113: #WalkAway Campaign Founder Brandon Straka – Liberals, Lunacy & Lots Of Lies

The media has such a big role in controlling people’s thoughts, behaviors and are now implementing censorship on a scale we’ve never seen before. Way too often, many people unknowingly fall trap to the misinformation and lies. It is time to walk away from that and together take our country and lives back. Someone who can speak well about today’s topic is Michele Swinick’s special guest Brandon Straka.  A former liberal and Democratic Party supporter and the founder of the #WalkAway Campaign, a campaign that encourages and supports those on the Left to walk away from the divisive tenets endorsed and mandated by the Democratic Party of today. In this episode, Brandon shares with us the story of why he decided to leave behind the leftist ideology and started to move passionately towards the truth that many people are unaware of. Join Brandon as he pulls back the curtain and exposes the media, politicians and social organizations for who they really are and their poisonous agendas.  It’s time for the Facts, the Truth and to regain your independent thinking and freedom from the liberals, lunacy, and the lies we have been led to believe.

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#WalkAway Campaign Founder Brandon Straka – Liberals, Lunacy & Lots Of Lies

It’s time we get our country and lives back to normal, which means “discussing politics again,” but things have changed. The one positive realization many people had over the past month, they now know how much the Democrats hate hardworking Americans. Nancy Pelosi’s behavior during the negotiations of the CARES Act proved everything. If you’re a Democrat, have common sense and don’t believe in the party’s radical agenda, what do you do? My guest is going to provide you with all the answers. Brandon Straka is the Founder of the #WalkAway Campaign, former liberal and Democratic Party supporter who had very publicly walked away from the political left. He launched the movement in May of 2018 when his YouTube video about his decision went viral. In my opinion, he’s the most dynamic, sincere and common sense social leader we’ve had in decades. His message needs to be shared. He needs to be a household name.

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First, my joke is on with the show. “Have you heard about McDonald’s green new deal value meal? Order anything you like and the guy behind you has to pay for it.” Our guest is #WalkAway Campaign Founder, Brandon Straka, discussing liberal lunacy and lots of lies. Brandon, how are you?

I’m doing great. How are you?

I’m excellent. I want to first thank you for coming to the show and I want to thank you for having the courage to start the movement that you did.

Thank you for having me.

I want you to just give a little bit of your background, talk a little bit about the organization, then let’s jump into discussing the liberal ideologies, the identity politics and it’s time to get back focused on the 2020 election. It’s a very important year.

I started walking away almost two years ago. It was May 26th of 2018 that I released a six-minute video, which detailed everything about why I was walking away from liberalism and the Democratic Party. I was a Hillary supporter in 2016. I was a Democrat my whole adult life. I was very shattered when Donald Trump got elected president because I had fully and completely bought into the liberal media narrative of who and what Donald Trump was and who his supporters were. I was confused, scared and outraged, all of those things because the same media that I trusted told me that he had less than a 3% chance of winning and that there was no way that this was going to happen.

I went on this quest to try to understand how the media got it wrong and why anybody on the face of the earth would ever vote for a man who was such a racist, a bigot and such a deplorable hateful person as the media had made him out to be. When I went on that exploratory journey that I found out exactly what I did not expect to find out, which was that the media that I had been trusting my whole life was incredibly deceptive and that they had been creating a false narrative. Not just about Donald Trump, not just about Republican Trump supporters, but in general. The thing that shook me and upset me the most and got me to wake up and walk away was the realization that if you are a minority in this country, whether you’re black, brown or LGBT, which is I myself am a gay man, you’re being lied to and made to think you’re a victim with all the odds being against you.

