00:02:14.060Today on the show, we're going to be taking a sometimes excruciatingly close look at America's Next Top Grifter, a white Christian college student who waged a culture war with her incredible ability to do nothing particularly well.0.60
00:02:38.460And see what the reactions to Samantha Fulnecki, the institutional capitulation to yet another right-wing grievance campaign, the public mockery, and just the overall failure of the right to win this culture war gamble.0.98
00:02:54.320What that all says about our current moment and perhaps the waning limits of people's patience when it comes to bullshit.
00:03:02.140To do that, we are joined by longtime friend of the show and writer at Spitfire News, Kat Tenbarge, and new friend of the show, Parker Malloy, who is a media critic and writer of the newsletter, The Present Age.
00:03:23.160How are you guys feeling about what we're going to talk about today?
00:03:25.840Because I know it sounds weird, but I actually feel kind of great about this story.
00:03:30.080And I think that there's an encouraging message, which is like not always the case on this podcast.
00:03:35.500Yeah, you know, as as a trans person, I'm usually bracing myself for when these stories blow up.
00:03:40.880But this one, watching people just roast the essay instead of like rallying behind it, that that felt kind of good.
00:03:47.220The vibes are cautiously optimistic, I'd say.
00:03:49.620There was definitely a very palpable sense of like the backlash to the backlash this time, which is good to see because it's I feel like it's kind of signaling a shift, which I know we're going to get into.
00:04:00.080We most certainly will. We're gonna tell a story today and I think we have to tell that story by
00:04:06.040introducing Samantha and Christy Fulnecki. I want to start off by saying that I stalked both of
00:04:13.000these women's social media profiles in a way that made me feel a little self-conscious and weird
00:04:19.080because I know it's not like a becoming activity to like stalk strangers from Missouri on social0.93
00:04:25.720media and like go years back in their Facebook accounts. But listeners of this podcast know that
00:04:31.920my curiosity gets the best of me. And I do think when you become an active player in the witch hunt
00:04:38.700to shame queer people out of public life, you similarly open yourself up to scrutiny. Do you
00:04:44.060know what I mean? Like, do you think that's fair? And their Instagrams were public. So
00:04:47.520and clearly, like, especially her mom, as we're going to get into there is a desire to be seen
00:04:53.560and be heard. Yes. Okay. Do you both know about her mom? Yes. I feel like her mom's kind of one
00:04:59.940of those one of those people who's trying to live vicariously through her child. Like she spent so
00:05:05.620much of her life trying to become this political figure. And now now she's like, I have a daughter
00:05:11.060who can do it for me. Her whole story is amazing. That's one way to describe it for sure. So I think
00:05:17.420we should start with Samantha before we get to her mom. Samantha Fulnecki, the protagonist of
00:05:22.860the story we're telling today the junior at university of oklahoma grew up in springfield
00:05:28.840missouri she went to a catholic high school and she's the daughter of a lawyer mother who we're
00:05:33.620going to talk a lot about and a physician father and so i think it's fair to say that this is
00:05:38.800someone who grew up with money and i was looking not even at like a specific image on her instagram
00:05:45.360profile but just kind of the vibe you get from the whole thing which is like not to make too
00:05:50.880many inferences about her but you know like this is a suburban girl that i grew up with yeah these
00:05:56.400photos are they just scream visco to me like they are these these are visco filters this is this is
00:06:03.940the era from which it came from i will add like looking at photos from her social media of her
00:06:11.280in high school made me sad we talk about a lot of evil people on this podcast who do evil things
00:06:16.720and they're motivated for all sorts of different reasons.
00:06:19.780And to me, this is such a cut and dry case
00:06:22.260of like being indoctrinated into this like sheltered,
00:06:25.400religious, Southern evangelical bigotry by your parents.
00:06:29.540I was looking at these pictures of her
00:06:31.420where she's like at prom and at the beach
00:06:34.080and like thanking God for graduating high school.
00:06:36.380And like, I'm just reminded of every young suburban white person,
00:06:40.980like the people I went to high school with
00:06:42.420who grow up thinking that like that tiny suburban world
00:06:46.600is the whole world and are raised by parents who never challenge that for them, probably because
00:06:52.420the parents themselves don't challenge that. She also reminds me of like the girls in my school
00:06:57.680and guys who were part of Young Life. What's Young Life? Young Life is a like Christian
00:07:03.240youth organization that was really popular in suburban Cincinnati where I grew up. And it's
00:07:08.720popular around the country, I'm pretty sure. It was a bunch of people who were popular kids in
00:07:13.900high school who were super privileged whose instagrams looked something like this and
00:07:19.040christianity was kind of just part of their aesthetic this like sheen of like i'm so grateful
00:07:25.080to god that i graduated high school it's like it's part of the vibe and it's part of the image
00:07:30.700that she wants to convey and i think ultimately like the privilege that she wants to convey
00:07:35.120is like of this community and of this like style of engaging with jesus it's also just like when
00:07:41.180i see rich kids like thanking god for this or that and the other thing i'm like god didn't
00:07:45.360with love with love god did not do that your mom's a lawyer and your dad's a doctor like that
00:07:51.760capitalism did that you know god did not create generational wealth for you samantha plays
00:07:57.660tennis throughout high school which i also played tennis samantha i am trying to build bridges with
00:08:02.720If you I'm an empath, we could settle all of this over like a quick game.
