It sounds like something out of the Old West, but this year, Constitutional Sheriffs—law enforcement officers who believe they’re above state and federal oversight—have rounded up posses and set their sights on election security. WIRED’s Tim Marchman talks with reporter David Gilbert about how the Constitutional Sheriffs hitched their wagons to the big guns in the election denial movement, and how just one rogue county sheriff could call the entire presidential race into question.

Tim Marchman is @timmarchman. David Gilbert is @DaithaiGilbert. Write to us at [email protected]. Be sure to subscribe to the WIRED Politics Lab newsletter here.

Mentioned this week:
‘Take Back the States’: The Far-Right Sheriffs Ready to Disrupt the Election by David Gilbert
Far-Right Sheriffs Want a Citizen Army to Stop ‘Illegal Immigrant’ Voters by David Gilbert

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Transcript

Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.

Tim Marchman: This is WIRED Politics Lab, a show about how tech is changing politics. I’m Tim Marchman, filling in for Leah Feiger. In April, a group of law enforcement officers gathered in Las Vegas, and for about 10 hours, several speakers took the stage. They spoke about Antifa, government psyops, the Great Replacement theory and the deep state. The bottom line though was that they believed the 2020 elections had been stolen, that it could happen again in 2024. According to a former sheriff named Richard Mack, sheriffs are the ones who can stop it. More specifically, a group of sheriffs led by Mack known as the Constitutional Sheriffs

Richard Mack [Archival audio]: You get pushback, like extremist and fanatic pushbacks when we simply want to verify how our votes are tabulated. That’s it, and we have a right to do that, and we have a right to be suspicious about computers and we have a right to tell our public officials we want it done this way.

Tim Marchman: Constitutional Sheriffs have gained supporters like My Pillow CEO, Mike Lindell, former National Security Advisor, Mike Flynn. You might remember them from January 6th, and other people close to Donald Trump. If Trump loses the election in just a couple of weeks, some of the Constitutional Sheriffs are prepared to take drastic action and some see forestalling his defeat as their duty. Joining me today to talk about how the Constitutional Sheriffs could disrupt the 2024 election is David Gilbert, whose deep dive on the Constitutional Sheriffs came out this week on WIRED.com. David, thanks for joining me.

David Gilbert: Yeah, it’s great to be here finally to talk about Constitutional Sheriffs.

Tim Marchman: What do Constitutional Sheriffs believe and what sets them apart from other sheriffs or other law enforcement officers?

David Gilbert: At the heart of it, they believe that they are there to protect the citizens of their county, and the only power that they answer to are those citizens and the Constitution, and therefore, they believe that no federal, no state agency can tell them what to do and that they have ultimate power over their dominion, which in the US is a county.

Tim Marchman: I’ve read the Constitution a few times and I don’t remember most of this being in there. You write that the belief that they can disregard laws that they think are unconstitutional isn’t grounded in reality, and that accords with my understanding of things. Where does this belief come from?

David Gilbert: As you said, if anyone has read the Constitution of the United States, there is no actual mention of sheriffs in that document. What they do instead, if you speak to them at any length, is that they will cite a quote from a Thomas Jefferson letter as their justification for the importance of law enforcement. I think the letter says something like, “The Office of the Sheriff is the most important of all, the executive offices of the county.” That is a line that Jefferson wrote. The letter is actually focused on his complaints about lifetime appointments of local judges and how they abuse their office. That suggests that Jefferson wasn’t emboldening sheriffs, but pointing out the fact that these figures need to have limits and checks on their power, but that’s not something that these Constitutional Sheriffs take into account. They believe that Jefferson was effectively saying that they could do whatever they wanted.

Tim Marchman: This is rooted as you write in white supremacist beliefs. Can you unpack that a little bit?

David Gilbert: It is, and you can trace it back from the late-1960, early-1970s to a movement called Posse Comitatus, which was founded some say by a guy called William Potter Gale. He was at the time a minister in this militant anti-Semitic white nationalist quasi-religion, kind of known as Christian Identity. He believed that the sheriffs were these protectors of the citizens and that they had the power to call up militias and that they should be enshrined in law as the ultimate power law enforcement anywhere in the country. We’ve seen across the years that these far-right or Constitutional Sheriffs, no matter what they’ve done in terms of the extreme actions they’ve taken, if they have a base of supporters in their locality or in their county who believe in what they’re doing, they will be voted back into office for decades at a time.

