Stay ConnectedInside the right’s push to retake power, from the conspiracy-slingers to the MAGA acolytes to the straight-up grifters. Thought the Trump era was crazy? Wait ’til you hear what they have planned next. Hosted by Kelly Weill and Will Sommer. New episodes every Wednesday. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app today.
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While prosecutors appear to be closing in on Donald Trump and preparing to file formal charges, he’s been posting up an absolute storm on Truth Social. It’s all happening amid the backdrop of a potential arrest for the former president—which some pundits predict will bolster his re-election campaign. The Fever Dreams team isn’t so sure. Plus! Daily Beast reporter Jake Lahut joins the program to talk about his recent reporting on what appears to be DeSantis’ fledgling campaign—including a number of troubling anecdotes about the Florida governor’s ability to make small talk and press the flesh at his early stops in Iowa and elsewhere.
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If Tucker Carlson seems a little lost at the moment—that’s because he is. At least, that’s what Media Matters researcher Kat Abughazaleh says, and she has to watch the fire-breathing Fox News host every day for work. Then, Fever Dreams digs into the obfuscation being performed by Fox and others in the conservative media after one of the country’s worst banking collapses. Plus! In the podcast’s Fresh Hell segment, Weill and Sommer discuss the worst dressed man in North America—Jordan Peterson—and how exactly he styles the atrocious outfits he’s recently become known for.
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This year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), long a mainstay in Republican politics, wasn’t quite the A-list event of years past. Isaac Arnsdorf joins the podcast to talk about his own CPAC experience, along with breakout star, Kari Lake, who failed to win Arizona’s governor race last November but propelled herself to MAGA stardom with a Big Lie-style campaign at the state level. Plus, in the podcast’s Fresh Hell segment, Weill gives an update on the legal woes of Andrew Tate, the misogynist influencer and alleged human trafficker currently detained in a Romanian prison—as well as the bizarre rumor that he has lung cancer.
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Hosts Will Sommer and Kelly Weill unpack the QAnon connections behind newly elected Michigan GOP leader Kristina Karamo, who declared Michigan as “ground zero for the globalist takeover of the United States of America.” A wave of more than 100 deaths over the past two years at Fort Bragg has rocked the U.S. military—caused in part by an increasing number of overdoses, says Rolling Stone investigative reporter Seth Harp on this week’s episode of The Daily Beast’s Fever Dreams podcast. Plus, a look into both hosts’ personal history with the comic Dilbert—and its embattled artist, Scott Adams, who sparked a firestorm last week by going on a racist rant and calling Black people a “hate group,” among other things.
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On this week’s Fever Dreams, James O’Keefe gives his fans and foes a truly memorable send-off, while the Libertarian Party continues to its slide to the right. Plus, co-host Will Sommer discusses his years of reporting on QAnon—as well as his new book Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America.
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For it's 100th episode, Fever Dreams unpacks all the drama engulfing right-wing undercover video operation Project Veritas, including a number of claims about the difficult workplace culture fostered under founder James O’Keefe. Then the podcast is joined by labor reporter and author Kim Kelly, who talks about how her experience as a fan and critic of metal music helped her better understand—and report on—far-right extremists across the U.S.
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What if there was an atomic bomb about to detonate and kill millions of people—and the only way to defuse it was to have an Artificial Intelligence chatbot say a racial slur? Also on the podcast Weill and Sommer interview Trevor Aaronson, the host of the investigative podcast the Alphabet Boys, which tells the story of FBI informant Mickey Windecker, who almost single-handedly derailed the Black Lives Matter movement in Denver. Plus! Weill and Sommer recap a bombshell investigation into Eliza Blue, an overnight internet sensation who rose to prominence by becoming an ombudsman for victims of human trafficking.
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Journalist Nicky Woolf has spent months looking into the bona fide mystery of what exactly is happening with all of those U.S. diplomats and intelligence operatives reporting brain injuries thanks to some unnamed, futuristic weapon—and come away with the impression that this story, however far-fetched it may seem, may actually be true.
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Puck reporter Tina Nguyen joins this week’s Fever Dreams to discuss Rep. George Santos and the civil war brewing between his staffers and the far-right figures he’s begun to consult. Weill and Sommer discuss the recently disclosed rulebook for Proud Boys members, which includes a number of incredibly silly measures that members must follow. Then, speculation rages in Trumpworld over whether MAGA broadcaster Silk—of ‘Diamond and Silk’ fame—meant to shade the former president during a memorial speech for her sister and co-host, bashing him for supporting COVID vaccination efforts that conspiracy theorists say – without evidence – may have been responsible for her death.
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The first thing Andrew Tate did after his arrest on Romanian human trafficking charges was to complain about “the Matrix”—a shadowy power structure hell-bent on taking him down for, well, some unspoken reason. He is, of course, not the first one to use this term—it’s an emerging meme in right-wing spaces online, says Fever Dreams host Will Sommer on this week’s episode. Even Logan Paul, the YouTube provocateur and wannabe boxing star, has thrown out the theory to push back on critics after a particularly bad week of PR which began with the discovery of an abandoned pig he apparently once owned. Also on the episode, Sommer and co-host Kelly Weill investigate the origins of a new front in the culture war: gas stoves.
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Ineitha Lynette Hardaway—better known as “Diamond” from the pro-Trump broadcasting duo “Diamond and Silk”—passed away this week, leaving the future of the pair’s popular act in limbo. In this week’s episode of Fever Dreams, hosts Will Sommer and Kelly Weill speculate on what comes next for “Silk”—who was never really the group’s frontman, so to speak. Then, the pair tackle Brazil’s own Capitol riot, which came nearly two years to the day after Jan. 6. In terms of pure aesthetics, the two scenes were incredibly reminiscent of each other: “They had the flags, they had the marching groups, they had the people walking through government chambers, trashing things,” Weill said. But even as this was all going on, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has been camped out in Florida at the home of an MMA star, signing autographs and meeting with American fans of his Trumpian governing style. The state has become a new nexus for the world’s various right-wing movements in recent years, according to Fever Dreams guest and The Daily Dot political reporter Claire Goforth—and it appears Bolsonaro is angling to stay there and trade in on his popularity with the MAGA base rather than face the music back at home.
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It may be the start of a new year, but the Republican Party is back to its old antics again—throwing the House of Representatives into chaos as a rogue group of far-right Congresspeople refuses to step into line and back Kevin McCarthy’s bid for the speaker’s gavel. Kelly Weill and Will Sommer, hosts of The Daily Beast’s Fever Dreams podcast, predict that 2023 will only bring more insane antics from the chamber’s more controversial corners—and Fever Dreams favorites like Reps. Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, and Marjorie Taylor Greene are already floating their best ideas for what to do with their newfound majority power. Plus, the pod explores the arrest of misogynist influencer Andrew Tate—and how the downfall of a MAGA-adjacent internet celebrity leaves the rest of that ecosystem in the lurch.
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Kelly and Will dig through the mailbag to answer the burning questions on listeners’ minds. Whatever happened to the Qux Box, the right-wing tech device that was supposed to create a new internet? Are MAGA DJ’s “Milk n Cooks” still jamming out? And did Republicans lose the House because Rush Limbaugh died?
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This week, Fever Dreams hosts Will Sommer and Sam Brodey take you down the rabbit hole of Turning Point USA, a conservative youth organization which looks more and more like the future of the GOP. Also,: a year-end list of the best stories from a particularly deranged 12 months, as well as a look into how legacy media is doing with Daily Beast media reporter Corbin Bolies (Spoiler alert: not well!).
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On this week’s episode of the Fever Dreams podcast, Hannah Gais and Michael Edison Hayden from the Southern Poverty Law Center recalled a cast of characters to host Will Sommer and guest co-host, The Daily Beast’s Sam Brodey. Then, in the podcast’s “Fresh Hell” segment, the hosts dip into American conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro's growing online movie streaming empire and his burgeoning efforts to create a right-wing Hollywood in Nashville by acquiring the exclusive film and television rights to the books Atlas Shrugged and Pendragon Cycle, along with a forthcoming children’s cartoon about a family of homeschooled chinchillas.
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Kanye West seems more unhinged than ever before—and that’s saying something. And with Milo Yiannopolos now booted from Kanye's orbit, the only person who’s really winning is white nationalist Nick Fuentes, says host Will Sommer on this week’s episode of Fever Dreams. Then, Jim Small, editor in chief of the Arizona Mirror, catches us up to speed on Arizona’s election—and which conspiracy theorists in a couple of fringe counties are still doing their best to keep hope alive.
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Kanye’s West’s “traveling roadshow of right-wing internet fame balls” may be the topic of the week, but according to Fever Dreams host Will Sommer, fame, like money, does not equal happiness. In this week’s episode, Sommer and co-host Kelly Weill discuss the aftermath of Ye’s controversial dinner with former President Donald Trump last week. Notably though, it was Ye’s guest, the white nationalist Nick Fuentes, that had tongues wagging. Then, Cerise Castle, who covers the presence of gangs in the LA Sheriff's Department in her new podcast, A Tradition of Violence, explains what it takes to become a member.
