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August 1, 2024 • 16 mins
Buck Sexton is joined by David Harsanyi, senior columnist at The Federalist, about his new book, "Rise of Blue Anon: How the Democrat Party Became All About Conspiracy Theory." They discuss the tactic used by Democrat media to promote baseless conspiracy theories about Republicans, citing examples like the Trump pee tape and JD Vance. Harsanyi explains how these conspiracies are spread and given credibility by the media, making them more dangerous. They also touch on the prevalence of conspiracy theories in politics, the role of incompetence in government, and how these narratives gain traction. Harsanyi's book, available for pre-order, delves into the history and impact of these conspiracies on American politics.

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Speaker 1 (00:11):
You're listening to the Buck Sexton Show podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Make sure you subscribe to the podcast on the iHeartRadio
app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Welcome to the Buck Brief. Everybody. Our friend David Harsanyi
back in action here. He is a senior commis at
the Federalists. Got an awesome new book coming out, Rise
of Blue Anon. How the Democrat Party became all about
conspiracy theory, which I think is very troubling and an
important development in American politics. But I want to start

(00:41):
with this because you detailed this recently. We went into this.
They did it. They did it to Jade Evans. This thing.
Explain this tactic of the Democrat media where they like,
something random appears somewhere on the Internet that is obviously
slanderous or deeply undermining and destructive to a Republican And
then it's like, well, we need to bring on the

(01:02):
experts to go into detail about whether this crazy thing
that no one actually believes or should believe is true
is true? You know what I mean to be like
if I said he I'm like, hey, some people are
saying David Harsanyi is actually a lizard person. You take
off his face and he's a lizard and he eats puppies.
Let's just let's bring on some experts, some zoologists to decide,

(01:23):
Like they do that for real though with Republicans, how
does this work.

Speaker 3 (01:29):
I'll give you a famous example, which is the Trump
Key tape. Right, So there's no evidence for that. They
could find no evidence for that, so they talk about
it in a way.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
They'll talk about it.

Speaker 3 (01:41):
Like, you know, people are saying this, but it's not
true or whatever. They what they're doing is letting those
who had never heard the conspiracy know that it exists,
what their appetite for it in a way, so either
they give conspiracy there's essentially no conspiracy theory on the
left that isn't given some kind of hearing on the right.

(02:04):
On the in the main major media, you know, either
they're going to talk to someone who's who's spreading it,
or they're going to fact check it and debunk it.
But let you know about it. And that's one of
the many tactics they use to let people know all
the conspiracies that are going on out there.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
It doesn't make sense.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
There's the old thing, and I guess in politics or
maybe just life, in general, you know, when did you
stop beating your wife? The point of course being they're
just trying to assert that you are a wife beater,
and even when you deny it. They've injected this with
I feel like with conspiracy theory about Republicans in particular.
From the Democrat mindset, this stuff is a constant where

(02:46):
and they'll do really in like CNN will do in
depth reporting on something and I sit there and I say,
the whole point of the Russia collusion is the whole
thing I think a good example of this that was
just one big indulgence of a conspiracy that was flimsy
and absurd, but by talking about it, they were undermining
a political opponent. Right, So it just feels like they

(03:07):
play this double game all the time. Oh, we're journalists,
but like, let's talk about this crazy stuff for a while,
but we're doing it as serious journalists.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Yeah. I mean that's what my book's about. It lays
out how we got to where we are, the history
of it.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
When do you think a log like tell me about this, like,
when when did the blue and non conspiracy stuff? Is
it really a Trump era thing or do you go
a little earlier than that.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
Trump sort of blew it up. But I go all
the way back to the Clintons.

Speaker 3 (03:35):
I start with Hillary going on Good Morning Americans saying,
you know, there's this big conspiracy theory against her. So
every time she says something as a conspiracy theory, it
turns out to be true, but the reverse is never true.
So I put it like this. They've been doing this
for a long time. But here's the difference between the
right wing conspiracy theorist and the left wing and the right.

