Some internet mischief-makers created a fake DHS website purporting to show President Biden’s plan for COVID-19 concentration camps—and conservative Senate candidate JD Vance fell for it hook, line, and sinker.
The venture capitalist and would-be politician perhaps should have noticed that the site—which claimed to outline government intentions to restrict cross-state travel and set up Australia-like “quarantine centers”—listed the DHS Secretary not as present officeholder Alejandro Mayorkas but as Tim Woods, otherwise known as the DHS secretary in two seasons of the TV show 24.
It’s just the latest example of how Vance’s “culture-war shoutouts, they’re not landing right,” notes Fever Dreams co-host Will Sommer. Rather, every time Vance spits out something inane (like telling voters they can dine with him and his buddy Peter Thiel if they donate $10,000 to his campaign), his rival Josh Mandel “brutally own[s]” him—by, for example, offering to meet voters for $10 in a Chick-fil-A parking lot.
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Elsewhere on the podcast, Fever Dreams co-host Asawin Suebsaeng recounts how he teamed up with several other reporters and editors at The Daily Beast to answer a long-running mystery: Did character actor Jay Johnston—of Mr. Show, Anchorman, and Arrested Development fame, who notably voices the villainous Jimmy Pesto on Fox sitcom Bob’s Burgers—really storm the Capitol on Jan. 6?
Back in March, Twitter certainly took note when the FBI released the picture of someone who looked exactly like Johnston, asking for information about the man in connection with the violent assault on the Capitol that day. But since then, there have been no firm updates or answers—until now.
Suebsaeng and his team verified that Johnston has indeed been “banned from Bob’s Burgers” and that the writers are not writing for him anymore on the show. Also, the director of Johnston’s latest movie admitted on the record that the actor copped to being in DC that day, though he swears he did not violently attempt to overthrow the government. Still, as Suebsaeng notes, “that alone means that Jay Johnston has been held more accountable by the people at Fox, by the people at Bob’s Burgers, than Donald Trump—who led the fucking violent coup—has been by the Republican party.”
Meanwhile, the notorious Proud Boys are teaming up with a radical Black nationalist organization called Black Hammer, who are darlings of right-wing media. Journalist Dick Lehr drops by the pod to discuss his new book, White Hot Hate, on a domestic terror plot to bomb a Somali immigrant in Kansas. And Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse is getting slammed at rightwing conferences for maybe not being extreme enough, while James O’Keefe entertains the crowd with musicals. As Suebsaeng notes, further proof that “failed theater kids will destroy us all.”
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