The thoroughly unimpressive Mr. Fuentes



Tucker Carlson’s interview with Nick Fuentes was supposed to be explosive. It wasn’t.

Far from normalizing Fuentes or advancing his strange brand of “right-wing” politics, the two-hour conversation exposed him as a shallow, aggrieved figure without the intellect or maturity to lead anything. Carlson didn’t destroy Fuentes with debate. He did something worse: He made him boring.

Fuentes built his notoriety as a young “influencer” who mixes nationalism with online provocation. He’s outspokenly racist, anti-Semitic, and obsessed with pushing the limits of shock. And he’s managed to attract a following among disaffected young men — the “Groypers.”

Fuentes’ interview marks his peak — and his decline. Once the outrage fades, he’ll return to obscurity.

In recent years, Fuentes has tried to rebrand himself as something somewhat more serious. He talks about immigration breaking working families, foreign wars enriching elites, and a culture that mocks masculinity. Those themes resonate because they tap real frustrations that many Americans share.

But Fuentes offers no coherent moral or political vision. Others — better read, more disciplined, and far less toxic — make similar arguments with insight and integrity. The late Charlie Kirk, for example, famously wanted nothing to do with Fuentes and his followers for precisely that reason.

The grudge-filled path

Carlson’s interview focused less on ideas than on Fuentes’ grievances. He recounted his early days as a libertarian campaigning for Ted Cruz in 2015, his shift to Trumpism, and his viral rise after a debate with a leftist opponent. Soon he was clashing with prominent conservatives, especially the Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro.

According to Fuentes, Shapiro and his allies sabotaged his career and drove him into exile on the “dark web.” At no point does Fuentes wonder whether Shapiro recognized instability and immaturity in him — or simply concluded that he wasn’t worth the investment.

Like many in his Gen Z cohort, Fuentes mistakes online engagement for substance. Without outrage, he has nothing. He’s poorly educated, reads little, and shrugs off legitimate criticism. The result is a young man trapped in perpetual adolescence, angry that the world won’t take him seriously.

Carlson’s indulgence

Carlson tries to humanize Fuentes, appealing to Christian charity and the value of learning from failure. But Fuentes clings to his score-settling. His list of enemies includes not just Shapiro but Charlie Kirk, Joe Kent, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — and even Carlson himself, though he gets a temporary reprieve for offering the platform.

Carlson also attempts to rationalize Fuentes’ anti-Semitism, giving him space to “clarify.” Fuentes insists he doesn’t hate Jews personally — he just opposes Judaism as a “force against Western civilization.” He repeats conspiracy theories about Jewish control of institutions and denies the Holocaust.

Carlson pushes back, but only mildly. Both men protest that they “don’t hate Jews” and have Jewish friends, as if that were exculpatory. It isn’t. The exchange casts neither in a good light.

Empty provocateurs

The rest of the interview dissolves into incoherence. Fuentes casually praises Joseph Stalin, of all people, before the conversation fizzles. Carlson’s attempt to recast Fuentes as a misunderstood outsider backfires. The result is a portrait of a man whose only real claim to relevance is being disliked — and even that feels undeserved.

Carlson’s indulgence of fringe figures is becoming a pattern. Andrew Tate. Darryl Cooper. Now Fuentes. Each enjoys a sizeable online following built on provocation and grievance. And each, when pressed, collapses into self-pity and incoherence. These men are charlatans and grifters who don’t challenge the establishment; they merely rehearse falsehoods and conspiracy theories to raise their profiles among mostly lonely, disaffected young men.

RELATED:Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, and the war for the conservative soul

Photo by NurPhoto via Getty Images

The decline of two brands

Fuentes’ interview marks his peak — and his decline. Once the outrage fades, he’ll return to obscurity, remembered mostly as a cautionary tale about what happens when empty charisma meets unearned confidence.

Carlson, meanwhile, risks following him down that path. His willingness to platform attention-seekers may boost short-term clicks, but it erodes long-term credibility. Each indulgence costs him a little more trust.

