A new viral video has taken social media by storm, and it might change American’s fast-food habits forever.

The video shows a Popeyes employee filming himself while preparing raw chicken for customers, before disturbingly farting on the chicken. The employee then posted it on social media himself before getting fired.

“I don’t know if you eat at Popeyes. I don’t know that you’ll ever eat at Popeyes after watching this,” BlazeTV host Stu Burguiere comments.

“When I go there, I mainly only go for their biscuits, and I really hope no one’s farting on the biscuits,” co-host Dave Landau chimes in, admitting that before the release of the video, Popeyes was in his top five fast-food restaurants.

“But I mean, honestly, probably eating that chicken through the drive-thru and going is safer than going into the store,” he says. “There’s a lot of stuff that happens at those Popeyes.”

“It does feel like you take your life into your own hands a little bit, not just with the typical heart attack risk that you have at any fast-food place, but there seems to be additional risk at Popeyes,” Stu says.

However, the fart video isn’t the only problem Popeyes is facing.

“Texas customers are suing Popeyes, Dave, for $1.5 million, alleging they found a condom-like foreign object in their chicken,” Stu explains.

“What do you mean condom-like foreign object?” he asks. “Like generally speaking, you kind of know what it is, right? It’s either a condom or it’s not.”

“This stuff just grosses me out,” he adds.

Want more from Stu and Dave?

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​Viral video, Fast food, Popeyes, Dave landau, Stu burguiere, Chicken, Raw, Fart, Employee, Blazetv show 

Vice President JD Vance is sounding the alarm within his own party.

While rejecting socialism, Vance argued in an interview on Fox News that Republicans cannot dismiss the growing interest young voters have in it — as they are looking for answers in a struggling economy.

“Our response to socialism, which is a dangerous and destructive ideology, it’s been tried in the past and failed, our response to that can’t be just to ignore the economic concerns that I think are feeding this rising interest in socialism,” Vance said.

And Vance is letting those young voters know that they’re not being forgotten.

“And I guess I would say to that young person that you as an American citizen deserve to have a good life in this country, and you deserve to have a government that is making it easier for you to start a family, for you to afford to get a good education, for you to have a good job, for you to afford a home,” he said.

Vance went on to champion the slow but positive results the Trump administration is seeing.

“We’re seeing trillions of dollars of new investment into this country, which means good middle class jobs for young people, middle income people all across our country. We’re seeing housing prices finally stabilized. They doubled during the Biden administration. They have finally kind of flatlined during the first year and a half of the Trump administration,” he explained.

“We also want to get interest rates down, of course, so that young people can afford a home. We want people to be able to afford the good things about this wonderful country that we all live in,” he continued, before issuing a “warning” to his “fellow Republicans.”

“If we don’t get this right, don’t blame young people for being sympathetic to socialism. We’ve got to blame ourselves,” he added.

And BlazeTV host Pat Gray isn’t impressed with the economy yet either.

“Is it working?” Gray asks. “I hope so. I mean, the prices aren’t coming down yet, but that’s I believe almost entirely due to the Strait of Hormuz. That’s just thrown a monkey wrench into everything.”

“They’re celebrating a slower rate of inflation,” executive producer Keith Malinak says. “Well, it’s still inflation. And we mocked the Biden administration mercilessly for that kind of stance.”

Want more from Pat Gray?

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​Jd vance, Republicans, Young voters, Socialism, Economy, Donald trump, Democrats, Fox news, Pat gray, Keith malinak, Jeff fisher, Blazetv show 

Abdul El-Sayed, the Islamic Democrat hoping to win an open U.S. Senate seat in Michigan, is apparently not the only radical in his family.

Fatten Fathy Elkomy, El-Sayed’s birth mother, long worked for an Islamic organization that was identified by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2004 as a specially designated global terrorist organization, reported the Midwesterner.

IARA may have ‘provided direct financial support’ to Osama bin Laden and, by extension, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

The Treasury Department stated in a release at the time of the terror designation that the international offices of the Islamic African Relief Agency, or IARA, may have “provided direct financial support” to Osama bin Laden and, by extension, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

“IARA is identified as a nongovernmental organization (NGO) formerly affiliated with Maktab Al-Khidamat (MK), which was co-founded and financed by UBL [Osama bin Laden] and is the precursor organization of al Qaida,” the department said.