00:12:06.720Who is Christy Fulnecki? Well, Christy Fulnecki is a woman whose career I can understand back1.00
00:12:14.860about a decade well first of all she is the mother of samantha and five other children
00:12:20.300she was elected to springfield missouri city council in 2015 and then resigned in disgrace
00:12:27.100in 2018 after three years of people petitioning for her to go because she had been running her
00:12:33.580law firm without a business license for seven years crazy that's you know honestly i kind of
00:12:41.600respect that i i respect someone with like major skeletons in the closet running for local office
00:12:48.700it's bold yeah exactly it's like it's you know donald trump did that on like a large scale
00:12:55.260like i i like to hear the stories of the people who do that on the small local
00:12:59.820scale and the fact that it took three years of people trying to get a remove and when she
00:13:05.440was finally pushed out she like didn't really concede anything she just bought a larger house
00:13:11.920in a neighboring county and said that she had to leave springfield city limits because her family
00:13:16.980got too big and because city officials of springfield need to live in springfield she was
00:13:22.720like well i got this bigger house so i guess i can't be on the city council anymore it's awesome
00:13:28.440never concede never accept defeat little trumps everywhere while christy fullnecki was on this
00:13:35.400Springfield City Council. She unsuccessfully ran for mayor. She's done a lot of things. And so the
00:13:41.000next thing I want to send you about Christy Fulnecki is the banner from her website, her
00:13:47.820Facebook page, her everything. So tell me what we're looking at. I love this so much. It is so
00:13:55.080funny to me. It's a picture of her and she is rocking the leopard print, long sleeve shirt,
00:14:03.360the bangles and the chunky uh rings and of course just like tons of makeup like dark red lipstick
00:14:11.540incredible falsie game here um but my favorite part of how she describes herself is that she
00:14:18.080lists off her like titles and they are so funny to me podcast host lawyer public figure
00:14:25.220and entrepreneur identifying professionally as a public figure is so funny
00:14:33.200i mean she is a public figure to me with the amount of space she's consumed in my brain over
00:14:37.580the last like two weeks so she's not lying but what do you get from this right it's like she's
00:14:42.600very clearly trying to be a celebrity and in particular like a right-wing conservative podcast
00:14:49.860host type celebrity she's like small town ann coulter yeah if ann coulter had had children or0.96
00:14:56.200married which she didn't so it's like she's living out the i'm a mother i'm like a homemaker like
00:15:02.160style of this but it's also incredibly contradictory with like her supposed values because anytime
00:15:07.920someone claims to be like a traditional woman who upholds the the biblical standards of femininity
00:15:13.620by definition i should not know that you exist because you should be silent you you cannot be
00:15:19.980a female public figure and also be like i believe in biblical femininity and like some submissiveness0.99
00:15:25.520to men well it's the erica kirk thing right christy folnecki describes herself as a podcast
00:15:30.580host and she's not lying she did a conservative podcast called real talk with christy which is
00:15:37.240also by the way why does everyone who starts a podcast you don't have to call it real talk with
00:15:42.400your name there's like a hundred real talk with i could do should i change it to real talk with matt
00:15:47.780i listened to this podcast which was a really interesting thing to do on the subway home
00:15:53.600yesterday and one thing i will say about christy is while i don't think she's a particularly
00:15:59.480entertaining orator she does have a certain gift which allows her to talk by herself for 30 minutes
00:16:07.000which i think is actually like kind of rare like she can just go on and on and on and on and on
00:16:11.120and flow effortlessly from one topic to another the specific episode i listened to from 2021
00:16:16.920was where she was mourning the death of rush limbaugh where interestingly she describes rush
00:16:24.380limbaugh as like her hero and the person who turned her conservative i got the notification
00:16:29.460on my phone that Rush Limbaugh had died at the age of 70 and I started crying I couldn't believe
00:16:35.760it I thought I'm crying I didn't even know the man but we've been listening to him for 30 years
00:16:41.700some people over 30 years for myself his ideas and what he built as a pioneer he really had an
00:16:51.000impact in my life and I've always talked about on the radio that you know I was pretty liberal when
00:16:57.420i was in high school and growing up and when i went to college at university of missouri i started
00:17:03.200listening to him when i was a freshman and i just turned him on and was like well who is this guy
00:17:08.320he's pretty cool and he was funny great sense of humor you know he's the reason i became conservative
00:17:12.940and it does seem like she attempted to model her career after his and like she's always wanted to
00:17:20.260break out of like local radio and like become this conservative news anchor type radio star
00:17:26.580and clearly has never really been able to do it with with so much of this the podcast and her
00:17:32.720legal work it's so clear that she wants to be famous and i think that unfortunately for her
00:17:39.560it's like she's she's aged out of what makes for a good right-wing influencer type person and that's
00:17:47.600why i think so much of this is like her placing her expectations and her her dreams on her daughter
00:17:53.900A million percent. It's funny because like her obsession with Rush Limbaugh and like the style of her podcast is very reminiscent of like conservative talk radio. And I'm like, interestingly enough, she's trying to break into a very male dominated field.
00:18:08.220it's like she wants to be the voice in the ear of like people who are like truckers
00:18:13.780because there's such a huge culture around like listening to these conservative personalities
00:18:18.560when you have to drive really long distances for your job or when you have like like a security
00:18:23.680position or something where you're like spending a lot of time like idly but none of the audience1.00
00:18:29.720in that demographic wants to listen to a woman like speaking to them about politics so like she0.98
00:18:37.340is so limited by virtue of her gender in like the field that she has selected and i think by her age1.00
00:18:43.880is such a great point a lot of the this demographic wants to look at a really attractive like0.83
00:18:49.500conventionally attractive blonde young woman but they view her i imagine a lot of this demographic1.00
00:18:56.020she's trying to reach views her as like a mother they're not gonna like look to her as a source of
00:19:00.480authority right you're attempting to appeal to an audience of mostly men who don't respect or
00:19:08.240want to listen to women and if they have to they want it to be a woman who's like 20 and you know
00:19:13.040who's 20 her daughter lastly christy fullnecki has spent most of her time in recent years as a0.95
00:19:25.140lawyer and she's like with everything else used law as a means of like becoming this conservative0.95
00:19:30.780activist and tried to like leverage it for fame there's you know various local masking ordinances1.00
00:19:36.900and schools during the early days of covid that she fought she like fought tooth and nail for1.00
00:19:41.360clients who were like their put their life on the lines that they could like go into a government
00:19:45.860building without wearing a mask and she also represented january 6th rioters happy insurrection
00:19:53.580day y'all one other thing about her is that if you go to the springfield missouri reddit page
00:20:01.700and you search her name there are like a dozen posts going back like nine years she's hated
