Will Sommer JBL STEIN
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will som jbl
11 26 loomer fara text msg bs?
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AN 11 26 POST BLU TSU
It has been almost a week since the blue tsunami flooded the United States and MAGA has finally decided that the 2026 midterms were rigged.
Over the weekend, President Donald Trump's allies began sprinkling denialist conspiracy theories across social media. On Monday morning, Trump picked up on it and joined in, claiming that there was no possible way that the elections were accurate since the polls showed him to be beloved.
"Does anybody really believe that this 'Election' was honest. How could the Polls be so wrong??? Some early voting 'dumps' were so large that it was impossible to win, no matter how many people went to vote," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "It’s all about the machines, which are far more important than the voter! President DJT"
This would mean that two elections Trump oversaw were allegedly "rigged."
The Bulwark's Sam Stein and Will Sommer chatted for "MAGA Monday" about the conspiracy theories that "have been a little slow to get off the ground."
Trump is ranting about the polls, but Stein said that the only thing wrong with the polls is that they severely undercounted the Democratic vote. Even if they weren't undercounting, however, there still would have been a huge blue wave.
Trump citing "the machines," Sommer said, appears to go back to the idea that electronic voting machines are far "more important than voters."
"That's music to Mike Lindell's ears," Sommer said. He noted that Lindell is giving a "national address" at 7 p.m. EST, claiming the election was stolen.
"Jesus Christ, man, I can't believe we're doing this s—— again," Stein grumbled.
They pointed out that some Republicans were trying to take a victory lap over the fact that Republicans didn't throw a fit and claim the election was "rigged." Former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer wrote on X, "Tuesday was not a good night for Republicans. It’s been 4 days and no protests, riots and vandalism."
Stephen Richer, the former Republican Maricopa County Recorder, replied, "Congrats on not doing J6 this time! Really impressive!"
It was two days after that post that Trump claimed the election was rigged.
"It's like the lowest bar. You cleared it, Sean. Congrats," Stein said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Except now, apparently, Trump's not accepting."
Sommer quickly pointed out that it isn't January yet. The Jan. 6 attack happened after over a month of Trump's claims that the election was stolen from him.
"So, like, the arc has not finished," he added. "You know, you can't say we didn't do January 6th until they're sworn in."
The swearing-in date is Jan. 3.
So, there is an uptick in claims of voter fraud and Sommer said that it's just now "getting going."
Stein thinks the delay in claiming fraud came from MAGA fans being "lost" since Trump didn't make such claims for a week.
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an 11 26 ...?
“Sadly now, it’s too late and America is over,” posted Loomer on X the day after the Democrat wave. “Plan for your survival. Stock up on supplies, finalize your will in case massive political violence erupts, and temper the expectations of your children and grandchildren who will never know the American Dream. Make sure your children have food and shelter, but aside from that, most people’s kids are not going to have a future full of aspirations.”
“We are going to watch our country implode in the next five years,” she continued. “Eight jihadi candidates will now be headed to Congress after last night’s election. They will take their oath of office on the Quran, which explicitly causes for the killing of non-Muslims. They will have access to classified information and they will leak that information to America’s enemies and sleeper cells in our country who will without a doubt work to kill Americans. I’m glad that I was able to predict America’s future because it gave me time to plan. But aside from just trying to stay alive every single day, most Americans will not be experiencing much joy in the coming future. If you think things are bad now because gas is a dollar more expensive, you are in for a serious rude awakening.”
“Oh, my God. ‘Just Let me die,’ basically,” said Stein, describing her post. “Are people trying to talk her off the ledge? This kind of looks like a cry for help.”
“She tends to go to a dark place anyhow,” said Sommer. “She made statements during past Republican defeats where she’s said, ‘I can’t have a family. I’ve destroyed my life for Donald Trump’ …. So, she’s one who kind of puts the pathos out there a little more than most.”
“It makes sense that she’s out of reach, but she’s not the only one,” said Stein, who then quickly added that her “foe, Marjorie Taylor Greene, is clearly having the time of her life because she gets to say ‘I told you so.”
And MTG did just that, posting an AI image of herself holding court as a queen while Loomer bawls her eyes out behind her.