The tragedy isn’t just Fuentes’ wasted potential. It’s the spectacle of one of the right’s most talented communicators lending his megaphone to a man who long ago proved himself unworthy of it.

The bureaucracy strikes back — and we’re striking harder



Old habits die hard. The Oversight Project filed another lawsuit against the FBI today. During the Biden years, we were in court constantly, suing the bureau more than a dozen times over weaponization and abuse. Many of the cases we fought then connect directly to the scandals now surfacing under the Trump administration. We were over the target back then — and Washington doesn’t do coincidences.

But this case is different.

We’re suing the FBI to force transparency — not for politics, but for accountability. Because if we don’t fix this now, we’ll look back and wish we had.

Monday’s lawsuit strikes at a deeper problem: the FBI’s claim that it has been “reformed” and is now “the most transparent in history.” That phrase is absurd on its face. Compared with the post-COINTELPRO reforms and the Church Committee era, today’s FBI is anything but transparent.

We’re suing because the bureau has built a system designed to violate the Freedom of Information Act. Over time, the FBI has developed a “pattern and practice” of breaking the law to hide information. Reporters across the political spectrum can tell you the same thing. The bureau stonewalls, delays, and hides behind boilerplate responses that make a mockery of the law.

Our case asks the federal judiciary to step in and force the FBI to fix this — to overhaul its FOIA process and follow the law it routinely ignores. This isn’t a step we took lightly. For nearly a year, we tried to resolve these problems through other channels. But the bureau’s “fixes” never came.

Bureaucratic shell game

The FBI has perfected a set of tricks to avoid scrutiny. It uses canned denials for well-defined requests, ignores the public-interest standard written into law, and buries documents under layers of redaction. Even by Washington’s anemic transparency standards, the FBI stands out as the worst offender.

This isn’t theoretical. In practice, the Oversight Project submitted requests naming specific agents — like the infamous Timothy Thibault — and identifying internal systems such as the Lync messaging platform. We asked for communications containing key terms like “Republican” or “Mar-a-Lago.” Those are precisely the requests the bureau continues to battle with gusto.

FBI Director Kash Patel deserves credit for some high-profile disclosures, but we can’t depend on him to keep discovering incriminating documents in “burn bags” or forgotten closets. That’s not transparency — that’s triage. The FBI cannot investigate itself or selectively release information without feeding public cynicism.

The point of FOIA is citizen oversight — not bureaucratic discretion. In a republic, the people are supposed to control government institutions, not the other way around.

A pattern of abuse

If the FBI had obeyed its own transparency standards all along, Americans would already know far more about the scandals that shook their confidence in government: Russiagate, the Mar-a-Lago raid, Operation Arctic Frost, the targeting of Catholic parishes and concerned parents, and the January 6 excesses. Each of these was compounded by secrecy and delay.

RELATED: Video sleuth challenges FBI Jan. 6 pipe-bomb narrative, unearths new evidence

filo via iStock/Getty Images

The bureau’s institutional resistance to disclosure doesn’t just protect bad actors — it perpetuates them. It allows corruption to metastasize under color of national security and procedure.

Time to clean house

At some point, the FBI will no longer be in Kash Patel’s hands. That’s why reform should happen now while the issue is in the public eye. The systems that enable secrecy and abuse must be dismantled before the next crisis hits.

We’re suing the FBI to force transparency — not for politics, but for accountability. Because if we don’t fix this now, we’ll look back and wish we had.

Robert Sigg built a media empire that woke blacklisters are desperate to kill



Robert Sigg is a quiet man with a big voice.

His company, Real America’s Voice, is the platform for “The Charlie Kirk Show” and other populist voices leading the “dare not ignore” charts. I met Robert not long after a mutual friend shared a column I wrote — “Prove Charlie right.”

The commanding heights of government, advertising, and traffic went full Orwellian on RAV and did their best to starve it of vital ad dollars.

