I’m old—old enough to remember G. Gordon Liddy testifying before Congress during the Watergate hearings. He said something I never forgot: he was deathly afraid of rats. To conquer that fear, he caught one, cooked it over a campfire—and ate it.

That analogy works for me and UNASB.

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Before UNASB, I was intimidated by the dark-money machine—the opaque forces flowing from what I think of as the Epstein class through a right-wing media ecosystem that manufactures disinformation before there’s even demand for the truth. It doesn’t just respond to reality; it scripts it. It tells people how to think, what to think, and reinforces it until it becomes a wall.

For a long time, I didn’t want to look under that hood. It felt impenetrable—and frankly, I didn’t have the time. I chose to ignore the grotesque elements: the performative outrage, the coded racism, the bad-faith narratives fueled by money and power. I knew it was there. I just didn’t engage.

Then I found UNASB.

Within this community I was able to lower my resistance and actually listen to what the far-right is saying and doing. UNASB helped me do the uncomfortable thing: to examine it closely, understand it, and yes—if I extend the metaphor—catch, cook, and eat the rat.

We’re not just studying figures like Tucker Carlson or tracing the history of right-wing media. We’re also learning how to communicate more effectively ourselves—how to reach people, how to use the tools that successful influencers use, and how to recognize the coded language embedded in messaging.

Because that language works. It persuades people—often against their own best interests.

Take Alex Clark, who talks about wanting healthy food for her family. It’s clear that achieving that requires government support and regulation. Will she get that from this administration? Probably not.

But her brand is tied more closely to her MAHA affiliation than to the outcomes she’s advocating for—clean food, clean water, education, and infrastructure, which the non-MAHA side is pushing for in legislation.

That’s where the contradiction lives. And within those contradictions, we have opportunities—to build bridges, to connect, and to create moments of real understanding.

UNASB has given me clarity. It’s helped me understand the language, the structure, and the intent behind what we’re up against—and how to push back effectively.

Before this, I never would have spent time watching people like Benny Johnson or Ben Shapiro—paid influencers crafting narratives built on provocation and distortion. Now I can engage with that content without being overwhelmed by it.

I feel more aware. More grounded. More prepared.

And that power?

Yeah—I ate the rat. I’m not afraid of it anymore.

There’s still a lot of work to do. But UNASB has helped me see what’s out there—and what’s coming.

Bring it on.

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For years now, there have been calls for the left to “invest more in digital.” But as someone who’s spent a decade describing my own job as vaguely “doing digital politics things,” let me be the first person to say: we have to be much more specific about what we mean if we’re going to see real change in the space.

Hey y’all, this is Max Levy, your former recapper, author of The Short Answer newsletter (where this piece is also running!), and freelance digital and political strategist. I joined the Unfortunately Not a Sound Bath crew at the beginning of this year, where the discussions about the right’s cultural infrastructure and how the left can counter it have made it even more clear how urgent it is for people on our side to start doing things differently.

One place we can start is by moving from generic calls to “do better” to actually naming the changes we want to see.

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Think about it. When you say “digital,” do you just mean social media? Organic social media from a candidate’s page? Running paid ads or getting other creators and influencers to post? Do you want better graphics, professional videography, smarter captions, or just higher volume? Maybe you aren’t talking social at all, and you want to see better use of email. Are you using email to fundraise? Recruit volunteers? Persuade in-state voters? Or maybe you’re thinking about something else entirely when you say “digital.” As long as you don’t mean the guy who knows how to make the projector work, you’re probably right to think of it as “digital” work. And that’s a problem for digital teams that keep getting asked to do more and more, with the same staffing and budgets.

Using “digital” as an umbrella term may have once been helpful to describe campaign (often communications) work happening online. Now though, there are so many tools, tactics, and strategies under this umbrella that just using the term leaves decision-makers with enough ambiguity to get away with not doing anything.

So, let’s run down some specific ways to “do digital better” in the political space:

Devoting budget, staffing, and time to organic social media strategy

Organic social posts (what a “typical” account creates and posts, not paid ads that bypass the algorithm entirely) are a key way that regular people engage with political accounts, but they’re often an afterthought in budgets and strategies for reaching voters or supporters. An open letter from digital strategists to party leaders details more of what it would look like to take organic social more seriously, including increased budget, dedicated capacity for content creation, and a voice in strategic decisions. For campaigns specifically, we should also ask candidates and senior-level staff to carve out more dedicated time for digital content creation and training to hone the skills and frameworks that work for organic social.

Shifting ad budgets towards digital platforms

According to Tech for Campaign’s analysis of 2024 ad spend, “commercial advertisers allocated 78% of their media budgets to digital. Political advertisers? Just 36%.”

Do we really think campaigns know something that brands don’t about modern advertising best practices? Too many campaigns are still stuck in the past, and it’s time to shift to the places where people are actually paying attention. That means more budget to create digital ads, more spend to get those ads out into the world, and more latitude to test bold ideas or emerging platforms.

Building a stronger creator infrastructure — with both political and non-political creators

Races like Abigail Spanberger’s in Virginia and Mike Sherrill’s in New Jersey saw important investments in staffing, candidate time, and budget to engage social media creators in 2025, which marks an encouraging shift. But we’re still woefully behind the right in building our creator economy, and there’s a lot more time and funding that needs to be invested to get progressive ideas spreading through a self-sustaining, culturally-relevant infrastructure. (Lots more to say on this piece — stay tuned!)

Communicating better with “owned” audiences like email and text lists

Inboxes are one of the most intimate ways we communicate with voters and supporters, but too many organizations treat them as places to ask for donations and nothing else. And for smaller campaigns, they might not even have the staffing or budget to utilize or grow their opt-in email list at all. We need to train more people on low-lift best practices, make tools more accessible, and ensure leadership actually sees channels like email or text as tools that can be used to achieve organizing, messaging, and other campaign goals beyond fundraising.

Improving online organizing

Speaking of organizing — a group of practitioners recently produced a 60-page report on how Democrats could improve modern organizing, and many of their recommendations would be implemented with digital tools. They want campaigns to prioritize relational organizing (where volunteers talk to people they know, not strangers they cold call), finally merge offline and online organizing, and encourage teams to adapt and experiment. They make a number of specific, actionable asks, and the full report (or at least the executive summary) is worth reading in full!

These are far from the only things we can be doing to better reach, organize, persuade, and mobilize people online, and not every organization has the budget or capacity to implement all of them. But we have to start getting specific — naming actual goals, tools, and what’s needed to implement them — if we’re going to stop gesturing into the void and start actually “doing digital” well enough to win.

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P.S. If you found this piece insightful, you should of course subscribe to UNASB, but I hope you’ll consider subscribing to The Short Answer, too! Each week’s newsletter discusses a topic across politics, media, tech, or culture, plus articles worth your time, good posts from people across the progressive ecosystem, and a tool to make it easier to do impactful work.

In our last meeting, we had an off-the record conversation about how right-wing influencers are shaping narratives. We used the following info to prep in case our readers want to follow along!

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Minnesota Daycare Fraud Content

In December, pro-Trump creator Nick Shirley posted a video claiming to expose widespread financial fraud at Somali-run daycare centers in Minnesota, which went viral and was boosted by right-wing media and members of the Trump administration.

• Shirley visited various day care centers in Minnesota, filming people he found there and asking, “Where are the children?” After he wasn’t allowed to enter the day care facilities, he declared there were “no children anywhere.”

• Despite Minnesota investigators debunking Shirley’s claims about the facilities he covered, right-wing media and the Trump administration ran with the claims and used them as an excuse to slash Minnesota’s child care funding and escalate immigration enforcement in the state, ultimately leading to 4,000 arrests, months of protests, and the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Videos Alleging Voter Fraud

Trump aligned “independent reporters” are shifting to creating on the ground video content purporting to expose voter or voter registration fraud. This narrative shift coincides with the Trump administration’s widespread push to interfere with the midterm elections – often using immigration or conspiracies related to voter fraud or noncitizens voting as a pretext to do so.

• TPUSA’s Frontlines and Savanah Hernandez co-posted a video to Instagram showing a petitioner on LA’s Skid Row “exchanging cigarettes for signatures.”

• Cam Higby released a video featuring Jonathan Choe purporting to uncover fraudulent voter registrations along LA’s Skid Row. The title graphic for the video states it’s part 1.

  • Higby also posted a clip of the video to Instagram, where he alleges to have witnessed people exchanging “cash for registration signatures on ballot initiatives.”

• Nick Shirley rebooted James O’Keefe’s debunked voter fraud myths for a new audience in a YouTube video on “California’s Suspected Voter Fraud.”

• Right-wing influencer Benny Johnson released a “documentary” claiming that California’s assistance programs for unhoused individuals were being used to “rig national elections.”

• Right-wing commentators David Khait and Fabian Garcia teamed up to release a series of videos investigating voter fraud in Fulton County, Georgia, visiting a homeless shelter, a church, and more. For the church, the influencers claimed that over 2,000 people used the location as their voter registration address. However, the video omits reporting that Georgia’s voter laws allow unhoused residents to use nonresidential addresses to help them register to vote.

  • Khait and Garcia published a similar video about locations in Fulton County, Georgia, on YouTube on February 17. The video has been amplified by several right-wing figures, including Trish Regan and Libs of TikTok

ICE Ride-along Videos

After a select group of right-wing and right-leaning creators were granted exclusive access to ICE raids and ride-alongs, the influencers posted misleading videos which Trump administration officials re-posted and used as evidence to support their anti-immigrant agenda.

• Right-wing influencer and Real America’s Voice correspondent Ben Bergquam participated in at least 4 ICE ride-alongs in Chicago and posted a video to Facebook from one of his October ride-alongs which shows him referring to a group of bystanders as a “beehive of activist traitors,” with on-screen text that said, “Riding with ICE in Chicago exposing the enemies within!”

• During a visit to Chicago in October, Benny Johnson went on a ride-along and to an ICE facility with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and he posted content of the visit that earned over 2 million views in total.

• Shirley went on a ride-along in Chicago in October and posted at least two videos that earned over 2 million combined views. The videos show Shirley interviewing masked agents, riding in an ICE vehicle, and observing people being arrested.

CECOT Content

Since 2024, at least five YouTube content creators have been granted access to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, the megaprison to which the Trump administration began sending immigrants last year. The resulting YouTube videos have been viewed over 200 million times, and at least one creator appeared on Fox News several times to discuss what he saw while filming. Below are a few examples of their videos.

• Nick Shirley posted a tour of CECOT and appeared on Fox News at least 4 times to discuss his visit

• UAE-based YouTuber Joe Hattab posted a tour of CECOT, earning over 49 million views

• Turkish YouTuber Ruhi Cenat also posted a video tour, earning over 95 million views

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Welcome back to UNASB! This newsletter serves as a recap of our last meeting. As a reminder, here at UNASB, we listen to conservative-leaning podcasts, analyze their messaging and themes, and brainstorm actionable ideas for how the Democratic coalition can strengthen our approach.

It’s been over a month since Trump attacked Iran. The subsequent failures to conclude the war quickly lay bare some of MAGA’s fissures. These fissures, which had laid dormant and knitted together by Trump, have begun to burst out into the open and threaten to peel off a non-insignificant portion of Trump’s MAGA support.

This couldn’t have been more evident in podcasts (watch them here and here) from two of MAGA’s greatest warriors: Dan Bongino, podcaster turned FBI Deputy Director turned podcaster again, and Matt Walsh, of the Tucker Carlson wing of MAGA. Both are deeply loyal to MAGA but their backgrounds explain their differing takes on the war. Bongino is a mostly traditional Republican, having run for office multiple times and served as a federal law enforcement officer. Walsh came up in radio, transitioned to the Daily Wire, and is a self described “theocratic fascist”. Bongino is the guy you get a beer with at the bar. Walsh is probably the dude who radicalizes you on 4Chan.

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Bongino’s Version

Both spent much of their podcasts- each posted in the first week of March- talking about the war in Iran in very different ways. Bongino cheerleads the absolute smackdown we are (were?) putting on Iran. He talks about it in the way that Seahawks fans were probably talking shit after they beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl, or American hockey fans to Canada after the Olympics. Ironically, Bongino lampoons the Iranian foreign minister as Baghdad Bobby, an Iraqi propagandist who said things were going absolutely great during the 2003 Iraq War (until Iraq fell to the U.S.). Looking back almost a month after this podcast first aired, it’s fair to ask if Bongino is actually Baghdad Bobby.

Playing against type, though, Bongino provides rather thoughtful commentary on topics that liberals and progressives might agree with him on: the dangers of mass surveillance and the merit of body cameras. He then diverges into some political analysis and advocacy, gently warning about the midterms, and urging his listeners to “10, 10, 10” (call ten friends about the midterms, email friends ten times, and make ten social media posts). It’s a call to action that is so clear and easy that liberals and progressives should take, and take repeatedly.

Matt’s Version

Contra to Bongino, Walsh is extremely skeptical of the war, befitting the America First, isolationist wing that he is associated with. He starts by arguing that for any use of American military force, the benefits should outweigh the costs. He notes that the Trump administration has not made the case for war nor these benefits, effectively going radio silent, while contrasting their approach with the Bush administration- where, despite the disastrous Iraq War- they at least made the case. He also compares the Trump administration’s approach of “trust us, we’re the experts” to the similar approach (in his view) of the public health experts during COVID.

Liberals and progressives would agree with many of Walsh’s critiques. But he then uses the specter of terror attacks by immigrants in America unhappy about the U.S.’ attack against Iran (and the terror attack by a naturalized American citizen from Senegal in Texas in the days after the U.S. first struck Iran) to argue that the Iran War is making America less safe. He demagogues against immigration from the “third world”, arguing for denaturalizing “anti-American invaders”, while stating that before he could support the Iran War, America would need to deport every “third world Muslim militant and potential militant”. Ultimately, he concludes the totality of these risks make the war not worth taking. His conclusion on immigration is sobering and infuriating: if liberals and progressives could find common ground with someone like Walsh on Iran, they will quickly find that with his anti-immigrant rhetoric, it’s poisoned ground.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Bongino and Walsh both offer places to find common ground with different wings of MAGA.