“Good morning, everyone. Except Laura Loomer,” posted MTG on X. “An insane woman, two-time congressional loser, who has zero real life experience. Yet Natalie Harp somehow helped Laura become Trump’s crazy train late-night advisor. Make her the press secretary! Make her chief of staff! Give Laura something! Please entertain me!”
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10 26
- Will Sommer @ The Bulwark: Republicans Finally Have Their First “Goth Groypette” House Candidate
Kelley Dennison has embraced the movement’s symbolism. Its leaders are fixated on her weight and tattoos.
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9 26
Sep 11, 2026 Bulwark Takes
Will Sommer and Andrew Egger dig into Katie Miller’s previously undisclosed financial stake in Elon Musk’s xAI and why it may shed new light on her relentless promotion of Grok. Miller has posted hundreds of times repeatedly attacked OpenAI, Anthropic, and other AI companies while boosting Grok as the AI for “true patriots.” But the Washington Post found through White House financial disclosures that she owns roughly $1 million in xAI stock. After the Post broke the story, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson rushed to defend Katie and instead of declining to comment, Ferguson accused the Post of partisan attacks.
Stephen Miller’s Wife Has Some Explaining to Do
1 mil$ xai grok stock
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9 26
PRO-TRUMP INTERNET PERSONALITY Matt Tardio has made a career out of slamming the left. He was front and center last October at the protests outside Portland’s ICE facility, criticizing the demonstrations as violent and lawless. But records show that while in the Pacific Northwest, Tardio ran seriously afoul of some laws as well. And when confronted, he blamed Antifa for getting him high.
Often appearing alongside MAGA activist Nick Sortor, whose arrest at the protests turned them into a national issue, Tardio—a former Green Beret—earned mentions in outlets like the New York Times and NPR, while streaming the clashes nightly to thousands of viewers.
The protests helped Tardio grow his online audience, which stands, nearly a year later, at 375,000 subscribers on YouTube and 113,700 followers on X.
Police and court records I obtained through open records requests show that on August 26, Tardio pleaded no contest in Portland to felony coercion and misdemeanor harassment charges. According to police and Tardio’s alleged victim, Tardio tried to take one of his fans at the protest back to his hotel room to have sex. When she refused, he allegedly became forceful, grabbing the woman and even carrying her down an alley before she managed to escape—a crime caught in full detail, ironically, by surveillance cameras at the ICE facility.
When interviewed by a Portland detective, Tardio had an explanation: Left-wing “antifa” activists had plotted to get him stoned by
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8 26
'VERY weird situation': Hegseth EXPOSED for building army of INTERNET TROLLS to boost himself online
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Trump Pentagon secretly amassing ‘troll army’ as report exposes 'scandal of the century'
raw ref blwk
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has quietly assembled an online army of MAGA influencers — including some who work for the Pentagon or have nearly landed jobs there, according to a new report.
It came to light this week that Jennica Pounds, a right-wing influencer better known as “Data Republican” on X, has worked as a temporary Pentagon special government employee since July. The Defense Department confirmed her employment but refused to explain what specific duties Pounds performs.
But Pounds appears to be only one member of a “Pentagon troll army” Hegseth is assembling, The Bulwark revealed Thursday.
ALSO READ: 'I'm shocked': Chris Christie's telling Trump moment among revelations in new Russia files
“The defense secretary’s MAGA influencer allies aren’t merely cheering him on - some work for him,” The Bulwark’s Will Sommer told readers.
Sommer pointed to several other pro-Trump online personalities with connections to the Pentagon, including retired Col. Thomas R. Anderson, known online as “Cynical Publius,” as well as active-duty Army Lt. Col. Adam D. Ortona, another pro-Hegseth influencer.
Anderson has repeatedly promoted Hegseth’s agenda and stepped in recently to defend Pounds, saying she had “no obligation” to disclose her government role, The Bulwark reported. The Pentagon did not respond to questions about whether Anderson also works for it.
Meanwhile, Ortona has attacked Democrats and vowed to help Hegseth battle the bureaucracy inside the Pentagon, the report said.
Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) called the revelations the “scandal of the century.”
