The ‘No Kings’ demonstrations showed no evidence of the “hate America” Antifa craziness that Republicans warned of—but MAGA influencers keep claiming left-wing violence lurks around every corner.
By Will Sommer
MAGA SOCIAL-MEDIA USERS WERE OUTRAGED over the weekend to find their feeds full of further proof of the left’s problem with political violence: Liberals had been caught on tape attacking Republicans. In a video posted last Thursday by conservative X user Kevin Tober, a former staffer at the conservative blog Newsbusters, a man and woman appear to disrupt a watch party for the Virginia attorney general debate, which was being hosted at a bar by the Arlington GOP.
In the video, customers and bar staffers are seen scuffling with the pair as they struggle to make their way into the party. Some people fall on the ground, and the duo are frog-marched out the front door.
“Don’t fucking touch me!” the woman yells at one point.
As staffers hold the door closed, the ejected pair fume outside and shout at party attendees.
“This is the left in America today,” Tober tweeted, describing the interlopers as “violent leftists.”
The video went viral on the right, with many users claiming it as proof once again that it’s open season on conservatives in America.
“Violence against conservatives is legal and they know it,” moaned popular conservative X user “Political Math.”
Conservative talk radio host Larry O’Connor took to X to pin the blame on Democrat gubernatorial hopeful Abigail Spanberger, juxtaposing the video with a story she told at a June campaign event that included the line “Let your rage fuel you.”
But the man and woman who disrupted the watch party were not liberals at all. As the Arlington GOP made clear in its own statement, the duo were in fact former Daily Caller News Foundation reporter Myles Morell and wannabe Republican operative Alysia McMillan. If those names sound a bit familiar, it might be because you’ve seen them printed in this very newsletter. The same pair was responsible for the abortive Trump “First 100 Days” party that turned into such a disaster some who were involved described it as MAGA’s own Fyre Festival.
As Arlington GOP chair Matthew Hurtt told me, Morell had shown up to the debate watch party precisely to confront Hurtt. Why? Because Hurtt had, among other things, called Morell an “archetypal goober” in an interview with False Flag about the calamitous “First 100 Days” party.
“Why don’t you call me a ‘goober’ in person?” Hurtt recalled Morell yelling at him at the bar Thursday.
McMillan didn’t respond to requests for comment, and Morell declined to speak with me. In a statement to the ARLnow blog, Arlington police said neither side has pressed charges. As I was in the process of reporting this piece, Tober deleted the tweet in which he initially published the video of the confrontation and made his X account private.
Interfaction battles and emotional meltdowns are fairly common in MAGA politics; the fact that a confrontation like this had taken place wasn’t that surprising. But what stood out to me was the rush by those on the right to frame it as yet another instance of episodic violence from the left before any real facts about the episode had been established.
It’s part of a larger pattern. In the weeks since the assassination of Charlie Kirk and amid the Trump administration’s attempts to justify investigations of liberal groups and troop deployments in Democratic cities, those on the right have been eager to spotlight trends of liberal violence. Trump met with right-wing influencers in the White House earlier this month to hear their stories of being victimized by “Antifa” activists. Attorney General Pam Bondi held a press conference with right-wing pundit Benny Johnson after a man was indicted for sending a threatening letter to Johnson’s family.
In fact, the demand for tales of left-wing violence is outpacing the supply of actual incidents of it. In Portland, for example, conservative personalities have resorted to stealing American flags from anti-ICE protesters, then blundering back into the protests in an attempt to incite a confrontation. And while Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed the “No Kings” rallies would be packed with the Democrats’ “hardest-core . . . most unhinged” representatives, the right was relatively starved for content that met these expectations. Instead of feasting on apocalyptic scenes of chaos and civil disorder, they were left to nibble on the political tapas plates of minor incidents, like that of a protester in Denver stealing a Trump supporter’s glasses.
NO INCIDENT BETTER EXEMPLIFIES the right’s thirst for left-wing violence—or violence by immigrants or, really, any non-MAGA types—than the late September “abduction” of Florida teenager Caden Speight, which became a major story in conservative circles for about twenty-four hours before imploding.
Speight, a homeschooled 17-year-old from Citrus Springs, Florida, vanished on September 25—but not before texting his mother that he was being hunted by four “Hispanic” men in a white van.
“I need help being shot at 4 Hispanics armed white van one driver im hit,” Speight wrote to his mother, according to his arrest affidavit.
