - He's rights, he's rights. Like I worked for rights, and it's the thing, he's just like a democratic rights free bus and like obviously then right through as it becomes an able to evil after I quit working for him. I'm not saying that that was why, but I don't know, maybe I didn't get it once. I, there's something we can talk about. - There's something we can talk about. - Yeah, I don't think Ken Martin would do that after this, but just in like, in this modern, it's different. Like you talk about Terry McCullough for the different style of chair he is. Like a Terry McCullough would do well on this day and age, I think at 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 DC 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 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. 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 curse assignment 'cause 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 some small scandal that was like threatening to upend their meetings and which were open press, the RNC was like, talk down, everything went out was supposed to. No one was really allowed to access. No, there were no debates on the floor about like Israel and everything. - 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 in Trump, 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 at the DNC and I remember being the spokesperson and being so mad, 'cause I had the opposite view during this tiny window 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 tighten this fucker up a little bit, but like Rines wanted to appease everybody and please everybody and so he wanted, you know, the crazy Ron Paul people to ever say. And so it's funny, I get a little bit of trauma like watching the DNC meetings 'cause it's what I was supposed to manage and fail. Like it's tough and part of it is, I think Ken needs to tighten the ship up 'cause 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 solutions. Like it's like, it's not gonna 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, they can, they can, and God bless. But I mean, as time went, 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 executing myself to go back to my parenting Facebook chats. - You previously in previous life at the Washington Post wrote a great profile of my friend, Carrie like. - Our friend. - And our friend, we got to spend a lot of time together and we were in Arizona, which I miss. And one of the stories that you want, I think I believe the headline or the lead of it was like, with Carrie like, the cameras always on because her husband was camoring her. And subsequently to that, I had two encounters with her. It shows you the Carrie like, the power of that strategy where she secretly videotaped me. But only released one of them because she was kind of drunk and it was embarrassing. 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, like she released like a secret fish bowl 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 do to me? She touched me and I was like, please don't touch me. - I remember, she touched me, I said, yeah. - We were like, you were like a convention or something. - Yeah, she was speaking, we were in a side room. She said that she was like, I agree to do this if it's in the side room. And now I'm learned blind because they like rigged a camera system into them. 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, every person I talked to who was in Carrie late'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, 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. They all had really interesting stuff to say about Carrie. And one of the things that they told me, a lot of them brought it up was that she was always kind of taking vacation and she would just like [BLANK_AUDIO] period, it made things, people were kind of, you know, rolling their eyes about it. Like, oh, Carrie's often 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 it, why was it that the weed? Is it the dam? The music? I don't know. My impression, my impression was, 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 in ambassador, right, she's in ambassador to Jamaica. I was like, you know what? It all comes back. So she asked for this. She asked, you have to Mr. Trump and beg for it instead of all the countries in the world, I want Jamaica. No. Okay. To be clear, I don't know if she asked. Okay. But I think so. You're a journalist. I'm a podcast. I haven't talked to Kerry like in a long time. Yeah. Seems like she, she was like, she went to Mr. Trump and she begged like a dog to get the gym, I can't pass her job. That's my opinion. 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, she should be happy. The New Yorker should send you to church. Absolutely not. I don't know. Like, there was a moment where I do it. I need this. I need you to send Ruby to Jamaica. No, go together. Yeah. I'll go. Surprise. It'll be like the Jerry Springer show. You're like interviewing her and then I pop up from the side. The thing about you being secretly inter, secretly videotaped by Kerry Lake and the difference between that and me being videotaped by Kerry Lake is so vast, like you really held your own. You were like, don't touch me. 