Nazi Hunting

What’s the best way to fight evil? Laugh at fascist idiots and keep hunting Nazis, with your camera and the power of your voice. 

This week, we’re honored to welcome legend Sandi Bachom, an award-winning documentary filmmaker of such powerful films as Telling Jokes in Auschwitz and a Getty Images contributor whose work has appeared in acclaimed films like Laura Poitras’s All The Beauty and All The Bloodshed, Danny’s Strong’s Dopesick, and Alex Gibney’s Crime of the Century. But Sandi isn’t just behind the camera—she’s on the frontlines, documenting Nazis, like Trump’s MAGA rallies, and the Charlottesville tiki torch march where Heather Heyer was murdered. Sandi was also at the Capitol on January 6th, capturing Trump’s violent coup attempt in real time, footage used by the January 6 committee in Congress. 

Stay loud. Stay brave. And as always—get ungaslit. 

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Join the Resistance

  • Gaslit Nation Book Club: This Monday, March 31st at 4 PM ET, we’re discussing From Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp—the handbook that inspired revolutions from Ukraine to the Arab Spring. Grab your copy in the show notes and join us! 

  • Share Your Story: History is unfolding now—and we need your eyewitness accounts. Take our Reject Hypernormalization Survey (linked in the show notes) to combat gaslighting and preserve the truth.

This week's episode is sponsored by Factor: Eat smart with Factor. Get started at FACTOR MEALS.com/gaslit50off to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping. 

Want to enjoy Gaslit Nation ad-free? Join our community of listeners for bonus shows, ad-free episodes, exclusive Q&A sessions, our group chat, invites to live events like our Monday political salons at 4pm ET over Zoom, and more! Sign up at Patreon.com/Gaslit!

 

Show Notes

Take Gaslit Nation’s Reject Hypernormalization Survey https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/survey-reject-hypernormalization

Read or listen to for free: Gene Sharp’s From Dictatorship to Democracy https://archive.org/details/from_dictatorship_to_democracy_1306_librivox

Patti Smith clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wxqhg6z-t9o

Humiliation as Propaganda: Videos of Shackled Detainees Have History in El Salvador https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/19/world/americas/deportation-videos-el-salvador.html

Amid ‘DEI’ purge, Pentagon removes webpage on Iwo Jima flag-raiser Pages celebrating Navajo code talkers and other minority service members were also erased. https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2025/03/17/pentagon-dei-native-american-iwo-jima/

Olga Lautman unmasks the making of a Russian/Trump group chat: https://x.com/OlgaNYC1211/status/1904344536521797806

 

EVENTS AT GASLIT NATION:


Andrea Chalupa (00:11):

Welcome to Gaslit Nation. I'm your host, Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones, about Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine, a film the Kremlin, and its useful idiots in the White House don't want you to see, so be sure to watch it. There's a lot happening obviously with idiots, the least qualified people on the planet in charge of the most powerful military by far, and in service to the Kremlin. We're going to talk all about it in this week's bonus show coming out later in the week, so look out for that for now. I want to run this incredibly powerful and inspiring interview for all of us because we have a very special guest who has been on the front lines of the fascist war against America for an incredibly long time, going face to face with these fascists.

(01:05):

So she has a lot of lessons and inspiration for us today. Sandi Bachom. Sandy is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and a Getty Images contributor. She's licensed footage to major news outlets and films including Laura Poitras' Oscar-nominated All the Beauty and all the Bloodshed, Hulu's Dopesick, and Alex Gibney's Crime of the Century. Sandy has captured white supremacist terrorism at Nazi rallies, including countless Trump rallies and the Tiki Torch March in Charlottesville, Virginia, where protestor Heather Heyer was killed. Sandy's eyewitness account opens our discussion. Sandy was also at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, capturing footage of Donald Trump and his inner circle inciting a violent attempted coup against our democracy footage that was later handed over to Congress. Later that day, she learned that her son, her only child, had died in his hotel room in Washington DC from Fentanyl. The Nazis, Sandy exposes with her camera have tried to harass her by exploiting her son's death.

(02:21):

But Sandy, who has interviewed Holocaust survivors for her film Telling Jokes in Auschwitz knows that the best way to overcome evil is to laugh and keep hunting Nazis, whether with a camera or through the power of the pen. So if Sandy can keep fighting Nazis, so can we. And don't forget everyone, gaslit Nations book Club meets this Monday, March 31 at 4:00 PM Eastern to discuss our book of the month, Jean Sharps from Dictatorship to Democracy. This handbook for overthrowing dictators inspired revolts around the world from Ukraine to the Arab Spring. You can find it in our show notes to join the discussion. Oh, and it's free by the way, because it's a handbook to overthrow the oligarchy. So of course it's free. Jean Sharp made it free. So go grab your copy. There's an audio version in the show notes. To join that discussion and support the show, grab a membership at patreon.com/gaslit.

