What The Hell America!

The bro-comedy podcasts that helped Trump win the election and set off much agonizing about the right’s overwhelming podcast advantage have taken up a hot new topic: antisemitism and even, in one case, general Adolf Hitler apologia.

This month, mega-popular podcasters like Joe Rogan and Theo Von have hosted a series of antisemitic conspiracy theorists for friendly interviews. It’s a new trend that raises ominous questions about what happens when “just-asking-questions” small talk gets aired on the biggest platforms imaginable.

On March 5, Rogan hosted conspiracy theorist Ian Carroll, who has claimed that Jews did 9/11.

Among other things, Carroll called sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein “a dark stain on Israel and on the Jewish people.”

A few days later, Rogan interviewed podcaster Darryl Cooper, who goes by the name “Martyr Made” online. Cooper was in the news last year for saying on Tucker Carlson’s online show that Winston Churchill—rather than Hitler—was the “the chief villain of the Second World War.”

Cooper has been working on a podcast that attempts to see the war from the German perspective, and used his Rogan appearance to argue—more than a bit disingenuously—that 40 million deaths could have been averted in the war if only the Allies had let Hitler remain in power. For his part, Rogan said Cooper was “an educator . . . an unconventional educator.”

Not to be outdone, comedian Theo Von hosted Candace Owens, who was fired a year ago from the right-wing website the Daily Wire following a series of antisemitic remarks. Owens told Von that Israel controls the United States through blackmail schemes.

Despite their tens of millions of listeners, these podcasts aren’t renowned for the care they take in selecting their guests. Still, the sudden rise of all these anti-Jewish conspiracy theories on some of the country’s biggest podcasts over just a few weeks was notable enough that it occasioned some pushback on the right. Jeremy Boreing, the CEO of the Daily Wire, tweeted that Carroll’s interview on Rogan’s show marked “a terrible day for American Jews.”

“This way lies madness—and worse than madness,” he added.

So what’s going on here? I suspect that, with the right ascendant politically and culturally, bad-boy podcasters have run short of DEI sacred cows to skewer. Now, in an effort to keep churning out provocative content, they’re pivoting toward antisemitism.

Tim Pool isn’t like the other right-wing YouTubers with millions of followers. He’s a little bit punk, a little bit skater!

So I watched with interest when Pool—a former Vice reporter best known in the broader internet for the signature beanie he wears at all times—bought an empty lot in Martinsburg, West Virginia that had become a sort of makeshift hangout for local skaters. Pool, who lives near Martinsburg, had offered the skaters $20,000 in prizes for a contest they were organizing, only to have some of the skaters warn him he wasn’t welcome on the property. So he bought their skatepark instead, throwing the small town’s skating scene into disarray.

But roughly a year and a half after Pool bought the land with plans to develop it into a more complex skatepark, the dream is dead. In a confusing video posted March 13, Pool claimed that his skatepark has been bedeviled by anti-Pool vandals who, among other things, confronted him at a Cracker Barrel.

“I can confirm for you 100 percent these are far-leftist political individuals,” he said. “How do I know? They got in my face and threatened me personally at the local Cracker Barrel.”

Pool claims Martinsburg’s city government wants him to cut down on disorder at the skatepark, and he’s inclined to give them control of the land while he tries to sell the property. But curiously, Martinsburg mayor Kevin Knowles says he has no idea what Pool is talking about.

“The city has had nothing to do with that property,” Knowles told me in an email. “This is the first time I’m hearing any such thing. False news.”

Pool didn’t respond to my email seeking an explanation.

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The skatepark retreat is just the latest setback for the podcaster’s ambitious West Virginia plans. For years he has been working to launch a coffee shop/social club in Martinsburg, but that, too, appears to be on hold. He periodically tweets about how hard it is to run a business in the state, saying in January that he regrets ever moving his operations there and that he planned on leaving. In October, he threatened to quit his show entirely.

Notably, Pool’s business issues come after a major moment: the collapse of a very lucrative deal with the Russian government.

Last year, the federal government revealed that Pool—along with such other right-wing luminaries as Benny Johnson and Dave Rubin—was receiving gobsmacking amounts of money from Russia to make videos for a little-watched YouTube channel called Tenet Media. In Pool’s case, he made $100,000 for each weekly video he made for Tenet, which would work out to millions of dollars a year.

Pool, like his other former Tenet Media colleagues, claimed he had no idea the money was coming from Russia. But that spigot, clearly, has been turned off.

The Trump administration is at risk of alienating a key constituency: chemtrail conspiracy theorists. These people, who believe that airplane condensation trails streaked across the sky are really chemicals being sprayed over the population for mind or weather control, have started to complain that nothing is being done about the “chemtrails,” even with Republicans in charge.

Last week, former Saturday Night Live actor Jim Breuer posted videos on Instagram of the “chemtrails” he said were being sprayed over his Florida hotel.

“I know the FAA knows who’s flying,” Breuer said. “I’m pretty sure the governor can figure out who’s flying and spraying, and creating these fake clouds in the sky.”

Breuer’s videos inspired a host of other chemtrail-phobes to complain that Trump (despite employing the chemtrail-curious Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health and human services secretary) appears to have done nothing to rein in the chemtrails.

“Mr President, with all due respect this is not winning,” one tweeted over the weekend.

That’s all for False Flag until Thursday’s issue—by which point the chemtrails will hopefully all be back under control.