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Is Twitter really going to “go crazy” now that new owner Elon Musk has allowed previously banned users like former President Donald Trump back on the platform? Hosts Will Sommer and Kelly Weill discuss the prospects for the beleaguered social media site on this week’s episode of Fever Dreams. Also on the episode, Heidi Beedle, a reporter for the Colorado Times Recorder and host of the Western Fringe podcast, tells Sommer and Weill that anti-LGBT hate from Colorado Springs community leaders began peaking before this weekend’s shooting at queer venue Club Q.
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In this week’s episode of Fever Dreams, hosts Will Sommer and Kelly Weill discuss how just two weeks on from the Pelosi controversy, the Twitter CEO jumped on board a vague and unverified theory that is being used to explain why the “red wave” failed to materialize on Election Day. As well, the hosts talk Kari Lake’s Arizona election loss and their surprise that she is among the first to make vague references of fraud during this election cycle, noting her Nov. 15 tweet: “Arizonans know BS when they see it.”
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Would you eat raw testicles to become an alpha male? This week, Julian Feeld and Annie Kelly of the QAnon Anonymous podcast join us to discuss their new series “Man Clan,” which delves into the dark, dietarily dubious world of masculinity influencers. Meanwhile, as voters go to the polls, election vigilantes are flocking to Telegram channels where they award each other “points” for conspiracy theories about people they baselessly believe to be election “mules.” If Republicans take the House of Representatives, the right might mount an effort to impeach President Joe Biden, albeit on unclear charges. Fever Dreams co-hosts Will Sommer and Kelly Weill break down how Republicans might try to oust Biden, plus why failed candidate Laura Loomer is now blaming her primary loss on fellow rightwing mudslinger Milo Yiannopoulos.
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There’s a very good chance that at least two secretary of state positions in the battleground states of Nevada and Arizonawill be won by people who are part of a coalition put together by a QAnon promoter who some people believe is also JFK Jr. In this week’s episode of political podcast Fever Dreams, hosts Will Sommer and Kelly Weill take a deeper look at that “shadowy character,” Juan O. Savin, and how he, along with his supporters, could destroy American democracy. Also on the podcast, Alex Kaplan, a senior researcher at Media Matters for America who is an expert on all things Savin, says that while it’s hard to say exactly what would happen if these candidates take office, “the concern is that if these people got elected they could try to cast doubt on the election result or frankly just try to flat out overturn it and refuse to certify it. What this could do is essentially connect QAnon to a constitutional crisis, and that’s what could play out here if that/s what happens.”
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Things have gotten a lot crazier over the past few years for award-winning former CBS News war correspondent Lara Logan. Now reinvented as a far-right commentator, she was most recently kicked off Newsmax after appearing on Eric Bolling’s primetime program and launching into a QAnon-themed rant on air, claiming world leaders drank children’s blood and made people eat insects, among other notable wild conspiracies. Elsewhere in the episode, Maurice Chammah, a reporter at The Marshall Project and author of Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty, talks American sheriffs and their far-right tendencies. In the podcast’s “Fresh Hell” segment, the hosts discuss reports of intimidation at early ballot drop boxes, particularly in Arizona from those who are hyped up by Dinesh D’Souza’s debunked conspiracy film, 2000 Mules.
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The rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, faces an uphill battle to revive the “ghost town” that is the conservative MAGA site Parler, say hosts Will Sommer and Kelly Weill in this week’s episode of The Daily Beast’s Fever Dreams podcast. Ye is buying the social media platform after being kicked off Instagram and Twitter for an antisemitic post, Parler’s parent company announced Monday. Also on the podcast, Kyle Spencer, journalist and author of the new book Raising Them Right: The Untold Story of America’s Ultraconservative Youth Movement and Its Plot for Power, talks MAGA media personality and radio talk show host Charlie Kirk and how he got his start. Then, in this week’s “Fresh Hell” segment, Sommer reviews the Fox Nation special The Trial of Hunter Biden, which he describes as “honestly one of the strangest pieces of content” Fox has ever produced.
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Kanye West has been inching towards reimagining himself as both a virulent antisemite and the public face of Fox News and over the past few weeks, he’s been off the handle. Also on the podcast, Jared Holt, a senior researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and host of the podcast, Posting Through It, discusses a new report that he co-authored on the ugly election trends we can expect in 2022 and 2024. In this week’s “Fresh Hell” segment, the hosts discuss the new Republican “unwoke” bank, GloriFi, and how unfortunately, the new venture doesn’t seem to be getting off the ground, considering it is on the verge of bankruptcy.
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Herschel Walker already faced an uphill battle to become a U.S. senator after The Daily Beast reported he paid for a girlfriend’s abortion. But now it appears Walker is embroiled in another fight: one with his own son. Christian Walker, a conservative with a substantial social media following—particularly on TikTok—has taken aim at his father, whom he accused of violence and said abandoned his children from multiple women. “Herschel’s problem is that his son has such a way with words,” Will Sommer tells co-host Kelly Weill in this episode of The Daily Beast’s Fever Dreams podcast, referring to Christian’s impassioned online reaction to his father’s denials of the abortion allegations. Also on the podcast, Travis Waldron, senior national reporter at the Huffington Post, talks Brazil and its politics, which have been popping off thanks to the Brazilian general election. “The stakes of this one feel pretty high given the concerns about democracy and [President Jair] Bolsonaro’s efforts to follow Donald Trump down the path of election skepticism and potentially an all out challenge to the result of the elections,” Waldron says.
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“Corruption chic” is in. That’s according to The Conservateur, a new “D.C.-based fashion-and-lifestyle platform” from some of conservative fashion’s most elite, who, upset over Vogue snubbing Melania Trump, are now throwing in their political views with a cute new pair of shoes–or ankle monitors–in their own attempt at creating content. Michael Schaffer, a senior editor at Politico whose Capital City column runs weekly in Politico Magazine, tells hosts Will Sommer and Kelly Weill in this episode of The Daily Beast’s Fever Dreams podcast that while he doesn’t think Anna Wintour is losing a lot of sleep, the “MAGA answer to Vogue” has landed, and it’s already making headlines. In this week’s “Fresh Hell” segment, the hosts discuss the right’s reaction and misreporting to the emerging trend of colorful fentanyl pills dubbed rainbow fentanyl.
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What's the motivation and meaning behind the recent Trump rally in Ohio where supporters held up one finger in a “weird” salute. But what does it mean? Plus, Matt Binder, reporter for Mashable and host of the podcasts Doomed and Scam Economy, brings us inside the wacky world of crypto scammers.
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It’s on par with Don’t Worry Darling for being one of the most talked about cinematic events of the fall, but just how bad is Goonies star Robert Davi’s film My Son Hunter? On this week’s episode of The Daily Beast’s Fever Dreams podcast, host Will Sommer and returning co-host Kelly Weill review the biopic of President Joe Biden’s son Hunter. “It’s got legs on Don’t Worry Darling,” Weill says. “I think I fell into some kind of brain fog while watching it.” Also on the podcast, Ethan Chorin, Libya expert and author of the new bookBenghazi!: A New History of the Fiasco that Pushed America and its World to the Brink, digs into the famous 2012 terrorist attacks and the way that Benghazi exists in our politics to this day, particularly on the right.
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Just when you thought Dr. Mehmet Oz was losing the war against Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, this week, the reality TV star found a new arsenal at his disposal. On this week’s episode of The Daily Beast’s Fever Dreams podcast, host Will Sommer and guest host Ursula Perano, politics reporter at The Daily Beast, discuss the latest in the Pennsylvania Senate race. Also on the podcast, Philip Bump, National correspondent at The Washington Post, explains how he became the guy to go through all of the 2020 election fraud claims, eventually debunking each of them one by one. As well, Sommer talks about the confusing mess that was far-right political commentator and Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes’ supposed arrest by the FBI last week.
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On this week’s episode of The Daily Beast’s Fever Dreams podcast, host Will Sommer and guest host Andrew Kirell, senior editor at The Daily Beast, discuss the new song released by the pro-Trump YouTuber, who has used some of his wealth to fund a rock song, “Only Ever Wanted.” Also on the podcast, Andy Kroll, a reporter for ProPublica and the author of the upcoming book, A Death on W Street: The Murder of Seth Rich and the Age of Conspiracy, discusses how the story of Seth’s life and death took on this bizarre, conspiratorial afterlife online.
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Sometimes the biggest surprises come from the strangest of places. On this week’s episode of The Daily Beast’s Fever Dreams podcast, host Will Sommer and guest host Andrew Kirell, senior editor at The Daily Beast, return to the icy north to discuss the QAnon “Queen of Canada,” Romana Didulo, and her disco RV.Also on the podcast, Rolling Stone political news reporter Nikki McCann Ramirez talks former kickboxer “turned-awful-man” Andrew Tate.
