Listen to premium episodes on Patreon: patreon.com/postingthroughit

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Imagine it: it's April 20th, and some of your UCLA classmates have gathered on the lawn to celebrate 420. The smell of skunk drifts over. You hear laughter crackling over reggae playing from an iPhone speaker. You know what you have to do. You call campus police. There are laws on the books for nuisances like these.

In this Creamium edition of Posting Through It, Ben Shapiro calls the cops on you. You can't smoke weed here, dude — full stop. Jared and Mike ponder why marijuana-obsessed Shapiro can't hold onto his youthful audience, pick apart Mike Lindell's humiliating loss in the race for Minnesota governor, launch #ChudWatch on the news that Chud the Builder is free, and try to make sense of a weeks-long debate about burritos. 

Roll it, light it, smoke it — Posting Through It is back.

Everyone knows it's coming. The MAGA movement has spent years claiming that any election where Republican candidates lose must be fraudulent, and its top media figures have spent every election cycle since 2020 stoking doubts about the integrity of US democracy. There's no reason to think 2026 midterm elections will be any different.

Jared and Mike are joined by Alex Kaplan and Kayla Gogarty, two researchers from Media Matters, to discuss what election denial activists have been getting up to in recent months and what we may see from right-wing media if Republican candidates take a beating at the ballot box this fall. They discuss some of the movement's key characters, their relationships to the White House, and the tactics they're pushing this time around.

Remember Sidney Powell (aka "The Kraken") from 2020? Find out who her successor will be.

Links:

• Election deniers reach a fever pitch calling for a “national emergency” declaration so Trump can give himself “king-like powers” over the midterms (MMFA)

• Tina Peters and other election deniers claim they've pitched the Trump administration on a midterm “election-security plan” (MMFA)

• Right-wing media’s response to results of LA mayoral primary race is a preview of their midterm playbook(MMFA)

• Follow Alex Kaplan on BlueSky: @alkapdc.bsky.social

• Follow Kayla Gogarty on BlueSky: @ohhkaygo.bsky.social

Transition Music: "Gray Beard" by Gurthworm

Support the show on Patreon to gain access to weekly premium episodes: patreon.com/postingthroughit

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The promo material for Dinesh D'Souza's 2022 film "2000 Mules" left out one key detail: the election security expert it hinges its core claims on believes in teleportation. Four years after D'Souza released his thoroughly debunked election-fraud exposé, the same people behind it are gearing up to release new material ahead of the 2026 midterms. Jared and Mike revisit the 2022 film to understand how it convinced a generation of Republicans that the 2020 election was stolen.

Posting Through It finds "2000 Mules" looking and sounding more incoherent than ever — a film that conjures an entire conspiracy out of nothing, then pads it out with conservative media psychobabble. And somehow, still, no one has reckoned with the fact that Gregg Phillips, of True the Vote fame, believes he was involuntary teleported on at least two separate occasions.

...54,000 mules? What are we gonna do with all of those?

Is the MAGA media machine actually cracking up, or is it just taking a summer nap? Jared and Mike sift through new data reporting from The New York Times, and a truly staggering amount of cringe, to find out. View counts are dropping, engagement is cratering, and people are getting "the ick" from influencers like Benny Johnson.

Amid this MAGA content recession, one unusual newcomer is growing her audience: self-styled "American Sweetheart" Savanna Cannon. First covered in The Bulwark, Cannon is producing racist Instagram content in apparent hopes of converting horny MAGA men into OnlyFans simps who will pay to watch her do anal.

MAGA has also taken aim at rap music, claiming without evidence that the genre only succeeded in pop culture because of funding from since-shuttered USAID programs. If not for this secret USAID scheme, they suggest, maybe we'd all be line-dancing to country tunes right now. Imagine that!

Links to stories referenced:

• The MAGA Media Machine Is Fracturing (Stuart A. Thompson @ The New York Times)

• Right-Wing Media and OnlyFans Are in a Symbiotic Relationship (Will Sommer @ The Bulwark)

• Right Wingers Claim Rap Music is Dead Thanks to ... Elon's USAID Cuts (Nikki McCann Ramírez @ Rolling Stone)

Support the show on Patreon to get access to weekly premium episodes: patreon.com/postingthroughit

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Maybe you've heard of the Hitlerian livestreamer Nick Fuentes. He hurls slurs at Black people, denies the Holocaust, and calls for the abusive treatment of women — all to boost his view counts and further his white nationalist ideology. 

Fuentes has legions of fans, but pretty much everyone else agrees he's a [Tim Robinson voice] piece of shit. You wouldn't know it, though, watching his recent conversation with Hunter Biden — the son of former President Joe Biden who's best known for his struggles with drug addiction — on the "Channel 5" YouTube channel. 

Biden and Channel 5 host Andrew Callaghan handed Fuentes all the attention he could ever ask for in an interview that can only be understood as a debacle. After a quick catch-up on Andy Ngo after our latest "Who the Hell?" episode, Jared and Mike break down where the interview went wrong. Callahan bills his project as unbiased, unfiltered journalism, but what was left on the table in this episode looks to be shaped by one man alone: Nick Fuentes.