Tim Marchman: The mandate of the public is pretty powerful, but some of these sheriffs are citing a higher source of authority. They say their power derives from God, which seems pretty unconstitutional given the separation of church and state in America. How do they respond to that?

David Gilbert: Well, they respond by saying that the separation of church and state is not something that really exists. They say that, that again is a misreading of the Constitution, and the entire Constitutional Sheriff’s movement is deeply infused with Christian nationalist beliefs and ideology. Most of the Constitutional Sheriffs who I’ve spoken to over the last six months or so are eager for the US to return to being a nation rooted in Christianity, where Christianity is at the center of all aspects of life, be that law enforcement or education or government or culture. They believe that in that society because they believe they got their power from God, that they will be the most powerful law enforcement individuals across the country.

Tim Marchman: Under this constitutional order as they understand it, is there a role for constitutional governors or constitutional mayors, or are these powers unique to sheriffs?

David Gilbert: They seem to believe that these powers are unique to sheriffs. In all the time I’ve been covering this, I’ve never heard any of them speak about other figures, whether in government or law enforcement that would hold similar powers to a sheriff. Again, that comes back to the idea that this is somehow enshrined in the Constitution. As we said, it’s not, but in their belief system, in their ideology, they can trace the sheriff. It’s one of the oldest law enforcement offices in the world. It goes right back to the UK where the sheriff did the bidding of the local magistrates and collected taxes and stuff like that. It’s obviously been exported from England to the US and it has persisted since the beginning of the US nation. They believe that, that is key to giving them the power that no one else in the US has because at a local level, they’re there to protect their citizens, and the citizens are the ones who elect them, and therefore, that is their duty. Even if other positions like a governor is elected by the people, they don’t seem to believe that, that position should have the similar kind of constitutional protections.

Tim Marchman: This is all pretty bizarre, but what does it mean in practice? Are there any weird examples you’ve turned up in your reporting of Constitutional Sheriffs exercising these powers they believe they have in strange and perhaps entertaining ways?

David Gilbert: I’m not sure about entertaining. I suppose one of the most famous adherents of the Constitutional Sheriff’s movement has been Joe Arpaio, who was the sheriff in Maricopa County for a long period of time back in the 1990s and through the 2000s. He only lost his position in 2016, I think after multiple civil rights lawsuits against him. He is infamous for setting up tent cities and creating a posse or a militia who went out to round up illegal immigrants. At one point they claimed, I think they had 3,000 members in this party. What he was doing was imprisoning people in conditions that were inhumane against all human rights, and he was sued multiple times as a result for civil rights violations. He continued to deny it. Even up until, I think this year, he was trying to run once again for elected position in Arizona. These guys are continuously trying to portray themselves as protectors of the people, but what they’re doing is by breaking the law and also inflicting horrific conditions on people, especially the most vulnerable people, and yet they get re-elected over and over again.

Tim Marchman: How common is this belief that sheriffs are the ultimate arbiters of the constitution? How many of these people are there?

David Gilbert: It’s hard to say exactly how many people are part of the Constitutional Sheriffs movement. Richard Mack says that the CSPOA has a membership somewhere between 400 or a thousand sheriffs, depending on what day of the week you ask him. When you ask him specifically, he won’t tell you. More broadly, surveys have shown that this idea that sheriffs are the ultimate power in their county has very broad support within the 3,000 odd sheriffs in the US, with about 40 to 50% of them saying that they believe that ideology. Now, many of them are not members of the CSPOA or would not publicly identify as Constitutional Sheriffs, yet they believe the very thing that makes Constitutional Sheriffs a Constitutional Sheriff.

Tim Marchman: You mentioned the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, and that was founded by a guy named Richard Mack, who we mentioned at the top. Give us some of the group’s history. Who is Richard Mack? What led him to start this group? What did they do? What’s his deal?

