MS NOW Smears Brandon Herrera, Interview With His Opponent Goes Wrong

Nicholas Fondacaro
September 11th, 2026 2:44 PM

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In the run up to the midterm elections, the liberal media were pulling out all the stops to try to flip control of the House. It was clear they had zeroed in on Texas 23 since both CNN on Wednesday and then MS NOW’s The Last Word on Thursday had targeted Republican nominee and GunTuber Brandon Herrera for a smear campaign. However, when MS Now’s Lawrence O’Donnell tried to give Herrera’s morbidly obese opponent a boost with a national interview, the connection gave out.

Leading into his smear job, O’Donnell suggested that Herrera’s YouTube channel was dedicated to bashing woman. “Donald Trump's candidate for a congressional seat in West Texas, Brendan [sic] Herrera has four million followers on his pro-gun YouTube channel, where he  attacks women in an echo of the way Donald Trump attacks women reporters who ask him questions,” he chided.

Notice that O’Donnell couldn’t even bother to get Herrera’s name night, calling him “Brendon” instead.

Following soundbites of Herrera making fun of “fat,” “blue-hair” “feminists” from Austin, O’Donnell flaunted his lack of original reporting and research by just reading headlines and quotes from other outlets that sought to smear Herrera:

Politico reports, quote, “Past videos in which he mimics a Nazi march to Nazi music, jokes about the holocaust, and boasts about his 1939 edition of Mein Kampf.” That is, Donald Trump's candidate for the House of Representatives in west Texas.

The Guardian reports, “In 2024, during a run for Congress, Herrera said, ‘I am not, nor have I ever been a neo-Nazi’ after describing a Nazi era gun as the original ghetto blaster. The Republican Jewish Coalition condemned him at the time as ‘a goose-stepping extremist.’”

 

 

Even if he had done his own research, it’s unlikely that O’Donnell would have shared Herrera’s comments on Mein Kampf from his Unsubscribe Podcast where he described it as “schizo” and agreed with the analysis that it’s “fucking dog shit.” Herrera also explained that his copy was translated by a German Jew who survived the Holocaust and mocked Hitler in the margins.

He also failed to share Herrera’s comments about how all this was said in jest, as he had said in his video reviewing the German MP-40, “The best way to not repeat history is to learn about history. And the best way that I know to get you guys to learn about history, it to make really fucked up jokes about it.”

 

 

Then came O’Donnell’s attempt at an in-kind campaign donation to Herrera’s opponent Katy Padilla Stout.

After playing one of Padilla Stout’s campaign ads in full (29 seconds), O’Donnell teed up a series of very generic questions about how President Trump was viewed in the state and about her messaging regarding Herrera; who he claimed, without evidence, had an “astonishing record of anti-Semitism.”

Two questions and answers seemed to be about all Padilla Stout’s internet connection could hold up, because after O’Donnell’s third question it gave out:

So you, you have the challenge, obviously, of having to appeal to Trump voters. It'll be impossible for you to win this district without some Trump voters coming over to vote for you in this. What is your what is your message specifically to them?

[Eight seconds of dead air]

Oh, I think we have a problem with our feed here on the - on the - on this interview. Can we get can we  can we - we lost her completely.

 

 

O’Donnell likely wouldn’t have asked Padilla Stout anything about her campaign’s finances and the alleged misuse of thousands of dollars to buy cookies.

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

MS NOW’s The Last Word
September 10, 2026
10:37:00 p.m. Eastern

LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: Donald Trump's candidate for a congressional seat in West Texas, Brendan [sic] Herrera has four million followers on his pro-gun YouTube channel, where he  attacks women in an echo of the way Donald Trump attacks women reporters who ask him questions.

[Cuts to video]

BRANDON HERRERA: 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]

His noggin appears to already have arrived empty and is instead full of mush. Much like the average Austin feminist.

[Cuts back to live]

O’DONNELL: Politico reports, quote, “Past videos in which he mimics a Nazi march to Nazi music, jokes about the holocaust, and boasts about his 1939 edition of Mein Kampf.” That is, Donald Trump's candidate for the House of Representatives in west Texas.

The Guardian reports, “In 2024, during a run for Congress, Herrera said, ‘I am not, nor have I ever been a neo-Nazi’ after describing a Nazi era gun as the original ghetto blaster. The Republican Jewish Coalition condemned him at the time as ‘a goose-stepping extremist.’”

The Democratic congressional campaign committee added this district to its list of competitive congressional districts in November. The Democratic candidate in the district is our next guest, Katy Padilla Stout.

[Cuts to campaign video, 29 seconds]

KATY PADILLA STOUT: I'm the daughter of a migrant farm worker who became a lawyer, and I was raised by a single mom who never quit on a better future. So, neither did I. I became a public school teacher and an attorney who fights for kids and families when no one else will. Now I'm running for Congress because I know we can have lower costs, safer schools, and something better for all our families, but we've got to come together to do it. So, Texas, let's do this.

[Cuts back to live]

O’DONNELL: Joining us now, Katy Padilla Stout, Democratic nominee for Texas 23rd Congressional District. Thank you very much for joining us tonight.

Donald Trump has come to Texas to try to defeat you in this race, along with everyone else challenging Republicans in Texas are. Do you find that Texas voters are watching Donald Trump's convention instead of these two NFL games this week?

PADILLA STOUT: I don't believe so. I don't think that there's a lot of enthusiasm regarding this midterm convention for them.

O’DONNELL: As you proceed in this campaign, you've got two things going on here. You've got this person you're running against who has an astonishing record of anti-Semitism and horrible things he has said about women. You've got that to contend with. You've got your case to make to voters about what the issues. How do you balance those two things?

PADILLA STOUT: I think we do it the best that we can, and that's having genuine conversations with people, connecting with them, really listening to what their concerns are, and letting them know that we are offering them a choice, that they can choose someone who will listen to them, someone who represent them in this district, and the values that we uphold here in Texas.

O’DONNELL: So you, you have the challenge, obviously, of having to appeal to Trump voters. It'll be impossible for you to win this district without some Trump voters coming over to vote for you in this. What is your what is your message specifically to them?

[Eight seconds of dead air]

Oh, I think we have a problem with our feed here on the - on the - on this interview. Can we get can we  can we - we lost her completely. Okay. Well, we're going to try to get her back. We're going to see what we can possibly do to reconnect this. We're going to go to commercial break now.

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