00:20:09.680it's it's amazing the nine years ago full neck he loses bigly nine years ago finally a list of
00:20:16.880full neck he's embarrassing actions for sgf nine years ago full neck he draws fire from satanism
00:20:22.340supporters it's it's amazing she's just you know and then it's just her increasing attempts to get
00:20:28.520attention branson judge dismisses all of full neckies lawsuits against the city you know
00:20:33.740blocked on facebook by fall necky voter says his rights were violated it's it's great it she is0.56
00:20:40.020just this villain to her local community that is so funny and i feel like this is such a like parable
00:20:48.600of modern conservatism is like your real life neighbors hate you. Maybe even your own family
00:20:55.060like despises you. Like you are just flat out unpleasant to be around and you cause problems
00:21:00.260for everyone. But you can gain success and attention and validation for your bad behavior
00:21:06.360by like going online and reaching out to and connecting with this exact type of person in
00:21:12.160every other town. It's like everyone who we hate just like finds each other online and like gains
00:21:18.260power that way the holidays are upon us and if you are thinking of last minute gifting options
00:21:26.480stocking stuffers etc etc especially for that person in your life who might want a slightly
00:21:33.060more elevated sustainable version of something that they already own and use all the time you
00:21:38.560might want to consider blue land blue land is a line of sustainable home cleaning products on a
00:21:44.540mission to eliminate single-use plastic by reinventing cleaning essentials that are better
00:21:48.700for you and the planet now i know what you might be thinking cleaning products on the holidays can't
00:21:55.260we come up with something a little sexier okay fair but i submit to you that these are the sexiest
00:22:02.840cleaning products i have personally ever used from the delivery to the packaging to the products
00:22:08.060inside blue land is the perfect way to turn something that is traditionally quite an eyesore
00:22:13.280in the home into something that you will like looking at and look forward to picking up as
00:22:17.940much as you can look forward to cleaning right blue land is simple all you do is buy one of
00:22:22.440their forever bottles fill it up with water and pop in a tablet of whatever cleaning solution
00:22:27.180you've bought whether that's mirror cleaner multi-purpose cleaner hand soap etc when you
00:22:32.040run out instead of going to the store buying another bottle of cleaning supplies you just
00:22:36.460fill it right back up with water pop in a refill tablet and you're ready to go and those refill
00:22:41.040tablets start at just two dollars and 25 cents so not just better for the planet but also better
00:22:48.140on your wallet if you would like to try blue land today perhaps grab a last minute gift for someone
00:22:53.640or for yourself you can get 15 off your first order at blueland.com slash fruity that is blueland.com
00:23:02.320slash fruity now let's get back to the episode so you've been waiting for it we've arrived
00:23:10.660the essay. Just last month, Samantha Fulnecki, back to her, was tasked in a psychology class at
00:23:19.100the University of Oklahoma to write a 650-word response essay to an academic paper that the
00:23:26.180class had read called Relations Among Gender Typicality, Peer Relations and Mental Health
00:23:32.280During Early Adolescence, which was a study about the effect of gender norms on the mental health
00:23:37.860of middle schoolers. Now, the specific points in the instruction were to discuss why the topic is
00:23:45.100important or worthy of study, demonstrate an application of the study or results to one's
00:23:50.140own experiences, show a clear tie-in to the assigned article, be clearly written, etc., etc.
00:23:57.660So I've clipped, I would say I've clipped parts of the essay. This is honestly like two-thirds of it
00:24:01.840because I was reading it and I was like, this is so fucking good. I can't miss this.0.92
00:24:05.000and i thought in true classroom fashion that we could read it popcorn style
00:24:12.000perfect so here is what samantha fulnicki wrote this article was very thought-provoking
00:24:21.140and caused me to thoroughly evaluate the idea of gender and the role it plays in our society
00:24:26.640spoiler alert it did not cause her to thoroughly evaluate anything
00:24:30.560the article discussed peers using teasing as a way to enforce gender norms i do not necessarily
00:24:38.480see this as a problem you don't see teasing as okay god made male and female and made us
00:24:44.960differently from each other on purpose and for a purpose popcorn cat god is very intentional with
00:24:53.560what he makes and i believe trying to change that would only do more harm gender roles and tendencies
00:25:00.280should not be considered stereotypes.1.00
00:25:03.580Women naturally want to do womanly things0.99
00:25:06.180because God created us with those womanly desires1.00
00:27:42.900One of my good friends printed out the article that Samantha was supposed to be responding to and like went through and highlighted all the parts.
00:27:51.620Like she clearly did not read the source material at all because it has nothing to do with trans identity.
00:27:58.500It has nothing to do with what she's writing about.
00:28:00.360Obviously, like she's contradicting herself throughout.
00:28:02.400Basically, what the piece is showing, what this study is showing is that even girls and boys who do adhere to traditional gender stereotypes still experience mental health consequences because they never feel like they can live up to the full view of what their gender should be.
00:28:19.760So, for example, in the study, they point out that girls who are athletic, like Samantha herself, girls who participate in sports, that is not a feminine trait.
00:28:30.780And so girls experience bullying and teasing for being athletes, which is something that like Samantha herself engages in.
00:28:38.380So it's like I'm not expecting a lot from this piece based on like clearly where her intentions lie.
00:28:45.380For anyone who thinks that this essay has anything to do with the article that it's supposed to be about, like just even skim the article and you will see they have nothing to do with each other.0.63
00:28:54.980Yeah, this pretty clearly seemed like an excuse for her to just go on an anti-trans rant.
00:28:59.900As you said, the original article was not about trans people or trans kids or anything like that.
00:29:07.180She only references the article at the very beginning of the paper where she says, like, it made me think.
00:32:13.020But using your own personal beliefs to argue against the findings of not only this article, but the findings of countless articles across psychology, biology, sociology, etc. is not best practice.
00:32:25.760You argue that abiding by normative gender roles is beneficial. It's perfectly fine to believe this. But to then say that everyone should act the same while also saying that people aren't pressured into gendered expectations is contradictory. Especially since your arguments reflect a religious pressure to act in certain gender stereotypical ways. You can say that strict gender norms don't create gender stereotypes, but that isn't true by definition of what a stereotype is. She's being so nice about calling this girl an idiot.1.00
00:32:55.760please note that acknowledging gender stereotypes does not immediately denote a negative connotation0.95
00:33:02.560a nuance this article discusses if you read it additionally to call an entire group of people
00:33:10.060demonic is highly offensive especially a minoritized population you are entitled to
00:33:15.620your own beliefs but this isn't a vague narrative of quote society pushes lies but instead the0.96
00:33:22.200result of countless years of developing psychological and scientific evidence for
00:33:26.360these claims and directly interacting with the communities involved. I was reading this this
00:33:31.040morning and I was like, this is the softest criticism imaginable given what was submitted.