Speaking from authority as both a former law enforcement officer and Deputy FBI Director, Bongino makes the case against mass surveillance using AI tools and in favor of body cameras to protect law enforcement officers from false accusations. With Walsh, liberals and progressives are uniformly against the war in Iran, just as Walsh and the isolationist wing of MAGA are. This opposition has been proven correct through the subsequent failure to defeat Iran quickly and the closure of the Hormuz Strait that is increasing prices. Hijack these talking points to help pivot conversations.

Despite the common ground, Bongino and Walsh both use extremely loaded language when talking about Democrats and immigrants.

Bongino spends much of his time praising Kristi Noem and blasting Democrats as the “anti anti communists” (willing to lie in bed with anyone, as long as they’re anti-Trump) and Walsh uses extremely demeaning language when talking about immigrants. These guys will never view liberals or progressives as partners on anything.

How are we supposed to square the potential to find agreement with the fundamental incompatibility with Bongino’s and Walsh’s views?

The first step is to separate the listener from the messenger. Just because someone listens to Bongino and Walsh doesn’t mean they will agree with everything they say or believe. The next step is to understand what is core to their appeal. Walsh and Bongino appeal to a sense of safety and order. In the case of Iran, it’s possible to argue that the Iran War has made us less safe, less secure, and also put our troops in harm’s way for no reason.

Like many other successful MAGA commentators, Bongino and Walsh often come off as “we’re just asking questions” guys. Liberals and progressives can use that against them.

First, as someone noted in a listening group, encourage curiosity as an act of resistance, and then use the disconnect in what Bongino and Walsh are stating is fact against the reality that is plainly before us. In the case of the Iran War, it is clear- despite what Bongino Bob says- that the war is not going well or achieving its objectives. Liberals and progressives can use that dissonance to undercut Bongino’s authority before his audience and drive distrust between MAGA leaders and their followers.

WHAT UNASB MEMBERS ARE READING

• The Trump-inspired realignment of the conservative think tank world

• I Went to Florida to See the 31-Year-Old Candidate Thrilling Gen Z. We’re in Trouble.

• For Republicans, the political influence of X is greater than ever

• Silicon Valley Is Drifting Farther and Farther Right

• Evie Magazine Averages an Anti-Birth Control Article Every Month

• Thousands have swooned over this MAGA dream girl. She’s made with AI.

Thanks for reading! We’re currently accepting new members into our 5th (!!) cohort starting in April. Sign up here!

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I live in likely the strongest liberal bubble in the country – San Francisco. As a result, it is very rare that I encounter someone in my daily life with political views that are in direct opposition to mine. The political debates around me are between the liberal, really liberal and really really liberal – who still all agree on the vast majority of issues. As someone who is exceptionally conflict averse, I recognize that the absence of what I see as uncomfortable confrontations is both an incredible privilege and not the experience of much of America. In an effort to continually learn about our country and work toward a sane future, I’m diving into the deep end and learning how to have these conversations productively – even if they aren’t ever comfortable.

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How am I doing this?

I joined the most recent cohort of Unfortunately Not a Sound Bath – a listening club that’s been getting a lot of attention lately, including a recent feature in The New York Times. Here’s the premise: we listen to right-wing media not to criticize or slam it, but to actually understand the communication tactics being used – and then apply those lessons to how we communicate on the left.

And, let me tell you. It is hard. I have to listen to the assignments on 1.5x speed to be able to get through them without going into a full on panic attack. I get the majority of my news from NPR (subscriber to two stations), The New York Times, and The San Francisco Chronicle. Why would I willingly subject myself to content that makes my blood pressure spike? Because understanding how the other side talks, what resonates with their audiences, and how they frame issues isn’t about agreeing with them. It’s about getting smarter about how we show up in conversations – especially the hard ones with people we care about who see things differently.

It turns out there’s actual science backing this up. This recent piece in the Times breaks down what research tells us about productive disagreement – and spoiler alert: most of us are doing it wrong. The key isn’t winning the argument, it’s creating opportunity for actual understanding.

I’m also drawing inspiration from this piece about talking to friends who “aren’t paying attention” to politics right now. It’s a reminder that productive conversations aren’t about winning arguments – they’re about staying connected to people and helping them see why any of this matters in the first place.

I’ve already learned a lot. For instance, the right is not a monolith – there are real differences of opinion, just like on the left. America First and Trump First coalitions have genuinely different views on Iran, which means there’s actually room for productive conversation about foreign policy. Who knew?

I’m also realizing that not every conversation needs to be explicitly about politics to influence politics. If the right can use a review of the new Wuthering Heights movie to reinforce tenets of Christian Nationalism (yes, really), then we can absolutely use cultural touchpoints to reinforce our values too.

And here’s the thing I keep coming back to: I can easily understand why the right has been so successful at messaging. They package tough ideas in bite-sized, repeatable nuggets – sometimes in the most unexpected places. Meanwhile, we’re over here writing monologues and policy theses. What if we just said things simply and said them again? And again?

So here’s my commitment

I’m going to keep showing up for these uncomfortable conversations. I’m going to listen more than I want to. And I’m going to keep reporting back on what I’m learning – because if we’re going to do something about democracy, we need to be able to talk to people beyond our bubble, even when (especially when) it’s hard.

Who’s with me?

If you’re interested in joining UNASB, currently accepting new members into our 5th (!!) cohort starting in April. Sign up here!

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Follow Sheila at: https://dosomethinganything.substack.com/

Welcome back to UNASB! This newsletter serves as a recap of our last meeting. As a reminder, here at UNASB, we listen to conservative-leaning podcasts, analyze their messaging and themes, and brainstorm actionable ideas for how the Democratic coalition can strengthen our approach.

The Right Wing’s use of cultural commentary as a tactic to funnel new audiences into the MAGA-aligned media ecosystem is something UNASB has come to understand well. We’ve examined how this works to target young men; last week, we turned our attention to how it operates on women, leading with moral concerns and values-first messaging before pivoting to ideology.

The episode: Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey’s Episode 1304 | ‘Wuthering Heights’ Movie is NOT What I Expected.

The messenger: Allie Beth Stuckey is a podcaster on Glenn Beck’s network and author of the recent New York Times bestseller ‘Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion,’ which frames progressive appeals to compassion as dangerous manipulation tactics. A Conservative Millennial, wife, and mom of three, Stuckey operates at the intersection of politics and Christian theology. She has 722k YouTube subscribers and 900k Instagram followers.

In the episode, Stuckey critiques the recently-released film ‘Wuthering Heights’ and contemporary pop culture through the lens of Christian womanhood and purity culture, taking aim at Bridgerton, Taylor Swift, Twilight, among others. Notably, Stuckey’s discourse around ‘Wuthering Heights’ seems to imply that she has not actually watched it.

Note: Stuckey’s advertisers—pro-life diapers marketed as “knowing what a woman is,” crisis pregnancy centers, prepper supplies that shift responsibility for family protection from state to individual—explicitly reinforce the worldview she proselytizes.

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Key Learnings & How to Use Them

Values-first messaging is a gateway

Stuckey leads with appeals to shared moral concerns: gender-based violence in media, the impact of hyper-sexualization on young women, and the toxicity of patriarchal control in romantic relationships. This approach lets listeners first agree with her moral premise without realizing they’re being moved toward a particular political worldview.

She never mentions being “Republican” or “conservative,” never invokes the boogeyman language of “the left” or “Hollywood elite.” By avoiding partisan language, she sidesteps barriers many people put up against political messaging. A mother concerned about media’s impact on her child, or a young woman worried about a romantic relationship, finds herself in genuine agreement, then gradually absorbed into an ideology that systematically undercuts women’s agency and autonomy.

Making it actionable

This is how moral foundations function: start with a shared truth or moral concern (sexualization of children, social media harms kids, media depicts violence) that activates a core moral intuition, then bring politics in through that foundation. The Right does this well, whereas the Left tends to lead with policy. We can compete on this terrain, but we have to arrive there through a moral frame, one that actually expands agency. This UNASB op-ed is essential reading to understand how: Before the Argument, There is an Instinct.

One obvious place for the Left to lean on moral foundations? Widespread outrage and disgust over the Epstein files. Stuckey references the scandal directly, describing it as ‘the reality of evil…being perpetrated against the most vulnerable’, indicating her audience is already engaged with and disgusted by this story. We can leverage the same moral intuitions—disgust towards the perpetrators, an instinct to protect the most vulnerable from harm, a desire for justice on their behalf—by continuing to demand transparency and accountability for those responsible, including the many perpetrators with ties to the Trump administration.

Accessible language and scripture mimic connection

Stuckey opens with scripture, then positions herself as a relatable older sister who, in girlhood, was also led astray by mainstream culture (Taylor Swift’s “Fearless” album, the Twilight series), but ultimately saw the light and wisely chose a different path. From the spiritual communion of sermon to the intimacy of girl talk, Stuckey speaks directly to the longing for meaning and belonging that people feel so acutely today, in an increasingly atomized and lonely world.

Stuckey also offers community in a space that affirms her listeners’ feelings of overwhelm. She offers them in-group membership as part of, for example, the “never watched Bridgerton” club. For that in-group to exist, there must also be an out-group: those consuming different media, who by extension have different values, and are thus morally compromised.

Making it actionable

We must speak to people’s hunger for meaning, belonging, and relational connection. Language that speaks to people on a human level—to their hearts and souls, not just their heads—is one way to do that.

We can also reframe what the actual threat is. The Left has an opportunity to offer the same sense of in-group belonging, but around a shared enemy that’s actually harming regular working people: tech billionaires, the Epstein class, corrupt politicians. We can create a “we” that’s defined by who we’re protecting ourselves against.

The appeal of benevolent patriarchy as God’s eternal plan

Stuckey’s message resonates because it acknowledges real pain: women’s fears of being alone, alienation from modern culture, uncertainty navigating modern dating and anxiety around partnership. Her refrain “God’s eternal plan is going off without a hitch”, which was mentioned frequently by listeners in the comments section, extends grace even to women who’ve “failed” the purity culture script.

However, she exploits this pain. After making her listeners feel heard and understood, she shifts toward benevolent patriarchy and purity culture as the solution to their problems—or at least a salvation from worrying about them. She reframes self-knowledge as selfish narcissism and lowered expectations of romantic partners as spiritual maturity. She presents this as protecting women, but in reality, it restricts them.

It’s notable how this mirrors Stuckey’s critique in Toxic Empathy that progressives use appeals to compassion as manipulation. She deploys the same tactic here, gently and compassionately addressing real fears, then presenting solutions that ask women to accept less.

Making it actionable

Stuckey’s vision has a critical weakness: it offers no agency. She tells women what to avoid, what not to consume, but she doesn’t offer them anything concrete to do. No path forward, no aspirational vision. This is a weakness the Left can leverage. We have an opening here, to offer women solutions that are aspirational and involve real agency and real choices.

WHAT UNASB MEMBERS ARE READING

• What Love is Blind: Ohio Understands About the Rust Belt That Democrats Don’t

• ‘You unbelievable coward’: conservative US media in open warfare over Iran

• Hasan Piker: ‘The left should be better at manufacturing outrage’

• ‘Nazi heaven’: Inside Miami campus Republicans’ racist group chat

• Inside the secret meeting that led to the AI political resistance

• MAGA Christians Are Split Over Iran

Thanks for reading! We’re currently accepting new members into our 5th (!!) cohort starting in April. Sign up here!

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A Visceral Beginning

Listening to The Benny Show, the first episode in my Unfortunately Not A Sound Bath journey, felt like I had jumped into the deep end. It left me deeply unsettled by what I heard. I wasn’t prepared for my own visceral reaction. My body reacted before my mind could organize an argument. I felt a tightening. A sense of contraction.

I had hoped that listening would humanize and broaden my perspective. Instead, I found myself wondering whether this was a fool’s errand. This rhetoric is not meant to build understanding but rather to invoke fear and exclusion.

For a moment, I considered stepping back. I could handle well-reasoned arguments from either side, but I didn’t know if I wanted to listen to such an inflammatory narrative.

And yet, I stayed.

What’s shifted for me over the past couple of months hasn’t been softening toward the content (which remains painful to hear). What’s shifted is how I’ve begun to listen and what I’ve been able to acknowledge about myself.

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The Moral Understory

Jonathan Haidt argues in The Righteous Mind that our political divisions are rooted less in facts than in moral intuitions. He describes six core moral foundations:

1. Care and harm

2. Fairness and cheating

3. Loyalty and betrayal

4. Authority and subversion

5. Sanctity and degradation

6. Liberty and oppression

He doesn’t argue that the foundations are good or bad, but simply describes them as a product of how humans have evolved in systems that promote survival, reproduction, and cooperation.

Haidt’s research suggests that people on the political Left tend to emphasize care, fairness, and liberty. People on the Right tend to draw from all six foundations, especially loyalty, authority, and sanctity. The difference is not simply about policy preferences. It is about which moral instincts are activated. To be sure, a moral instinct may later be overridden by logic, but the instinct appears first.

Conflict Entrepreneurs Exploit Moral Instincts

Moral instincts are easily exploited in today’s media landscape, where anyone can host a podcast and say just about anything they want. Stories circulate quickly. They do not need to persuade everyone. They do not need to be true. They need only resonate with the moral instincts of a particular audience. And often they are peddled by “conflict entrepreneurs” like Benny Johnson who exploit division and conflict for their own benefit.

When listening to UNASB’s podcast assignments through the lens of Haidt’s research, we get a glimpse of something more layered that conflict entrepreneurs are using to stir up outrage, hate, and fear among their audiences.

