0:03

What's up QAA listeners? The

0:06

fun games have begun.

0:09

I found a way to connect to the internet. I'm

0:14

sorry, boy.

0:15

Welcome listener to the 256th

0:18

chapter of the QAA podcast, the

0:20

Libs of TikTok and bomb threats of

0:23

schools episode. As always, we

0:25

are your hosts, Jake Rokitansky and Travis

0:27

View.

0:28

Libs of TikTok is the name of a social

0:31

media presence on Facebook, Twitter, and

0:33

other platforms run by a woman named Haya

0:35

Rejcik. In just a few years, it has

0:37

catapulted from a relative unknown to

0:40

a right-wing media force. Rejcik

0:42

mostly reposts videos, photos, and screenshots

0:45

designed to stir the ire of her

0:47

followers. The vast majority of her output

0:49

concerns the LGBTQ community,

0:52

for example, calling out teachers for sharing their

0:54

pronouns with students and hospitals

0:56

for offering gender-affirming care. Her

0:58

accounts have been amplified by the likes of Joe Rogan,

1:01

Glenn Greenwald, and other big names.

1:03

The account's posts often include the

1:05

names, social media handles, and other identifying

1:08

information of its subjects, leading to harassment

1:10

campaigns against the individuals and organizations

1:13

it spotlights. Rejcik's obsessions

1:15

often go on to become mainstream topics of

1:18

conservative discourse. She commands the attention

1:20

of some of America's most powerful right-wing politicians,

1:23

and her influence has empowered the account's conservative

1:25

fanbase to threaten and protest children's

1:27

hospitals, teachers, school districts, drag

1:29

shows, and more. To get

1:31

a better idea of the real-world

1:33

impact of libs of TikTok, we're

1:35

joined by Will Carles. He is a reporter

1:38

for USA Today, and he recently published

1:40

an investigation titled When Libs

1:42

of TikTok Tweets, Threats Increasingly

1:45

Follow. And for this report, Carles

1:47

got a rare personal interview with Rejcik

1:50

herself. So Will, thank you so much for

1:52

joining us today to discuss her reporting. It's

1:54

an honor and a privilege, guys. Thank you. Yeah,

1:57

I'm glad to finally have you on. We've been chatting

1:59

for years.

1:59

about QAnon and related

2:02

matters so this is a long time coming. Glad

2:04

to have you on the show. Before we get

2:06

into your recent report, I thought it would

2:08

be worthwhile to bring back QAnon

2:11

News because there has

2:13

been a couple of really, I mean, relevant

2:15

news items to my interest. Now, first

2:18

off, Jacob Chansley, better known

2:21

as the QAnon Shaman, famous for having

2:23

his photo on basically every news

2:25

outlet in the world on January 7, 2021 because of his

2:27

involvement in the

2:30

Capitol riots. He appears

2:32

to be planning a run for Congress

2:34

in Arizona with, of course, the

2:36

Libertarian Party. So he issued a CAD

2:39

statement of interest. He filed

2:42

paperwork with the Arizona Secretary of State's

2:44

office. So he's, he seems to

2:46

be serious about this. Yet, yet

2:48

another example of believing

2:51

in QAnon, totally destroying

2:54

and then empowering your

2:57

life. I mean, this is, this is a long

2:59

way he's come from standing alone

3:02

outside the Arizona Mall,

3:04

shouting about pedophiles. And I assume if

3:07

he, you know, is elected into office,

3:09

he will do the same except probably,

3:11

you know, from behind a podium

3:14

of some sort. I thought he denounced QAnon,

3:16

right? Didn't he say he doesn't believe in QAnon

3:19

and it was all nonsense these days? I gotta

3:21

say, I don't recall when

3:24

he did this. I mean, maybe I haven't

3:26

followed every single one of his tweets. I know

3:28

that when I went to his first public

3:30

event right after he got out of prison in

3:33

Scottsdale, Arizona, he had a, you know, he spoke

3:35

at a church, a big crowd. He said

3:37

that he was all for what he called the

3:39

Q psychological operation. While

3:42

acknowledging it was, it did include

3:44

some disinformation. He cited, for example,

3:46

you know, QAnon followers should believe

3:48

that JFK Jr. is alive and that kind

3:50

of thing. But he seemed to still have a positive

3:54

attitude towards QAnon just a few months

3:56

ago. Now, you're not the only person to say this. The

3:58

Associated Press article, where we're to

4:01

the story said that quote,

4:03

although he previously called himself the QAnon Shaman,

4:06

Chansley has since disavowed the QAnon movement.

4:08

I don't know if that's fully accurate. I

4:11

disagree. Look, I'm sure if you spend,

4:13

you know, enough time

4:15

in the federal

4:18

penitentiary system, you're gonna start

4:21

coming to terms with separating

4:23

yourself from some aspects

4:25

of the movement that got

4:27

you into prison in the

4:29

first place. So that makes sense to me,

4:31

you know, it's you can disavow Q as the

4:35

arbiter of the future, you know,

4:38

or classified information and still

4:40

totally embrace the general

4:42

sort of emotion that believing

4:44

in QAnon sort of brings you,

4:47

as well as a lot of the conspiracy

4:49

theories that are woven in, right? Well, as I

4:51

learned from your show, like there is

4:53

no such thing as QAnon, right? I mean, it was

4:55

just there at Q, there's Q and there are anons, but there's no such thing

4:58

as QAnon.

5:01

So the second story I

5:04

want to cover is that according

5:07

to a recent filing, recent

5:09

legal filing, members of Michael Flynn's family

5:12

pocketed hundreds of thousands of

5:14

dollars and leftover money from a legal

5:16

defense fund that was set up for

5:19

Flynn as he faced federal investigation

5:21

over the, you know, is involved

5:24

in the 2016 election. So this is relevant

5:26

to us because he

5:29

set up, because a lot of that money that came flowing

5:31

to him came from QAnon followers who

5:34

donated the Flynn because they thought that he was going

5:36

to help take down the deep state. And

5:38

so this is really interesting. So this information

5:40

came from testimony from Michael Flynn's sister

5:43

that came from a defamation case involving

5:45

CNN. So in this case, members of Flynn's

5:47

family sued CNN because that

5:50

report referenced the fact that they all

5:52

took the digital soldier oath and they, I

5:54

don't know, this is a very flimsy

5:56

lawsuit in my opinion. So here

5:58

are the details. So according to emotion of Flynn's

6:01

sister Barbara Redgate who was

6:03

a trustee for the Defense Fund, testified

6:06

that she didn't mind taking money from

6:08

people who use QAnon hashtags as

6:10

long as they were directing people to

6:12

the Legal Defense Fund. Now after paying

6:14

Flynn's lawyers with the Defense

6:17

Fund money, Barbara testified that she was

6:19

paid about $265,000 and that Flynn was paid whatever

6:24

was left over in the account and

6:26

she claimed that this was somewhere it was

6:28

more than $250,000 but less than a million. Wait a minute, wait a minute.

6:33

So she got 250k

6:36

for running the fundraiser

6:39

and he got maybe potentially

6:41

half a million dollars? Something

6:44

like that? Yeah, yeah. It wound up

6:46

like I mean this is obviously pretty

6:48

slimy. I don't know if there are anything like any legal

6:51

stipulations involved with

6:53

like how these funds are supposed to be distributed.