The revelation to me that the media, the Democrats, and the whole liberal leftist ideology is exploiting fear for minorities in this country by controlling people’s thoughts and behavior. That’s when I was like this is much more wicked, insidious and duplicitous than I realized. I ended up walking away from the left. Over a period of time, I ended up finding myself over in the Republican camp which is where I am now and I am now a Trump supporter. That’s why I walked away. That’s why I made that video that I put out on May 26th of 2018. We’re almost two years old now, this organization called the #WalkAway Campaign, which is encouraging other people who are feeling pushed away or feeling like they no longer recognize the party that they once were loyal to and they once believe in. They now have a place to leave the left and to walk away from liberalism and the Democratic Party.

Do you think that partially your change in attitude was because the party changed so much or your thoughts for what it stood for was different or is it a combination of the two?

I think it’s a combination of the two but I do believe that the party has changed quite a lot. I think that liberalism has changed and has gone from being an answer to a real problem at a certain time. That answer itself became toxic because it over-corrected and it overreached. Liberalism was probably born from this very altruistic, compassionate, want and need to be supportive of people who were experiencing racism or people who were experiencing homophobia. I think it started out to be on a mission of equality for women and marginalized classes of people. What has happened now is this perpetual victim state that people have now found themselves in and that there never seems to be an endpoint. There never seems to be any recognition that we have made progress. We have moved forward.

If you ask most liberals now, they would tell you that Donald Trump is the most anti-LGBT president that we’ve ever had and black people and different groups of people are experiencing racism and oppression at a level we’ve never seen before. It’s like, “Are you kidding me?” You think racism is worse than it was in the 1950s or 1960s. It’s crazy but it’s become conditioned into the minds of people on the left. It’s an identity and they don’t know how to exist beyond this identity of victimhood and oppression. What I want to do is try to get people to recognize that the world has changed. I believe that we live in the greatest of times if you’re an LGBT American or Black American. We have an incredible president in the office who’s fighting for all American people regardless of skin color, sexual orientation, gender, etc.

We live in a time of great privilege as Americans in the year 2020. I want people to see that the world isn’t perfect but we’ve come a long way. I think that minorities in this country should be coming from a mindset at this point of freeing themselves and realizing that the American dream is alive and well and it is for the taking for everybody. It’s time to go get it and stop thinking of yourself as a victim and as somebody who’s caught in the chains of an oppressive system that from which you cannot break free. I don’t believe that’s true.

You’re right. The opportunities now are more than ever before. I’m glad that you brought up how supportive Trump is with minorities and the LGBTQ community because if you look prior to what’s going on with the Corona issues, unemployment in all of those categories was that an all-time low. Take it from a women’s standpoint, more women were starting their own businesses. There were more women in the workforce if you want to go into the gender side of things. The opportunities are there. It’s like people have been so conditioned and brainwashed. They don’t see it. It is not everybody but there is still a percentage that is living in this victimhood. If you look back, that’s always been the message of the left because they’re not a hand up, they’re a handout.

That doesn’t solve anything. You want people to be able to take care of themselves, have personal responsibility, self-reliance, be able to fend for themselves and support themselves. If you look from the money and power angle, if you’re a politician, you need people to believe what you say and follow along. If you don’t have a flock, you can’t have a job. You want to keep people suppressed. You want to feed them misinformation and have them think that they need you to exist rather than being independent. That’s the victimhood you’ve talked about, you’ve tried to get people to realize that it’s not how it is and it’s not healthy. It’s not even left or right. It’s common sense. It’s the way people need to think. 

It’s not just the politicians or the people in government who manipulate this. It’s largely the media but there’s a whole entire industry dedicated to this. It’s what I call the oppression industry. They do need these narratives to continue on so that they can stay in business. Look at organizations like the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD or the NAACP. These organizations only can continue to exist and continue to pay their six-figure salaries to their CEOs, founders and their staff if people keep pouring in donations. The people are only going to continue pouring in donations if these organizations continue putting up narratives that if you’re black, you are in danger. It’s always directed at a political party. It’s not enough to simply say, “You’re in danger from the police. You’re in danger from white America and you’re also in danger from the Republican Party and the Republican president.” That’s how this whole oppression industry itself also continues to exist by perpetuating this narrative and in the end, the bottom line is always money.