Hearing the Instinct Beneath the Rhetoric

When I heard Benny Johnson describe immigrants as eroding the “fabric” of the country, and Muslim prayer framed as allegiance to a foreign land, I heard loyalty and sanctity being activated together. A moral boundary around who truly belongs, and an implicit concern about cultural purity.

When I heard Benny Johnson’s insistence that America must be rooted purely in Christendom, that “orderly, clean, safe societies” flow from adherence to a singular Christian doctrine, I heard authority and sanctity intertwined. A vision of hierarchy presented as sacred order.

When I heard him dismiss global suffering with “I don’t care” because it was not “my country,” I heard in-group protection elevated above universal care.

Politics, in the Haidt’s moral foundations framework, is not primarily persuasion through evidence. It is moral storytelling that taps into a listener’s instinct about what is sacred or who belongs. To listen in this way, we also must name our own instincts.

Naming My Own Instincts

Only after mapping it this way did I fully acknowledge something about myself. My moral compass leans strongly towards care and fairness. Rhetoric that is dismissive of suffering or that draws unfair lines around who is welcome in our country activates something in me almost immediately and makes it difficult to stay with what I’m hearing. My fight-or-flight instinct is activated. My reaction is not just intellectual disagreement. It is a moral instinct.

Moving from Reaction to Real Conversation

Hearing the moral instincts shifted something in me. Instead of asking only, “How could someone listening believe this?” I began asking, “What instinct is being activated here?”

That question does not erase disagreement. It does not excuse harmful rhetoric. It does not change the fact that podcasters like Benny Johnson are demonizing other human beings and intentionally sowing the seeds of divisiveness for their own gain. But it complicates the narrative. It invites curiosity about what meaning people are interpreting from this content rather than assuming that all people of a certain political party are simply misinformed or ill-willed.

This is an important distinction as we move from media and online spaces to real, human interactions with people (who are not conflict entrepreneurs), where “it’s hard to hate up close” rings more true.

Much of my professional work centers on helping people navigate conflict and talk across differences. I have sought out cross-partisan spaces and joined conversations designed to bring people with opposing views into the same room. I have come to believe that understanding across differences is possible, though not easy, a believer in Mary Lou Kownacki’s words that “there isn’t anyone you couldn’t love once you heard their story.” I have yet to have a one-on-one conversation with someone whom I have been unable to find any common ground.

Which Instincts Do We Elevate?

Using the lens of moral instincts also raises a harder question. Which moral foundations are emphasized or neglected in my own community? If moral instincts shape perception and belief, then how we frame the issues matters.

On the political left, the moral language often centers on care and fairness. We tell stories about protecting the vulnerable, correcting injustice, and expanding who is included within the circle of belonging. Those instincts can be powerful, but they can also make it harder to recognize the moral concerns that resonate more strongly for others, such as loyalty, tradition, or social order. Understanding which instincts resonate for different audiences is just as important as the facts we present.

Staying in the Room

Staying allowed me to move from reacting solely at the level of outrage to listening for the deeper instinct underneath the argument.

We can be shocked.

We can be angered.

We can be offended.

And we can still ask what fear is being tapped, what value is being defended, what feels sacred to the listener, and whether the messenger is seeking to divide or to understand.

In a polarized culture, that shift will not change everyone’s mind. But it changes the quality of attention we bring to the conversation. And perhaps that is where true persuasion begins.

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Welcome back to UNASB! This newsletter serves as a recap of our last meeting. As a reminder, here at UNASB, we listen to conservative-leaning podcasts, analyze their messaging and themes, and brainstorm actionable ideas for how the Democratic coalition can strengthen its own approach.

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UNASB made its annual pilgrimage to the Joe Rogan Experience, where we got a deep dive into the tech right’s worldview through the guest, Palmer Luckey.

Luckey is a tech billionaire who invented the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset which was acquired by Facebook (now Meta) in his early twenties. He was fired from Facebook (or was asked to leave or mutually separated, depending on who you ask) at 25 for making a $10,000 donation to a pro-Trump group that ran a “Too Big To Jail” billboard with Hillary Clinton’s face and other anti-Hillary memes during the 2016 election.

Now in his thirties, Luckey runs the weapons and tech manufacturer he founded, Anduril Industries, which has made millions from government contracts and is even more entrenched within the tech right network. Anduril received initial investments from tech right figurehead Peter Thiel, and the company’s early staff included former executives from Palantir, Thiel’s technology and surveillance company.

Rogan and Luckey’s conversation runs for over three hours, and it feels like two dudes hanging out and talking about whatever pops into their minds next. Still, the episode works to paint Luckey as a righteous boy genius living at exactly the right time to use his talents to become massively wealthy and help his country in the process.

Joe Rogan Experience #2394 - Palmer Luckey

Throughout the podcast, Luckey makes specific cultural references — from sci-fi shows to video games to his company Anduril itself, which is named after a sword from Lord of the Rings — that provide a window into the kinds of media that are resonating with a cohort of Millennial and Gen-Z young men. Rogan (who seems to have more bro-y cultural touchstones), doesn’t quite match Luckey’s enthusiasm at all times, but the two talk about The X Files, conspiracy theories, Star Trek, video games, robot battles, talking dogs, and more. These references could get very niche (this nerdy recapper clocked that Luckey was name-dropping a Yu-Gi-Oh character as a fictional technologist he admired without Luckey even naming the anime series itself), but they were mostly from mainstream, not right wing, media.

Luckey still works in conservative talking points into these pop culture discussions, though. He praises Warner Bros. for announcing they will make movies people want to see, and not what he calls “art house social justice money losers” (notably, he doesn’t say ‘woke’). He never uses the actual phrase “DEI,” but he uses a heavy-handed metaphor about choosing the best ratio of men’s to women’s bathrooms in a new office building to ‘prove’ that working towards more gender diversity in male-dominated fields like video games is undeniably stupid. Rogan nods along.

Luckey’s portrayal of his career (and the worldview he developed through it) also consistently reinforces the tech right’s narratives. Luckey celebrates the role of weapons manufacturers and defense contractors as a way to live out his boyhood dreams, gamifying war so it doesn’t feel like it has life-or-death stakes. He breezes past the fact that he’s made billions from government spending and military contracts, describing it as more efficient cost savings. He even says making instruments of war is the morally righteous thing to do (because if a moral person doesn’t make the weapons, someone else will), adding that the best role for the United States would be “to become the world’s gun store.”

And then there’s the actual politics talk. A tangent that starts with Rogan and Luckey talking about the Gulf War ends with them agreeing that Trump is the only man alive who could withstand the physical pressures of the presidency, and they’re off to the races. Luckey shares a story about Clinton advisor John Podesta refusing to answer a straightforward question in a meeting with potential donors in 2015, citing that exchange as the moment he fully turned against the left. Then he talks about how he’s been a longtime Trump supporter by 2016, claiming credibility as both a converted liberal and a Trump fan ahead of his time. Rogan and Luckey may gesture at being independent, but through it all, they are unabashedly pro-Trump, anti-Democrat, and certainly anti-liberal.

Key Takeaways

• Luckey presents himself as the (pun intended) luckiest guy in the world. He’s born at exactly the right time to take his childhood love of sci-fi, his self-proclaimed brilliance, and the government’s desire to pay for new weapons in order to get rich doing what he loves. In this way, he gives young men who might not have Rogan’s brawn but Luckey’s brain a future to aspire to —a future that still leads them to the right.

• Luckey claims to be the source of truth — both intellectually and morally —without qualms or caveats. He says without batting an eye that the best choice for smart, moral people is to go into weapons manufacturing. He’s convinced that independent corporations should be the only ones making military technology. He’s even got an unimpeachable read on the British psyche and Chinese acceptance of surveillance. Rogan rarely pushes back or asks follow-ups; Luckey is able to hand-wave his source for some military knowledge with an “I can’t tell you how I know that,” and the conversation moves on to another area of Luckey’s expertise.

• Luckey finds just enough points of disagreement to paint himself as an independent, credible voice. He calls himself libertarian, doesn’t think the state should be involved in regulating marriage at all (gay or otherwise), and even references a time when he used to work with a liberal nonprofit. He even breaks with other tech-right thinkers by criticizing government surveillance and censorship on social media, and by saying he does think foreign policy decisions should be made by an elected official, not a corporation. Rogan takes these departures from expectations as adding credibility, not marks against it.

• Rogan isn’t fully sold on the tech right’s post-human fantasies. While Luckey hypes up robot-on-robot boxing matches (and his long-term backer, Peter Thiel, isn’t convinced the human race should endure at all), Rogan would rather use AI to help humans box better instead. He also seems bored during some of Luckey’s nerdier tangents, suggesting this jock-nerd alliance isn’t fully locked in.

What we (left-leaning people) can learn from this and DO

We can find common ground for conversations with people who are compelled by the tech right, through critiques of bloated military spending.

Luckey, who directly profits from government defense contracts, is willing to say that America’s defense spending is bloated and inefficient. This could be an inroad to talking more about reprioritizing massive military budgets. It could also be an opportunity to talk about what the government is NOT spending money on, like making medication more affordable, fighting monopolies, improving education, or keeping our air and water clean.

Present a compelling vision of the future, and inspire tech innovators to help us make it possible.

Luckey offers a clear, supposedly utopian future through tech. It’s one where we can talk to our dogs thanks to AI, where drones are constantly monitoring to detect and stop wildfires before they get a chance to spread — and yes, where the brightest minds have made the United States the gun store of the world. If we want to bring more people onto our side, we have to give these potential innovators a different vision to work towards. Instead of weapons, what should we be creating? The Abundance-left paints a picture of America with towers of housing, freely available clean energy, and thriving innovation. How can other factions of the left improve their own worldbuilding in the public consciousness? Whatever future vision you may have, talk about it often and in tangible ways, and invite more people in to help you make it real.

Faith is still an important battleground, even with the tech right.

In one of the more surprising moments, Luckey talks about how AI and technology go hand in hand with his devout Christian faith. His faith gives a purpose to his billions and his mission, and AI shows that man can also create something in its own image. Could there be better answers from the left for people asking these same questions?

We have to do better about engaging sci-fi and fantasy fan cultures.

Reading Lord of the Rings or watching Star Trek doesn’t automatically make you conservative — just ask Stacey Abrams (or your recapper, who dressed up as J.R.R. Tolkien for a fourth grade biography night). The left has made some inroads here, like making DC Comics’ Nazi-fighting G.I. Robot into a symbol of anti-authoritarian resistance online, but there’s more work to be done. This fan engagement also needs to be authentic, instead of just playing Madden a week before Election Day to try and reach some gamers. There will always be a contingent of trolls mad about casting a woman or non-white Star Wars character, but there are plenty more apolitical fans out there to find common ground with and bring to our side, too.

WHAT UNASB MEMBERS ARE READING:

• Christian nationalist pastor speaks on his sermon to troops at Pentagon

• Young Voters Are Turning Away From Trump. Here’s Why

• What the Left Can Learn From A MAGA–Adjacent Christian Streaming Service

• MARK HALPERIN: Trump strategy super session plots midterm survival as history stalks GOP

• ‘The right has won the family’: my relentless search for lefty mommy bloggers

• How We Collectively Shifted the ICE Convo

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On a frigid Chicago January evening, I make my way through a bustling multiplex, to a near-empty theater occupied by just one other couple. I’m realizing we’re getting our own private screening for the documentary Melania on opening weekend.

This is not a normal movie review, since I’m here on assignment for Unfortunately Not a Sound Bath—it’s a messaging autopsy. UNASB’s goal is to get out of our bubble, study the content millions of people are consuming, notice the patterns, and translate those patterns into better real-world conversations.

Amazon reportedly spent around $75 million for the story and distribution rights. The price tag had critics calling it a “propaganda piece” and “open bribe” under the label of a biopic. The film centers around Melania Trump’s experience as First Lady-elect during the 20 days leading up to the 2024 Presidential Inauguration. To be fair, this may have been an interesting story in other hands instead of the Epstein connected director, Brett Ratner.

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When Vibes Replace Substance

As Monica Hesse observed in The Washington Post, there’s nothing to see here—and hiding Melania’s true personality “is, in fact, her personality.” This isn’t a flaw in the documentary, it’s working exactly as intended. The absence is the point, emptiness is the brand. The film’s vibes just require production value to persuade viewers with atmosphere and aesthetics.

The film sells us the image of Melania Trump following a formula of three repeating pillars —Family, Business, and Philanthropy. In many positive promotions for the film, these themes were incanted constantly. Say it enough times with the right music and lighting, and maybe no one will notice a lack of evidence of these things.

The Family That Never Connects

Let’s start with Family. The film mentions it constantly. We see Melania Trump lighting a candle for her deceased mother, a brief shot of Barron Trump, references to Donald Trump. But watch closely—there’s no actual connection shown. No conversations, no warmth, no moments that reveal relationships. Melania is surrounded by staff in every scene, moving through palatial spaces alone. In her gilded palaces, I’d almost feel sorry for her. The out-of-touch comparisons to Marie Antoinette are not new, but at least Marie had her cosplay Hameau de la Reine to pretend she connected with the working class.

This is a film about a family that rarely appears in the same frame with anything resembling intimacy. It’s the aesthetic of family—the word invoked, the symbolic gesture—without the substance. Even the moments that should feel intimate are staged for maximum emotional manipulation. The private moments in a cleared out church for Melania’s candle-lighting scene, or the “unifier” line from Trump’s inauguration speech, highlighted in the trailer and edited to appear as if he nods acknowledgment to Melania’s earlier scene contribution. (Rewatching the speech, the acknowledgement never happened.)

Some critics have tried to paint Melania as a trapped Rapunzel, a victim waiting to be saved. Maureen Dowd got it right in The New York Times: she’s not imprisoned in the tower, she’s “comfortable in the frosty vertical solitude,” swaddled in luxury. The isolation isn’t inflicted on her—it’s cultivated.