When we spoke, his son Parker — his right-hand man and a rising star in the industry who effectively manages all of RAV’s programming — was by his side. Parker is just four years younger than Charlie Kirk. He was working in the family business at just 15 years old, chasing hurricanes for another Sigg property, WeatherNation — a politics-free outlet. As Sigg described it, “A take-an-umbrella or wear-sunscreen business.”

Fighting through censorship

I wanted to talk to Sigg about the behind-the-scenes war against his business — a campaign that includes a pernicious form of censorship through shadow-advertising bans and Big Tech algorithm manipulation that leads to traffic starvation.

RAV seeks to bring a unique voice to the marketplace of ideas. It’s one of the sources RealClearMedia’s properties draw from when presenting our across-the-spectrum report each day. Charlie Kirk, in fact, was published on RealClearPolitics the day of his assassination.

My firsthand experience is that RAV’s approach is not welcomed by those who control access to advertising and traffic. RealClear’s advertising score, in turn, gets dinged for aggregating RAV content — even though we usually pair its offerings with liberal counterprogramming.

RealClear has been dealing with this attitude for a decade, but when Sigg launched RAV, he was surprised by the “You can’t do that” reception he received.

“This,” he thought, “is not the American way.”

The commanding heights of government, advertising, and traffic went full Orwellian on RAV and did their best to starve it of vital ad dollars. How bad did it get for Sigg and RAV? Here’s how bad: The devious advertising boycotts were extended to the apolitical WeatherNation.

The political sins of RAV — as perceived by the media and political establishment that Matt Taibbi has dubbed “the Blob” — were carried over to WeatherNation. And so the “do not buy” word went out, to be heeded by the smug self-appointed guardians of the status quo. So much for the purported objectivity of the media and advertising business minders. If you are doing your level best to impoverish one business and it just won't die because it’s connected to another business that is thriving, then just destroy its access to revenue. That’s the treacherous game the Blob is playing.

Yet instead of discussing the reality of de facto censorship and other threats to free speech in America, the national conversation was derailed by Jimmy Kimmel’s boorishness and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr’s interloping. (As fate would have it, Carr’s problematic, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” comment happened on a RAV-sponsored show.)

Sigg’s response: “RAV has only known the hard way — and the hard way is still the norm for Real America’s Voice, and I would gather the same for RealClear.”

We both agreed that things are getting better, but slowly. Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) are putting in the work to extirpate the censorship industrial complex from advertising and web traffic. Still, the roots and prejudices run deep, and RAV is still being blacklisted by advertisers.

Never surrender

But Robert and Parker Sigg don’t roll over for anyone. They run a never-surrender, blood, toil, tears, and sweat, prayerful, “we will prove you wrong” family business. They are an interesting blend of spirituality and spite. Sigg made it clear to me that “The Charlie Kirk Show” will go on.

“I came into the media space on the disruptor side,” he said, recalling the launch of Real America’s Voice. “Cable — the new disestablishment market actor — was taking mind and market share from the media trads. But it was clear ... that their days too were numbered. Dish was built for a streaming world with no cords, where everything was floating in a cloud.”

RELATED: Did the FBI shadow ban Charlie Kirk?

Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images

In Sigg’s telling, the Internet was the greatest cord-cutting, cancel-your-subscription force in human history.

“Everything RAV builds has a cordless future in mind. We are successful in the present and built for the future that is fast approaching, if not already here,” he said. “With RAV, I wanted to provide popular programming for underserved and hungry audiences. My insight was no different from Roger Ailes’ at Fox. Fox’s growing audience demonstrated that half of America was being underserved.”

His goal was not to compete with Fox but to rise up and serve up talent that would make Fox — and others in the new ecosphere — better:

Our attitude is that a rising tide lifts all boats, but it is up to the consumers, not the guardians of media, to determine the winners and losers. Not the government and their regulators, the advertiser guardians, or the traffic controllers, but the American consumer, voting with their ears and eyeballs.

Continuing the fight

As I said, our approach at RealClear is viewpoint diversity. We offer a place for the pluribus of America’s voices — his included — to make their case and for readers to decide for themselves. Come to our site, and you’ll find a balanced pairing of rival perspectives, one after another. And we have suffered for the past 10 years for doing so.

