Brandon Straka explains the #WalkAway campaign and his disillusionment with Democratic Party and liberal media
Former liberal Brandon Straka details his conversion on 'Life, Liberty & Levin.'
This is a rush transcript from "Life, Liberty & Levin," March 3, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
MARK LEVIN, HOST: Hello America, I'm Mark Levin. This is "Life Liberty and Levin." Brandon Straka, how are you my friend?
BRANDON STRAKA, FOUNDER OF THE #WALKAWAY MOVEMENT: Great to be here.
LEVIN: It is spelled Straka but it's "Strak" is that correct?
STRAKA: You nailed it.
LEVIN: So I am the first one to get it right.
STRAKA: You're one of the first.
LEVIN: All right, Americans, it's "Strak" and I want you to remember that name because he is a very important guest and a very important interview, which is why wanted to have you on the program.
You, Brandon have started a movement called the #WalkAway Movement.
STRAKA: Yes.
LEVIN: So let's start at the beginning. What is the #WalkAway Movement?
STRAKA: Well, so we started as the #WalkAway Campaign and it initially began as a social media campaign. I'm a former Democrat, a former liberal. I always voted Democrat my entire adult life and you know, I'm a gay man and so really for me, I kind of called myself a Democrat by default because I think that the Democratic Party does this incredible job of marketing themselves toward minority groups in America and telling us that we need them and telling us that we're in danger constantly from people on the right, that Republicans hate us, that conservatives hate us and wish to do us harm.
And they've got the liberal media machine backing them up, so for me it was kind of a no-brainer. I'm a gay man, I'm a liberal. I'm a Democrat and I think that that's sort of the autopilot kind of thinking that most minorities in America go into, and well, I think we'll probably get into the story, but essentially after the 2016 election, I --
LEVIN: You voted for Hillary.
STRAKA: I did. I voted for Hillary Clinton.
LEVIN: So how recently did you convert?
STRAKA: Well. So after the 2016 --
LEVIN: What happened and caused to you convert?
STRAKA: Like most people, when Donald Trump announced that he was running for President, I thought it was a joke. I was laughing right along with everybody else until it got to be around the primary and it became very clear that he was probably going to be the Republican candidate and then all of a sudden, things got really scary because again, that liberal media machine that targets, you know, people like me and I think other minorities started using our identities against us because this is what they do.
LEVIN: But what did you think Donald Trump was going to do the gay community?
STRAKA: well, I mean they were telling us that you know, his running mate, Mike Pence was this raging homophobe who was going to try to mandate conversion therapy for gay people. I mean, there were people talking about putting gay people in concentration camps. I mean, I know it's so laughable now, but at the time, it was really, really scary because as absurd as it seems to me at this point, I really believed everything that the liberal media told me.
I mean, I believed that he called all Mexicans rapists. I believed that he advocated for the sexual assault of all women and so, as he was gaining popularity and we were leading up to Election Day, I was sitting here like I think many liberals and Democrats going, "What is going on with conservatives in this country?" Like who are all these covert bigots that we didn't understand that we were living amongst?
Because you have to remember, too, we just had eight years of Barack Obama and so the liberal media never told us that he did anything wrong. I mean they talked about a scandal-free presidency. They talked about you know, this amazing Savior for eight years and they never even really reported to us much about people on the right having issues with Obama.
I mean, we just thought that this guy could do no wrong. So when all of a sudden, we have according to them the world's biggest bigot vying for the highest office in the country and he has all of this support we're going, "What is happening?"
So Election Day rolls around and you know, I wasn't terribly concerned because the same liberal media told me that he had a 3% chance of winning, so there was nothing really to be afraid of. Well, boy oh boy, did we get a surprise on Election Day, right? So I was one of those people --
LEVIN: How did you feel?
STRAKA: Oh, I was shattered. Shattered. I mean, I was -- I remember sitting at home watching the election results roll in and if you'll recall, it went into the night. It was, you know, they didn't call it early, so I ended up going to bed because I was getting so nervous I just couldn't take it, but I couldn't sleep.
So I was rolling over like every 15 minutes and going to the world's most reliable source, "The Huffington Post," to see you know what -- because I know they wouldn't lie to me, so I was trying to see what they would say and finally, I think somewhere around 2:00 to 2:15 in the morning, there's Donald Trump's picture with a giant red banner on "The Huffington Post" that said, "Nightmare: President Trump," and then underneath the picture it said, "Millions to lose health insurance, civil rights to be rolled back dot, dot, dot and other possible headlines from a Trump presidency."