“IARA, MK, and UBL commingled funds and cooperated closely in the raising and expenditure of funds. IARA engaged in a joint program with an institute controlled by UBL that was involved in providing assistance to Taliban fighters.”

The Treasury Department alleged that IARA leaders — who secured agreements with the U.S. Agency for International Development totaling over $1.3 million until USAID terminated those agreements in 1999 — not only hobnobbed with terrorists in Sudan and various Middle Eastern locales but provided hundreds of thousands of dollars to bin Laden two years before the 9/11 attacks via its overseas branches.

Although she was reportedly never charged with a crime or named as a co-conspirator, Elkomy’s name appears dozens of times in a list of exhibits filed with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri in a case against the IARA that resulted in guilty pleas from two of the organization’s board members.

RELATED: Woke 2.0 is coming … and it will be worse

Sarah Rice/Getty Images

The descriptions reference her alleged involvement with multiple wire transfers, several calls between 1999 and 2002, and a request for $24,607.45 for the IARA’s Iraq office that was allegedly sent to Mubarak Hamed.

Hamed, a native of Sudan who served as the executive director of IARA, pleaded guilty in 2010 for his role in a conspiracy to illegally transfer over $1 million to Iraq in violation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

Blaze News reached out to Elkomy and the El-Sayed campaign for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

Greg Manz, Michigan GOP senior communications adviser, told Blaze News:

This report is deeply troubling. To that end, Abdul El-Sayed has yet to adequately address these reported terrorist connections.

Why hasn’t Abdul unequivocally denounced his mother’s alleged connections to groups associated with the same terrorist groups directly responsible for 9/11? And why does Abdul continue to campaign with communist influencers who think America deserved 9/11?

Abdul El-Sayed repeatedly surrounds himself with extreme, troublesome figures and consistently refuses to clearly denounce their horrific actions, vile statements, and alarming associations.

Elkomy previously denied connections between the IARA and terrorists, telling the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2004, according to the Midwesterner, “I’ve been working there serving orphans and children with at least one deceased parent, and it breaks my heart they’re not going to get any help.”

The former IARA member has apparently been following her son’s political journey.

When asked who he had heard from after securing the Democratic nomination, El-Sayed told the New York Times earlier this month, “My mom.” El-Sayed has also referenced his mother’s psychiatric work on the campaign trail.

The Democratic nominee’s campaign site does not mention his birth mother in his bio, noting that “Abdul was raised by his father, Mohamed, an Egyptian immigrant, and his stepmom, Jackie, whose family has lived in Gratiot County, Michigan, since the 1800s.”

El-Sayed, whose parents are both Egyptian immigrants, also has a radical half-sister.

Eman Abdelhadi, El-Sayed’s half-sister who works as a professor at the University of Chicago, was arrested last year for allegedly spitting on an Illinois state trooper outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.

Fox News Digital recently reported that Abdelhadi, whose so-called scholarship appears to revolve around gender and Islam, also delivered an “October 7 blessing” on the first anniversary of the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel.

After stating “Allahu Akbar” and noting that “that phrase means God is greater,” Abdelhadi said in a video shared on Instagram on Oct. 7, 2024, that “Allahu Akbar” is a phrase she had been “thinking about a lot over the last year, because it’s a phrase that reminds us that no matter how great the brutality, the oppression, the intensity of what we’re going through, the horizon of justice is just around the corner.”

“We have an imperative to not just imagine a better future, but to build one together,” added Abdelhadi. “I’ll see you on the streets.”

The El-Sayed campaign said of Abdelhadi’s radicalism, “Abdul loves his sister and also disagrees with her on a number of political positions and the rhetoric she’s chosen to use, including on foreign policy.”

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​Abdul el-sayed, Mike rogers, Usaid, Treasury department, Terrorism, Senate, Islam, Osama bin laden, Politics 

Republican Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond is battling allegations that, during his gubernatorial campaign, he called on Democrats to defeat voter ID.

Drummond is in a runoff election for the Republican nomination against former state Sen. Mike Mazzei, who was endorsed by President Donald Trump.