Both of our boats ought to be rising, but we operate in a world that is trying to sink us both. RealClear’s sin is that we create a dialogue in a media scape that is more interested in monologues.

“The marketplace has not been friendly,” Sigg said. “But for the few who should be starting to put job above ideology and see the value of our audiences and their purchasing power — and move on an underpriced value with an upside return — they will lead the way to a better future.”

Let’s hope so — and let’s put in the needed work to make it so.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

After Losing At SCOTUS, Wisconsin Finds A New Way To ‘Target’ Catholic Charities

Wisconsin is seeking to deny a tax exemption not only to the CCB, but to all such religious and nonreligious organizations across the state.

Taxpayer-Funded Schools Can’t Prohibit Prayer And Promote Witchcraft

What looks like harmless exploration of 'different beliefs' is reprogramming the moral compass of the next generation.

‘No Kings’ is the clown show covering for a coup



In June, the left launched its “No Kings” protest to denounce the horrific “authoritarian dictatorship” of Donald Trump. Deporting illegal alien gang members, preventing the mutilation of children, and punishing criminals all became proof of Trump’s incipient “fascism.”

Now that Trump has deployed National Guard troops to stop violent leftist mobs from attacking ICE officers, Democrats and the left have decided to stage a sequel on Saturday. The whole thing will look like farce — clever signs, bad folk music, and stale slogans — but behind the clown show, the left is radicalizing shock troops preparing to do real violence.

The ‘No Kings’ spectacle will fill news segments and late-night monologues, but it’s just camouflage.

No myth runs deeper in American life than the idea that peaceful protest drives reform. Boomers grew up believing that singing folk songs, waving witty signs, and smoking pot were powerful tools of change. The media sanctified the calm resolve of civil rights marches and the flower-child theatrics of the anti-war movement as the true engines of progress. As usual, Hollywood left out the ugly parts.

Those movements also produced riots, rapes, arson, bombings, and murders. The violence was so widespread that Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign ran one of the most famous ads in political history promising to restore law and order. The peaceful demonstrators made for good television, but it was the violence that moved the needle. No one likes to say it aloud, but the violence worked.

The first round of “No Kings” protests had respectable turnout but achieved nothing. Leftists filled the streets to mock Trump and chant about freedom, but no policies changed, and no momentum followed. Trump’s approval may have slipped to the mid-40s, but Democrats still wallow in the low-30s. Americans may be weary, but the protests haven’t persuaded them that the Democrats can govern.

Violence has been far more effective. The assassination of Charlie Kirk has made conservative campus events nearly impossible. Universities now demand absurd security fees or simply cancel appearances outright, citing “safety concerns.” The threat doesn’t come from the speaker — it comes from the activists university officials refuse to restrain. Several conservative commentators are stepping in to finish Kirk’s tour, but the assassin’s veto has reshaped the landscape.

Violence also brought Jimmy Kimmel back to late-night television. After he lied about Kirk’s assassination, sponsors complained, and two major affiliates refused to run his show. Sinclair Broadcasting even planned to air a Kirk tribute in his slot. Then came bomb threats, followed by gunfire targeting an ABC station in California. Sinclair folded, scrapped the tribute, and restored Kimmel to the lineup. Terrorism works. It succeeds where boycotts fail.

RELATED: Evil unchecked always spreads — and Democrats are proof

Blaze Media Illustration

Mob action has disrupted immigration enforcement too. Leftists have assaulted ICE officers, blocked arrests, surrounded vehicles, and tried to plant explosives. One would-be assassin aimed for agents but only killed detainees. Trump’s Justice Department has begun cracking down, but the left keeps escalating. They’ve learned that violence yields results.

It’s hard to take Democrats seriously when they wail about “authoritarianism.” They jailed Trump officials, abortion protesters, meme-makers, and even the president himself. They don’t fear power — they crave it. What they hate is losing it.