“How many more people that are blue checkmarks on X, that are putting out information on behalf of the federal government and Donald Trump and the Republican party . . . are actually special government employees being paid by your tax dollars?” Kinzinger asked in a social media video.
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7 26 ALSO POD SAVE WORLD
- Will Sommer @ The Bulwark: Laura Loomer’s About-Face on Ukraine Baffles Allies
- “You’ve got to ask yourself what in the name of sweet holy hell is going on here?”
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PRO-TRUMP INTERNET SLEUTH Jennica Pounds—better known as “Data Republican” to her nearly one million followers on X—made a grim announcement on Friday. Deep-state operatives embedded within the Trump administration had tried to entrap her into committing treason.
“It’s not okay when the Deep State sets you up to commit a crime,” she wrote in a now-deleted thread. “I have never been more angry in my life.”
In Pounds’s portentous telling, an unnamed official—soon after revealed to be Sarah B. Rogers, the undersecretary for public diplomacy at the State Department—had offered to leak her government documents about Cuba to publish as an “exclusive.” While Pounds was initially enthusiastic, markings on the documents prompted her to panic that she was being set up. Had she published the documents, Pounds felt, she would’ve exposed herself to criminal prosecution. She took the news of her supposed entrapment directly to her audience.
The idea that Trump administration officials would conspire to send Pounds to prison is bizarre on its face. After all, Pounds is an administration favorite. Her tweets claiming to have data to justify Elon Musk’s cuts aimed at USAID and other government agencies made her an out-of-nowhere star during the DOGE era, even though she didn’t seem to have a solid grasp of how government spending actually worked.1
Pounds’s accusations against Rogers—who is also beloved in the MAGA movement for her efforts to support free speech for far-right extremists in Europe—confounded right-wing media figures. Was Rogers really
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BULWARK SOMMER 7 26
TRUMP’S PRIMETIME ADDRESS Thursday is shaping up to be a grab bag of conspiracy theories, all of them intended to help Republicans take control of the midterms. He might declare that Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock are somehow fake senators; or announce a national emergency on voter fraud. The latest reporting suggests Trump will claim China tried to steal the 2020 election.
Whatever Trump does, it’ll be because of John Solomon—a star conservative reporter who is, somehow, also a White House staffer. For nearly a decade, Solomon has had a hand in the creation of nearly every major MAGA grievance narrative, from the Russia investigation to Ukraine to 2020 election fraud. Solomon has a pretty clear M.O.: He’ll spin a story that seems like a massive exposé, getting it trumpeted on Fox News and throughout the right-wing media ecosystem before it has a chance to deflate under scrutiny, as it usually does.
Now in his gig as a short-term White House staffer, Solomon has been digging up the raw material necessary for both prosecuting Trump’s enemies and the expected attempt at electoral chicanery.
Yet this narrative impresario and his brand of quasi-journalism remain largely unknown outside the world of right-wing media.
In 2007, when Solomon was an investigative reporter at the Washington Post, the Columbia Journalism Review was already complaining that his stories amounted to the “John Solomon special”: front-page revelations that, when scrutinized, turned out to be little more than a “steady stream of mediocrity.”
Now, thanks to his role in the Trump administration, Solomon has a chance to work that magic on a much larger scale.
Typically, MAGA muckrakers are liars or crackpots, like Mike Lindell, or that one rogue falconer (but not the one you’re thinking of). Compared to these folks, Solomon is a veritable Walter Cronkite. He has a serious journalistic background after working for Post and the Associated Press, and he dresses in ties and navy suits. His veneer of seriousness provides a valuable service for the MAGAverse. Watching him can almost feel like watching a grizzled mainstream investigative journalist who just happens to validate Trump’s obsessions.
A story from the final days of the first Trump administration shows how much Solomon lives in the Trumpworld pocket. The day before Joe Biden’s inauguration, then-Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows called Solomon to the White House to review a binder of newly declassified files from the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into Trump and Russia—just the kind of document handout Solomon loves.
Meadows wanted Solomon to publish the contents of the binder on Inauguration Day. Solomon’s staffers at his website, Just The News, scrambled to scan them all. Then a new envelope arrived for Solomon, with new files “he was permitted to write about,” according to a lawsuit Solomon later filed against the Justice Department.
