Trumpist Election Deniers Descend Into High School Drama

In the aftermath of the contested 2020 vote, Trump’s biggest election-fraud cheerleaders—Lin Wood, Sidney Powell, and Michael Flynn—were a tight crew. But the MAGA clique’s now in trouble, as they turn on each other with wild accusations and petty infighting.

The drama started after the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict, when the teen accused Wood of “botching the case or trying not to get him out of jail,” Fever Dreams co-host Will Sommer explains. “And that really puts Lin Wood in a hot spot because Kyle Rittenhouse is just the darling of the right, right now.” Add to that a spat over Rittenhouse’s $2 million in bail money, which Wood thinks belongs to him (since he raised much of it) and suddenly the stakes are pretty high.

Meanwhile, other pro-Trump factions are coming out of the woodwork to slam the lawyer online—including Sebastian Gorka, who has branded Wood a “fraud” and is calling for him to be charged with “aiding and abetting” Rittenhouse’s imprisonment. And Sidney Powell, Wood’s one-time ride-or-die, who has been “very quiet about this whole Rittenhouse thing and she’s not backing up her guy.”

“Now Lin Wood is just spiraling out,” Sommer says. “You can see how it’s open season on him right now...There’s a lot of drama at Stop-the-Steal High today.”

Of course, Wood’s not going quietly, and has been raging against Powell and General Flynn, insinuating that Powell’s in hot water with the federal authorities and that Flynn used an “occult” prayer. To cap it all off, Powell decided to hit back at Wood with a meme that is “basically a Drake lyric” to poetically note: ‘It’s not a stab in the back that kills you. It’s when you turn around and see who's holding the knife.”

In short, as co-host Asawin Suebsaeng notes, “Sidney Powell, Lin Wood, and Michael Flynn. If they can’t be held together with the anti-democratic MAGA glue that brought them so tightly together, especially in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, who is going to make it?”

Remember the QAnon group that thinks JFK Jr. and Sr. are still alive and going to appear in Dallas? Things are getting pretty dark and culty with them. “They are still very active,” Sommer explains. “I have talked to some family members who have spouses or parents in this group. And these are people who I think seemed relatively normal to their relatives and then have sort of given up everything to move to Dallas and wait eternally, seemingly, for JFK to show up.”

In addition to fervently believing that President Kennedy will return to America for a few weeks—“then he'll die and Trump will take over”—“some of their leaders have started saying, ‘Well, the only place we can reach this sort of level of achievement or ascension is if we die.’ And obviously at that point, you’re really getting into kind of some, like, suicide cults. It is a disturbing operation.”

Elsewhere in the podcast, Suebsaeng and Sommer talk about how Trump’s favored candidate in a Pennsylvania primary just bowed out of politics after losing a big custody case in court, in which his ex-wife accused him of horrific physical abuse. Now, the hydroxychloroquine-loving Dr. Oz is perhaps looking to throw his hat in the ring for that seat. And the right-wing duo that wrote a play about Lisa Page is now making a biopic on Hunter Biden, starring Gina Carano. From The Mandalorian to MAGA-land, what a career progression!

The hosts also welcome scholar, expert, and activist Abdur-Rahman Muhammad on the podcast to discuss the exoneration of two men who had been convicted of killing Malcolm X—and whose lives were stolen and ruined by the false charges. “We have known for decades that these men were innocent,” Muhammad notes. “There is a largely untold story about the human cost and the human toll that was visited upon particularly their families… they had to live out the rest of their lives with the stigma and with the stain of being the murderers of one of the most beloved, if not the most consequential leader in Black America, Malcolm X, they had to live with that.

“And they experienced hardship and suffering and pain. As a result of that stigma, always having to move, always having to be on their guard for someone who may have wanted to enact some type of street justice against them, their children were taunted and bullied and abused in the playgrounds…”

Muhammad also notes that questions remain as to identities of the undercover FBI operatives or informants who were in the ballroom on the day of Malcom X’s murder and why they were hidden from the prosecution and the defense—as well as to the “appalling lack of security presence” at the ballroom that fateful afternoon, along with the fact that police had tipped off reporters that something momentous was going to occur, indicating foreknowledge of the assassination plot.

“When we look at the assassination, the FBI is deeply involved in fomenting hatred against Malcolm X, propaganda against him. They planted poison pen letters. They planted newspaper articles that suggested... that he was hungry for power … which created jealousy and a backlash against them. This was all done by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I mean, their hands are dirty as hell in this whole thing. And they are equally guilty along with the men who carried it out.”

Listen, and subscribe, to Fever Dreams on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!

Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.