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The fallout from the FBI’s raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort feels never-ending, and those still suffering the sting of the right-wing backlash are the ones who enforced the move, including the federal magistrate judge who signed off on the search warrant.Also on the podcast, the hosts talk with Nick Lutsko, a musician who writes and sings songs that, according to Sommer, are a crossover between our crazy political moment and the lives we lead on the internet. But most importantly, says Sommer, Lutsko sings about conservatives including Dan Bongino and, unsurprisingly, Alex Jones.
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The FBI raided Mar-a-Lago! This week on Fever Dreams, Will Sommer and guest host Anthony Fisher talk about the FBI search on Mar-a-Lago, whether the feds should have given Trump advanced notice, and whether Republicans will vaporize the Justice Department the next time they have power. In Fresh Hell, Will explores the depths of alleged depravity at James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas group, where an ex-employee claims sexual harassment and drug use is running wild. Anthony talks about the Twitter demise of the infamous “Groomer” troll Conceptual James. Reporter Jessica Pishko joins to talk about sheriffs acting with impunity and positioning themselves as right-wing voter fraud influencers.
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On the latest episode of Fever Dreams, host Will Sommer and guest host Anthony Fisher discuss the motive behind Donald Trump’s endorsement for Eric…but which one? The team also discuss and review Alex Jones’ “documentary” as his Sandy Hook trial continues. Elsewhere in the episode, Matthew Remski, cohost of the Conspirituality podcast, explains the meaning behind “conspirituality” and what it encompasses.
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On the latest episode of Fever Dreams, host Will Sommer and guest host Anthony Fisher discuss Alex Jones’ upcoming trial and John Rich’s No.1 hit, “Progress,” along with the problems surrounding the title.
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On the latest episode of Fever Dreams, host Will Sommer and guest host Asawin Suebsaeng–returning to the podcast he helped launch– talk about the “little people just riding around the miasma of MAGA-ism”. One of those people is Ray Epps, whose life has been turned upside down by a Jan. 6 conspiracy theory and who's had to go on the run. But the big guys have problems, too. The hosts discuss Trump's reasons for running again in 2024—not least among them, his belief that it's harder to prosecutors to go after him if he's in the Oval Office. And Matt Ford, a writer with the New Republic, delves into the nitty gritty of how exactly we got to where we are as a country with an aggressively rightwing Supreme Court
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Move over, MAGA — it’s LAVA time. With efforts to overturn the election stalling, a former inventor and treasure hunter proposes that Trump supporters embrace a new acronym: LAVA, or “Let America Vote Again.” Fever Dreams host Will Sommer buries the hatchet with his one-time podcasting partner and Rolling Stone reporter Asawin Suebsaeng to break it down. Also on this week’s episode: Trumpworld looks for a patsy to take the fall as the Jan. 6 committee closes in. Will explains the meaning of “NESARA,” the mythical law some conspiracy theorists means they don’t have to pay their credit card bills. Finally, the boys say goodbye to the Georgia Guidestones, a Fever Dreams favorite recently blown up by a mysterious bomber.
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Hope you didn’t get too rowdy on Independence Day — the Large Hadron Collider is about to zap us into another dimension, and July 4th partygoers will be left in the old universe. So goes the thinking in a new TikTok conspiracy theory. On this week’s Fever Dreams, host Will Sommer and guest host Andrew Kirell discuss what they’re expecting to get from the new dimension, and whether the Mandela effect is at play. Also on the podcast: MAGA supporters declare July to be “America Month,” and a Michigan secretary of state candidate gets into sexual demonology. 2020 election deniers build up their local infrastructure. Also: Reporter Baynard Woods joins to talk about his new book, “Inheritance,” an investigation of his family’s history in white supremacy.
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Q of QAnon infamy has returned! Hosts Will Sommer and Sam Brodey talk about Q’s new posts after a nearly two year hiatus, and QAnon conspiracy theorists’ excitement about them. Sam gives an update on the pardon-crazed January 6th committee, and Will talks about the right’s obsession with a possibly fake pro-abortion rights group promising a “Night of Rage.” In this week’s Fresh Hell, QAnon believers are duped into buying bogus cryptocurrencies and lose a ton of money.
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Will Sommer and Sam Brodey chat with Jessica Huseman, editorial director for Votebeat, about how folks who actively tried to subvert the 2020 election are now vying to get on ballots for positions that could allow them to influence the next presidential race. Elsewhere on the podcast, the hosts discuss the “kerfuffle at the GOP convention in Houston over the weekend” in which a “YouTube prankster” staged a dramatic confrontation with Congressman Dan Crenshaw, and wonder how many British documentarians are going to come out of the woodwork at the January 6 committee hearings. And finally, the hosts note how a drag queen named Barbara Seville busted apart Kari Lake’s anti-LGBTQ hypocrisy, and discuss how Texas Republicans are terrified that the woke are now coming for the Alamo.
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The Proud Boys are at the center of the January 6 committee hearings — but who are they? HuffPost editor Andy Campbell, the author of an upcoming book on the Proud Boys, joins Fever Dreams host Will Sommer and guest host Sam Brodey to give. from their cereal-themed beat-in rituals and their varying self-love regiments. Sam, a congressional reporter for The Daily Beast, weighs in on the committee hearings. In other extremist news, Will and Sam discuss a botched appearance from Patriot Front white supremacists at an Idaho gay pride parade. And finally, Will takes us to a lower depth of “Fresh Hell” that was previously believed possible, exploring the right-wing manosphere’s belief that receipts somehow steal their masculinity.
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From the newest development in the Capitol riot investigations, with Proud Boys charged with seditious conspiracy indictments, to Kevin McCarthy’s war with MAGA hardcore believers, Will Sommer and guest host Zachary Petrizzo break down the state of the political right in this week’s episode of the Fever Dreams podcast. As for the guest this week, the duo was joined by documentary filmmaker Brian Knappenberger who is behind the upcoming Nextix docuseries Web of Make Believe: Death, Lies, and the Internet. (Watch the trailer here.)
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In another wild week for right-wing Fever Dreams, Ted Cruz is all about door control now, Dinesh D’Souza has new competition from the MyPillow guy in the fight for the craziest documentary about what Democrats supposedly did to steal the 2020 election, and much more as host Will Sommer and guest host Zachary Petrizzo help navigate the madness, with an assist from “Unholy” author and Christian nationalism expert Sarah Posner.
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Who’s the most goated pro-Trump rapper alive? Perhaps it’s Forgiato Blow, the trash-talking, Hooters-addicted “Mayor of Magaville.” Vice News reporter Tess Owen joins Will Sommer and guest host Zachary Petrizzo to talk about her recent profile of Blow. Plus: the wheels come off the trucker convoy, and Zach and Will break down the latest failed stunt from Jacob Wohl.
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The Pennsylvania Senate primary results are in, and the hosts discuss how insurgent right-winger Kathy Barnette’s rise was an indication of how fringe figures are now outflanking even the former president and his favored candidates. Michael Hayden from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) joins the podcast to discuss the mass shooting in Buffalo and the accused killer’s obsession with the bogus ‘great replacement’ lie. The podcast hosts also discuss a recent New York Times expose on how QAnon factions within evangelical churches are driving out conservative pastors who give “any sort of nod to any kind of social justice, any kind of nod to Black Lives Matter or treating the poor well”—and how neo-Nazis in Idaho are driving out more moderate Republicans by entrenching themselves in local politics and running vicious harassment campaigns against their enemies.
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A newly nominated Republican congressional candidate in Ohio claims he’s not a QAnon guy, despite appearing to own an extensive wardrobe of QAnon merchandise. This week on Fever Dreams, we revisit J.R. Majewski, the next likely candidate to join Congress’s growing Q wing. Elsewhere, hosts Will Sommer and Kelly Weill discuss a falling-out among the white nationalist America First movement, which entered a bitter feud after its former treasurer got a girlfriend (a faux pas with the movement’s celibate leader). While that racist youth movement flounders, another is quietly amassing influence. Reporter James Pogue joins us to discuss the New Right movement, an anti-liberal alliance whose star candidate J.D. Vance just won his GOP nomination for Congress. Finally, we visit a more longshot candidate, who, if elected, pledges to blow up a Georgia monument that she believes is Satanic.
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The right has achieved a decades-long goal by successfully overturning Roe v. Wade, but all they want to talk about is finding out who leaked the opinion breaking the news. Fever Dreams hosts Will Sommer and Kelly Weill talk about the right’s leak-hunt and insistence that, somehow, the leaker is a terrorist. Meanwhile, Alex Jones gets some hefty bitcoin donations. Plus: this potential future congressman has bars! Will and Kelly discuss J.R. Majewski, the Ohio congressional candidate poised to become Congress’s third QAnon support — and its first rapper. Raw Story’s Jordan Green joins to talk about Jan. 6, and Will reviews “2,000 Mules,” pundit Dinesh D’Souza’s latest stab at proving the election was stolen.
