Ruby Cramer: The Power of MAHA

Hello and welcome to the Bollard Daily. I'm your host Tim Miller. If you're looking

for a bunch of politics, you can have that over on the next level feed. I just looked

at our outline for today's next level show. We've got Trump Madness, Higgseth Madness,

some new ads. We're going to discuss, so come hang out there. But on today's show, it's

RFK Madness. We're going to be talking about. I'm tickled to welcome for a long overdue

inaugural visit to the pod and old friend. She's a staff writer at the New Yorker covering

politics. She's at the Washington Post and Buzzfeed. She's got a new article out. The print

edition is called The Scare Online. You can find it as a Mahak custody battle. It's Ruby

Crane. Thank you. What's up, Ruby?

Tim, nothing. I'm so happy to be here. Me too. You tell the story in this feature. So

eloquently as you do. It's a story in West Virginia. My husband's home state about a couple

of Michael and Leah. But before we get to them, I just kind of want to do a big picture

here. You quoted a democratic strategist that said about Mahak. It's two truths in a

lie. That's how people get sucked in. I just wanted to hear from you kind of on the

bigger picture of what you discovered interviewing all these people and spending. It seems like

spending a lot of time on Mahak message boards. Yes. The last four months of my life have

been basically been endlessly doom scrolling on parenting Facebook groups. It was a really

interesting project. I had never written anything about Mahak. Of course, I followed it

with it closely and I've been really interested in it. It's a political movement that sort

of defies expectations and stereotypes and crosses really interesting partisan lines and

isn't very easily defined because it's so wide-ranging and has so many different tenets,

which also for Democrats makes it really hard to combat. I think that's what the strategist

was part of what they were getting at with this quote, which was one of the best sort of

summaries I heard of the appeal of Mahak and the way that people kind of become low-hanging

fruit for the Mahak movement, this idea of it being too truth and a lie. Yes, it's true that

chronic disease is an epidemic and is on the rise, one truth. It is true that ultra-process foods

are potentially harming our bodies and make up more than half of our daily caloric intake,

which is crazy. But the lie that's snuck in there is that vaccines that have been standard

care for children for decades are something that we should be studying for a potential link

to autism, which is the main sort of crux of the anti-vax movement that's been disproven again

and again. These little sort of suspicious claims about the medical authorities in our country

lying to us, those are the things that kind of get snuck in into the movement that come alongside

these other arguably really good things that so Mahak has pointed out our attention toward.

Did you find yourself being sucked in at all, reading the posts? Did I get worried about beef

tal? We're not worried about beef talo, we like beef talo, are you attracted to anything?

We like beef talo and we don't like seed oils. I found it really compelling emotional

atmosphere to live in for a while. I was just kind of existing in these online spaces for a really

long time as part of my research for the story. You can see really easily how you get sucked

into this idea that basically something is poisoning our bodies. Big pharma is out for profits,

not just our wellbeing. All these things, this feeling that exists that kind of like

undergirds, all these online spaces, I understand and it's really true and it's easy to get kind of

sucked into that way of thinking. While I didn't get fully Mahak pill, I definitely found

the anxiety and the fear of these parents that are just trying to do the best they can and

navigate different online spaces specifically, like really understandable and relatable and

it was easy to see how guts taken to an extreme really, really quickly. RFK seems like such a

unique figure in this as like a catalyst and a lot of this stuff has been happening for a long time,

you know, and it sort of gets really like kind of brought together. I can away kind of like based on

his unique like weird various beliefs. I remember people coming to John McCain Town Halls in 2008

concerned about the autism link, right? Like that existed and you know, there was like woo-woo

you know stuff that existed for a while now like in its own orbit and you know concerns about

processed foods, right? Like that it all has got blended together. Is it because of RFK or like

what's the chicken and the egg on that do you think? I think it's a really good question. I don't know

the answer because Kennedy has, I give him credit because he put words to these feelings that we've

all felt and seen and that have been like proven time and time again by all the biggest storylines

in our healthcare system over the past 10, 15 years. So the whole concept of healthcare being,

you know, just disproportionately expensive in this country and everyone being saddled with like

really incredible medical debt. He's talked about that. This idea that why are more and more people

getting sick with chronic diseases and we know that people are eating unhealthy foods and we know

sort of it's being driven by corporations that are out for profit. Like again, I got some coming

back to Tutu Tristan the light again. Like this is true. We know this is a feeling that people have

and he put words to it for the first time and almost maybe think like as I was looking back on

some of his messaging when he was running for president in 2024 and then later when he was sworn in

and also when he endorsed Trump after pulling out of the race, I was sort of marveling to myself

a politician or a leader in the political space didn't do this earlier. Like even the opioid epidemic,

it's like all these things that have been swirling around in the atmosphere over the last 15 years

that we know are so viscerally felt for families. No one was talking about it in this way. So I kind of

give him credit for kind of like just taking existing pieces of these, of this declining trust.

I think that's the main sort of like undercurrent and putting words to it.

I'm reluctant to handing it to RFK. It's kind of like the drill ISIS meme. I don't know if you

have to hand it to them now that we're like not doing mRNA cancer studies since he's in there. But

like the point of someone else could have grabbed this mantle in a way that focused more on the

tritz. I think that is right. And did it responsibly? Yeah. And particularly on the left. I wanted to

get to Michael and Leah. There were two things that struck me. I think if I told you about these

people and just gave you these generic descriptions like 10 years ago and you asked them which party

they were in. Everybody would say, oh, those people are Democrats. Like Michael was a long hair

bell bottom wearing like musician, gig musician. And Leah was like into numerology,

divine femininity. She thought she was receiving messages from the universe. She had a truth tattoo.

These people seem like they could have been certainly getable for Democrats.