‘We have to vote “no” on both state questions.’

An audio recording of Drummond’s comments spliced together was widely circulated on Monday. It appeared to show him telling attendees of a government employee summit, reportedly held on August 3, to show up to defeat the two state questions that will be on the ballot.

“We have to vote ‘no’ on both state questions,” Drummond said, according to the audio. “Just don’t tell any legislator I said that, OK? Every Democrat, every libertarian, every independent needs to show up at the poll. There might be a couple of you guys in here. Go to the polls! Right? It was intentional to put it on August 25 because traditionally only the Republicans show up, and traditionally the Republicans are not as strong in education as they should [be].”

One of the two proposals that will be on the August 25 ballot would “require proof of identity to vote in any election authorized by law and conducted by a county election board or the State Election Board.”

A spokesman for the Drummond campaign told Blaze News via email that the remarks were taken out of “context.”

“These clips are a few seconds long, stripped of context, and selectively edited to manufacture a false narrative. We’re not going to pretend that spliced snippets on X are a serious representation of Gentner Drummond’s views,” said campaign chairman Matthew Parker.

Parker also stated that “Gentner was one of President Trump’s largest Oklahoma donors.”

The president reiterated his endorsement of Mazzei in a post Tuesday.

A recent independent poll showed that Drummond is deadlocked with Mazzei, and the election will likely be settled by the 14% of undecided voters.

RELATED: Top Oklahoma Democrat forced to resign after trying to pay Ethics Commission with a forged check

Mazzei has raised $946,000 since June 2, according to the latest campaign filings, while Drummond has been able to raise $2,928,000 in the same time period.

The runoff election will decide who will obtain the Republican nomination on Aug. 25. Early voting for the election begins on Thursday.

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​Donald trump, Gentner drummond, Oklahoma, Politics, Voter id 

A dinosaur logo is at the center of controversy surrounding the whereabouts of some rare literature.

This story, involving Amazon, has taken wild cross-country turns and led to one of the most unexpected places.

‘They just want the content as a bunch of words strung together.’

As AI companies have rushed to gobble up texts for digitization and model training, suspicion has mounted that companies are buying up batches of rare tomes for uses they’d rather keep under wraps.

When it comes to Amazon, the granddaddy of Big Tech book merchants, the narrative starts with one specific shipment of 1,000 books.

Described as having been printed in small batches or obscure languages, the thousand were purchased through an online marketplace called Biblio.

A journalist from 404 Media, piquing his curiosity, asked the seller to help him puzzle through what he described as an anomalous “historical spike” in book sales the past few years. According to Publishers Weekly, book sales increased in 2025 by 2.5% over 2024.

404 decided to affix one of the books with an Apple AirTag — effectively a tracking device — in order to find out who was behind the large purchase.

It worked.

The shipment went to a California airport before winging its way to Milwaukee International Airport. The same day, the AirTag showed that it went on to a warehouse belonging to Trifinity, a specialized shipping and distribution company in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

It stayed there for two weeks before traveling west by truck to Colorado. And then, the next day, it arrived at an Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas.

At Amazon Fulfillment Center LAS8, as the warehouse’s location is known, Amazon is allegedly collecting, scanning, and badly damaging rare books to train its AI model, all through a team called VGT3. In vaguely military fashion, VGT3 has a patch-like logo: a tyrannosaurus rex baring its teeth over an open book.

The details on book-hungry VGT3 were previously undisclosed until recent reporting, although there have been some online breadcrumbs. On a Reddit thread under AmazonFC from last year, one person said they work at VGT3 and all they do is “scan books.”

Amazon has not publicly explained VGT3’s scope or operations.

RELATED: ‘GAME’ OVER? ‘Thrones’ author George RR Martin reveals what’s stopping his last book

Reporting the revelations, 404 Media alleges that Amazon is buying a massive number of books, scanning them to train their AI model, and effectively destroying them in the process, cutting off the spines to make them more easily scannable.

“Some are assigned to cut books, and others go to receive where they get books and scan the bar codes,” an alleged employee told 404. “We didn’t have rates, but now we do, but it’s not stressful.”