(03:55):
Let's not pretend that right wingers don't get caught up
in that. Everyone does. It's that they will polish it off,
will produce it, will calibrate it to be somewhat plausible,
We'll give it. We'll find people who work for, you know,
institutions that were supposed to respect the media or the
government to spread it. And that is much more dangerous

(04:16):
because it's it has a far wider reach and has
far more plausibility and far more you know power. When
you have like the x you know, director of the
CIA saying yeah, the Russians are definitely involved or whatever
it is. You know, it's not like Alex Jones or
someone just yelling on YouTube about you know, some some
lizard people or whatever they talk about.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yeah, that's the difference.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
That's what I would expect a lizard person who eats
puppies to say, David, I'm just like, you know, it's
it's amazing that you can sit here and go back
and look at some of the Democrat conspiracies that have
become so I mean they obviously, I know there's very
passionately held beliefs about the twenty twenty election and what
was fair and it wasn't. But to me an election

(05:00):
like people manufacturing votes to steal an election, let's just
say that has happened. I mean, anybody for example, who's
familiar with you know, LBJ, and you know like there
has been it's stuffing. These are real things that have happened.
And there were let's just say, excessive liberties taken with
some state laws in twenty twenty, breaking state laws I

(05:21):
think clearly in twenty twenty in order to help Democrats
vote wise. And then there's some other stuff that people
bring up that you know, they don't have evidence for it,
but they have a feeling for But it's not crazy,
like to think that Donald Trump was on a tape
with Russian prostitutes who were urinating on him, which let's
just be on that. That is what, you know, the
Pee Peet tape, that was what the end for BuzzFeed

(05:43):
to launder that through CNN and the intelligence community to
launch or you know, to launder it with the help
of the guy Christopher Steele, who did. I mean, this
stuff is insane, Like this is just there's just no
basis in reality for any of this, and this is
reported on the biggest news networks for years.

Speaker 3 (06:01):
Well, I think it's like for years and years there's
been this paranoi of building up about Republicans. They're they're fascist,
they're Hitler.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
There's no more debating, there's just accusations. So when you prime.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
People up in that way, you're going to start to
believe the worst things about them. So that's how this
Russia thing, I think, really infiltrated the mindset of a
lot of people, and I actually think many people believed it.
You know, I remember that poll there were like sixty
four percent of Democrats thought like ballots had been changed
or whatever the number was.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
I know there was a packing of the voting machines
by the Russians, to change votes. Wild stuff, right, yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (06:39):
Mean there were When you go back and read about
it now, you're like, this is the most insane thing
that has ever happened in American politics. People believe that
the president of the United States was an asset for
another country, you know what I mean? And you know,
Jonathan Chait wrote an eight thousand word piece in New
York Magazine talking about how he had been in asset
since nineteen eighty seven. Like they lost their minds, and

(07:01):
it's because they're paranoid about their political opponents. And if
it was Ron DeSantis, who is the presidential nominee, now
they would go in some different direction and say he
was you know, he wanted Oridians to die during COVID
or whatever.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
It is some of the stuff where you know, I mean, yeah,
Trump is Hitler, but Ron DeSantis is worse than Trump.
Therefore Ronda Santis for a few months there worse than Hitler.
It was pretty amixing. I was like, how do you go?
What is the worst than Hitler? On the dial? Like
where where is that? Even? How does that happen?

Speaker 2 (07:30):
It's nowhere to go.

Speaker 3 (07:32):
It was wild, Like, yeah, I just would say that
you made a point about how sometimes you can believe conspiracies.
I think because there's a lack of transparency or people
are kind of egging you on to believe it, like
the Birther thing in my opinion, but the Secret Service stuff,
for instance, there's such a lack of transparency and so
mind blowingly incompetent that people are going to start to

(07:53):
believe crazy things. And I don't actually blame people in
that case for believing that something weird is going on.
I'm not saying there is, but I don't blame them.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
Well, I mean this is when people, I mean, on
the on the Epstein stuff for example, I'm like, I
don't know all the answers about who ran the conspiracy
or anything, but I know that there's stuff that it
would be irrational to believe was a coincidence. That's where
some of the Epstein stuff goes. Whether it's the FBI
not taking evidence when they're actually searching his house. I mean,
there's a lot of stuff there, But I have a theory.