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 film, are you going to film this? I kind of asked in the sad way, like, do we 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. Give clap backs. I'm just trying to, I've just tried to do this story, anyway, it was wild, but we love Kerry and we had such a good time in Arizona together. She's a character. I had pitched them back when I was writing before I did a daily podcast. I had pitched them because we'd had somebody back before 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 room and I want to wake up and have breakfast with Kerry and just be like, are you like this? Yeah. Exactly. And I want to know what she's like at breakfast. Like, do you have the makeup on still and, and are you, and they all assured me that like, no, at breakfast, she is talking about election fraud. And I'm like, maybe I don't know. I'd like to know, but I didn't have it. I want to know too. Kerry also, I just want to add one more thing about Kerry, like, is that it was, she had this, like, cadre of young men around her working for her, do you know what I'm, 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, I was trying to negotiate this interview that then happened in the side room. These kids, I've never seen vaping zins. I tried to 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 zin for the first time in a couple of days. I'm most stranger to nicotine, but I was like, whoa, I don't think it was, I don't even think it was zin. I think it was off market, you know, like, gas stations and or something, well, it was wild anyway. So maybe we can, yeah, we can replay that in Jamaica. I'd love to that. We're closing with two truths in a lie. It's this is what we call we're bringing closure to the podcast, you know, we started and we're closing with two truths in a lie. Would you like to go first or me? I'll go first. Okay. It's a ma ha theme to two truths in a while. Okay. It's ma ha theme. So I have ordered natural all-cure style supplements served to me via Instagram ads. I have watched every documentary available on all streaming platforms about twin flame unions. I know that doesn't sound ma ha theme, but it is because one of the characters in the maha custody piece 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 are there? There are a lot. At least there are definitely two main ones, but there might be a third somewhere out there. Questions. 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. 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. I would not. What the vibe is. Okay. Not when I first saw it. I first learned about a libertarian New Hampshire when I was out there working for John Huntspin and we're driving around to the other somebody doing raw milk on the side of the road. I was like, what? I thought up until that moment, I believed milk to be raw. Like, I don't know. I'm not a farmer. Okay. I grew up in the suburbs. I had a real time. You were John Huntsman just finding out. Yeah. He was explaining it to me. I was just like, he knew how that is. And I was just like, oh, that's weird as fuck, but he's like those are people. So anyway. Yeah. 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 got that. I was one of the first 1200 people in the world to get monkey box. My daughter is only a trip to the emergency room is putting a bead up her nose and that happened during COVID. A bead? A bead. A bead. A bead. Up the nose. And during COVID, we had to mask, go in and get the doctor. Did it go down? Try it out. We got it out first. Good. Okay. That's true. You've used a lot of detail there. So I know that happened. I think the month, I don't know enough about monkey box to know if this is even plausible. And I'm scared that that could be true. I don't know, but I'm also scared to reveal my ignorance on monkey box, some leveling with you on that. And then what was the first one? A flu shot. Oh. A flu shot, anti-vaxxer. The monkey box thing has to be fake. That has to be the lie. I mean, I do like departing and have a good time, but it was a friend of mine that actually was one of the first 1,200 people in the world to give up and it's one of my favorite facts about him. And we won out on the god love them. It was a lot. Okay. Is he okay? He's great. Yeah. One of my other besties is a infectious disease doctor. He got on that motherfucker and he was 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. I've got, I had a lot of connections to early monkey box diagnoses one from the doctor and patient side, but you, but you, you preach, you preach yourself out a little bit about the flu shot. I did. I, and I, and my husband hated it, he said, 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 going to die from flu. I understand why not, but I wanted to offer that as kind of a peace offering to the Mahab people. Absolutely. 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 to the brink, baby, unlearn. My whole thing, I just want to say one thing, also kind of like, indefensive, Mahab 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 and 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, menacing 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. Yeah. I'm not mad at that. I mean, once the kids are tough, the small kids are tough, but that's why I feel like the unlearning question is such the key point because it's like, and I do, I understand. It's just like, I feel like it's a lot 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 or had a girlfriend boyfriend that was a manipulator or whatever. And like, had somebody tell you that and you get mad. You get your backup. Like I get that. Like I get that. And so I understand why trust a science 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. And I'm looking forward to whatever you're doing next. We'll do it again soon. 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 going to be a good one. See you all then. [Music] The Bullwork Daily is brought to you thanks for the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Anzali Skipper, and with video editing by Dante DeCicco and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.