Unfortunately for Solomon, the whole plan got botched when a White House staffer recalled the files for further redaction. The binder disappeared back into the new Biden administration. Solomon’s fervor for getting access to them again led to a special favor from Trump, who named Solomon as one of his personal representatives at the National Archives, where he would have the freedom to again pursue the story (to give you a sense of Solomon’s perceived reliability to the ex-president, the only other person designated as Trump’s representative at the time was Kash Patel). It was a decision intended to redound to mutual benefit, and sure enough, Solomon eventually published the files in April 2025.
HOW DID SOLOMON WIND UP as Trump’s favorite journo? After leaving the Post in 2008, Solomon moved between journalism nonprofits and conservative media for a while, powered by a personality once described as “charming and garrulous and brimming with swagger.”
He reached a new level of prominence on the right when he became an executive at The Hill in 2017. His portfolio there was superhuman: simultaneously launching a TV channel, drumming up ad business, and filing news and opinion articles. As you might expect, it was a situation rife with conflicts of interest, with one staffer warning that Solomon was up to “reputation-killing stuff.”1
Solomon’s first big moment at The Hill came with his coverage of the Uranium One faux-scandal, during which he heavily insinuated—but did not come close to proving—that Hillary Clinton had approved the sale of rights to a key American uranium reserve to Russia in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation. At the time, Republican anxieties about Trump’s own Russia ties were in overdrive, so Solomon’s articles gave them the tantalizing feeling that the “real” Russia scandal was that Clinton was the true Putin patsy.
In March 2019, Solomon waded into even murkier waters: the bizarre series of events that led to Trump’s impeachment over efforts to pressure Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden. Solomon inexplicably began to target American ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch in articles for The Hill, portraying her as disloyal to Trump and weak on corruption. A month after Solomon’s series began, Trump fired Yovanovitch.
House Democrats later alleged that Solomon’s columns were part of a smear campaign run by Rudy Giuliani and a web of right-leaning Ukrainians and Americans, in a complex deal meant to convince Ukrainian officials to investigate the Bidens.
Solomon met regularly with figures involved in digging up dirt on the Bidens. The group became known as the BLT Team, named after the BLT Prime restaurant in the Trump International Hotel in Washington where they met. The gang included Giuliani, the prolific Ukrainian-American schemer Lev Parnas, and husband-and-wife legal team Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova. He even shared a draft of a story with the group before publication—a major journalistic taboo.
DiGenova and Toensing seem to have made something of a cottage industry out of this. They represented at least one Ukrainian involved in the scheme. They had also, perhaps not coincidentally, represented a key Uranium One “whistleblower.” And they were also Solomon’s own lawyers, even though he used them and their clients as sources in his articles without disclosing that relationship. Once again, all of this flies in the face of journalistic standards.
Conflicts of interest aside, much of Solomon’s reporting on Ukraine was simply wrong, according to experts on the byzantine world of Ukrainian politics. Even as Solomon became a regular on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show (and used that relationship to make himself valuable to the BLT Team, according to Parnas), an internal Fox News research document I reported on at the time acknowledged that Solomon was involved in a Ukrainian “disinformation campaign.”
“It was primarily non-truths and non-sequiturs,” one State Department noted of Solomon’s reporting during the first Trump impeachment investigation.
Solomon left The Hill in October 2019. The newspaper skewered him in an internal review, with some of the editor’s notes added to his Ukraine’s articles running nearly as long as the articles themselves.
DESPITE QUESTIONS ABOUT SOLOMON’S credibility during his run at the Hill, his star on the right continued to rise. In 2020, he launched Just The News, a conservative news outlet where he has run pro-Trump stories without even the thin layers of editorial oversight he faced at prior media outlets.
Solomon is also becoming a right-wing media mogul, adding minor conservative brands The Post Millennial and (the historically significant) Human Events to his holdings in November. In June 2025, the publisher of RealClearPolitics accused Solomon of convincing some of that website’s donors to withdraw their support in an attempt to soften it up for a takeover, too.