00:33:36.100Yeah, the whole essay was a passive aggressive personal attack on this TA. You know, there's
00:33:41.900there was another line in there that we didn't touch on that was it is frustrating to me when
00:33:46.440I read articles like this and discussion posts from my classmates of so many people trying to
00:33:51.620conform to the same mundane opinion so they do not step on people's toes i think that is a cowardly
00:33:57.640and insecure way to live like she doesn't know what mundane means side note no that that was0.74
00:34:03.460she's the most mundane person i've ever seen it has sections like dumping on the teacher0.99
00:34:10.080and then calling out all her classmates and not engaging with the material that she was supposed
00:34:17.340to talk about. It's rage bait disguised as an essay. And I also think it's interesting that
00:34:23.180like people have said, oh, well, she shouldn't have gotten a zero because at least she turned
00:34:27.640something in. I don't know when or where people went to college, but like I went to the other
00:34:34.200OU, Ohio University, which was not a very hard school to get into. And people got zeros constantly
00:34:40.540in like level 1000, level 2000 classes. If you turned in something that was bad or contained
00:34:46.560an error of fact, or like, as you said, Parker, in this case contained like numerous personal
00:34:51.660attacks, of course you would get a zero. You would be lucky to not be kicked out of the class.
00:34:57.640When I was in college, so I was taking a sociology class and there was one of my classmates who like
00:35:02.960blew up at the teacher because he got a zero on a paper because the teacher asked him to not call
00:35:10.740homeless people bums. Whoa. He was just like, this is not an appropriate term to use when
00:35:16.040discussing in the paper in his like, you know, research paper or whatever. And the teacher was
00:35:21.840just like, you got to do something. And he threw a little through a little fit, but then like went
00:35:26.340back and, you know, because it was 2009, this kind of grift didn't exist yet. You know, he was upset
00:35:33.480and went back home. And that was that, you know, these types of students, basically what I'm saying,
00:35:38.900have been around forever. I had a professor in 2015. So definitely in the age of like TPUSA
00:35:46.260already existed, like this type of stuff was starting to flourish. And I had a professor
00:35:50.200in a journalism class where if you had one error of fact in an article that you turned in,
00:35:56.320immediate zero. And people hated him for it. People complained. People got their parents
00:36:01.500to call the school and complain. The department was like not happy with this policy. But like
00:36:07.060Nonetheless, I feel like that is pretty commonplace, but a lot of the backlash also starts to make sense when you consider that like a significant portion of the modern conservative movement doesn't even think college should exist and thinks that like if you pay for a degree, you should be handed a degree and nothing in the middle of that matters.
00:36:26.000right right to me this whole assignment you know it's like if you were given a math assignment0.99
00:36:32.500and in place of any numerical answer you just wrote like i love god fuck trans people like0.99
00:36:38.300you're gonna get a zero and that's effectively what happened here like her submitting something0.98
00:36:43.080where there is writing on the paper like it it doesn't matter it's not you can't just you can't
00:36:49.960just do that. And people were also like, well, you know, doesn't her belief system matter? And
00:36:55.360you're in an institution of higher learning, theoretically. Like this professor says,
00:37:03.140you have to include evidence for your argument that can't be women do womanly things because
00:37:10.740God instilled in them those womanly desires. Similarly, like, like this would do great in a0.88
00:37:16.560church right which is where i'm sure she got it from if i went to a church and i said like i love0.99
00:37:22.940having gay sex all day they would be like well you're gonna get a zero and i'd be like well1.00
00:37:28.220fair enough i submitted this in a fucking church so i just don't know what you're expecting1.00
00:37:33.840ironically like this is participation trophy logic is this idea that like if you show up0.98
00:37:40.140and you put in some effort quote unquote around effort then you deserve like a passing grade or
00:37:45.980you deserve to even be like rewarded just because you like showed up so in response to getting a
00:37:51.420zero samantha full necky files a claim of religious discrimination which is amplified by
00:37:56.220turning point usa and then further amplified by the republican governor of oklahoma kevin stitt
00:38:02.880who released a statement quote the situation at university of oklahoma is deeply concerning
00:38:09.060i'm calling on the ou regents to review the results of the investigation and ensure other
00:38:15.360students aren't unfairly penalized for their beliefs the concept of a governor issuing a
00:38:21.340statement over a student's failing grade okay former oklahoma superintendent of schools
00:38:26.660ryan walter called samantha quote an american hero now ryan walter he's he's the guy who left
00:38:34.180his job because he got caught watching porn right yeah wait let's fact check that ryan walter
00:38:39.300ryan walters porn yep he called it a mishap hey it happens a mishap you know as as one does0.81
00:38:46.260but it's the drag queens right the teaching assistant was put on leave by the university0.94
00:38:52.100which i actually think is like the most fucking dismal aspect of this entire story like i i don't0.98
00:38:57.500know i i think that what like what the fuck is the point of higher education if you bend to pressure0.98
00:39:01.960in this way because like the crazy right wing bigoted turning point type people like they're0.95
00:39:09.760going to exist they're going to scream and shout but they need institutions like this to bend the0.91
00:39:13.900knee because it gives them validity and i would be fucking pissed by the way if i was a student0.89
00:39:19.760at the university of oklahoma because to me like this you have zero credibility as a university0.94
00:39:25.740it renders a degree from there useless in my opinion i mean i know i sound dramatic but it's
00:39:31.100Like, if you as an institution of higher learning don't stand for any real fact and you're willing to cave to these bigots who just want white evangelical grievance politics to be flattered at all times, how do you have credibility as an academic institution?
00:39:46.440And also with this, after the teaching assistant was put on leave, I there was a clip on Fox News because they covered it naturally.
00:39:55.420We're on there on their show outnumbered where a guest said the fact that this graduate student was placed on administrative leave at all is a sign of how far we've come in the space to protect conservative views.
00:40:08.460Just a few years ago, that would not have happened. And I think this person is absolutely correct. Just a few years ago, this would not have happened.
00:40:16.440But like this is them really showing what this is all about, that this is about silencing voices they disagree with and running trans people out of jobs.