100%

100%

100%

100%

100%

You know when we talk about the groups, like there's all this talk and I do it. Like about the Manosphere

or about my people like the former Republican college educated voter or the Bernie to Trump voter.

Like this is a big demographic kind of of these people that that are

you know, I think more whatever naturalist maybe a little conspiratorial minded and

and like they've happened Republicans like until two minutes ago.

Until two minutes ago and even now they don't really fit like these these two characters in

particular don't even really fit our expectations of like what a mega Republican voter might look

like now. And I intentionally kind of tried not to describe them in with political labels in the

story because I wanted to show how little they fit into these boxes. And I think it's really

really indicative of the moment we're in where it's like nothing really quite makes sense in the

way you expected anymore. Everyone's not about data centers. Everyone's upset about Jeffrey Epstein.

Like all these sort of things and feelings again are blurring political lines that existed even

like two or three or four or five years ago. Well, their story's pretty sad though. So buckle it.

Well, I guess it's not the sad. Nobody's dead yet. So that's good. I'm just going to let people

you know, do a little trigger warning for people. But tell us about the kids are okay. Yeah.

So they have three kids. And yeah, as mentioned that the all-todd line of a custody battle. It's

literally centered around views over their treatment. Yes. And I will say to just like as a preamble

to Michael and Leah, I interviewed so many different people who were in and around the Mahab

movement including like moms who had gone down the Mahab radical and really committed to the lifestyle

and then came out of it. And we're sort of just trying to figure out what they believe again. I

talked to people who were still in the movement. I talked to people that left it behind years and

years ago. So Michael and Leah are two people who live in West Virginia. They met when they were

really young. They met online. They got married. At the time they got married. Neither one of them

was particularly interested in healthcare or wellness. One thing that Leah knew for sure was that

she wanted to be mom. She wanted to be a stay at home mom specifically too. And while I wouldn't

necessarily describe her then as a conservative person, she was sort of rubbing up against this

strain of mainstream feminism at the time. I guess like era of Hillary Clinton, lean in,

girl boss type moment. And she's like wait a second. I want to be a stay at home mom. I was born

to be a mom. I've been dreaming of being a mom. This is my dream in life. It's the thing that matters

most to me. And I'm kind of feeling like there are people in the world who look down on that.

So that's core. I think we're calling it cottage.

cottage.

Who knows who we're calling it back then. We don't like to remember those times.

So I think that that becomes kind of an important thing for her experience later on too.

So they get married two years later. She's pregnant and has her first child.

And again, is not someone who's given a lot of thought to vaccines. The boy who's boy named

Keith gets all standard vaccinations as a baby. He gets the vitamin K shot, which is another

thing that's become suddenly controversial. Standard care for infants since 1961. He gets all the

things. Then the pandemic comes. And Leah is pregnant again this time with her second son.

And while she's pregnant lockdowns are happening, her husband who as you mentioned was sort of like

a bell bottom wearing old school rock and roll fan. And I think by then was really kind of coming

around to a more conservative way of thinking. He was a Trump voter. He works as a gas station sort of

like technician. And his work wasn't impacted by lockdown. So he told me he gets most of his

news from a conservative aggregator called citizen free press. Are you familiar with us?

Oh, I know that's a free press. I wasn't. But it kind of looks like drugs kind of like it has

just like links. It literally started because drugs got too woke. So there was a mega-right

drug competitor that was more Trump friendly and less, I don't know, gay or whatever the problem

is. At that point, right exactly. So does y'all you need to know?

Okay, so for context, like this is what Michael's favorite. Yeah.

News sources. Yeah. So he's reading about the virus on this site. He kind of thinks something's

fishy with the pandemic. He's watching kind of in horror as people follow mask mandates. And like

as like these plastic bear, you know, he was like describing with a great derision, the plastic

barriers that went up around cash registers and stuff like that. So as the pandemic is unfolding,

Leah spending just like more and more time online, like many of us. And she sees people in her

sort of Instagram community starting to fight about masks and vaccines. And she just kind of

follows her curiosity. Like she described herself to me as a really open-minded person. And

it was almost like when these views sort of entered her feed, she just, you know, accepted them

into her life. And I know a lot of people might be like, oh, you've got to know better. But I think

if you go back to that first year of COVID, such a vulnerable time, like so easy to just, yeah.

I mean, I will say look, with love. And obviously, these are the people that were correct for the

most part. But like, you know, and it's not that different from the Fauci candle instinct.

Right? I mean, like it's a little different in that like with Fauci, like you're trusting

somebody who has like made a career of biology and has a long history. And so like putting your

trust in that person, like makes more logical sense to us. But like there was some illogic to it.

Like there was like a cultishness to it. And like there's this kind of uncertainty. And like people

grabbed on to something and like, I don't that makes sense to me. Totally. And there was a lot of

like weird public shaming around who wore a mask and who didn't and who was doing the vaccines and

who wasn't. And I think she bristled at that. And it was also around this time that she began to

sort of like position her status as a stay at home mom is like an active defiance, you know,

which I think goes hand in hand with some of this. Right. So she's kind of starting to think

about vaccines for the first time. She meets a mom who you know, on social media, a total stranger

who tells her a horror story of a vaccine injury, which is the term of choice in the maha world.