So they started scaring us with fake headlines, literally immediately after like the moment that he got elected, but still it wasn't clear to me, I wasn't seeing what they were doing, I was just scared to death -- scared to death.
So I got on Facebook the next day and I made a video crying, literally crying, saying you know like, "Why? What were you guys thinking? Why did you do this?" And I spent the next couple of months --
LEVIN: Meaning what did all you deplorables vote for him?
STRAKA: Yes. Yes, it's important maybe to mention that I grew up in a rural community in Nebraska, a little tiny farm town called O'Neill, Nebraska and so, a lot of my friends on Facebook and family members and people I grew up with, I knew that they had voted for Trump even though they hadn't actually stated, I knew and so I was just like, how could you do this? How could you do this to me? How could you do this to people like me? What were you thinking? How could you do it to America? What were you thinking?
And so for about two months, I was posting like this and nobody would answer me and it was about two months exactly after the election at the end of January of 2017, I wrote a post in which I said, "You know, for the life of me, I will never be able to understand how you could watch this man stand before a cheering crowd and mock a reporter's disability and still go into that voting booth and pull the lever for him. What is wrong with you?"
LEVIN: And the media pushed that scene at that rally over, over, over again.
STRAKA: I remember vividly being at the gym and looking at because, you know, they don't play Fox News at the gym or at airports and it's always CNN, always CNN everywhere you go, so I remember being at the gym and looking up at the CNN on the screen and seeing him frozen in that position with the banner underneath that said, "Donald Trump mocks disabled reporter."
And so I put this post on Facebook and finally somebody answered me. It was a woman named "Diane," who was my babysitter when I was a baby and she -- staunch Christian conservative --she and I had many battles over the years on Facebook, but I never unfriended her as I did so many other conservatives who I had had arguments with. I didn't unfriend her and she wrote to me privately and she said, "Listen, I don't want you to like rip me a new one, I'm just asking have you seen this?"
And she sent me a video, a YouTube video entitled, "Debunking the Trump mocked the disabled reporter." Now, I saw this video and I became instantly enraged just reading the title because I thought, "Oh here we go." More like right-wing propaganda, more brainwashing and then I got almost exhilarated. I was like, "I can't wait to watch this and tell her how stupid she is for falling for this propaganda."
So I played the video and it was about six or seven minutes of footage of Donald Trump doing that exact same voice in that exact same gesture as he did that day when he mocked the reporter's disability, but the common thread in all of these different scenes throughout the years was that, he was imitating someone who was caught in a lie or imitating somebody who was groveling because they had done something shady.
And I watched it and Mark, I'm telling you, it was the strangest experience I've ever had in my life. I almost sort of dissociated for a moment because there was this disconnect between my brain and my heart because my brain was telling me, "Oh my god, I don't think that he mocked that reporter's disability." My heart was saying, "But we hate him, but we hate him, but we hate him."
And so I couldn't reconcile within myself what had happened and so I shut my computer. I watched it three times and I couldn't figure it out, so I went to bed, woke up the next day and I watched it again and I thought, "Okay, he didn't. He didn't mock that reporter's disability," but why did CNN tell me that he did because CNN has never lied to me before, so why did they start lying today?"
You know, I couldn't figure it out, so I started asking these questions and going to -- you know, I live in New York City now so I started going to other liberal friends, co-workers saying, "Have you seen this? Have you seen this?" And I was instantly met with this wall of hostility and contempt. People were, "What are you doing? What do you doing? What? So you love Trump now? What are you doing?"
I said, "I don't love Trump. I'm just trying to understand, this doesn't make any sense to me." They were very angry at me for even asking questions. Now, I thought this was strange because I thought, here we are, and we are upset all the time because he's been elected. We're crying. We're terrified.
Here I am coming to you with this little piece of evidence that says - that suggests maybe things aren't as bad as they seem, but you don't want to believe that maybe things aren't as bad. You want to be angry. I thought this is very interesting.
But the point is that, it became very clear to me that I wasn't safe asking these questions because people didn't want to have this conversation. So I started getting in bed every night after I was working and just watching videos on YouTube or reading stories trying to understand, researching the media taking moments out of context and what I found was fascinating.