David Gilbert: Mack is a former sheriff himself. He was initially in the police and got disillusioned because he felt he was just this guy who had to write so many tickets every day. Then he got involved in the undercover drug operation and he felt that the war on drugs wasn’t protecting the people or wasn’t serving the people. He became sheriff in Graham County in Nevada in the late 80s. Subsequently, he was recruited by the NRA to take part in this lawsuit against the Brady bill, which would’ve forced sheriffs to seize people’s guns had they been found guilty, which is something that Mack believed. The Second Amendment is something that Mack and the Constitutional Sheriffs believe in strongly. They won that case, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of them, and he became this rising star in the far right and the pro-gun movement where he was traveling around the country speaking at NRA events and other things. After several other failed attempts at running for office, including the governor’s race, he in 2010 or 2011, he decided to form the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, which is effectively a successor to the Posse Comitatus movement, but more organized, more structured, more professional. Over the course of the last 13, 14 years, he has built up that organization to this national group, which is spearheading the Constitutional Sheriffs movement. While the numbers of people who align themselves with the Constitutional Sheriffs has gone up and down over the years, since COVID, it has definitely been on the rise because it is glomming onto this idea in the US that the federal government and governors and other elected officials are trying to take away people’s rights, and the sheriffs are there to protect that. He has used that to increase the power and the influence of the CSPOA.

Tim Marchman: As you said, and as you write in the article, this all really rose to prominence because of COVID. What kind of things were these Constitutional Sheriffs and this organization doing in say, 2020, 2021?

David Gilbert: The Constitutional Sheriffs movement has always been infused with a level of conspiratorial thinking. In 2020, 2021, as the COVID pandemic was playing out and there was lots of conspiracies in relation to both the origins of COVID and also the efficacy of the vaccines, the CSPOA, even though at the time some of these measures that were being put in place were being put in place by Donald Trump, they leaned into this idea that the federal government was overreaching, that they were infringing on your freedoms. They encouraged local pastors not to shut down their churches if the government told them to, or to keep their businesses open if the government told them to shut them down. They praised anyone who would do this and they saw themselves as one of the flag-bearers or the torchbearers for the movement to push back against government oversight, and they gained a lot of prominence because of it.

Tim Marchman: Another interesting aspect of Mack’s thinking is that he has really deep-seated views on the power of posses. He said, reportedly, after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, “People get all upset when they hear about militias, but what’s wrong with it? I wouldn’t hesitate for a minute to call out my posse against the federal government if it gets out of hand.” Now, the efficacy of his posse versus a trillion-dollar military aside, that’s expressive of something bigger, which is that it seems like one of the core beliefs of Constitutional Sheriffs is that they can organize a militia or a posse or work with groups that already exist in their area, kind of deputize them. Who’s actually in these posses, and how are Constitutional Sheriffs and the posse or militias or other organized groups working together?

David Gilbert: The idea of a posse has gone hand-in-hand with sheriffs or far-right sheriffs for years, for decades. Mack and Dar Leaf, one of the other members of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association are very forthright in the idea that a sheriff should have his or her own posse. When you ask them what a posse is for, they’ll say, “Oh, it’s just for security at a state fair, or if there is a natural disaster that they would be called out to help the sheriff and his deputies.” It sounds very much like they’re just helping their community. In a lot of these cases, the posses are armed, and in a number of these cases, the sheriffs instead of training up or organizing, their own posses will link up with a local militia because that’s already established, and therefore, they can just tap into this group who are of a similar mindset in terms of Second Amendment rights and government overreach and likely will do the sheriff’s bidding at the drop of a hat. It’s something that has been a part of the Constitutional Sheriffs movement from the very beginning, this idea of a posse. In Klickitat County in Washington, one sheriff has amassed posse of 170 people, I believe. He’s very proud of his posse. He said most of them are armed, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s going to be any problem with them. In the last, I would say 18 months, the idea of posses and militias linking up with sheriffs has become this much greater idea, much bigger push to have more and more militias or posses linked to sheriffs because they believe that there is going to be some sort of incident where they will need to call on their posses to do their bidding.

Tim Marchman: Has the movement responded to people who might hear about these posses and think of lynchings and organized state terrorism against Black people that took place through very similar structures?

David Gilbert: Not really. They are completely unwilling to engage in any sort of constructive dialogue around why there are so few. There are very few Black Constitutional Sheriffs, if there are any, and there are even very few Black sheriffs full stop, and there are also very few women sheriffs. They are unwilling to really engage in it, and the CEO of the CSPOA, Sam Bushman, who isn’t a sheriff, speaking at a conference in April, he decried the media calling him a racist and said he couldn’t be a racist because he was blind.