Just just like, you know, a vaccine injury. And you know, a child that had, you know, like a seizure,

which these things do happen. Sure. And was vomiting apparently after getting a vaccine. And in

this story sort of like, menacingly, the doctor pulls this woman aside and says, you know, vaccines

aren't as safe as you think. And here's why. And you know, who knows if this was apocryphal or what

happened. But Leah is terrified by this story. And she asked for a couple months, her elderly grandmother

after receiving two doses of the, of the COVID vaccine passes away. She blames the vaccine. This

is a perfect storm sort of coming together. And suddenly, like, it really does not take long,

where she is considering herself, quote unquote, crunchy mama. And you know, she's, she's no more

red dyes in house. Tim has his head in his hands at this point. No more red dyes. You know, no

chemicals in the food. You know, and Michael, who I think like in many families in America had defer

choices about like taking care of the kids to the mom was sort of like, oh, whatever. I'm just

kind of pissed that organic groceries cost more. And like, that like really, like he's like, I don't

get why we're buying organic peanut butter. And she's like, this is what we're doing now. There's no

replacing Jeff. There really is no replacing Jeff. Yeah. And I mean, Michael comes away as you get into

this custody battle where he wants them to, you know, get vaccinated, et cetera, eventually,

after some sicknesses happen, which you can explain. And like, he has kind of the hero of the story

in some ways. But also he's like, you know, taking them on motorcycle rides, which had me a little

little bit of helmet and helmet. And I'm sure, but I don't know. As a reader, I was kind of like,

ah, he loves the little kid loves the little circle. But anyway, I fast forward to the kids and

not think back. Yeah. So the kids basically, as soon as she goes down this rabbit hole, she decides

no more vaccines. And one of the scary things about that in this family is her middle child,

Donnie suffers from spinal muscular atrophy, SMA, which is a genetic disease that we

can cure muscles and leads you basically more vulnerable to respiratory illnesses. So around the

time that Donnie's diagnosed with SMA, Michael starts like kind of asking more questions for the

first time of of Leah about like, what's this vaccine thing all about? Like, why, you know, should we

be doing it? Should we not be doing it? I don't think this marriage was necessarily destined to work

out. But it does come to a head sort of over these issues in 2025. One night, Michael is seeing Leah,

you know, she's she's on her phone more. And he he thinks that she's cheating on him. And one day

in dramatic fashion, he kind of grabs her phone and runs to the garage in the back of the house.

And starts looking through her messages, trying to see if she's cheating. And it turns out, no,

she's not cheating. She is talking with a holistic spiritual guide slash she's paying in Bitcoin.

She's paying in Bitcoin. And I just want to say one thing because I know this is like

head-and-hands moment. But what I learned in my research for this story is that

this world and all the sort of like, fringe diversions that are attached to it, so much of it

revolves around like making a buck. Like yeah, you don't say. Yeah, I know there's some

grifters in the mom. There are some grifters and they are out there. And I talked to some really

smart people that were like, oops, I accidentally spent 10 years in a multi-level marketing company

selling capsules of dried fruits and vegetables. And that became my whole world. And I went to

conferences and I dedicated my life to selling these fruit and vegetable capsules.

Smart people. Yeah, I know. The story's about to get a little tragic. So I just want to sit on the

humor for a second. Okay. It is a funny scene of like a prestige television show. Like going to grab

the phone, thinking that your wife is cheating on you and you're going to discover it and then

finding out she's sending Bitcoin to a holistic spiritual guide. It's very like HBO Max in five years.

Yeah, it's very like, did you see Eddington the movie?

No. Okay. Well, that is like if you wanted to, it's like the prestige movie horror film of March

2020 COVID era. I did see that. Sorry. I just forget. I forget the name of things I watched.

I did see it. It's excellent. There's like a fight over a data center that's kind of happening

in the back of the film the whole time. Anyway, this could be like a subplot of a movie like that.

Spoiler. The holistic healer she was paying a bit coin did not heal the children and they get sick.

The kids got sick this spring. And it was around the time where measles was on the rise.

South Carolina was in the middle of the biggest outbreak that we've had since the virus was declared

eliminated in 2000. Other outbreaks were underway like in many states. The thing about measles is,

it's like it's so incredibly contagious. Like we just don't now that these immunization levels

have dropped below the threshold for her immunity. Like we as a country just no longer have the

ability to contain measles. That's sort of the consensus that I came to talking to the medical

experts and doctors. Right. So measles was on the rise in the spring. The kids are home with

Michael for spring break. One of them has a runny news and a ping-pink eye normal stuff.

Donnie the child with SNA starts to get get kind of like water eyes as well. Michael's like,

this I don't know they've they've sick a lot apparently. Over the course of the spring break,

they get sicker and sicker. Soon the youngest a girl gets sick as well. And you know the list

they're like give everything away in a story. Although we've already talked about the spiritual healer.

You know, it's like a week of hospital visits and at one point Donnie breaks out in a rash of flat

reds blotches, a very distinctive rash, a rash that looks exactly like a measles rash.

And it just kicks off this sort of nightmarish week of hospital visits, ambulances,

the youngest child who was three at the time is like hooked up to the little tubes in her nose

and is being tended to by doctors and a little mini stretcher and doctors and isolation

at just nightmare, true nightmare. The kids are okay now. But it just in true like maha

modern tale fashion, you know, all of this played out on Facebook.

Michael who you've referenced his motorcycle is sort of like a micro influencer in the motorcycle

community in the mid-Atlantic was posting about this in real time.

Julia, who's also sort of a micro influencer, was seeing these posts and her mom was posting

back on Facebook and they were it was it became this very public fight that was playing out in

Facebook and if you looked in the comments, you know, little fights over vaccine safety would

break out and it was just a mess. But like all things related to maha, like there's just a level of

a level to which people are experiencing their lives online in a way that I don't think we're

fully like reflecting on that was very evident in the sort of saga of this couple.

In the spirit of macular thing well, people read it see exactly how it finishes, but I

wanted this kind of pull apart. We went down and visited and interviewed both of them, Michael and

Leah after you know, kind of this health scare for a variety of reasons. Julia is not like convinced,

but it was vaccine related. There's something that David from said on this podcast like three years

ago that I was really stuck with me about about cults or about MLM so about anything, which is like

if you have a friend that gets adduped in a scam and you figure it out, you know, whether that is

whatever I've got condo to sell you in the Everglades or anything and you go and you tell them,

like, hey, you're getting adduped. Like the friend is more likely to get mad at you, right?

