Florida’s Groyper Candidate for Governor

This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security, one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau Podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. of my chart. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. I'm Clayton Eckerd. In 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. But here's the thing. Bachelor fans hated him. If I could press a button and rewind it all, I would. That's when his life took a disturbing turn. A one-night stand would end in a courtroom. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. Listen to Love Trapped on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 1969. Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. And at Morehouse College, the students make their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr. It's the true story of protest and rebellion in Black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Call Zone Media. Welcome to It Could Happen Here. I'm Garrison Davis, joined by James Stout. Hello. Hi, Ger. What are we learning about today? We are going to be learning about a man named James Fishback. Okay, good first name. Oh, yeah. I wanted to get someone kind of unbiased, but I now understand Unfortunately. that you might be just kind of, you know, drawn to him. Yeah, I've come here to defend the James name. I don't think that defense will last very long. Okay. James Fishback is a former hedge fund analyst who's been worming his way into the political world of the new right during the past two to three years. Yeah, I'm giving up on that one already. Got no interest in defending this guy. If you're active on any kind of political feeds, whether that's short-form video, Blue Sky, Twitter, you've probably seen a video or two of James Fishback. But this episode, we're going to dive a little bit more into his background and his current political activities, which includes some things you probably haven't heard before. So James Fishback has tried to attach himself to a lot of various aspects of the new right. he attempted to attach himself to the presidential campaign of vivek ramaswamy back in the oldie days okay yeah remember when but he did so just by like showing up at campaign staff events he wasn't a staffer like he just kept like appearing he asked to like stay overnight at a hotel that the staff was all staying at for this campaign event in florida and tried to build a personal rapport with Vivek over a few months. And eventually, Fishback outstayed his welcome. He then pivoted to becoming what I would call a D-tier right-wing commentator and an advocate of Doge. In 2025, Fishback was a frequent guest on news networks, CNN, Fox, and others, speaking as a quote-unquote Doge advisor, a role that he never officially had. Great. Never actually worked with Doge. His quote-unquote advising was through adding Elon Musk on Twitter with random suggestions. He's literally in their comments online. Correct. His Doge claim to fame is that he came up with this idea of the Doge dividend, which is like a stimulus-type check that the government would send to people based on the savings that they found or created through slashing government agencies. So that was his idea that he added Elon Musk about, and this idea gained some traction. And this kind of boosted his image as a quote-unquote Doge advisor, and it helped him trick news agencies into boosting his public profile by associating him with Doge. Eventually, this led to Doge official Katie Miller, wife of Stephen Miller, having to clarify in July of 2025 that Fishback was not involved with Doge in any way. but he got a lot of traction off of this doge advisor thing right back when ramaswamy left doge uh oh yeah i'd forgotten that he he did wow how time flies before the inauguration because he was planning on and is planning on running for governor of ohio fishback tried to put his name in as like a hey i'll become the co-chair of doge elon since my pal ramaswamy is going to be busy uh that also you know did not did not work obviously yeah what a needy guy he's just very very needy very clingy yeah yeah he's very parasocial yes and after katie miller released a statement being like this guy's not part of doge fishback began lobbying trump for the vacant seat on the federal reserve board of governors really no shame based on his you know credentials as this like patriotic America first investor, right? Who's worked at a hedge fund or two and tried to get his way onto this vacant seat. When that didn't turn out, obviously, Fishback set his sights on his home state of Florida, launching what I would call a Groyper style campaign for governor. Cool. And this is what we're going to be discussing for the rest of this episode. I'm not like intimately familiar with the Groyper space, but this seems to be like the most kind of like beta behavior to constantly like notice me uh i forget what that's a word that begins with s pick me no yeah it could be pick me i guess it's like a notice me senpai or something that people say uh i never expected you to say notice me yeah i've unfortunately i've been on the internet too that like that's what he seems right he seems It's like extremely... Yes. Yeah, this is like, I think what would be coded as like beta behavior in the... Yeah, and now he's kind of trying to do this with