Sam Bushman [Archival audio]: They literally trashed me. Rolling Stone wrote an article about me that claimed I was a racist. I can’t see. I don’t know what race anybody is. I don’t care.

David Gilbert: That was his excuse that he could not be a racist, and that all criticism of him is therefore, unjust. Even though he has been connected to a group, an American white national, a neo-confederate group called the League of the South.

Tim Marchman: Fascinating. There is an election coming up very shortly.

David Gilbert: Is there?

Tim Marchman: Let’s get into what the-

David Gilbert: We should get on that.

Tim Marchman: … sheriff’s and their posses are talking about doing. What have some sheriff said they plan to do on election day?

David Gilbert: One of the most troubling things I’ve heard sheriff’s tell me, they’re planning on monitoring what’s happening in their locality on election day, not necessarily at the polling places as such, but around the polling places because they’re not allowed to police polling stations, but they’re going to be monitoring who is moving in and out of the areas. If they see people that they don’t recognize, they’re going to do something about it. My interpretation of that is that they have been listening to this conspiracy about floods of illegal aliens coming into the country and voting for Democrats, and that they believe that if they see people who do not look like them, they are going to take action. That could lead at the very least to those people not being allowed to vote because the people who have been riled up for the last six months believe that there’s going to be this flood of illegal aliens coming into the areas to vote will believe that, that’s what they’re seeing in front of them.

Tim Marchman: One of our plausible nightmare scenarios is groups of Latino Americans being hassled at the polls possibly being harmed, prevented from voting. This seems like it could happen. Do you think it’s more likely that this would be a passive thing with most of these Constitutional Sheriffs where they would be allowing, say, militias to hassle these voters? Or do you think it’s more along the lines of active coordination and intimidation from the sheriffs themselves?

David Gilbert: I think it’s both. There is, as you say, a likelihood that some militias will feel emboldened just by the fact that they have a link to the sheriff, even if the sheriff isn’t telling them to do anything around election day, and that could be troubling. I think some sheriffs will actively be coordinating with these posses or with these militias to do something around elections, whether it’s potentially harass voters who are Latino or Hispanic. It’s hard to say exactly. It’s not going to be uniform. There isn’t this network of Constitutional Sheriffs who are organizing and doing the exact same thing all across the country. They will be responding in different ways across the country, some more extreme than others.

Tim Marchman: Some of these guys are talking in public already about going pretty far, right?

David Gilbert: When you speak to them in interviews and they know they’re being recorded and it’s in public, they will nearly always mention the fact that they want this to be nonviolent. If you tune into their private subscriber only webinars, which they do once a week, usually Mack and Sam Bushman, the CEO will be talking and they just begin to go down different rabbit holes and conspiracy theories are promoted, and Mack gets very much more animated than he is when he’s speaking in public. One recent webinar, he was speaking about this conspiracy where he believed the only way that Donald Trump was going to win was if he was voted in on purpose by the Democrats. The Democrats would be stealing the election for Trump in order to trigger a civil war in the US, and that the violence from that would then be horrendous. Mack has these ideas around the election that something horrendous is going to happen, and that he’s constantly reinforcing the idea that both Constitutional Sheriffs and the people who support them need to be ready for when that happens.

Tim Marchman: When we talk about violence and people associated with this movement have posted some pretty crazy stuff. There’s a sheriff in Barry County, Michigan named Dar Leaf, who’s been telling people to get an AR-15 and stock up on 500 rounds of ammunition. Why? What use is that going to have for people?

David Gilbert: Dar Leaf is an interesting character. Again, he was at the April event with the CSPOA and he was at a Florida event in September as well where he was speaking. He’s been running an investigation for the last four years into the 2020 election, and he has yet to produce a case.

Dar Leaf [Archival audio]: Every time I see a finish line coming up, something happens. It’s like the finish line got moved away from me. More technical stuff comes up.