The friend is more likely to get mad at you than the person that duped them. It's just like a human

natural defense mechanism, right? And like, this is kind of replete throughout your kind of

reporting, right? Which is just like the people who are really butt in on this, like they feel

talk down to if they get brought information to the contrary of what they know, they dig in further,

not every character, but like a lot of characters. So I'm just wondering like if there are any like

lessons from that that you took as far as disentangling people from this, like, I don't know, it's

pretty bleak to like look at this and be like her three children had, you know, this really

horrible sickness and you still come out of it, like, not changing your mind.

Not the leading that vaccines are, but like a good thing or necessary. Yeah. I think one of the most

interesting revelations I had in reporting this is I was talking to a nonpartisan group in Washington

that was doing a study about Mahal. They were just trying to understand like, what is this beast?

What has it become? And like, you know, what do we do about it? They in the course of the study

through interviews with with moms in the movement found to your point that same things like trust the

science or follow the research or like trust experts, it just translates to different versions of

like you think I'm stupid. And I think that's basically true. I mean, I think people don't want to

be told that they're doing the wrong thing for their kids and that anyone else knows better what

the right thing to do for their kids is like it is true that as a parent, nobody cares about your

kids more than you do. So who is to say that like some random person on Facebook or journalists or

talking head on TV or you know, like a future democratic head of HHS is going to know better.

Opposite probably, honestly, like at this point like yeah, there are a lot of things that

Democrat could fix in 2029, but I don't know. I read stories like yours. This probably is not

the worst thing probably. Yeah. Because it's a lack of trust. The immigration system like there are

other things. I don't know how you put this like back in the like toothpaste back in the tube or

whatever. Like I think one of the things sadly that will do the most to sort of reverse views on this

is the actual return of vaccine preventable diseases. Like measles is not going away. Whipping cough

will come back like it already is polio vaccinations are dropping like there are going to be

story after story of what happens when the sort of tenacity of belief and ideology meets a hard

biological reality. And I think for some moms, I talked to who recently came out of the Mahan

movement and sort of went into what one called their unlearning phase. It happened because

the anxiety of living with an unvaccinated child as a virus like measles is reemerging is so intense.

Like one mom, this one wonderful woman named Lindsay and Virginia who just made an appointment

for her daughter to get the MMR vaccine said that if you could imagine every step you take in

life in the public having a nagging thought in the back of your head being like, okay, this is

this is it. It's happening. Measles isn't in the air. The particles are in the air. This is when

my daughter is getting measles. She said like anytime she went on a trip, anytime she was in a rest stop,

anytime she was in grocery store, like those thoughts would occur to her. And I think that that's

an incredible amount of anxiety to live with. It's kind of reminiscent for me of like the GAHIV

experience. Like on the side. Right. Like if you feel like it's always, you know, not now anymore,

like thanks to PrEP and like these medical advances, but like that's true. That's why I don't know,

maybe that's like an apt parallel kind of, but like there is a lot of uptake on the on PrEP and

these kinds of drugs because like you don't want to feel like that. Yeah, exactly. Like you it's

it's just true peace of mind, I guess. And it's a matter of like, okay, what am I scared of more

a potential adverse reaction from a vaccine or the diseases that vaccines prevent?

And so I think that's one way like the pendulum can swing backward, but I think in general,

so much trust has been lost. And frankly like in four years, I don't can't imagine the degree to

which Trump and RFK will have just like confused people. Yeah. It's just like so much every day from

both of them on this topic. Was there anything else from the unlearning woman that you feel like

you that struck you as far as like motivation or was it was fear really the motivation? I think it

was fear of the of the kids getting sick. Multiple moms I talked to just described like this

anxiety and fear of being like, is my kid going to get sick because I've chosen not to vaccinate

them and just having that nagging thought in your head be a really kind of like potential aha moment.

Aha. Aha. I feel like I'm deep in mega world like I knew citizens free press. I you know,

I get a lot of like mega content. I don't get any maha content or like this is another

universe from me like altogether. So I'm just kind of curious. So you've been spending a lot of time

on the last few months like, is there anything like a sense of betrayal or like backlash to RFK because

I mean, he's doing what he said on the vaccine stuff, but like not really on the food. There's been

like a lot of agricultural kind of discussion about how like the big ag companies won the internal

dispute over, you know, maha issues and the administration. I was kind of curious like broad

lift or any other like recent political developments you noticed. You know, it's interesting. I don't

really see a ton of discussion in maha spaces of RFK himself and like of what he's doing policy wise.

And maybe I was in the wrong parenting groups or something, but I feel like in a way,

the entire movement and the coalition of maha and the attitude and the sensibility and the

lifestyle is bigger than Kennedy. And I think it's so built on distrust of mainstream authorities

that like there aren't any expectations in a sense for Kennedy to like, I don't know. I mean,

that's my sense. My sense is not like people are like, okay, is Kennedy going to deliver? Of course,

for the true anti-vax heads, they're like, we need him to deliver on stuff. But I didn't even have

too many conversations with people about Kennedy. You know, I know he's like in the atmosphere,

like for example, like Leo was kind of constantly posting stuff to her Facebook, including some stuff

about RFK and from children's defense fund. But I didn't hear a lot of moms talk about what they

expect from his administration. So I didn't see any, I didn't hear any backlash.

Well, in some ways that's upsetting because I do think there is some backlash in my like the maha

activist group because they have actual things that they want it, which is a different category of

people than just maha moms and Facebook check groups, right? But I can other ways, I think that is,

I can again, like presents opportunity. It was not like an unnatural thing pre-COVID for a

democratic politician to be out there being like, you know, we really shouldn't trust these big

pesticide companies and the big pharma companies like we should make sure that their rules around

them and like we should really do healthy eating. A famous first lady did something on that,

right? Like it feels like recapturable to me. But maybe that's wrong. I don't know. Maybe it's not.