Organizers claim that more than 2,000 “No Kings” protests are set for the weekend. The biggest ones will draw crowds, mostly aging Boomers reliving their youth. They’ll march, sing, and pretend to matter. But the real movement isn’t in the drum circles. It’s with people like Jay Jones, the Virginia attorney general candidate who still enjoys Democratic support despite texting fantasies about murdering the children of conservatives. That’s the true face of the modern left. They’re not waving signs — they’re plotting.

The “No Kings” spectacle will fill news segments and late-night monologues, but it’s just camouflage. Behind it stands an organized, violent movement convinced that terror is legitimate politics. These people don’t want debate. They want obedience — and they’re willing to bleed us for it.

Statement On Department Of War Media Access Guidelines From The Federalist CEO Sean Davis And Editor-In-Chief Mollie Hemingway

When other credentialed outlets and journalists spread lies about the Russia collusion hoax, or the Covington kids hoax, or the Kavanaugh rape hoax, or the Ukraine impeachment hoax, or the COVID-19 natural origin hoax, or the peaceful BLM riots hoax, or the suckers and losers hoax, or the Hunter Biden laptop hoax, or the Biden’s-brain-is-totally-fine-you-guys […]

Court upholds school's ban of 'Let's Go Brandon' clothing in free speech dispute



On Tuesday, the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court's ruling that a Michigan school district did not violate two students' rights when the administration forced them to remove clothing with the words "Let's Go Brandon."

The case involved two brothers who wore sweatshirts with the phrase to school in 2022. The students, both then of middle-school age, were asked to remove the clothing "since the phrase 'means the F-word,'" the opinion related, quoting assistant principal of Tri County Middle School Andrew Buikema.

'It contains no sexual content, no graphic imagery, and no actual profanity.'

Specifically, the opinion affirmed the district court's understanding that the school "reasonably understood the slogan 'Let's Go Brandon' to be vulgar."

The court decision explained in detail the provenance of the well-known expression, which originates from a 2021 NASCAR event in Alabama.

RELATED: 'Let's go, lawsuit': Students sue after school forces them to remove 'Let's Go Brandon' sweatshirts

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

In a video of the NASCAR event, the crowd can be heard chanting, "F**k Joe Biden," but a reporter misreports the chant during her interview with professional race car driver Brandon Brown. She says the crowd is chanting, "Let's go, Brandon."

The misreported phrase quickly became popular as an outlet for criticism of then-President Joe Biden.

The opinion from the appeals court stated that the reporter either misheard the chant or was "simply trying to put a fig leaf over the chant's vulgarity."

"The school administrators reasonably interpreted the 'Let’s Go Brandon' slogan as being vulgar speech that 'a school may categorically prohibit' despite its political message. Requesting that students remove clothing with that slogan didn't violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments," the opinion of the court concluded.

The court split two to one in the decision. Judge John Bush dissented from the opinion of Judges John Nalbandian and Karen Nelson Moore.

Bush wrote in his dissent that wearing clothing with political messaging is "the first point of entry to civic engagement." The school's intervention thus "quickly ended" the boys' "civic engagement."

Getting to the core of the issue, Bush added, "The phrase at issue here is a euphemism for political criticism. It contains no sexual content, no graphic imagery, and no actual profanity. To the extent that it implies an offensive phrase, it does so obliquely — by design."

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The Medal Of Freedom Was Created For People Exactly Like Charlie Kirk

For years, the Presidential Medal of Freedom has been awarded to celebrities and political allies. But on Tuesday, President Donald Trump will posthumously award Charlie Kirk the highest civilian honor, reviving the medal’s original intent of recognizing those who have made extraordinary contributions to the security, ideals, and freedoms of the country. Kirk was assassinated […]

Why America needs faithful Christians now more than ever



As America approaches its 250th anniversary, urgent questions arise about the role Christianity should play in public life.

In recent months, the unapologetic, personal Christian witness of public officials — and their open collaboration with pastors, priests, and other faith leaders — has drawn new attention. For me, these moments have been deeply moving and inspiring.

The founders were clear: Free institutions depend on moral citizens, and morality is nurtured by religion.

