These Podcasters Are Going All The Way Down the MAGA Rabbit Hole

I’d like to share two quick examples of how comedy’s right-wingers are going deeper and deeper down the conspiracist rabbit hole, something I suspect will become an increasing problem as the election approaches. 

The first is from a Patreon episode Tim Dillon released yesterday. Obviously he’s no stranger to conspiracy theories, but I think he let slip something revealing in this episode, during his comments about the Apalachee High School shooter. (He’s very upset that the shooter’s father is being charged for giving him the gun, but that’s not what we’re focusing on now.) Here’s what he said:

Dillon: The interesting thing about this, actually, I was texting with Joe, whose last name is unimportant, but he has a podcast. And we were looking at: “GPS data reveals that an FBI special agent previously linked to multiple other shooters was within a thousand feet of Georgia school shooter Colt Gray on 11 separate occasions over a 14-month span.”

I don't know what any of that means, but that's odd. And this is a Twitter account called “Shadows of Ezra.” And it's basically about—this GPS data is interesting. I don't know anything about it, so I cannot say anything about it. I will say that this is the same type of data that linked [Trump shooter] Thomas Matthew Crooks—this GPS data is what linked Thomas Matthew Crooks to a bar in Washington, DC, frequented by Secret Service and FBI. Which is interesting because Thomas Matthew Crooks, again, is this kid with no digital footprint, no social media, not social, and yet is visiting a bar in Washington, D.C., which is like a famous haunt for FBI agents. 

Again, according to this GPS data, which I know nothing about. So I do not have any information about how this GPS data is—how it's like gleaned, like how they get it how it's harvested or whatnot, and I don't know the veracity of it I just know that it's it's being bandied about on Twitter quite frequently now that you have GPS data linking these people to weird places and weird people.

I don't know. I think the Heritage Foundation was doing something with this, but again, I don't have any—you know, I can’t—people are going to say, “Well, you're just, you know, you're circulating a conspiracy”—I’m just talking. And I didn't do an investigation on what exactly is happening. I don't know, right. I'm just saying that this is being discussed pretty openly on Twitter that stuff. Like this is happening.  

Producer: Yeah, so there's some data whistleblower on Twitter that tracks all this data. Like he worked I guess in this sort of investigative space where he's this guy named Tony Seruga has been putting out this information. He was the source for the latest shooting as well.

Dillon: Right. I mean, I'm going to read more about it because I just don’t have enough information to ascertain if this is actually legit or not.

Okay, so that’s obviously a load of nonsense, but what it tells us is that Tim Dillon and Joe Rogan—two very influential podcasters, albeit one much more influential than the other—are both getting and credulously spreading news from some crank’s Twitter account. Here’s the tweet they’re talking about, with absolutely no sourcing:

And here are some other tweets from that account:

And what of that Tony Seruga fellow Dillon's producer mentions? Well, let’s take a quick look:

Shocker: he’s a Nazi engagement farmer too. This is the stuff Tim Dillon, who just filmed a Netflix special, is passing along to his fans, completely unfiltered, with no apparent concern for the truth. Not good.

Now let’s turn to the latest episode of Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast, once again featuring the podcast's resident favorite Holocaust deniers, Bill McCusker and Andrew Pacella of War Mode. There’s a great deal of disturbing stuff in this episode, including Pacella’s complaints about women reading erotica—“you go to New York on the subway, Black chicks will just openly read it, I’m like watching them read erotica, very big letter print… makes me sad”—but what I’d like to highlight is the following exchange:

Bill McCusker: One of Kamala Harris’s slogans is literally a Nazi slogan. It’s like, joy with something. I forget what the fuck it’s called. 

Matt McCusker: Oprah came out and said it. Oprah went, [singing] “Jooooy!”

Pacella: Really? She did one of those?

Matt: Dude— 

Bill: She’s fucking with John of God, dude.

Pacella: John of God, yeah.  

Matt: What’s the problem?