No, I think that's right. I just struggled to imagine what it would look like and sound like,

you know, like what would it mean for a Democrat to, as you say, recapture maha?

Mary Ann Kadeff. I had Mary Ann on the show a couple months ago. Oh my gosh.

She was, I know. It's like obviously she has some things I like, I really find a little kooky. But like,

she was pretty good on this. I don't know. Really? What did she say? What was her mean?

I mean, she was like, I mean, the thing was just talking about how the Democratic Party was like not

listening to what like to the real concerns that these moms had. And like, I don't know. It just,

it was because RFK was so fucking pernicious on the vaccine stuff. And, and because of like the way

he went around about business, it was really hard. And you can relive history and say like maybe

Kamala or Biden should have tried to keep him in the tent. But I think it was going to be really

hard to do it. People that say that I think missed the fact that he was already basically out of

the tent about the time he was pretending like had they called him like you might have made a

difference. Like I don't think I really don't think it would have. We'll never know. Yeah. Maybe some

people know. But RFK, you could use that model and like incorporate someone who is who who and

be like, I'm not going to put this person in charge of the nation's health, but like there are

ways to engage. Yeah. Mary Ann had the like crystal.

Yeah.

Right.

I mean, Iowa candidates, Rob Sand is really like, I don't know if this is true, right? And so this is

where I think it's maybe possible. Like, like, cancer, I know this is true. Cancer is really on the

rise in Iowa disproportionately to other states. There's conversations about whether that's pesticides

or whether that's the water, you know, getting the water and all this stuff. And he's running on that.

And like that's ma, and that's scientifically based. I don't know. It feels like there are ways to do it.

Agreed. And I think even Bernie Sanders did a lot of this in like 2020 specifically in just

highlighting stories of how people have been kind of like screwed over by, you know, the health care

industry or the pharmaceutical industry in some way, which you would think it might be a little

bit different after COVID, but I don't really recall it being a big issue in 2024 on the

Democratic side. Like, I don't really remember Biden or Kamala going there.

Well, I mean, don't say they did because they did. They put out white papers.

Right. But like it was it. You know, I mean, people wasn't focused.

All right, I won't talk about a couple of your other stories since you've been at the New Yorker.

You're at the New Yorker now. When I met you, you're a Buzzfeed girl. So, you know, it's a big

the authority to have you on the pod is I'm honored. But before we talk about a couple of your

other stories really quick, there was one thing that gave me a little what the fuck in this story

that I just wanted you to tell people about, which are agra hoods. I did not I did not know about

agra hoods. You don't like that. What's up with that? You say the words so fine. Not said. I

don't know how to pronounce it. Like agra hoods. Okay. So agra hoods are kind of like wellness-minded

communities where you can literally a community like a cold assack. It is literally

a neighborhood community kind of subdivision type deal. Like subdivision doesn't sound like a very

maha description, but for lack of a better term subdivision. Yeah, there's a couple. I tried to

interview them for for my piece, but they didn't get back to me. So if you're listening, get back to

me. They've been going around in an RV touring all of the agra hoods in America and like giving

little videos synopsis of like one for each. I think they all have a slightly different flavor.

Like perhaps some are more quote unquote maha traditional than others. But yeah, you can buy

house and live and like do you know, I don't know, natural cooking classes and have your kids

being neighbors with other kids that are living in non toxic homes. You know.

We're an amazing country. There's so much stuff out there. I don't know anything about.

Yes, the agra hoods. The agra hood that I featured in the piece called Saren B

and it's right outside Atlanta and it's founder recently claimed that none of the kids living at

Saren B have asthma because they lived this like non toxic lifestyle. Like maybe,

maybe none of them do have asthma. That's kind of interesting. I don't know. Because I couldn't

that just be just like random chance. It could be it could it could also be like

none of my cousins had asthma. Yeah, I also couldn't have asthma. But so because of the 11

me. She's 10 years old. Did you grow up in a non toxic household? No. I mean, you know,

I mean my mom cooked, which is nice. Real weird. We had really good. But did she cook with like

plastic spatulas because that's a huge note. Oh, we definitely had plastic spatulas. Okay, so

you've got microplastics in your body. I don't want to know where the microplastics are. I want to

hard pivot to a couple of your other stories. And then we're going to close by playing two

tricinoli ourselves. So get ready for that. Two of your other articles recently, one, I wanted to

talk about because I just just talk about the scale of the ice operations. You're doing a lot of

ice reporting like many six months ago before you moved into the mom. And I feel like I talk about

it as much as anybody I try to because it's just it's so fucking enraged you to me. And yet,

like I was going back to your old story, it's the new total story of this Merrimar Martinez.

Well, I don't think I even mentioned, which I talked about kind of just there's like it's hard to

keep track of kind of the scope of what they're doing, what the deportation campaign. But for folks

that like me like that needed to be refreshed on that story, just want to give a brief synopsis

of what happened. Does Merrimar Martinez and Chicago? Yeah, so it's funny because I wasn't as

familiar with her story either, but it really set the playbook for everything that we saw in Minneapolis

later with Alex Freddie and Renee Good. She was a woman in Chicago who was living in the south

side in a community that was sort of like on the watch for ice during the surge there. And this

was in the fall of 2025. So so yes, so a few months before the surge in Minneapolis, she had been sort

of like following the ice surge there, hadn't really gone to protest or done anything like that,

but was sort of like on the watch in her neighborhood, trying to warn sort of neighbors to be on

look out for ice agents. She's American citizen, by the way, and she's a young woman. She's 31.

