Everyone wants to label him “far right.”
By mid-afternoon of Jan. 4, it had become increasingly clear that a slew of far-right actors were gearing up for violence at the Capitol. Tim Pool derided and dismissed the accurate reporting out of hand.
Of all the ideological enemies Pool, 35, rails against on YouTube for an audience of millions each day, few stack up to the mainstream press. In his mind, coverage of then-President Donald Trump’s instigations and the mounting threats was yet another example of the media’s “depravity,” he said.
“What do you think they’re going to do?” asked Pool. “It’s so stupid.”
Two days later, a mob stormed the Capitol, whipped into a frenzy by nonsensical claims of a stolen election and determined to put a stop to the constitutional transfer of power. To date, nearly 600 alleged rioters—a mishmash of Trump backers, QAnon adherents, and members of militias and extremist groups—have been arrested.
Throughout the fall of 2020, the wildly successful YouTube pundit had spent countless hours hyping the blinkered legal strategies and half-baked fantasies about voter fraud animating the online right. At the same time, in each video Pool tried to separate himself from the hardcore conspiracy theorists. After all, he was just commenting on the news.
What Pool kept secret from his younger, overwhelmingly male, decidedly right-leaning audience during this time is that he seemed to have a pretty good idea what might happen on Jan. 6.
“Dude, I’ve had messages from people saying that they’ve already got plans to rush to D.C. as soon as Nov. 3 goes chaotic,” Pool said in early September during a recorded conversation reviewed by The Daily Beast.