(03:18):

We offer discounted annual memberships. That's patreon.com/gaslit. Thank you to everyone who supports the show. In tribute now to Sandy Bacon and all she has done to bear witness to Trump's Russian backed fascism, trying to overthrow our democracy and to destabilize the world, we call on our listeners to submit their own eyewitness accounts of living through the history chaotically, fire cracking all over the place today. Help us combat gaslighting. Hold onto your humanity and give voice to your feelings and the historical truth carried in your body and mind. Share your important eyewitness account with the Gaslit Nation Archive Project. It's simple. Take our reject Hypernormalization survey on our website. I'll link to it at the top of the show notes. And now here's Nazi Hunter Sandy Bachom will begin by playing her footage of Patty Smith addressing Occupy Wall Street organizers at the Riverside Church on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in 2012. Listen to Patty Smith's words. A reminder to us all the oligarchs are burning it all down as we're all witnessing, and we the people are going to build it back stronger.

Patty Smith (04:41):

That the people have the power to redeem the work of fools upon the meat, the grace of shall its decree, the people rule. And I believe everything we dream will come to pass through our union. We can turn the world around. We can turn Earth's revolution and the people of the path, the people of the power. To cry, to occupy, to hope, to strive, to march, to live, to laugh to dream. Thank you.

Andrea Chalupa (05:40):

Welcome to the show, real life, Nazi Hunter, Sandy Bachom.

Sandy Bachom (05:45):

Hello, Andrea.

Andrea Chalupa (05:47):

So honored to have you here. You're a legend.

Sandy Bachom (05:50):

Maybe we should edit that out actually. I mean, seriously, can you want to start over?

Andrea Chalupa (05:56):

No, this is it. This is the good stuff. So tell me, when did you start hunting Nazis?

Sandy Bachom (06:03):

I went to Charlottesville in 2017 because somebody told me, another journalist told me that there was going to be the largest meeting of white supremacists in the country, and it was going to happen in Charlottesville, Virginia on this weekend. And I didn't have any money and I took my last $200 because my ex-husband said, you have to go. I didn't even know what a white supremacist was. I took a bus down to Charlottesville and I got there and then I saw all these people in Hitler t-shirts, and I got an interview with David Duke and people doing the He Hitler, it was my indoctrination into white supremacy and neo-Nazis.

Andrea Chalupa (06:49):

And that was the protest where a Nazi drove a car

Sandy Bachom (06:54):

And James Fields Jr. And I filmed him all day and I kind of watched him. I didn't know it was him until afterwards, but I watched him kind of become radicalized as the day progressed. He showed up early in the morning with a group of guys in khaki pants and he went by himself into the park. And then as the day progressed, the next thing I know he's in the park with thousands of guys with these little shields, and he's standing with one of the main groups that I think they were called American Vanguard or Vanguard America. They evacuated the park about noon, I think because people were armed in there. They had guns. And so the cops evacuated. They said they'd be arrested if they did, and they all streamed out. And then he walked right in front of me chanting Jews will not replace us, but first he said, they said, the group of them said, you will not replace us. And then all of a sudden they said, Jews will not replace us. And we all thought we were hearing things. I didn't even know what that meant. And then later on in the day, I was injured actually, and I got taken to the hospital.

Andrea Chalupa (08:04):

How did you get injured?

Sandy Bachom (08:05):

Somebody cut me off. It tripped me, not intentionally, but there was a surge at the end of the day when everybody was leaving and there would be little ruckuses around the city and all the press and all the people that were there, but their iPhones and stuff were following 'em. And I saw a militia guy that was bleeding and he was being carried by his other militia friends. And I went to shoot it and somebody cut me off and I tripped and I fell forward and I cracked my head open and I broke my arm. And so they took me to the hospital and that was the hospital where they took all the victims. And 10 minutes later, from the time that I fell was the time that fields ran through the crowd and I was on my way there. And when I was in the hospital, it was really weird, it was really quiet.

(09:00):

There are a lot of doctors there and I'm in horrible pain and I go, help me here, help me while I'm bleeding. And a woman came over to me, she was dressed in and clergy outfit. She was some kind of pastor and she said, I'm not supposed to tell you this, but somebody died. And I was trying to look in the rooms. I was in the hallway to look in the rooms and see what was going on in the news. They were all watching it on the news and all the nurses and doctors were watching YouTube videos of it. So I found out later they were trying to see what kind of injuries people had because they were all brought to the hospital. And then at one point, this couple, when they were sewing me up, this couple comes in and they would look dazed and they take out the camera and they show me is said, is this you? And I was on the ground and they had been hit by flying bodies this couple. And I said, yeah, that's me. And that's how it got me involved in documenting these people because my job is to point my camera at them and document who shows up at these events. So I did that from then on.

Andrea Chalupa (10:11):

When the car rammed through the Charlottesville protest killing Heather Heyer bodies flying everywhere, and Heather Heyer's last tweet was, if you are not furious, you're not paying attention.