When police found Speight’s truck, he was gone. There was a bullet hole in the windshield and blood in the driver’s seat. Florida and federal law enforcement joined sheriff’s deputies in their hunt for Speight.
Soon after, the Amber Alert announcing Speight’s apparent kidnapping and shooting became the story in right-wing media online. Speight’s name trended on X with thousands of tweets.
Part of the fascination with the story was owed to an apparently erroneous report that Speight was wearing a MAGA hat when he was kidnapped, raising the idea that perpetrators were seeking revenge against Trump supporters more broadly or engaged in some kind of copycat killing inspired by Kirk’s assassination. Far-right manosphere personality Matt Forney predicted waves of liberal celebrations “if Caden Speight is murdered by those Mexicans.”
“We have to stop allowing these people doing this to us based on our skin color,” right-wing commentator Dennis Michael Lynch said in a video, complaining that the mainstream media was ignoring Speight’s peril because he’s white.
“Reports say he may have been wearing a MAGA hat when this happened,” wrote prominent pro-Trump commenter Robby Starbuck on X.3
Popular right-wing figures like Benny Johnson, Eric Daugherty, and the “End Wokeness” account all weighed in as well, though it’s not clear exactly what they said because they have since deleted their posts.
That’s because, roughly twenty-four hours after he disappeared, the idea that Speight was a MAGA victim of Hispanic violence began to unravel.
The Marion County Sheriff’s Office, which was leading the search for Speight, said he had been seen at a local Walmart shortly before his supposed abduction buying a tent, camping supplies, and a bicycle, suggesting that he had in fact staged the shooting and kidnapping, then biked away from the scene. A witness then came forward to say they had seen Speight abandon his truck. The abduction story was further undermined when Speight’s brother told law enforcement Speight had talked about running away.
Speight was soon discovered by police. He was alone. Authorities said he shot himself in the leg and shattered his femur in an attempt to make the kidnapping look real.
“The initial details that Caden texted to his family were proven to be false—completely made-up,” Sheriff Billy Woods said in a video.
As the real facts of Speight’s case became clear—and as comparisons to the “balloon boy” and Jussie Smollett hoaxes began making the rounds—only a handful of conservative personalities were willing to admit they had been fooled.
“He duped all of us including his family,” complained Bill Clinton accuser and now right-wing commentator Juanita Broaddrick in a post on X.
Speight was arrested last week on charges relating to firing the gun and staging the kidnapping. And while MAGA pundits tried to make his abduction a story about the perils of immigration, his arrest affidavit suggests he was actually very interested in meeting up with Mexican cartels. Along with ChatGPT searches for how to drain his own blood—in an apparent attempt to make the fake abduction look violent—Speight searched for information about “the main cartel station in mexico” and “the best route” to “where the gulf cartel are.”
You won’t be surprised to hear that the speight spate of tweet deletions by right-wingers was not accompanied by chagrined apologies for misleading followers with wild speculation, let alone promises to do better in the future. To the contrary: Even after Speight’s story fell apart, the Rift, a conservative media outlet that hosts far-right pundit Elijah Schaffer, claimed the hoax “underscores” how dangerous the world is for Trump supporters.
“Stay vigilant, lock and load—because the hunt is on, and we’re the prey,” the blog wrote.
POLITICAL VIOLENCE IS, of course, a very real thing, with victims of it on both the left and the right. Vigilance is sadly necessary more and more.
But the efforts to claim that it is solely, or even primarily, the province of the left has led to remarkable contortions on the right. Because, oftentimes, the motivations for those attempting or even carrying out the violence don’t fit into neat ideological packaging.
Take another recent incident. On Monday, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced charges against Nicholas Ray, a previously anonymous X user who allegedly made death threats to right-wing, pro-Israel personalities like Laura Loomer and Josh Hammer.
Ray’s politics aren’t exactly clear, aside from the hatred he had expressed for Jews and Israel on his X account. Making things more complicated, Ray had allegedly blamed Israel for murdering Charlie Kirk—a decidedly right-wing position associated with the likes of Candace Owens.
That prompted some griping from right-wing pundits. Alex Jones protégé Owen Shroyer, who split from Jones’s InfoWars last month, complained on his new show that Uthmeier and Loomer were out to silence Israel critics.
“Do you consider that a direct death threat?” Shroyer asked skeptically. “Censorship is coming”
In defense of Ray, Shroyer said, these were merely “very light, nuanced death threats.”
Oh, well in that case!
