Battle of the Dummies: Which Party’s Crazies Will Alienate Middle America First?

Tell me your company, and I will tell you what you are.
—Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

Audiences also identify brands by the company they keep. That’s why celebrity endorsements cost so much money: When done right, they’re worth it!

Because instead of spending millions to convince audiences how super-wonderful your brand is, you can simply connect your brand with a celebrity. Suddenly, his adjectives are now yours. You piggyback off his lifetime of brand attributes — good and bad — but your assumption is that the good vastly outweighs the bad.

The celebrity becomes your “brand ambassador.”

And like it or not, the Republican and Democratic Parties are also brands. When audiences think about them, they associate certain qualities. Very specific adjectives come to mind.

But beware: Associating your brand with the wrong “brand ambassadors” can destroy your business in the blink of an eye. (Don’t believe me? Go ask Bud Light.)

After all, anything with the power to brand positively can also brand negatively.

Political parties are especially vulnerable to brand corruption because they exist in an open-ended ecosystem. There’s no quality control; anyone can join at any time. If, for example, a handful of screwballs antagonize the American people by refusing to stand for American citizens at the State of the Union, then poof — it becomes part of your brand identity.

That’s the PR problem for political parties: In a free society, it’s next to impossible to muffle your crazies, because they have free speech, too.

Which beckons an intriguing question: Which party’s crazies will alienate Middle America first?

There’s no easy answer. To be fair, both parties have strong benches. But there’s an awful lot riding on it, because our nation is at war — yet opinions are still in flux. According to polling data, 32% of Republicans and a whopping 38% of independents are still undecided over Trump’s decision to attack Iran.

Prediction: Until opinions harden, polling data will be all over the place. Just one news cycle — or the subtle rephrasing of a polling question — will shift opinions by 15+ points. Over the next two weeks, we’ll see rival polling companies reporting radically different results.

Don’t dismiss it as empty noise, because it actually means something important: Support or opposition to the Iran War is still a jump-ball, and the political outcome is undecided.

On the Republican side, much of our “influencer community” is racing to the anti-war side. Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes, Megyn Kelly, Andrew Tate, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Marjorie Taylor Greene — nitwits one and all — will be promoting podcasts, videos, and X posts designed to rally public opinion against the president.

Expect their criticism to be somewhat muted — at least, at first. Much of their audience consists of Trump voters, and if they get too antagonistic too quickly, they risk blowback. They need to tread slowly.

But it’s going to get VERY bad in a hurry.

After all, their business model necessitates stoking outrage and controversy, because clicks = cash. It’s a far different business model than traditional talk radio, where hosts succeeded because they built trust, rapport, and long-term loyalty with their audience. On YouTube and X, you don’t need trust; you only need clicks, and the easiest way to get attention is by saying and doing outrageous, controversial things.

It’s why Tucker Carlson NEVER talks about the issues that unite the GOP, only the things that divide it. That’s where the money is!

Prediction: The more influencers like Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Megyn Kelly attack President Donald Trump as a traitor, “Israel First,” and a warmonger, the more they’ll be rewarded with fawning coverage by the mainstream media. This will incentivize our “influencer community” to steadily escalate their attacks.

So if you think it’s bad now, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. This is the calm before the storm.

As for the Democrats, they have two key advantages. First, Democratic voters are more united against Donald Trump than Republicans are united for Donald Trump. (Just 19% of Dems are undecided on Iran, compared to 32% of Republicans and 38% of independents.) And second, their “influencer community” is significantly smaller than ours and carries less PR weight.

This means their crazies are less likely to demotivate Democrats — and our crazies more likely to demotivate Republicans.

That’s a big deal, because midterm elections hinge on turnout. Mobilizing your base matters more than winning a plurality of independents.

But independents still matter. And sometimes, the best way to mobilize your base is with a common enemy: the other party’s crazies!