00:40:29.000The fact that the teaching assistant was trans, like it was not a core part of this story, but yet that's what every right wing outlet covering this was was talking about, because that that's what it's really about.
00:40:44.400The supervising professor, the actual professor for this class is a cis woman who concurred with the trans teaching assistant and gave Samantha the same grade. And all you hear is trans teaching assistant, trans, trans, trans, trans.
00:41:00.860Yes. Like that to me proves that it was about targeting this trans person and not the academics who agreed with her assessment. And I have like a relative who's a faculty member at a university. And that was something that really stood out to her was like this completely negates a lot of administrative processes at the university because you had two members of the staff agreeing that were usurped by like this student's complaint.
00:41:28.080And that is not how any disciplinary process is supposed to work.
00:41:32.160I highly doubt that's how the University of Oklahoma's like handbook says that these
00:44:40.320Samantha Fulnecki then gets, like I said, slotted into these Turning Point USA speaking gigs on campus.
00:44:47.680Here is a clip from her giving a speech.
00:44:52.000He also said that I can't use my own personal ideology to defend an opinion that goes against the consensus of every medical field and every medical association in the United States.
00:45:04.040they unfairly told me that i can't use my personal feelings to go against the medical
00:45:11.280consensus from every medical association in the united states like stamps foot how in my science
00:45:18.240class literally and also and also i'm a psychology major how do you say those words out loud and then
00:45:26.720be like i'm in the right we need to bring back shame lastly i want to show you a clip from an
00:45:35.600interview she did with local news because she was she's she's on a tear she is on a tear does it
00:45:42.380work stay tuned to find out the demonic thing is that um i didn't mean for that to be offensive
00:45:48.180but the truth will naturally offend people and um so i think that's why people are kind of
00:45:55.360viewing that as offensive. Would you have a problem having a transgender teacher?
00:46:01.160I wouldn't. Not if they're able to separate their kind of beliefs and things from grading,1.00
00:46:13.280then I don't, you know, really care who my professors are. It's so hard for her to reach
00:46:20.460end of a sentence or articulate any sort of coherent idea which that's not everyone's strong
00:46:26.120suit it's totally fine if she wasn't trying to like weaponize all this in the most sinister way
00:46:30.900possible but it does strike me that the thing that comes most naturally to her when she's speaking
00:46:36.380is using the they pronoun which is which is correct for this particular professor it's like
00:46:42.960the only thing that rolls off the tongue for her christy should have put her in voice lessons0.80
00:46:47.600because she does not have the juice to be able to make these points in a way that is compelling.0.99
00:46:54.240She's not like a fast speaker. It's like that nugget of, I'd be fine with having like a trans1.00
00:46:59.620professor as long as it didn't impact their grading. Like it took her so long to formulate1.00
00:47:04.740that thought, even though that was clearly being drilled in as like, this is the core component of
00:47:09.540what we want you to say. Yeah. Cause she can't right away, come out and be like, no, I would
00:47:14.620totally be against that that would be bad i would i would hate having a trans professor and i think1.00
00:47:19.180that they should all disappear that was the messaging that her mom was on right because her
00:47:23.860mom has been crusading for her this this is the biggest moment in christy's life i think like she
00:47:29.160is she is living this she was responding to people on social media being like um it's an opinion essay
00:47:34.920it's fine you don't need facts when you're writing an opinion essay and also just retweeting people
00:47:41.560that were straight up calling for trans people
00:47:43.400to be just like driven out of society.
00:47:46.280Kat and I were texting about this yesterday
00:59:24.620I think before continuing on with the Samantha Fulnicki saga, we have to explain to the listener who might be unfamiliar what exactly Samantha is trying to do here by leveraging transphobia and white Christian grievance politics for her own benefit and these like speaking gigs and these interviews and Fox News thing.
00:59:44.480And we can't do this without explaining, I think, in a little bit of meaningful detail what Riley Gaines has achieved and the precedence that she has set.
00:59:53.120Many of you might be familiar with Riley Gaines. I made a full episode about her last year, but the very brief explanation, if you are not familiar with her, is that she was a swimmer at the University of Kentucky a few years ago, who in a single race tied for fifth place with Leah Thomas, a transgender swimmer.
01:00:15.920If you think that that's not a very exciting tale, you'd be right. But it is the best story that they had at the time of how trans women in sports were like eating up all of the opportunities from cis women. And you can't even stand on the podium that doesn't exist for fifth place anymore because you might tie with the trans women that you have to share that non-existent podium with.0.94
01:00:38.560And anyway, Riley leveraged right wing grievance and media outrage from this fifth place tie into a multimillion dollar career.1.00
01:00:49.920And she, you know, she's on Fox News all the time.1.00
01:01:01.200A lot of people might be familiar with this story, but I do want to mention here that Mother Jones and Pablo Torres recently published an extremely detailed investigation of Riley Gaines' career and financial ties.
01:01:16.460And I think we should talk about that a little bit so people can understand the very real material infrastructure that Samantha is trying to slot into here.
01:01:27.360You know, keep in mind, had Leah Thomas not existed, Riley Gaines would have still come in fifth. So literally nothing changed for her. But in this Mother Jones, Pablo Torre investigation, they find out that she's making, you know, the Leadership Institute, which is this right wing group, like paid her more than $126,000.
01:01:48.400The Leadership Institute opened a project called the Riley Gaines Center.
01:02:42.720In this Mother Jones piece, you know, they they point out that yet the following spring, Riley Gaines tweets, he's an arrogant cheat who stole a national title from a hardworking, deserving woman.
01:02:54.460It's just the amount of hatred and anger.
01:02:58.380And she talks about wanting to take down the entire trans movement, you know, that this is just this is the house of cards and that it's going to fall and stuff like that.