6:55

Did they even pay the lawyer? I mean which

6:58

lawyer did they have? Was it the guy

7:00

from the jail cell at the Simpsons? I

7:04

mean yeah it's a it sounds like this this

7:06

Defense Fund is basically what

7:09

we thought it was is that it was like you know

7:11

perhaps a way to cover legal bills

7:13

but it sounds like there was at least hundreds

7:16

of thousands maybe more than a million dollars

7:18

left over that they could skim from. These

7:20

Legal Defense Funds are always like

7:22

sketchy though. I mean I've reported on the

7:25

ones that that grew up around the Proud Boys

7:27

you know both before and after January

7:30

6th, the Oath Keepers like I

7:32

mean there seem to be very

7:34

few sort of federal and other laws

7:36

like surrounding what is and is not

7:38

a Legal Defense Fund. Like I mean where

7:40

are the boundaries of what that money can be used

7:43

for? It's never been made clear to me and

7:45

if there's a whole bunch of money left over then what

7:47

do you have to do? Do you have to go out and commit another crime

7:49

so that you can use the money in your legal defense?

7:51

I mean it seems seems pretty arbitrary.

7:54

Right I mean if you raise this on like GoFundMe

7:56

or whatever you know GoFundMe isn't

7:58

gonna come after you to see... to see, well,

8:00

hey, we want to just making sure all the money that

8:02

you got from us that went directly to

8:05

the lawyers. Nobody's, nobody's checking

8:07

on that. Look, you could have enough money for

8:09

the lawyers and say, Hey, why don't we raise

8:12

a legal defense, you know, why don't we raise a defense

8:14

fund? And, you know, not only will

8:16

that offset the, you know, offset

8:18

the cost of, of whatever our legal expenses

8:21

are, but hey, we, you know, we might have a bunch left

8:23

over afterwards. And Flynn was pardoned,

8:25

right? I mean, he was pardoned twice by, by

8:28

Trump, I think. So if you're pardoned,

8:30

then your, your legal case essentially goes

8:32

away. Right. Or was he pardoned? I guess he was pardoned

8:35

after he was already found guilty. Yeah,

8:37

I think so. Yeah. Yeah. He was, yeah, after

8:40

he's found guilty and he was awaiting sentencing

8:42

and there was sentencing hearing was delayed

8:44

for a long time because of COVID. Uh,

8:46

and then of course he was eventually pardoned, but yeah,

8:49

I mean, it's just a rock solid drift

8:51

because, cause like you could, you could just say, help,

8:54

help a big attack by the deep state. And that's

8:56

just, uh, for the, you know, literally

8:58

millions of QAnon followers. That's a, that's

9:01

a quite enticing rallying cry. Sure.

9:03

And feel like, you know, you can, you can do more than just

9:05

post. You can, you know, you can donate money

9:08

to your hero Flynn. In theory, if you know,

9:10

you're going to be pardoned anyway, then you can probably

9:12

get a pretty cheap lawyer, right? Cause

9:14

who cares? You can hire old

9:17

Gil. I wonder

9:19

how long he kept this, this defense

9:22

fund, you know, going as advertising

9:24

is cries for money going. Even after he

9:27

got, he got information from Trump, then

9:29

you're like, don't you worry, you can get pardoned before I

9:31

leave office. That's a moment where you're standing

9:33

in the living room with your family going, Hey,

9:35

I just talked to president Trump on the phone. He's

9:37

going to part of me and the legal defense fund, it's

9:40

still climbing. We're at, we're at $2 million

9:42

already. This is, oh boy, this is

9:44

going to be great. I mean, this, how much

9:46

worse is this than any other number of

9:48

like things that people give their money to

9:50

though? Right? I mean, it's a free country. You

9:52

can give your money to whoever you want to. Right.

9:55

But I mean, I think, I think the point here is like,

9:57

if it's, if there's no legal defense,

9:59

cause going on then and you're giving to

10:02

a legal fund, then you've got to have at

10:04

least a bad taste in your mouth when you figure out

10:06

it was actually spent on Christmas

10:08

ornaments or something else, right? Yeah,

10:10

go and commit some other small

10:13

type of misdemeanor crime, just

10:15

so you can hire a lawyer at

10:17

least and say, hey, let's

10:20

go into the lawyers. Now

10:22

let's move on to Libs of TikTok

10:25

and your reporting, Will, because I

10:28

mean, we've talked about this

10:30

account before because it is very

10:32

troubling. We spoke to Taylor Rowens

10:34

who wrote that article for the Washington

10:36

Post in which she revealed

10:40

the person behind the account and the

10:42

history of what was involved in

10:44

making this. I think this is kind of an interesting story

10:46

of like not to absolve high a right

10:48

check of what she's done, but the way in which

10:51

social media itself and social media attention

10:53

kind of created a monster because she had

10:55

tried a few different strategies of

10:58

ways that she could build a presence online

11:00

and this particular one of just

11:02

driving panic and fear and hate

11:05

about gay and trans people seems to be the

11:07

one that just struck for her. So I mean,

11:09

like how did you think she came upon this content

11:11

strategy that she's using? I think it just

11:13

as you say, it was trial and error, right? I mean,

11:16

she tried all these different things and

11:18

this is the one that she saw catch a light.

11:20

I mean, she's many things,

11:22

but like knowing her audience and

11:24

knowing how to strike a chord is something that

11:26

she's clearly very adept at. And

11:29

of course, the unfortunate thing, well, among

11:31

the unfortunate things with that is what

11:34

we found and what we reported on which is these

11:37

threats that came out of that whole campaign

11:39

and the fact that people just aren't content

11:42

to just kind of snigger at people, but

11:44

they in some cases are kind of taking matters

11:46

into their own hands as well and calling in these

11:48

threats, which is pretty awful. Yeah,

11:51

I wanted to get like a better handle on

11:53

the content that Libs of TikTok

11:56

posts and the threats because you hear

11:58

that and it sounds bad, but... the

12:00

way you listed your article

12:02

and the media matters has also done a good job of this

12:05

as well. I'm just laying out example after

12:07

example of example of the connection

12:09

between what that account posts

12:11

and real-world harm. So I want to like just walk

12:14

through a couple of examples that you discussed. So

12:16

one thing that you discussed, so on March 16,

12:19

2022, Libs of TikTok targeted Doren Becker

12:21

Children's Hospital in Oregon. And this

12:24

is part of the Oregon Health and Science

12:26

University's health system. And they

12:28

were targeted for providing gender-affirming care

12:30

to youth. So what happened after that? Well,

12:33

right after that, they started receiving a

12:35

huge harassment campaign

12:38

that then eventually grew into a bomb

12:41

threat that led to serious

12:43

disruption at the hospital. I mean unsurprisingly,

12:46

these hospitals, they're big corporations, they

12:48

don't really like talking about this stuff

12:50

very much. But in this case, it was revealed

12:52

that there was harassment both of the individual

12:55

doctors and then also the hospital itself. And

12:57

that's a pattern that just keeps playing out.

12:59

But I mean to talk a little bit about the content

13:02

of what what hire posts on Libs

13:04

of TikTok, I think it falls into a couple

13:06

of different categories. What she will say

13:09

and what she did tell me in my interview

13:11

with her was, look, I'm just

13:13

posting what people post themselves.

13:16

And in a lot of cases, there's some

13:18

truth to that. I mean, she basically takes a clip

13:20

from a video that a progressive teacher,

13:23

usually an LGBTQ plus advocate

13:26

teacher or doctor has posted online,

13:28

and she will post that. Now, in a lot of

13:31

cases, that comes with kind of a snarky

13:33

comment or a dog whistle, something

13:35

that's clearly designed to sort

13:37

of mock this person. So

13:39

that's what I think a lot of people find very

13:42

hurtful about this account is that you

13:44

have these people who are kind of trying to put out

13:46

there in the world these messages of allyship.