Bill: John of God’s a guy who ran a trafficking thing in Brazil and then went to jail for it. Oprah was all, “He’s the best, he’s my magic man.”

Pacella: Dude, Matt, he’s this guy that hypnotizes people—

Bill: —cut your eyeball open—

Pacella: —he can put a needle in your eye and people don’t even freak the fuck out. 

Matt: Why would he do this? 

Pacella: He’s some kind of a healer. 

Matt: And he’s Oprah’s bro?

Pacella: So Oprah had him on, they were like, boys.

Matt: What did the guy do?

Pacella: He was like a religious—they called him John of God. 

Matt: Gotcha. 

Pacella: But then I think he was trying to make babies with little girls. 

Matt: Ahhh.

Bill: "Strength through joy." "Strength through joy."

Pacella: That’s a Nazi thing?

Bill: It’s a Nazi thing, yeah. 

Pacella: Oh, wow. 

Bill: What are you gonna do?

Matt: I’ll be curious, man. It’s just weird to me that people for real being like, nah dude, she’s chill.

Bill: Yeah, you raped someone if you’re saying that.

Gillis: On the drive here, I saw a nice Kamala next to a Ukraine flag. It’s just very funny—

Bill: “I’m on medication.”

Gillis: The joy people, their party line is like, “We need the war in Russia,” also—

Bill: —“get this Indian Black chick in, please.”

Let’s get this out of the way: João Teixeira de Faria, aka “John of God,” is indeed a self-proclaimed healer and convicted rapist who received favorable coverage from Oprah Winfrey in 2010 and 2013, years before he was accused of rape and other forms of abuse by hundreds of people. (It sure is interesting that these guys, who also constantly bring up Epstein and his associates, never seem to care about rape when it comes to their hero Donald Trump.) Okay, but what about that “Strength Through Joy” bit? Here’s what: it’s completely false! That’s not a Harris campaign slogan at all and never has been; this is a claim that circulated around the online right with absolutely no basis in reality. And today Shane Gillis and Matt McCusker blasted it out to their millions of fans, alongside some nice misogyny and racism to boot. 

What could possibly explain these guys’ attitude towards conspiracy theories about Democrats? Could it be that they want Trump to win? I sure wonder!

One last thing before we go, with a hat-tip to reader Josh for sending this my way. Check out this bit from Ron White’s appearance on some podcast called The Great Unlearn:

If I do a set at a casino, it’s $125,000. If I do one at the Comedy Store, it's $35. So they get quite a discount… But it’s a showcase club and you need those sets, right? So they don’t have to pay you anything. And I never picked up one of the checks, I have a stack of checks this thick at the Comedy Store to this day because I just didn’t need the $35 bucks. 

But in Joe’s club, if I do a 15 minute set in the main room, he pays me $1,200 bucks. And if I go on last, he pays me $8,000 bucks. And you can’t make over $35 in New York or LA. Well, no, the Comedy Cellar, they pay $50 for sets during the week and $100 on the weekend. And people live on it! There are so many sets that you can do in LA and New York that you can scrape by a living and never leave the city, and people do it. I guess. 

And that’s the same thing here. You can make a living in Austin doing standup comedy, and that’s a rare thing, that you don’t have to leave. If you’re in with Joe—but Joe pays the doormen more than that just to quit doing their job as a doorman and go up there and do a set, which they’re lucky to be able to do. He pays them more money than the Store or the—it’s like a hundred bucks a set, just to stop your job and go up there and make an extra hundred bucks and get to do standup, which is what you want to do anyway, and that’s why you work there as a doorman. 

You know, 80% of the door goes to the comics. And that was nobody’s idea but Joe Rogan. He always felt like, why not treat comics fair? Why not acknowledge that we’re in the comedy business, and nothing matters but the comedians? 

Three takeaways:

1. It pays really well to be Joe Rogan’s friend.

2. Every other comedy club pays complete shit. 

3. The future of standup comedy is in the hands of a guy who gets his news from some Nazi on Twitter. 

Have a great week!