For many in the mainstream media, however, this has been profoundly unsettling, prompting warnings that the nation is sliding toward a form of “Christian nationalism.”

Are they right?

The question may be something of a red herring, but it’s worth addressing. Faith has always shaped American life. The founders never intended to build a secular vacuum; they expected religion to cultivate the virtues that a free people need. At the same time, they knew that belief cannot be imposed. True liberty demands space for religion to flourish — and restraint against coercion.

Living authentically as believers in public life is not the same as enforcing religion on others. The former honors conscience and its freedom while allowing faith to enrich society; the latter distorts faith and undermines pluralism.

Charlie Kirk’s memorial service last month highlighted the power of Christian witness in public life. His widow, Erika, speaking through grief, declared, “I forgive him because it was what Christ did and is what Charlie would do.” Her words reminded a nation mired in resentment that Christianity’s strength lies in free, authentic witness. Much has been made of President Trump’s off-message remark, “I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them.”

But rather than dwell on it, we should note that he later suggested Erika’s example might move him toward forgiveness — a sign of the quiet influence of authentic faith.

Other public officials like Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary Marco Rubio spoke from the heart and leaned on their Christian faith.

It’s here that we must remain careful: If religious witness is perceived as a partisan tool, its power is weakened. The church’s mission is not political victory but the salvation of souls, offered freely to hearts and minds.

RELATED: Charlie Kirk's legacy exposes a corrosive lie — and now it's time to choose

WoodyUpstate/Getty Images Plus

Christianity’s very public witness in our nation extends beyond Charlie’s memorial. The members of the presidential Religious Liberty Commission include influential evangelical and Catholic leaders as well as a prominent Jewish rabbi. They have spoken openly about their beliefs and their conviction that faith will heal many of our nation’s divisions.

At the Commission’s third hearing held last week, testimony highlighted ongoing pressures faced by people of faith working to educate our nation’s youth. Catholic Fr. Robert Sirico described relentless targeting by state officials of Sacred Heart Academy, a private, Catholic parochial school in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Sirico deftly clarified the line between faith and power during Q&A: “I’m not advocating the creation of a theocracy. I’m very happy to have a cultural competition of ideas.”

Sirico’s words remind us that resisting coercion is not the same as desiring the control of the public square; it is the defense of the right to live one’s faith fully and contribute accordingly.

Contrast this with the temptation of adherents of Christian nationalism to weaponize the faith for worldly power and control. Such ideologies blur the necessary distinction between the spiritual and temporal, collapsing them into one.

When that happens, both church and state are diminished. Christ himself made this clear when He told Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36).

Professor Russell Hittinger, executive director of the Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America, has observed that Jesus’ words set apart the heavenly and temporal orders. To confuse them, Hittinger warned, not only misrepresents the mission of the church but also humiliates it because the gospel cannot be reduced to the ambitions of civil power.

Rejecting such ideologies, of course, does not mean ignoring hostility toward Christianity. Believers today are often dismissed as intolerant or branded as bigots.

Yet, the founders were clear: Free institutions depend on moral citizens, and morality is nurtured by religion.

George Washington called religion and morality “indispensable supports” of political prosperity. John Adams warned that the Constitution was made for a “moral and religious people” and is inadequate for any other. At the same time, they recognized that belief must never be forced.

This is why religious pluralism and freedom matter so deeply. The Catholic Church affirmed this in “Dignitatis Humanae,” the Second Vatican Council’s declaration on religious liberty. It teaches that safeguarding religious freedom benefits both individuals and the Church, while respecting the God-given free will of every person.

America’s constitutional commitment to religious liberty reflects this wisdom, ensuring that Christianity and other faiths can flourish.

The divisions before us are real — but not irreparable. As the nation looks to its semiquincentennial, Christians should reflect on how faith has shaped civic life and be confident that it can help us confront today’s challenges. At the same time, we must resist the temptation to wield political power to impose Christianity.

We are called instead to live our faith visibly, guide others toward justice and mercy, and bear witness to truth through example, persuasion, and love — not through coercion or abuse of authority.