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'Groomer' panic is sweeping the nation as right-wing types turn against LGBTQ rights, and the talking points—as with the backlash against Critical Race Theory (CRT) in schools—can directly be traced back to a group of anti-wokeness activists on the "intellectual dark web." As The Daily Beast's senior opinion editor Anthony Fisher notes, the 'anti-wokeness' activists have "created this groundswell that is absolutely affecting policy," with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' own press secretary is now parroting the leaders of the movement. Meanwhile, the co-hosts discuss how Elon Musk's successful bid for Twitter is galvanizing the right (and QAnon numerologists), and how two manosphere influencers in Romania have been raided in connection with an human-trafficking and rape investigation.
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Would you buddy up to a neo-Nazi for a cut of crowdfunded “patriot freedom” cash? That’s the question reportedly wracking a wing of a D.C. jail, where multiple alleged January 6 rioters are being detained. This week on Fever Dreams, hosts Will Sommer and Kelly Weill dive into the far right’s money troubles—both behind bars and outside them, as three of Alex Jones’ companies file for bankruptcy. Media Matters associate research director Nikki McCann Ramirez joins the podcast to discuss Tucker Carlson’s bizarre new “special” on masculinity, which features a guy tanning his balls on what looks like a Tesla charger. Elsewhere, Will and Kelly check in on the stinkiest new QAnon trend: not bathing due to fear of snake water.
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No, passenger “Let’s go Brandon” does not need to check-in at Gate 10. It’s just the latest right-wing trend that has conservatives paging fake passengers over airport intercoms. This week, Fever Dreams brings you the bleeding edge in COVID-19 conspiracy theories (this time about snake blood), as well as dispatches from Colorado and Pennsylvania, where primary contests are revealing divides between the GOP mainstream and its growing QAnon wing. Finally, we’re joined by Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz, who brings us up to speed on Republican TikTok and the battle for Gen Z viewers. The kids aren’t alright.
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Hosts Asawin Suebsaeng and Will Sommer have one thing on their minds: how they can score $2,500 to land spots on a bogus “grand jury” indicting Anthony Fauci. On this week’s episode, Swin and Will discuss the burgeoning trend of soaking your fans by selling them “super juror” spots on fake grand juries aimed at Fauci and Hunter Biden. Street Fight podcast host Murder Bryan joins to explore the world of right-wing shock jocks, with a focus on “Mancow” Muller. Bryan also weighs in on a QAnon referee scandal that has roiled pro wrestling. Elsewhere on the ep, Swin and Will talk about the right’s new crusade to prove that Disney is part of a groomer cabal, and Herschel Walker’s troubled Senate campaign.
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Some of Donald Trump's lawyers have some cringe hobbies, like trying to do coup d'états. But did you know that one of them is an amateur poet, who has written verses about "THE TORONTO SUBWAY SYSTEM" and, "of life and sex and puzzled joy, a chopped up mess of Miss Playboy." In this week's episode of Fever Dreams, hosts Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng bring you dramatic readings of the Trump "legal B-team" poetry. Elsewhere on the pod, our hosts welcome New York Times writer Elizabeth Williamson to discuss her new book on the Sandy Hook massacre, Alex Jones, and "the Battle for Truth." For those interested in plumbing the depths of Ginni Thomas's efforts to support Trump's efforts to cling to power, Sommer breaks down the wild, undeniable QAnon connections. Finally, for listeners curious about the question, "Why are Capitol Hill Republicans so furious this week about (alleged!) cocaine-fueled orgies involving 70-something year-olds?" our hosts—unfortunately—have an answer for you!
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Fever Dreams host Will returns to the pod to talk with Swin about Alex Jones’s maybe-fake illness, which conveniently struck him down right before a Sandy Hook deposition. New York Times reporter Ryan Mac stops by to talk about Republican mega-donor Peter Thiel’s plans for 2022 — what is that guy up to? Also on the agenda: the trucker convoy’s bumbling, accident-prone attempts to terrorize DC and the Ohio Senate race that nearly turned into a real-life brawl. Finally, Swin kicks off his farewell tour by announcing he’s leaving the pod and The Daily Beast for good.
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Is this the country’s most off-the-rails local Republican party? This week, Fever Dreams checks in on the Kootenai County, Idaho GOP, where local leaders are accused of trying to force a hostile takeover of the local Democratic party, and install an antisemitic troll as the new Democratic leader. Plus, we bring you the latest from Mar-A-Lago, where Donald Trump is making angry phone calls about his floundering social media site, Truth Social. We’re also joined by Reason reporter C.J. Ciaramella, who tells us about the FBI’s secret collection of police brutality statistics—and why those numbers might never see the light of day.
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Donald Trump is racking up massive Secret Service bills—and hassling those agents about their physical fitness and whether they voted for him. This week on Fever Dreams, we visit wannabe demagogues at home and abroad. In Florida, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene spoke at a Hitler-hyping white nationalist conference. Other members of her party, meanwhile, prefer to heap praise on Vladimir Putin, whom they laud as “anti-woke” as he oversees Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That attack is so large that researchers have been sounding alarm bells about Russia’s military buildup for months. This week’s guest, Daily Beast reporter Adam Rawnsley, describes how researchers have tracked Russian troop movements through Google maps and TikTok videos, bursting the Russian military narrative about the reason for the invasion.
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MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is back with a wacky new claim, this time about Fever Dreams host Asawin Suebsaeng. It’s not true—but it’s not even the weirdest conspiracy theory on this week’s podcast, where we preview co-host Kelly Weill’s new book about the flat earth movement. We check in on a flat earther who got arrested for trying to hand out flyers at a school playground, and learn why the movement even alienates some QAnon believers. Actress Dylan Gelula joins us to discuss her podcast “Lecture Hall” and why we can blame Mad Cow Disease for the rise of Dr. Phil. Elsewhere, we try to log into Donald Trump’s new social network (which is too glitchy to load) and learn about an upcoming gathering of clout-chasing white supremacists, and the politicians who support them.
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Even though the Canadian trucker protesters have been cleared from Ottawa’s border bridge and commerce lanes with the U.S. reopened this past weekend, Canada is still struggling to contain the demonstrators—and as Fever Dreams guest and Vice writer Mack Lamoureux notes, more insidious, and even armed, groups are emerging within the greater protest. What’s more, Canada’s trucker blockade is spawning copycats far and wide. Elsewhere on the pod, co-hosts Asawin Suebsaeng and Kelly Weill, and very special guest host David Roth, talk about how Super Bowl 2022 was just one gigantic ad for crypto, and how Ohio Senate primary candidate Josh Mandel—the one whose alleged sex life Trump likes to gossip about—“looks like he just hatched out of something.” The hosts also unpack how QAnon-loving Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has become a prime kingmaker in GOP political endorsements, and follow several disturbing developments in the story of the violent Denver manosphere shooter Lyndon McLeod.
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t’s that time of year again for the Super Bowl halftime show and while the 2022 lineup of Dr. Dre, Snoop, Mary J. Blige and Eminem reads to most fans like a warm and fuzzy 90s nostalgia bath, “to hear certain conservative commentators describe it,” notes Fever Dreams co-host Kelly Weill, “this Super Bowl is ripe for Satanism.” It's all part of the Satanic Panic that’s been brewing in the U.S. for awhile, including the bonkers QAnon conspiracy theories around the deadly Travis Scott concert at Astroworld in December. Meanwhile, Fever Dreams reveals why President Trump has refrained from endorsing a candidate in the Ohio Senate primary race—spoiler, he thinks Josh Mandel is “fucking weird” and has been gossiping about his sex life—and the hosts discuss how Joe Rogan and Spotify have become a proxy for the larger culture wars. And The New Abnormal co-host Andy Levy brings us tales from the crypts of Fox Headquarters, where Fox News once let him host a late-night comedy show with very little supervision.
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The first QAnon campaign finance filing is finally here, everybody! And it’s… hilarious how much cash this congressional campaign managed to raise. “His first campaign finance filing came in, and it seems to support the idea that not too many people want Mr. QAnon himself in Congress,” Fever Dreams co-host Kelly Weill reports. Elsewhere on this episode, hosts Asawin Suebsaeng and Weill interview Wall Street Journal reporter Byron Tau, who reveals how an ordinary citizen’s phone can suddenly turn its user into an unwitting spy for the U.S. military. Also, the Fever Dreams gang tries to answer one of contemporary popular culture’s most enduring, most annoying mysteries: “Why does Bill Maher laugh so much at his own jokes all the time?”
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Is Joe Biden just as bad as Donald Trump for calling attention to voting rights? The nation’s whataboutist pundits say yes! This week, Fever Dreams dives into the beltway’s favorite new talking point. Elsewhere in D.C. this weekend, anti-vax celebrity Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggested that he was more persecuted than teenage Holocaust victim Anne Frank because he cannot hide in an attic. (Kennedy currently has a top-selling book, so the persecution analogy falls a little flat.) Later, Jane Coaston, host of the New York Times podcast “The Argument” explains how she broaches tough conversations and forges unlikely agreements with people across the political spectrum. Finally, a hoax about separate restrooms for students who identify as “furries” has sent Michigan Republicans into a weird, anti-trans panic.