The Business Empire That Isn’t

Then there’s Business, the second pillar. Her empire, as promoted in the film and press materials, consists of: a cryptocurrency venture (launched shortly before the crypto market crashed), NFTs (that barely sold), some jewelry, and holiday ornaments. There’s also a publishing company with one product—her own coffee table memoir and this film deal. That’s it. That’s the business portfolio of someone positioning herself as a serious executive.

As critics at The Atlantic have suggested, the film is really a “hard launch of a new lifestyle brand.“ They’re right. This is an extended infomercial for Melania the brand—the memoir, the jewelry, the crypto ventures, the aesthetic. The film itself IS the business, which explains why the actual business empire feels so hollow. She’s not building businesses; she’s licensing her image. The product is the mystique.

Compare that to the hours of footage devoted to showing us luxury, wealth, and designer consultations. We’re meant to absorb “successful businesswoman” through atmosphere, not evidence. The film lingers on a video call with France’s First Lady, Brigitte Macron, featuring an impossibly long shot of a MacBook—ever so naturally perched on Melania’s memoir. Everything is product placement, including Melania herself. We’re watching a commercial disguised as access, branding disguised as intimacy.

In promotional interviews, her agent, Marc Beckman, described the film as a “fashion explosion” showing “how she gets dressed, how she selects her styles.” In promoting a documentary about a First Lady’s work, the selling point is wardrobe selection? My mistake, Marc, I thought this was about a successful immigrant executive businesswoman rising to the top.

The Philanthropy Platform

And then there’s Philanthropy, the third pillar. The film leans heavily on “Be Best,” her anti-cyberbullying platform. What it doesn’t mention: the platform has been functionally dormant for years, with minimal activity on her website or social media about it since the end of her first term. The irony—that her husband remains one of the most prolifically vitriolic social media users in history—goes entirely unaddressed.

In promotional interviews, her agent lists examples of the First Lady’s accomplishments: the Take It Down Act, foster care executive orders, AI initiatives for children. But notice what’s missing: implementation details, measurable outcomes, follow-through.

The “Fostering the Future Together” program is announced with universities “involved,” but where are the students? How many have been helped? The one anecdotal letter he mentions—from a teacher who benefited years ago—is telling. If this were an active, robust program, there would be hundreds of stories, not one carefully-curated testimonial.

There was also a “Unity” purse partnership with Gucci, where 20% of proceeds would supposedly go to charity. You’ll just need to drop $2,800 on your next shopping trip to Beverly Hills. Which raises the question, who’s benefiting? The film wants you to absorb “philanthropist” the way you might absorb “glamorous” or “poised”—through repetition and aesthetics, not through demonstration.

Her agent claims she works “seven days a week from 6am to past midnight. Every day. There’s never a vacation day.” If true, where’s the output? What are the receipts for all those hours? The film itself—covering 20 days—shows us designer consultations and party planning. That’s what “working around the clock” looks like in this universe: curating the appearance of work, not the work itself.

Who This Film Is Really For?

Who watches this and comes away satisfied?

Sitting in that near-empty theater (that seats 300), I desperately wanted to ask the only two other people why they were there. Were they Melania fans? Hate-watchers? Critics? Unfortunately, when the lights came up, I must have blacked out since the next thing I knew I was standing outside, brought back to reality by the frigid Chicago evening. My numb brain needed a strong drink.

Later, as I decompressed and pored over my notes, I went looking for any authentic positive response without direct ties to Jeff Bezos or the Trumps. Just like in the film itself, it took a lot of searching to find anyone praising her who wasn’t getting paid, one way or another.

To better understand the target audience, I attempted to break down who was buying tickets to see the film.

The Trump loyalists tended to be older women in sold-out theaters in wealthy conservative strongholds like Florida and Texas. They describe Melania as “beautiful, classy, poised” and most importantly, “an influence to Trump.” For them, the three pillars don’t need evidence—they’re articles of faith. The film confirms what they already believe about proximity to power equaling virtue. These are fans of the Trump brand regardless of what shape it comes in, and Melania has always been the most palatable package.

The apolitical parasocial viewers who might be the ones that secretly peek in their party host’s medicine cabinet. Their investment is to happily watch the drama unfold like a reality show, ambivalent to the real-world consequences. They don’t care if the business is real or the philanthropy is active—they’re here for the aesthetic of wealth. The three pillars are just set dressing for voyeurism.

The Alchemy of Propaganda

This is the danger of the modern influencer class: making billionaire excess feel not just acceptable, but deserved and achievable. Melania Trump floats from scene to scene, moving between private jets, designer clothes fittings, glitzy residences, and golden eggs, with language about “hard work.” It’s telling non-political viewers that this level of wealth isn’t about inheritance or corruption—it’s about work ethic.

That is if they just worked “seven days a week,” they too could have designers consulting on their wardrobe choices. It’s the American Dream repackaged as the American Royal Family, and you’re invited to watch but can never actually touch.

The Protection Racket

Here’s what keeps me up at night: the film works even when it doesn’t.

Sophie Gilbert in The Atlantic put it bluntly: “Melania the movie isn’t a documentary; it’s a protection racket.” Amazon—which has extensive federal contracts through AWS and whose CEO Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post and Blue Origin—paid $40 million for this film with $28 million going directly to the Trump family coffers, far above any competing bid, adding $35 million for marketing. Amazon reps insisted they invested so heavily because they “think customers are going to love it.”

The film made $7 million in its opening weekend—technically “the strongest opening for a documentary in a decade.” But as Sam Adams noted in Slate, there’s an old Hollywood term for a $75 million movie that opens with $7 million: a flop.

But that was never really the point, was it? Bezos dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago just weeks before this deal was announced. Days after the film’s release, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth visited Bezos’s facilities. The film premiered at the Kennedy Center—not with celebrities, not with Hollywood, but with government officials. Government officials attending a film about a First Lady, distributed by a company that needs those officials’ approval for federal contracts.

This isn’t just a bad movie. It’s a transaction dressed up as art. And while Amazon spent $75 million on this vanity project, they laid off one-third of Washington Post staff, including investigative reporters who might have covered the transactional nature of that very deal.

If you’re wondering what a “protection racket” looks like in practice, that’s it. The corruption isn’t hidden—it’s performed as culture, with a red carpet.

The New Blueprint

It’s what critic Sonny Bunch in The Bulwark calls “a pure and naked instrument of grift and propaganda deployed to great effect on an audience happy to lap it up.” Theaters in Florida and Texas sold out with people paying to bask in the golden glow of Trump Tower, even as my Chicago theater sat empty.

Trump supporters bought validation and millions more will stream it, absorbing the message that wealth equals virtue, that emptiness equals mystery, that a life of fittings and place settings is something to aspire to rather than mourn.

This is the blueprint now. Not to convince people with arguments, but to train them to accept branding as reality. To consume power as entertainment. To mistake production value for substance. To scroll through life absorbing vibes.

So, I’ll ask anyone with the misfortune of seeing this film (and the couple in my screening), is this what legitimacy looks like? Does wealth equal virtue? Does access equal truth?

But we’re not helpless. We can refuse to stream it. We can spend fewer dollars with Amazon, the company run by a billionaire that gifted $28 million to another billionaire while laying off a third of their Washington Post journalists. We can patronize actual documentaries that investigate power instead of performing it.

More urgently, we need to recognize propaganda when we see it. Not for us to become paranoid, but to become literate. To notice when editing fabricates truth. To question when we are told to stare at golden shiny things and ignore reality.

Because if we can’t tell the difference between what is and what was, we’ll already have lost more than we know.

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At UNASB, we don’t listen to MAGA voices to mock them. We listen to understand them — to study how they package power, masculinity, nostalgia and grievance into something aspirational. We try to decode the vibe.

Last Monday, we spent three hours inside one of the most influential vibe machines in America: The Joe Rogan Experience. His guest was Palmer Luckey.

If you only know Luckey as a young billionaire with political opinions, you’re missing the engineering part of the story. He’s not a nepo baby. He built something real.

As a teenager, Luckey began developing what would become the prototype for modern virtual reality headsets. He founded Oculus Rift. In 2014, Facebook acquired Oculus VR for $2 billion. By his early twenties, he was one of Silicon Valley’s wunderkinds — proof that technical brilliance plus timing equals astronomical wealth.

He is now 33 years old and has spent over half his life building advanced electronic systems. After leaving Facebook, he founded Anduril, a defense technology company with billions in U.S. government contracts focused on autonomous weapons systems, surveillance and AI-enabled military tools.

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He is now a big boy with very big toys.

He is, by any definition, accomplished. Smart. A true engineer.

And he is also a MAGA supporter, moving comfortably within the ecosystem that Rogan both shapes and reflects.

That is where the metaphor becomes unavoidable.

In the biblical book of Isaiah, there is a vision of peace: They shall beat their swords into ploughshares. Weapons transformed into tools of cultivation. Instruments of death reshaped into instruments of nourishment.

For centuries, that phrase has represented moral progress — the idea that technology and power can be redirected toward human flourishing.

Luckey represents a cultural inversion.

The engineer who once built a device designed to expand human experience — to immerse us in new worlds — now builds machines designed to dominate and, if necessary, eliminate perceived enemies. The ploughshare has become a sword.

And we are funding the forge.

Anduril’s contracts are not speculative venture capital experiments. They are taxpayer dollars. Public money flowing into increasingly autonomous and increasingly anonymous systems of force.

Luckey frames this as innovation.

He does not present himself as a warmonger. He presents as an engineer solving problems. He sees inefficiency and wants to optimize it. He sees risk and wants to automate it. He sees global competition and wants to win.

In that framing, morality becomes secondary to capability.That’s the cultural shift.

Rogan’s platform amplifies this because it rewards confidence, competence, and masculine spectacle. It prizes strength, innovation, and the thrill of competition. The allure of dominance. In that ecosystem, robots fighting robots isn’t horrifying. It’s fascinating.

Palmer Luckey doesn’t appear cruel. He seems excited, proud, almost boyish in his enthusiasm. And that is what makes it complicated.

Because what he builds is not neutral.

Autonomous weapons are not simply cooler versions of existing tools. They alter the moral distance between decision and consequence. They abstract human cost. They make force scalable and, potentially, easier to deploy.

Three hours of conversation, and very little sustained reflection on what happens when lethal capability becomes software-driven and self-directed.

Three hours of futurism and nostalgia — and almost no pause to consider what kind of world emerges when cultivation loses cultural prestige and combat gains it.

I found myself strangely conflicted.

Luckey is charismatic, brilliant, and in some ways admirable. The self-made engineer archetype still holds enormous power in the American imagination. We are drawn to competence. We root for builders.

But admiration without scrutiny is how cultural currents quietly reverse direction.

We once imagined technology as something that would free humans — from labor, from scarcity, from limitation. Increasingly, it is being sold as something that will outfight us.

Turning ploughshares into swords is not simply a defense policy decision. It is a cultural one. It reflects what we celebrate. What we fund. What keeps life going.

And while we argue over groceries and healthcare, billions of public dollars are moving from cultivation to combat — from tools that feed to tools that fight.

This isn’t inevitable.

It is a choice.

The most unsettling part of the interview was not aggression. It was what was missing. An absence of moral wrestling. An absence of hesitation about where this road leads. The engineer sees a system to improve.

The question is whether we, as a culture, still see the difference between building a world and dominating one.

In many ways, 2026 feels like a Mars moment — whether you believe in astrology or not. The cultural current favors fire, assertion, boldness. Competence is prized. Strength is aestheticized. Winning is a virtue.

Palmer Luckey embodies a version of masculinity ascendant in this moment: technically brilliant, fascinated by capability, comfortable with scale and force. It is not an angry masculinity. It is an optimized one.

But masculinity is at a crossroads. Real strength is not measured in how powerful the tool is, but in what the tool is for. The divine masculine — if we still believe in such a thing — is not defined by domination. It is defined by stewardship. It asks not only “Can we build it?” But…“What are we responsible for once we do?”

A warrior without guardianship is a spectacle. Power without compassion is performance.

It isn’t how big or good-looking your muscle is. It’s what you use it for.

If we do not remember the difference, we may wake up one day to discover its long-term cost: we didn’t shift resources to infrastructure, or that which helps people.

We simply built better swords — and called it progress.

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I have a confession to make: I don’t have strong opinions about Bad Bunny’s halftime performance or his music. I enjoy the Winter Olympics, but can’t say I live or die by them, or the athletes—besides Lindsey Vonn. I didn’t watch the Grammys or pay attention to which artists spoke out against ICE.

I might be the exception because each of these events has been a flashpoint in the ongoing Culture War between MAGA and the rest of America. Enough pieces have been written about the current state of the Culture War, and it appears that, as of this writing, Trump and MAGA are currently losing it.

I am less interested in watching these specific events and more interested in what they say about the current state of Trump’s hold on America, its institutions, and most importantly, its people.

America Afraid

Think back to just over a year ago. America’s cultural institutions were afraid to go against Trump/ruffle MAGA’s feathers. SNL is an illustrative example. The episode after Trump’s election, they spent much of it kowtowing to him in a joking and self-aware way. Their episode directly preceding Trump’s second inauguration deployed Dave Chappelle (perhaps as a fellow cancel culture victim, depending on your view) to plead with Trump, “Do not forget your humanity and please have empathy for displaced people”. These were signals to America about our new authoritarian age, which would soon see major institutions from prestigious law firms to universities bend the knee to Trump. Professors, scientists and various celebrities literally fled the country, including noted authoritarianism scholar, Timothy Snyder, who ironically led his “resist-the-libs” bible, “On Tyranny” with the edict, “Do not obey in advance”. Snyder obeyed in advance. And many of our cultural institutions, political leaders, and artists seemed to fall in line.

That’s what makes Bad Bunny’s speech at the Grammys and his halftime performance so notable. It’s why Olympians speaking out matters. Why the NBA canceling Minnesota’s game after the murder of Alex Pretti breaks through (some of) the noise. Popular culture and media—despite their fragmentation—continue to both set and reflect the terms of our national conversation. Bad Bunny, artists at the Grammys, and our Olympians all had the courage and felt they had the space to say something. They act as the beacons to everyday Americans who might otherwise remain quiet.

