Aaron Rodgers

When the news broke that, per CNN, Aaron Rodgers reportedly claimed that the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was a “government inside job,” I didn’t even flinch.

Obviously, it’s a horrific conspiracy theory that you have to be devoid of human empathy to even entertain. But I have absolutely no problem presuming that Rodgers does hold those beliefs. In fact, I’d be shocked to learn he didn’t believe it.

That’s because I recently listened to the New York Jets quarterback’s appearance on the Look Into It with Eddie Bravo podcast. Currently only available behind a paywall, I plunked down the $14.99 (ugh) necessary to listen to this show’s full episodes, which feature “uncensored conversations with ‘red-pilled’ martial arts stars, comedians, rock stars, and conspiracy theorists.”

You might have heard about the episode as some details made their way onto aggregation sites, news sites, and social media. The list of topics discussed during the three-hour episode certainly paints a picture.

After sitting through that entire discussion, I was left with two very distinct realizations.

One, Eddie Bravo delivers on what he promises.

Two, Aaron Rodgers is so much further down the rabbit hole than many of us even realize. And given all of the things he’s said on The Pat McAfee Show, not to mention what he reportedly once said about September 11, that is saying something.

At the time, it didn’t seem worth writing about as there wasn’t an inherent sports media angle. However, since then, Rodgers has (somehow) become a potential vice presidential running mate, and the aforementioned Sandy Hook story has brought the depth of his conspiratorial thinking to the limelight. So the other tidbits that Rodgers candidly discussed on the podcast suddenly seem to have journalistic merit, confusing as they can be to juxtapose against one another.

I will do my best below to summarize what other things Aaron Rodgers believes, in his own words.

On Immigrants

After a long back-and-forth between Bravo and Rodgers about how the COVID-19 virus was fake, the COVID vaccine hurt people, and the entire pandemic was some kind of conspiracy, Rodgers gets extremely passionate about a conspiracy theory recently floated by Bret Weinstein on The Joe Rogan Experience that certain types of immigrants are attempting to enter the U.S. to join the military to gain citizenship and then turn against Americans.

“How bout when [Weinstein] is talking about the two different migration groups, right?” asked Rodgers. “You have the Spanish-speaking group and you have the Chinese group. And he’s talking about the scary thing, which I actually thought about for years. I said, no American-loving soldier is going to turn on their people, right? But who would turn on their people?

“And he mentioned that… on the podcast. What happens if they offer citizenship for military service? That’s a fucking scary thought. And what bill was just brought into the Congress, I believe yesterday, the day before? That exact type of bill offering citizenship for immigrants.”

Rodgers is offering a very dark view of the “Courage to Serve Act,” which is sponsored by Rep. Pat Ryan, D-N.Y., and Rep. John James, R-Mich.

Just Push the Parasites Out

Bravo goes on a rant about how germ theory is fake and viruses “are not what you think they are.” He seems to be on the train of thought that there’s no need for vaccines or even medicine because any sickness is just something your body needs to “push out.”

“When you take antibiotics…you’re stopping the process of your body pushing out all these toxins that it collected from your diet or from the air,” said Bravo. “And it seems like it healed, like, you took antibiotics, oh, it’s gone. But all you did was stop the process of pushing it out. And then your body just saves it.

“Now it’s still in your body. And they believe that possibly there’s links to cancer. Like, maybe that’s what cancer is. Like, tumors and stuff, you never let your body push that stuff out. And we have a cold, same thing. When you have a cold, your body’s pushing out toxins.”

“Same thing with parasites, right?” asks Rodgers. “Have you looked into that part too?”

Bravo then explains that there are “at least 20 studies” that prove people can’t get one another sick, using Alex Jones’ rant about how they’re “putting chemicals in the water that turn the freakin’ frogs gay!” as an example to back up his point.

There’s then a long back-and-forth about how the pandemic shutdown happened so that Anthony Fauci could make a vaccine that isn’t actually a vaccine for a virus that wasn’t real even though people died but maybe people didn’t actually die and every doctor in America was on the take. (Or something like that. Honestly, it’s impossible to keep track of all the strings, not to mention the constant flip-flops).

“Experimental Gene Therapy”

Eventually, Rodgers arrives at his belief that the COVID-19 vaccine is, in fact, “experimental gene therapy” that “changes your DNA.”

“They vaxxed millions and millions of Americans, right? Who knows what this is going to do to us?” ponders Rodgers. “There was a gentleman early on, there’s a video you can find… He basically admits if we’ve called this what it is, experimental gene therapy, maybe 5 percent of people would have signed up for it.

“But when you tag the term ‘vaccine’ to it, then you open up this whole other thing. So if you question a vaccine, now you’re anti-science, now you’re a tinfoil hat-wearer, now you’re a quack, and you’re anti-medicine, anti-health, right? And that’s what they did. That’s what they did. And then they can vilify whoever they want to vilify.

“I mean, all the shit. Remember this is shit that they said? This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. President Weekend at Bernie’s Biden went on TV and said it’s going to be a winter of death for the unvaccinated. That’s what he fucking said. Are you kidding me? Do people not remember this? Do you not have a problem with this? Do you not think any of this is a little bit strange?