Fuentes and the Groypers, although at... Oh, I see. To this point, more successfully. Okay. He's actually more successfully ingratiated himself with the Groypers space. On a Tucker Carlson interview, he talked about how the Twitter account, sorry, X account, AF News, or AF Post, it's America First Post, America First News, was a part of his political radicalization towards the sort of Groyper-style politics. This is like a news aggregation account that promotes far-right nationalist talking points and framing through various news stories. A lot of people used to share posts from this account not knowing its political orientation just because it was very active as a news aggregation source. Yeah, there were a few of those on Twitter. BNO News is another one that just aggregates some repo stuff. And Fishback has pointed to this as being a part of his like a Groyper style red pilling is the activity of this account. To get a sense of his kind of very Groyper online background or at least like a place within the new right, I'm going to read a tweet of his from February 8th, 2026. Quote, as Florida governor, I will refuse to let subhuman jesters spike our collective cortisol. Not even once. Also, no foids or e-girls. Unquote. How much of that do you understand, James? I got cortisol. I'm familiar. All right. Okay. So this is using the kind of currently trendy, like, looks-maxing terms. the jester which has been used a lot since clavicular's stream with fuentes and sneco at that club where they played the kanye hal hitler song spiking cortisol is a frequent way that people in the looks backing space will refer to your stress being raised and especially like through politics like through politics raising your stress okay um and foids and e-girls is just like misogynistic ways to refer to women coming out of like the incel space okay so you know this This post is, you know, kind of a joke, but it's also signaling to a certain type of person that, hey, I'm your guy. Yeah, I speak your language. And it's also just really annoying, right? He's trying to be off-putting on purpose because that will drive attention to him from people who don't like him. And, you know, in trying to cover him in this episode, you know, I'm trying to, like, ride that line of not just unnecessarily giving him publicity because he says outrageous things. But then also framing his rising profile within a certain context, which is Groyper candidates popping up more and more frequently across the United States. Yeah. So in terms of Florida, DeSantis can't run for another term. He is term limited. The clear front runner to succeed DeSantis is U.S. Representative from Florida, Byron Donalds, who has Trump's endorsement. Last month, Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins also announced a run for governor. but Fishback is not a non-player in this race and his candidacy displays a tension within the Republican Party between the former like Tea Party and classical MAGA wing which is now the effect of conservative establishment and this new America First Wing which takes some of MAGA's originating principles to their far-right nationalist conclusion. I talked about this tension last year in the episodes about Nick Fuentes' interview with Tucker Carlson and this surge of GRIP-er adjacent Gen Z staffers filling out the ranks of the Republican machine in D.C. Now, Fishback is one of the first candidates to draw a lot of attention by essentially running as a GRIP-er candidate. Depending on how well he does, it could indicate how successful this politics can be when presented in front of Republican voters. The primary election isn't until august and there's not tons of polling yet on this race like let alone from established pollsters but as of late january fishback's most favorable poll puts him 15 points behind frontrunner byron donalds according to quote-unquote patriot polling meanwhile donald's own sponsored poll puts him upwards of 42 points ahead of fishback around the new year so all this stuff is really out of date and fishback certainly has risen his profile since then but we're still waiting on like reliable polls to come out yeah but he's certainly getting a lot of headlines and is uh doing a successful job in raising his public profile now a part of fishback's strategy to raise his public profile and like name recognition both in florida and nationally it seems to be just through generating controversy very similar to how fuentes did this or the more recent social ascension of the looks-maxing streamer clavicular. Earlier this month, Fishback claimed that a fire was, quote, intentionally set in his side yard, prompting him to do a publicity stunt where he walked out of his porch holding an AR-15 style rifle above his head, promising to shoot anyone who attempts to harm him and his staff. I will share a clip. I've seen this one. I'm excited to watch it again there if you come back to this home and our staff our volunteers are working hard we're not waiting for the police we're gonna shoot you with an ar-15 sight on scene 556 yeah that's what we're going to do it's very simple shall not be infringed we have a right It's just a bunch of words that he's saying, like not in any particular order. 