The systematic scanning of the codes, known in the trade as ISBN numbers, further fuels speculation that the world’s books are being methodically scanned by tech companies ultimately intending to consume printed material so thoroughly as to retire it from common use.

Blaze News reached out to Amazon to ask if the books are being scanned to train an AI model, if there is public information about VGT3, and if the books are indeed being destroyed.

In response, an Amazon spokesperson only told Blaze News that the company “purchases books through commercial channels to help develop and improve the products and services our customers use.”

RELATED: ‘Expert witness’ humiliated in $61 million lawsuit after lawyers discover one insane detail

JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/Getty Images

The scope of the rare books were described as being prints that not many people would care about “in the same way people might care about the first edition of ‘Oliver Twist.'”

“There are different types of value,” said the bookseller who sent out the bulk shipment. “There’s monetary value, obviously, but there are a lot of other types of value.”

Without identifying the books by name, the seller claimed they offered “historical value, intellectual value, [and] sentimental value. All sorts of things, and all of those the AI companies don’t care about. They just want the content as a bunch of words strung together.”

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​Amazon, Artificial intelligence, Books, Las vegas, Tech 

A South Carolina teacher is accused of soliciting an underage student through “explicit” text messages to engage in a sexual act, police announced.

Police said 45-year-old Megan Lawrimore Bolt, of Florence, was arrested on Aug. 11. Bolt was charged with criminal solicitation of a minor.

‘This situation was brought to our attention by a parent of the student involved, and we took immediate action and reported it directly to law enforcement.’

South Carolina law states: “A person eighteen years of age or older commits the offense of criminal solicitation of a minor if he or she knowingly contacts or communicates with, or attempts to contact or communicate with, a person who is under the age of eighteen, or a person reasonably believed to be under the age of eighteen, for the purpose of or with the intent of persuading, inducing, enticing, or coercing the person to engage or participate in a sexual activity.”

A person convicted of criminal solicitation of a minor in South Carolina faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $5,000.

Police said Bolt was released from the Florence County Detention Center on a $10,000 bond on Aug. 11.

The Florence County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement, “According to investigators, between the dates of April 1, 2026, and August 5, 2026, Bolt, a public-school teacher, is alleged to have knowingly communicated sexually explicit texts with a minor student, 13 years of age or younger, with the intent of persuading the minor to engage in a sexual act.”

Citing Florence County Sheriff T.J. Joye, the Post and Courier reported that Bolt had been a music teacher at John W. Moore Middle School before being terminated.

Bolt is not currently listed on the school’s staff directory.

Florence 1 Schools, the school district that includes John W. Moore Middle School, issued a statement to WPDE-TV:

This situation was brought to our attention by a parent of the student involved, and we took immediate action and reported it directly to law enforcement. The individual referenced in this matter is currently not an employee of Florence One Schools. Any further information regarding the circumstances of the arrest should be directed to law enforcement.

The Florence 1 Schools employee handbook notes that any staff member “having any interaction/activity of a sexual nature or intent with a student” is considered to have engaged in misconduct “while on duty on/off district premises.”

WPDE obtained records from the South Carolina Department of Education that showed Bolt received her teaching certification in music and choral education in December 2002.

Bolt’s certification remains valid through June 2029, according to education records.

The Florence County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Blaze News.

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​Bad teacher, Teacher student sex scandal, South carolina, Crime 

A New York state assemblywoman who identifies as a democratic socialist went viral online after posting a video of herself claiming that people steal toothpaste and soap because of poverty.

The socialist dogma that theft is caused by wealth inequality is a common claim that was also proclaimed by far-left Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

‘Tolerating crime leads to escalation of crime. This has been proven in every society across time and ours is no different.’

“Most of what we say were crimes of poverty, people who were stealing things like toothpaste, people who were stealing things like soap. And that means if you’re stealing those things, you need them,” said Emily Gallagher during a speech in front of the Manhattan Criminal Court Thursday.

“And we are choosing to protect billion-dollar companies like CVS and Walgreens over the people who are struggling to get by,” she added. “So I would say that the true crime is that there is such incredible wealth disparity in this city that there are people who can be thrown in jail simply for having a biological need.”