13:48

And these messages of love and support.

13:51

And by mere virtue of putting them on

13:53

her account, she's basically saying, look how

13:56

ridiculous and in some cases, how insidious

13:58

and awful these people are. That's her insinuation.

14:01

And of course, this all plays into this broader

14:04

right wing, far right narrative that

14:06

anybody who supports LGBTQ causes

14:09

is coming for your kids, is a groomer, is

14:11

a pedophile that has become really the central

14:14

rhetoric of the far right and conspiracy

14:16

theorists over the last couple of years

14:19

and has led to numerous

14:21

instances, not just of harassment and threats,

14:23

but also of real life violence

14:26

and death, as you guys know. So

14:29

a lot of people have said, you know, she knows exactly

14:31

what she's doing and she is playing

14:33

into that audience. Sure, like she's

14:35

not looking at these videos and going,

14:38

oh, well here's something interesting. You know,

14:40

here's an interesting idea of how to communicate

14:43

a certain thing in schools or

14:45

hospitals or any administration or

14:47

just somebody in their bedroom or whatever, saying, you know,

14:49

I wanna post this so other people can see, you

14:52

know, sort of other walks of life.

14:54

I mean, she's looking at these videos, I imagine,

14:57

and going, oh, this is gonna drive people in saying,

14:59

oh, this is gonna piss people off a lot.

15:01

I mean, that's the nature is, I

15:03

think that when you are running an account,

15:06

you know, when you are on social media and you

15:08

are trying to keep your subscribership

15:11

or, you know, grow your following,

15:13

you are looking for stuff that you know

15:16

is going to push the buttons of the audience

15:18

that you already have. And given

15:20

that her audience is, you know, right

15:22

wing, it's, of course,

15:25

you know, she's looking for stuff that she knows

15:27

is going to, you know, for lack of a better

15:29

word, trigger her followers. And she doesn't

15:31

just stop there, right? I mean, in cases

15:34

where she has posted things that were obvious

15:36

hoaxes and obviously sort of

15:38

designed by people to sort

15:40

of trip up people on the far right, she

15:42

also posts things completely out of context

15:45

and without any sort of explanation, she'll

15:47

take sort of short clips from things. She'll also

15:49

post just outright what turned out to be outright

15:52

untruths. You know, for example, she posted

15:54

about a hospital that was alleged to be

15:57

performing hysterectomies on children.

15:59

That just... wasn't true and she ended up having

16:01

to delete that tweet and along with lots

16:04

of other tweets, admitting that she

16:06

had kind of made a mistake on that. So I

16:08

think it's like she likes to portray herself

16:10

as a journalist but first of all, there's

16:13

a massive amount of kind of bias.

16:15

There's a very significantly biased

16:18

MO in everything that she does and she

16:20

gets things wrong. If I as a journalist

16:23

had made the sort of mistakes that she'd made

16:26

just in the last year, I probably wouldn't have

16:28

my job anymore. So it's kind of this idea

16:30

that like, oh, I'm just a journalist doing journalist

16:33

stuff but it's like, well, you're doing that but you

16:35

don't have any of the editorial guidelines,

16:37

you don't have any of the sort of lawyering

16:39

and fact checking that goes into our work. You're

16:42

just sort of putting things out there and sort

16:44

of the consequences be damned essentially.

16:46

Yeah, and like it's really aggravating.

16:48

So obviously, her primary

16:52

goal is clearly to get engagement. It's

16:54

not about like helping

16:56

a clear understanding of anything

16:59

in particular. I mean, whenever she gets

17:01

sent something, because I get the sense that

17:03

the majority of our content is something that her

17:06

followers send her and she sort of recognizes

17:09

something to that, recognizes content

17:11

that will generate a lot of outrage and therefore

17:14

a lot of shares and likes and follows

17:16

and stuff. And then she adds

17:18

the appropriate framing that will maximize

17:21

that amount of rage and then that's what she goes

17:24

with. I don't think her goal is actually

17:26

to illuminate anything

17:28

as much as inspire

17:31

hate, the kind of hate that

17:33

gets a big engagement for her account. Yeah.

17:36

Well, let me just kind of play devil's advocate

17:38

there for a second and be sort of fair

17:40

to her. So her stated

17:44

reasoning for creating this account, what

17:46

she told me was to quote, raise

17:48

awareness about the situation in America.

17:51

She says, there's a clear pattern of the sexualization

17:53

of children going on in public schools and

17:56

I think that's a problem. I think it's super

17:58

harmful and I want to call it out and raise. awareness

18:01

to it. So to be clear,

18:03

I agree with you. I mean, I think that clearly

18:05

by looking at her content, you can see that

18:08

it's mainly based around getting as much engagement

18:11

as possible. And I think it's fair to look at her past

18:13

as well, her past attempts to kind of create viral

18:16

content that then grew into this. Clearly

18:18

that's what she wants to do as a content creator.

18:21

But there is a sort of, there is a, I

18:23

guess, a philosophy behind it. It's not a

18:26

philosophy that a lot of people agree with, but it's also

18:28

a philosophy that a lot of people in this country do

18:30

agree with, which is shown by the amount

18:32

of followers that she gets, you know? So I guess

18:35

what I'm saying is like, it's not baseless,

18:38

kind of, kind of clickbait content

18:40

driving. Like it is, it does have at its

18:42

foundation, sort of like a goal,

18:45

a stated goal. And she's been clear

18:47

about that. And it's a goal that some people

18:49

agree with, and a lot of people don't agree with. Does

18:51

that make sense? Yeah, yeah. But I

18:53

think it would be closer to describe her as a kind of

18:55

like anti-gay and trans activist.

18:59

Even that feels really charitable. I feel like

19:01

it really is, and it's like when examining

19:03

her account, it really is more base engagement

19:06

than anything else. That's just my interpretation.

19:08

Yeah. I mean, and you know, through the lens

19:10

of social media, I mean, this all gets, you

19:13

know, amplified because these are moments that would otherwise

19:15

be private moments between, I don't know, teachers

19:17

and students, or I don't know, confessionals,

19:20

but the fact that they're posted online, you know,

19:22

and who posts them? Is it

19:24

the poster themselves? Is it

19:26

somebody who also subscribes

19:29

to the same sort of ideology that Haya

19:32

does? So they go, oh my God,

19:35

this is awful. So I'm going to videotape

19:37

this to make fun of it and post it on social media.

19:39

And then it gets shared to her. It just seems like

19:42

a pipeline of

19:44

bullying that sort of ends up on this very

19:47

sort of massive platform where

19:50

it's going to get even more views, more engagement.

19:52

It's going to rile people up even further to the

19:54

point where it trickles out into the real world.

19:57

Like the article discusses. It's also to

19:59

be very It's coming from a place

20:01

of flawed logic

20:03

and flawed and conspiracy

20:06

theory essentially. It's coming from this

20:08

idea that as I mentioned earlier, that

20:10

anybody who is an ally or in any

20:12

way feels believes in a

20:15

progressive kind of world for the

20:17

LGBTQ community is engaged

20:19

in a conspiracy to corrupt

20:21

children. I mean, she's very frank about that. That's

20:24

what she believes. And obviously

20:26

that's not true. As

20:29

anybody who knows anything

20:31

about the LGBTQ

20:33

community knows. So to be very clear, but

20:35

I guess what I'm saying is like, I think for

20:37

hire, it's not just

20:39

about engagement. It's about sort of

20:41

driving that narrative. It's about keeping

20:44

that conspiracy going

20:46

and keeping that conspiracy alive and recruiting

20:49

more people to that conspiracy, which again

20:51

is sort of the central tenet at this point

20:54

of the far right in the United States. Right.