Andy Ngo is MAGA media's go-to "expert" on far-left extremism. The Portland-born social media personality has spent years pushing Republican leaders to treat anti-Trump and leftist movements as terrorist threats, churning out a bevy of hyper-sensationalized and misleading social media content to make his case.

Jared and Mike’s guest for this episode is researcher and reporter Molly Conger, who hosts the "Weird Little Guys" podcast. Together, they retrace notable moments in Ngo's life and career to explain his overnight MAGA stardom and how he's weaponized it against his perceived political opponents. From his roots in the "New Atheist" movement to his appearance last year at a White House "Antifa Roundtable" event, Ngo’s career has become emblematic of MAGA’s contempt for journalistic standards and the truth.

(Ngo declined to be interviewed for this episode. He responded to our request for comment with a public statement on X that said he wanted "nothing to do with" this episode and included false claims about one of the show's hosts.)

Links for Molly:

• ​Weird Little Guys (Cool Zone Media)
• ​Bluesky: @socialistdogmom.bsky.social

Transition Music: "Mad King Blues" by Banjosynth

Listen to the full episode on Patreon: patreon.com/postingthroughit

Preliminary hearings wrapped up last week for Tyler Robinson, the “old boy” accused of shooting and killing Charlie Kirk last September. Prosecutors presented their evidence, and while it certainly seemed compelling, a sizable portion of MAGA internet just isn't buying it. It’s likely they never will.

Brandy Zadrozny, a senior enterprise reporter for MSNOW, was at the Utah courthouse during Robinson's preliminary hearings and spent time with the conspiracy theorists who can't let their doubts go. She joins Jared and Mike to walk through what the hearings actually showed, what the believers took away from them, and why the evidence didn't move the needle for people like Candace Owens.

Join us for what is arguably the biggest story of the year for MAGA. TPUSA has been in damage-control mode for nine months trying to protect the organization and Erika Kirk, and it still seems like they're losing the battle.

Links for Brandy:

• Change my mind: Searching for reality in Charlie Kirk’s murder case (MS NOW)

• Erika Kirk faces Charlie’s alleged killer and conspiracists as preliminary hearing begins (MS NOW)

• Bluesky: @brandyzadrozny.bsky.social / X: @BrandyZadrozny

Transition Music: "Boxcar" by Jawbreaker

Subscribe to our Patreon to hear the full episode: patreon.com/postingthroughit

~~~

Has Russia poisoned Sen. Lindsey Graham with ricin? Why is Clavicular in Israel, and why did a rabbi give him an OpenAI necklace? Is Kash Patel threatening to arrest us for disliking his girlfriend's singing? Jared and Mike struggle to answer these questions and more in this jam-packed Creamium episode, sifting through the trash left behind by a busy news cycle.

It culminates with the biggest mystery of all: what do Laura Loomer, Jacob Wohl, and rapper Lil Boosie Badazz have in common? Turns out Mr. Badazz paid $600,000 to far-right operatives Wohl and Jack Burkman to secure a presidential pardon from Trump that never materialized. Now Boosie is on social media demanding that Loomer, Mike Cernovich, Jack Posobiec, and others confirm whether they ever supported his case, as Wohl and Burkman claimed they did. We wish we could say the responses have been illuminating, but they have not.

Bring a flashlight for this one. Or even a gun. Because “after dark, it's Jurassic Park.”

Graham Platner, a progressive candidate for US Senate in Maine, managed to defy an array of scandals as he rose to become the frontrunner to take on thirty-year incumbent Sen. Susan Collins. But last week, after a former romantic partner credibly accused him of rape, Platner suspended his campaign and withdrew his candidacy — leaving his supporters heartbroken and the Democratic Party scrambling to find a replacement candidate.

Journalist Nathan Bernard joins Jared and Mike to break down the collapse of Platner's campaign and what comes next for Democrats who have been desperately trying to unseat Collins without success. Bernard was on the ground from day five of Platner’s campaign. He walks through what Platner meant to Maine Democrats, why volunteers stuck around through earlier controversies, and how the mood darkened after a rape allegation ended his political aspirations.

With Platner out, the question is whether an alternate candidate like Troy Jackson or Nirav Shah — or even Ms. Rachel — can consolidate support fast enough to make Collins "concerned" about her reelection.

Links for Nathan:

• X (Twitter): @nathanTbernard / Bluesky: @nathantbernard.bsky.social /

• In Letter, Platner Volunteer Network Warns Dems: Nominee Must Back Same Agenda to Win Our Full Support (Drop Site, July 2026)

• Platner Volunteers Want to Move Forward with a New Candidate (Drop Site, July 2026)

• Voters Weigh In: From Waterville to Ogunquit, Mainers Are Standing By Graham Platner (Drop Site, Oct 2025)

Transition Music: "Pale Horse (live in london)" by Truman Sinclair