Sandy Bachom (10:26):

Oh yeah. It was really a call to action, wasn't it? I remember reading that. I am not sure that's the exact words, but that's what I realized. I'm 80 years old and I was born during World War ii, what's called a war baby. And my uncle was shot down by the Nazis in 1942, and my great grandfather fought in the Civil War.

Andrea Chalupa (10:50):

So you come from a family of Nazi hunters, is what you're saying?

Sandy Bachom (10:53):

Antifa, I'm a family of anti-fascists because anybody who resists fascism is an anti-fascist. I always said I was kind of like zeal with a camera as it would wind up just oddly at all of these situations like Charlottesville. And then a year after Charlottesville, I heard that Gavin McGinnis, who was the head of the Proud Boys, was speaking at the Republican Club. Sure. It was the young Republican Club on the Upper East Side. And I went there and I stood outside the door and I filmed people going in and I filmed them going out. It just stayed there all night and at the end of the evening they left and we followed them and that's when the street brawl happened where they had this violent street brawl, which kind of put them on the map actually.

Andrea Chalupa (11:44):

The Proud Boys.

Sandy Bachom (11:45):

The proud boys. I'm sorry. Yeah.

(11:47):

So that video was the only video of the event, and I was a in the truck, got subpoenaed, I had to testify in the trial, and now I see them and they yell at me. They're so horrible to me, but seriously, fuck them. Look, if you're going to behave badly in front of my camera, is it my fault? I just turned the camera on and they just do what they do. Then the whole thing of me following these people escalated and I met a whole bunch of journalists in Charlottesville after that that we are sort of a group that follows these groups around the country when we can and we can afford to.

Andrea Chalupa (12:26):

So you were also there. I just want to say we're living in a time where the Nazi in chief, well, there's two Nazi in chiefs in the White House, Elon and Trump.

(12:37):

They are doing what Stalin and what Putin do. They are erasing history and rewriting history. The Navajo code breakers, they wipe them from the website. The Native American who was at Iwo Jima, they wiped him from the website. On and on the list goes. If you were a hero, an American patriot hero, including from a group that faced genocide in the establishment in the United States, they are trying to erase you. That is Stalinist. Hey Gaslit Nation listeners, I'm excited to share that I have some sort of cosmic relationship with the Super Delicious and nutritious and fast meal plan, service factor, healthy gourmet meals, deliver to your home and heat it up in a few short minutes. Factor tends to come into my life when I'm juggling a million deadlines at once. Their juice smoothies are my favorite and help me burn the midnight oil to fight fascism through my podcast and art projects that keep me sane. Seriously factor. Thank you. I can't recommend them enough. Also, my mother-in-law was visiting from Paris and she approves as well and she's very Parisian, if you know what I mean. So that's another endorsement. Now my listeners can find a meal plan that works for their lifestyle and get 50% off. Eat Smart with Factor. Get started@factormeals.com slash gaslit 50 off and use code gaslit 50 off to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping. That's code Gaslit 50 off at factor meals.com/gaslit 50 off to get 50% off, plus free shipping on your first box.

Sandy Bachom (14:18):

Yesterday was the anniversary of Stalin and Hitler meeting to come up with a secret pact to go against the

Andrea Chalupa (14:26):

Molotov Ribbontrop Pact.

Sandy Bachom (14:29):

And I interview Holocaust survivors, and I'm working on a film now with one of them interviews that I've done with him over the years, and he warned us about this. The first thing he said, everybody asked, how did it happen? He was thrown in Auschwitz, he was thrown in three different death camps. And he said the first thing that happens is the change of language the hate of the other. In his case it was the Jews. But look what Trump did in the beginning with all Mexicans are rapists, right? That was the most, that was the beginning of the language change and normalizing that kind of language. All Mexicans are rapists. There was a fight at Trump Tower with a bunch of Mexican guys, and I think they sued Trump, but it doesn't do any good. The reason this works for them, it goes back a little bit further.

(15:20):

So the first Trump rally I went to was in Minneapolis in 2019, and one point he stops. He gives the same speech every single time. It's exactly the same speech. And then he just plugs in whatever the latest Hunter, Biden's, laptop, whatever it is, and he points to the press, I'm credentialed press. We were in a pen in the middle of the arena and he goes, you'll never get the truth out of them. They're fake news. They're the enemy of the people and everybody turns around and gives us a finger and goes, boo. And it was so shocking to me. But this beating away at the free press has been going on for years. Every single time he gets in front of a microphone, if you'll notice, he talks about, I expected that from you, your fake news. He has trained them to not believe anything they read.