01:03:08.960just like social media incentivizes the most extreme opinions like had she kept responding
01:03:15.540to things like she did in that original daily wire interview she would not have become a whole
01:03:21.160thing she needed to embrace this really hateful really angry approach which i think it'll be
01:03:29.320interesting to see if in a year samantha fulnecki is still saying like i'm fine with like having a0.67
01:03:34.300trans teacher like that would be fine like i feel like that's gonna change very quickly for her if
01:03:39.420she wants to get the riley gains like gravy train back on track for her i mean i'm interested if in
01:03:45.240a year we'll be hearing from samantha full necky at all but yes point taken oh hopefully she's just
01:03:51.840doing her own thing i wish i wish her well you know it's like i hope she graduates and whatever
01:03:56.620she's she's majoring in and i hope that she finds a job and does that you know like riley gains was
01:04:03.940apparently going to be like a dentist now she's just a full-time transphobe they're gonna dangle0.99
01:04:09.420this carrot i imagine in front of samantha that's like if you devote your life to this and you
01:04:14.840become the poster child for trans people can't be teachers and trans people can't work at
01:04:19.800universities or in academic settings then like we will potentially offer you this lifestyle
01:04:24.640and i also think it's really interesting like the fact that the devoss family has provided so much
01:04:31.620of the financial support for Riley Gaines's career.
01:04:34.880Yes, yes, because the DeVos family donated the initial $100,000 to create the Riley Gaines
01:04:41.160Center, which promised to send Gaines to speak on college campuses and recruit other student
01:04:47.840athletes who have been, quote, harmed by zealots of transgender ideology.
01:04:52.360There are a couple of interesting connections with that, one being that Betsy DeVos during
01:04:57.660Trump's first term, what's his appointee to lead the Department of Education. And one of her major
01:05:02.900missions was to rework Title IX to disadvantage victims of like any sort of sexual crime on1.00
01:05:11.060campus. But also what Title IX does is it creates the legal requirement for women's sports. And1.00
01:05:18.960they've worked to undermine that because basically what Title IX does is it prohibits
01:05:24.260like sex-based discrimination. So it requires that there be women's athletics in addition to1.00
01:05:30.140men's athletics. And in more recent decades, it has provided these protections for students who
01:05:35.840are victims of gender-based violence. And it's interesting that the DeVos family has done so
01:05:41.640much to undermine that. And that during Trump's term 2.0, the Department of Education has obviously
01:05:47.120been dismantled and Title IX has been weaponized against trans students and trans athletes in
01:05:52.520particular, the usage of like the white cis Christian woman as like the victim in these
01:05:58.300scenarios is interesting because it plays well with sort of like the emotional fallacy and appeal
01:06:03.560at the heart of a lot of like anti-trans and anti-queer arguments. But it's also like I'm like
01:06:08.620women's participation in sports is endangered by these people, like counter to their supposed
01:06:13.520values. And I also would think that women's plays in education is at risk because of these people,
01:06:19.000because what they really want is for educational institutions to once again be the domain of
01:06:24.560almost entirely privileged white men. And I think that like when women advocate for these causes,
01:06:31.300it's like they're using their their privilege in that moment. But I think the ultimate goal here
01:06:37.260is also to like kind of reverse DEI because white women do academically outperform white men. So0.68
01:06:43.900that's not going to like fly for long either so one thing about riley gains that i learned in the0.99
01:06:50.100the mother jones piece like in april 2023 so this was almost a year after the the race she was0.99
01:06:57.500starting to kind of lose steam she was uh she was doing turning point usa events you know giving
01:07:03.060speeches on college campuses she went to give a speech at san francisco state university and the
01:07:10.340students there protested when the event finished it said i'm reading from the piece then the
01:07:15.680classroom door was open protesters rushed towards games she tweeted that she was assaulted by a man
01:07:20.920a guy in a dress she told fox news that then you know campus security had to basically be like
01:07:27.160that didn't happen you know we have we have footage at multiple angles you weren't you
01:07:32.420weren't assaulted you know she she said that protesters jokingly said like tell her to pay
01:07:37.860us 10 bucks each and we'll and we'll all go home or something like that and she says she was held
01:07:43.120for ransom and yeah so so it said in the following days and weeks she embarked on a media tour
01:07:51.460claiming she had been punched hit multiple times and held for ransom the next month she testified
01:07:57.340before the house homeland security committee and you know where she described the episode as
01:08:02.360kidnapping like this is this is the reality does not matter at all to this world and fox news will
01:08:11.620sit there and they will amplify it and they will make it a story like i feel so bad for leah thomas
01:08:17.960the the swimmer in this like yeah she hasn't done she hasn't done much since since all of this she's
01:08:24.680been very quiet but she will forever be synonymous with like look at that man in women's sports and
01:08:31.840she'll be hated by people like imagine being leah thomas and being like i'm gonna go google my name
01:08:37.980today like you you can't do that and the same thing that happened to leah thomas is currently
01:08:44.260happening to the professor in this case in this case mel melkirth i think is her name that's what
01:08:51.200sucks because melkirth she she's not speaking up they're not making comments they're staying quiet
01:08:56.460as I'm sure the school is saying you they have to at the at this point because they're still0.96
01:09:01.940employed, but they're just on leave. And no matter what she does, you know, her whole life's going to
01:09:07.780be kind of a, you know, a total train wreck from here on out because Samantha Fulnecki wanted to0.96
01:09:13.200become famous. And I mean, this is the playbook. It's like make people afraid to hold anyone
01:09:20.820accountable. Like the playbook here is like make anyone who is, again, like a minoritized group
01:09:26.060As she said in the response to the essay, like it's make people afraid to exist in public spaces, make trans people afraid to pursue these types of careers, like to exist in public life and to like contest bigotry.
01:09:41.860Yeah. And the playbook, it's constantly being used and it becomes clear what's happening very, very quickly. You know, remember a few years back with the Dylan Mulvaney incident where basically Bud Light paid her to do an ad read on her Instagram and people freaked out.
01:10:00.720I'm trans. I run a newsletter and I have to kind of wonder how many brands have looked at working with me, looked at advertising with me and quietly decided it just wasn't worth the risk of associating themselves with a trans person because there is no level of, oh, it's fine to work with the trans person unless, you know, like in the Dylan Mulvaney situation, there wasn't even a, oh, here's this thing.