“They shut the country down. The largest transfer of wealth ever. These pharma companies made billions and billions and billions of dollars for an experimental gene therapy that changes your DNA. That you have bizarre extra death numbers going on.

“If you follow diet suddenly, and you follow and you track healthy, youngish, or even healthy athletes who got jabbed, just dying. Not to question any of it. Like, any, this is a little bit strange. You’d probably be the same people in the 80s going, yeah, nothing wrong with AZT.”

Young Athletes Had To Retire Due to the Vaccine, Apparently

Rodgers followed that last part up with some thoughts on the many, many athletes who died or were forced to retire because of the vaccine.

“There’s plenty of young people and not just who’ve died, but have had episodes on the field, had to retire, had to stop playing. But then now you’re vilified to even question, like, back in the day, this is how fucking crazy and backward this shit is. There was a witchhunt to see in the NFL, who’s vaccinated, who’s not vaccinated, what vaccine you got, shit on the people who aren’t vaccinated, right?

“Like, the first question was like, when you got to the campus, are you vaccinated? And now somebody has a heart episode or dies, unfortunately. And if you happen to be like, wonder if they were vaxxed? You’re a fucking terrible person. You have no empathy. And it’s like, no, I have all the empathy in the world. These people were vilified and scared to death to get vaccinated. And how many people actually would have wanted to?”

Citation needed, to say the least.

Trump Sucks Too, Apparently

“Trump’s an outsider, all the right rhetoric, we’re going to drain a swamp and go after the corruption. And I don’t think a lot happened. And what I fault him for is Tony Fauci because he is an establishment pharmacrat since he got in, and he’s been in forever, and he’s the highest-paid government official. And… not only did Trump push the vaccine, Operation Warp Speed or whatever the fuck it was, but he let Fauci stay in charge and shut the country down.

“So my thing on politics is I’ve always thought it’s a fucking sham because the majority of them are all juiced in, and it’s run by the big banks, the big pharma, the lobbyists, the big everything, right? That doesn’t give a shit deep down about the American people, all they care about is profits, power, and control.

“So my antidote to that is RFK, Jr.”

This is All JFK’s Fault

Speaking of RFK, Jr., Rodgers shared that his appreciation of conspiracy theories goes back to the granddaddy of them all, JFK’s assassination.

“The last real President was the first President I studied, which was JFK,” said Rodgers. “And that’s what got me into questioning things because I did a sophomore project on JFK, life and death. And when I read, back in the day in 1998 or 9… you read the story about Lee Harvey Oswald being the sole gunman of the president and this magic bullet theory, I remember thinking to myself in the sophomore class, ‘That’s fucking bullshit.’ And that got me into questioning things.

“And now when you go back, and I’ve read a ton of books about JFK, about his life, he was trying to do some real shit. He was trying to decrease the power of the Fed and get us back on a metal standard. He was going after corruption. He wasn’t letting the OSS, which turned into the CIA, get us into World War III with Operation Northwoods, which you can go research.

“He fired Alan Dulles. And then if you research Alan Dulles’ background and know his connection to the Bushes and how he basically went from banking to espionage to bringing Operation Paperclip, which brought the scientists, the German scientists, into the States… which turned some of them into MK Ultra.

“And again, these are not conspiracy. These are all proven things, although conspiracy is a term which gets slighted. Conspiracy theories have been right about a lot of things in the last couple of years, if you go back and look at it.”

Trump, Biden, Doesn’t Matter

“Trump got four years. I don’t know how much this swamp got drained. It seemed like there are certain members of the establishment who stayed in power or got to power. Biden. I mean, he’s a puppet. I don’t know who’s actually running the country, whether it’s somebody else, but he can barely put his sentences together.”

How Many Viewers?

“[Biden] goes up on a press conference the same night, coincidentally enough, that Tucker [Carlson] is doing his [Vladimir] Putin interview that got 200 million viewers. He goes out there and can’t put a sentence together and confuses Mexico and Egypt.”

Note – The “200 million viewers” notion was popularized by Donald Trump and is, of course, not true. Do better research.

Every 16-Year-Old’s U.S. Election Rant

“Here’s my thing, because I’ve said this before, but why in the world can you not have an election day that’s a national holiday? There’s no excuses about going to vote, right? It’s a national holiday. There’s no work. That’s the day you go vote. They’re all tallied on the same day. You show some form of ID to vote. I don’t think that’s racist. I don’t think that’s preferential. Everybody knows, all right, November 4 is going to be Election Day.

“You have to have some form of ID for that. It’s a day off. If you want to vote, you vote. It all gets tied on the same day. What happened? I mean, how many days after have we seen over the years, whether it’s Bush-Gore in Florida or a bunch of the swing states this last election where they couldn’t get the votes counted until a day after, two days after, a week after, they’re still going through this stuff. That’s crazy. Make people go, hmm, something’s going on here. They call the race the counting at three in the morning and you wake up the next day and it’s totally flipped.”