20:56

And like only focusing on content

20:58

that is going to drive that conspiracy

21:00

further. Like a great example is, you know, when

21:03

I don't know about you guys, but when I was

21:05

in middle school, we had

21:07

a square dancing unit. I don't know. Did

21:09

you guys have to take square dancing in

21:12

middle school or anything like that? In the United Kingdom,

21:15

weirdly square dancing. Yeah.

21:17

It was like, we had this whole unit and you learned

21:19

how to square dance. It's like, that's not a part

21:21

of my call. That comes from

21:24

a like Puritan sort

21:26

of thing that has nothing to do with education

21:28

or my background or anything. And yet everybody

21:31

in my middle school, you know,

21:33

you had to do this and it was a part of your

21:35

gym class or whatever. And it's like, well,

21:37

nobody's highlighting any of that. Nobody's

21:39

talking, you know, there's, you know, she's not pointing

21:41

out all of the, you know, all of the moments

21:44

in which another culture's sort

21:46

of traditions or beliefs

21:48

or practices are forced on, you know,

21:50

children. It is only focused on

21:53

this one thing, which I think Travis,

21:56

you know, made the point of. of

22:00

other people that that Lives

22:02

of TikTok is

22:05

also targeted individual doctors as you discuss in

22:07

your piece. You

22:10

discuss the example of last October, Wrightchek

22:12

posted a video of Dr. Catherine Gast and

22:15

she's the co-director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's

22:17

UW Health Gender Services Program. And

22:22

in this video she described gender

22:24

affirming operations and what was the result

22:26

of the attention that that Wrightchek

22:29

gave this doctor? Well, Gast spoke

22:31

with NBC News at the time and told them

22:33

that this was pretty terrifying. It

22:36

was a scary and overwhelming time she said and I think anybody who's

22:38

ever found themselves at

22:43

the center of the far-right troll storm and just

22:45

the far-right ecosystem for a few days knows

22:49

that it's pretty horrible. I mean it happened

22:51

to me last week. I kind

22:53

of became the target of Haya and a

22:55

few other people and it gets pretty horrible. And

22:58

in Gast's case, I believe she was getting like literal threats

23:00

to her phone, threats

23:03

to her person, to her life. And I mean this

23:06

is just a doctor who's again trying to do

23:08

good in the world, trying to make people's lives better and has

23:10

their care and their

23:13

work taken out of context and then next thing

23:15

they know they're being threatened with their

23:18

lives. And that's happened again and again. I was

23:20

reading a story this morning about a teacher who

23:24

has been threatened just last week because they were

23:26

targeted in an individual post. So that's

23:29

what we were really trying to get at with

23:31

this story. It's like if this happens

23:33

once or twice because this account is calling these

23:35

people out, then it can be seen as like an outlier.

23:41

But this has happened literally dozens of times over the

23:43

last two years and it's actually speeding

23:47

up. There are more and more cases

23:49

of these actual literal bomb threats

23:51

being called in and this disruption to not having

23:53

a police officer. just

24:00

to individuals but to schools and it's

24:19

happening. There's lots and lots of evidence

24:21

to show that it's happening and there's lots of

24:23

evidence to show that there's a correlation between what she

24:25

posts and those threats that come out.

24:28

Yeah, you're right. It has happened over

24:31

and over again and one

24:33

of the most interesting things that I saw from

24:35

reporting is the specific examples

24:38

of schools that were threatened and

24:40

even had to as a consequence had

24:42

to disrupt the school operations.

24:45

I mean could you talk about what you learned

24:47

about those instances? Yes and most recently

24:50

this happened up in Davis in California

24:52

where what happened was you had

24:55

an event at a library

24:58

in Davis which is a sort of fairly small

25:00

city in California and

25:02

at this event it was actually a Moms

25:04

for Liberty group which I think you guys have done

25:06

some reporting on as well and Moms

25:08

for Liberty this kind of far right you know parents

25:11

rights group was holding this event

25:13

and the people in the event kept on

25:15

misgendering female trans

25:18

athletes and kept basically calling them men

25:20

and one of the library staff stepped in and said

25:22

look this needs to stop like you need to stop doing

25:25

that and they wouldn't and then they ended up actually

25:27

canceling the event and kicking them out because of it.

25:29

Now that clip went viral,

25:32

Libs of TikTok tweets about it and then the next thing

25:34

you know that library starts getting bomb

25:36

threats. That then extended to

25:38

the local school district that started to get

25:41

bomb threats as well and I think they're up to like seven

25:43

bomb threats and those schools have

25:45

had to you know they've had to literally close they've had

25:47

to send students home. These kids education

25:50

has really been disrupted as a result and

25:52

it's like now hire will say well do

25:54

you have any evidence that that's my followers

25:56

doing that and you know in each and

25:59

every instance Is the person

26:01

calling in the bomb threat and saying, I'm doing it because

26:03

Libs of TikTok told me to, or because Libs of

26:05

TikTok tweeted about you yesterday? No.

26:08

But again, what we've showed with our reporting,

26:10

what we showed what media matters kind of pulled together

26:13

was this correlation. There's a tweet, and

26:15

then in the days that follow, there's a threat.

26:18

And not only that, but the threat is directed

26:20

almost always along the same line. So

26:22

if the tweet is about LGBTQ stuff,

26:25

then the threat is about LGBTQ stuff,

26:27

right? And so

26:30

there's no doubt that that correlation

26:32

is there. And yes, schools

26:34

have really been the target over the last

26:36

two or three months. There have been something like, I think it was 16

26:39

different individual threats to

26:42

school districts. And it's seriously

26:44

impacting kids learning in those districts.

26:47

It's really quite sad to see. Yeah,

26:50

I mean, that's certainly one of the things that makes me call

26:53

bullshit on the claim that this

26:55

kind of activity is motivated by concerns

26:58

for the welfare of children. Because if there's anything

27:00

that harms the welfare of children, it's

27:03

forcing them to not be able to attend

27:05

school or their library for several

27:08

days. Another anecdote that

27:10

you have in your reporting concerns

27:13

here, the South Dakota State University

27:15

Gender and Sexualities Alliance, and you

27:17

spoke to someone named Alyssa

27:20

Gonzalez about what happened there. So

27:22

what was the story? So yeah, this was a really

27:24

interesting one. This is one of those examples

27:27

of where Libs of TikTok tweeted something

27:29

that just wasn't accurate. And what

27:31

happened was they tweeted an image

27:34

of somebody wearing a nude illusion,

27:36

which is essentially like a bodysuit that makes

27:38

you look nude. And they claimed that this

27:40

was at a drag show, an all-age

27:43

drag show held by the Gender and Sexualities

27:45

Alliance at South Dakota State University. It

27:48

actually wasn't. It was from a previous

27:50

year's drag show at which no children

27:53

were present. But it didn't matter. Because once

27:55

it hit Libs of TikTok, it got out there.

27:57

And the next thing that they knew, all

28:00

of these threatening phone calls and threatening emails

28:02

and that eventually culminated in a bomb threat.