I found videos of black people showing up for Trump rallies to support him and when they showed up, CNN would cut them out of the shot so that it appeared that there were only white people there. I watched him calling Mexicans "all Mexicans rapists" speech and saw once again that they had taken that moment out of context and that wasn't at all what he was saying. He didn't say anything negative about Mexicans in general. He was talking about some people being released from prison and coming over the border, you know, and I started to see my God --
LEVIN: And by the way, let me just -- it reminds me of Charlottesville and they continued to push this racism argument that he was saying both sides of an argument, he was endorsing the Klan and the neo-Nazis, that's not what he did.
STRAKA: Not at all.
LEVIN: He was saying, both sides of good people, pro or con, those monuments that there are arguments to be made and you don't have to be a racist to say "Leave the monuments alone," a lot of people believe you shouldn't be book-burning, you should be pulling down monuments and so forth.
But even today, CNN and MSNBC tried to create the notion that somehow, he's a white supremacist.
STRAKA: Yes.
LEVIN: Anyway you were saying?
STRAKA: Yes, no, but that's a perfect example and interestingly, with Charlottesville, I had already at that point had my eyes open that actually happened after these events, so that was one of the first examples that I was experiencing in real-time because now, I saw, I was like, "I see what they do," and it's the kind of thing once you see it, you can never unsee it. Once you realize what they're doing, you see it every single time.
So when Charlottesville happened, I already knew and I was like, "Aha, they're doing it again. They're doing it again," because you're right. He certainly did not say, "Oh the neo-Nazis and the KKK, great people." No, no, no, he was saying there were also historians mixed in with these people who were just simply protesting to preserve their speech.
LEVIN: The free speech people. Leave everything alone.
STRAKA: Absolutely.
LEVIN: The warts and all and let the American people sort it out.
STRAKA: Right.
LEVIN: Don't pull monuments down. Don't burn books. We're smart. We can figure these things out.
STRAKA: Yes.
LEVIN: And the stains are important to know about.
STRAKA: Yes.
LEVIN: There is a Confederate General who did this, this, this, this and that's important to know, isn't it?
STRAKA: That's absolutely important to know.
LEVIN: When we come back, as I listened to you, I want to get more into this movement and more of what you're doing cause I think it's crucially important.
STRAKA: Thank you.
LEVIN: I want to talk about the media, not just to talk about the media and the hit on the media, but what you seem to be saying to me is, "I was brainwashed. I was brainwashed." Social media and by all these people, by CNN, by MSNBC that keep pushing this agenda.
The media are they giving us news? Are they giving us propaganda? I want to ask you that when we return.
Ladies and gentlemen, don't forget, almost every weeknight, you can watch me on Levin TV, Levin TV go to blazetv.com/mark to sign up, blazetv.com/mark or give us a call at 844-LEVIN TV, 844-LEVIN-TV. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEVIN: Brandon Straka, I want to get to the media part in a second, but I want you to finish. You come to this realization that you have been played that you've been manipulated, and now suddenly, you see a light -- light of Liberty.
STRAKA: Yes.
LEVIN: But you've created this movement, so finish your story for us.
STRAKA: Well, so as I was you know, getting into bed every night and doing more research you know as anyone who use uses YouTube knows you start off with one video and then you end up in a rabbit hole and it's four days later and you've missed work and you're still watching videos.
You know, so I would start off kind of watching these things about the media and then eventually, it would lead me to you know Ben Shapiro speeches, Ann Coulter, Milo Yiannopoulos -- all of these different conservatives who in the past, I wasn't even willing -- Tucker Carlson, who I love more than God himself now.
You know, I wasn't even willing to look at these videos before. I would just see Tucker's bow tie and I was like, "Next, next," you know, but like suddenly I was like listening for the first time and I was like, "My God, the conservative point of view makes so much more sense than all of this identity politics, political correctness, divisive, divisive, divisive nonsense that I've been going along with in lockstep for so many years."
And so then it became more and more difficult. This is when I thought to myself, "Oh my God, I think I'm becoming a conservative or maybe I always was, I don't know." But I reached this point by 2018 where I was willing to say, "I'm a conservative and I don't -- you know, as a gay man, I've done the closet before. I've done the hiding my head in shame and denying who I am. I'm not doing it again. I'm not going back for round two.
So I was like, you know, "I'm going to wear this conservatism proudly and I'm not going to be silent about it," and I don't want -- I see the way the Trump supporters are being treated. I see the way the conservatives are being treated and I want -- I do not want to allow that to happen either if there's anything I can do about it.