(16:17):

So he has actually said, don't believe what you see. Only believe what I say. So he's brainwashed them, and I believe his techniques are actual brainwashing. The techniques that he uses are brainwashing. Well, you witness it, so you talk about how it's repetitive. There's this incredible documentary about Errol Morris that people should take a look at. It's about the Manson murders. Oh, I watched it. Did you? And about the mind control that he probably learned in prison. And Morris wasn't too keen on the idea that it was the CIA, whatever that was called the CIA mind control experiments that they were doing. But his parole officer was involved in those experiments apparently. But I really think that he learned it in prison. And I mean, I don't know in the weeds you want to go on this, but after Hurricane Sandy hit, I went out and I filmed people that had lost everything.

(17:15):

And there were a lot of them were low income and several of them had been in jail, and there was a guy who became the leader. He was this charismatic guy. He'd lost everything. And he became the leader of this group that I followed. And he had done a lot of time in prison, and one of the women pointed out, she said, don't trust him because there's this book called The 75 Laws of Power, I think it is. I have to look up the exact title of it. It's banned in prisons now. And it tells you how to manipulate people and mind control and get people to do stuff for you, which this guy got all of us to do things for him and give him money and all sorts of things. I didn't have any money, but he somehow got me to give him some money and they learned this stuff in prison. So anyway, Manson, he was in this list of people and this book, they create a cult. Steve Jobs was on the list. He created a cult around Apple. And then what Manson would do is he would isolate them. He would give them acid, and then he would fill their brains with, I guess the mind control techniques were the CIA techniques were to make somebody insane instantly,

Andrea Chalupa (18:32):

MK Ultra. So it was Operation MK Ultra where the CIA was literally infiltrating college groups. They were on Haight Ashbury. And what they would do is they would do these human experiments to subjects that were unwitting. They didn't realize what was going on and they were feeding acid. Sometimes they would use prostitutes to learn these subjects and they would give them acid and just see how they could manipulate them. And the idea was that the CIA wanted to learn how to control people and get them to kill. And so this was all happening at a time when Robert Kennedy was assassinated and his assassin didn't remember a damn thing. And he's like, I just went blank. And I don't remember it really. I didn't know that MK Ultra is sadistic. It's like I've studied decades of the Soviet Union. This is up there with one of the darker chapters of the Soviet Union, the human experiments, how they ruined people, how creepy it is. And when it became a huge public story, it was all happening against the backdrop of Watergate, which the CIA was also central to. We're in a very dark chapter in America, but we've kind of always been in a dark chapter in America. There's always this group of people. And I know this sounds very conspiratorial, but it's just the facts. Power attracts sadist. Power attracts people that want to inflict control and dominance and cruelty on others, and that's what they were doing.

Sandy Bachom (19:55):

But remember, Trump is a Russian asset.

Andrea Chalupa (19:58):

On top of it, and all the Russians are before the CIA was against the Russians. And now the CIA is working with the Russians. So now it's all new territory. We haven't been here yet.

Sandy Bachom (20:08):

Yeah, but he does in the first of all, you wait in line for hours or maybe a day or something, they wait in line to get in. The whole thing is orchestrated. And then when you finally get inside the arena and you can't leave, did you ever hear of EST, the Erhard Seminar Trainings?

Andrea Chalupa (20:29):

No.

Sandy Bachom (20:29):

In the seventies I was in advertising and everybody did these. There really was mind control. It was the beginning of the human potential movement. So it was in the early seventies, so it came out of the sixties, and you would go and you would stay in a hotel room, they'd lock you away from everything. You couldn't pee for 24 hours. You were stuck in this room, and the trainer would take you on these guided meditations and they would tell you your life didn't work. And the Ku Klux clan, all of these groups, they get these disenfranchised people in the room and they say, your life doesn't work. You're a piece of shit. You're never going to go anywhere you hate your wife, but I have the answer. And that's what Trump would do in these rallies with blaming everybody. It was Obama's fault, it was Hillary's fault, whatever.

(21:22):

And only I can save you. He's actually said that only I can save you. So you go into this room and for three hours after you've waited in line for all those hours, then inside they're playing music. And the first time I saw the YM them dancing, the YMCA, I was out on the floor with them and YouTube took this video down, but I was running around with my camera in the middle of it and they were going Y. And they would go YMCA and they'd spell out the letters with their hands. And I said to a friend, I said, do they have any idea what that song is about? It's about going to a bathhouse and picking up guys and it doesn't really matter because now that's his song and that's his dance. And because of what I know, because my experience of having been hypnotized, basically, I understand that process and how susceptible people can fall victim to it, but he's a master at it. He's a showman. Everything is like the, not to jump around, but you know that video, the glossy video of the El Salvador kidnappings, the video that they posted about the planes that that's what this whole thing in front of the judges now.

Andrea Chalupa (22:46):

Oh yes. Where Trump and Steven Miller very sneakily sent these two planes with so-called gang members that they were deporting without due process at the same time. The judge was blocking this order.

Sandy Bachom (23:03):

After one of the planes left after he said, you can't do it

Andrea Chalupa (23:07):

Right. And they just went ahead and did it. And they're like, sits over international water. We can't do anything now.