So she's driving one day, sees an unmarked Tahoe, knows immediately that it's DHS, starts

following the Tahoe, honking her horn, rolls down their windows, her shouting, let me grow, let me grow

to warn neighbors. And eventually like as we've seen happen again and again, these car-related incidents

turned dangerous. They get into sort of like a tense kind of standoff in the road. They're going

side by side. We know from bodycam and footage that there were three border patrol agents in the Tahoe

that are feeling like they're getting quote unquote boxed in. And the two cars, I don't want to say

collide because they really like side-swiped. But after contact is made, the border patrol agent driving

the Tahoe stops the car, gets out of his car, and fires five times into Marimoma Martinez's car.

And she shot, first off she could have died easily. She didn't. But after this incident,

she is almost immediately described by DHS, which at the time was still being run by Chrissy

Knome as a domestic terrorist and is smeared and charged with assaulting a federal officer.

Which again, like this is the playbook. Yeah, Trisha McGofflin afterwards said that she was armed

with a semi-automatic weapon. She had a pistol in her purse. I love that, I was at the second

amendment people now. It's all it's good for everybody to hold a weapon except for protesters

protesting ice. Yeah, she had a small handheld pistol in a pink holster at the bottom of her purse,

which she carried everywhere with her. So it was Trisha said she was armed with a semi-automatic

weapon. She's a domestic terrorist. She said that Martinez wrote a post that said, hey,

to all my gang, let's fuck those motherfuckers up. Don't let them take anyone that was not her. She'd

mixed her up with another Latina woman apparently. Cash Patel shared a video of a black SUV ramming

an agent's truck saying it was Martinez. That was not her. That was a different video.

It's time that you're at the start of call. Those posts remained online. So that was just, again,

a total preview of everything we saw with good and pretty. Like a situation where it's totally

unnecessary. Like, what do you think about Martinez behavior? Like an agent of the state totally

unnecessary and irresponsible to like fire the weapon five times. There was no need to do that.

Like, that's not protocol. I've had FBI and law enforcement agents on to talk about that.

And then obviously it's it's grotesque for then the government to lie and smear the person

afterwards. But it's what it's exactly what they did to Renee Good then. Right. It's exactly what

what they did to Renee Good and Alex Prede. I think the speed with which it happened in this

particular case was really alarming. It was like hours, you know, without, of course, any

investigation into what happened. I'm sure without all the evidence being collected in terms of like,

well, we know it could some of the agents hadn't, you know, fully been debriefed. So it's just like

this was a preview of what happened in Minneapolis. The difference with Martinez is she lived to tell

the tale. And she found how difficult it was to defend yourself when the federal government is

coming with the full heft of the federal government at you, not just with criminal charges, which were

later dropped. But just in the court of public opinion, like it turns out it's really hard to

defend yourself when, you know, people at the highest levels of government are calling you a

domestic terrorist. This woman was a young preschool assistant teacher. Crazy. Crazy. The other

thing that I just rereading it, I just, you can see how they've changed the tactics now. Right.

Like that was the move in the fall, right. It was like very shock and awe, scare people.

And then the government goes all out. They did the snuff films, right. And like that was part of

the effort to get people to self-deport honestly. And it was part of the whole mission. And like

now a year later, you know, there's still, as we've been reporting on a bunch the last couple weeks,

like still grabbing people, but they're doing it in like such a more low key way to literally

prevent this. Like what they don't want anymore is the Murray-Mar Martinez. They don't care

that you get injured, but they don't want the, hey, I'm warning people in the neighborhood,

like the tactical, it's a tactical change because it prevents what we saw in Chicago and many

apples. Like community action is harder when it's happening kind of under the radar. So. Yeah, absolutely.

You also did a Ken Martin takeout. A profile on my guy Ken Martin DNC chair.

Some fine journalism. Do you want to take down? No, take out. Take out. I don't know. John

Favreau did to take down I think. What you reported on. Man, it's tough. I don't know. You know, I

look at the Ken Martin thing and this is going to feel really mean to him because I do not mean this

in about his morality or integrity. Okay. He's right. He's right. Like I worked for rights.

And it's the thing. He's just like a democratic rights freebess. And like obviously then,

right through as it comes becomes an able to evil after I quit working for him. I'm not saying

that that was why. But I don't think Ken Martin would do that after this. But just in like

in this modern, it's different. Like you talk about Terry McCollough for the different style of

chair. He is like a Terry McCollough would do well on this day and age. I think at any day and age,

it's like there was this old model of party chair that like they were the state party chair

in some place in the country. And then they come to DC and they focus on the operations and they're

behind the scenes and they're a pleaser and everybody. You know, they do a good job of making

all the activists happy. Like it's just a different job now. And I don't know. It's tough.

It's not not done seem fun. But I don't know. I also think like everyone is very clear that

things are not going well there. So this is not to excuse Ken. Right. You know, no one's

excusing Ken. But I mean, there's no world in which this would ever make sense. But like if I were

in that world, I would never do that job ever, ever, ever, ever. Like I used to cover the DNC a lot

which was a kind of curse assignment because everyone was always sort of in chaos somehow. Which is

like so my impression. I've never covered the RNC. But you tell me my impression was that while the

DNC was always like kind of slandering and behind and fundraising. But also like there was some small

scandal that was like threatening to upend their meetings and which were open press. The RNC was like

talk down. Everything went out was supposed to. No one was really allowed to access. No,

there were no debates on the floor about like Israel. That is true. Except for the tiny window where I

was there, which we could blame on me. But in the Bush era, it was very tight. And then in Trump,

what? But in that interperiod where the party is having this tumult, the RNC was reflective of it.