28:04

And so I spoke with Alyssa, who's the president

28:07

of the GSA, the group that put that on. And

28:09

what was really remarkable about that story

28:11

is that Alyssa told me that she had gone

28:14

home for the holidays around this

28:16

time of year, last year, when she got

28:18

a call from the police department about

28:20

the bomb threat. And in her situation,

28:23

she was actually standing in her parents'

28:25

house when she took this call. And her dad

28:27

was like, hey, what was that about? And she

28:29

ended up having to come out to her parents.

28:32

Like, she had

28:34

not previously come out to them. And this

28:37

conversation, this bomb threat, kind of really

28:39

pushed the issue. And now, for her,

28:42

luckily, everything went great. Her parents were very

28:44

supportive and constructive. But that just

28:46

kind of shows, I mean, that's just one

28:48

example that I found of like

28:50

talking to someone where I was actually able to connect with

28:53

the person who was, you know, at the center of the

28:55

threat. And it just shows like the ripple effects

28:57

of this activity. Like it's not just

29:00

the threat itself. Look, a bomb threat is scary,

29:02

right? A school shutting down is scary.

29:04

But like how many other like psychological

29:07

impacts are there out there to people? How

29:09

many kids who, you know, maybe

29:11

there's a kid out there who's been involved

29:15

in what has been a target in a school shooting

29:17

and like, and this is bringing back all the trauma

29:19

of that as they have to be taken out of their classroom,

29:21

right? I mean, it's like, it's not just the

29:24

observable damage that's being

29:26

done. I think it's like just the multiple,

29:29

multiple ways that this resonates

29:31

and that this, you know,

29:32

ends up causing harm to people. Yeah,

29:34

and also, you know, all for the

29:36

fact that these, you know, however many

29:39

hundreds of thousands of followers that she has

29:42

can just believe the thing that they already believe.

29:44

You know, it's not even, you know,

29:46

correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't feel like, you know,

29:48

her content is necessarily changing

29:51

minds. I mean, maybe it is, you know, maybe she's

29:53

radicalizing people to be anti-gay,

29:56

anti-trans, but I have to believe

29:58

that for the most part, she's just... stoking

30:00

a fire that is already roaring

30:03

and yet all of these people's lives, you know,

30:05

people who are affected by her posts,

30:07

you know, their lives are affected significantly

30:10

in this specific case, you know, being forced

30:12

to come out to your parents, you know, maybe before

30:14

you're ready and it's like all for what? So

30:17

the people who already are anti-gay, anti-trans

30:19

can be like, oh yeah, more of the

30:22

stuff that I hate, you know, more of the stuff that

30:24

makes me mad when I watch it. It's

30:26

just like the whole thing feels so gross

30:29

and it's just another moment

30:32

where I am so sad

30:35

for our species with

30:37

how popular and essential

30:40

social media has become to our,

30:43

you know, our way of life. Really mostly

30:45

for the worst, it's mostly for the worst folks. I

30:48

really think, I was hoping the Trump

30:50

impression was going to come out. I

30:53

think it's more than that too. I think it's more than

30:55

just kind of like appealing to people's

30:57

kind of base hatred and base,

31:00

you know, biases,

31:02

because as I've kind of mentioned a couple of

31:04

times, like I really genuinely think

31:07

that that sort of anti-trans

31:09

issues particularly, but

31:12

anti-LGBTQ issues

31:14

in general, that's kind of becoming

31:17

like the GOP platform, at least the far

31:19

right GOP platform, right? That's

31:21

what has become like the glue

31:24

that is keeping the, you know, at least

31:26

the far right of the Republican Party together.

31:29

And it's almost like, I mean, this

31:31

whole show is based on QAnon, right? And

31:33

QAnon is so fascinating and has been

31:36

so interesting. And essentially what QAnon

31:38

kind of boils down to, right, is it's a brand,

31:41

right? I mean, it's an idea. It's

31:43

a sticker you can put on your car that sends

31:45

other like-minded people the message

31:47

that like we're in the same team. Like it's a dog

31:50

whistle. And that is increasingly

31:52

what anti-trans sentiment

31:55

and thought and ideas have become. They've

31:57

become this kind of dog

31:59

whistle. this symbol to

32:02

the rest of your

32:04

club, that you're all in the same club together.

32:09

In many ways, it's filling the void that QAnon

32:12

has increasingly left behind. So

32:15

yeah, I don't think it's just about

32:17

that. It's also about just reassuring

32:20

the base, like reassuring the far

32:22

right base that, hey, there's still

32:25

an idea that we all agree with. There's

32:27

still this thing, even if Trump goes

32:29

away, even if he doesn't win, even if QAnon kind

32:33

of fades into insignificance, there's

32:35

still this thing that we all agree

32:37

with, right? And we're going to keep fighting

32:39

it, we're going to keep pushing it. Yeah, anti-gay,

32:42

anti-trans, anti-communist.

32:45

Right. And what's really remarkable

32:47

is if you talk to young people, if

32:49

you talk to the teenagers who

32:51

are apparently being mortified by this stuff,

32:54

is it's like, this is genuinely,

32:56

they see it, a lot of them see it as like,

32:58

this is the civil rights issue for them. This

33:01

is the thing that they are

33:03

going to fight for. And it's

33:06

a really interesting place to be in 2023, because what

33:08

the trans population

33:10

is a fraction of this country. I mean,

33:13

it's like less than 2%, but yet the

33:15

amount of time and effort

33:17

that the far right has devoted to

33:19

sort of making that population

33:22

the center of attention is like, it's

33:24

really eye-opening, I think. Well,

33:27

and I think there's probably the added effect that

33:29

because this kind of hatred

33:31

and rhetoric is so public, that maybe

33:34

that percentage is smaller because people are

33:36

increasingly more fearful to live

33:39

how they want to live. Like there

33:41

was a person at our live show, one of our

33:43

live shows in, I believe it was

33:46

Colorado, and we did a short Q&A after

33:48

the show and they stood up and they said, they

33:50

asked, I'm curious to know what kind of resources

33:53

you guys follow, where you get your

33:55

information from. I want to tap

33:57

into that because I'm afraid for my life.

34:00

I want to have as much information

34:02

as possible so I don't go to a place that's

34:05

potentially dangerous or this, that and

34:07

the other thing. We were all at a loss for

34:09

words. It was incredibly heartbreaking

34:12

to hear. It's one thing when

34:14

you see it online but when you're in the same room with

34:16

somebody and you're standing across

34:18

from them and you can see that they are

34:21

afraid for their own safety

34:23

just to be who they are, it's

34:25

just awful. It's

34:28

shocking that we're still there in like 2023. There

34:30

is, you know, that there are, you know, hundreds

34:32

of thousands, millions of people out there who are literally

34:35

fearful for just living in the skin that they live in.

34:37

You know, I hear that a lot in my reporting.

34:39

We actually did a really big investigation

34:42

at the end of last year into an

34:44

all-age drag show in Texas,

34:46

in Roanoke, Texas, that sort of

34:48

became the center of attention and we delved

34:50

a lot deeper into it because actually anti-fascists

34:53

showed up armed to protect this

34:56

drag show. You guys might remember those kind of viral

34:59

videos and viral photos of that event but

35:01

it's like that's where we are right now. We're

35:03

at the point where if you are, not

35:05

even if you're trans but even if you are like

35:07

a drag performer who is trying

35:09

to sort of share like love

35:12

and understanding and acceptance, like you

35:14

literally need the protection

35:17

of armed allies who

35:19

come to the event with you to protect

35:21

you from the people who wish you

35:23

harm, right? I mean that's a

35:25

pretty remarkable place to

35:27

be in 2023. Yeah, I mean this

35:30

is why I think this reporting is so valuable

35:32

because obviously not every single instance

35:34

of someone being seriously threatened or

35:37

harassed is publicly known. Like

35:39

I know that it's not a fun

35:41

thing to talk about publicly and, you

35:43

know, I know I don't talk about every

35:45

single instance of like trollic harassment.