5.56. Yeah. It doesn't make much sense. It doesn't, no. It also 5 I guess people do call it 5 But yeah fascinating 2 30 round Well he doesn actually have a magazine in there I noticed No, no magazine. The backside's folded down as well. It is, for those familiar with such things, a straight-out-the-box Smith & Western MP15. It looks like he may have bought it quite recently. So this is one such incident where he tried to generate some kind of publicity through this very provocative gesture. But he's also done this through the language he uses. Fishback refers to frontrunner Byron Donalds, who is black, as Byrone, which is just not his name, and has said, quote, Byrone wants to turn Florida into a Section 8 ghetto, unquote. He's also used Charlemagne's nickname for Hakeem Jeffries, A-Pak Shakur, to refer to Donald's and has called Donald's a quote-unquote slave to his donors. Jesus Christ. So yeah, a lot of stuff like that. Yeah. Fishback has proposed a 50% income tax on OnlyFans creators, calling it a quote-unquote sin tax. And one of his very first campaign videos was titled, I'm running for Florida governor to make the trains run on time. Oh. Cool. so i this has not like generated tons of controversy and headlines yeah it's you know caused some social media posters to be like oh look at this guy clearly doing a nazi dog whistle but then it's also signaled you know early early in the campaign signals to you know gripers and people in the very very far fringes of the right has signaled to them that hey i'm gonna be your guy yeah which in part he's doing so that he can count on them to kind of do free free publicity for him right like he wants to activate a certain type of overly online young male to be like a public spokesperson to like to just to boost his name recognition and even if he doesn't win in florida in this race it'll at least help his career like nationally in some way so he's he's counting on this like a groyper block to do a lot of heavy lifting and that's part of why he does some of these very very like gross tongue-in-cheek stuff make the trains run on time come on dude Yeah, it's like a clumsy dog whistle, right? It's embarrassing. There's no sleight of hand here or whatever. He's just kind of blundering his way towards being like, look at me Nazis. Yeah. This video, he just talked about trying to bring back the Amtrak to the Florida panhandle. It's like a one-minute video. Yeah, cool. It had nothing to do about actually making trains run on time. It was about trying to return Amtrak to a certain section of Florida. Fitchback has promised to, quote, divest every penny from Israel on day one, unquote, which would include 385 million in foreign bonds invested in by the state. And he's opposed to adopting anti-Semitism definitions in schools that make it, quote unquote, against the law to criticize Israel. Yeah, this is where the hard right and the soft right. Yeah, I bet. Yeah, I'm sure it's Israel you're concerned with here, buddy. Yeah, no, I bet. I'm sure. He's not doing this out of, you know, principled stances of Palestinian solidarity. Yeah, he just wants to do anti-Semitism like the old-fashioned way. Yes. And this can be displayed during a campaign event at the University of Central Florida, where Fishback discussed how to make lunches in high school cafeterias more healthy. But on topic. What's with the Pop-Tarts in the Broward County Public Schools in the cafeterias? I'm not saying that the test scores are a result of the Pop-Tarts, but if you wanted kids to fail, if you wanted to set up our kids for failure, you would feed them the absolute goy slop in our cafeterias. And that, that is on Gentile, okay? everyone's really excited to hear that hey uh yep wow yeah i mean the crowd is like uh they love it yeah but it also looks like they just arrived from like a southern florida be a pong invitational tournament like it's uh it's it's a lot of like frat boy type yes it's a lot of the people who are who consumed like the manosphere type content online yeah short clips of nick fuentes probably aren't regularly tuning into his like three hour live stream on rumble but but engage with his content through short clips online yeah same thing with like sneeko clavicular right it's it's this type of this type of influencer which has right-wing politics but but they aren't like super invested in politics it's it's this it's this mix of like post incel male influencers that combine right-wing politics and it's a very common form of like entertainment for these people that we see in the background of this video right it's a lot of Like college guys, 18 to 22. Yeah, it's mostly white men from traditional college age. Speaking of schools, in 2022, a Florida school district cut ties with Fishback's debate organization after a female student came forward with allegations that Fishback, quote, initiated a romantic relationship, unquote, with her while she was working for his student debate organization when she was 17 years old. He was 27. Jesus. The student claimed in a protection order request that after joining the debate organization when she was 16, Fishback, quote-unquote, systematically cultivated a relationship with her by increasing, quote-unquote, opportunities for personal interaction, and that Fishback later, quote-unquote, explicitly directed her to keep the relationship a secret while she was working for his school debate organization. Jesus. After turning 18, she moved in with Fishback. The two were briefly