And I think that's what we're seeing at DNC. And I remember being the spokesperson and being so

mad because I had the opposite view during this tiny window 2010, 2012 of like being so mad. Like

why are we doing open meetings where we discuss birthright citizenship or whether Obama was born in

Kenya? And I was like, why don't we like tighten this fucker up a little bit? But like, Rines wanted to

appease everybody and please everybody. And so he wanted, you know, the crazy Ron Paul people

never say. And so it's funny. I get a little bit of trauma like watching the DNC meetings because

it's what it's what I was supposed to manage and fail. Like it's tough. And part of it is, I think

Ken needs to tighten the ship up because it's like people that have very strong views on this issue

won't like this view. But it's like the DNC delegate meeting is really not the place to discuss

like the two states. It's like, it's not going to get resolved here. And like it only is going to

enrage people who are on the opposite side of wherever you land. And so like, why are you doing it?

You know, but they can't help them. They can't. They can't. And God bless. But I mean, as time when

Trump is doing things that are theoretically enraging the entire Democratic Party,

why is there not more energy and creativity around like how to respond to this moment? That's what

that's what puzzled me in dipping back into this world very briefly before executing myself to

go back to my parenting Facebook chats. You previously in previous life at the Washington Post

wrote a great profile of my friend, Carrie like our friend and our friend. We got to spend a lot of

time together and we were in Arizona, which I miss. And one of the stories that you want. I think

I believe the headline or the lead of it was that like with Carrie like the cameras always on

because our husband was camoring her. And subsequently to that, I had two encounters with her,

it shows you the Carrie like the power of that strategy where she secretly videotaped me.

Only released one of them because she was kind of drunk and it was embarrassing the other one

and she didn't really nail me. So that video remains on her husband's phone somewhere. But like the other

one, she released like a secret fish bowl camera of me. This is like a year after your article as

I kind of remember this. This is so crazy. Like, yeah, when she touched me, she touched me,

you're like a convention or something. Yeah, she was speaking away in a side room. She said

she was like, I agree to do this if it's in the side room. And now I'm learned why because they

like rigged a camera system into them. Anyway, she's a kooky character. I don't know why don't you

go to Jamaica and visit her. So one fun fact about this. Every person I talk to who was in Carrie

late's previous life when she was a television anchor told me how much this woman loved Jamaica.

No. Yes, I've been looking for a place to like, like, you know, no one tweets anymore. I'm scared

of Twitter. So I can't tweet this. I guess I can talk about it here. And you're reporting for the

profile? Yes, I've talked to all of her former colleagues at this news station where she was working

in Phoenix. You know, they all had really interesting stuff to say about Carrie. Like

and one of the things that they told me a lot of them brought it up was that she was always kind

of taking vacation and she would just like disappear and it made things. People were kind of, you

know, rolling their eyes about it. Like, oh, Carrie's often vacation and she would go to Jamaica.

Like she loved Jamaica. Everyone referenced how much she loved Jamaica. I'm telling you. So

when I saw that why was it that the weed? Is it the dam? The me? I don't know. My impression,

my impression was that my impression was like she and her husband just connected with the place.

I don't know if they have a familial connection. I don't know if like there's any other connection

other than they really liked Jamaica. But they were always on Jamaica. So when I saw that she was

appointed and ambassador, right? She's ambassador to Jamaica. I was like, you know what?

But it all come back to she asked for this. She said I'm sure to Mr. Trump and beg for it.

Instead of all the countries in the world, I want Jamaica. No, okay. To be clear, I don't know if she asked.

But I think so. We I can impute that. You're a journalist. I'm a podcast. I haven't talked to

Carrie again a long time. Yeah. But seems like she she was like she went to Mr. Trump and she begged

like a dog to get the gym. I can't pass her job. That's my opinion. I don't I don't you don't

I don't know if anyone cares. But like, you know, it would be interesting to ask. But she loves

Jamaica. So I was like, Oh, you know, you should the New Yorker should send you to

Absolutely not. I don't know. I feel like there was a moment. Do it. I do it. I need this.

I need to send Ruby to do it. Yeah. I'll go. Surprise. It'll be like the Jerry Springer show.

I'm like, you're here. I'm here. But I pop up from the side. The thing about you being secretly

inter secretly videotaped by Carrie Lake and the difference between that and me being videotaped

by Carrie Lake is so vast. Like you really held your own. You were like, don't touch me. I would have

been like, I couldn't handle it. I just like withered under this videotaping thing. Like, we also

went into a side quote unquote side room for this interview. And when we walked in, she had

cameras set up everywhere. And I was like, are you film are you going to film this? I kind of

asked in a sad way. Like, do we really have to do we really have to do this? I'm not comfortable on

camera. Yeah. In that way, you know, I'm not like a, I don't know. You're right. I'm just trying

to long form. I've just tried to do this story. Anyway, it was wild. But we love Carrie. And we had

such a good time in Arizona together. She's a character. I had pitched them back when I was writing

before I did a daily podcast. I'd pitched them because we'd had so many back and forth. So I was

like, it would be once it was over. And I was like, you won. Like she didn't win. But like Trump won

again. And I was like, I want to do a story where I like sleep over at her house, like not in her

bedroom, but like in a guest room. And I want to wake up and have breakfast with Carrie. And just

be like, are you like this? Yeah. Exactly. Like I want to know what she's like at breakfast. Like,

do you have the makeup on still? And, and are you, and they all assured me that like, no, at breakfast,

she is talking about election fraud. And I'm like, maybe I don't know. I'd like to know, but I

didn't have it. I just want to add one more thing about Carrie. Like is that it was, she had this

like cadre of young men around her working for you. Yeah. And in it, in an effort to

immerse myself in the world, like I went out with them one night to just try to like, you know,

yeah, I was trying to negotiate this in a real that then happened in the side room. These kids,

I've never seen vaping zins. I tried a zin for the first time. I almost fainted in the back of

the Uber on the way back to my hotel from the zin. Don't try to say it for the first time.