01:10:24.260here's this thing she said that was offensive and inappropriate. And she needs to have her
01:10:29.920ads taken away or something like that. It was just simply, this is a trans woman and we don't like1.00
01:10:34.880that. And we're not going to, you know, deal with that. You know, right now, as we're talking about1.00
01:10:40.480this Oklahoma case, you know, the same playbook is being deployed. Yesterday, I checked, I looked
01:10:45.600over at Twitter and you've got libs of TikTok and you've got all these other right wingers
01:10:50.760who are freaking out because there's a netflix movie called queen of coal which is a spanish
01:10:55.580language film for one uh it's a spanish argentine film based on the true story of carla antonella
01:11:01.860rodriguez the first trans woman to work in the coal mines in patagonia lux pascal pedro pascal
01:11:07.900she's so pretty is in it and like that's the controversy that she's in it sorry not not to
01:11:12.640add some really insightful commentary there but she's so pretty i mean i mean she is you know but
01:11:17.940But like you've got like right wing media are running stories, calling it like Netflix's wokest movie yet.
01:11:23.600They're trying to run the Dylan Mulvaney, Leah Thomas playbook, you know, generate enough outrage to to pressure companies into pulling or apologizing or distancing themselves from a trans person.
01:11:35.640You know, that's the point of these campaigns. You don't actually have to get everyone fired.
01:11:40.100You know, you don't have to successfully pressure every company.
01:11:42.400You just have to create enough ambient fear that people start making calculations on their
01:12:05.580And I think there's this, like, attempt to retroactively, like, shoehorn a Leah Thomas
01:12:10.800thing onto Mel Kerth where like Samantha Fulnecki is Riley Gaines in this situation. The professor
01:12:16.260is Leah Thomas. The professor has robbed Samantha of her valor by existing in public life as a0.88
01:12:23.020trans person, right? Like you have the media constantly being like, trans professor took0.51
01:12:27.440this grade away from this sweet little Christian girl. I think this is so indicative to me of like,
01:12:33.940I think that trans sports as a culture war issue is losing steam. Like I think it's past its peak.
01:12:40.800very frankly, as we've said on this podcast many times, like that energy, they have to find a new
01:12:46.340place to channel it before people start looking at the actual powers that be in this country that
01:12:53.460are disenfranchising them, right? We have a president who claims that eradicating trans
01:12:57.720athletes would improve their lives. That president is continuing to rob them of an affordable life,
01:13:02.740healthcare, etc. by continuing to collude with billionaire tech oligarchs who are destroying
01:13:07.780humanity. And I just think the trans sports as a panic was never going to be a big enough issue on0.93
01:13:13.900its own to sustain this cycle of outrage and white grievance. So now we need to do trans people in
01:13:19.760academia. Yeah. And like these, these stories would kind of pop up every once in a while where
01:13:24.500there'd be like a teacher at a school came out as trans and they should be fired. And there was
01:13:30.680this, this famous case in the UK. I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the teacher
01:13:36.300More than 10 years ago, there was this teacher who came out as trans and people started a pressure campaign in the media to get her out of there.
01:13:46.660And she ended up committing suicide.0.99
01:13:49.580And like, that's that's a victory for this movement.0.82
01:13:52.980I feel like every trans person knows that at any given moment, a few powerful people on the right could decide to destroy their lives.
01:14:03.880By let's say, you know, if a trans woman is in public and goes to use the restroom and then gets confronted afterwards about it or something like that, like you could have Fox News, you could have the Daily Wire, you could have the right wing podcast ecosystem like coming down on you and basically just destroy your life, make you virtually unemployable, you know, make it almost impossible for you to exist in public.
01:14:33.360And these, these aren't people who are, who are seeking to become famous. You know, it's, it's just, it just happens. And the people who make these arguments, who try to drive trans people out of public life, never actually make their arguments. They just go that I don't want that here. Get that person out of society. You know, there's, there's nothing that trans people could do to defend against this, which is the scariest part.
01:15:01.680The world that these campaigns are building are one where trans people are too risky to hire, too controversial to the platform and too dangerous to be seen with, you know, not because of anything that we do, but because of who we are.0.94
01:15:14.980And that's what that's what scares me. Like, I've I've had that worry.
01:15:18.840I'm like, oh, no, what if one of my articles escapes the bubble of where it usually, you know, the audience bubble and someone on the far right decides, like, I'm going to I'm going to take down this trans person.
01:15:31.160like they could totally do that and it would suck i really like how you were describing like the
01:15:36.860chilling and the silencing effect parker because it's like these campaigns can be so powerful even
01:15:42.300without like institutional support because fear is such like an effective weapon to control entire
01:15:49.140populations of people with and at the same time we've seen in the us and in the uk like these
01:15:55.740types of campaigns can result in actual legislative force to push trans people out of public life
01:16:02.440so it's like you have the cultural impact the legislative impact and then like the economic
01:16:08.480social impact and it is such a like horrifying toolbox where as a conservative person you really
01:16:16.280only within this like environment have something to gain but as like a trans person or as a person
01:16:23.540who falls into any minority that's under attack it's like you only have something to lose i want
01:16:28.460to bring up here a term which i'm borrowing actually from naomi klein but what i'm calling
01:16:33.180the mirror world aka every accusation is a confession i think so many parts of this story
01:16:40.320support the idea that every conservative accusation is a confession right conservatives
01:16:45.860always accuse progressives and especially queer people of indoctrinating their children into like
01:16:52.440being trans or whatever when we just want to give our kids like the space to be whoever they are0.83
01:16:58.380and what we have here is a right-wing religious zealot mother who's clearly indoctrinated her
01:17:05.920daughter into being a right-wing religious zealot with similar aspirations in right-wing entertainment
01:17:11.540but also conservatives have spent the last couple years coasting on this fear of DEI diversity equity
01:17:19.020and inclusion, which broadly means for those of us who are still attached to reality, making sure
01:17:24.840that minorities are included and respected in workplaces. But to conservatives, it's actually
01:17:29.800like a nefarious plot that our transgender overlords are going to dominate cis straight
01:17:35.680white people in public life, that trans people will be given the best grades and the best jobs0.87
01:17:41.400and the most power in society by simple virtue of being trans. And everyone is famously so nice to
01:17:47.040trans people in america and has any of this borne out in him i sadly sadly no i wish there will
01:17:55.240always be people who believe like oh well i could become more popular if i were trans it's like no
01:18:01.040you no it's so awesome when you have like people i don't know like i feel like ben shapiro or bill
01:18:06.560maher it's always like cis white men who are like if you want to be cool now you could just be trans
01:18:12.240And I'm like, well, why don't you try and see how how cool and how nice everyone treats you?0.82
01:18:18.300But anyway, what we see here is the very people making these claims about DEI trying to steamroll queer people out of public life and get themselves to the top of the heap, despite being totally mediocre, simply by virtue of their white Christianity.0.63
01:18:35.560It is white conservatives grooming their kids to be conservative and wanting DEI for themselves.0.68
01:18:42.720Because the reality is, like, if there are no efforts to balance, like, the student population via admissions, then actually, like, white men, for example, are getting absolutely walloped by the competition because their academic performance does not compare to, like, their peers.
