Eaton Fire #18: Zero Containment

Mike RothschildLeave a comment

I’m dropping a quick note here for folks who haven’t heard that last week, I announced my next book, Zero Containment, on the Eaton Fire. It’s about everything that went wrong before and after the devastating blaze.

The book will mix my own story of survival and rebuilding with a detective story about all of the things that had to come together in exactly the right way to result in Altadena’s burning. It was the fire, the wind, the drought, the lack of preparedness, poor decision making on the night of the fire, Altadena’s racial demographics and status as an unincorporated town, and sheer bad luck that resulted in my home and thousands of others all going up in smoke. And we’re struggling against the same combination of factors in our rebuild: the insurance crisis, home prices, tariffs, disinformation, cuts to emergency services, the need for crowdfunding as a social safety net, and the looming specter of the disaster happening all over again. This book is about how this all happened, and where we go next.

Zero Containment will be based in part on my initial blog posts processing the blaze, though it will contain almost entirely new writing and reporting. As such, I won’t be writing any further blog posts about the fire, except for extraordinary situations.

But I’ll still be writing and doing interviews in lots of places.

I’m endeavoring to write between one and two pieces a week on Patreon, with a mix of paid and free content. Subscribing on Patreon, at just $5 a month or $48 a year, is the best way you can help support my work as I both continue to rebuild and document that process in Zero Containment.

As we get closer to pub day in Fall 2027, I’ll find a way to reward paid subscribers with something book related.

Last week I announced my new monthly column for Talking Points Memo called Rough Edges, about conspiracy theories and the damage they’re doing to our society.

I appeared on the Epstein Files Book Club podcast, talking about the connection between the Epstein/Rothschild connection and what it does and does not mean.

I also published a piece for Big Think on the resilience of antisemitic conspiracy theories, which is very much worth your time.

Thanks so much for your continued support through this process.

Return of the Cranks

Mike Rothschild

To help my work fighting back against America’s descent into conspiracism, please support me on Patreon at just $5 a month.

Get in losers, we’re going election denying again!

Since Donald Trump has never given up on the completely false notion that he actually won the 2020 election, it’s appropriate that the acolytes who made their names off 2020 election denial haven’t either. What else are they going to do with their time? Get actual jobs? Be useful to society? Why bother, when there’s grift to be grifted and marks to be riled up?

Of course, it’s not that simple. It never is with Trump. The far right has already spent months leading into the 2026 midterms pushing a buffet of proposed voter suppression laws, conspiracy theories, redistricting initiatives, revived audits of counties Trump unexpectedly lost to Joe Biden, and the SAVE Act – a law that would essentially make it almost impossible for large swaths of the population to vote. They know 2026 presents a golden opportunity for the Democrats to take one or both houses of Congress back, and make the last two years of Trump’s second term a never-ending series of hearings and impeachment trials.

The most troubling and most insane iteration of this drive to redo 2020 could be a draft executive order that would allow Trump to declare a national emergency based on foreign interference during Joe Biden’s victory, and essentially seize control over how Americans vote. Mail-in voting would be banned, draconian ID rules would be imposed, every American would be required to re-register, and all ballots would have to be counted by hand in public. The result would be massive restrictions on voting, and even the potential of Trump simply trying to “cancel” the election altogether as part of our non-existent “emergency.”

Obviously, this would be both completely unconstitutional and batshit crazy. Elections in the United States are the purview of the states, and the president has no power over them. The Constitution is absolutely clear on all of this. Most of these “ideas” are totally unworkable, and would be ignored by many states with congressional races the GOP needs to win. To be blunt, this isn’t going to happen, and would be annihilated in court if it did.

And yet, the last decade has seen Trump do all manner of things he “can’t do.” Unilateral wars, flights of egotistical fancy, taking control of the budget away from the House, and a conveyer belt of graft running through the White House are all things the president shouldn’t be able to do, and yet is just doing. Nobody stops him.

But before we resign ourselves to never having a free election again and being under Trump’s decaying thumb for decades to come, there are some caveats.

