The Mother Jones Podcast

Ammon Bundy Is Running to Be Idaho’s Next Governor


Listen Later

Mother Jones reporter Stephanie Mencimer has been following Ammon Bundy for years. He's the guy you'll remember who became a kind of folk hero on the far-right after he joined his father, rancher Cliven Bundy, in leading an armed standoff against the Bureau of Land Management in Nevada in 2014. Two years later, Ammon led the armed takeover of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, which left one occupier dead. Bundy went to trial twice on criminal charges related to the standoffs but federal prosecutors failed to win a conviction.

Now he’s a big-time celebrity activist and running for governor of Idaho. Shortly before the pandemic started, he created what has been dubbed “Uber for militias”—a kind of network that can summon armed protesters for all sorts of far-right gatherings, including anti-mask and anti-vaccine protests during the pandemic.

He’s a messianic figure, and Mencimer wanted to understand what the appeal was. She found a complicated and very-American story about violence, religion, and public lands battles in the West. This in-depth profile was published in Mother Jones earlier this year, and reproduced in read-aloud form here by our partners at Audm.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

The Mother Jones PodcastBy Mother Jones

  • 4.5
  • 4.5
  • 4.5
  • 4.5
  • 4.5

4.5

1,062 ratings


More shows like The Mother Jones Podcast

View all
Fresh Air by NPR

Fresh Air

38,470 Listeners

The New Yorker Radio Hour by WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

The New Yorker Radio Hour

6,688 Listeners

The NPR Politics Podcast by NPR

The NPR Politics Podcast

25,887 Listeners

On the Media by WNYC Studios

On the Media

9,180 Listeners

Reveal by The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX

Reveal

8,288 Listeners

Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts by Slate Podcasts

Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts

3,485 Listeners

Bite by Mother Jones

Bite

219 Listeners

The Conversation with Dasha Burns by POLITICO

The Conversation with Dasha Burns

1,507 Listeners

The Nation Podcasts by The Nation Magazine

The Nation Podcasts

423 Listeners

The Daily by The New York Times

The Daily

112,362 Listeners

Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast by Chris Hayes, MSNBC

Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast

9,445 Listeners

What Next | Daily News and Analysis by Slate Podcasts

What Next | Daily News and Analysis

2,395 Listeners

Post Reports by The Washington Post

Post Reports

5,430 Listeners

Throughline by NPR

Throughline

16,232 Listeners

The Al Franken Podcast by The Al Franken Podcast

The Al Franken Podcast

8,566 Listeners

The Ezra Klein Show by New York Times Opinion

The Ezra Klein Show

16,145 Listeners