01:19:00.640oftentimes like women lead men and oftentimes like it's the exact opposite where the balancing
01:19:07.160of these populations the dei efforts were actually benefiting people who were undeserving who fall
01:19:13.060into these privileged categories you know every once in a while i'll see some like conservative
01:19:16.960post something that's like oh look 92 percent of humanities professors are are liberal it's like
01:19:24.400yeah i don't know like what do you want and then they're like it needs to be 50 50
01:19:30.240like no that's not how things work participation trophy now my dear listener if you've made it this
01:19:38.120far in the episode and you're wondering matt didn't you say up front that this was a hopeful
01:19:43.720story but now we're just talking about christians weaponizing transphobia to create a world where
01:19:49.480they can steamroll everyone out of public life that doesn't flatter their mediocrity where's
01:19:55.300the optimism there well my friend we've arrived we've arrived at the crux of the episode which
01:20:02.220is that none of this worked it would have been really really funny if right there you were just
01:20:06.600like well i have something to tell you about my world i support that i figured that would be dark
01:20:15.260yeah yeah exactly and this episode is brought to you by rumble no no no the the hope is that0.99
01:20:24.380despite all of the cards lined up perfectly for her, she had the wannabe grifter conservative
01:20:33.300activist radio host mom. She had the local chapter and then the national chapter of Turning
01:20:39.140Point USA on her side. She had the governor of motherfucking Oklahoma. It didn't work.0.99
01:20:46.060After some initial, you know, interview opportunities, speaking opportunities,1.00
01:20:51.580and a clear attempt to turn Samantha Fulnecki
01:20:55.660into a national, as Ryan Walters said, American hero,0.93
01:20:59.540came a much bigger wave of mockery towards Samantha,
01:21:18.960and mediocre this person is and the situation is i'm gonna be very straightforward when i say this0.94
01:21:24.580that girl samantha from oklahoma university 100 deserved to fail that assignment and she should
01:21:29.720probably consider switching her major to something that is less academically challenging god made man
01:21:36.860and woman man and woman are different man do man things woman do woman things if you do man things1.00
01:21:44.760as woman, you are demon. I rewrote the Oklahoma girls essay with the same homophobic comments,0.98
01:21:50.940but I actually made it passable this time. She's crying religious persecution and calling her essay1.00
01:21:55.100the truth of the gospel. I agree. This is religious persecution of Christ and she is the one doing it.1.00
01:22:01.000I had no idea it was going to blow up like this. I mean, all I did was immediately call the governor
01:22:08.060of my state because that's what every normal college student does when they get a bad grade.
01:22:14.760Students at the University of Oklahoma held a huge walkout in support of the teaching assistant who was put on leave.
01:22:22.900Shout out to the students of the University of Oklahoma.
01:22:25.920Something I found so striking is that Samantha Fulnecki's Instagram, which, like I said, it's public.
01:22:33.200She has a collaborative post with Turning Point USA as her most recent post, clearly trying to run the playbook for herself, draw a huge following.
01:22:41.900Riley Gaines has over a million Instagram followers.
01:22:44.760weeks into this controversy, Samantha Fulnecki has 5,000 Instagram followers.
01:22:52.480There's like girls I went to high school who were just like popular in their like sorority
01:22:57.240that have more than 5,000 Instagram followers. And I don't see Instagram followers to be very
01:23:02.980clear about what I'm saying as any sort of measure of worth. But this is just to me such
01:23:09.520an indicator of like you failed. You failed the essay, but then you also failed the grift.
01:23:14.760And I feel like one of the reasons why, as this took off, so much of why it was taking off was
01:23:20.780backlash to the grift. It's like conservatives and I look at the libs of TikTok grift. She was
01:23:27.500really good at kind of taking things out of context in a way where she was getting people's
01:23:33.080base impulses to react and rage baiting and rage baiting and rage baiting. When the TPUSA chapter
01:23:39.700of OU like posted the actual essay in excerpts. This had kind of the opposite network effect
01:23:47.020where it's like people, especially on Twitter, love to dunk on other people's writing. Even if
01:23:54.600they themselves are like not good writers, it is such a thing on social media. Like if you put
01:23:58.820your writing out there, especially in this way, they literally broke it down into easily digestible
01:24:04.060chunks and people were just like dunking on the quality of the writing. But that's the whole thing
01:24:10.800with these like conservative outrage machines too, is that, and we've said this so many times on this
01:24:15.360podcast, it's all based on lies and misinformation and selective editing. That's what Libs of TikTok
01:24:21.180did to your point. That's what Riley Gaines did when she was kidnapped at her university speaking0.64
01:24:26.980gig. The grave error that they made here was showing the actual essay. Because if you just
01:24:33.520read that headline samantha fulnecki is failed for citing her religious beliefs you might be
01:24:39.520like huh maybe there really is persecution against christians on campus but then they actually showed
01:24:45.500the actual essay which as in all of these situations when you actually show what the0.88
01:24:50.780fuck is going on a normal person is going to be like yeah no i'm just not i'm not i'm not feeling
01:24:57.460this one diva and like all so many of the responses to that post with her essay were like0.99
01:25:06.460you should not have posted this you failed propaganda 101 like you would have been so
01:25:13.680much better off had you not told us what she actually said and that's why i think it's
01:25:18.480interesting that you know when fox news has been talking about her they haven't been showing people
01:25:22.740what the essay says they didn't talk about how it's different than what the actual paper that
01:25:28.180she was supposed to have read no they just say she was she was given a zero for citing the bible
01:25:34.000i feel like turning point usa really you know shot themselves in the foot