For one, there’s no real evidence Trump has seen this executive order, and he claimed that he had no idea what it was. Believe him or don’t, but as of now, this order remains a draft floating around the White House – even as 2026 primary contests are already taking place. And again, this EO is totally unconstitutional and unworkable and insane. Trump’s “elite strike force” lost more than 60 cases in their attempt to overturn the 2020 election. with many now facing sanctions of their own. Even the conservative leaning Supreme Court wanted nothing to do with their Hail Mary tries to undo the will of the people. It’s certain that if Trump signed such an order, it would quickly be buried in lawsuits and blocked.

But more than anything, the draft order is the handiwork of a cadre of 2020 election deniers whose reach and relevance are ebbing in the face of a new crop of unhinged white supremacist influencers. Many of these are people who rose to prominence specifically through insane conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being stolen by Italian satellites or Chinese bamboo fibers or COVID-19 being engineered or Serbian data farms stealing legitimate votes. They made millions of dollars through books, videos, subscriptions, and podcasts devoted to Trump having his rightful second term stolen by a vast conspiracy.

They are serial liars. They are professional scammers. And this might be their last chance to cash in. Once Trump is off the national stage, many of these people will be of little use to the GOP. And they know it.

The unworkability and total flaunting of the law of this potential EO is well-covered by more legalistic minds, so I won’t rehash it here. But I do want to focus on the people pushing it, to reassure everyone that just because some people say they have Trump’s ear doesn’t mean they do, or that what they say has any validity to it. Many are QAnon promoters, others are disgraced business figures who set their reputations and savings accounts on fire to defend Trump’s demented conspiracy theories. Again, these people make money when they lie, and the bigger and dumber the lie, the more money they make.

The “mastermind” behind the potential order appears to be 80-year-old lawyer Peter Ticktin, a longtime right wing attorney who has represented both his former classmate Donald Trump and former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne is a variety of unsuccessful lawsuits. He also appears be the driving force behind trying to get his client Tina Peters, currently in Colorado state prison for allowing unauthorized access to voter rolls in that state, a pardon from Trump, despite not being eligible for a federal pardon. Ticktin’s website touts his experience in Divorce & Family Law, Mortgage Foreclosure Defense, Personal Injury, Estates, Wills & Trusts, Business Litigation, Entertainment Law, [and] Employment Law; none of which are election law. Because his election law experience is entirely based on conspiracy theories about the last decade of Trump-related shenanigans.

Joining Ticktin in this lunacy are a rogues gallery of familiar figures from 2020. One is MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, most recently in the news for losing a defamation trial brought by former Dominion executive Dr. Eric Coomer, and for attempting to run for governor in Minnesota. Wouldn’t a sweeping revamp of American electoral laws at the 11th hour, making it harder and more complicated to vote, imperil his candidacy? That’s one of those rhetorical questions conspiracy theorists never answer.

If you like this piece, there are dozens more like it available on Patreon for paid subscribers. Just $48 for a full year!

Coming along for the ride is another familiar 2020 influencer, disgraced former national security advisor and “they’re putting the COVID vaccine in salad dressing” conspiracy theorist Mike Flynn, whose relevance on the far right has severely waned, and who also pushed Trump to declare a similar emergency in 2020 without success. Byrne is part of this crusade as well, as is another of his attorneys, the oft-sanctioned Stefanie Lambert, who is currently awaiting her own trial as part of alleged criminal activity around accessing voting machines in Michigan.

Many other people also claim to be part of this effort, or have been referenced as part of the team trying to get this order across the goal line. The most well-known is “Juan O. Savin,” an absolutely ridiculous figure well-known in QAnon circles for trying and failing to get a slate of election deniers into office as secretaries of state in 2022. He also is one of two different figures bandied about by fringe-dwellers to “actually” be John F. Kennedy, Jr., who died in a plane crash in 1999.

There’s also “Georgia’s most influential conspiracy theorist” Garland Favorito, a hardcore election denier who has also espoused claims that, among other things, Mossad did 9/11. And let’s not forget Obama birth certificate crank and “Infowars QAnon correspondent” Jerome Corsi, who has claimed to be part of the team drafting the order that will “safeguard elections” by “getting the military involved.”

What these people have in common is that they are either professional cranks, or only have a public footprint thanks to 2020 denial. Their claims that Trump has seen this order and is reviewing it have no evidence to support them, and their public track records are filled with lawsuits for defamation and grandiose claims that have been falsified by reporting. To be blunt, they lie a lot. And they get called out and slapped down for these lies a lot. They can claim all they want that they have Trump’s ear and he’s about sign their “draft order” and make himself president for all eternity. Without evidence, their claims should be viewed as beyond dubious.