(08:22):
I don't know. If I haven't read the book yet,
you got to send me a copy. Actually, I'll buy
it because I like to support your work. I'll buy
a copy of the book Blue and on the Rise
of bluing on everybody. But in the meantime, I want
to throw a theory your way. But first up, I'm
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(08:43):
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(09:04):
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code buck for ten percent off. David, I have a
theory I want to throw your way. Is the problem

(09:26):
that conspiracies are just inherently more interesting to people, and
therefore it is just clickbait all the time. Any conspiracy
I can come up with if I'm willing to like
put my reputation in some jeopardy. I guess no one
cares about these things anymore, but I'll get clicks, right.
I mean, you know my lizard per If I went
all in on the lizard person story that you know,
you like eat bunny rabbits and you're actually a lizard

(09:47):
or whatever, people would click on it. They might think
I'm insane, but you know, I feel like that has
an effect.

Speaker 3 (09:53):
And that happens a lot now, especially on Twitter or
x because it's monetized.

Speaker 2 (09:59):
So the more like create, the crazier you are, the
more people are going to click on your stuff. I think.

Speaker 3 (10:04):
Yeah, I mean, it's it's a I think people who
are people who are feel powerless. Sometimes we're in the
Democrats case, people who lose power and want it so badly,
or you know, they want to have some explanation for it.
They can't just simply let's talk about nine to eleven. Like,
people have all these these theories, but like, why wouldn't
they believe that a bunch of Islamis who promise to

(10:26):
do something would.

Speaker 2 (10:27):
Actually do it?

Speaker 3 (10:28):
Or why can't they believe that Kennedy was killed by
a Kami who went to the Soviet Union and who
came from Cuba. People want to think that the world
is more complex. There's that there's these dark that there
are dark forces working behind the scenes to undermine them
in some way or undermined the country. And it's just
like you say, a better story, more interesting, right, Well
this is.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
This is the problem. And I always say this and
people are like, well, you're the CIA, so it's exactly
what they would expect to see. I I get CEE,
I got to say, but I look at them and like,
I promise to anyone out there, of the CIA conspiracies
that people have heard, whether it's like oh, like you
know MK Ultra or like JFK stuff or whatever, ninety

(11:10):
five maybe ninety nine percent of that what all that's
going on is actually sloth, indifference, and in competence of
a massive federal bureaucracy. Like I know that that sounds
almost impossible to people, but it really like there are
these places are not staffed with It's not James Bond
over there. Okay, I worked there. Maybe maybe people will

(11:30):
admit that because I were. It's people doing a job.
A lot of them are, you know, not really held
to particularly high standards. There are some awesome people at
the CIA and the FBI and whatever, and there are
a lot of schmos. I think I can say that
radio right, schmos in New York, we's call them schmos.
So there's a lot of that too, And I just
feel like that's never something that gets people, that doesn't

(11:53):
get them as excited. So you don't hear about that.

Speaker 3 (11:55):
Yeah, I mean there are such incompetent people working in government.
We see it every day there there it's filled people
who are just ridiculously incompetent.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
Well, you're telling me all these people got I.

Speaker 1 (12:06):
Mean, David, imagine if your job you had, you know,
because like you right, right, So, people buy your books
or they don't. You write articles, people click on your
articles to read them or they don't. There's advertising and
other things. You know, obviously books it's just people pay
for them. Imagine if your job, you had no metrics,
no incentives, and no individual responsibility whatsoever. Welcome to working

(12:27):
for the federal government, like.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
And you have a union to protect you, so you
could never read get fired.

Speaker 1 (12:33):
I try to tell people this and they don't either, like, oh,
you know, CIA stewe just stooging for the CI. I'm like, no,
this is the truth. And the CIA is like the
elite of the federal government. The CIA is is the
Harvard of federal government agencies. Like there's a lot you
go lower down the chain, people are like, oh, could
they really be like this, could ATF really screw this
up that badly? You know, talking about Operation Fast and Fears. Yes,

(12:56):
the answer is yes, like anyway, and I know people
don't want to hear that, but these places there's a
lot of dumb and there's no accountability. The place where
I agree people getting angry about is on the no
accountability because they're you know, you mentioned the thing about
getting fired. But even in the secret services, like Secret
Service directors resigned and it's only because they just made
such a mess of it. But nobody else over there

(13:17):
is going to get fired. Nothing else is gonna happen.