35:48

I'm the subject of number one because I don't

35:50

think that's an interesting story and then number

35:52

two because I know

35:54

that this sometimes just empowers the trolls.

35:57

I know how trolls operate. I know they like the fact that they are

35:59

the first to go to the event. thrill of knowing that they got a

36:01

reaction out of someone. And

36:03

so trying to just take

36:05

this with good grace is just

36:08

a way of denying that. Now, not everyone has that luxury

36:10

when they're being like, we're in the subject

36:12

of very serious, life-threatening threats.

36:16

But yeah, this really is

36:18

what we know about with Stuff You Report is almost certainly

36:21

just the tip of the iceberg of the very

36:23

harmful impact of this

36:25

just never-ending hate campaign

36:28

that's coming out of Lives of TikTok.

36:30

And to be clear, we put ourselves in

36:32

the firing lot. You know what I mean? If I

36:34

get descended on by far-right trolls

36:36

because I wrote a story about high-right shit,

36:39

I turn my Twitter off and it's like, well, I just got

36:41

to deal with that for a couple of days because

36:44

I put myself out there. But I reached

36:46

out to people in the course

36:48

of writing that story. I reached out to people who

36:51

had been tweeted about that week by

36:53

Lives of TikTok and I said, hey, just wanted to know,

36:55

are you getting more harassment? And

36:59

three people who I reached out to came

37:01

straight back to me like, oh my God, I had no

37:03

idea what was going on. I suddenly started to get

37:05

all of this stuff in my inbox and all

37:07

of these hateful messages and all this hate. And

37:10

turns out it was because of this. I didn't

37:12

even know that this was out there. So it's

37:14

not like... It's a different

37:16

playing field when, again, when I write

37:18

a story about Haya, I interview her, she

37:20

decides to sit her followers on me, like whatever.

37:24

It's fair game to a certain extent. This is

37:26

just some person who, again, is trying

37:28

to put a message of joy

37:29

and love and allyship out there and

37:32

then that video gets taken out of context

37:34

and gets put onto this site and the next thing you

37:36

know, you're getting all of this hate. But

37:38

honestly, what this story reminds me

37:41

of is I did a story a few months

37:43

ago about a guy called... I don't

37:45

even want to name him, but let's just say like a far

37:47

right troll. He's a literal

37:49

neo-Nazi who was organizing

37:52

something, was organizing a campaign

37:55

on telegraph. Now, his was much more

37:57

blatant. He was basically saying, go and attack...

38:00

these people go and ruin

38:02

their day, go and ruin their week, go

38:04

attack these people. And it was mainly LGBTQ

38:08

accounts on Instagram, but again, just random

38:11

people that have been kind of plucked out of mid-air,

38:13

and this guy was just like sicking his followers

38:16

on them.

38:16

Now, Haya sort of dabbles

38:19

with the idea of saying, like, go after these people.

38:21

She has in a couple of times said, oh, it

38:23

would be terrible if these people got a lot of phone

38:25

calls. And again, she can sit

38:28

there and say, like, I don't tell people

38:30

to go out and do these

38:31

threats and I condemn them and all the rest of it. But

38:33

what she hasn't

38:34

done is say, don't do this. She

38:37

hasn't at any point said, please don't go

38:39

and threaten people and send bomb threats, right?

38:42

Which she could do. Yeah, it's a wink,

38:44

wink, wink, not, not. It's the implicit

38:46

understanding of how bullying

38:49

on social media works and

38:52

knowing that that is a side

38:54

effect of posting this, you know,

38:56

posting her content. It's, yeah,

38:59

I mean, I don't think that she could plausibly

39:01

say, look, look, I, hey, I had no

39:04

idea that this person was going

39:06

to be the subject of, you know, all

39:08

of these hateful messages or, you

39:10

know, trying to get them fired from their workplace

39:13

or whatever, you know, whatever the outcome

39:15

is. I don't think even, I don't even

39:17

think she could convince herself

39:20

that that is not a part

39:22

of what she's doing. Right. Because

39:25

we all know that we know how mean people

39:27

can be on social media because they don't have to face

39:29

any consequences. They can just, you know, they can

39:31

sit and be as mean as they want

39:33

to be and they can close their phone and

39:35

they can go on and live with, and they can live

39:38

their life. But the person on the other end

39:40

is the one that has to, you know, reap, reap

39:43

all of the consequences. It's really

39:45

unfair and we shouldn't lose track

39:48

as well at the fact that this is an extremely

39:50

vulnerable population. I mean, this is a,

39:52

this is a group of, this is a segment

39:54

of society that has a far higher

39:57

suicide rate than, you know, than

39:59

the average.

39:59

it's a, as we talked about

40:02

earlier, it's a population that is already

40:05

like fearful and scared and

40:07

having to deal with like harassment, you

40:09

know, from other places. And that's the specific

40:12

audience that is increasingly like getting

40:14

targeted by this. Like, you know, leave

40:17

aside the doctors, leave aside the teachers for

40:19

a minute, leave aside the librarians, like look

40:21

at just like the trans people

40:24

or the LGBTQ people that she posts

40:26

about, like, those are, you know, those

40:28

are people who are already

40:29

vulnerable and already being targeted in

40:32

society and they're being laser

40:34

focused on with this, you know, with

40:36

these campaigns.

40:38

So for this piece,

40:40

you managed to get an interview

40:43

with Right Check Herself, which is a bit

40:46

of a feat considering her hostility to the

40:48

press. I'm curious how you swung that. I

40:50

think it's the first interview that she's done

40:52

with someone who wasn't a complete sycophant, frankly.

40:56

I just reached out to her on Twitter. I

40:58

was like, hey, I'm writing this story

41:00

and I'd really like to talk to you. And she

41:02

said, she wrote back saying,

41:04

look, I'll do it, but only if I

41:07

can record the whole thing. And I said, that's

41:09

fine. I mean, I've got nothing to, you know,

41:11

nothing to hide at all. Like, let's do it. And

41:13

then, yeah, I got a call from her and we talked

41:16

about 45 minutes. That's interesting.

41:18

And like she, we spoke

41:20

to her, I mean, did she totally like just like seem

41:23

to play dumb act like she had

41:26

no culpability for, you know, for

41:28

the connection between what she posts and

41:30

then what the subjects of her post have to

41:32

go through? Yes, essentially. Yeah. I mean,

41:34

what she now, she did several

41:36

times condemn, like these

41:39

bomb threats. She said, look, I don't want anyone getting bomb

41:41

threats. I don't want anyone getting hurt. Like I completely,

41:43

I'm completely against that. I think they should be

41:46

investigated. But she, you know, openly

41:48

denied the fact that they're connected to

41:50

anything that she's posting. She essentially said, look,

41:53

you don't have any proof that these

41:55

people are doing this because I tweeted

41:57

about them and her sort of big

41:59

argument. that I think she'd kind of thought

42:01

long and hard about back at me was like, hey,

42:04

if I get a bunch of death threats

42:06

after you write this story about me, are

42:08

you the journalist then responsible for

42:11

those death threats? And my response

42:13

to that was like, look, I write a lot of stories,

42:15

right, about a lot of different people. And if

42:18

over the course of two years, if someone put together

42:20

a study and came to me and said, look, over the course of

42:22

like two years, dozens of people that

42:24

you've written about have been threatened, like,

42:27

I would take that very seriously, right? And

42:29

I think that anyone who's in the dissemination

42:31

of facts business, which is what we do,

42:34

would in good conscience take that seriously.

