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Welcome back to False Flag! The war with Iran is still dividing the Trump movement, with Tucker Carlson claiming the president is being fed polls wrongly convincing him the war is broadly popular. Sam Stein and I broke it down today on our weekly MAGA Monday livestream. Tune in next Monday at 10 a.m. EDT for more!
This week, I wanted to check in on James Fishback, the groyper who would be governor of Florida. According to internal campaign text messages I was able to obtain, his staffers are worried about his mammoth personal debts—and his campaign manager told a colleague he regularly subjects her to verbal “ass blastings” for minor infractions at work. Not exactly a great office climate.
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–Will
Leaked Private Texts Reveal Wild Fishback Campaign Drama
Aides feared candidate’s couch was repossessed, called heterosexual sex gay.
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Fishback Staff Wish He’d Just Return His Luxury Watch Already
NO ONE EXPECTED James Fishback to get this far.
As the leading groyper politician in America, he has gone from weirdo outsider to registering in the mid-single digits in GOP primary polls for Florida’s gubernatorial race. But polls tell only part of the story. Fishback also regularly draws hundreds of fired-up college students to his events, some of them even melting down in tears upon meeting him. The favored candidate in the governor’s race, Trump-endorsed frontrunner Rep. Byron Donalds, is concerned enough that he denounced Fishback as not a real “groyper.”¹
Meanwhile, white nationalist podcaster (and groyper icon) Nick Fuentes has hailed Fishback as “really smart” and “very impressive,” noting that he laughed at a racist comment Fishback made about Donalds. These comments would be a kiss of death for many, but it’s a badge of honor for those on the increasingly influential far-right wing of the conservative movement.
Yet even as he’s ascended to previously unimaginable political heights, Fishback has quietly been beset by a big problem in his personal life. He’s deep in debt, owing more than $200,000 to his former hedge-fund employer as a result of some machinations against his old boss. That number could balloon to over $2 million once legal fees are calculated, according to an affidavit filed by the hedge fund’s lawyers in October. And the repo men are closing in.
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Last week, the hedge fund, Greenlight Capital, asked a judge to rule that the Tesla Model 3 Fishback drives on the campaign trail really does belong to him, despite being registered in his father’s name. It could pave the way for it to be seized. Fishback also has to appear in court on April 1 to explain why he shouldn’t be held in contempt after failing to provide documents that would help creditors seize his assets.
The dissonance between Fishback’s social media success and his disastrous personal finances hasn’t been lost on his campaign staffers. According to text messages I’ve obtained, those staffers privately bemoaned their candidate’s money problems, fretted over what the problems could mean for his gubernatorial bid, and wondered openly if his property was already being seized.
The text messages were provided to The Bulwark by Bryant Fulgham, a disillusioned former Fishback campaign worker who served as the candidate’s county outreach chair. Fulgham provided the messages and talked about his experiences on the campaign because, he said, he’s concerned Fishback is misleading his passionate young followers about how much he could actually accomplish if elected.
In one early February exchange, Fishback’s campaign manager, Emma Wright, claimed that his couch had been repossessed.
“Did they legit take it?” Fulgham asked Wright. “Or was he joking.”
“I think they did man,” Wright replied, adding a sad face emoji.
“Oh my god shit,” Fulgham wrote back. “We’re gonna be sleeping on the floor soon up there,” he added, with two weeping emojis.
Wright replied by joking about Fishback’s Tesla offering the couch moral support while also being repossessed.
“Telsa (also being seized): STAY STRONG COUCH,” she wrote, adding a black fist-up emoji.
Fishback did not dispute the veracity of the texts. But he did broadly dismiss the messages, and he insisted that none of his couches have ever been repossessed.
“This is silly,” Fishback wrote in an email to The Bulwark. “My couch is sitting in my living room.”
Fulgham ultimately quit the Fishback campaign, and not because he didn’t have a couch to sleep on. Instead, he says his departure came because he ran afoul of a veterans group for sailors on USS Liberty—a ship Israel accidentally sank during the Six-Day War in 1967. The ship has become a