Gallagher went on to say she’s pushing for more treatment rather than jail and called on people to defend previous criminal reforms that are being threatened by “fearmongering” by “the right-wing media.”

Her post of the speech clip went viral after critics lambasted her claims and hit her with ridicule.

“This is such tired rhetoric. People steal for opportunity more than need. Where do you think that tube of toothpaste ends up? On the street. For sale. To buy drugs. I know. I used to do that all the time. Just tell the truth. Stop lying,” responded a recovery advocate.

“They definitely should be incarcerated for stealing. Otherwise nothing prevents people from stealing, stores close or lock up merchandise, life gets worse for the 99% of people who have no intention of stealing,” said another critic.

“Tolerating crime leads to escalation of crime. This has been proven in every society across time and ours is no different. I’ve endured poverty and unfair circumstances but NEVER did I steal,” read another reply.

“Something tells me you’d feel differently if someone stole your lunch,” joked one user.

RELATED: Socialist atheist teacher goes viral for demanding student loan forgiveness after divulging his own debt

Despite the online blowback, Gallagher defended her comments and again implied that people are getting imprisoned for stealing toothpaste.

“Using arrests and jail as a way to punish struggling people doesn’t reduce crime. Each incarcerated person costs the state over $500,000 in taxpayer dollars per year, and the data from decades of trying this tired approach is clear — it does not work,” she said to Fox News Digital.

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​Democratic socialist, New york, Poverty, Theft, Alexandria ocasio-cortez, Politics 

A pro-life group threatened with legal action for daring to refer to an abortion as the “killing” of a human being has made abundantly clear that it will not be making any apologies or retractions.

More than refusing to oblige an activist group’s legal demands, Live Action, a pro-life organization founded by Lila Rose, has leaned into the fight, reiterating that “abortion kills a child and that every baby deserves a chance at life.”

‘They know that controlling the language is essential to making abortion easier to accept, because people intuitively understand that abortion kills a child.’

The demands

Abortion in America is a radical activist group co-founded by Cecile Richards, the deceased former Planned Parenthood president who made millions of dollars helping snuff out millions of American lives and was awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor for her efforts by former President Joe Biden in 2024.

The activist group’s litigation arm, Amplify Legal, sent a cease-and-desist letter on July 15 to Live Action on behalf of 13 individuals who were referenced in reports published by the pro-life advocacy nonprofit’s news arm.

In its 19-page letter, Amplify Legal complained that Live Action News had “repeatedly written about our clients intentionally ‘killing’ their babies” and accused the pro-life organization of engaging in a “pervasive pattern of publishing false and defamatory statements condemning our clients.”

Amplify Legal alleged that Live Action News not only mischaracterized the conditions of some of the babies whom its clients aborted but that its characterization of abortion as “killing” was, in at least one case, false.

Upon learning that her unborn son Nolan suffered from multiple abnormalities, including a condition called Potter Syndrome and that there was a deficit of amniotic fluid around him, Megan Kling — a Wisconsin-based abortion activist — traveled to Minnesota to have her pregnancy terminated at 23 weeks.

RELATED: The unbearable burden may still be worth bearing

Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg/Getty Images

According to the Wisconsin Examiner, physicians induced premature labor, and the baby perished an hour after delivery.

An April 15, 2025, Live Action News article discussing the boy’s tragic death referenced his mother’s expression of fury in an interview over having to leave the state to end her pregnancy.

Kling told the Wisconsin Independent in February 2025, “I was honestly very angry that the only option in the state of Wisconsin for me was to carry that baby to term. I still want to have a third healthy child someday, and it was infuriating to be in that doctor’s office and have the doctors not be able to help me due to politics.”

Amplify Legal took particular offense to the way Live Action News framed Kling’s above quote by writing, “Kling was angry that she couldn’t have Nolan killed in her own home state.”

The pro-life publication also noted that an induced abortion, such as that apparently pursued by Kling, “always carries the intent to kill the baby.”

Amplify Legal took issue with the wording of the pro-life group’s article as well as its title — “Mom encouraged to abort baby, even as doctors worked to save others like him” — stating that “each of these statements and the plain implication that Ms. Kling intended to kill her child due to mere ‘health challenges’ are false and defamatory.”