David Gilbert: He tried to seize voting machines, but he couldn’t get a warrant from the court to do so. One of the other things that he has been doing while he’s been running this investigation is he’s also been running a militia course, and he openly advertised it on his Facebook page last January that he was going to be running this course, and we managed to get hold of emails that he had been sending. In those emails was a slide presentation from the militia training course. The militia training course is for, I think they said potential jurors, home-schoolers, ladies and gentlemen, was how it was described. Pretty much anyone wants to come along. It is, as you said, advised them to get a standard AR-15 military-grade weapon and 500 rounds of ammo. This again, is all in preparation for a scenario when something major happens, and this militia or this group can be called. Now, Dar Leaf already has a posse. He already has his own posse, which he uses for security at state fairs and whenever there’s any rescue needed or anything like that, so this is a separate organization. What ultimately that militia will be used for or called on to do is unclear.

Tim Marchman: What does happen if a sheriff just decides to seize ballots or a voting machine?

David Gilbert: We don’t know. It’s a scenario that hasn’t happened yet, but it’s never been more likely to happen when the vote happens on November the 5th because there are a lot of sheriffs out there talking about being ultra-vigilant around elections. There are a lot of sheriffs out there who are talking about conspiracy theories that are linked to what may happen at the election. We’re already seeing conspiracy theories being shared new ones from 2020 about what’s happening in 2024, two weeks out from the election. Around election day, around a couple of days before, a couple of days after, there’s going to be so much disinformation that it is going to be virtually impossible if you are just scrolling through social media to know what is real and what isn’t. If sheriffs are tuned into these channels that are spreading this disinformation, and many of them are, they could act on those rumors without having the proper evidence to back it up. What happens once that takes place, at the very least, it’s going to delay certification of the vote. At worst, it means that the vote will never be able to be certified because they have taken ballots or they have damaged ballots and they don’t have a chain of custody for those ballots. It has the potential to significantly disrupt the outcome of the election.

Tim Marchman: When we come back, how the Constitutional Sheriffs became entangled with high-profile election deniers and what impact they could have on the 2024 election. Welcome back to WIRED Politics Lab. Election denial is core to the Constitutional Sheriff mission now. They think the 2020 election was stolen. They see immigrants and Democrats as the enemy. Now it’s 2024. Talk to me about how this movement has coalesced with election deniers.

David Gilbert: I suppose they have been flirting with the election denial movement ever since 2020, really. In 2021, they teamed up with True the Vote, which is one of the preeminent election denial movement groups. You may have heard of a little movie called 2000 Mules, which they were involved in producing even though it was completely debunked and they claimed that there was all these ballot mules were stuffing ballots into ballot boxes around the US. They were working with them at the time doing cross-promotional stuff and just generally boosting each other’s credibility within this wider movement. Over the last six months, the Constitutional Sheriffs and the election denial movement have become much closer. It really started or really kicked off in April at this conference in Las Vegas where Mack and lots of others were speaking. Also, at that conference was Mike Lindell, the Pillow salesman turned election denial conspiracist and funder of the election denial movement, Patrick Byrne, another funder of the election denial movement, and the granddaddy of them all, Michael Flynn, who has spearheaded the idea that the 2020 election was stolen and that someone needs to pay for that. All of those guys, along with a number of others, are speaking at the event. The event was just filled with talk about how the election in 2024 was going to be stolen, what they had to do about it, how militias and sheriffs could help fight back against the Democrats or the illegal aliens or whoever else was the enemy that they were talking about at the time. It seems now that the Constitutional Sheriffs movement, which in the past has stood for different things, is all in on election denial, and it’s the only thing that Richard Mack is now talking about on his webinars. It’s the only thing that is exercising him, and he is, as he says himself, obsessed with trying to prevent whatever’s going to happen in 2024.

Tim Marchman: How do these people benefit each other? You’ve seen them in this setting, almost like a conference for these types. What are they getting out of their relationships with each other?