In your position, are you having interactions with some of these groups where they are contacting you or people from their groups are contacting you because their ideology is opposite and you threaten them and you endanger their existence? Are there any conflicts that you have with them where they try to intimidate you? They’ve got deep pockets and loud voices.

Not in a direct way but in an indirect way. When we’ve done events for the LGBT community, as #WalkAway, we traveled around the country visiting minority communities. We’ve done the Black community, the Hispanic community and the LGBT community. We have a women’s event coming up and we were preparing to have our first Jewish event, which unfortunately had to be canceled due to the Coronavirus outbreak. When we’ve done our LGBT events, we have faced being canceled 4 out of 5 times with those and that’s because of pressure that’s on the venues that we’re utilizing to do our events. That pressure is oftentimes coming from these different organizations like Human Rights Campaign or whatever because they have a lot of connections to the media, particularly niche media like the LGBT The Advocate Magazine, Out Magazine and LGBT news sources.

A lot of them take their directives from these organizations. They work in tandem to put out stories and to find the pressure to make sure that our messages can’t get out but we’ve been successful 3 out of 4 times. We get cancelled and then have to secure a new venue last minute and the show does go on but they certainly made it harder. That’s with intention because they don’t want these minority communities to get the message that they are free, that they do have a choice, and they do have the opportunity. They don’t want them to know that. That’s the great irony about all of this. These advocacy groups are crying inequality and are crying racism and bigotry. They don’t want these communities to know that they have the freedom available to them that they have.

They’re threatened by independent thinking and people doing their own self fact-checking and having opinions that are different from theirs. The hypocrisy is mind-blowing when you think about it because everything that they say they stand for is exactly the opposite of what they’re doing by trying to get your events canceled. That doesn’t make any sense. They say they want everyone to be able to voice their opinion and they want to be supportive and have equality but if you disagree with them, then all of a sudden your ideas are very bad, you’re very bad. You can believe in whatever you want as long as it’s what they want you to believe…then it’s okay. You’re outspoken and you’re out there in social media, especially in the LGBT community. How has it personally affected you and how are they treating you now?

My reception within the LGBT community has not been great up until this point. We do see every day more and more LGBT people waking up and starting to think for themselves and make the position to walk away. I think that on our end of things, it’s growing. Whereas I think their end is more diminishing, but in general, they still have the majority for sure. They don’t like me. They don’t like my message so they do what they do best, which is tell lies, malign me, and misrepresent what my organization is about, what I’m about and what my message is about. They go to accusations which is that I’m a Nazi. I’m a racist. I’m a bigot. I’m a white supremacist and self-loathing gay man. It’s absolutely backwards and inside out because my message is that I want to provide more choice, more opportunity and more freedom to all minority communities.

If you want to be a Democrat, be a Democrat. It’s your life. You can do whatever you want. All I’m saying is that you don’t have to be based on the color of your skin, your gender or your sexual orientation and what have you. A lot of people in your community will probably tell you that this is the only choice that’s available to you and that making any other choice would be an indication that you’re a self-loathing individual or that you’re not acting in your own best interest. I’m here to say that is a lie. I can give you any number of reasons why that’s a lie and that you do have a choice. Not only do you have a choice but you should make a choice. Any party or any political ideology or any group that tries to tell you that you are limited to only supporting them and using fear to exploit that messaging is not looking out for your best interest. They don’t care about you. They do not have your back.

You have shared lots of personal stories of people that have come over from the dark side to the good side. Is there one that sticks out of your mind that was powerful and you said, “What I’m doing is my purpose and I feel completely rewarded because I’m helping so many people?”