Sandy Bachom (23:11):

And that is actually happening soon. But what I believe happened, because I'm a producer, my whole life produced television commercials for 40 years at the top ad agencies in the world. And that video was so extravagantly produced, edited, scored,

Andrea Chalupa (23:32):

Where they glorified skirting the law. Basically they glorified defying the courts by making this gauzy video.

Sandy Bachom (23:39):

But what the insidious thing was is that they said that this was the people on the planes. But what happened was the planes were in the air on Saturday. The planes left on Saturday the 15th, I think, something like that. And at eight o'clock the next morning, Bukele, the president of El Salvador released this video and then it was amplified by Musk to his 200 million followers, whatever, and then it went through the disinformation amplification network and they implied that those were the people on the planes. But that video, it was so glossy produced because this is what I do. It was drone footage, it was editing the closeups, it was lights flashing, head shaved tattoos, and then taking, it had taken days. So that video was produced way in advance of the flights. And I believe conspiracy theorists that this was the test of the courts. I filmed this guy Holman at the rod of iron. I dunno if you've ever heard of that. You know what the rod of iron is?

Andrea Chalupa (24:51):

No. What's the rod of iron?

Sandy Bachom (24:52):

The rod of iron is the gun cult. They worship the AR fifteens, and it's the son of Sun Young Moon, this guy named Sean Moon, it's out in Pennsylvania and I've filmed it for three years. And Mike Flynn was out there. Mike Flynn is back. By the way, he's in the meetings now. Did you notice that? Michael Flynn is now back in the White House? He's in the, and he spoke and this guy Holman spoke. He said exactly what he's saying, now we're coming for you. This was before the election. They knew because they knew they were going to win the election. This I believe is the constitutional crisis that we've all been talking about because when they defy the court, then that is when we're in deep, deep doodoo. And that's what I believe that this whole kabuki around this video and the planes leaving in defiance of the court and now they're going to say, like Coleman says, we don't care about the courts we're going to do, we're coming for you. So watch that, because I think that's the big one. And when the courts don't work anymore, democracy's over, I don't see, what do you think about that?

Andrea Chalupa (26:04):

It's kind of funny because they packed so many ideologues in there so they can kind of use the courts in certain places, so they don't need to defy the courts, just that the judges actually doing their job by holding the constitution. So the funny thing is that they could get judges that rubber stamp what they're doing. I think the whole thing is a constitutional crisis. I don't think we need to point to one. I think it's been a constitutional crisis since 2016 when Trump came to power illegally with the Kremlin's help. When you have longtime Kremlin operative Paul Manafort running your campaign for free, and you have a meeting with Russian intelligence in Trump Tower with the very people, Jared and Don Jr. And Manafort who are running your campaign, and that's June, 2016. And then what, A few weeks later, suddenly WikiLeaks releases all this hack material by the Russians taken from Democrats to DNC, and it's all carefully orchestrated and the media's falling for it like Catnet because they're immature

(27:03):

And America is an undeveloped democracy. We're a teenager in the world, a hot M hormonal teenager. So yeah, I think the whole thing has been a constitutional crisis and people that have studied authoritarianism for decades, I have been screaming about it and warning people and called crazy, hysterical conspiracy theorists. But we were right. And unfortunately, the last thing that I want to say is that Americans had the chance to avoid this. We had the chance because he told us from the very beginning who he was and what he wanted to do. He was very clear about it. You did not need to study authoritarianism to understand it. He was telling us the entire election in 2016, he couldn't say anything bad about Vladimir Putin, like you pointed out, Mexican judge, Mexican rapist, all the hate speech blasting a reporter with disabilities. All of it was there from the very beginning. And unfortunately, Americans have to get initiated into the group of people, which it was a very long list across this planet who have experienced dictatorship firsthand.

(28:15):

And obviously Jewish people don't need this. Non-white people don't need this. Japanese Americans don't need this. They didn't internment already on us soil, and there's a long list of groups that don't need that initiation and try to stop them, but for the rest, they unfortunately need to go through it themselves, and there's no guarantee even after that that there'll be wiser after. I mean, Poland had a, Poland suffered under dictatorship, but they still had a wannabe autocrat for a while, a Trumpian government. It's not a panacea, it's not a guarantee, but that's where we are. So I've seen an event about that because it's pretty infuriating that we could have stopped this. So many people that could have stopped it failed us.

Sandy Bachom (28:58):

Manafort. I went to Trump's first press conference in 2016. It was in July 11th, 2016. Manafort had just been brought on out of nowhere. Who was the guy the worked for the Russian oligarch. He worked for

Andrea Chalupa (29:18):

Deripaska.

Sandy Bachom (29:19):

Deripaska

Andrea Chalupa (29:19):

He was announced back in March.

