CNN Suggests TX Republican Shares Qualities With Domestic Terrorists

Nicholas Fondacaro
September 9th, 2026 4:25 PM

Text to Speech

00:00 00:00
Font Size
CNN via SnapStream

While noting “the razor-thin margins in the House of Representatives” during Wednesday’s The Situation Room, CNN targeted Republican congressional nominee and GunTuber Brandon Herrera with a smear campaign. While whining about Herrera making jokes about “fat” and “blue-haired” feminists, the leftist network grossly suggested that Herrera’s brand of comedy supposedly meant that he shared ominous qualities and aligned with domestic terrorists.

“Well, CNN has new reporting about crass and sexually degrading comments about women made by a congressional candidate in Texas, 30- year-old conservative YouTube creator Brandon Herrera,” announced co-host Pamela Brown following a commercial break.

Regarding why they were talking about him, Brown accidently gave away the game him when she noted: “And given the razor-thin margins in the House of Representatives, Democrats are hoping the controversy surrounding Herrera may help provide a path to victory in this red-leaning district.”

CNN senior investigative reporter Allison Gordon audibly sighed as she explained who he was: “So, [sigh] Brandon Herrera is a longtime conservative creator. He has more than four million fans on YouTube, very popular, and the content was voluminous.”

What followed was a mash up of edited together video of Herrera mocking leftist women, mostly focusing on those in Austin, Texas (Click “expand”):

You will notice his noggin appears to already have arrived empty and is instead full of mush, much like the average Austin feminist.

[Transition]

So, when a blue hair on the news says that a semiautomatic AR-15 is an assault rifle, she is both fat and wrong.

[Transition]

But what if, out of self-defense, you had to take down something a lot bigger, like an elephant or a killer whale or an angry blue-haired Austin feminist?

[Transition]

These things weigh in at about 6,500 pounds apiece, or approximately four times as much as the average Austin feminist.

No lies detected.

 

 

The pair returned to clutch their pearls into diamonds. They were upset that Herrera would make “degrading jokes.”

Of course, they omit that he also makes them about himself and his friends. They even did the thing where the media says his comments were “really vile” but wouldn’t actually share it so the audience could make their own determination:

GORDON: And we also found examples of Herrera using sexually suggestive slang to describe women, making degrading jokes. And, in particular, he insulted a female gun safety advocate, Shannon Watts, and her children, just using really vile language that I'm not going to repeat on air.

BROWN: Yeah, it is so vile what he said about her.

Meanwhile, CNN would say “shithole” 195 in a single day to try to make an anti-Trump point. Moreover, they’ll let one of their commentators use the N-word repeatedly with a black host, along with other slurs unironically.

Gordon took things to a dark place by dismissing Herrera’s insistence that his comments were nothing more than jokes by bringing in analysis from a “political extremism” expert, who suggested Herrera’s joke put him in the company of domestic terrorists:

But I spoke with Cynthia Miller-Idriss. She runs a political extremism research lab at American University, and she really pushed back on that assertion, because, in her research, she found that when folks -- When looking back at folks who commit political violence and extremism, if you look at their search history on the Internet, it's often because they have been consuming a lot of misogynistic online content.

“Whether that be on YouTube, podcasts, or social media, there's often that connective through line,” Gordon added.

Additionally, Brown made incredibly vague allusions to how Herrera make “controversial comments in the past about Nazis and about veteran suicide before.”

Of course, CNN didn’t show the clip from one of Herrera’s videos where he directly said, “I’m not a fan of fascism.” CNN also omitted that Herrera co-hosts the Unsubscribe Podcast with three of friends who are veterans, and they support veteran causes including suicide prevention.

Here’s a NewsBusters video debunking similar smears CNN made against Herrera a few months ago:

 

 

In an X post reacting to CNN’s hit piece, Herrera said: “Man, I forgot I was this funny.”

“What’s funnier though, is the same people who celebrated Charlie Kirk’s murder saying that me joking about ‘fat blue haired feminists is “’political violence,’” he added. “This is why CNN+ failed so bad they had to shut it down.”

 

 

We couldn’t say it better ourselves.

The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:

CNN’s The Situation Room
September 9, 2026
10:40:54 a.m. Eastern

PAMELA BROWN: Well, CNN has new reporting about crass and sexually degrading comments about women made by a congressional candidate in Texas, 30- year-old conservative YouTube creator Brandon Herrera.

Herrera is running to replace GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales, who resigned this year following sexual misconduct allegations. And given the razor-thin margins in the House of Representatives, Democrats are hoping the controversy surrounding Herrera may help provide a path to victory in this red-leaning district.

Joining us now is Allison Gordon with the CNN Investigates team, who looked into Herrera and what he has said in the past.

Tell us what you found, Allison.

ALLISON GORDON: Yes, there is a lot, Pam.

So, [sigh] Brandon Herrera is a longtime conservative creator. He has more than four million fans on YouTube, very popular, and the content was voluminous. So, my colleague Morgan Leason and I, we dug through old YouTube videos, more recent ones, podcast appearances, social media feed.

And taking that all together, we tried to get a very clear picture for this story in order to tell it properly. Let's take a listen to just some of what we found.

[Cuts to highly edited videos]

BRANDON HERRERA (R-TX): You will notice his noggin appears to already have arrived empty and is instead full of mush, much like the average Austin feminist.

[Transition]

So, when a blue hair on the news says that a semiautomatic AR-15 is an assault rifle, she is both fat and wrong.

[Transition]

But what if, out of self-defense, you had to take down something a lot bigger, like an elephant or a killer whale or an angry blue-haired Austin feminist?

[Transition]

These things weigh in at about 6,500 pounds apiece, or approximately four times as much as the average Austin feminist.

[Cuts back to live]

GORDON: Yes, so that's just a little bit of what we found.

And we also found examples of Herrera using sexually suggestive slang to describe women, making degrading jokes. And, in particular, he insulted a female gun safety advocate, Shannon Watts, and her children, just using really vile language that I'm not going to repeat on air.

BROWN: Yeah, it is so vile what he said about her.

And his team is basically trying to write this off as him joking, right?

GORDON: Yeah.

When I reached out to his campaign, they again characterized these past comments about women as jokes, and then they also directed me to his opponent, Katy Padilla Stout, who's a Democrat, citing her involvement in a domestic violence case as an attorney in San Antonio.

And then when I went to Stout's campaign, they said that she was just doing her job as a court-appointed appellate attorney, and that Herrera needs to take more accountability for his past comments about women.

BROWN: And he's been pressed on controversial comments in the past about Nazis and about veteran suicide before. Again, he has said those were jokes.

But you spoke with apolitical extremism expert who pushed back on that assertion. Tell us more about that.

GORDON: That's right, Pam.

This is not the first time that this candidate has been looked at for past comments. And he's continued to maintain that these were jokes. But I spoke with Cynthia Miller-Idriss.

She runs a political extremism research lab at American University, and she really pushed back on that assertion, because, in her research, she found that when folks -- When looking back at folks who commit political violence and extremism, if you look at their search history on the Internet, it's often because they have been consuming a lot of misogynistic online content.

Whether that be on YouTube, podcasts, or social media, there's often that connective through line. And she described Herrera's comments to me, particularly when he compared women's weight to that of animals like elephants or killer whales as hallmark internet misogyny.

Again, Herrera characterized his past comments as jokes, and he rejected that assertion.

BROWN: All right, Allison Gordon, thank you for bringing that reporting to us. We appreciate it.

Donor Privacy Policy