I have to be honest and say that every #WalkAway testimonials touch me in some way. They’re all good. They’re like my babies in a way, so it’s too hard to choose between all my babies. We took twenty #WalkAway testimonials from black Americans and we created a short film with them called The Great Awakening: Breaking the Chains of the Democratic Party. That’s a short film that people can find on YouTube for free. It’s about 45 minutes long. It is spectacular. It is beautiful. It’s brilliant. I didn’t make it myself. This is not me patting myself on the back. It was somebody in the #WalkAway Campaign named Mike Boss. He lives in Los Angeles. He makes films in Hollywood, he has been a great supporter, and advocate of our movement, of what we’re doing. He came to me with it and said, “I’ve made this sort of documentary film. I want you to tell me what you think of it.” I saw it and I was blown away.

We’ve taken that film and we’ve gone around the country and done screenings of it in black communities around the country from Harlem to Atlanta, Georgia to Downtown, Los Angeles and we’ll be doing more and more once the country begins to open up again. We do them for free. Free screenings of this film and we do a panel discussion afterwards. People in the black community who have walked away from the left, what we call the #WalkAway Black Americans Town Hall. It’s not one testimonial, which was your question but that to me is a special and beautiful product that has come out of the testimonials that we strung together for this documentary film. That has been incredibly impactful, resonated with a lot of people, opened a lot of people’s eyes and gotten people to #WalkAway. That’s something to me that’s very special and coming from this movement.

You’ve got town halls, you’ve got online events, and you’re doing a big event with women. What other types of activities can people get involved with or maybe have some interactions in person once everything gets back to normal?

We also do a college campus tour, which was called The #WalkAway Thought Revolution College Campus Tour. We went to a good number of schools last semester and unfortunately, we had to cancel this semester’s tour, which is pretty heartbreaking to me. We have to look forward and not look back. We’ve booked eleven schools for the fall semester and some pretty good ones too. I’m going to be at Berkeley in California, the epicenter of liberal craziness. I’m going to Dartmouth, Ohio and Florida. People can go on my social media (Twitter) @BrandonStraka. They can see the graphic that has all the colleges that we have booked. We’re still talking to at least 5 or 6 others. Which I’d say the next 1 to 2months, we’ll have those shored up and we’ll have a very expansive tour. I’m ready to go for the fall semester because America will reopen and life will go back to normal. We are going to be ready for it when it happens.

Kudos to you on getting into those college campuses especially with the ideology that they’re being indoctrinated there. Anyone paying attention or listening over the past several months or watching on TV, the backlash a lot of conservatives have when they go on college campuses to talk is unbelievable. It’s chaos at those events. More power to you for getting it coordinated and making it happen. I’m hoping that you guys are financially secure enough to hire your own security for safety reasons because you can never be too safe.

We do hire security for all of the events that we do but you have a good point. People like and support what we’re doing. We did an event and as I was being introduced, one of the gentlemen who was introducing me said, “#WalkAway is the most important piece on the chessboard going into the 2020 election.” I thought it was a very powerful and amazing thing to say. If people agreed even a little bit with that statement, I hope they support us. They can go to WalkAwayCampaign.com to make a donation. We’re a 501(c)(3) organization. This is a tax-deductible nonprofit org. and that’s a tax-deductible donation. Your money will go towards the College Campus Tour getting us into minority communities. All of this hard work that we’re doing to try to wake people up and get them to walk away from the left.

I’m glad you brought that up because looking at just numbers alone, you’ve got Millennials from age 23 to 38 plus Gen Z, 18 to 22, they make up 37% of the voters for 2020. Even if somebody is a Republican and they’re in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and they believe in this country, and they’re listening to the movement that you have created and the messaging…Pick up your checkbook people because you’ve got a majority of these young people that are thinking the old way that Brandon used to think. They’re not clear on how the world should be working. They need to be woken up because those are some dangerous numbers, Brandon.