engaged. Fishback denies the student's characterization of the relationship timeline. After the girl broke up with him, Fishback allegedly sent hundreds of unanswered texts to her over several days. This information comes out of a harassment case that was later dismissed. The case wasn't about the legality of their relationship, importantly. It was about harassment after the two had broken up where these details emerged. Yeah. His debate organization, this is some kind of like plastic turning point. Yeah, but kind of. It was a Florida-based debate organization in high schools to encourage debate. It was active around 2022. It was bought by another company a year or two ago. But in 2022, a district ended cooperation with this organization after news came out about this relationship. Yeah. It is interesting considering the amount that Fishback and Fuentes and these guys will talk about the Epstein files and then have this in your... Yeah, inappropriate relationships with underage women. Yeah. That worked for you in your high school debate organization. Yeah, that gives me the ick. in a substantial way. Also kind of not that surprising from this kind of area of the right, but it's still gross. Yeah. It's time for an ad break, but we will return to discuss Fishback's reoccurring campaign rhetoric and his promises as governor. Hi, this is Jo Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And I just sat down with a mini driver. The Irish traveler said when I was 16, you're going to have a terrible time with men. Actor, storyteller, and unapologetic Aquarian visionary. Aquarius is all about freedom loving and different perspectives. And I find a lot of people with strong placements in Aquarius like are misunderstood. A sun and Venus in Aquarius in her seventh house spark her unconventional approach to partnership. He really has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms, on different houses, in different places, but just an embracing of the isness of it all. If you're navigating your own transformation or just want a chart side view into how a leading artist integrates astrology, creativity, and real life, this episode is a must-listen. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. This MSS officer has no idea the U.S. government is on to him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the Sixth Bureau podcast. I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question, of his life. And that's a unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict? A villain? A nurse named Lucy Letby. Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level if the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton Eckerd, and in 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. He became the first bachelor to ever have his final rose rejected. The internet turned on him. If I could press a button and rewind it all, I would. But what happened to Clayton after the show made even bigger headlines. It began as a one-night stand and ended in a courtroom, with Clayton at the center of a very strange paternity scandal. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. Please search for it. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. This season, an epic battle of he said, she said, and the search for accountability in a sea of lies. I have done nothing except get pregnant by the f***ing bachelor. Listen to Love Trapped on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back. A big part of Fitchback's campaign is targeting H-1B visas. He promised on day one as governor to fire as many H-1B workers as he can and to, quote unquote, incentivize companies to hire Americans again. Here's a radio appearance where he discusses this. On the first day in office, I would fire every single H-1B who works at a state agency. Number two, if you have a state contract with Tallahassee, I don't care if it's serving meals or serving up IT tech support, you have 24 hours to pick. As President Reagan said, Drew, now is the time for choosing. You got to pick. Do you want your $50 million a year state contract from Tallahassee or do you want your 50 or 100 H-1Bs? You pick. You can't have both. There's no negotiating and you have 24 hours. That's how we create a culture that stands up for the dignity of American workers. That's an interesting approach. You can't get H-1B jobs, not for the federal government, but for state government. I cannot imagine that, especially in Florida, there are very many Well he not just concerned about H Fishback has also railed against student visas as a threat to the American way of life and has falsely said that Trump plans to send 200 students from China to Florida public universities which serve only about 430 students So they'd be like 45%. It's not real. It's just not. That's just not true. Yeah. This was proposed as an idea, not Florida specifically, but this was proposed in spring of 2025 as a negotiating tactic with China over tariffs. This isn't a real thing. Since then, Fishback has promised to raise tuition on all foreign students to $1 million via executive order. The governor cannot legally raise state school tuition via executive order. These are just words that he's saying. Also, like a lot of these state schools, having a certain number of students who are paying a higher fee, be that the non-US or out of state, like it's integral to their