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The latest conspiracy theory to convulse MAGA-land does not involve COVID-19 boosters or deep-state January 6 plots, but a bit of routine construction at dear old 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue—which has convinced some on the right that Biden is about to impose martial law. Meanwhile, Trump’s favorite network One America News is in trouble, and the former president is threatening to crush and “destroy” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis if he doesn’t fall in line for 2024. And finally, the co-hosts discuss the Ray Epps saga, a rightwing deep-state conspiracy about a January 6 that has made it all the way to the January 6 committee—and that has caused a spate of young rightwingers accusing likeminded boomers of “being feds”—and journalist Jonathan M. Katz joins the podcast to talk about his book, Gangsters of Capitalism, about a man named Smedley Butler who was involved in most of the U.S. invasions and occupations and wars around the turn of the century and who eventually became an antiwar activist and “blew the whistle on a fascist plot to overthrow Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”
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One surefire way to garner some extreme MAGA-cred nowadays is to get COVID-19, lie about it and say you just have pneumonia, and remain unrepentant as an avowed anti-vaxxer. But there’s at least one MAGA diehard—an associate of Steve Bannon—who has taken things a step farther. This guy has recently been vlogging (yes, vlogging) from his hospital bed—after being admitted for contracting the coronavirus. Of course, he’s talked about how thrilled he is that he never got the COVID vaccine… even though he’s been vlogging lately from a COVID ward about how much trouble he’s had breathing. Join Fever Dreams hosts Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng, as they offer this latest glimpse into a most lethal American culture war. Elsewhere on the episode, Suebsaeng and Fever Dreams producer Jesse Cannon interview Abbie Richards, a TikTok “power user” who’s also a leading expert on how conspiracy theories wildly proliferate on TikTok.
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When Amanda Moore lost her job, she decided to go undercover in MAGA land, attending QAnon events and CPAC, hanging with Neo-Nazis and “blood-and-soil fascists,” and palling around with Proud Boys at Harry's Bar in the lead-up to the January 6 Capitol Riot. But what her new compatriots didn’t know was that she was often recording them, and the result is a chilling portrait “of what the right looks like from the inside.” Elsewhere on the podcast, co-hosts Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng discuss the results of a Texas election audit that “Republican officials were trying to bury”—namely because “they found basically nothing wrong with the results”—and dissect an increasingly bitter feud between two audit-fanatics that has descended into potty-mouthed doxxing. Sommer recounts his firsthand experience of being at the Capitol during the riot a year ago, and the hosts dissect the newest catchphrase to devour the far-right and the latest chaos roiling the ultra-alpha manosphere.
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The year 2021 brought some major grifts in MAGA-land, as Fever Dreams hosts Asawin Suebsaeng and Will Sommer noted in their final podcast of the year—think Melania Trump’s NFT’s and the ‘Freedom phone,’ which was basically a “rebrand of a cheapo Chinese phone” selling at five times the price. But the Qux Box (pronounced “Cucks”) takes the prize as the pair’s “favorite dumb character of 2021.” Months after it was first promoted by its inventors—a former Infowars reporter and her husband—“I’m still trying to figure out what the Qux Box is,” Sommer notes. “Seems to be an off-brand Roku as best as I can tell.” Meanwhile, as the Omicron wave hits the United States with a vengeance, some right-wingers are convinced that the reason they’re sick is not because of the widely transmissible and near-ubiquitous new variant of COVID-19, but because of … anthrax.
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Some internet mischief-makers created a fake DHS website purporting to show President Biden’s plan for COVID concentration camps—and rightwing Senate candidate JD Vance fell for it hook, line, and sinker. Elsewhere on the podcast, The Daily Beast discovers the answer to whether character actor Jay Johnston—who voices the villainous Jimmy Pesto on Fox sitcom Bob’s Burgers—really did storm the Capitol on January 6. Meanwhile, the Proud Boys are teaming up with a radical Black nationalist organization called The Black Hammers, who are darlings of right-wing media for doing things like bashing Holocaust victim Anne Frank. Journalist Dick Lehr drops by the pod to discuss his new book, White Hot Hate, on a domestic terror plot to bomb an immigrant mosque in Kansas. And James O’Keefe is entertaining the crowd at rightwing conferences with songs from the musical Oklahoma. As co-host Asawin Suebsaeng notes, further proof that “failed theater kids will destroy us all.”
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Her name is Trevian Kutti. Is that the name of the lamest Bond villains of the Pierce Brosnan era? Or is she a Kanye West publicist who fumbled her way into a Coen Brothers-style mission to shred the democratic order and keep Donald Trump in power? On this week’s Fever Dreams, hosts Asawin Suebsaeng and Will Sommer are joined by Daily Beast colleague Adam Rawnsley to bring you a new deep-dive into the life and bizarre world of Kutti. Later on, our hosts welcome Dan Friesen and Jordan Holmes, the hosts of the excellent Knowledge Fight podcast, wherein “each episode, Dan and Jordan take a look at some clips from that day's Alex Jones Show and struggle to make sense of what they find.”
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Trump fanatics Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn had a secret falling-out—and it’s just the latest revelation in the ongoing civil strife that’s been engulfing some of MAGAworld’s top election deniers. On this episode of FEVER DREAMS, hosts Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng dig deeper on some of the unreported aspects of the backstabbing and high-school-style melodramas that are throttling the once tight-knit community of far-right luminaries who tried to nuke American democracy to make Donald Trump happy. Elsewhere on this episode, writer and “Know Your Enemy” podcast co-host Sam Adler-Bell talks about his article in The New Republic on the latest “New Right” and upstart young conservative intellectuals talking up “counterrevolution.” Sommer and Suebsaeng also get into the apparently out-of-shape neo-Nazis marching around in Washington, DC, and also take a look at the latest on former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’ world-historically shambolic book tour.
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‘Seinfeld’ writer Dan O’Keefe is the man who gave us the holiday of Festivus—and as he reveals for the first time on Fever Dreams, its origins are pretty dark. Elsewhere on the podcast, the big MAGA civil war between Trump-loving attorney Lin Wood and former national security advisor Michael Flynn went nuclear this week and has turned into a circular MAGA firing squad. The co-hosts identify the next anti-vaxxer trend to sweep the far right internet, and it involves black sharpies. Finally, O’Keefe—who also worked on ‘Veep’—talks about how Trump’s awful presidency totally changed Selina Meyer’s story arc.
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In the aftermath of the contested 2020 vote, Trump’s biggest election-fraud cheerleaders—Lin Wood, Sidney Powell, and Michael Flynn—were a tight crew. But the MAGA clique’s now in trouble as they turn on each other over wild accusations and petty infighting. Elsewhere on the podcast, the hosts discuss how Trump’s hand-picked candidate in a Pennsylvania election has flamed out (possibly to be replaced by Dr. Oz), and eagerly await an upcoming Hunter Biden biopic. And scholar and activist Abdur-Rahman Muhammad joins the show to discuss the exoneration of two men accused of Malcolm X's murder—and why the FBI is “guilty as hell.”
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One-man YouTube brand and far-right darling Tim Pool came down with a nasty case of COVID-19—and with Joe Rogan’s help, became the latest posterboy for the dubious treatment of the virus with ivermectin. Meanwhile, Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy is waging war on Insider for an article that detailed his allegedly brutal sexual encounters with women. Bari Weiss’ unaccredited University of Austin is already bleeding staff members. Alex Jones lost big in court to the Sandy Hook parents. And a new, wacky Jan. 6 documentary, by character actor Nick Searcy, is coming to America just in time for Thanksgiving.
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Congressional dentist Paul Gosar is tweeting anime beheading videos of his colleagues and the hosts of The Daily Beast’s Fever Dreams have some questions. Namely, “who on Gosar’s staff is the meme Lord?” As host Will Sommer notes, “Not a good sign for the state of the country, or the right, to be tweeting your anime assassination fantasies.” Elsewhere on the podcast, Sommer and host Kelly Weill discuss the FBI raid on Project Veritas, and the proliferation of TikTok Satanist conspiracies around the deadly Travis Scott concert. And The Daily Beast’s Justin Baragona appears on the pod to talk about Tucker Carlson’s new Jan. 6 documentary, in which he warns the leftover the prospect of more violence from what he sickeningly calls “legacy Americans.”
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Will JFK Jr. rise from the dead and proclaim himself QAnon King in a Dallas press conference this week? Probably not. But that hasn’t stopped conspiracy theorists from gathering in Texas to meet the long-departed lawyer. This week on Fever Dreams, Will Sommer and guest host Kelly Weill discuss the nuttiest legal battles on the far right, from conspiratorial attorney Lin Wood accusing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of stiffing him $5,000, to neo-Nazis representing themselves in a trial over the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. NPR correspondent Tim Mak joins the podcast to discuss his new book MISFIRE: Inside the Downfall of the NRA, which delves into the secrets of the powerful gun lobbying group and its downright weird leader. Plus, Will gives a harrowing cautionary tale from the metaverse.