More than that, this entire effort stinks of desperation. The influence many of these figures have is ebbing away as the MAGA movement moves on. They go on the same rotation of podcasts making the same claims, to dwindling audiences and a base that’s provably getting tired of Trump’s relentless flip-flopping on the economy and Iran. Many are in their 70’s and 80’s, and have little influence on potential Trump successors like JD Vance and Marco Rubio. The clock is running down on their potential to make money off election denial.

Meanwhile, the GOP is facing what could be a historic wipeout in 2026, and a lame duck Trump not on the ballot in 2028. It’s not a surprise that a variety of fading and desperate figures are trying to gin up enthusiasm among their base and despair among the other side. Again, what else are they going to do – get real jobs? Retire and hang out with their grandkids?

Obviously, the 2026 election stands on potentially precarious ground, full of voter suppression and restrictions. Trump might try some sort of national ban on mail-in voting, though it’s unconstitutional. He might deploy ICE and CPB to certain polling place, despite it being illegal. He might even announce he has canceled the election or that no Democrats will be sworn in. These are empty threats, but just the act of him making them carries a certain weight. Nobody should take our democracy or our elections for granted. Not anymore.

But this “draft order” from a clown car full of cranks should be greeted with extreme skepticism. Its purveyors are liars and cranks. None can be trusted. Ultimately, they win simply by being talked about as serious people. They are not.

QAnon vs. Infowars, Part One

Mike Rothschild

It’s purely a coincidence that this piece about the early days of QAnon is coming out a few days after I learned about the death of 8chan founder turned 8chan opponent Fredrick Brennan. Fred was omnipresent in the first year of organized pushback against Q, including appearing with me on the first big podcast I did about Q, Reply All.

Those first months of Q were frenetic because it was rapidly growing with little understanding of who was behind it, or what they wanted from it. Making matters worse was that for Q’s first year, the mainstream media wanted nothing to do with it. To most news outlets, this was just more dumb Pizzagate crap, irrelevant to only a few hardcore conspiracy theorists, and too weird to waste time on.

Obviously, that wasn’t true. We learned the hard way that ignoring rapidly growing fringe movements doesn’t make them disappear – it only ensures they gain strength with nobody paying attention. And they gain strength because of early promoters who legitimize and spread them, either because they believe they’re real, or because they can see dollar signs. Or both.

Jordan Sather was one of those early promoters, a conspiracy theorist who has touted a variety of false claims and fringe beliefs to a steady audience. Some are harmless, like his belief in a “secret space program,” a notion that’s been around for decades. Some are extremely harmful, like his shilling for medical bleach as an alternative treatment for COVID-19. Sather was in the trenches from almost the start of QAnon, and still somehow believes that the “military intelligence team” of Q was leaking clues to an upcoming purge of the deep state that has not actually happened.

I was curious when I found this piece from Sather about Alex Jones’ early links to Q, from promoting it, to trying to co-opt it, to turning against it – and doing it again and again. As I read it, I was pulled back into a world of competing grifters, a growing mythology, and my unease that you can’t be bombarded with unfulfilled promises that the bad guys are finally going down without eventually trying to do it yourself. We’re getting a lot of that these days, and it’s worth seeing where it all came from.

Here’s my response to the first part of this very lengthy piece. The second part will be out next week, for paid subscribers.

Read More »

Twilight of the Scolds

Mike Rothschild

This piece is free, but paid subscriptions are the reason I’m able to take time out from rebuilding to write. To sign up and get access to dozens of additional posts, go to Patreon.com/MikeRothschild

When Donald Trump won re-election in 2024, it looked like a permanent vibe shift in American culture. Banished to the hinterlands of conferences and policy papers were the Democrats and progressive values, replaced by a perpetually aggrieved digital brawler who promised a utopia of free speech and free stuff. Trump’s vision of America wasn’t just one of prosperity and safety, but it was a place where everyone was able to say what they wanted and do what they wanted.