Sandy Bachom (29:22):

Right? So in March he came on, and this press conference was in July 11th, and Manafort had just introduced Pence a few days earlier to Trump.

Andrea Chalupa (29:36):

to get the Evangelical vote.

Sandy Bachom (29:38):

Yeah, well, this press conference, the videos on YouTube is so fascinating because the whole press conference was all about the evangelicals, and he said, I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the evangelicals. And so he was wooing. This was Manafort and Bannon's doing, bringing in and probably Flynn too, bringing in the evangelicals, and that's when you have already a cult, the white evangelicals, I'm saying all religious these guys, but the white evangelicals, I was raised a Christian, this is nothing, any Christianity I was raised about. God is love and help people less fortunate than you. Anyway, so he brings on Mike Pence and Mike Pence says at this press conference, he says, I'm a Christian, I'm a Republican and I'm a conservative or something like that in that order. So number one, he's a Christian. And right after that was the convention. I mean Pence was brought on matter of days before the convention, and the only thing as you recall, that Manafort changed one thing in the platform was about Ukraine.

(30:44):

My opinion, this whole thing has been about Ukraine from the very get go. So then Manafort gives, and this didn't make any sense to me until I went to the inauguration. He gave the polling data to the Russians, and I didn't really understand what that meant until I interviewed a guy at the inauguration, this inauguration in dc, and he had a sign that said he was the number one door knocker in Georgia, and he was like a really reasonable guy. And I said, what does that mean? He said, there is an app they have in this town in Georgia, which was a swing state in all the swing states, they did this. They have an app that told you if the door you're knocking on, if they're Christian, if they own a gun, if they vote regularly in elections or they miss a year, which for some reason is a hook for them, it means they're changeable the vote for Obama.

(31:51):

Then you don't vote and then you maybe vote for Trump because rumor has it in the conspiracy mill is that Musk fooled with the tabulation machines in the swing states because it didn't make any sense that all the swing states went to Trump and that they announced it four hours before the election was closed. I think Elon's 4-year-old son said it in a video. They'll never find out. We sound like crazy conspiracy nerd, but it's true. When does it become not a conspiracy theory and actual fact? So it's been in the works for, my mother was a member of the John Birch Society. It's been in the works for since the fifties, probably longer ago, but since the fifties, and I don't know how we're going to get out of it. And then this Musk thing is just terrifying. I have a lot of followers on Twitter.

(32:49):

I had a lot of followers. I had 250,000 followers on Twitter will always be Twitter to me. I used to actually make a living. I live on social security and licensing my footage and people would support my work, but when he bought it, he blocked me immediately and he took me out of the algorithm. I don't know if you've experienced this yourself, and people just don't see me anymore for some reason. I'm getting millions of hits on things again, so maybe I'm back in. I filmed my phone where I called social Security and that has 2 million views I think on Twitter, but he's manipulating everything. That's why these Tesla protests are so powerful. Anybody can do them. Anybody. People ask me, what do I do? I want to get involved. So now all of a sudden people are saying, well, it's a little late, but better late than ever. They're saying, what can I do? What can I tell you? I said, well, you can find your local resistance group or a national resistance group, make a sign, handmade sign, go to a Tesla showroom every Saturday. Every Saturday across the country there.

Andrea Chalupa (33:57):

I think there's a lot that people can still do to resist and take back our country, and I think it's important for us to see it as it's not the Democratic party that's going to save us because they helped get us into this mess. There's no central power dynamic that is as organized as these fascists are. They didn't have an answer for any of this, even though they knew very well that the war is in the states and these state houses on this grassroots level,

(34:26):

The Republicans have been fighting and taking over our democracy, as you said, decades ago, and they waged that warfare in the states, in the State's government. Despite all that, it was grassroots groups like States Project, which I donate to, which gave far more money in 2024 to these state races for the Democrats than the actual Democratic party. We're not going to get out of this from some central operating system. It's very much a decentralized resistance, which actually makes it more insidious, which makes us more dangerous to them because it's a leaderless movement and that's the best movement you want and you want a lot of people flooding it. You want a lot of people showing up and protesting in Tesla dealerships and you want people being creative and bobbing and weaving when they zip that way. We zag that way. You've got to exhaust them. You got to rope a dope them

(35:22):

And force them to spend more and more money trying to stop us and block us and it's not going to work because they're radicalizing so many people with their own destruction. They're awakening so many of their own to their own cruelty because you have these Trump voters that married South American women who are now losing their wives on the border when they come back from a vacation. It's like, you snatched my wife. I have no idea where she is. She said some private prison in Louisiana, and I'm spending all my money, the down payment on the home. We're going to buy on lawyer fees because you Trump who we voted for. It's just crazy. So it's going to be a painful lesson. We could have avoided it. Unfortunately, a lot of people that did try to fight it and stop it are going to get swept up in the cruelty, and it's not fair.