budgeting, right? Like, yeah, they're not making it on interstate tuition. Fishback has talked about all this in an interview on Tucker Carlson's internet show last month, where he said that a child, quote, from Shenzhen, who doesn't know what Florida orange juice tastes like, can't possibly in an economic sense. But I think, I mean, not to sound gay, but in a spiritual sense does not represent our state and our heritage, unquote. Tucker replied, that's the opposite of gay, actually, unquote. That's a hell of a exchange of words again. Like I'm like, like a little lost here. Yeah, this is this is a sizable faction of of the new right of the of of the groopers who are filling staffer positions at Heritage and in DC. Yeah. Like, this is the sort of media environment, like, linguistic environment that they are coming out of. And the Pearl Clutchie reaction is not useful here, right? I'm not, like, who cares, right? This is obviously embarrassing. This is, like, a man in his 30s trying to sound like a kind of homophobic 18-year-old who's kind of only homophobic via, like, linguistic reflux. This is, like, embarrassing cosplay. Yeah, it's very cringe. I can't even find this stuff offensive. Like, this is just, it's... No, it's sad. Like, the primary sentiment, I feel, is, like, vicarious shame for this guy and his, like, desperate search for attention. Now, a core component of selling fascism to people is that they were promised a future that's now been taken away from them because of some group of people that are the enemy, right? This is, like, the dream of finding a subservient wife, a cushy full-time job, buying a home, raising 2.5 kids in a safe and secure homeland. But because of, quote-unquote, them, this dream is no longer possible. Through the years, we've seen different versions of this targeting Jews, feminists, Palestinians, Muslims, Mexicans, Central and South American immigrants. Now, during Fishback's Carlson interview, he elucidated on like an updated version of the 21st century version of the American dream that was stolen from Gen Z. Gen Z was such an important part of the president's victory last year. Yes. And they feel betrayed by a lot of these Trump advisors and what they've chosen to prioritize and not. I can see why. And when I've met them and I've met them where they are at their universities, whether it's UF a couple of weeks ago, I'll be at FSU and just a couple of weeks from now, their number one frustration is that, look, they don't want to be lectured anymore. They got a degree. They got good grades. They got good test scores. They didn't study gender studies or black intersectionality. They did the STEM thing that Republicans told them to do. Yeah, learn to code. Learn to code. And now they say, you know what? Amazon, Google, FedEx. No, no, those jobs aren't available for you, you pesky Americans. You want paid time off. You want to go to church on Sunday. We're going to give those jobs to an entire new class of foreign serfs known as the Indians and the Chinese. And we're not going to even interview you for those positions. They don't even pretend that the Chinese or the Indians are smarter. They're not. They don't speak our language. They have no skin in the game. They're not smarter. They're not at all. Oh, I know. And so the issue then becomes, do we actually have a labor market that is utterly rigged against American citizens? The answer is yes. I think this is a really interesting exchange on a sort of slide that's happening on the right, beyond talking about illegal immigrants. What's really interesting to me is that the first real immigration restrictions that were passed in the United States was the Chinese Exclusion Act, right? Yeah. And we have circled all the way back to essentially a very similar argument. Yeah, the slide from talking about illegal immigrants in the far-right space to really honing in on student visas, foreign workers, I think is an interesting pivot. And this new version of the American dream of like STEM jobs, learn to code, that's now been taken away, that's no longer accessible because so many young Americans aren't getting hired because they're adamant about going to church on Sunday. Something that's not true. That's not real. Yeah, that's not a real thing. First of all, young Americans are not, in large numbers, going to church on Sunday, nor is there hiring discrimination because they don't want to work on Sundays, right? These things aren't real, but it taps into a certain feeling that someone in college might have right now, especially in the wake of like AI, vibe coding of, they were told that there's this like life track where you can work in tech. And now there really isn't many tech jobs open to people. And they're trying to turn this situation into this fight against legal immigration. Yeah, into fascism. It's funny to see Carlson repeating that the learn to code thing as if that was like a serious piece of career advice given to people. that has been a meme for, I don't know, close to a decade. Yeah. Like everybody knew there was bullshit. It's literally like the phrase is a joke. Fishback later says after this little rant that, quote, our North Star should not be a free market, but a free people. He's okay if the market's not free. He's okay if we're going to be restricting which types of workers are allowed as long as we have a free