Yes, it’s true: The MAGA-adjacent “influencer community” is chock-full of idiots, halfwits, and full-blown wackaloons. Between Carlson, Owens, Tate, Kelly, Fuentes, Yiannopoulos, and Greene, we’ve heard everything from Jewish space lasers to Erika Kirk murdering her husband to demons sneaking into bedrooms.

I mean, c’mon, folks, does this sound like serious journalism?

Why are so many neocons closeted gay Republicans? pic.twitter.com/WBYO6vHClr
— Tucker Carlson Network (@TCNetwork) May 2, 2025

But despite the (many) flaws of our crazies, to my knowledge, they still haven’t encouraged terrorist attacks against American citizens. That’s still a bridge too far.

Not so with the Democrats.

BREAKING: Hasan Piker tells his audience how to commit terrorist attacks.

“Just make f**king drones. You can purchase them from online marketplaces. China literally sells explosive ordnance delivery mechanisms that you can put on a DJI drone.“@FBI

pic.twitter.com/QWh6d4tZjE
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) March 3, 2026

It’s a story my colleague, Catherine Salgado, covered on Tuesday:

A leftist influencer with millions of fans casually instructed his audience on how to commit terrorist attacks most easily and effectively, as the U.S.-Israeli operation against Iran continues full throttle.
Hasan Piker, or "HasanAbi," has a massive audience for his Twitch streaming and leftist political commentary. Amidst the current phase of the conflict between Iran's terror-sponsoring regime and the United States and our allies, Piker chose to gush over Iranian drone attacks on civilian targets, which have killed innocent people in Israel and the Gulf states. Piker even went a step further and discussed how ordinary people could potentially obtain the tools to carry out drone warfare.
[…]
This is grossly irresponsible and quite probably illegal behavior (see 18 U.S. Code Chapter 113B). Piker was not only lauding deadly terrorism, but he was also actually providing listeners with the information to pursue similar terrorist acts around the world.

Piker is by no means a bit player in liberal circles. By some metrics, he’s the biggest left-wing streamer in the world, with 4.5 million followers. And just like our crazies have infuriated mainstream MAGA conservatives, Piker has done the same to Democrats, including Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.):

A Congressional letter has been sent to the leadership of both Amazon and Twitch to sound the alarm about the amplification of antisemitism on Twitch. Hasan Piker, who has described Orthodox Jews as “inbred” and a Jewish man as a “bloodthirsty pig,” is the antisemitic voice of… pic.twitter.com/h95QXZ78AJ
— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) October 30, 2024

Piker is hugely influential with Millennials, Zoomers, and Gen-Alphas. But if you’re over 40, you probably haven’t heard of him. His name means nothing.

And therein lies the political opportunity for the Republican Party.

We might not be able to silence our crazies — but we can publicize the heck out of theirs. If the Republicans are serious about winning the PR war over Iran, we need to give our base a common enemy.

Someone like Hasan Piker is perfect. Not only is he profoundly unlikeable and extraordinarily offensive, but he’s even been accused of electroshocking his poor dog, Kaya, during livestreams. Briefly, he became a factor in the New York City mayoral race, when Zohran Mamdani refused to condemn Piker’s comments that “America deserved 9/11.”

Make. Him. Famous!

Not with liberals, because he’s already famous with liberals. Instead, make him famous with conservatives and independents.

It’s simple math: If our crazies are going to be weaponized against us, we'd better weaponize their crazies against them.

Because not all crazies are created equal. From blaming America for 9/11 to electroshocking dogs to advising viewers on how to use drones for terrorist attacks, Hasan Piker isn’t just partially crazy.

He’s fully crazy. Fully stupid. And fully retarded.

That’s a mistake. As five-time Academy Award winner Kirk Lazarus taught us, “Never go full retard.”

Make. Him. Famous!

One Last Thing: 2026 is a critical year for America First. It began with Mayor Mamdani declaring war on “rugged individualism” and will reach a crescendo with the midterm elections. Nothing less than the fate of the America First movement teeters in the balance.

Never before have the political battle lines been so clearly defined. Win or lose, 2026 will transform our country.

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