It’s having an impact and it’s a matter of getting into the communities and having a conversation in a different way. I think what we do differently than so many conservatives who have gone and people going in with the Republican messaging, is we offer people the freedom and the space to be able to make this decision on their own. At #WalkAway, we don’t go into these colleges or minority communities and say, “Walk away from the Democrats and become a Republican.” We don’t say, “Walk away and become a Trump supporter.” We say, “Do your own research. Think for yourself. Come to the understanding that you are being manipulated by the media, by the Democrats and by liberal ideology,” which has become omnipresent everywhere from entertainment to academia, to politics and culture.

It’s everywhere. We’re trying to say, “If you don’t want to be a Republican, don’t be a Republican. If you don’t want to become a Trump supporter, fine, but start thinking for yourself and start doing your own research. Stop believing the liberal media because they’re not telling you the truth and they don’t have your best interest at heart. Become an independent free thinker. Wherever that journey leads you, we’re here for you.” We have people in #WalkAway who are Republicans who are Independent or Libertarian. We are a community and a network of people who support and appreciate that diversity of opinion and thought. We engage in civil dialogue and civil disagreement with one another. It’s a beautiful movement and it’s a slice of America, exactly the way that America should be. I think people should support what we’re doing.

You said that beautifully and that’s what I personally think is why your movement and message are successful because you’re doing it from a different approach. It’s not because you come up with a campaign strategy in order to manipulate somebody or persuade them or force your opinion and the ideology on them. The approach that you have is sincere because that’s how you feel. It comes across in all your messaging, in your voice, in your conversations and your posts. You want people basically to pull their heads out of their rear ends, think for themselves and whatever works for them is great. You don’t have to think a certain way because somebody told you because most of the time, that’s not even the truth. Those are a bunch of lies. Be independent and stand on your own two feet. You’re teaching them the things that you would have thought maybe their parents taught them but that’s okay. As you said, they are your babies. Technically, you are their daddy and you are teaching them the stuff that they didn’t learn in school.

These are the things that you would think would be the fundamentals, like the golden rule. I appreciate that so much. It’s sincere because it’s real. If something’s real and somebody believes in it as you do, you have a passion for it and it’s your purpose. You are the epitome of the American dream and an example of what it means to be when you’re dedicated, you have integrity and you believe in something. Look how big this organization and movement has become when it started literally with you probably getting pissed off and filming a video. Now, look at it years later. You’ve done something amazing and I hope that you recognize that.

I recognize it in certain ways. One way or another, everything points back to the work. It’s not just me. I started this on my own but I now have a handful of people who are my core team. We work around the clock doing all of these things that we do because we love what we’re doing. I think that there are times when we pull something amazing off and those are the moments when we’re like, “We’re doing something here and this is awesome.” It’s like this women’s event that we have coming up. It was supposed to be May 1st in Nashville but unfortunately, now we’ve had to push it back to October 2nd. It’s still happening and this event that we’re doing is we have a panel of women. We’re going to do it in a large theater in Washington, DC on October 2nd.

I have for this event Laura Trump, Judge Jeanine Pirro, Diamond And Silk, Katie Hopkins and Shameeka Michelle. We were able to get all of these women together on the same stage in one night which is not easy to do. All of these women are very busy and they’re all traveling here and there. When we got all those contracts signed and everyone to get on the same day at the same time, we were like, “This is pretty awesome what we’re doing here.” This was just a handful of people putting this together. There are moments that I feel like what we’re doing is pretty incredible but we don’t spend a lot of time patting ourselves on the back and saying, “We’re so great.” We mostly keep working, moving forward, and trying to figure out how we’re going to have the most impact next. Where we’re going to talk to them and how we’re going to change their minds. That’s where our heads are at.

That’s a good space to be in. That’s powerhouse group of ladies, that’s a big stage. If people want tickets or information, is it listed on your website?

Not yet because we were not all set to go in Nashville and we just got the final contract signed by Judge Jeanine. We got their contracts for the new date which is October 2nd. We know for sure it’s going to be October 2nd and it’s going to be in Washington, DC. Now, we have to line up the venue of our dreams, which we’re talking to them right now. Once we have that contract signed and everything, then we’ll get tickets on sale.