American people. Yeah. So his strategy for winning this race appears to be through appealing to homeowners and prospective homeowners through tax cuts and down payment assistance, but then also really trying to engage Gen Z voters, looking at the success of previous politicians, including including Trump and how much of his victory was related to the Gen Z vote. he's really, really honing in on trying to activate young voters in Florida. He's planning to visit every single state college and state university and talk about these issues. As a social media stunt, he's going on a statewide Waffle House tour, visiting all the locations in the state. Great. And through this, he continues to talk about these beliefs on legal immigration. In an interview with a local magazine, Fishback discussed his belief in the quote-unquote great replacement, stating, quote, you can't make America great again with Chinese. You can't make America great again with Indians. You can't make America great again with Haitians. So when I speak about the Great Replacement, I speak about legal immigration programs that for far too long have been overlooked. Illegal immigration has been a primary concern for establishment Republicans, but each one of many legal immigration programs, by definition, take spots and slots, jobs away from American citizens. My campaign is the one that stands up and says, America is for Americans. And so we have to stop apologizing for that. Yeah. Little slight move there with the America is for Americans. Yeah. In reference to Germany for the Germans. I'm sure he knows exactly what he's doing. Oh, most certainly. Yeah. This is the obvious next place. They have made so much political headway with racism. And the obvious direction to keep going, therefore, is to be the one who's willing to lean a little bit further into racism, right? See if that can get you a little bit further, a little bit more popular. Yeah. It makes sense in that way. That's why I find his candidacy really interesting. Regardless of how well he's going to end up doing in the primary, he is trying to Trojan horse something into, not even Trojan horse in a way, he's kind of openly trying to pull something into Republican politics. Something that's been like festering in the sidelines for a while, you know, stuff that Nick's been advocating for a while. There was that fight around H-1B visas about a year ago. And he's really honing in on this as a potential future for the party. And we're going to we're going to see how successful this is, like in part. Right. There could be other factors that make his campaign not do very well beyond these sorts of politics. But this is this is the first time you've really seen these deployed at this scale, I think. And he's counting on the GRIPers support. And this is this is what Nick's been talking about for a while, trying to run candidates like this as much as possible. in 2026. We'll talk more about Fishback's relationship with Fuentes and the Gripers after this ad break. Hi, this is Jo Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And I just sat down with a mini driver. The Irish traveler said when I was 16, you're going to have a terrible time with men. actor, storyteller, and unapologetic Aquarian visionary. Aquarius is all about freedom loving and different perspectives. And I find a lot of people with strong placements in Aquarius, like are misunderstood. A sun and Venus in Aquarius in her seventh house spark her unconventional approach to partnership. He really has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms and different houses and different places, but just an embracing of the isness of it all. If you're navigating your own transformation or just want a chart side view into how a leading artist integrates astrology, creativity, and real life, this episode is a must listen. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. This MSS officer has no idea the U.S. government is on to him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the Sixth Bureau podcast. I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question, of his life. And that's a unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, a story gripped the U.K., evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Letby. Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox and in the new podcast Doubt the Case of Lucy Letby we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was No voicing of any skepticism or doubt It'll cause so much harm at every single level if the British establishment of this is wrong Listen to Doubt the Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts I'm Clayton Eckerd, and in 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. He became the first Bachelor to ever have his final rose rejected. The internet turned on him. If I could press a button and rewind it, all I would. But what happened to Clayton after the show made even bigger headlines. It began as a one-night stand and ended in a courtroom, with Clayton at the center of a very strange paternity scandal. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. Please search warrant. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I Stephanie Young This is Love Trapped This season an epic battle of he said she said and the search for accountability in a sea of lies I have done nothing except get pregnant by the f bachelor Listen to Love Trapped on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Alright, we're back. In my episode last year about the right-wing fallout of Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson's brief friendship, I discussed how Fuentes was making threats and promises to deploy his Gruber fan base to influence elections both in 2026 and then in the Republican presidential primary in 2028. And after that news cycle had peaked, Fuentes continued to really hammer down his promise and threat to various candidates that if they do not adopt sufficient America first messaging, he will deploy his fan base across many different primary states to influence the election through support and harassment. And I believe that Fishback is attempting to hold Nick to this promise. On a podcast appearance last year, Fishback said that Nick Fuentes, quote unquote, broke the internet by speaking truth to the deranged maniac Piers Morgan in an interview. I do love how Piers Morgan is now like an avatar of woke for the American, right? The biggest interview of the year. Nick Fuentes and Piers Morgan were Nick made very, very clear. We are done with the pearl clutching. We are done with the white guilt. We are done with this pseudo religion that attacks us for just wanting to exist in our own country, to buy a home, to get a job, and to benefit from all the things that we were promised. There he is again, talking about all the things that we were promised. And us, right? Like he's a 30-year-old hedge fund guy. Yeah. Like he got all the things. No, he did get the dream that he is saying no longer exists. Like that has been his life. Yeah, yeah. And he's just trying to cash in on it now. No, but through this interview, he just keeps talking about Fuentes and glowingly refers to the Graeber fan base. I'll tell you the truth. I found the audience of young men who follow and watch Nick Fuentes to be actually incredibly informed and insightful and very patriotic young men. I'm going to be completely honest. I probably shouldn't say this, but I think Nick's following is actually really impressive. There's a lot of young men who are patriotic, who are well-informed, who know our history, which is why they are so frightened by the current path that we are on. Having a candidate talk openly about the Gropers in this way, I think, is super interesting. This is one of the first cases, and I don't think it'll be the last, where Nick's fans and Nick himself are openly referred to in a race like this. yeah it's a it's interesting again not like super duper surprising to me how easily the overton window is moved to the right right now and there's a whole like network of these like short form or long form video places to do that right that are kind of set up to incentivize that almost he doesn't have any particular genius that allows him to do it right like there is a system in place, both with like Fuentes kind of outside of the electoral politics Overton window, and then all these places that straddle the lie, right? Like Tucker Carlson, et cetera, et cetera, where that exist to bring these further right discourses into the admissible discourse of electoral politics in this country. Yeah. And Fishback, as a largely unremarkable candidate, is counting on a group of probably hundreds to thousands of young men to do free campaign work for him by telling them that they're good smart little boys yeah by complimenting them he is is counting on on his success being contingent on this griper army of gen z internet users yeah to him these are like a valuable political block and like that that's the thing that i find interesting about this yeah as you they used to be like pure poison right yeah yeah now now they're seen as like a as like a possible asset. Yeah. And Fishback knows that there could be some drawbacks by going this extreme. A few days ago, Fishback walked through Miami's nightlife on stream with Manosphere influencer Sneeko, who asked Nick Fuentes if he would endorse Fishback as governor. Oh, he said yes. Nick Fuentes has endorsed James Fishback for governor of Florida. Oh, gee, that'll really help. Let's go. Wait, it won't help. Never mind. he's voting for byron uh no nick fuentes is voting for byron donalds but that's a bad name byron donalds does that even sound like he could be a governor so there you can see that he knows that it could have some possible negative effects but he's he's willing to play in this like irony irony zone while still very clearly embracing fuentes and and the gripers yeah and like on this stream with snickers is like indicative of a few things after Fishback talked about Goyslop at that school event, you know, he said afterwards that he wasn't aware of, like, the offensive connotations of the term. Where the fuck else is he getting that word from? Which is not true, right? This has been, like, a 4chan term forever to talk about how, like, the Jews are poisoning Gentiles with food to make them, like, subservient, right? That's what the term means. He knows that. And he continued to use the Goyslop term on Sneeko's stream. And after jaywalking on this stream, Fishback joked, quote, the headline we'll read tomorrow, Florida gubernatorial candidate breaks the law with Hitler sympathizer, referring to Sneeko. Great. And based on the most recent polling we have on this race, Fishback's