IAF
Solomon also helped launch and continues to provide office space to a foundation that doles out millions of dollars to a network of conservative media outlets and think tanks, including his own site. As Mother Jones reported, few if any of those funding connections are disclosed in Solomon’s journalism when he cites groups that have benefited from the nonprofit’s largesse. Mother Jones describes the sort of ideologically driven news sites in the foundation’s network as “pink slime,” a name that comes from “by-products added as filler to ground beef.”
But Solomon’s biggest honor came this summer, when Trump made him a special government employee tasked with helping “identify some documents, some secrets” to be declassified and released to the public. He is eligible to serve in the role for up to 130 days. Solomon, who said he’s not being paid for the White House declassification work, announced in June that he was stepping down as Just The News’s editor-in-chief, although he continues to host his show and publish articles on the Just The News website.
Solomon isn’t the only member of the BLT Team joining the administration. In April, diGenova was sworn in as a counselor to the Justice Department operating out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, where he’s reportedly working with a grand jury to indict Trump critics like former CIA director John Brennan. The judge overseeing the proceedings—and making decisions on whether to approve things like subpoenas for witness testimony or documents—is infamous Trump loyalist Aileen Cannon, who ran interference for the president during special counsel Jack Smith’s classified documents investigation between Trump’s terms in office. Earlier this spring, Cannon blocked the release of Smith’s final report on his investigation’s findings.
Toensing came out of retirement in May to be sworn in as a “deputy chief for civil rights in the criminal section” in the same prosecutor’s office, according to a statement filed in court by District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro.
“Ms. Toensing has extensive obligations in that [Florida] District related to a grand jury proceeding,” Pirro wrote, suggesting that Toensing too is working on some kind of urgent grand jury case against perceived Trump enemies.
Solomon has openly admitted that his role declassifying government documents is central to helping that same grand jury, suggesting the once-ridiculed group involved in crafting the anti-Biden Ukraine narrative is now helping Trump pursue his enemies through the Justice Department.
Referring to the administration’s push to declassify files about investigations into the president, Solomon told Benny Johnson in April that “those documents will help this prosecutorial team in Miami” by taking away the need for the sorts of secret and time-intensive processes that would otherwise be needed to make use of them in court.
But Solomon’s decades-old reputation for letting down his audience is starting to reach conservatives, too. Popular conspiracy theory blog Conservative Treehouse has grown skeptical of Solomon’s promises, even adding a bolded warning label of sorts to a preview of Trump’s Thursday speech so readers wouldn’t get too excited.
“Caution should be noted as newly appointed Special Government Employee John Solomon is responsible for the content,” the post read.
Emerald Robinson, an anchor at Mike Lindell’s online channel, wasn’t excited either.
“LOL why would anybody trust John Solomon based on his record?” she wrote on X.
When you’ve lost Lindell’s crew…
- Will Sommer @ The Bulwark: The Right’s Worst New Star Just Shot Someone
Meet “Chud the Builder.”
There’s a truly villainous new livestreamer who’s become a cause célèbreon the right—a guy so bad he makes Clavicular’s videos about drug overdoses and the Israeli mafia look like an episode of Bluey.
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Meet “Chud the Builder,” a mustachioed, cowboy hat–wearing 28-year-old Tennessee man whose real name is Dalton Eatherly. His internet alias combines the insult “chud”—basically slang for a low-brow right-winger—and a play on both Eatherly’s profession as a construction worker and the children’s show Bob the Builder.
Eatherly’s gimmick is that he films himself walking around calling black people the n-word or accusing them of “chimping out”—a racial slur comparing black people to monkeys. When the people he’s accosting get understandably mad, he encourages them to attack him so he’ll have an excuse to defend himself with mace or a gun.
You can probably guess where this is headed. On Wednesday, Eatherly shot someone in the Nashville suburb of Clarksville, according to police, apparently after the man punched him. Eatherly also shot himself during the incident, sustaining a minor injury. Eatherly has been charged with attempted murder by the Montgomery County district attorney.
“Everybody knew this was going to happen,” popular streamer Asmongold said Wednesday after the shooting, describing the event as a “huge, huge aura loss.”