So I came up with this idea to shoot a six-minute video, I jokingly called the "Definitive Manifesto of Everything that's wrong with Liberalism and the Democratic Party."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STRAKA: Once upon a time I was a liberal. In an effort to gain voters and maintain power, the Democratic Party that I once loved has joined forces with the extremist left.
The Democratic Party and the liberal media now believe their own ill-gotten conclusions and have ominously decided that they and only they know the remedy for society's ills.
So I am walking away and I encourage all of you to do the same. Walk away.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STRAKA: I put this video out on social media, but I realized that there was a larger purpose here. It wasn't just enough for me to tell my story and to kind of, you know punch through that wall of, "I'm going to boldly where my conservatism and not be ashamed to denounce the Democratic Party and liberalism." I know there are millions of other people who are feeling exactly the same way I'm feeling, too. That their Party has left them. That the Democratic Party has become a party of rage and hate and lies and the liberal media machine that backs them up. They're sick of it. People are tired of it.
So I created something that I called the #WalkAway Campaign. I encouraged other people to also make their videos and put them out there so that we could create almost this Internet community of support and I dreamed that it would be a big deal, but I didn't really know, I didn't know how people would react.
I created a Facebook group and I said, "Look use the #WalkAway and make your videos and talk about why you're walking away from the Democratic Party. It exploded and what I also told people, too was you know, going back to sort of my story of how this all happened. For months, I was reaching out on social media saying, you know why did you guys do this? No one would answer me.
So I said, "Listen, it's time for the silent majority to become un-silent. We need people on the right to be making their testimonials to reclaiming the narrative of what it means to be a conservative." So we have what we call the #WalkAways and we have what we call the walk-whiffs who are those who walk with those who walk away. Those are the conservatives.
And thousands of people started making their testimonials and at this point, the group has grown to over 400,000 on all social media platforms. We have tens of thousands of testimonials and it's become a massive movement. It's a very real thing, #WalkAway.
LEVIN: Do you think people who are brainwashed or mesmerized by the modern day media, do you think more and more people are capable of it?
STRAKA: Yes, because -- and I'm living proof of that. If we could get into a time machine and go back two years ago and this person could meet the former me, the former me would think that pod people had taken over and that somebody had stolen my brain.
But yes, if I can change, anybody can change and we are going to -- and we have change. I mean, since I started #WalkAway, I get messages by the hundreds, sometimes by the thousands saying, "Because of this campaign, my eyes have been opened. We are going to change minds and we are going to change hearts."
But we're so much more now than just a social media campaign. One of the things of many that we're going to do going into 2020 and beyond is education and one of the things I want to do is create a video series, a very excellent quality video series debunking media lies and myths and teaching people how to be skeptical again when they're watching the news, teach them how to be analytical and see for themselves as I said before, once you see it, you can't unsee it. Just teach them to realize what is being done to them, the brainwashing so that they see, "Ah, they're doing it again. Ah, they're doing it again."
Because you know, they don't care about news, what they care about is a narrative and right now, the most important thing to them is pushing the narrative of division through racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, xenophobia, any phobia that you can think of.
So they start with a conclusion. The conclusion is, you're a bigot. The conclusion is, you're a racist. Then they work backwards and they go out and they seek out anything that they can spin as evidence to support that conclusion.
They're not going out looking for stories. They're looking for little sound bites that they can use to support the conclusion that they've already come to.
LEVIN: It's a great point. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AISHAH HASNIE, CORRESPONDENT, FOX NEWS: This is a Fox News Alert from "America's News Headquarters," I'm Aishah Hasnie. An Alabama sheriff says at least 14 people are dead from a possible tornado some 100 miles southwest of Atlanta. Several people are still missing as crews search through the wreckage and the debris. A local coroner now says he expects that death toll to rise to at least 20. The damage is being described as catastrophic in the community of Beauregard. The state's Governor Kay Ivey tweeting this out earlier today, "Our hearts go out to those who lost their lives in the storms that hit Lee County today. Praying for their families and everyone whose homes or businesses were affected."
Officials from Alabama, EMA and other agencies are quickly working to provide assistance. The governor also warning about the possibility of more severe weather overnight.
I am Aishah Hasnie, now back to "Life, Liberty & Levin."