It’s human nature to be influenced by those we interact with in person and online. We take our cues from our friends and family, but also our public figures. When Americans see people in public positions who have nothing to do with our political system speaking out, it can become popular to speak out. Impossible to measure but real nonetheless. Because silence begets silence but conversations spark fire for action.

It also rebuts the “lol, nothing matters” theory that sometimes becomes popular. Nothing is inevitable. Policy impacts politics impacts culture impacts popularity (or perhaps vice versa). Going after all undocumented immigrants - not just those who commit crimes - and the resulting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti matter. Tariffs increasing prices for Americans matter. Slow walking and covering up the Epstein files matter. Americans notice and Trump’s popularity plummets.

America Unafraid

And so, our cultural figures speak out. People post in random sports subreddits about the Epstein Files. A subreddit about catbongos says, ICE Out, after the deaths of Good and Pretti. These acts feed one another, and even people who normally disdain what they consider loud and combative politics, realize that it’s not “politics” to want their fellow Americans to not be murdered, that immigration is a core American value, that prices are too high, and that we should hold billionaires accountable if they’re in the Epstein Files. As was noted here recently, each act, each statement, is a sign, a permission, an implicit exhortation, and the start of a conversation: about our values and who we want to be.

These are the sparks and the kindling of a shifting tide. Many are witnessing it. But we must each participate in it. We must talk to our friends and family because some don’t hold our same field of view and certainly don’t share our information bubbles. When we share a meme that undercuts MAGA’s message, when we reach out to a friend who we might not often agree with to start a well meaning conversation about what’s going on in Minnesota or the Epstein Files or another hard to defend outrage- that becomes impossible to miss and serves as the fuel to victory. Each of our actions builds on one another and momentum can take hold. But we must be the momentum and the backbone, or else the tide turns again.

I’ll say again: Trump is starting to lose the culture war. He’s losing the culture war because Americans are fed up with his vision and governance of America. It starts with Bad Bunny. It ends with each of us, in our words and actions that our communities witness, online and in person. And eventually, the roaring fire becomes too large and too loud to ignore.

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This piece was written by an UNASB club member who wishes to remain anonymous. If you would like to join the club, please signup for the waitlist here.

This past week, at 38 weeks pregnant with my first child, I went to the hospital with high blood pressure. They were checking for preeclampsia - a condition that can quickly become life-threatening for both mother and baby - despite my otherwise normal and healthy pregnancy. I sat in a triage room, hooked up to monitors, watching numbers on a screen, waiting and nervous.

Thankfully, the tests came back negative, but this is what new motherhood is, before it even formally begins: It is a cascade of fears from rational to irrational, and everything in between. For many of us, they begin before we even get pregnant and don’t seem to let up. Fear that something is wrong with your baby. Fear that you’re not feeding them right. Fear that you can’t trust the information you’re getting. Fear that you’re not enough. Fear that the world your child is entering is not safe. According to one survey, new moms spend more than 1,400 hours worrying about their baby’s health in the first year alone. That’s eight straight weeks of nothing but worry.

These fears are universal and, in many cases, healthy! They’re the instinct that keeps us vigilant, the power that we could lift a car, the engine behind every late-night Google search and every call to the doctors. But in 2026, the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement and the Trump administration have turned those fears into a grift. They are not easing the anxieties of new mothers. Instead, they are identifying them, inflaming them, and converting them into supplement sales, podcast downloads, and ultimately, votes.

MAHA is taking our concerns and turning them into cons.

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The Concern: “Is something wrong with my baby?”

Every new mom worries that something is wrong with her baby. It is biological. It is constant. It is the reason we lie awake listening for breathing.

The Con: Tylenol causes autism and the vaccine schedule is a hoax.

The same week I started getting pregnancy headaches - the kind where you’re already anxious because you know high blood pressure runs in your family, and you’re not quite out of the first trimester weeds - the White House went on Truth Social to tell parents not to give their children Tylenol “for virtually any reason,” linking acetaminophen to autism despite no causal evidence. A major JAMA study of 2.5 million children had already directly rebutted this claim. The American Academy of Pediatrics called the White House announcement “filled with dangerous claims and misleading information.” But the damage was already done. Personally, I had to spend an entire appointment navigating how to treat my headaches and worse, parents started showing up to ERs with infants running 103-degree fevers, too afraid to give them medicine.

Last week, I had to call my hospital with a question I didn’t think I’d need to ask: would they still be administering the hepatitis B vaccine after birth, given recent Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recommendations? And when RFK Jr.’s HHS removed the COVID vaccine from the recommended schedule for healthy children and pregnant women - a move that also affects insurance coverage - the question of what else might quietly disappear stopped being paranoid and started being practical.

They are taking the most primal fear a mother has - is my baby okay? - and exploiting it to sell distrust.

The Concern: “Am I feeding my baby right?”

Twenty-eight percent of new parents list “is my baby getting enough to eat?” as their number one fear. Before my baby has even arrived, I’ve already fielded unsolicited opinions about breastfeeding versus formula, about what I should and shouldn’t be eating while pregnant, about whether my prenatal vitamins are the right brand. The anxiety around feeding is relentless and for many mothers, it’s tied directly to the question of whether they’re doing enough.

The Con: Shame moms no matter what they do but tell them you have all the answers.

In said recent interview on Alex Clark’s TPUSA podcast, Calley Means, a former food and pharmaceutical industry lobbyist turned White House special government employee who by his own admission helped kill sugar taxes on behalf of Coca-Cola, lamented about “processed food as the first food a child eats.” That’s formula. He is talking about formula. The thing that keeps millions of newborns alive and healthy when breastfeeding isn’t possible or isn’t chosen. The MAHA movement claims to be the voice of American mothers and then shames them for how they feed their babies from day one - and the guy doing it used to lobby for soda companies. Meanwhile, RFK Jr.’s HHS has pushed to restrict what SNAP recipients can buy, because apparently the administration that can’t get its own dietary guidelines straight wants to police what low-income mothers put in their grocery carts.

The Concern: “Can I trust what I’m being told?”

At our hospital tour, another expectant parent asked about the vitamin K shot, not because they had a medical concern, but because they’d seen something on Instagram. The nurse paused. You could feel the room recalibrate. This is what happens when federal health policy gets filtered through wellness influencers: every routine question becomes a landmine, and healthcare providers are left doing cleanup for misinformation they didn’t create.

I’ve had to think carefully about how I talk about our decision to use a doula and midwives, because those choices now carry political coding they didn’t used to. The vaccine schedule conversation, which should be a routine part of prenatal care, has become loaded with suspicion from every direction. I chose these things based on the guidance of trusted medical experts not because some wellness influencer told me the answers to America’s health crisis are in the Bible, like Means does in the interview.

The Con: The people asking you to distrust the medical establishment? Consider who they are.

Casey Means, Trump’s nominee for Surgeon General, dropped out of her surgical residency, profits from wellness supplements and sponsored social media posts, runs a metabolic testing company that a Public Citizen report says has already benefited from RFK Jr.’s promotion of wearable health devices, and invested in tobacco giants Philip Morris and Altria while selling you supplements for metabolic health.

Her brother Calley helped kill sugar taxes (or so he claims) for the soda industry before rebranding as a health crusader. As Public Citizen put it: MAHA influencers “accurately identify that much of the US healthcare system is beholden to corporate interests,” then “sell consumers their own version of the grift.” They didn’t fix the corruption. They just swapped which industry gets to profit off your anxiety.

The Concern: “Is my child safe?”

This is the fear that haunts every parent and the one this administration has the least credibility to address. The Harvard Center on the Developing Child has documented how childhood adversity such as abuse, family separation, and witnessing violence triggers toxic stress that disrupts developing brain architecture, weakens immune function, and drives chronic inflammation. The research on childhood sexual abuse (CSA) specifically is devastating: a Lancet Psychiatry umbrella review covering 559 studies and over four million participants found that CSA is associated with virtually every adult health outcome studied: elevated rates of cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disorders, chronic pain, and a 39% increase in type 2 diabetes. At the cellular level, childhood sexual abuse accelerates telomere erosion - literally aging survivors from the inside out.

This is the actual childhood health crisis. Not sugary cereal. Not Red Dye 40. Not the measles vaccine, whose most common side effects are a mild fever and a sore arm, and which prevents a disease that hospitalizes one in five and kills one to three per thousand who catch it.

The Con: They are actively endangering children.

In the same interview, Calley Means repeatedly says that President Trump is going to be “the voice of American children and the voice of American mothers.” I listened to this episode just days after the latest Epstein files dropped. Let’s sit with what “the voice of American children” actually looks like.

The 3 million pages of Epstein files released by the DOJ include an FBI report detailing an allegation that Trump raped a 13-year-old girl. They include a victim’s account of Ghislaine Maxwell “presenting” her to Trump at a party, telling her he “liked” her and suggesting she was “available.” They include a description of a 14-year-old being brought to Mar-a-Lago, where Epstein elbowed Trump, gestured at the child, and asked, “This is a good one, right?” Trump smiled and nodded.

And MAHA isn’t clean from the files either: Dr. Peter Attia - the longevity guru whose *Outlive* was a bestseller, whose podcast is gospel in the “optimize your health” world - appears over 1,700 times in the Epstein files. Three years of correspondence after Epstein had spent time in prison for soliciting minors. Medical advice for a convicted sex trafficker. CBS pulled his 60 Minutes segment after finding that one of the wellness industry’s most trusted doctors was pen pals with a pedophile.

And just a reminder: TPUSA is the same Turning Point that hosted the Super Bowl Halftime Show alternative - billed as a celebration of “American faith, family, and freedom” - headlined by Kid Rock. Whose song “Cool, Daddy Cool” includes the lyric “young ladies, I like ‘em underage / see some say that’s statutory / but I say it’s mandatory.”

The Concern: “Am I enough?”

Underneath all the specific fears - the feeding, the vaccines, the safety - is the one that runs deepest: Am I a good enough mother? Researchers have found that this question haunts parents across demographics. One qualitative study found that expectant mothers’ anxieties distilled down to a single devastating question, “Can one of my small choices ruin the entire life of my child?”

The Con: The MAHA movement has built its entire appeal on the answer being you’re not enough.

Yes, the wrong food will poison your child. Yes, the wrong medication will give them autism. Yes, formula will set them up for failure. Yes, the vaccine schedule is the thing that’s making kids sick. And the only way to be a good mother is to reject the establishment entirely, do your own research, buy the supplements, follow the right influencers, and achieve a kind of maternal purity that, conveniently, requires a subscription and discount code. This is how they actively work to erode public trust in medical professionals, making mothers feel like they can’t rely on doctors and instead must turn to MAHA for guidance.

This is the funnel. And at the bottom of it are not healthier kids. It’s a voter base.

Calley Means says the quiet part out loud in that same Alex Clark conversation when he shares that Charlie Kirk told him behind the scenes that he was excited about the MAHA movement because of “the electoral implications of MAHA and how new voters could be brought into the fold.” Not changing vaccine regulations. Not finding root causes of disease. Not healthier kids. Power. And Means says this in the same breath as he says that the answers to our health crisis are in the Bible.

So what do we do?

Well, the rugged individualism baked into new parenthood cuts across political lines. It makes sense, we all want agency. From the ingredients in our food to what kind of education our kids receive, it is part of our responsibility to navigate the world on behalf of our children. These fears? They’re not weaknesses. They’re what make us pay attention.

But the Alex Clarks, the Calley Means, the Trump advisors, and the MAHA influencer class are not respecting those fears. They are mapping them, monetizing them, and weaponizing them all while Mar-a-Lago membership hits $1 million and the man they call “the voice of American children” smiles at fourteen-year-olds in his own club, and while a former soda lobbyist tells you the real problem is your baby’s formula.

More and more people are waking up to the fact that the Trump administration thinks Americans, specifically moms, are absolute idiots. From the brazen lies out of DHS after Border Patrol agents shot and killed Alex Pretti on a Minneapolis street, a nurse and a U.S. citizen, whom Kristi Noem immediately labeled a “domestic terrorist” despite video evidence showing otherwise, to the abduction of five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos from his home in a Minneapolis suburb where federal agents using the boy as bait to get his mother to open the door. And we can’t forget the constant denial of the president’s well-documented social calendar with the most prolific child sex trafficker in modern history, even as 3 million pages of Epstein files now sit on a DOJ server with Trump’s name appearing thousands of times throughout.

It is abundantly clear: they think we’ll keep eating the bullshit they’re serving.

But they’re wrong. And here’s one simple thing we can do: talk to each other. Share our stories, our fears, our questions. Build communities of trust and support that don’t depend on influencers or politicians, but on our communities. When we hear a friend repeating MAHA talking points, engage with empathy and facts because they are likely coming from the simple desire to be a good parent. The antidote to their grift is our solidarity. They can’t exploit our fears if we face them together.

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“We have everything we could ever want. It’s about power.”

What sounds like a war cry, or a leaked text from a GOP Signal group, is actually pulled from Netflix’s Members Only: Palm Beach trailer. This quote neatly summarizes the motivation behind the protagonist of the show, millionaire Ro-Mina Ustayev, who upends her life to move from Philadelphia to Palm Beach in pursuit of power, in the form of a Mar-a-Lago membership.

Politics are never openly discussed on the show, but proximity to power is lusted for openly and often. In this show lies a case study about how eagerly the most well-resourced on the Right will bend to power in order to get in the same room as President Trump or Elon Musk, and the uniform of the Right reinforces the ideology. What can the Left learn from watching wealthy women radically transform themselves for access to Trump?

The bargain is clear. In exchange for access to President Trump and Elon Musk, Ro-Mina must accept isolation, xenophobia, and relentless scrutiny under Palm Beach’s strenuous social code. It’s not about wealth. It’s about what you have to do and how you have to look to amass power.