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Jesus—aka actor Jim Caviezel—has “emerged from his chrysalis as a QAnon butterfly” and is now spending his days making videos about adrenochrome and appearing at Q conferences to quote from Braveheart. Meanwhile, Sean Hannity and other right-wing types are in a gleeful tizzy over MAGA rap songs, while Gen Z is falling in love with some pretty crazy conspiracies—5G, Scientology, and old-school Pizzagate—over on TikTok. And a civil court case against the deadly organizers of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville could have big implications for the January 6 rioter trials.
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Did Dennis Prager deliberately catch Covid-19, or is he just embarrassed now that he did? Will Sommer and guest host Kelly Weill discuss the talk radio host’s coronavirus hunt, plus Laura Loomer’s intense memoir about getting PTSD from a Twitter ban. Author Amanda Montell joins to talk about her new book, Cultish, an investigation of real cults like Heaven’s Gate and quasi-cults like Crossfit. Audit fever hits never-before-seen heights. Plus: Will and Kelly talk alleged QAnon operator Ron Watkins’s bumbling congressional bid and MAGA lawyer Sidney Powell’s rap-heavy legal defense.
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As far-right efforts to “audit” the 2020 election fizzle, some of the movement’s biggest names have accused each other of being communists, FBI informants, and “homewreckers.” Meanwhile, other right-wing figures have more pressing concerns: namely, how to launch their own airlines for pilots and passengers who refuse to be vaccinated. And hosts Kelly Weill and Will Sommer dish on the dumbest new t-shirt slogan that’s about to take off with Trump fans.
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The hosts of QAnon Anonymous dropped by this week to talk about the latest Q conspiracies involving the Facebook outage and the annoying fact that Joe Biden remains in the White House. Plus: Trumpcoins are flooding Telgram via fake celebrity accounts, Corey Lewandowski’s police report is a must-read, and the Sandy Hook parents are finally victorious over Alex Jones.
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With the Arizona audit in chaos after confirming Biden won, the boys are joined by Arizona Mirror reporter Jerod MacDonald-Evoy to talk through the aftermath — and the audit-enthusiast civil war. Kelly Weill joins to talk about the new book bans. Plus: the rise of “vigilante medicine” urging COVID patients to stay out of the hospital, and a consideration of rising Gen Z Republicans Gunnar Thorderson and Morgonn.
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Ron Watkins, the alleged mastermind behind QAnon, is getting in on the NFT game by selling Trump retweets. And Tiffany Trump and the Krassenstein Brothers aren't far behind...Meanwhile, Eric Trump is headlining an anti-vaxxer conference that also features the Q. yoga crystals lady—so, sounds prestigious. And Fever Dreams hosts Asawin Suebsaeng and Will Sommer chat with director Joe Carnahan about his latest movie, Copshop—including the post-production drama that led Frank Grillo to slam the film's editors.
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A former InfoWars reporter is pushing a hot new gadget on the right-wing electronics market: the Qux… Yes, it’s pronounced “cucks.” No, no one knows what it does. But for $99, it promises to free Donald Trump’s supporters from the tyranny of Big Tech! Elsewhere on the pod, Fever Dreams hosts Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng welcome on filmmaker and horror-comedy auteur Josh Ruben, director of “Werewolves Within” and “Scare Me.” Ruben dishes on his as-of-yet unproduced horror-movie script—inspired by a true story of a woman enraptured by the cult of Trump.
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Over $8 trillion spent, and almost a million dead bodies. The U.S.-led war on terror absolutely devastating over the last two decades. The wars also led to Donald Trump’s rise to power, irreparably degraded our culture, and made our far-right conspiracy theorists somehow even dumber. On this episode of FEVER DREAMS, hosts Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng bring on national-security reporter and ‘REIGN OF TERROR’ author Spencer Ackerman to break down how, thanks to the War on Terror, “[what’s] QAnon today,” is likely “going to be the Republican Party on Capitol Hill in however many years.”
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Conservative talk radio hosts keep dying of COVID-19, after voicing skepticism about vaccines. Meanwhile, at the top of the conservative news food chain, Fox News hosts face backlash if they’re even perceived to promote vaccination. Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters joins Fever Dreams to discuss how right-wing media is falling prey to its own COVID talking points. Later, hosts Asawin Suebsaeng and Kelly Weill discuss the GOP’s new thirst for invading Afghanistan, the wannabe-Rambos invading school board meetings, and the disappearance of a lawyer tied to a number of conservative causes.
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There is something wrong when your local police department warns you about marauding ‘Antifa buses’ coming to your town to hurt your grandmother. It’s even worse when the police dispatch a helicopter to hunt down the imaginary bus of Antifa soldiers. On this episode of FEVER DREAMS, hosts Asawin Suebsaeng and Kelly Weill welcome NBC News reporter (and Daily Beast alum) Ben Collins to explain what happens when police departments across the U.S. start “falling down these rabbit holes.” Elsewhere on this episode, Weill and Suebsaeng dive in on how the horse paste and “sheep drench” craze among anti-vaccine COVID truthers—and to a certain extent, on Fox News—is getting so out of hand… that the FDA had to spend part of its weekend telling people to knock it off.
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*** CONTENT WARNING - On this weeks episode after the ad break at 27 minutes we start an interview that has a graphic description of a child being murdered by a Q-Anon follower. If you wish to skip this content we give warning after the ad break and you can skip to the 33 minute mark in the podcast if you would like to avoid it. ****Hosts Asawin Suebsaeng and Kelly Weill and guests David Roth and Jared Holt discuss Mike Lindell’s hilariously chaotic Stop-the-Steal conference, a QAnon murder, and why the MAGA crowd thinks ‘woke generals’ are to blame for the disastrous Afghanistan exit.
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Remember when hydroxychloroquine was the "it girl of the conspiracy verse"—a supposed COVID miracle pill touted by Donald Trump and the Demon Sperm Doc? Those days are over and there's a new drug blowing up the unhinged corners of Facebook and the internet. As our Fever Dream host Asawin Suebsaeng, and guest hosts and Daily Beast reporters Kelly Weill and Adam Rawnsley, explain, the drug—called ivermectin—is sometimes used by humans for parasites and fungal infections. Elsewhere on the podcast, Rawnsley discusses how Russian trolls—not the GRU guys, kind of a clumsier, knockoff version—are trying and failing to make Americans and Europeans believe that the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines will turn us into chimpanzees. Weill walks us through the latest audit clown showdown in Virginia, where State Senator Amanda Chase really hopes you'll give her $$$$ to retally her state's not-even-close election. And guest Cameron Joseph, a senior political reporter at Vice News, breaks down the simmering cold war between Mitch McConnell and Trump for control of the Republican party and its candidates during the midterms.
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As Trump tried to subvert American democracy, he told DOJ officials that they were not “following the internet the way I do.” He was referring in part to ultra-rightwing conspiracy site Gateway Pundit—run by the so-called “dumbest man on the internet.” This week’s episode of Fever Dreams goes inside how the habitually wrong website so influenced the president that he carried print-outs of its articles around the West Wing as he pushed the Justice Department to declare a fraudulent election. (One official says he threw the printouts in the trash. Or maybe recycled them.) Hosts Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng also break down how new restrictions on anti-vaxxers are convincing some of them to finally get the jab, and how ISIS militants have infiltrated the alt-right’s new social media network Gettr. Elsewhere on the episode, Daily Beast reporter Kelly Weill talks about how all those conspiracies about Trump retaking power in August are now imploding, and reporter Steven Monacelli breaks down how a flyer purportedly from Black Lives Matter groups making the rounds in Texas—which asked white parents to pledge to not send their kids to Ivy League schools—was in fact the work of a conservative PR firm and was amplified by the right-wing media ecosystem..
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If you’ve ever wished the kids’ books you read your small children included more references to the “cabal” at Jeffrey Epstein’s island, then we have some news for you! On this episode of FEVER DREAMS, hosts Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng delve into the wild and bafflingly lurid world of a new series of conservative children’s books, which include adorable foxes teaching your kids not to embrace communist ice cream. Elsewhere on the episode our hosts interview ‘New Republic’ staff writer Alex Pareene on why Democrats suck at “propaganda,” as compared to their Republican opponents, and how the future of the mainstream GOP was accurately (and depressingly) spelled out for us—among the marchers in Charlottesville in 2017.
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On this episode of FEVER DREAMS, hosts Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng discuss the ongoing war for consumers that’s raging between two MAGA-style coffee companies, with one of the companies landing in hot water with its fans for trashing the Proud Boys. “I love how Black Rifle Coffee is his perfect little metaphor for what has happened to the Republican Party over the past four years,” Suebsaeng said. Elsewhere on the episode, Suebsaeng and Sommer welcome actor, comedian, and Conan O’Brien sidekick Andy Richter, who dishes on his philosophy on late-night comedy and politics—and how eye-rollingly lame it was that one time Donald Trump actually dropped a condom right in front of him and Conan.