LEVIN: Brandon Straka, Donald Trump -- you despised him. His election almost ruined your life you felt. What do you think of him today?
STRAKA: Love him.
LEVIN: You love Donald Trump.
STRAKA: I love Donald Trump.
LEVIN: Tell us why.
STRAKA: Well for so many reasons. First of all, I think he's doing a spectacular job as President. I love that he's a rebel and a revolutionary and I think that he is -- this is what is so disappointing to me about this period that we're living in right now.
If liberals and Democrats could just let go of the hatred, I mean we're -- this could be the most fun enjoyable time, one of the most in our nation's history. I mean, Donald Trump is the President. Whenever are we ever going to get this time back? But they can't enjoy and they're making themselves miserable. They're making us miserable.
But you know, another reason I think I love him is because once and again, I say once you see it, you can't unsee it. Once you see clearly what they're doing to him and the way that they're maligning him and lying about him and just assassinating his character on a daily basis and going after his family and going after his children and going after -- you realize, I have such a deep admiration for this man at this point that he's willing to endure this because newsflash, he doesn't need to.
He doesn't need the money. He doesn't need the fame. He doesn't need the attention. I mean this guy could be retiring and enjoying this time with his grandchildren and enjoying his wealth and traveling the world. He is doing this because he loves the American people and he cares about this country.
And so when I look at somebody who is willing to just you know just get smacked around as much as he does and still keep taking it and doing it for the American people, I have nothing but admiration for the man.
LEVIN: How are you received in the so-called gay community?
STRAKA: They don't, I think, yet understand what it is that I'm doing and that's kind of the attitude that I try to take is that, despite any treatment that I may be receiving right now, which is obviously not favorable, I think that in time, the gay community and the liberals in general are going to have a clearer understanding of what it is that I'm trying to do because --
See what it is right now is that, so many are still stuck, I think, again because of the liberal media. In this mindset that if you're a conservative, you wish to do harm to the gay community or you wish, you know, if you're a Republican it's because you hate gay people.
Not only have I not found that to be true, I've been warmly embraced by conservatives and I mean, I'm leading this kind of phenomenal movement and nobody has come up to me and said, "You know I really love your movement, but you're gay, so I just -- I can't get on board." Like that hasn't happened and it's not -- you know, it's only growing and growing.
And so what I really want the gay community to see is that -- I'm largely trying to empower them, same with black people, same with brown people, same with all of these other targeted groups in the left, the Democratic Party. I want them to see that the world has changed, you know, and this is I think another important point, it's not as if oppression is a fallacious concept. I mean our nation has a dark history, you know, in the way that we have treated black people, the way that we've treated brown people and women and LGBT people.
But I want to focus on where we are today. I want to let go of the past and live in the present and look to the future, which at this point, I don't believe that we live in a time where we are oppressing minorities in America anymore. It just isn't happening and that goes for the gay community as well.
I want them to see, "Hey, guys, like let's move on. Let's forgive and move on," because I think at this point, we should be worrying about empowering ourselves as individuals and not sticking within these groups and seeing ourselves as victims.
LEVIN: But some people are heavily invested in being victims.
STRAKA: It's their identity.
LEVIN: Some groups are invested -- front groups -- they give a lot of money to promote victimhood.
STRAKA: That's right.
LEVIN: And the louder they are, the more radical they are, the more outrageous they are, the more they draw media attention and headlines and so forth. It's sort of a very vicious cycle. What you seem to be saying to me is, "Let's get off the hamster wheel. Let's start to pay attention to what's actually going on. Put the brainwashing aside, and let's embrace our individuality and our liberty regardless of who you are or what you are," which is a quintessential conservative message.
STRAKA: Absolutely. And what you're describing is what I call the oppression industry. It's an industry that exists by constantly making people feel like they're in danger, constantly making them feel like they don't have the same rights or advantages or opportunities as other people in this country and after they get done delivering that message and they say, "And click here to donate, please."
So yes, what I want is for people to see that you know, they can embrace their individual identity and it's not like these things aren't extremely important, they are.
I mean, if I look at my own community, the gay community, we have an astronomical HIV rate in this community. We have an astronomically accelerated drug and alcohol abuse rate in this community. Now, these aren't coincidences. These are the results of people constantly being fed the messages that they are not good enough, that they are in danger, that they are not wanted, that they're hated, that they're, you know --
And so I want people to see, this isn't reality anymore. It doesn't have to be this way. I'm sober. I've just celebrated more than four years of sobriety and my life has changed tremendously for the better. I wish what I have and what has happened to me for every other person who's ever felt like they weren't good enough or that they were a victim or that -- set yourself free. I want these people to be liberated and it can happen, it should happen.