42:36

Like imagine if someone came to you guys, imagine

42:38

if like Project Veritas or something came

42:40

to you and were like, hey guys, I just wanna let

42:42

you know, like in dozens of occasions,

42:44

like over the last two years, like subjects

42:46

of QAnon Anonymous have like faced death threats

42:48

and intimidation and harassment. I mean, you'd

42:51

be, you'd probably think twice about that, right,

42:53

you'd be concerned about that. But what she did

42:55

was just deny it. She just denied the

42:57

connection, said, you know, you have no proof,

42:59

this is somebody who's inspired

43:02

by me or driven by me. Like I literally

43:04

think she will maintain that

43:06

line up until the point where

43:09

somebody either calls in a death threat and sort of

43:11

literally says, like, I saw you on

43:13

Libs of TikTok or Libs of TikTok, you know,

43:15

told me about you, or God forbid,

43:17

you know, goes out and commits an act of violence

43:20

and openly says like, I'm doing this because

43:22

I saw it on this channel. So, you

43:25

know, hopefully we don't get to that point, but

43:27

she's certainly not kind of backing down on

43:29

anything that she says or does. And

43:33

I think that that's also sort

43:35

of indicative of the right wing content

43:38

creator. You know, I can

43:40

say for our part, you know, when we first started

43:42

this show, there was always a constant

43:45

conversation about trying to examine,

43:47

you know, whether we were punching down

43:50

or we were, you know, there were times where we

43:52

edited stuff out because we felt like this is a

43:54

small account that's doing something sort

43:56

of crazy. And, you know,

43:58

yeah, it's funny. but it feels

44:01

bad. I mean, we're constantly, you know, and

44:03

still, you know, to this day, we're constantly

44:05

try to be aware

44:08

of that, of even people

44:10

who we completely disagree

44:13

with, you know, politically or ideologically.

44:17

We try to – you know, I speak

44:19

for myself, but I think Travis would agree. I think

44:21

we try to take

44:23

into account the human affect

44:26

of whatever we cover. And

44:30

I think that when it comes to

44:33

right-wing or extreme right-wing

44:35

content, that is – that's

44:37

part of it, right? Because they do

44:39

believe that they are in this, like you

44:42

said, this civil war that

44:44

they are – that this is – these are the hills

44:46

that they're willing to die on. And,

44:49

you know, posting online, attacking people

44:51

online, each is a bullet,

44:54

you know, on the front lines of this

44:56

sort of war that they believe that

44:58

they're in. Yeah, I mean, 100 percent.

45:00

And, you know, it's just – the

45:03

thing is that all this – this has been such an interesting

45:05

kind of journey to go on reporting this story

45:07

and kind of dealing with the – you know, with the

45:10

backlash that resulted from it from the far

45:12

right and kind of dealing with, you know, with everything

45:14

that came out of it. Because it sort of crosses

45:17

over a lot of different interesting things that

45:19

are going on right now, right? Because, I mean, there's

45:21

this sort of weird blurring of, like,

45:23

what's journalism and what's not, you know?

45:26

And what I would say is, like, look, there

45:28

are plenty of, like, conservative

45:31

news sites that are every

45:34

single day reporting about what they

45:36

consider to be, like, outrageous activity

45:38

going on in schools and outrageous activity,

45:40

like, and just this sort of idea

45:43

that the LGBTQ community is kind of taking

45:45

over or whatever. They pick your conspiracy

45:47

theory, right? And they're doing it,

45:49

like, at least with a sort of a veneer

45:51

of, like, journalistic integrity. They're doing

45:53

it in terms of, like, they're not just

45:56

riling people up. Like, they're sort of trying to

45:58

put facts out there and, like, let people make it happen. their mind

46:00

up, but they have a focus

46:03

in the same way that a lot of media

46:05

organizations on the far left have a focus

46:07

and are constantly engaged in trying

46:09

to make the other side look bad. What

46:12

Haya doesn't do

46:15

is she's trying

46:17

to walk this line that she's journalist, but again,

46:20

she doesn't play by the journalistic rules.

46:22

A great example of that, and I hate to bring this up

46:25

because as you mentioned earlier, Travis, we're

46:27

not the story. We're the reporters. We're just

46:30

getting stuff out there, but she's

46:32

released two videos since

46:34

this story came out, both of them attacking me

46:37

and attacking my integrity. She's very,

46:39

very selectively edited out parts

46:41

of that video to make

46:44

her point.

46:45

Of course she was going to do that. We

46:47

knew that she was going to do that the moment that I signed

46:49

up to do the interview, but the point is

46:52

she hasn't included any

46:54

context. She hasn't included my

46:56

side. She hasn't contacted me and said, hey, I'm

46:59

going to make this video. Do you have a comment

47:01

on it? The mere fact that I not

47:04

only reached out to her, but then spent 45 minutes

47:07

listening to her, hearing her out, discussing

47:09

it with her, that's what actual

47:11

journalists do. If you're not

47:14

going to do that, then you can call yourself

47:16

a content creator, call yourself whatever

47:18

you want to call yourself, but I don't know.

47:20

It's not what I consider to be journalism. AARON

47:23

MATE Yeah, we saw on her page,

47:25

she included a photo of herself holding

47:27

the issue of USA Today with

47:29

her Twitter handle on page

47:32

one, seeming very proud of this very

47:35

unflattering story about how

47:37

she's helping inspire bomb threats

47:39

at schools. But she seemed to be proud

47:41

of it because it's like, oh, this whole thing

47:43

is well, I'm being attacked by the mainstream media.

47:46

So I'm like over the target. I

47:48

mean, it's all, I think, a real bullshit

47:50

performance. AARON MATE She also changed her background

47:52

image to one of like, it's the lives of kick

47:55

top logo, but with like little fuses coming off

47:57

it. So they're like bombs. So it's like, look,

48:00

You don't get to in the interview

48:02

say, I'm completely

48:04

against this, I don't think people should do this and

48:06

then act proud and

48:09

sincerely happy about the fact that there's

48:11

a story written about you causing bomb threats. Those

48:14

two things to me are mutually exclusive.