David Gilbert: I’m not sure it’s a conference as most people would think of as a conference. There were also prepper tables with people selling big buckets of food and T-shirts of AI-generated images of Donald Trump on T-shirts and med beds were also there. Very much a conspiracy conference, if anything. How they help each other is it’s this idea that the network effect effectively where a number of far-right podcasters were there. They were broadcasting live from it. It was being live streamed on certain rumble channels, and these people are constantly orbiting each other in these circles. By doing that and by speaking on the stage together, they were able to give credibility to each other’s movements. For the election deniers, the idea that sheriffs who are elected officials, unlike them, having their back, is obviously hugely beneficial. For Constitutional Sheriffs, having Mike Flynn and Mike Lindell and Patrick Byrne, and Steve Bannon was meant to be there, he just canceled at the last minute. Having all these people who have a much higher profile nationally than Richard Mack was a huge boom for him and gave his movement once again, this big lift that it has since continued to take advantage of.

Tim Marchman: What have election officials or experts said about all this? Has anyone spoken out against these sheriffs and their tactics?

David Gilbert: Lots of researchers and academics have been speaking out, trying to get people to pay attention to what Constitutional Sheriffs are doing. One of them, Devin Burkhardt, who has been tracking this group since its inception, really for a decade at least. He has been continuously talking about how dangerous they are, how they have been promoting extremist ideologies, and that they are one step away from tipping over into an insurrection 2.0, as he puts it. Others like Will Pelfrey, who’s a professor of criminal justice, he points out that if you have one sheriff and there are hundreds of sheriffs who are in the CSPOA, if you have one of those who decides to take action, take things one step further, who prevents ballots from being counted, if that sheriff is in a swing state like Dar Leaf is, for example, he’s in Barry County in Michigan, if they take action and they prevent ballots from being counted properly, then it could just undermine the entire election.

Tim Marchman: For your story, you also spoke to Jamie Raskin, who’s a congressman from Maryland and also a long-time professor of constitutional law. What does he have to say about all this?

David Gilbert: The first thing he said when I asked him about this, I gave a long-winded introduction to the Constitutional Sheriffs, but he was aware of them and he just said, “Look, there’s no constitutional basis whatsoever for their claims. It’s just not in the Constitution,” as we’ve said already. He said that the sheriffs, they just don’t have any more power than police chiefs or mayors or county commissioners. They’ve fabricated everything. He was also pointing out that the fact that they’re now working with groups like Flynn and figures like Lindell and Byrne, is a huge red flag because if they then have a sheriff next to them who is wearing a badge and has obvious authority is there with them and is backing them up, then that’s a major problem.

Tim Marchman: Do the people you spoke with have concerns about voter intimidation? Is there any sign that in jurisdictions with Constitutional Sheriffs, people will just feel less inclined to vote?

David Gilbert: Absolutely, and especially minorities who are listening to their sheriff, especially ones who are active on social media, and a lot of them are, talking about illegal aliens coming in to vote and floods of migrants coming in to vote, and that we have to be vigilant to watch out for people who are not from this area who may look different. That type of rhetoric, even if it’s just posted on social media, experts will tell you that, that will have a massive impact on voter turnout. Because why if you were voting in an area like this and you were not white, would you take a risk and turn up at a polling station where you know that there are a lot of supporters of the sheriff and potentially members of a posse or a militia who are emboldened by the sheriff, would you turn up to vote in your polling place? It’s something, I think could have a material impact on local races, down ballot races. Whether or not it has an impact on the presidential race is hard to say, but the fact that these guys are saying it quite openly, Mack is doing it from his pulpit on his show and that filters down to his membership and then it gets repeated on their channels and it is seen by their constituents, then that has a hugely damaging effect, especially on vulnerable groups and minorities.

Tim Marchman: I think we come to the ultimate question here, which is do you really think that one of these Constitutional Sheriffs or many of them could impact the outcome of the election? Is this something we should be mentally preparing for?

David Gilbert: I think we have to be prepared for it. I think if January 6th has taught us anything, it’s that we need to be paying attention when these people are saying things in the open. The rhetoric around January 6th was looking back now, it seems pretty obvious what was going to happen given how people were talking on platforms that weren’t encrypted, that weren’t secret. It may not have been on Facebook or X or Instagram, but it was on the open internet. In the four years since, every single one of those groups has become more and more emboldened and the Constitutional Sheriffs specifically have become more popular. They have strengthened their links to hugely influential election denial groups and they have Donald Trump on their side because he is already pushing the idea that the 2024 election will be stolen even before it’s happened. To think that it’s impossible for just one of these Constitutional Sheriffs to take things one step too far and seize a voting machine during the election or to confiscate ballots or shut down a polling place, intimidate voters outside the election place so that they don’t vote. I think it would be crazy to say that, that is unlikely to happen. There’s every possibility that we will see something like this happening in a couple of weeks’ time.