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Outlandish sunglasses company Pit Viper has a problem: white nationalists love them. This week, Fever Dreams hosts Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng talk about Pit Viper’s attempts to push back on their alt right fanbase, after the reflective shades popped up during the Capitol riot. Salon reporter Zach Petrizzo talks his appearance at CPAC Texas, where the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys were out in full force and Rep. Matt Gaetz had to throw a party all his own.
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In 1978, an American neo-Nazi published The Turner Diaries, an infamous race-war novel that went on to inspire so many far-right and violent extremists in the subsequent decades. So it wasn’t a huge shock when anti-democratic rioters showed up at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC, on Jan. 6, casually recommending that people read the atrociously racist book. “Please don't go buy this book. The money can still go back to white power groups, if you do,” Kathleen Belew, a University of Chicago assistant professor of history, told hosts Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng on this week’s episode of the Fever Dreams podcast.
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This week’s episode of Fever Dreams features the brilliant Atlantic columnist Adam Serwer, whose new book—The Cruelty is the Point: the Past, Present and Future of Trump’s America—builds off a 2018 essay to examine how President Trump weaponized racism and white identity politics to build in-group belonging among his supporters, as has happened countless times before in U.S. history. Meanwhile, DOWN IN ARIZONA... Our intrepid co-host Will Sommer recently traveled to the Copper State to hang out with QAnon promoter “Baby Q” and see the premiere of former Overstock CEO and amateur election-fraud hunter Patrick Byrne’s new election movie, "The Deep Rig."
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Now that COVID is waning, Tucker Carlson and the rightwing hysteria machine have to find a new culture war. Heads up, Concerned Parents, there’s a new moral-panic bogeyman—fomented by the far right and Fox News—that’s coming for America’s children, and it’s called critical race theory. n this week’s episode of Fever Dreams, Daily Beast reporters Asawin Suebsaeng and Will Sommer talk to senior NBC News reporter and Daily Beast alumnus Brandy Zadrozny about how the battle over CRT has become the “new obsession of the rabid right,” one that Tucker Carlson and well-connected conservative activists are trying to foment in towns nationwide. And don’t miss our discussions of the rise of the Barstool Republican and whether it’s fair to kink-shame the Proud Boys, as well as a behind-the-scenes look at how Trump tried to shut down Saturday Night Live.
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Far-right activist Ammon Bundy is running for governor of Idaho—despite being legally banned from the Idaho statehouse. “He’s prepping a run for Idaho governor, to the dismay of the Idaho Republican Party, which really does not want that affiliation,” said The Daily Beast reporter Kelly Weill. Elsewhere on the episode, The Week national correspondent Ryan Cooper talks about a government report claiming that the U.S. Park Police didn’t clear protesters outside the White House—and how its claims that the Trump administration didn’t act just to set up a presidential photo-op have been overblown in the media.
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On this episode of FEVER DREAMS, hosts Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng sit down with Canada-based comedian and “Not Even a Show” host Chris James, a man who spends his days figuring out ways to prank prominent conservatives and MAGA luminaries, such as Rudy Giuliani and Dan Crenshaw, on-air. “These people are in positions of power and they are acting in this incredibly reckless way,” James says. Elsewhere on this episode, Suebsaeng and Sommer dig into how the false idea of Donald Trump’s August “reinstatement” in the White House worked its way up from MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, all the way up to the ex-president’s delusional ears. And if you’ve been wondering how Fox News host Greg Gutfeld’s new paid-subscriber venture is going… Sommer has discovered that it mostly feels like a lazy effort to prove to his fans just how dumb they are for giving him their cash.
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You thought Michael Flynn calling for a coup was the most exciting thing to happen at the QAnon conference in Dallas over Memorial Day weekend? Think again, Fever Dreams fans, for just before the wacko retired general longingly wished for a Myanmar-style crackdown here in the U.S. of A., our very own beloved host Will Sommer got kicked out of QCon to a standing ovation. Also on this episode of Fever Dreams, our hosts talk to The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel about the massive GOP push to crackdown on voting rights at the state and local levels, and they discuss how Trump’s associates are trying, and failing, to get the former president to care about encouraging his base to get vaccinated.
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A tough-talking anti-human-trafficking organization with ties to Donald Trump relied on a tip from a psychic for at least one of its failed “raids” in Haiti, according to reporters who have tracked the group. “They have defended the use of psychics and made it sound like something that law enforcement does all the time, which they might do, but that doesn’t make it a good idea,” Vice senior staff writer Anna Merlan said on the latest episode of The Daily Beast’s Fever Dreams podcast.
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On this episode of FEVER DREAMS, hosts Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng welcome writer/director Larry Charles, a Sacha Baron Cohen collaborator who also wrote some of the darkest and most beloved episodes of Seinfeld. According to Charles, if Seinfeld were on the air today, Kramer would definitely be a “QAnon believer”... but also somehow in Antifa, too? Charles also opens up about what he sees as mainstream comedy and “very corporate” satire’s major failings in confronting Donald Trump over the past half decade. Elsewhere on this episode, Suebsaeng and Sommer introduce listeners to a former Survivor contestant and a falconer—yes, a falconer—and explain their efforts to take down Joe Biden and the all-powerful “Deep State.” (The duo have not been entirely successful.)
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If the federal investigation into Matt Gaetz does indeed end up spelling the MAGA congressman’s downfall, it’ll be partly because of a group of wannabe Instagram influencers.
On this week’s episode of The Daily Beast’s Fever Dreams podcast, hosts Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng welcome fellow Beast reporters Jose Pagliery and Roger Sollenberger, the duo that’s been breaking story after story on the Gaetz scandal in recent weeks. The pair reveal new details on the Gaetz saga that haven’t been publicly released before, including additional passages from the confession letter secretly written by disgraced Gaetz wingman Joel Greenberg, and sent to Trump associate and longtime GOP ratfucker Roger Stone.
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In this episode of FEVER DREAMS, hosts Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng sit down with Intercept reporter Ken Klippenstein, to delve into how an incredible amount of taxpayer money goes into the U.S. government’s sprawling, frightening, and oftentimes downright bizarre domestic surveillance programs. Millions upon millions upon millions of that treasure often get funneled into programs such as the Trump administration efforts to prevent threats to the republic as SCARY as… Insane Clown Posse fans, violent emojis, and individuals (supposedly) trying to break Netflix star Joe Exotic out of lockup.
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So, remember when ex-President Donald J. Trump insanely told the United States that injecting yourself with bleach might be a cure for the coronavirus? It turns out that there’s a whole slew of wackos who have been promoting bleach drinking—disguised under the name of “miracle mineral solution”—for a range of health problems long before #45 took office and let more than 400,000 Americans die from COVID on his watch. That includes a scammy father-son duo who tried to form a church of bleach so they could claim it was their religious right to sell their chlorine dioxide snake oil. The feds didn’t buy it and now they’ve been indicted (after a brief stint on the lam in South America) in the biggest takedown yet of these dangerous bleach peddlers.
Plus! Sportswriter David J. Roth walks us through how anti-vaxx stubbornness among some players is causing big-time chaos in baseball.
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In this episode of FEVER DREAMS, hosts Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng go deep on the far-right “Health and Freedom Conference” in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where thousands of attendees flocked to reaffirm their commitment to Donald Trump, the QAnon conspiracy, coronavirus denialism, and the belief that their high-profile political enemies deserve to be shot and killed. Sommer recounts his time reporting from the terrifyingly mask-free conference. Suebsaeng and Sommer also welcome Sara Kenigsberg, a former video producer for Biden 2020, who opens up about what it was like to become an object of the Trump campaign’s hate last summer. Her crime? Well, in part, it was loving pigs, and arguing that these animals don’t racially profile humans. Seriously.
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In this episode of FEVER DREAMS, hosts Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng welcome HuffPost reporter Ryan J. Reilly, who dishes on some of the wildest, least expected, and flat-out dumbest ways alleged U.S. Capitol rioters have been handed over to the feds. Some are, intentionally or accidentally, snitched out by their wives or significant others. Others get screwed by people who hated them in high school. Others get arrested following the help of amateur “Facebook stalkers.” Additionally, Suebsaeng takes the listener into a strange, dark ride through Donald Trump’s “voter fraud” tipline, complete with deranged tales of dick pics, pornographic Trump deep-fakes, and “a hell of a lot of buttholes.”
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Note: If you're coming here from The New Abnormal the interview picks up after the commercial around 12:30
He founded the noxious online forum that gave QAnon life. And now, he thinks “Q” should be arrested and tried.