(36:13):

It's not right. It's not our fault. If you listen to the show and you made your phone calls and knocked on doors and you made sure you vote, it wasn't your fault. But we all still need to fight like our lives depend on it because they do. And so do the lives of so many of our fellow citizens and global citizens around the world. And so I do want to ask you, you were there on January 6th. You witnessed that so much of what you've witnessed and recorded is archives of now that future historians will depend on to make sense of this moment.

Sandy Bachom (36:43):

Yeah

Andrea Chalupa (36:43):

I know this for a fact because in my research as a historian and filmmaker, I have depended on people like you that existed back in the 1930s and 1940s to make sense at that time. And so you are invaluable to future historians. And yes, there will be future historians and they're going to want to know the people's history, the eyewitness history, because if we are forced to be underground for a bit in exile for a bit, they're going to rewrite history just like Putin and Stalin did. And so we cannot let them do that. So what are you doing to preserve the countless hours of footage you've taken? Where's your library going to be? You should obviously have a place abroad, not just in the US.

Sandy Bachom (37:27):

It's so interesting you say that because I like to say something about eyewitnesses because I am working on this film. I had created this thing with Holocaust survivors, a little website called Last Eyewitness Project, and it was over the years, the Holocaust survivors. When I was lucky enough to find them, I would put the videos up, but you can find it on the internet. And one of the men that I met was a teacher and he would teach his experience in the Holocaust to school children that were his age when he was taken by the Gestapo, which is 13 years old, came to his house. But so he's dead now. He was in his nineties when he died. And the film I'm working on now is interviews with him and it's called The Last Eyewitness because when the last eyewitness is gone, we are left to stories about what people think happened.

(38:22):

So we have to preserve, I could be the last eyewitness to democracy. I'm the last eyewitness to what happened on January 6th because I'm 80 in my last chapter, however long it goes. And I tell people when they see something on the street like these groups, Patriot Front, which I've filmed and Blood Tribe and the Goam Defense League, they do these. All of a sudden they're in Nashville or they're in some obscure city in Iowa or something. Get your phone out and start shooting and become a citizen journalist. That's how I started at Occupy Wall Street, became a citizen journalist at Occupy Wall Street. So that's one tangible thing you can do. I tell people to do that, and because we have to document this, they have apparently disappeared. Now that Elon's in there, God knows what all the January 6th committee stuff is. It's come to light that one of the January 6th hostages, all of his, the discovery is gone.

(39:25):

All the video's gone. So if they did it to one guy, what are they doing to the rest of, so myself and my colleagues that were there, I always wanted to do a film of just, we were everywhere. We were at each entrance. I was on the West side, my friends were on the east side. When the Oath Keepers broke in, my friends were inside in one window in the east side and the window on the right side. Then the west side, when the Proud Boy, I filmed The Proud Boys coming up to the Washington Monument at 10 o'clock the morning of January 6th, and Enrique Tario, who was the leader was had been arrested, so he wasn't there, but we always believed that he took himself out of the scene specifically. So whatever happened, he would either still be around. I don't know what the reason was, but we're pretty sure all the films that have been made about it. One friend of mine did a film called 64 Days, and he was the one that was doing the documentary on The Proud Boys, Nick Quested. He was the first witness in the January 6th hearings. And we all kind of agree that Enrique took himself out. So in that group was all of the proud boys that were sent to jail for 22 years for Seditious Conspiracy. And I said, oh, good, I'm safe. Right?

(40:51):

I'll be 110 when Enrique gets out. And there they are. They had a press conference. I mean, I'm sure I'll see them again. I did see Gavin McGinnis. They do a documentary on me in that my meeting with Gavin McGinnis will be in that documentary. So I won't tell you about that. But the importance of everybody being an eyewitness, because when the eyewitnesses are gone, they can say anything they want. They can say The Holocaust never happened, which they do. Nick Fuentes, whom I have filmed a couple of times, is a Holocaust denni. And he's so blatant about it. I used to think that was his gimmick. I thought that was his hook, that he didn't really believe it, but he really believes that Jews are horrible people and the Holocaust never happened. And he's a horrible antisemite as most of them are, as Trump is.

(41:44):

By the way, you know what David Duke said in Charlottesville? He said, we are here to support the policies of Donald Trump. That's why we voted for him was the head of the Ku Klux Klan, the Grand Wizard, former Grand Wizard of Ku Klux Klan. When Trump was elected the first time, there were a hundred thousand people in the streets, 50,000 people at a march would show up. And I think people are starting to wake up seeing what's happening in Serbia and what's happening in Europe, a million people in the streets. And that's the way to bring down a despot is the people. Patty Smith, she sang this song at Occupy Wall Street. I'd never heard it before. It says, and the people have the power to redeem the work of fools. It's decreed on the meek. The grace is showered. It's decreed. The people rule. And we have forgotten that.