“Live Action News and Ms. Flanders disseminated (1) unprivileged statements, (2) to a large public audience, (3) that expressly assert and aggressively insinuate multiple provably false factual claims, which (4) are the very type of fabricated assertions — e.g., that a mother killed her baby — that any reasonable person would understand as inflicting serious and predictable reputational harm,” alleged Amplify Legal. “This conduct satisfies every element of defamation under Wisconsin law.”

‘We will win.’

In addition to demanding that Live Action News refrain from issuing further “false statements” about Kling and its other clients, Amplify Legal demanded that the pro-life group delete the relevant content and issue retractions.

Kling said in a statement that Live Action’s behavior “is cruel, twisted, and borderline obsessive. That’s why I’m proud to join with the other families to demand an end to Live Action’s hate and abuse.”

Lauren Peterson, the CEO of Abortion in America who served as a writer on former President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, stated, “The harm caused by this deliberate spread of disinformation adds to the trauma these families have already experienced because abortion bans prevented them from receiving the compassionate medical care they needed.”

The response

“The answer is ‘no,'” the legal group representing Live Action said in an Aug. 17 response to the abortion group’s demands.

Peter Breen, the executive vice president of the Thomas More Society — the legal group representing Live Action — noted:

Live Action will not cease reporting on abortion. It will not desist from expressing the view — shared by tens of millions of Americans and by the pro-life movement your clients have made careers of publicly opposing — that abortion takes the life of a living human being and is accurately described as “killing.” Live Action will not delete its archive, will not retract protected opinion, and will not submit its future coverage of public figures, public lawsuits, public convention speeches, and public political campaigns to your pre-clearance.

After spending 14 pages explaining why Amplify Legal apparently has no legs to stand on and should go pound sand, Breen reiterated: “Your demands — all six — are rejected in toto. Live Action will continue to report on abortion, on the litigation industry that has grown up around it, and on the public advocacy of the public figures who wage that pro-abortion campaign — your clients included.”

In conclusion, Breen noted that Live Action will “continue to call abortion what its editors, tens of millions of Americans, the State courts, and the Supreme Court’s own opinions have called it: ‘killing.’”

“Abortion is an act of killing. It deliberately ends the life of a living human child. That is the truth abortion activists want to forbid anyone from saying out loud,” Lila Rose, the founder and president of Live Action, said in a statement. “They want abortion placed beyond moral judgment, even when the child targeted is disabled or has received a difficult diagnosis. They know that controlling the language is essential to making abortion easier to accept, because people intuitively understand that abortion kills a child and that every baby deserves a chance at life.”

Rose noted further that “legal threats against our First Amendment right to speak will not change that mission. Threats will not stop us from calling abortion what it is or from fighting for the right of every child to live. We will keep fighting, and we will win.”

Abortion in America said in a statement to Blaze News, “Live Action has repeatedly accused grieving families with wanted pregnancies of ‘wanting to kill’ their babies. These statement are both inaccurate and cruel. Our clients will be weighing all of their options.”

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​Abortion, Abortion in america, Amplify legal, Cecile richards, Eugenics, First amendment, Legal threat, Lila rose, Live action, Pro-life, Politics 

Darline Nordone’s rise in South Carolina threatens to turn one of MAGA’s founding promises into a punch line. The movement that vowed to “drain the swamp” is now watching establishment money, inherited political machinery, and a presidential endorsement converge behind the sister of one of the Senate’s most durable establishment figures.

It also risks making Republicans look ridiculous as they denounce the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Democrats will use this cartoonish spectacle to argue that the Republican Party has been captured by corporate interests and turned its back on ordinary Americans.

Nordone (recently rebranded as Darline Graham) remains something of a political blank slate. Beyond the relationship with her late brother Lindsey, her support for a pro-abortion political ally, her years in state bureaucracies, and her association with diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, voters have relatively little record from which to judge what she would actually do in the Senate.

Her refusal to state clearly what she is for and against only deepens the uncertainty.

What voters can reasonably expect, however, is continuity with the Graham political brand: Lindsey Graham’s fanatical interventionist foreign policy, establishment instincts at home, and comfort with bipartisan deals that many MAGA voters spent the past decade rejecting.