In Q: Into the Storm, HBO’s new six-part documentary series on QAnon, the filmmakers make their case that father-son duo Jim and Ron Watkins are the true culprits behind “Q.” In a new interview with The Daily Beast, the breakout star of the doc dishes on the Watkins’ “fascist” ramblings (including expressing sympathy with Spanish conquerors who mutilated indigenous populations), why he thinks the Watkins should be prosecuted, and the precise moment he discovered that his former cohorts could be singlehandedly duping the world with a deranged conspiracy theory.
In this special bonus episode of The Daily Beast’s Fever Dreamspodcast, New Abnormal host Molly Jong-Fast joins Fever Dreams producer Jesse Cannon and co-host Will Sommer to interview Fredrick Brennan, the star of HBO documentary. Brennan, founder of the website 8chan that would become a breeding ground for QAnon, has since become an outspoken opponent of the website’s current owner, Jim Watkins, and his son Ron.
Brennan argues that Ron and Jim should be arrested for allegedly posing as the mysterious “Q,” likening them to scam artists.
“Essentially, what QAnon was—what the Q poster was doing—was impersonating a federal agent,” Brennan said. “And the Watkins have received material gain for that, in terms of their site getting bigger, them being featured in mass media, he had a super PAC…that received donations. He received ads that he would not have received otherwise.”
Brennan added, “I think that this case is too important and that the courts should be left to decide whether or not what they did was impersonation of a federal agent…We can't keep looking at the Internet and being like, ‘Oh, well it happened online.’”
Brennan elaborates on the very moment it dawned on him that his 8chan successors could actually be behind the far-reaching and destructive pro-Trump hoax.
“When 8chan came back online, it was extremely unstable,” he recounted. “I was trying to post on it to see if it worked. And it was not working at all for me, but somehow, ‘Q’ was posting. And that was kind of the moment for me that sealed the deal…If they had not already been controlling it before, they were controlling it now.”
Brennan also describes why he believes the Watkins family wants to do far more than just shitpost—that they would love to help bring about a “fascist” state.
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By the end of the big new documentary series on QAnon, the filmmakers show off a pretty damn strong case that a shitposting systems administrator named Ron Watkins is the guy currently behind “Q.”
But the docuseries doesn’t fully capture—at least not in detail—all the crazy lengths to which Watkins went in order to finger Steve Bannon as the head of the violent, culty conspiracy movement.
“Ron actually had been planting the seed for Bannon from the very first time I met him,” Q: Into the Storm director Cullen Hoback tells Will Sommer and Swin Suebsaeng on the new episode of FEVER DREAMS. “So he had known me for, I think, less than 48 hours. And at the end of that interview… he pulls me aside and he just says, ‘You know, you should look into Steve Bannon.’ Which I immediately found pretty suspicious... Right from the get-go, he was planting the seed.”
Hoback wasn’t the only guy Watkins was trying to convince. Even in his own shop—the notorious troll-haven 8Chan—Watkins was attempting to shine a light on Bannon. “It seemed like he had even done that internally. Somebody who works with them [Ron Watkins and his father Jim] at one point… showed me a chat they'd had that went all the way back to early January of 2018, where Ron was internally suggesting Steve Bannon.”
Hoback adds, “It seems that this was a red herring. This is my interpretation, that it was a red herring that he had been planting for some time. And I suspect that he had put a lot of work into this and wanted someone to pick up on it.”
As the documentary shows, Watkins even produced a supposed “data set” meant to demonstrate that “Q” and the former top Trump strategist were in the roughly same place at roughly the same time.
But suspicion eventually swung back to Ron and his dad, even though they were almost certainly not “Q” originally. (Most likely, it was a group of folks.) Back then, you might be surprised to learn, “Q” was treated as a joke—one of a whole gaggle of “anons” claiming to have insider knowledge the nefarious workings of the deep state. There was even one character named “BigDickAnon,” Sommer says.
“It's interesting reading the first posts where everyone's like, ‘Get outta here, Q, you're a total loser.’ There's a really funny line where Q's like, ‘I must go dark, the deep state is closing in’ and someone's like, ‘Yeah, time to log off. Mom's meatloaf is ready, loser. Get out of here,’” Sommer adds. “It's just fascinating to see how people treated Q initially and how it turned into this thing that would have people in Congress—and storming Congress.”
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Did you know that everyone’s favorite Suez-Canal-blocking ship is now the subject of a QAnon conspiracy? The Daily Beast’s Asawin Suebsaeng and Will Sommer lay out why the adrenochrome set is convinced that the stuck ship’s cargo is full of trafficked children on the latest episode of our Fever Dreams podcast (Hint: it has to do with Hillary Clinton’s secret service code name—you guessed it, EVERGREEN.)
Speaking of Hillary conspiracies, Suebsaeng and Sommer discuss why the right just can’t seem to come up with a good Joe Biden conspiracy to smear the new president; Trump’s base seems more interested in reverting to their old hatreds of Clinton and Barack Obama. (As Suebsaeng points out, Biden quite simply is not Black or a woman, and so doesn’t inspire the same level of vitriol from the hardcore racist, misogynistic Trumpites.)
Meanwhile, there’s a tug-of-war going on between those in the Trump administration who want the former president to receive “credit” for the COVID vaccine drive and the rightwing anti-government, anti-vaxx diehards who refuse to believe that their Emperor God actually wants them to get the shot. The tussle is crystallized in Trump’s former HHS staffer Michael Caputo, a “really brash, incredibly Trumpy longtime Republican operative” who has taken it upon himself to prosthelytize about the vaccine in biker bars among the “MAGA Sons of Anarchy”—and who’s running into a lot of resistance.
Keep an eye out for the interview with The Daily Beast’s own Kelly Weill, who walks our hosts through the crazy cast of lawyers and faux-lawyers who have sprung up to defend the Capitol Rioters and anti-masker businesses—one of them quotes from Lord of the Rings, another has never actually passed the bar because he thinks it’s a British conspiracy.
And most importantly, we learn about Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes’ supervillain origin story, how Texas National Guard troops faced a hostage situation with Pizzagate overtones, and how Will Sommer is singlehandedly responsible for bringing the phrase “soy boy” out of the Internet swamp into the national spotlight.
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Take one self-proclaimed satanism expert. Add in a pinch of dumpster-diving. Throw in a chicken-coop fire, and (of course) pillow magnate and Donald Trump pal Mike Lindell. And you’ve got the recipe that Trump 2020 deadenders are currently leading in the great state of Arizona to try to, somehow, overturn the election there.
“It could be like a Coen brothers movie. It has that atmosphere,” Daily Beast political reporter Will Sommer tells his colleague and co-host Asawin Suebsaeng on the premiere episode of Fever Dreams, The Beast’s new podcast. “You have these kind of vigilante groups of people who connect on Facebook and say, well, let's go to the board of elections—and then they dive into the dumpster and see what they can find…Or there was a fire at a chicken farm owned by or connected to this guy who's opposed to the recount, and they said, well, he probably put the ballots in there and set the fire! And then they go out to the farm and they smell the air and they say: This smells like burnt ballot to me!”
Fever Dreams takes you inside the right’s push to retake power, from the conspiracy-slingers to the MAGA acolytes to the straight-up grifters. Thought the Trump era was crazy? Wait ’til you hear what comes next.
To start, there’s the slew of Republican efforts to not only to keep challenging the 2020 presidential contest, but to also execute further election and voter crackdowns across the country.
“What’s going on is that Republicans need some shred of voter-fraud evidence that they can then use to impose more voting restrictions,” Will adds. “But what they’re doing here in Arizona…[the recount effort involves] this satanism guy, who maybe does not have the most credibility, or they were looking to hire this very pro-Trump outfit that’s been laughed out of other state recounts.
To help further unpack how the Trump era was just one long, aggravating, and monumentally blood-drenched Coen brothers movie that we were all forced to live through, Swin and Will welcomed Ike Barinholtz, the comedian and star of such films as Blockers and the Neighbors franchise,as well as in TV series Bless the Harts, Eastbound and Down, and The Mindy Project.
The whole Trump presidency “really was Burn After Reading,” Ike contends. But “if you want to learn how the insides of the [Trump] White House work, you have to watch Step Brothers. It will all make sense.”
Ike also opens up about what it was like to co-star in the 2020 satire The Hunt, just as then-President Trump was busy issuing, in Swin’s words, a “cultural fatwa”—via tweet—on the movie. “No one loves ‘cancel culture’ more than the Republicans. It’s their favorite thing, they love it, they thrive on it,” he says. “The worst possible thing is for Donald Trump to tweet about you. Just, it changes your life in a terrible, terrible way…I was super nervous that he was going to tweet about it. And then he tweeted about it!”
As a result, he and others working on the movie were, naturally, inundated with threats of retribution and violence...
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The Daily Beast’s top reporters take you inside the right’s push to retake power, from the conspiracy-slingers to the MAGA acolytes to the straight-up grifters. Thought the Trump era was crazy? Wait ’til you hear what they have planned next. Hosted by Asawin Suebsaeng and Will Sommer. New episodes every Wednesday. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app today.
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