(42:46):

We have forgotten. It's up to you to get your ass out into the street if you're not going to get to the fucking poles, which 8 million didn't. You can rectify that. Get out there, bring your, there's one woman who's with Rise and Resist. Rise and Resist is a wonderful group in New York. They did the die-in down in Wall Street that was on Rachel Maddow. They're relentless. They do. Every Tuesday, they go to Fox News and they hold their signs up and they started these Tesla protests. Well, Elon Musk put them on a list, and now they're being investigated for domestic terrorism. The people in this group are their sixties, seventies, eighties, and one woman is 92, and she went inside the Tesla dealership on her red walker, and I've got video of her walk by the red Tesla sign. And I said, how old are you? She says, 92. I said, when did you first start protesting? She said, the Vietnam War, which is my generation. So we still have hope. I know that you agree with that. We're not giving up yet, right?

Andrea Chalupa (43:57):

Absolutely not. They're assholes. Why make it easy for them?

Sandy Bachom (44:02):

Be a pain in their ass. Just be a fucking irritant. Exactly. If that is your only job, they hate me. They call me an old. The things they say to me, they say, I killed my son. Total 21-year-old little pitchers in line at a Trump rally goes, oh, you killed your son. It's just bad parenting. Who gives them permission to take my personal tragedy of the loss of my son and just say to an 80-year-old woman, I killed my, this is where we are. Stuff that Gavin McGinness said to me, he, you miserable cunt. He said, you miserable cunt. I never met him before. You put two innocent people in jail. He said, but the thing that put two innocent people in jail are 12 jurors. It wasn't me. I didn't even see who started the fight. I just happened to be a witness. What we do is uncomfortable. You think it's uncomfortable for me to get yelled at by these guys, and I don't give a shit because I'm old and I'm going to continue to do this to my last breath.

(45:11):

What's your excuse if I'm 80? Everybody's got an iPhone. That's how we get them. Everybody takes out their iPhone. That's what we did at Occupy Wall Street. They would say, the cops are coming and everybody, they say, grab your cameras. It was the most photographed event at that time in history was those days in Zuccotti Park. And that's how I learned how to shoot that kind of conflict. Journalism like that. If I can do it, you can do it. There's no excuse anymore. And if you love this country the way I do, he perverted the flag. He humps the flag. I got him at CPAC hugging and molesting the flag of the United States of America. My uncle is buried in Arlington. My other uncle was shot down when he was 19 years old, over by the fucking Nazi. Shot him down over the English channel. He never found his body.

(46:05):

So I do it for them, and I just hope we can get the numbers together and at the very least, just be an irritant. Go to the town halls. I went to this town hall. I'm just starting to post it now, and the response is really incredible. It was the first question because the town halls are asking, and I'm going to continue going to the town halls because they can't get the Republicans to go. So the Democrats have a town, they have a town hall in the Republican district, and then they have, in this case it was Tom Malinowski who had lost the seat to the Republican guy. And then the people get a chance to ask the questions that we're all asking, what country abolishes the Department of Education in time without missing a beat said the Taliban. So that's valuable. Document that, put it up on YouTube. Put it up on Instagram. We all have a role here.

Andrea Chalupa (47:00):

What advice do you have for people who are in red states where they feel outnumbered and they're scared and they know that if they show up at this protest, there could be violence.

Sandy Bachom (47:09):

I don't know about the violence, but I wanted to do, and I think I'm going to do it. I want to make a little card for how to responsibly protest. You should, because you have rights on the street. It's your first amendment right to assemble, as long as it's not violent. And what I do when it gets violent, I did it in Charlottesville. I did it at the Capitol. I run the other way. I turn around and I'll leave it to my friends to get up close with these guys, and I run and I use a Zoom lens. I get far away as possible. What a great opportunity to be in a red state. You can go to these town halls. Do you see what's happening at the town halls with that veteran? He says, you took away my benefits. You took away my social security.

(47:55):

Once they go into Social security and they go into Medicaid, there's going to be a shift because it's going to hurt the red states more, I believe supposedly than the blue states. I would not survive if it didn't have Medicare and Social Security. I was in a car accident. I didn't walk for a year. I worked my whole life, made a lot of money, then I lost everything. I was run over by a car, got a crook lawyer. I stole my money, got me evicted, and I applied early for Social security. And every month I know that that check's going to get deposited. But now I'm worried. What do I do? Where do you go? Where are you going to call if they don't deposit your check? What do you do? Get out there. And in the red states, you will find allies. If you go to a Tesla protest, you will find allies. There's indivisible groups all over the country, and I think more and more are going to spring up. But go to the Facebook groups of these. Rise and Resist in New York has a Facebook group. They'll tell you how to do it. They give courses in how to peacefully civil disobedience courses and just be a pain in their ass. An 80-year-old woman with an iPhone, you cannot believe the havoc I can wreak with an iPhone.

(49:23):

So that's my advice.

Andrea Chalupa (49:32):

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(50:40):

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Andrea Chalupa