youth-centric strategy does seem to be getting its intended results. In a University of North Florida public Opinion Research Lab poll from the middle of February, Byron Donald's is up 31% to James Fishback at 6%, about a 25% gap, which is kind of in between the more Fishback-friendly Patriot polling numbers and Byron Donald's own internal polling. A sizable gap to be sure, but not one that is insurmountable. What's really interesting about this poll, though, is the youth numbers. For ages 18 to 34, James Fishback is at 32%, whereas Byron Donald's is at 8%. He's massively ahead among youth. Meanwhile, Byron Donald's tactics to address Fishback's connection to the Gripers has been a little odd. I'm going to read a statement from last week. Dear James Fishback, I heard you crashed out when I told the truth about your stupid anti-Semitic BDS plan that you stole from Kamala Harris, just like you stole your whole gimmick from Nick Fuentes and Zoran Mamdani. You're no racist. You're no groiper. You're no anti-Semite. You're what people hate about politics. Performative slop. Unquote. So Byron Donald's approach to addressing Fishback's ties to the Groypers are not to actually attack him for these ties, but to say that he's a fake Groyper, that he's not actually one of them, that he's stealing his policy ideas from Kamala Harris and stealing his gimmick from Fuentes and Zoran Mamdani. Quote unquote, you're no anti-Semite, you're no racist. So basically attacking Fishback for not being a real enough racist? And Donald isn't the only one linking Fishback to Zoran Mamdani. The conservative magazine The Spectator released a positive profile on Fishback last week with the headline, Is James Fishback the Right's Answer to Zoran Mamdani? The similarities seemingly being that he's behind in the polls in a race that could be very influential for the future of the Republican Party while gaining a lot of traction among youth and having a savvy online element of the campaign. And so Byron Donald's response to Fishback's popularity online, the popularity among young voters, is to compare him to Kamala Harris and Zoran Mamdani and claim that he's not actually a real racist, that he's not actually a real groiper. I do not believe this is going to be an effective line of attack or damage his numbers among the young, especially male supporters that he has. Because Fishback already knows that he has the Groyper base in his pocket. And that's why he's able to make jokes with Sneeko about how, no, no, no, Nick Fuentes is actually supporting the other guy. He is secure enough in his Groyper support to jokingly distance himself from Fuentes as a strategic move because he knows the Gripers are already going to be doing free labor for him to boost his chance of winning. He already has them. Cool. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Like he's relying on like social media exposure from them and then he can even say other stuff to conventional media and it probably won't matter that much. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, he's still getting profiled by major outlets like every week. And it's going to be a long race. He wants to eventually debate Donald's like in a televised debate. Unclear if that's going to happen. But as of now, that's kind of the current state of his candidacy, his strategy to overcome the gap in polls. And I will be keeping an eye on this race, specifically because it does relate to what I was talking about last year in terms of this wave of Groyper-friendly candidates expected to try to get into the Republican Party in the next two to four years. Yeah, the election is November of this year. november is the general august is the primary okay yeah so uh i guess the kind of republican primary in uh in georgia is the the big deal i mean in florida sorry yeah yeah the primary race in florida is going to be the one that i'm keeping the most track of yeah yeah and you know don't be surprised if you start seeing fishback pop up and more stuff in the next few weeks yeah great well that does it for us today at it could happen here yeah now it's time to end the podcast to lower the collective cortisol. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security, one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Joe Interstein, host of the Spirit Daughter Podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And today I'm talking with my dear friend, Krista Williams. It can change you in the best way possible. Dance with the change, dance with the breakdowns. The embodiment of Pisces intuition with Capricorn power moves. So I'm like delusionally proud of my chart. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. I'm Clayton Eckerd. In 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. But here's the thing. Bachelor fans hated him. If I could press a button and rewind it all, I would. That's when his life took a disturbing turn. A one-night stand would end in a courtroom. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. Listen to Love Trapped on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 1969. Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. And at Morehouse College, the students make their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr. It's the true story of protest and rebellion in Black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.