But they're constantly getting messages from their media, from their party - the Democratic Party, that we're still living in the past.
LEVIN: Wouldn't the Democratic Party cease to be, that is cease to exist, but for the balkanization of Americans, but for the victimization of Americans, but for trashing America and yet I see people by the tens of millions who would pour into this country if we allowed the poor into this country, gay people, straight people, black people, brown people, white people -- all people. We are such an oppressive horrific country that we can't keep people out. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEVIN: Brandon Straka, you didn't go to college?
STRAKA: No.
LEVIN: Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
STRAKA: Well, now I think it's a good thing.
LEVIN: Why is that?
STRAKA: Because I never got indoctrinated. I mean, I actually think that that's probably part of the reason I was able to get out alive the way that I was and hopefully, encourage a lot of other people to get out as well. You know, I hear all the time now that these colleges and universities are just becoming more and more indoctrination camps I think than institutions of learning.
And I have to believe that that's true because I have seen with my own eyes the way that this sort of liberal -- excuse me for saying -- but cancer has overtaken the minds of young people. I mean, they can't even carry on a conversation --
LEVIN: Have you spoken in any college campuses?
STRAKA: Well, I will be.
LEVIN: It appears that when conservatives simply try to speak at universities and colleges all over the country, it creates a violent response, which goes to the issue of academic freedom and free speech. There doesn't really seem to be academic freedom and free speech in a lot of our campuses in this country.
Your #WalkAway boom, are you going to focus some on colleges and universities?
STRAKA: Absolutely. Yes, I mean, we have to kind of go into the belly of the beast in many, many respects. So yes, young people are absolutely a demographic that we must speak to and we will get into colleges and high schools, but there are a lot of other initiatives.
We're using very creative means to try to communicate with people and I think this is why we've been so successful. I mean, we have an enormous amount of black people and brown people in this campaign and the reason why I think is because we're communicating with people in ways that I think typical conservatives and Republicans never have before.
One instance is around Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, we put out a 35- minute short film documentary that we made so -- with this campaign, as I told you before, it started as video testimonials, people telling their stories. So we had a Hollywood film producer in our campaign, his name's Mike Bosse. He created a 35-minute -- we call it "documonial" testimonial- documentary using the testimonials of 20 black Americans and he threaded them together to create this unbelievable compelling sort of story about the black experience in America, how this particular community is indoctrinated into voting Democrat, telling the true history of the KKK, talking about Planned Parenthood, talking about faith and religion and how these things play in and we call it "The Great Awakening: Breaking the chains of the Democratic Party."
We put it out, it's available for people to watch on YouTube for free anytime that they want and so we put this out and it's had phenomenal response and so what we're going to do now with that film is actually rent out theaters across the country, raise the money so that people can come and watch it for free and fill the theater with as many you know, people of color as we can and have a panel of #WalkAway people who after the movie is over, we're going to have like town hall-style discussions and say, "Why are we still voting Democrat? And is this still serving as well?"
And I intend to do the same thing with the LGBT community. We're going to do a #WalkAway LGBT town halls across the country -- San Francisco, New York City -- and really just have honest and frank discussions and say, "Listen, it's time to rethink our political motivations and proclivities."
LEVIN: This is a widespread grassroots movement you're trying to create here. This issue of race is very interesting to me. The President was making progress in the black community. There was a poll, I think back in August, I forget if it was Pew or Gallup. Twenty one percent favorability in the black community particularly among black males, and then I noticed the media started pounding him as a racist and he's a racist and bringing the race barkers on from various universities and colleges, of the Capitol Hill. "He is a racist. He's a racist."
And I'm sitting I think, "What the hell has he done that's racist?" I can't think of a single thing, can you?
STRAKA: No. And then they under report all of the amazing things that he does, too. I mean he's done these incredible sort of celebrations and things at the White House during Black History Month. The First Step Act, I think, is an incredible thing that will really, really help the black family in America.
He has already, you know, pardoned people who got these crazy life sentences for kind of you know smaller petty crimes, certainly, things that didn't warrant a life sentence. He's done amazing things to try to help the black community and -- but they need to keep these people thinking that he's a racist.