Members Only: Palm Beach follows Ro-Mina’s attempts to gain acceptance into a society of modest blondes with a preference for florals and pastels despite her own penchant for leather and yelling. Three Palm Beach veterans guide her metamorphosis: Rosalyn Yellin (a prominent philanthropist and former Zumba instructor), Gale Brophy (a socialite of the past with mysterious wealth), and Hilary Musser (a property developer celebrating wedding number five). Ro-Mina herself is a former healthcare executive, Uzbekistani immigrant, and aspiring singer/fashion designer. Each woman has embarked on a tremendous transformation to fit into Palm Beach society.

And now it’s Ro-Mina’s turn.

Ro-Mina’s wealth, which is enough to cover the $1 million cost of membership at Mar-a-Lago, does not make her social life any more bearable. Acceptance requires submission to “the Palm Beach way”. Ro-Mina is willing to learn and implement these standards, of which the most important is never showing your chest and legs at the same time, but finds true acceptance still out of reach. It seems new rules are created just for her - when she asks for cash instead of presents on her birthday, she’s chastised by each of her mentors. She shows off her new wardrobe often, but it’s the wrong material. Meanwhile, Ro-Mina’s mentors routinely violate the very rules they claimed were set in stone.

These contradictions are on purpose. The rules aren’t about looking or acting a certain way. They’re about deference to leadership in exchange for more invitations to ever-more enticing rooms

Ro-Mina Ustayev on IMDb

Throughout the season, Ro-Mina repeatedly and proudly shares her immigration story and attempts to merge her Uzbekistani heritage and culture with the customs of Palm Beach society. Instead, she is referred to as Pakistani and eventually, the tension reaches an all-time high when Ro-Mina is told to “go back to her own country” at an etiquette class by one of her mentors. But instead of backing down, she recommits to climbing the social hierarchy. While commenting that immigrants often take better advantage of American opportunity, she even imagines herself at the top of the ladder, leading the entire Palm Beach social scene in her own way. But that seems all but impossible while the old guard of Palm Beach continues to criticize and undermine Ro-Mina’s every move. It becomes clear that it just isn’t about the look, it’s the public display of reverence to the powerful that truly leads to acceptance and praise.

What Members Only Says about the Right – and Left — in this current moment

At Unfortunately Not a Sound Bath, we analyze and brainstorm on right-wing messaging and themes and convert them into actionable ideas to strengthen the Democratic approach. Members Only: Palm Beach showcases how the Right’s promise of power and personal celebrity is enticing enough to convince the wealthiest across America to upend their lives and relocate to Trump’s front door.

The political Right reinforces its power in a way that intensifies the loyalty of its aspirational believers. Conform and defer, and you’ll be rewarded with access, wealth, and validation.

The left mirrors these demands of conformance in less clear-cut ways. The left encourages diversity in image and slogan, but the rules of acceptable behavior are even more strict and numerous. Take the recent attempt to cancel Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers of the Las Culturistas podcast after they discouraged fans from donating to Jasmine Crockett’s campaign to flip Texas’ U.S. Senate seat. Backlash against this expression of diversity of thought as to where Democrat voters’ limited dollars should go quickly ensued.

Those of the left must display humility, tolerance, smarts, confidence, and charm in perfect form, across all demographics, at all times, to be considered marketable. Even then, the payoff still may not cover your ever-increasing rent.

If your goal is to tap the nearly endless resources of influence and cash of the right-wing elite, the decision to conform is easy. At least, it seems worth it to Ro-Mina. The later episodes justify her outer work by featuring a picture of her, floral-clad, next to the President and her mentor, with perfect smiles all around.

Those on the left gain status through a combination of virtue signals—empathy, compassion, collectivism. As evidenced in Members Only, the Right gains ground through a seemingly easy to follow guide to power. Follow the rules, you’ll be rewarded. The clarity is seductive.

If politics is downstream of culture, and culture is composed of group identity, then Members Only shows how the enforced styling of the Right sustains its worldview and prestige. They understand that power is something to be protected, not shared. Being easy to identify shows your dominance. They make the path to power legible, with clear messaging and visuals meant to go viral. Meanwhile, the left demands perfection and makes no promises for success.

The Right is selling access and the left is selling approval. We shouldn’t be surprised that one is much more persuasive. If Democrats want loyalty, they have to offer real, clear, and joyful incentives, not just moral righteousness. Otherwise, they will keep losing to people in pastels who know exactly what they’re dressing for.

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Welcome back to UNASB! This newsletter serves as a recap of our latest meeting. As a reminder, here at UNSAB, we listen to right-leaning podcasts, analyze their messaging and themes, and brainstorm actionable ideas for how the democratic coalition can strengthen its own approach.

UNASB turned our attention to the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, which has been a major conversation driver of that has moved health-conscious voters to the right. There’s no better place to start analyzing the MAHA movement from within than through Alex Clark’s Turning Point USA-backed podcast Culture Apothecary.

The health and wellness-focused podcast with half a million subscribers touts its mission as providing a space where “each guest provides their own remedy to heal a sick culture - physically, emotionally, and spiritually.” The message is stickier than ever– more than70% of her audience in the past year are new listeners.

The selected podcast episode, “Debunking MAHA Lies and Explaining Year 1 Trump Controversies,” features Calley Means, a current HHS senior advisor, wellness entrepreneur, and brother of Trump’s nominee for our country’s next surgeon general.

The conversation was far-ranging, covering topics such as vaccines, pesticides, infertility, and public nutrition assistance. There are repeated references to how untrustworthy food companies and medical experts have become. Means describes MAHA’s success as a “cultural transformation” around health. He tempers expectations of radical, immediate change by offering a parallel to the decades-long mission to overturn Roe v. Wade. He explains, contrary to the evidence, that “research has not been cut”, and instead promotes how MAHA is investing heavily into cancer, microplastics, testosterone, and “food as medicine” research. Means also celebrates major MAHA wins like removing soda and candy from SNAP.

Throughout the podcast, there were many calls to action. Listeners were encouraged to call their lawmakers about food label reforms, send the podcast to a liberal in their life, and question their pediatricians about their children’s prescriptions. The message was clear: MAHA isn’t just policy, it’s a well-organized cultural revival.

Key Takeaways

Health is an effective political conversion tool.

Mothers and families feel overwhelmed by the costs and conflicting information each time they visit a grocery store or doctor’s office. MAHA offers individuals something that looks like personal empowerment, which is so much sexier than believing that the government is invested in the public good. Once you’re in the MAHA movement, you’re part of a community of logical, empathic individuals who are seeking a healthier future, and crucially, you should do everything in your power to support MAGA so that the momentum continues.

Simple is good.

Both Means and Clark emphasize non-controversial, feel-good solutions to complex health issues. Eat more whole foods. Get some sunlight and lots of exercise. Brushed aside are how socioeconomics affects access to these factors, or how well-researched western medicine practices do have their place for those patients who need it.

The right is effective at turning the speaking points of the left around.

The promotion of equity is portrayed as opposite to logic. Public health nuance that takes affordability and equity into account is reduced to claiming that promoting whole foods is racist. Ultraprocessed foods are cast as a construction of the left. “They accuse us of being sexist for suggesting that moms should cook whole food for their kids.”

Trust in medicine, government, and research is incredibly low, and the right does not expect this to change.

Instead, they are planning incremental changes over the next few decades to radically upend what healthcare means in America. Under this system, short-term policy losses are to be expected. They are priming their audiences for the long game.

Making What We Learned Actionable

Fact checking isn’t enough.

MAHA is selling a message of a stronger, healthier, and cheaper future. The left needs to move towards a framework where public health helps you thrive, not just protects you from harm.

MAHA invests in speaking to moms and influencers directly.

The left communicates top-down. By investing in direct storytelling from families or communities, the left can make its message more relatable and accessible.

The rise of MAHA comes from its relatable identity as a group of individuals and families concerned about their health and seeking a system that’s easier to understand.

If Democrats want to compete, they need to build an equally compelling vision of an America where good health is easy and empowering. Cultural movements win when they make people feel strong.

WHAT UNASB MEMBERS ARE READING

• Back to the Basics: The Venn Diagram of Progress

• The Dizzying Rise of MAHA Warrior Calley Means, RFK Jr.’s Right-Hand Man

• Is Joe Rogan Really Turning on Trump?

• Built for a Different War: Why Progressive Institutions Can’t Compete in Today’s Media Battlefield

Thanks for reading! Want to get involved in UNASB? Click here.

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There are many things that have stayed with me from a career in social impact: relationships, fundraising strategies, and an understanding of what “social enterprise” actually means. But the learning I refer to most came from a mentor steeped in equity-centered practices, who distilled years of social movement work into one deceptively simple framework:

“We all have work to do: Alone. In Affinity. Across Differences.”

I lived this methodology first hand. I am an Ashkenazi Jew who walked the Silent March from Auschwitz-Birkenau to honor my people. I studied Arabic to understand a part of the Middle East I’d never been taught. I joined Progressive Jewish spaces and attended Breaking the Silence events on campus. And then I lived and walked across Jordan so I could understand history from a Palestinian perspective. All while traveling to my Israeli “friends-turned-family” home for Passover that same Spring.

I landed somewhere powerful: meaningful relationships, conversations, and moments with Palestinians, Israelis, passionate Americans, and seemingly indifferent folks until news hit the front page. Every time there’s a crisis in the Levant, I take calls from each category of person, each relationship built on the foundation of trust, mutual understanding, and honesty. I have never sacrificed my convictions for palatability; I have remained open to persuasion or new approaches to peace when presented with new information.

UNASB exists because its members refuse to stay in our bubble. We meet biweekly to dissect conservative-leaning podcasts, not to mock them, but to understand the messaging patterns that resonate with millions. We’re studying their techniques so we can have more effective, long-term conversations with people we disagree with.

Rather than defending UNASB’s approach, I’m inviting those who criticize our group to consider their own strategy. Whether people agree with us or not, the difficult truth is: what we’ve been doing for the last decade hasn’t worked, and isn’t working now.

How are you advancing the causes you care most about?

Though this framework was originally developed for equity-focused work in schools, specifically to support educator collaboration in multiracial contexts, I’ve repurposed it for democratic deliberation in an increasingly politically fractured nation.

• Alone: We need to understand our individual identity and personal growth areas, but we can’t move the needle operating only from our personal convictions.

• Affinity: We must explore our convictions in safe containers alongside those with shared or similar beliefs, but can’t change anything by staying in our echo chambers forever, surrounded only by people who already agree with us.

• Across Difference: We have to build unlikely coalitions that lead to sustainable solutions. But we can’t move the needle by abandoning our convictions just to fit in with people who are different from us.

The framework of working Alone, in Affinity, and Across Differences isn’t about choosing one approach over another: it’s about committing to all three.

Because that’s what it takes to make lasting progress.

This framework isn’t theoretical for me; it’s the architecture underlying my time with UNASB and The Magnet Collective. The skills for healthy democracies, workplaces, and communities are the same: constructive conflict, productive conversations, and collaborative deliberation to create solutions better than the ones we have today. Not perfect -- Better. Progress. Whether in policy reform, workplace deliverables, or finally filling that pothole you’ve skirted around the last three years.

We can’t build better policies, systems, or structures without aligning the majority of people to a shared solution. Collaboration can’t happen without Good Conflict and communication. And productive conflict and communication can’t happen in just one lane. They must be practiced, reflected upon, and practiced again across all three: Alone, in Affinity, and Across Differences.

Alone

This is personal work: the unglamorous process of learning and unlearning. What will it take to interrupt hatred, bias, and fear, not just in society, but in yourself?

Without this work, activism becomes performative instead of transformative.

If you’ve made it this far, you’ve probably started this work already.

This is what allows me to listen to a two-hour Benny Johnson episode without rage-quitting or red-pilling. When I first started UNASB, I couldn’t make it through 20 minutes of content without calling a friend to rant or eating my feelings.

But the “Alone” work forced me to ask myself: Why does this messaging land with millions of people? Where am I dismissing valid concerns because of who’s expressing them?

This self-interrogation doesn’t mean abandoning my values; it means examining why I hold them and whether communication of my convictions actually resonates with the realities of most Americans. And exploring how my beliefs remain true to myself while expanding my suggested solutions to reach more Americans, not less.

In Affinity

This Circle is with others “like us.”

People who broadly share our identities, our commitments, or our lived experiences. Affinity spaces are a natural way for people to connect around something we have in common, whether that’s race, religion, political orientation, or simply a shared workplace.

UNASB is fundamentally an affinity space. We are left-leaning people who gather to study right-wing content together. A shared political starting point lets us do the hard work of genuinely understanding, not just criticizing, conservative messaging. We can say: “I kind of understood that argument,” or “That messaging technique actually makes sense” without being accused of betraying our values.

These spaces serve a critical function. They offer safety, affirmation, healing, and the ability to speak freely without constantly explaining or defending your lived reality. They’re where we can be vulnerable about our mistakes, ask questions we’re afraid to ask in mixed company, and hold each other accountable without the performance pressure of being watched by those we’re trying to reach and engage.

In UNASB meetings, we workshop how to respond to family members. We practice reframing progressive values using communication patterns that work in conservative spaces. We process frustration together so we don’t bring emotional reactivity into politically divergent conversations.

But affinity spaces become echo chambers if we never leave them. That’s why the framework requires movement between all three Circles. UNASB isn’t the end goal.

It’s preparation for Circle 3.

Across Differences

This is the hardest, and often most necessary, work: engaging with people who have different experiences, perspectives, and yes, different political beliefs. It requires curiosity instead of quick condemnation. Listening instead of rehearsing rebuttals. Maintaining our values while remaining open to understanding how others arrived at theirs.

This is why UNASB exists. Not so we can listen to conservative podcast strategy forever, but so we can have better, longer-term, more productive conversations with real people in our lives. So we can collectively build policies that better represent Americans’ pain points, some of which Democrats have clearly overlooked for decades.