That is precisely what the MAGA movement was supposed to oppose. We do not need to consult America’s founders to remember why. We need only go back to 2015, when candidate Donald Trump declared war on the political establishment and won by promising to change it.

Obviously, the call to “drain the swamp” reigns supreme in setting the frame, but there is an embarrassment of riches in terms of quotes to choose from to make the point even more specifically. How about at the first Republican debate in 2015:

I will tell you that our system is broken. … I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me. … And that’s a broken system.

How about candidate Trump on Hillary Clinton:

These interests have rigged our political and economic system for their exclusive benefit. Big business, elite media, and major donors are lining up behind the campaign of my opponent because they know she will keep our rigged system in place. They are throwing money at her because they have total control over everything she does. She is their puppet, and they pull the strings.

And what about the special interest support of failed military interventions supported by his then-opponent Senator Lindsey Graham:

Judging by the incompetent way he ran his campaign, it is easy to see why his military strategies have failed so badly — we can’t even beat ISIS!

That is the political movement I signed up for, volunteered for, worked for, and still fight for.

RELATED: ‘Birthright senatorship’ betrays America First

Finn Gomez/Getty Images

How can that movement be squared with an extension of establishment politics rather than its replacement? It can’t. Everything Trump once condemned is now reappearing in almost cartoonish form.

So who is spending so heavily to support Darline Graham Nordone — and what do those interests expect in return?

A group called the Invest in Tomorrow Coalition is flooding money to support Darline Graham Nordone against her conservative opponent Ralph Norman. The group has announced $1 million in the race, as part of a $15 million larger pledge across the country, having already spent millions to defeat conservatives Chip Roy and Andy Ogles in their primary races.

The group is a super PAC, made possible by the 2010 Citizens United decision and its progeny, and funded by “clean energy” interests that favor government support for their industry. Conservatives have spent years attacking that kind of arrangement as corporate welfare — or, less politely, socialism. The point is not that every donor buys a politician outright. It is that political money is rarely charitable. Donors spend because policy matters to them.

Darline Graham Nordone has also received support from the establishment Senate campaign arm, the National Republican Senatorial Committee. While she can’t take over her late brother’s campaign account directly, it can be transferred to the NRSC, which is funding her already. Notably, her opponent, Ralph Norman, is an original co-sponsor of the Save America Act from six years ago. For an establishment Senate already twisted into knots over its obstruction of that critical legislation, it makes sense that they wouldn’t want another fierce advocate for it.

There are others in this one-sided spending race as well. The Security is our Strength PAC, formerly associated with Lindsey Graham, is of course supporting her to the tune of $900,000. This group makes it clear that it views her as the one who will be “carrying the legacy forward.”

I take it from their perspective that they want the same out of this Graham that they got out of the last one, which is a different political tune than others suggesting that Darline may be more focused domestically. There is also a group called Palmetto Action that is coming in north of $1 million to oppose Ralph Norman, on similar lines.

RELATED: The Biden autopen scandal has one big winner: Anthony Fauci

Alex WROBLEWSKI/AFP/Getty Images

Put simply, a great deal of money is flooding into South Carolina, and most of it is either supporting Darline Graham Nordone or opposing Ralph Norman. For a movement built around draining the swamp, the optics could hardly be worse.

South Carolinians should brace for a deluge of ads from every screen and speaker they own. Special-interest money can move votes; that is why people spend it. But the underlying question will remain: Why is Darline Graham Nordone a serious contender for this Senate seat? Her birthright senatorship via a famous last name, President Trump’s endorsement, and a flood of outside money are doing much of the work.

South Carolinians should see this for what it is: a rejection of one of MAGA’s core promises. This is not draining the swamp. It is restocking it.

Democrats will happily use this cartoonish spectacle to argue that the Republican Party has been captured by corporate interests and turned its back on ordinary Americans. They will also have an easy answer when Republicans denounce democratic socialism: Why should voters take that charge seriously if a Republican senator reaches office with the help of interests seeking to socialize the costs of private investment?

That will be a tough charge to rebut.

​Darline nordone, Democratic socialism, Lindsey graham, Political establishment, President trump, Republican party, South carolina, Democratic socialists of america, Maga, Opinion & analysis