Clearly, Eatherly is acting in this vile way for attention. He’s been on my radar for a few months, but his shtick is so depressing I was reluctant to give it any more coverage. At the point where a rising online star is shooting people, though, I think it’s worth considering how the economics of livestreaming and the right’s embrace of even the most despicable people could allow a figure like “Chud the Builder” to exist, let alone get a serious following.
Eatherly’s rise has been fueled by “clipping” accounts on social media, which take the hours of streaming he produces and repackage his most incendiary moments into shorter videos. He’s appeared on InfoWars and Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes’s online show to make his case that he’s defending free speech by trying to reclaim the n-word for white people. His videos have also, understandably, been heavily commented on by black YouTubers, some of whom have raised the specter of violently confronting him.
“Somebody might have to just do it,” hip-hop podcaster DJ Akademiks said recently, calling for Eatherly to be assassinated in the same way Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was.
This sort of boomerang effect—in which Eatherly says the most provocative thing possible to get attention, which, in turn, gets a provocative response that also gets attention—is the fuel of the modern internet. And it’s lucrative.
The videos have made Eatherly a notorious figure in Clarksville, where he lives. He’s also raised $65,000 in a crowdfunding campaign, and sells a memecoin called, naturally, “$CHUD.”
Eatherly’s journey into commercialized racism began sometime in 2024 or early 2025, when he got into a road rage incident with a black woman. The woman’s daughter posted a picture of him, claiming he had called her family the n-word, Eatherly claims lost him his job in construction. In response, Eatherly began filming himself berating black people in public.
It’s a strange way to make a living, even in 2026. But it’s not unique to Eatherly. Last year, a woman named Shiloh Hendrix made more than $800,000 from a crowdfunding campaign after she was filmed calling a five-year-old boy the n-word. Hendrix wasn’t a livestreamer, just an organic racist. But Chud’s obnoxious, confrontational style has been echoed by other livestreamers, like an American internet personality named Johnny Somali, who was just sentenced to six months in a South Korean labor prison for harassing Koreans as part of his content creation strategy.
Intriguingly, the FBI appears to have shown interest in Eatherly and his associates even before Wednesday’s shooting. Last week, Eatherly was arrested in an unrelated case for allegedly refusing to pay his bill at a restaurant after being kicked out for livestreaming and making racial attacks. While in custody, Eatherly claimed, he was interviewed by an FBI counterterrorism agent about any ties he could have to an extremist antisemitic group called the Goyim Defense League.
This all seems to have taken a bit of a toll on Eatherly’s private life. Shortly before this week’s shooting, he claimed that his son’s mother was changing their child’s name so the boy wouldn’t be associated with his racist father.
Whatever’s going on in Eatherly’s personal life, it’s indisputable that his public profile has only grown. His racist content is, unfortunately, the perfect type of ammunition for the online culture war. While the image-conscious white nationalist Nick Fuentes has rejected Eatherly’s tactics of “antagonizing people in public,” the former-ESPN personality turned conservative sports figure Jason Whitlock said the black men Eatherly targets need to behave better themselves.
“Chud the Builder’s rise is a sign of weakness among black men,” Whitlock, who is himself black, wrote on X last month.
The dissection of Eatherly’s content has continued even after he shot someone. Eatherly’s defenders have argued that the shooting should be legal, assuming he was physically attacked first. Yet Eatherly’s defense will almost certainly be undermined by the fact that, before the shooting, he sent numerous violent, racist tweets laying out how he planned to provoke a black person into attacking him so that he could shoot him, a plan he hoped would ratchet up racial tension nationally.
“Series finale is dead chimp on the pavement and you monkeys rioting when I walk free,” Eatherly wrote menacingly in a May post on X. “Stay tuned.”
“The day one of you [slur] make me take your life is the day the White man takes this country back,” Eatherly wrote in December.
It might be hard to muster up a self-defense argument with a social media trail like that. As of the publishing of this newsletter, Eatherly’s lawyer has not commented publicly on the case.
But in an ominous sign about the economics of the worst corners of the livestreaming world, the price of the $CHUD memecoin shot to a new level in the immediate aftermath of the shooting—with buyers appearing to bet that all the controversy about “Chud the Builder” would turn into a windfall.
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