This doesn’t mean debating bad-faith actors. It means building coalitions with people who feel differently but share common objectives. It means hard conversations with family instead of cutting them off. It means organizing in spaces where consensus is earned through deliberation, not granted because everyone in the room already agrees.

The goal isn’t to compromise our values. The goal is to build the kind of broad-based power that actually shifts systems. And systems don’t change because everyone agrees with each other. Things change because we build unlikely alliances, find common ground across differences, and create movements too large to ignore.

But you can’t do any of that without Circles 1 and 2. You can’t facilitate across difference if you haven’t examined your own triggers. You can’t persuade someone or learn from them if you haven’t practiced explaining your perspective with people who share your convictions first.

This isn’t about excusing harm or compromising on justice. It’s about recognizing that sustainable change has always required coalitions built on shared concerns, not forced rhetoric or same realities. These coalitions require compromise and strong, trusted relationships.

Movements don’t win by preaching solely to the choir. They win by expanding it.

In the past, I’ve ended friendships over social disagreements and yelled quip remarks rather than listen to another’s perspective. But these strategies: the call-outs, the purity tests, the assumption that if we just yell our values loud enough everyone will come around, they’re not working.

I’m so uninterested in being liked. Or even in being right. What I am most interested in now is winning for my people. For my friends with a different skin color than me. For my neighbors on food stamps. For my family of teachers, unsure if going to work means enduring “Know Your Rights” trainings, preparing for a school shooting, or actually teaching.

I don’t have all the answers. But as a dear friend & mentor recently reminded me, doing the same thing and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.

What might we gain by trying something new?

Progress has never come from a single approach.

So before dismissing UNASB as naive for studying conservative podcasts, I invite you to map your own strategy onto this framework.

• Are you doing your internal, personal work?

• Are you building accountability with people who share your commitments?

• Are you engaging, really engaging, across lines of difference?

We do the work alone to ground ourselves.

We do the work in affinity to sustain ourselves.

And we do the work across differences to actually change the systems we’re currently stuck in.

If we abandon any one of those Circles, we fail.

The stakes are too high. Our communities are fracturing. Our workplaces are fleeing. Our democracy is fraying. And the only way forward I’ve found that actually works is the hardest one: doing the internal work, building confidence in affinity, and then meaningfully and productively engaging across differences.

In fact, I would argue that UNASB and strategies like it might be the most promising move we have in our repertoire.

If you’re on the fence, how would you change our strategy to make progress?

I’d like to deliberate.

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The New York Times profiled UNASB last week, and the online left had a field day calling us secret fascist right wing agents. Specifically, this post on Bluesky got traction (over 4k likes—we are FAMOUS!), with political commentator Jamelle Bouie1 writing,

“very classic case of unserious people who do not take anything seriously and see politics as a little game, and they are almost certainly listening for the vicarious thrill of hearing people voice and affirm their personal prejudices. they’ll be openly fash in a few years”

Several other users, across multiple platforms, expressed concern that we are inadvertently red-pilling ourselves. One user on Instagram wrote,

“Sounds tedious and an awful use of time. Why would you intentionally [expose] yourself to media designed to radicalize people and distort reality? Do you think [you’re] immune to the effects?”

I’m going to take this comment at face value and address this fear head on for myself. After 12 years of closely studying American history with a focus on the intersections between racism, social justice movements, and mass media, not to mention myriad radicalizing personal experiences; am I worried that a few hours of listening to Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes is going to suddenly flip my entire value system, worldview, and deep convictions around right and wrong? No.

If anything, my year in UNASB has helped me to be more grounded in my leftist beliefs and community, and therefore take my activism offline. I’m even making new friends in my thirties(!!!!)— one drove me to my first DSA meeting on Saturday, another that committed to canvassing with me for a progressive council member2 running in our neighborhood.

Every accusation is a confession. If you are concerned that you may accidentally become a fascist due to living in fascist times…I fear your politics may be merely reactionary to this moment, and not rooted in deeply held beliefs. There is deep spiritual work for you to do before wading into Nick Fuentes’s Youtube comments.

Once you do that, I encourage you to face your fears and look the enemy in the face directly, so you can counter it more effectively. (That’s what we’re doing in the club…duh!)

A few of our haters actually did a great job spelling out what UNASB does: seriously study right wing creators such that we can have more effective conversations with people we disagree with.

One of the main purposes of the club is a commitment to deep canvassing3 and relational organizing. Rather than knocking on strangers’ doors every four years and demanding their vote (the traditional model of political canvassing), start having real conversations, today. Lengthy, two-way conversations sans judgement, where you ask lots of questions and get vulnerable yourself.

When you do, you are going to hear echoes of talking points peddled on these podcasts: MAHA moms’ concerns about chemicals in foods, conspiratorial suspicion of big government institutions, fears about loneliness and a decline in community bonds, and a lot of (mis)interpretations of Christian doctrine. Your conversations will yield better results when you come armed with the knowledge of what ideas your fellow Americans are swimming in, and if you have developed an action plan of how to combat that messaging with your friends (aka UNASB).

Every month, our co-founders remind us of the “evergreen homework assignment”: talk to someone right-leaning or apolitical about what’s going on. And every time, someone shares that an idea, a tactic, or messaging strategy they learned in the club changed the way they spoke to a loved one and achieved a positive outcome. They got their in-law to call their senator about ICE funding, they were able to share a factual news source with an acquaintance drowning in disinformation, they had a productive conversation with a stranger on a train.

We’re not asking you to build bridges with fascists or try to rationalize their beliefs. We’re asking you to get serious about how Americans are getting their information and the deep parasocial bonds they form with podcasters. Out of the top 10 podcasts Spotify users listened to in 2025, 7 are right-wing or right-adjacent. 7/10!!!!!

You can keep your head in the sand and shit on what we do in the comment section, or you can face reality.

For a closing action item, a few commenters suggested we may be funded by malevolent right-wing forces…

If anyone has any Thiel bucks to share, pls DM.

In all seriousness we are looking for donations and would love if a larger media org wanted to work with us… .. … :)

FWIW: A Few Short Caveats Before We Begin

1. Over the last seven months, I’ve been surprised (horrified) to find that many of the most popular right-wing creators/podcasters, as extreme as they are in the short clips circulated in my feed, can be compelling and even charming when given an hour to speak on their various podcasts. The commentary they offer, harmful as it is, is deceptively simple and easy to understand.

2. I don’t work in politics but I care deeply about our political future. I’ve watched as the right has monopolized the conversation online, and I think it’s critical that left-of-center people take a serious look at these creators and try to learn what makes them effective.

3. It’s worth noting that our digital news ecosystem is not a fair marketplace for ideas. A lot of powerful interests are working behind the scenes to socially engineer the information we see, keeping us ill-informed, angry and divided.

4. I disagree with the entire belief system, rhetoric, peddling of racism, homophobia, transphobia, and harmful conspiracy theories that right-wing content creators like Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens, and countless others have made their careers normalizing.

With all these items in mind, our political process still relies on understanding and engaging different perspectives. Ignoring the loudest and most popular voices on the right isn’t just bad politics; it makes it impossible to understand the information people are consuming on a daily basis. The cues that these creators have perfected to reach millions of partisan and politically ambivalent listeners are not captured in the short clips amplified on TikTok and reels. We ignore these cues at our own risk. ​

The Podcast Election

In 2025, over 210 million Americans listened to podcasts. 55% of listeners identified themselves as weekly listeners. There is no longer any doubt that podcasts are a primary source of news for the vast majority of Americans.

One of the reasons I value UNASB is because I’m interested in how the Right has cultivated and expanded an online ecosystem of podcasts and creators.

As part of the 2024 campaign, President Trump and Vice President Harris appeared on dozens of podcasts in the four months leading up to the November election. “20% of likely voters… [said] they have watched one of the Trump podcast episodes… More than half of [listeners] said Trump’s podcast interviews made them “more likely” or made “no difference” on their decision. In contrast, about 27% of voters said they have watched one of Harris’ appearances on podcasts. But for those who… watched, about 50%… said it made them less likely to vote for her.”

Not only did President Trump make more appearances, but the appearances he made persuaded more voters to support him.

While Harris did make campaign stops on Call Her Daddy, The Breakfast Club, and The Howard Stern Show, her appearances focused primarily on the election and her candidacy. Meanwhile, Trump talked about professional wrestling with Mark Calway, spent three hours on a live show with Joe Rogan and joked with Theo Von on This Past Weekend. Overall, President Trump visited more non-political shows and took more risks to build his audience.

What I want to stress here is that the right-wing’s dominance of podcasts and emerging platforms didn’t happen in a vacuum. The right-wing has systematically developed an ecosystem of commentators and creators over the last decade. Media Matters identified nine of the top ten of the nation’s largest podcasts as “right-leaning.” Of the 320 shows the organization analyzed, approximately 60 percent met the same “right-leaning criteria.”

This piece is my attempt to outline some of the things I’ve learned as part of UNASB, reconcile with this reality, consider ways the left could break through to new audiences, and take on this right wing media ecosystem.

Case Study: Will The Real Tucker Carlson Please Stand Up?

The first thing I noticed when listening to and watching Tucker Carlson’s podcast, The Tucker Carlson Show, was his tone shift compared to his evening show on Fox News.

On TV, he could be found most weeknights sporting a bow tie and floating conspiracy theories like whether President Obama had wiretapped President Trump. The Fox News version of Tucker Carlson was combative, hyper-partisan and a lot more aligned with the GOP establishment.

Podcast Tucker is different. He’s more laid back. He wears flannels, makes jokes and presents himself as a reformed zealot seeking common ground. Whether this is true or not, this is the way podcast Tucker presents himself.

During Tucker’s conversation with Ana Kasparian, host of The Young Turks, the two talked like old friends. They laughed together and found common ground on a range of issues, like Israel, the homelessness crisis—while still allowing for deep differences. This conversation employed one tactic that I’ve seen across many right-wing podcasts: the “agree to disagree” maneuvering. There are many issues on which Tucker Carlson and Ana Kasparian disagree: whether the 2020 election was stolen, whether women should have a right to choose, etc. There were moments where each person came close to discussing these topics, but, frustratingly for me as a liberal listener, they completely dodged them. By maintaining this agree-to-disagree compromise throughout, the conversation was cordial and created room for them to find issues they could agree on: like the genocide in Gaza, the need for better services for people experiencing homelessness and ways that big companies push agendas on the mainstream news channels.

This is no small feat in today’s political climate and it’s a deliberate strategy to maintain civility and conceal the real differences between the left and the right. It’s replicated across new episodes every week. By actively avoiding the most bombastic disagreements, welcoming guests with radically different political views and maintaining a friendly banter, Tucker Carlson has strategically reinvented himself, enabling him to reach new audiences and mainstream the views of some of the country’s most radical right-wingers.

​Case Study: Nick Fuentes Can (And Will) Say Anything

Growing up, Nick Fuentes listened to the popular right-wing radio host Mark Levin every day. Levin is a radio personality best known for accusing President Obama of being linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and peddling the great replacement theory. The right-wing radio show host has an innate ability to boil every issue, no matter how complex, down to a simple left versus right and right versus wrong framework. As a high schooler, Levin’s simple, pro-America rhetoric resonated with Fuentes.

Fuentes’ early podcast episodes reflect a more boilerplate version of traditional conservative rhetoric; over the last decade his tone and content have grown much more fringe.

After listening to a few of his episodes, I would characterize his approach to podcasting as a sort of stream of consciousness, angry screed attacking any and everyone. His episodes feel organically disorganized, jumping from topic to topic and shifting back and forth from blatant racism to attacks on his perceived allies to the political right. He frequently reminds the audience, “you may disagree with me, but I’m telling you the truth.”

To reiterate, I’m disgusted and appalled by almost every argument he makes and every position he supports. But… They’re not complicated and I understand them.

In the same way that Donald Trump’s early 2015 political rallies wrapped the national media for their outlandish and unpredictable quality, Fuentes has grabbed the national media with his penchant for a bizarre sound bite, his shameless embrace of racist conspiracy theories and his ability to attack both political parties. Whether you’re watching Fuentes for the first time or you’re an active weekly listener, you never know what he’s going to say—and that may be a part of the appeal.

In the episode UNASB listened to, Fuentes rambled about President Trump’s military parade. He called the parade “lame,” accused President Trump of being a “grifter,” urged conservatives to move further right and declared MAGA dead. He simplified the president’s lackluster parade to a simple and effective attack on MAGA as a whole.

Over eight years, Fuentes has recorded hundreds of hours of content and grown his following to millions of listeners. Even those of us who don’t listen to him religiously know who he is because his ideas have entered the mainstream dialogue of conservative politics.

If you need any more proof that his strategy is working, consider that the Republican Party has devolved into a full-scale revolt over whether MAGA should embrace or reject the podcaster.

Where We (Could) Go From Here

The Democratic party will never succeed if they can’t meet the moment. We are living in an era that requires a different, never-before-seen, playbook. Here are some basic and cursory things that we could do:

1. Identify and elevate new content creators who are platform savvy, quick on their feet and broadly likable and persuasive. One item to stress, these individuals don’t need to be expressly political. Most of the creators drawing the largest audiences are not political, but rather comedians, gamers, athletes or everyday people sharing stories about their lives.

2. Most people are not following politics day to day. When we talk about politics, we must focus on emotional appeals and storytelling.​ Specifically, we need to be better at framing the policy issues we care about in ways that resonate with people who may be learning about our positions for the first time.

3. Learn something from the creators on the right. Love them or hate them, they’ve quickly adapted to a new medium and simplified complex political issues for a sizable, and growing, community.

4. It’s not enough to call out disinformation if we’re not challenging the ecosystem that enables it to flow freely. The left must take lessons in simplistic and compelling communication from the right, to counter the content that has mainstreamed much of the MAGA agenda.

It is not enough to criticize creators we disagree with or respond to every controversial thing they say. We must make a broader pitch to their listeners, and make inroads to new audiences who are not following politics day-to-day.