After all, Trump could get away with the crassest of jokes, the cruelest of reactions, and the most callous disregard for feelings and empathy that anyone in public life had ever displayed. Since Trump’s entire shtick remains “if you vote for me, you’ll become like me,” so too did millions of people embrace perpetual transgression and not giving a fuck. And given much of the discourse around the “groups” and “microaggressions” of 2024, you could see why. Progressive culture entailed being scolded by woke moralists for using the wrong words, or canceled for telling a joke that nobody had ever been offended by until five minutes ago.

To MAGA, the left was a self-replicating minefield of offense and hurt feelings, of having to abandon long-held social mores and beliefs just in case they bothered someone. Of women deciding they were men, of diversity shoved in our faces, and of miserable language policing.

In contrast, MAGA culture allowed you to say whatever you wanted, and if someone had a problem with it, you settle it with a vigorous debate. Freedom of speech would be absolute, and consequences nonexistent. No cancel culture, no offensive. You can say the “R” word as much as you want. Conservatism was now cool, edgy, transgressive, and unafraid.

Obviously, that wasn’t real. And it’s not what happened. Instead of offering intellectual and social freedom, MAGA turned into a North Korean style cult of personality, with even the most mild criticism of the leader and his acolytes or the conduct of federal authorities met with devastating consequences. Ritual humiliation was paramount, deviation from the norm was harshly punished, and the only thing that mattered was adherence to the doctrine that Trump is always right. Instead of destroying cancel culture, MAGA became cancel culture. There was no “vigorous debate,” only online dogpiles leading to offline threats, ruined careers, destroyed lives, and a chilling effect on speech that could in no way be considered “free.”

That’s not cool. It’s not edgy or transgressive, it’s deeply authoritarian. And it’s not actually what most people want out of cultural discourse. Polling of the GOP and Trump prove that the erratic and cruel abuses of the administration are driving Americans away from Trump, away from the GOP, and away from the “vibe shift” that characterized the first year of Trump’s second term.

But part of what’s made MAGA so rancid to so many people is the endless moralistic fussing of Trump’s biggest fans who want to control what we eat, what we watch, and what we wear. And so we now have what’s shaping up to be the Waterloo of the culture war: the Super Bowl halftime show.

The NFL, in a nod to its growing international base, gave us Bad Bunny. The massively-popular Puerto Rican rapper would be delivering the Super Bowl’s first non-English halftime show, likely a medley of his many hits, reinforcing his global dominance, and the culture’s shift away from programming for boomers.

Immediately, and despite having ostensibly been boycotting the NFL for reasons nobody seems to remember, the far-right went into outrage overdrive. How dare the NFL foist this non-American on the most American of sporting events (despite Bad Bunny being Puerto Rican and therefore American, and also many foreign acts having played the Big Game). This politically correct virtue signaling can’t stand.

So we had an alternative halftime show, put together by the late Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, featuring what turned out to be several no-name country acts opening for a haggard and clearly lip-synching Kid Rock playing on tape in a warehouse in Atlanta for a few hundred fans. Yes, the people obsessed with their enemies needing safe spaces in fact needed a safe space.

And they felt compelled to tell us how much they needed it. Every single major conservative influencer went out of their way to declare how they’d be turning off the Woke DEI show and turning on Good Old American Entertainment, and several claimed the TPUSA show was so popular that the NFL was freaking out and losing millions of dollars every minute. Americans wanted classic and wholesome songs about drinking beer and the joys of cutting grass.

As turns out, Americans did not actually want that. While the numbers of streams it got are hard to pin down, the TPUSA show got a small fraction of the viewers that Bad Bunny’s ode to love and Latino culture received, probably around six million views on YouTube, as opposed to the 120 million or so TV’s and screens tuned to the NFL.

What those viewers got definitely was not edgy, transgressive, or cool. Instead, it was sweaty and desperate. It insisted on its own importance, while actually having none. And it might have been the worst thing you can possibly be in a culture war fight – it was boring. Everything about it was boring. The music, the vibe, the dull boasts from Twitter personalities that Kid Rock had “broken the internet” and “changed the game forever.” It was just lame. And counterprogramming a Spanish-language show with a song about mowing your lawn is an irony so dense that light can’t escape from it.

Bad Bunny offered a show that many viewers couldn’t understand, but also understood perfectly. A couple actually got married on stage – countering the idea that conservatives are the party dedicated to traditional values and marriage. It was fun and breezy, but also a deeply meaningful examination of the way Puerto Rico has been left behind and abused by the mainland. It was about unity and the combination of cultures that makes America the place people want to run away to. And while many conservatives whined relentlessly about Bunny’s “filthy” lyrics and the sexy gyrations of the various dancers, given that the show was actually about as titillating as the average 80’s hair metal video, it’s pretty clear that the only objection was that non-white people were being sexy.