We’ll have your website and all your information listed on our websites so that way people will have more than one place to go find it when they’re ready to learn more, go to any events, to town halls, and any of the other future events that you are planning. I know you said you had a very short window because you’ve got to go out there, do good and get your message out. Are there any parting words, any information or something you want to plug? The floor is open for you at this point, Brandon.

Thank you so much. I would say for your listeners who are not yet familiar with what we’re doing, check us out, go to WalkAwayCampaign.com. If you go there, there’s a button that says join the movement. It will direct you right to our Facebook group, which we’re close to 240,000. In that group, we have tens of thousands of written testimonials, video testimonials, and people telling their stories. It’s incredible. People are going to love watching those videos. They’re amazing. Please give me a follow on social media. You will do that on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. @BrandonStraka

If you believe in what we’re doing and I think that you do, please consider being a donor to what we’re doing. You can do that on the website as well, make a donation and maybe even consider being a monthly donor. Even if it’s $10, $20, everything helps. If you’re able to be a larger donor, that’s incredible. We’ve gone a long way at this point through the support of the grassroots. Please don’t ever feel like $5 or $10 isn’t a lot or enough, that’s a big help. Every little bit helps. It helps us get to more people and get that message out more stuff. Please support us.

There’s a big thing happening in November and it could change the landscape of how this country moves forward. The numbers of the Millennials and Gen Z is 37% of the voters. It’s a big number. I want people to pull out their checkbooks who are in their 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. You’ve got a bunch of Republicans here that need to dig deep into those pockets. Brandon, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it. We’ll have you back at any time that you want.

We are here to support you in any way we can to get the message out further about the movement. Whenever you want to come on, pop in and say hi, you’re more than welcome because I believe in what you’re doing. I’m impressed and like you said, “Independent thinking,” that’s all it is. Think for yourself. Do your own fact-check. It’s very simple. Brandon, you’re a good guy. You’re doing good work. Keep it up and don’t worry about that backlash that comes at you. They’re scared of you. They’re threatened and they’re scared and they don’t like that you’re right. That’s the problem and that’s okay.

Thank you so much for your support. I appreciate that. I’d love to come back and do a follow-up once everything gets reopened and we get moving again.

Once the dust settles. Thanks again. I appreciate it. You take care of yourself out there. Stay strong.

Thanks so much.

We’re proud to have Brandon Straka and the #WalkAway Campaign as Partners in the Everything Home Socially Conscious Referral Network and Marketplace. Please check our our Patriotic Purpose Driven Resource Platform:

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Important Links:

• WATCH: The Video That Started It All
• The Great Awakening: Breaking the Chains of the Democratic Party
• #WalkAway Campaign
• WalkAwayCampaign.com
• Facebook – #WalkAway Campaign
• Twitter – #WalkAway Campaign
• @BrandonStraka – Brandon Straka – Twitter
• Instagram – Brandon Straka
• Facebook – Brandon Straka
• BrandonStraka.com
• Get Involved #WalkAway Campaign
• Rescue America Volunteer Sign Up
• DONATE To #WalkAway Campaign 501(c)3

About Brandon Straka

Brandon Straka is the founder of the #WalkAwayCampaign, former liberal and former Democratic party supporter who had very publicly walked away from the political left and created a social movement encouraging others to do the same.  He launched the movement in May of 2018 when his YouTube video about his decision went viral.  Born and raised in rural Nebraska and now a resident of New York City, Brandon travels the nation promoting the #WalkAway Campaign message and sharing his desire to bring a new awareness and understanding to the reality of politics in America today and his mission to unify America.

Brandon is the most dynamic, sincere, common sense, social leader we’ve had in decades and his message needs to be shared.  Brandon needs to be a household name.