An Uno Reverse 'gotcha' moment

On Saturday, a young man introduced himself as “Tommy” and asked if Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed would disavow the Muslim Brotherhood. El-Sayed did, repeatedly, and Tommy kept asking the question anyway.

But it didn’t matter: El-Sayed had already pulled out an Uno Reverse card. He slowly and surgically took apart the question and why it was being asked in the first place.

Spoiler alert: the young man from that clip is a former staffer for Josh Hawley (R-MO) named Thomas Teepell, according to independent journalist Marisa Kabas, who broke the news. She found that Teepell currently lives in Detroit (but just in case, I’ll start yelling “Tommy” every time I walk into a QuikTrip in Missouri and see if he answers).

Despite Tommy’s motivations, I felt this entire exchange was completely respectful and not, as CNN put it, a “heated exchange.”

I’d like to talk about the moment, Tommy’s true motivations, and its coverage.

But first! Let’s take a slow Sunday walk (or Monday for unpaid subscribers). It’s been a while since I turned this newsletter into my personal Xanga from 2005. Here’s what I’ve been up to.

Well, it finally happened. I got a really good night of sleep.

But before that, I managed to watch 20 minutes of VisionQuest. So far, so good? I think most Marvel fans would agree that two of the first three Marvel shows, WandaVision and Loki, remain head and shoulders above the rest. The other show Falcon and the Winter Soldier was an unintentional warning of what was to come.

Kevin Feige did not heed that warning: when WandaVision and Loki found such success in our living rooms, Marvel went absolutely nuts, launching six bajillion new shows, without a ton of oversight and at the Quicksilver speed of light.

I happened to really enjoy She-Hulk and I thought Ms. Marvel could’ve taken off with another season, but the only shows I’ve loved since 2020 were season 2 of Loki and Agatha All Along (which was kind of a sequel to WandaVision).

VisionQuest is another extension of WandaVision. As someone who just watched the first half of the first episode, I cannot yet give a verdict, but I do know that I love Paul Bettany and James Spader. I also know Edinburgh is my favorite city in the United Kingdom. A recipe for success!

I did find it interesting that, in those first twenty minutes, Vision was referred to as “AI” maybe five times as much as any previous iterations of the character. I’m not sure what that means for the show. Is it pro-AI? Is it trying to say something about AI? Or is it just using the term “AI” more often because the audience is now far more familiar with artificial intelligence than they were in 2020?

What do you think of the latest Marvel offering? Are you a long-time fan like me, who has begun to waver under the weight of all that content from 2021 to 2023? Reply to this email or send a new one at [email protected].

Every fall, I break out the most complicated recipe I know from our most difficult cookbook: pumpkin soup made from an actual pumpkin. I bake a whole-ass pumpkin in the oven for an hour. In that hour, I dig around for all the 20-something ingredients needed from when I made the soup last year. Finally, through various steps that make me feel, just for a moment, that I could compete on a low-stakes cooking show, I make a delicious pumpkin soup.

I forgot to take a photo, so just imagine the most incredible soup you’ve ever seen. Now imagine a toddler taking one small bite and saying “I like it.” Then twenty seconds later, she says “I’m full.” Then an hour later, she eats two hot dogs.

We’ve received over a hundred calls already for What’s Your Source? Every week, the problem is not “do we have a good question for the next episode?” Instead, it’s “which one do we pick?”

Another problem is, “oh, I could answer this in a short.” And so, I am playing with the idea of What’s Your Source? shorts, in which I answer a caller question in under three minutes, wherever you get your vertical videos.

Naturally, this is meant to serve as something of a promo for the long-form show, but I also just want to answer all of these really good questions! Over the next week or so, I’ll be working on this and answering some of your very good questions on the misinformation you’re seeing in your social feeds.

Important note: just because we’ve received plenty of calls, it doesn’t mean they should stop! We want this show to be as current as possible, so please keep calling in with your questions! And they shouldn’t be just political either. In fact, I would love to dive into the Kelly Clarkson $15 Million Bird drama. I just need someone, ANYONE, to call in about it.

When Thomas “Tommy” Teepell stood up to ask Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed if he would disavow the Muslim Brotherhood, it came with a lot of history.

The post-9/11 era of intense Islamophobia in the United States never quite died down. During the 2016 presidential campaign, then-candidate Trump ran on a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” In recent months, conservative news outlets and politicians have questioned El-Sayed’s personal ties to the more dangerous offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood, without evidence. If you Google his name right now, you’ll see coverage of Saturday’s exchange.

But the most recent article from Fox News? It’s this:

The headline is misleading. In the article itself, El-Sayed confirms her presence on the watchlist and goes on to say,

For someone like Teepell, who appears to be in his early 20s, this post-9/11 Islamophobia is all he has known. Despite his ulterior motives (see below), it’s easy to see how he could truly believe that this question was completely fair and not at all rooted in racism or bigotry.

It doesn’t make his questioning okay. Also, he is a grown adult man. And unfortunately, the more we learn, the worse it looks for Tommy. In her reporting for The Handbasket (which I highly recommend as a news source!), independent reporter Marisa Kabas uncovered a ton of information on Thomas Teepell:

I imagine in the coming days, possibly even hours, this story will gain even more traction. I hope Marisa is given her due for this excellent reporting.

When I first watched the exchange between El-Sayed and Teepell, it reminded me of another viral moment that comes back almost every presidential election. It happened when Teepell was only a child:

John McCain politely but firmly shutting down a racist, bigoted question about Barack Obama.

This is the America I grew up with. I was 17 years old, watching a Republican defend his Democratic counterpart. That Republican continued his work as a senator after losing the election. I was lucky enough to meet McCain in 2016 while shooting a video in his office. He was gracious, funny, and kind.

I don’t know what El-Sayed and McCain would agree on politically, but they both cared about America. They both present as decent people. In both viral videos, this wasn’t a “heated exchange,” as CNN called the El-Sayed exchange. It was a politician at their best, showing respect for other people, while refusing to sink to the level of the question. I hope people like Tommy, who never knew this world of civil politics, get to experience more of this in their lifetime.

What did you think of the exchange? Reply to this email or start a new one at [email protected].

I’m obsessed with this TikTok trend, in which people act out a seemingly normal event, but for a character in the Girl Meets World universe. It’s quite therapeutic for a Boy Meets World fan like me who couldn’t get past the first episode of Girl Meets World when it aired (yes, I know that it was made for children. But it was really bad!).