Can’t have that now, can we?

Obviously, it’s impossible to talk about a seminal event in Latino culture without talking about the administration’s demented drive to destroy it through ICE raids and demonizing. And in that light, it becomes clear that the “alternative halftime show” was just a vector for raising money and getting clicks from the far right’s ongoing anti-immigrant moral panic. Again, Bad Bunny is not actually an immigrant, but they don’t see the distinction.

The halftime show didn’t reference ICE or the raids directly, and it didn’t have to. Instead, it did what the right has spent years failing to do: it insisted upon itself. It showed us a culture and a people who are not all that different from anyone else, full of people who want the same things we do: love, dancing, tacos, freedom. To be understood and respected and left alone and embraced. It was a party where everyone was welcome, as opposed to a joyless struggle session where speaking out runs the risk of getting you crushed like a bug. Who wants to go to that party?

Even now, days after the Super Bowl, they are still whining. They are whining because well over 100 million Americans and millions more across the world chose a Puerto Rican rapper’s show about how love is stronger than hate over their hacky attempt to claim dominion over popular entertainment. They’re whining because nobody wants them in our face anymore telling us what invisible transgression we’re supposed to be boycotting this time. And they are whining because they were seen through. They are losing the culture war. The vibe shift is dead. Conservatism under Trump is not cool or cutting edge, it is dictatorial and smug and hateful and stupid.

MAGA culture revealed itself once and for all as annoying and scolding. It is everything it claimed to be fighting against. And it will not leave us the hell alone.

With that as the alternative, it’s no wonder Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl show was a hit.

If You’re Not a Nazi, You Don’t Act Like a Nazi

Mike Rothschild

History is full of highly influential thinkers and artists who have expressed viciously hateful views, only to portray themselves as anything but that when called out. Antisemitism, in particular, seems to attract a special kind of “I’m not against Jews” backpedaling among people desperate to not be seen as Jew-haters while they spew repellent Jew hate.

In my book Jewish Space Lasers I write about a few of the most egregious examples, including Pat Robertson defending himself as a friend of the Jewish people after rehashing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in his book The New World Order, and conspiracy kingpin Bill Cooper printing the entirety of the Protocols in his own book Behold a Pale Horse with the caveat that any reference to “Jew” should be changed to “Illuminati” because he wasn’t antisemitic.

The book also makes reference to Kanye West, now known simply as “Ye,” as an antisemite who has not repented or couched his hate of Jews in any sort of equivocation.

I might need to make an addition to any future printing, because Ye paid for a full-page letter in the Wall Street Journal apologizing for his antisemitic outbursts and full-on embracing of Nazi iconography. Blaming his veer into fascist ideation on bipolar disorder exacerbated by an undiagnosed brain injury, Ye apologized for his “poor judgment and reckless behavior”, said he is not a Nazi and loves Jewish people, and said he is working to get better. Ye’s Nazism wasn’t his true ideology, he claimed, but a sort of manic troll of himself, where he “gravitate[d] toward the worst symbol [he] could find, the swastika” to symbolize his descent into unmedicated and untreated darkness.

To be clear, Ye’s “episode” was not just some bad jokes or outdated stereotypes. He fully wrapped himself in the ideology and symbology of the Nazi party. His admiration for Hitler and comparisons of his own ordeal in the music industry to Hitler’s “persecution” had been public for years. He had wanted to title a 2018 album Hitler before changing it to Ye. And he routinely used antisemitic tropes and stereotypes about Jewish being clannish and all-powerful, usually going through a cycle of retraction and reiteration each time.

And while his apology makes reference to a four-month breakdown, his antisemitism had increasingly come to define his career arc. From a deranged 2022 tweet calling for “death con 3      On JEWISH PEOPLE” [sic] to his recent sharing of swastikas, SS logos, and a song called “Heil Hitler,” Ye wasn’t just a rapper dabbling in Nazism, but becoming a Nazi dabbling in music.