Speaker 3 (13:19):
Person, it's going to go work at the Brookings Institutional
in someplace and make a ton of money like that,
it doesn't really even matter. It's like in Afghanistan, thirteen
Americans were killed, not one person lost the job, you know,
and the Secret Service thing like you have literally one
job on earth and that is to protect his politicians,
and you don't, and then you it was pretty hard

(13:39):
to get that woman to resign, right.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
You know, a little while back, David p the FBI director,
said something about like they weren't sure if Trump got
shot or if it was shrapnel. What the hell is that?

Speaker 2 (13:51):
Oh? Right, did you see?

Speaker 1 (13:52):
Oh you have? Oh yeah? Oh yeah, No, The FBI
director was like, we don't know if it was a
bullet or shrapnel. I'm like, bullets, don't I've never heard
of a bullet making shrapnel before. I mean, I guess
you could try to say around, could skip off something,
and but that's just a bullet, right, Like you're a
gun guy, right, yeah?

Speaker 3 (14:08):
Er fifteen? How far was that guy? One hundred and
fifty yards? It was like some incredibly easy shot to take, honestly,
And that.

Speaker 1 (14:16):
Was with eight he got off eight rounds. The chance
of me hitting a human sized target in a vital
area at one hundred and fifty yards, even with steel sites,
which I think they're now saying he had at one
hundred and fifty yards, is one hundred percent. One hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (14:32):
I would even I could do that.

Speaker 1 (14:34):
Yeah, That's what I'm saying, is like, it's not I
mean a one round. Okay, you're nervous, you know, because
you're like a lunatic assassin, Like I get it right,
eight shots. And the all thing strikes me is that
David will come back and want you to tell everybody
about your about your book. Here just one second where
they can go to get it. A good friend of mine,
porter Stansbury, he did something really interesting. He cut a
salary of a dollar a year. He might be like, well,

(14:54):
who is this guy? He started a massive financial research company,
one of the biggest and best in the entire country,
that does hundreds of millions in revenue a year. He's
the founder and chairman. Why would you pay himself a dollar?
He says, there's something called a secret currency, something that
you can benefit from his well, and he wants you
to learn about how to use this secret currency to
your advantage. It's not gold or bitcoin, Porter says, every

(15:16):
American is legal, entitled, legally entitled to use this, but
few know very much about it. So if you want
to grow your wealth in the years to come and
protect your money while inflation is chipping away at everything,
you need to go check out Secret Currency twenty twenty
four dot com. That's secret Currency twenty twenty four dot com.
Don't wait, go check out what Porter Stansbury has to say.
It's secret Currency twenty twenty four dot com. David, I

(15:38):
love all your books. By the way, I've blown people's
minds with the stat I always credit you for it
about about how England on a per capita basis poorer
than Mississippi, the poorest US state. People are people check
and I'm like, go check out eurotrash David's book. So
so I'm selling books on the side here for your shoe.
But appreciate it, of course. But Rise of bluing on

(16:00):
just tell people it's coming out when when can they
get it?

Speaker 3 (16:03):
Rise of blowing on how Democrats became a party of
conspiracy theorists. It comes out in the fall. So I
just felt like I had to start talking about it.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
Well, when are we doing pre orders? My man, pre orders,
we're doing that right now.

Speaker 3 (16:14):
Anyone could go to Amazon, Barnes and anywhere they sell
books pre ordering and I would appreciate the support because
all pre orders are go into the first week sales
and maybe I can get on a.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
List and fantastic. We're gonna do what we can. Team
Buck is on it. David Harsanyi one of our originals.
Great to see you, man, Thanks and congrats on the book.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
Thanks, Thanks, as always,
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