I'm the most stranger to nicotine. Sure. But I was like, whoa, I don't think it was, I don't

even think it was in. I think it was off market, you know, like gas stations and or something. Well,

it was wild anyway. So maybe we can, yeah, we can replay that in Jamaica. I'd love to.

We're closing with two truths in a lie. What's that? This is what we call, we're bringing closure

to the podcast. You know, we started and we're closing with two truths in a lie. Would you like to go

first or me? I'll go first. Okay. It's a maha theme to two truths. Okay. It's maha theme. So

I have ordered natural all-cure style supplements served to me via Instagram ads.

Okay. I have watched every documentary available on all streaming platforms about twin-flame unions.

I know that doesn't sound maha theme, but it is because one of the characters in the maha custody

piece is a like expert on twin flames. So I have watched all twin-flame documentaries and I have

consumed raw milk. How many twin-flame documentaries? There are a lot. I think there are at least,

there are definitely two main ones, but there might be a third somewhere out there. I

think. Questions, have you consumed raw milk for a story or did you actually get the natural

supplements for Instagram? That seems to be the crux of the question for me. Wow. I think

that you have not done raw milk. You're correct. Yes. I would try it though, for sure. Have you

tried it? I don't even know what the vibe is. Okay. Freaked me out when I first saw it. I first

learned about a libertarian New Hampshire when I was out there working for John Huntspin

and we're driving around to the other somebody doing raw milk on the side of the road. I was like,

what? I thought up until that moment, I believed milk to be raw. I'm not a farmer.

Okay. I grew up in the suburbs. I had a real time. You were John Huntsman just finding out.

Yeah. You had explained it to me. He knew about it. He knew about it.

And I was just like, oh, that's weird as fuck, but he's like those are people. So anyway,

here's mine. Okay. I didn't take the flu shot for many years because one year it seemed to make me sick.

Okay. So I was a little bit of a flu shot, anti-vaxxer. Totally got that.

I was one of the first 1200 people in the world to get monkey box.

My daughter is only a trip to the emergency room is putting a bead up her nose and that

happened during COVID. A bead. A bead. A bead. A bead. Up the nose. And during COVID, we had to

mast go in and get the doctor. Did it go down? Try it out. We got it out first. Good.

Okay. Well, you've used a lot of detail there. So I know that happened.

I think the month, I don't know enough about monkey box to know if this is even plausible.

And I'm scared that that could be true. I don't know, but I'm also scared to reveal my ignorance

on monkey box. So leveling with you on that. And then what was the first one?

Flu shot. Oh. Flu shot anti-vaxxer. The monkey box thing has to be fake.

That has to be the line. That has to be the line. I mean, I do like departing and have a good time,

but it was a friend of mine that actually was one of the first 1200 people in the world to get

and it's one of my favorite facts about him. And we won out on the God love them. It was a lot.

Okay. Is he okay? He's great. Yeah. One of my other vases is a infectious disease doctor.

We got he got on that motherfucker. And he was on that was texting me.

They're like, if you got your shot yet, I don't know what you've been doing out there,

but he's like, get your shot. He's like, I've been seeing. So I've got I had a lot of connections

to early monkey box diagnoses one from the doctor and patient side. But you, but you,

you've reached, you've reached yourself out a little bit about the flu shot. I did. I,

I, and I, and my husband hated it. He said, like, but I don't like the flu shot I think gave me the flu.

Like I got it one year and I felt awful afterwards. And I was like, why am I doing this? I'm not

going to die from flu. I understand why not, but I wanted to offer that as kind of a peace offering

for the maha people. Absolutely. I get it. I get what I totally get it to. I mean, it gets a little

kooky, you know, when your kids have the measles, but like, you know, I get the mindset. So it's like,

come back to the brink, baby, unlearn. My whole thing, I just want to say one thing also kind of like

in defense of maha is once people get there, once they go down what someone in the story terms,

the radicalization funnel, it's like, look at the environment we're in. Look at the way social media

is like permeating our lives. Look at how easy it is to Google something out of fear anxiety

about your kid and then like, end up two hours later or deep on a reddit board or something. Like,

look at what Trump is saying from the Oval Office about that's a vaccine and how children's bodies

are being quote unquote pumped with vaccine. You know, all these like really disgusting menacing

language terms to discuss vaccine. Look at what RFK is doing. How are we expecting people

to act or think any differently? I'm just like, I do not. It's kind of a wonder that more people

aren't. Yeah, I'm mad at them. I mean, once the kids are tough, the small kids are tough. But

I, like, that's why I like that. I feel like the unlearning question is this, it's such the key

point because it's I, and I do, I understand. It's just like, I feel like I said this a lot,

but like, everyone can relate to this in any situation in their personal life. Like, we've all been

duped or like got our mindset on something that isn't true or had a girlfriend boyfriend that was

a manipulator or whatever and like, had somebody tell you that and you get mad. Like, you get,

you get your backup. Like, I get that. Like, I get that. And so I understand why trust a science,

doesn't work. But like, something's got to work because it's rough out there.

All right, that's Ruby Kramer. What a delight. Thank you for coming on the podcast.

Thank you. And I'm looking forward to whatever you're doing next. We'll do it again soon.

Thanks. Awesome.

All right, everybody else. Go listen to the next level. If you want more politicking and we'll

be back tomorrow with a bit of a double header. It's going to be a good one to see all that.

Please don't you play.

Those evil tricks on me.

Something now.

And I'm sure I know you.

I've been sneaking around inside my head. There's nothing else to do.

The Bullwork Daily is brought to you thanks for the work of lead producer Katie Cooper,

associate producer Anzali Skipper, and with video editing by Dante DeCicco and audio engineering

and editing by Jason Brown.