Rather than disagreeing without engaging, try engaging but disagreeing.

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The semi-charmed reality of hyper-normalization that many creators and influencers were living in may finally be coming to an end.

Polling has made this clear: approval for ICE and Trump are slipping fast. While political insiders and mainstream media may be moved more by data, society as a whole is moved by culture.

Polls don’t give permission to speak out, but people with influence do

After the killing of Alex Pretti in Minnesota, and the protests that followed, people have stopped treating this like another bad news cycle and started speaking out like something fundamental had finally been exposed.

The moment where the distance between “what we’re told is happening” and “what we see is actually happening” is truly collapsing.

This time, it isn’t just the political creators, independent journalists, or your friend who just “always post about this stuff.” This horrible act by the administration is causing everyone from the mid-sized Midwest mommy bloggers to influential powerhouses like Alix Earle and creators from across the spectrum of the entire internet to all agree that this is the red line for the culture.

This really matters because the veil between the dual states, the one where life seems normal for some, and the other where the power of the government feels limitless, has finally been lifted for all to see.

The post deemed safe enough to share

What’s happening in Minnesota is the final straw for those who have stayed silent this past year or more likely, this past decade, and this post gave them the chance to finally say “I can’t stay quiet anymore, even if it hurts my bottom line”. It was deemed by the creator economy (or their managers) that this was THE ONE to post to appease your audiences, or safe enough to dip your toe into political content. It’s a good post; it shares resources about how to help folks in Minnesota. It gives tangible action steps to take, so it feels better than just talking about feelings.

As with all things online, this inherently has layers. Creators started and stopped by sharing that post in their story. Alix Earle is a great example – she shared this right in the middle of posting photos of herself at Paris Couture Week. But others took it further.

Some are posting that their family members are immigrants, some are talking about how this went against their faith, and some are even going as far as saying Fuck ICE, or Fuck Trump.

And still others pushed further, beyond outrage or resources, and said, “if you supported Trump or ICE, unfollow me” or “you’re a shit person if you voted for this”

That reaction makes sense when you’re getting hit from all sides at once. Creators are being told to speak up faster and louder, while also being scolded with “I liked you better when you weren’t political” or “why are you still posting shopping links?” Creators are expected to be blank vessels for our entertainment, not fully actualized humans, and this is where parasocial relationships start to break down on both sides.

But telling one another to stop having feelings—just unfollow me— isn’t helpful. Calling people bad or telling them to fuck off from the conversation entirely doesn’t actually build understanding; it just puts up walls where we need bridges.

Propaganda is a hell of a psychological tool, and a lot of people are just trying to find some off-ramp out of the confusion and fear that a lot of media feeds them. The backlash to Pretti’s killing isn’t just political — it was emotional, moral, and human. And for some, demanding purity online was a way to express that intensity.

Being part of Unfortunately Not a Soundbath has taught that people can change their minds. A lot of people have strong convictions, but loosely held, and the right uses this to help hold favor when culture shifts. Perspectives aren’t monoliths. And above all, connection is greater than division, and something the left should do better is opening our big tent when people want to come in. It’s much more helpful to say “glad you could make it” instead of “what took you so long?”

This is what community actually looks like

This moment isn’t just about Minnesota.

It is about a lot of people realizing, all at once, that the gap between the story we’re being told about power and the reality of how it operates has gotten too wide to ignore. And once you really, truly see that, you start reaching for something else; each other.

When the veil lifts, the instinct isn’t just outrage, but also connection. The feeling of not being alone in our thoughts, feelings, or difficult questions.

This past weekend showed us what community can look like in real time, both online and off. Not everyone agreed on language or tactics. Not everyone showed up in the same way. But they showed up together, as neighbors, followers, lurkers all alike.

That matters.

If we want to get through what’s coming, politically, culturally, emotionally, astrologically, we need to purposefully build community. We need spaces where people can ask questions without being shamed or canceled, and process what’s happening without being told they’re doing it all wrong. They need a safe space to change their mind and grow.

We talk all the time about wanting a village, but villages don’t just appear. They’re made of villagers. And villagers stay even when it’s uncomfortable, listen instead of unfollow, and choose curiosity.

And the mid-size Midwest mommy bloggers are right about that part: everyone does want a village. But in this moment, we all have to be villagers.

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We started Unfortunately Not A Sound Bath a year ago, and it has grown beyond anything we could have imagined. Today, UNASB was featured in the New York Times. We’re excited for more people to learn about this space and want to take a minute to lay out UNASB’s purpose and member journey.

Unfortunately Not a Sound Bath (UNASB) is a virtual podcast listening club that meets biweekly to discuss a right-leaning podcast, analyze their messaging and themes, and brainstorm actionable ways for how the Democratic coalition can strengthen its own approach.

We’re not here to stay in our echo chamber or vent about how frustrating the other side is. Nor are we trying to red-pill ourselves into sympathizing with Nazis. But we can’t pretend the content isn’t out there, incredibly popular, and unfortunately persuasive to millions. UNASB is about helping people meet others where they are, challenge harmful narratives, and shape a more progressive culture through connection and conversation.

Ideally, members go through the following journey

1. Get out of your liberal / media bubble by understanding the content millions of people are consuming every day.

2. Notice the patterns and techniques right-leaning creators and hosts use to communicate with their audiences.

3. Apply these learnings to your everyday conversations with your apolitical friends or the MAGA-curious people in your life to have long-term persuasive conversations.

For people who haven’t read EVERY UNASB club recap or op-ed, we’ve compiled a starter guide to dive in

Op-eds written by UNASB members

• The UNASB Guide to Having Productive, Long-Term, Persuasive Conversations About Politics

• I MAGA-fied a Fresh TikTok in 12 Hours. By Day Two, It Was Serving Me White Supremacy

• UNASB tips for making holiday meals politically productive

• Baseball and Billionaires: When Sports Mimic Life & How We Can Better Connect Around Them

• Finding Ways to Talk to My Republican In-Laws

• The Elites Are Always Thinking About Us

• Conviction Is No Excuse: An Open Letter to My Fellow Leftists

Club recaps

• Gas Prices, Scapegoats, and “Real” Americans

• Wellness, Wedge Issues, & the War for Young Minds

• MTG Mainstream???

• Matt Walsh on Guns, God, and Gender

• Peter Thiel, The Billionaire Behind the Curtain

If you want to join our meetings, you can join the waitlist for our next cohort here, and in the meantime, please subscribe right here on Substack to keep up with what we’re learning (and paid subscribers help the club going!)

We hope more people learn about the club and understand the importance of talking to people in this moment, understanding what we’re up against, and building community along the way.

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Welcome back to UNASB! This newsletter serves as a recap of our last meeting. As a reminder, here at UNSAB, we listen to conservative-leaning podcasts, analyze their messaging and themes, and brainstorm actionable ideas for how the Democratic coalition can strengthen its own approach.

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Before we dive into our latest recap, we want to remind everyone reading this that now is the time to reach out to every apolitical or right-leaning person in your life to make sure they know about the murders and kidnappings in Minnesota (and across the country). When we started UNASB a year ago, we believed long-form persuasion conversations with the people you know was one of the only ways to break through this polarized environment. We still believe that, but know things are moving at a terrifying speed. The time to act is now. Give people in your life the room to change their mind about this administration. If you don’t know where to start, read our op-eds or send us an email at unasbtheclub@gmail.com.

Now, for your regularly scheduled recap...

UNASB interrupted our regular podcast listening to read chapter five of Jason Zengerle’s new book Hated by All the Right People: Tucker Carlson and the Unravelling of the Conservative Mind. Since we recently welcomed a new cohort, it felt appropriate to take a look back at the origins of the conservative media movement and Tucker’s role in it. Zengerle also joined us to answer our questions and discuss his reporting in greater detail.

The book follows Tucker Carlson’s rise through conservative media and his ideological transformation over the past 30 years. Chapter five covers an inflection point in Carlson’s career and in our media landscape: the creation of the Daily Caller and, subsequently, rage bait.

In 2010, Carlson launched the Daily Caller, an online news outlet dedicated to bringing a professional and serious publication to conservative media. In its infancy, the Caller was committed to facts and prioritized journalistic norms. Tucker soon learned that strategy was not conducive to getting clicks or growing an audience, essential for the site’s survival.

The Caller’s staff struck gold when they discovered rage bait

Articles incorrectly implying an unpopular RNC Chair attended stripclubs, and “ousting” the liberal media’s scheming to help Obama win the 2008 election propelled the Caller’s readership and links from other publications. The success of these misleading and inflammatory articles led to a shift in Carlson’s strategy for the Caller. Rather than committing to formal journalistic norms, the Caller began to focus on what could make its readers the angriest (and generate the most amount of revenue). There was blowback and controversy, but what the Caller was losing in credibility with mainstream media (or readers), it was gaining in revenue and a passionate following from its conservative base.

A snapshot of some of the rage baiting titles the Caller has used over the past 15+ years

The evolution of the Caller is a fascinating examination of both Tucker Carlson’s motivations and how the online media landscape incentivizes rage baiting and extremism. He initially founded the Caller on the argument that conservatives were struggling because they refused to put “accuracy” first and instead focused on bombast and opinion in their media. In 2008, he was arguing that media organizations that don’t care about accurate news will fail.

The past 15+ years have shown us that this is simply not true.

The Caller’s success evolved from its original purpose into “a website that would be less about facts and more about feelings”, highlighting how revenue on the internet is generated (clicks, links, shares, etc), fundamentally changed how media organizations, especially entirely online ones, can succeed.

For how much the right accuses the left of being snowflakes, it’s clear they have big feelings too. Carlson, Breitbart, and so many of the conservative thought leaders UNASB has focused on have harnessed and encouraged the right’s anger, fear, and frustration for huge profits and political influence through rage baiting them with clickable titles and misleading or outright fake news.

Tapping into emotions, especially negative ones, has proven wildly effective in our current media landscape and attention economy

This type of media, whether it’s in an online newspaper or a podcast, especially resonates with, and targets, people who feel the status quo is failing them.

During our chat with Zengerle, we discussed why this type of content was so appealing and why the left was so blindsided by the shifts in people’s beliefs it prompted. Zengerle’s response was that it came down to Americans’ distrust, frustration, and anger with our current systems and institutions, which conservative media has been feeding into for nearly 20 years.

Over multiple election cycles, while the right has been infuriating and mobilizing its readers, the left has failed to meaningfully engage with the lived realities of everyday Americans. The politics being offered often do not reflect the pressures people are actually facing, such as the cost of rent, economic insecurity, and day-to-day survival. The left has instead wrongly assumed that people want to protect our institutions despite them being largely ineffective at providing the support and social safety net they need. When approaching the 2016, 2020, and 2024 elections through this lens, it is obvious why someone like Trump, who wants to dismantle our institutions, is so popular.

Right-wing media does a great job of validating people’s anger and frustration by leading with emotions. While publications like the New York Times are delivering accurate and thorough news across their platforms, Zengerle noted that, outside the opinion column, they aren’t telling people how they should feel, and more importantly, who they should be mad at. In other words, they don’t rage bait us.

Key Takeaways

The internet favors the extreme.

The crazier sounding, the more absurd the better! In a world oversaturated with content, both people and algorithms are drawn to the most extreme version of an idea. We saw the start of this with The Caller, and it’s only gotten more pronounced as we’ve adapted to short-form content and podcasts.

Emotions are profitable.

Emotions, especially negative ones, are the north star guiding so much of the pundits, podcasters, and commentators on the right.

Conservative media owns their beliefs, no matter how controversial.

Part of the Callers’ and Breitbart News’ success that Zengerle covered in Hated Chapter 5 was that they owned what they were saying and didn’t really care about the backlash. The Caller’s success really took off when they tried to create controversy and make people, not only in their audience but across the political spectrum, mad.

Making what we learned actionable

We can play the blame game too!

The Caller and subsequent conservative publications and podcasts are always ready to place blame on everyone, from the establishment politicians and the LGBTQ+ community to immigrants. If the left were to call out billionaires and really dial in on affordability with the same outrage that conservative media brings to culture war issues, we’d have a far better chance at finding common ground than we currently do. This includes traditional media.

Running a campaign on protecting institutions is not going to win elections.

This was especially apparent during the 2024 election, when the Kamala Harris campaign, which largely centered on saving our political institutions from Trump, didn’t work. Institutions are not working for the vast majority of Americans; the left needs to run on a platform that focuses on making them better, not just maintaining them.

We should be mad and tell other people why they should be mad too.

As mentioned earlier, negative emotions are powerful, and when we can collectively channel our rage toward a common good, we can have a huge impact. A great example of this was this past summer, when Jimmy Kimmel was reinstated by ABC/Disney due to people’s collective Disney+ cancellations and outrage over his unfair firing. Given the kidnappings and murders happening in Minnesota right now, it’s critical that we’re not just angry, but vocal, urging everyone who will listen to be outraged as well. Drown out the Trump administration’s, and right-wing media’s, lies about what’s happening with your voice and the voice of everyone you know.

WHAT UNASB MEMBERS ARE READING:

• A Little-Noted Element Propelled Mamdani’s Rise: Gen Z Loneliness

• You’ve Heard About Who ICE Is Recruiting. The Truth Is Far Worse. I’m the Proof.

• Inside the Conservative Campus Revolution

• Exclusive: Secret ICE Programs Revealed

• What the Left Is Getting Wrong About the Right

• Has Joe Rogan fully soured on Trump’s presidency?

• Republicans’ New Health Care Strategy: Lie Loudly. Lie Often.

• Looksmaxxing’ Reveals the Depth of the Crisis Facing Young Men

• A Trump Veto Leaves Republicans in Colorado Parched and Bewildered

• How Jessica Reed Kraus Went from Mommy Blogger to MAHA Maven

• Top conservative influencers cheer Greenland takeover

Thanks for reading! Want to get involved? Click here.

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