We’ve even been through this cycle of apology and recidivism before. Ye wrote an apology letter in December 2023 for his outbursts – an act of contrition somewhat undercut by his subsequent releasing of a song called “Heil Hitler” and buying a Super Bowl ad to shill for his new swastika t-shirts. It should also be noted that both the late 2023 and early 2026 apologies came as Ye was ramping up to release a new album.

So which is real? The antisemitism or the contrition for the antisemitism? No matter how heartfelt and sincere his apology is, you can’t say what said and do what he did without either meaning it or wanting people to think you mean it. At some point, there is no difference.

One of the questions I get asked a lot when writing about conspiracy theories is whether or not their biggest influencers actually believe them. Does David Icke really believe lizard aliens control global politics? Does Alex Jones really think the government is about to crush all opposition and declare martial law based on obscure socialist plans from the 60’s? Is this all just a canny grift meant to exploit extant fears?

It’s pretty clear that these major influencers don’t believe every aspect of what they espouse. Jones, in particular, has spent the last year turning his back on everything he once believed about government tyranny and gun ownership as the Trump administration erodes the rights of people he dislikes. But it’s also impossible to spend all day, every day soaking in this nonsense without coming to believe at least some of it. Nobody is that skilled an actor.

And ultimately, whether the major influencers believe what they’re saying doesn’t matter – their fans absolutely believe it. And their fans will pay them for more of it. When you sell hate to a mob, whether you hold that hate yourself becomes less meaningful.

So is Kanye West actually a Nazi? Does he really idolize Hitler and think Jews are an all powerful clan hellbent on world domination? Or is he just a dipshit with an untreated mental illness who is happy to court controversy to sell albums and shirts? And as both a journalist who studies anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and as a Jew, can I forgive him? Should anyone?

To be clear, Ye’s antisemitism has been extremely harmful for his career. His agent at CAA and major sponsors have dropped him. He hasn’t toured in a decade, and while his albums still routinely hit number one and get major streaming numbers, album sales aren’t the main vector for artists to make money anymore. Tours and merch are – and Ye has taken a massive hit in both. “Heil Hitler” got millions of views and listens, likely from people listening in to see if Ye had really and truly lost his mind for good. Was it worth it? Was the likely small beans money Ye made from the song worth getting the approval of some of the worst people in America? Was it worth exposing new listeners to the genocidal poison of the Nazis?

In a Vanity Fair article on Ye’s apology, featuring Ye answering some emailed questions (or at least someone writing answers on his behalf, as they sound rehearsed and rehashed), TBI expert Bennet Omalu, the subject of the film Concussion, says that a brain injury from Ye’s 2002 car crash could have caused or worsened the condition behind this impulsive behavior.

This is where my personal sympathy for West ends. Plenty of people have TBI’s or car crashes. Some of them are prominent artists. A few have had outbursts and impulsive breakdowns. But only Kanye West released a song called “Heil Hitler” and made money off selling the symbol of the 20th century’s most genocidal political movement. Whether he did it because he means it or because he was sick stops being relevant at a certain point. He did it. And he did it a lot.

Whether Kanye West is “really a Nazi” or not is unknowable. I have no idea. I doubt he really knows either. He might have ill feelings toward Jews, as many people do, but have lost the ability to keep them out of his music. But this stuff has to be in you somewhere for it to come out, it has to exist in the first place to manifest in outbursts and demented tweets. You don’t just get hit on the head and start hating Jews, at least not to this degree. No matter his personal feelings, he feels comfortable enough with his fans and the music industry thinking he’s a Nazi to continue to act like one. People who are not Nazis generally don’t want other people to think they are Nazis, so they don’t act like Nazis.

But doesn’t this just prove Ye was too in the grip of his TBI to know the difference? It’s possible, but Ye is also a celebrity with unlimited resources and many people around him who do know the difference. None of those people intervened. None of them said, “hey Ye, maybe don’t put out a song about how great Hitler was.” Maybe they were afraid of being fired and the gravy train drying up, so they just went on enabling. Maybe they believed it too.

I hope Ye gets help, leaves behind this childish Nazi fixation, and makes more great music. At the very least, I hope his apology is a sincere one, and not an album sales ploy or the work of handlers. I hope he means it, and I hope he stops with this nonsense.

But I’m not going to be surprised if he does it again. If you’re a Nazi, you’re a Nazi. And if you’re not, you don’t act like one.