48:17

You can't have it both ways. You

48:19

can't be, oh, I'm proud, I'm proud

48:22

of the quote unquote activism

48:24

that is happening around my content, but

48:27

I'm also totally surprised

48:30

that Deep State USA

48:32

Today would frame me in such

48:35

a negative way. This is crazy,

48:37

this thing that they are accusing me of and I'm so

48:40

proud of this crazy thing at the same

48:42

time. It's all wink, wink, nod, nod

48:44

because she knows I think that

48:47

I'm making an assumption, but I don't

48:49

think she's scared in any way that this

48:51

is going to cost her engagement

48:53

or followers. If you have

48:56

anything, it's a badge of honor like you said. What

48:58

all we can do is I'll just point back

49:00

to the reporting, point back to the story,

49:02

I say, hey, the facts are there, make your own

49:04

mind up, go read the story, go look

49:07

at the correlation, go look at these

49:09

instances, all of which I verified

49:11

by the way. Media Matters did their initial

49:13

work and did the initial correlation

49:16

and found these. I then confirmed

49:18

every single one of them, called every one of these

49:20

institutions, spent a long time, spent weeks

49:23

making phone calls, emails, trying to confirm

49:25

this stuff. The facts speak for themselves. We

49:28

put out a set of facts, it's there,

49:30

she can spin it any way she wants to and

49:32

other people can spin it whatever way they want to. I'm

49:35

just going to point back at the reporting and say, it's

49:37

there, go read it. What was the demeanor

49:40

of the folks who worked at these

49:42

institutions that you talked to? I'm

49:44

sure on the one hand, they were happy that there

49:47

was a real journalist calling

49:49

to verify these facts. If

49:54

you're working in a hospital, that's not easy

49:56

work. We always say when life gets hard,

49:58

like, hey, you're not working in a hospital. you know, at least I'm not

50:01

an emergency room operator, you

50:03

know, that has to, you know, life and death

50:05

every single day. But to add this

50:08

on top of what's already

50:10

pretty well known to be a very stressful sort

50:13

of occupation, but yeah, what was their

50:15

sort of emotional sort of reaction

50:18

when you talk to them? Well, so the hospitals

50:20

are kind of in their own camp, right? Because hospitals

50:22

have like PR people, they

50:24

have, you know, they have a whole PR apparatus,

50:27

they're also, you know, a business. And

50:29

their overwhelming

50:29

response was essentially like, we

50:32

don't want to talk about this, like this happened in the past,

50:34

it's over, we're done, we don't want any more publicity

50:36

on this and I don't want any more negative publicity. Now

50:39

the schools that I could reach and

50:41

the individuals that I could reach, it was

50:43

one, first off, I mean, their

50:46

sort of fear and upset had

50:48

largely kind of congealed into anger and

50:50

that anger was like, as far as they

50:52

were concerned, like there was no doubt where

50:55

this harassment campaign started and where these

50:57

threats came from and who had caused them. Like

50:59

they all firmly pointed the

51:01

finger at, you know, lives a TikTok.

51:03

They said, look, this was like nothing. This

51:05

was like a little controversial thing or in

51:07

some cases wasn't even a controversy until

51:10

that tweet went out and then it went haywire. But

51:13

I'd say there's, I'd say there was some defiance.

51:16

There was some kind of teeth

51:18

gritting and like, we will overcome this kind of

51:20

stuff. But there's also residual fear. Like

51:22

there were several people who, who wouldn't talk

51:25

to me and who were clearly wanting

51:27

to put this behind them, you know, or just didn't,

51:29

didn't want to kind of rip the band-aid off

51:31

this like awful experience that they'd had,

51:33

you know? And I think that that's something that,

51:35

that I see time and time again with people who've

51:38

been victims of like the far right kind

51:40

of harassment, of far right harassment campaigns

51:42

is like, if they come out the other side

51:44

and they're recovering from it and

51:47

sort of, you know, trying to heal the wounds, like they don't

51:49

want to talk about it, you know? Like it's, it's

51:51

a horrible experience and they don't want to open back

51:53

up again. They do not want their name in

51:55

print again, you know? Now there are some brave

51:58

people like Alyssa who we mentioned earlier.

51:59

from South Dakota and she

52:02

told me her whole story and kind of described the

52:04

whole thing. And there's a great

52:07

quote in my story where

52:09

she basically says, look, she

52:11

basically told me, look, we've kind of come out the other end.

52:13

And now what we do in our meetings is like we read

52:16

these comments or we read the tweets that have been

52:18

directed at us, but we kind of read it in a stupid

52:20

voice, you know, so we're kind of like mocking them. Take

52:23

the power

52:23

away. Yeah. And she said, oh, she

52:26

said, it feels like, oh, we've made it. We're making

52:28

news and people are going to notice us. And if they

52:30

notice us, then we can talk more too. We

52:33

can still say that despite all this, we're here,

52:35

we're queer, we're out and we're proud. And

52:38

that sums up like what

52:41

some of the people who come out the other end of these

52:43

campaigns told me. Well,

52:46

you know, I'm going to leave it there because that's, I

52:48

think for a very disturbing story that's about the

52:50

most positive note we could end it on. So

52:52

thank you so much, Will. Where can people

52:55

read more of your work? Well, definitely

52:57

on USA Today. And if you just Google

53:00

Will Carlos, you know, USA Today,

53:02

then that'll take you to my author page. That's got all

53:04

my stories on it and they can follow me. I'm

53:06

at Will Carlos and yeah,

53:09

hit me up. All right. Thank you so much, Will. Thank

53:11

you guys. Thanks for listening to

53:13

another episode of the QAA podcast.

53:16

You can go to patreon.com slash QAnon

53:18

Anonymous and subscribe for $5 a month

53:20

to get a whole second episode every single

53:22

week. Plus access to our entire

53:24

archive of premium episodes of which

53:27

there are now what, Travis, like 230?

53:31

Like over 250. Yeah. I mean,

53:33

yeah, we got we got the 200 plus

53:36

premium episodes plus 10 episodes

53:39

of Trickle Down plus 10 episodes

53:41

of Mangplant plus soon to be very

53:43

soon to be 10 full episodes of

53:45

Spectral Voyager. It is a content

53:48

bonanza. Yes, it's it's

53:50

a pretty I must say it's a pretty

53:52

good value for for five dollars.

53:54

And look, if you're itching to if you're

53:56

itching to hear the premium content, but

53:59

you don't want to subscribe. for a bunch of months, you

54:01

can just pay the five dollars, download

54:03

everything, and then cancel your subscription,

54:05

and then, you know, in a hundred years

54:08

after the next 250 episodes

54:10

drop, you know, you can spring

54:12

for those. So, anyways, thanks to everybody

54:14

who does support us on Patreon because

54:17

it allows us to keep doing

54:20

this strange work. For everything

54:22

else, we've got a website, QAnonAnonymous.com.

54:25

So, listen up. Until next week,

54:28

may the deep dish bless you and keep

54:31

you.

54:55

For a lot of work, we've seen action from the software,

54:58

MOHA, MOHA, most

55:00

of your time, but a total of

55:03

four pain keys. Will

55:05

mentioned that in some of your paragraphs,

55:08

he mentions it once, like she says she opposes her hand.

55:11

He conveniently means that all the other

55:13

times that I have heard of my name, that's all there is. And

55:16

the fact that I never even once called for violence

55:18

in her body. But the whole framing

55:20

of the article is how to construct harmful,

55:23

hateful, dangerous, beaten

55:25

and terrorized who's a tiny, low-brow, that

55:28

I've never advocated for any

55:30

sort of violence. So, if

55:32

they are, why

55:33

aren't the people being

55:41

arrested? Who are these people?

55:58

I have polls. For finally,

56:01

it will be... Do you understand? I

56:03

think you tweet like that, but I never have. And

56:05

it's not on my account. Everybody knows

56:07

that. I'm repeatedly called for

56:10

law enforcement. I'm

56:12

very proud of law enforcement. I've been

56:14

in a verticals for five minutes, and

56:16

I've never seen a officer. In fact, I've been

56:19

created in a woman's arrest day for

56:21

making a murder to the woman's seat. If

56:24

someone decides to call

56:26

on a officer, that person

56:28

obviously has issues in a position they

56:31

are running out. I'll say it again, and

56:33

again, I've never spoken to a person that's trying to get to my place today. I'm

56:36

very proud of you.