“Way More Free Speech”

“How are people getting the news now? They’re listening to podcasts, and Joe [Rogan]  is number one. They’re watching X and Elon [Musk] has created a platform that has way more free speech now (Ed. note – Perhaps not?). There’s still some issues with it, for sure, but if you just look at the fucking Twitter Files and the collusion that was going on between the Alphabet companies and censoring of, like, legitimate experts in fields who were just stating their professional opinions. It’s fucking crazy.”

Tartarian Empire Conspiracies

Later on, Bravo and his producer launch into several conspiracies (flat earth, human beings didn’t evolve from monkeys, giants were real) that come together around the Tartarian Empire, a pseudohistorical conspiracy theory that has been described as “the QAnon of architecture” and often appeals to racists and antisemites.

Bravo goes off on a rant about how cathedrals built in the 1800s couldn’t have been built without power tools when Rodgers chimes in.

“The World’s Fair is part of it too,” said Rodgers. “It’s interesting.”

As for what Rodgers is referring to, “one canonical belief of Tartarian aficionados is that the elaborate temporary pavilions built for late 19th century and early 20th century World’s Fairs were, in fact, Tartarian capital cities,” per Zach Mortice.

“That’s very interesting stuff,” Rodgers continued. “I think that’s the best part of kind of going through life with just a curiosity and a skepticism almost about certain things is… ‘Look at this. It’s crazy.’

“I think it starts with the curiosity about our history and what is actually true that we’ve been told and what is a lie. Why does that fucking matter? It’s because if they can lie about that, what else can they lie about? And what are we actually doing on this planet?

“Where do we come from? And why don’t we care about things that actually should matter? And why are we so distracted, and why are they trying these different things for power and control? It goes back to what is real in this world and what can we actually go, ‘You know what? I really believe in this.’

“Tartaria is interesting to me because I have a natural skepticism paired with a true curiosity about history. I studied history in college. When I was nine years old, I studied Egypt. And that’s why I’m so fascinated by Graham Hancock and Randall Carlson and their theories about Egypt. I love their podcast with Joe.

“And why does that history matter? Because there’s been probably thousands and thousands and thousands and tens and hundreds of thousands maybe years of extremely advanced civilizations. Why does that change things? Because everything that they’ve told us could be a lie.

“A lot of the stuff, you mentioned Rockefeller. You look into the history of some of those families and what they’ve done to this country and just look at it from a medicine standpoint. Like, if you know the history of medicine in this country, there’s a great book called Dissolving Illusions, which touches on some of this stuff.

“But if you look at Rockefeller’s influence on history and education…very fascinating. Many buildings and structures and islands around the world and country have been named after a lot of these ruling families in a more of a positive light. But there’s been some interesting things that they brought to this country that maybe aren’t in our best interest. And I just like to question things.

“I think it’s interesting when you go to a big city, whether we play a lot of big cities, and you look at some of the architecture, you’re like, man, that’s fucking crazy. But doesn’t match some of the other stuff in the same time period. It’s very strange. What is this all about?

“And then you look at just looking at the world. It orients you and it gives you a curiosity to question what they’ve been telling you about various structures around the world, and there’s some things I look at, and I’m like, did we have Avatar-style home trees here? You look at some of these mountains that are flattened off that look like petrified pieces of trees.

“What would the world look like with free energy and time travel that he was working on? All the other crazy inventions that Nikola Tesla was bringing to this planet. And what would it look like? We knew the real history of what happened to the Library of Alexandria and what was written there. What’s in the library of the Vatican? What secrets are they hiding there that could move this forward?”

“…So I’m fascinated in the Tartarian empire, just like I’m fascinated with what happened with the Greeks and the Egyptians and America and what’s going on in Antarctica and what happened there. There’s a lot of really interesting things that pique my interest, but the buildings especially.

“I notice it every time I go into big cities, the architecture is very fascinating from just pure esthetic standpoint. They’re gorgeous, they’re beautiful buildings. But then you look at some old photos, and you’re like, what else [indecipherable].”

—–

In all seriousness, one of the things that becomes abundantly clear when you listen to Rodgers talk long enough is that he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, and he’s more than happy to continue not knowing it. He sees so much of the world through the lens of someone who has never had to get in the muck and deal with reality.

His “common sense” ideas have occurred to everyone, but he lacks the grounding to understand why they’re not in place, not to mention who is responsible for that. And he presumes that it means everyone else must be dumber than him, rather than concluding that he needs to educate himself further. Not to mention it becomes clear that while he appreciates being able to “question things,” he very clearly focuses that skepticism on specific areas and not others. He truly embodies the “college sophomore problem.”

If nothing else, living your life as if EVERYTHING is a conspiracy just sounds depressingly exhausting.

About Sean Keeley

Along with writing for Awful Announcing and The Comeback, Sean is the Editorial Strategy Director for Comeback Media. Previously, he created the Syracuse blog Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician and wrote 'How To Grow An Orange: The Right Way to Brainwash Your Child Into Rooting for Syracuse.' He has also written non-Syracuse-related things for SB Nation, Curbed, and other outlets. He currently lives in Seattle where he is complaining about bagels. Send tips/comments/complaints to sean@thecomeback.com.