FEVER DREAMS

Far-Right Activist Wants to be Idaho’s Next Governor—But He’s Banned From the Statehouse

This week’s Fever Dreams podcast takes on anti-masker extremists who fancy themselves politicians, and a disturbing FBI report warns of more violence from QAnon followers.

Far-right activist Ammon Bundy is running for governor of Idaho—despite being legally banned from the Idaho statehouse.

“He’s prepping a run for Idaho governor, to the dismay of the Idaho Republican Party, which really does not want that affiliation,” said The Daily Beast reporter Kelly Weill.

On this week’s episode of The Daily Beast’s Fever Dreams podcast, hosts Asawin Suebsaeng and Will Sommer talk to Weill about Bundy’s attempts to grow a far-right movement in the American Northwest.

In Bundy’s latest move, he’s preparing for a gubernatorial bid that has experts on the region fearing chaos from his supporters. But in a twist, Bundy can’t legally enter the state Capitol.

“It’s related to the last time he broke into the Capitol with a group of people, kind of a foreshadowing of the January 6 Capitol attack in Washington,” Weill said. “But right now, he’s not legally allowed to enter the building that he would preside over.”

Leveraging his family ties to right-wing extremists across the West, Bundy has built a movement called “People’s Rights” that often deploys its supporters to protest outside of even minor officials’ houses across the region.

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“It’s built so that it can mobilize for whatever grievance it has, be that masking or harassing judges involved in Ammon Bundy’s various criminal cases,” Weill said.

Elsewhere on the episode, The Week national correspondent Ryan Cooper talks about a government report claiming that the U.S. Park Police didn’t clear protesters outside the White House—and how its claims that the Trump administration didn’t act just to set up a presidential photo-op have been overblown in the media.

Suebsaeng and Sommer also discuss the fallout from a Houston local TV reporter announcing on-air that she had become a “whistleblower” for conservative operative James O’Keefe, as well as O’Keefe’s unlikely upcoming star turn as “Curly” in the musical Oklahoma!. Finally, the hosts talk about a new FBI report that warns that QAnon followers could grow more violent as they lose faith in the anonymous Q’s “plan.”

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

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Asawin SuebsaengSenior Political Reporter

Will SommerPolitics Reporter

Katie BakerEditor

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