LEVIN: And isn't that what you're up against?
STRAKA: Yes.
LEVIN: Exactly that. That is, we can't have a Clarence Thomas.
STRAKA: Right.
LEVIN: A man who thinks for himself and who believes in our founding principles -- liberty.
STRAKA: Right.
LEVIN: We can't have people who step out, whether it's a gay person, black person, a Latino person, a Jewish person. They called him anti-Semitic despite the fact he's the greatest President in terms of Israel's support and his daughter is an Orthodox Jew and he's got Jewish -- and yet this mantra goes on and on and on. Isn't this what you're going to be up against? The whole #WalkAway movement.
STRAKA: Perhaps it is, but I'm really not concerned about it. I mean, if they think they're going to come after me, they've got the wrong guy because I don't quit, I don't give up. I am endlessly creative. I mean, these are the means that I use to communicate with people that have been very effective and if they're going to try to sabotage me, I will outfox them at every turn.
LEVIN: And I have no doubt you will. Ladies and gentlemen, don't forget almost every weeknight, you can watch Levin TV. Give us a called at 844- LEVIN- TV, 844-LEVIN-TV to join us or go to blazetv.com/mark, blazetv.com/mark. We have a great conservative digital TV community there and I hope you'll join us. We'll be right back.
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LEVIN: You are not out there pushing victimhood, you're not out there pushing a left-wing agenda, so let me make a guess. You're not invited on CNN.
STRAKA: No.
LEVIN: You're not invited on MSNBC.
STRAKA: No.
LEVIN: There is not a full-page spread in any Style section in "The Washington Post" or anything like that.
STRAKA: Oh there is.
LEVIN: Oh, but against you.
STRAKA: Well, so what it is once the campaign got to the point where it was no longer ignorable about by the liberal media, they did start telling stories about us, but what they said was that this was a campaign that was conjured up by Vladimir Putin and that it's supported by Russians.
LEVIN: How's he doing by the way?
STRAKA: And that it's a Russian propaganda campaign. He is good. He is good. He and I have an on-again off-again --
LEVIN: Don't we all.
STRAKA: Yes, it depends on his mood. No, so that's how they tell the story. They tell people that #WalkAway is a Russian propaganda campaign that is was designed to hurt Democrats and that you know -- see this is how insidious and sneaky they are. They do this so that they can then have an excuse to start suppressing more conservatives on social media.
So they can say, "Ah that #WalkAway, that's that Russian propaganda thing and we have to suppress this account, we have to suppress that account, it's all tied together and it's very, very insidious.
LEVIN: You know what the Russian propaganda thing used to be?
STRAKA: What?
LEVIN: The Democratic Party.
STRAKA: Oh really?
LEVIN: For almost their entire modern existence.
STRAKA: Oh.
LEVIN: They tried to undermine Reagan who was trying to defeat the Soviets, and they were behind these movements, the nuclear freeze movement and other movements that were intended to tie the hands of the United States Military and also their little offshoots, the satellite countries that the Soviets were backing.
Nancy Pelosi went to Syria that was against the will of President George W. Bush, Speaker Jim Wright went and visited Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and other communist genocidal maniac. She was asked -- he was asked not to do that by Ronald Reagan. Ted Kennedy communicated with the Kremlin because he wanted to defeat Ronald Reagan in 1984.
Meanwhile, you and I somehow are influenced by Vladimir Putin, and you know we're not even sure how to spell his name and we're influenced by Vladimir Putin.
STRAKA: Well, see so when this happened to me, it was one another time in my life where I said, "Okay, so we're are getting something thrown at us, let's spin it and make it into a positive. This is what I say, I will outfox them every time.
So I said, "Okay, if they're going to call my campaign Russian propaganda and all of the people in it, Russian bots, let's just show them the truth," and so we put together a march on Washington that we did 10 days before the midterm elections. We raised an enormous amount of money through the contributions of hardworking Americans they gave twenty thirty dollars. We put together a spectacular march 10 days before the midterm elections.
We even devised a mascot for the campaign of a Russian bot whose name is Uranium One and then the march was actually so successful and amazing that I got a tweet from this gentleman here, Mr. President, Donald Trump who said, "#WalkAway from the Democratic Party Movement marches today in D.C. Congratulations to Brandon Straka for starting something very special." Amazing.