Tim Marchman: I think that point about listening to what people are seeing openly is really important. We worked together on January 6th, and I vividly remember for weeks beforehand we were planning out our coverage and the area where we were wrong was we thought there would be more violent attacks on state capitals, but we had different reporters assigned to different states to pay attention to what was going on there. There was no mystery about what was going to happen. I think it’s a very well-taken point when people say something, treat them as if they mean it.

David Gilbert: Do you think that, that lesson has been learned or is it just again, the same people will be paying attention but not necessarily the right people?

Tim Marchman: I have very grave doubts that the country has learned that lesson. When we come back, we will move on to something hopefully, more fun, our Conspiracy of the Week. Welcome back to WIRED Politics Lab. This is Conspiracy of the Week, that part of the show where David and I will present conspiracy theories that we’re fond of. This time, instead of Leah, I get to pick my own favorite. I’m going to start off with one of my all-time favorite conspiracy theories, the Dulce Base in New Mexico where many ufologists believe that aliens have been performing sinister experiments on humans, cross-breeding them with cows and other forms of human life, as well as extraterrestrial life to create monstrous hybrids that are underneath this town of about 3,000 people. One of the really excellent features of this conspiracy theory is the longstanding and persistent belief that the alien’s sinister activities grew so monstrous, so grotesque that they got into an actual firefight with the US military leading to the slaughter of dozens of soldiers who were attempting to hold back our secret alien emperors and overlords from continuing their hideous, monstrous genetic experimentation. I firmly believe that under the deserts of New Mexico, there is a vast underground holding facility where these aliens are experimenting on our DNA, cross-breeding us with frogs, attempting to make labor for off-world mining and whatever other uses they may put us to. I think the fact that this isn’t a top issue in the presidential election is a national disgrace.

David Gilbert: I think it is too.

Tim Marchman: What do you got? What are you paying attention to there, out there in the fever swamps?

David Gilbert: This week in Oregon, the elections division there was forced to close its phone lines because they were getting these out-of-state calls. No one really knew what was going on, but it was just an absolute influx of calls. The reason was because everyone in the MAGA world believed that the Oregon elections division had removed President Trump and JD Vance from the ballot and claiming that, that’s election tampering, which obviously it would be if that happened. What actually happened though was that the former president had opted not to submit a statement for the Oregon voters’ pamphlet, and that was what was sent out, and that’s what people believed was how Trump was removed from the ballot. Now, the Oregon Republican party issued a statement clarifying that the decision had been made by the Trump campaign, but that didn’t stop the conspiracies from spreading. It just persisted. Even if you search today, I just searched before we came on, and there are still people claiming that Donald Trump has been taken off the ballot in Oregon and that someone should do something about it. Given that we’ve been just talking about the Constitutional Sheriffs, that’s potentially a troubling scenario.

Tim Marchman: That is a choice conspiracy theory. I’m going to go with my own though, for the simple reason that we’re all thinking about the election so much, and I think we all need something to take our mind off the election. I would propose that the Dulce Base with its Monstrous hybrids of alien and Human DNA could be that thing for many of our listeners.

David Gilbert: I think we need to go to the desert. Check this out.

Tim Marchman: Investigate. David, thank you so much for coming on.

David Gilbert: Yeah, it’s been great. Thanks for having me.

Tim Marchman: Thank you for listening to WIRED Politics Lab. If you like what you heard today, make sure to follow the show and give us five stars. We also have a newsletter, which the marvelous Makena Kelly writes each week. The link to the newsletter and the WIRED reporting we mentioned today are in the show notes. If you’d like to get in touch with us with any questions, comments, shows, suggestions, or tips about underground alien bases, please write to [email protected]. That’s [email protected]. We’re always excited to hear from you. WIRED Politics Lab is produced by Jake Harper. Vince Fairchild is our studio engineer. Greg Obis mixed this episode. Steven Valentino is our executive producer. Chris Bannon is global head of audio at Conde Nast, and I’m your host, Tim Marchman, and we’ll be back in your feeds with a new episode next week.