LEVIN: You know, for all the attacks on this man, he's very human. He personalizes issues. People can identify with him which the media cannot. They live in a bubble. They're very confounded by this man. They're confused because you know why, because they don't understand America, and they don't understand Americans.
They all live and work inside the beltway or the West Coast. They're really not familiar with what goes on between the coasts, so I don't think -- if people want to contact you or your organization or get involved somehow, because I think a lot of our viewers might. Where do they go?
STRAKA: Well walkawaycampaign.com for right now and we actually are working on a new website which will be rolling out in two months under the same exact domain, so that won't change, but our goal is to get people off of Facebook, because of suppression and things like that, so we're going to have a very sophisticated website, probably around the month of May.
But for the time being #WalkAway Campaign still sort of has our place marker sort of website and there's lots of information there about how people, if they'd like to volunteer, if they'd like to help contribute because we are grassroots, I mean, we are we're kind of living on a wing and a prayer and we have big plans.
LEVIN: All right, we'll be right back.
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LEVIN: Brandon Straka, the future the country, you see fairly radical people announcing to be the Democratic nominee. I mean, so radical that they're starting to leave Bernie Sanders in the dust and they're talking about nationalizing healthcare, nationalizing education, really, that's what free education is all about; open borders, wealth taxes, massive marginal tax rates, things that are really contrary to the American experiment.
So a lot of people are very worried about this. How do you see the future of the country? How do you see the progress of the country?
STRAKA: Well, I am optimistic. I am eternally optimistic. I think about, first of all, the nature of people and I think the direction that our country is going to go in general. What I think is that, as the Democratic Party and the ideology of liberalism becomes more extreme, more fringe, more left, more and more people are being turned off and they're starting to have their eyes opened and the media itself, I think, is becoming more desperate.
The constant calls of racism, the constant calls of bigotry and jumping the gun so often as we see now with all of these hate crime hoaxes and stuff and they attack and then it turns out that, "Oh, well we got the story wrong." I mean, it's like this is happening on an almost daily basis now.
And so people are starting have their eyes open more and more and more and when the Kavanaugh hearings happened, we had a huge second wave of testimonials in our campaign and then it happened again, you know, with Jussie Smollett and all of these different things that are happening.
So I think that more and more people are going to continue to walk away, but what is a paramount is that nobody can be complacent at this point -- nobody. The era of the silent majority is over and I can't state this enough. It is time for the silent majority to become un-silent. Everyone must speak up. Everyone must defend their principles and defend this country and I think it's also important.
Perhaps the most important thing is for conservatives to continue to speak up and let people know black people, brown people, LGBT people, there is a seat at the table for them over on the right. That conservatism is for everybody. That empowering the individual is for all people, regardless of race, regardless of sexual orientation, regardless of gender because these people on the left are not getting that message. They're getting the opposite message.
But I think if they knew that, it's the values of conservatism that makes so much more sense than the ideology of liberalism and so, I think if people knew that they had a safe seat on the right, they would certainly be willing to come over because, yes, socialism is terrible for everybody and it's probably in the end worst for people of color and other marginalized minorities.
LEVIN: What you're saying is so true and yet it's a big problem in the Republican Party. Republicans don't know how to talk.
STRAKA: No.
LEVIN: If they would just go out there and be conservatives, principled conservatives, constitutionalists, talk about the individual, talk about liberty, talk about our founding principles and explain to the people as Reagan that the shining city on the hill, the magnificent things, the positive things, the great things we have done, the Industrial Revolution. You have running water. You have electricity. You have vehicles. You have food on the table -- that didn't come from government. It didn't come from socialism. It didn't come from Bernie Sanders. It came from, "We, the People."
STRAKA: Right.
LEVIN: And we do not explain that. We do not engage with the hard left.
STRAKA: Agreed and I also think that there's not enough communication between, you know, kind of identity lines for whatever reason. I understand that these things can be uncomfortable for some people, but I myself, I have absolutely no apprehension about going into an auditorium where I'm the only white person in the room and addressing an auditorium filled with black people.
Black people are just people. Brown people are just -- we just talk to each other the same way we talk. Black people love good ideas, just as much as white people love good ideas and conservatism is filled with good ideas, so we just need to be having these conversations.
LEVIN: It's a great pleasure. Wish you show all luck in the world.
STRAKA: Thank you. This has been amazing.
LEVIN: Don't forget, ladies and gentlemen, join us next week on "Life, Liberty & Levin."
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