Hi, I'm Will Summer. Welcome to The Daily Beast's Fever Dreams. I'm a politics reporter at The Daily Beast, and I'm currently working on a book about Q&ONN called Trust the Plan for Harper Collins coming out later this year.

And I'm Kelly Weil. I am also a reporter at The Daily Beast, and I'm the author of the book Off the Edge, Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why people will believe anything. On this podcast, we're going to take you on plunges into the sometimes hilarious, sometimes scary fanatics, infecting the way that millions of Americans view the world and how they vote.

Even in the aftermath of the Trump administration, the energy of these conspiracy theorists, grifters, and influencers is still pushing our mainstream political landscape closer and closer to a breaking point.

Hey, Will.

So over the weekend, I was watching this Trump rally out in Wyoming.

And there's a lot of talk about rhino hunting these days.

Not the rhino kind of hunting that not Cecil the lion type rhino hunting.

Exactly.

We're talking about Republicans in in name only hunting but this new

language is getting awfully popular with these hunts for rhinos of course they went out with

Donald trump kind of spearheading this effort to caspar wyoming on saturday and they were out there

trying to knock off primary incumbent liz cheney out there, who of course is kind of a foe

to kind of the mag hardcores, if you will. So this rhino hunting term is really picking up some

speed. So there's been a long time that for, gosh, at least since I was in high school, this has been

an insult, right? Just calling someone a rhino or a Republican in name only. And my first experience

with this was I was at a as a young

Republican I was at this like Republican state representative debate and this guy kind of a big guy

kind of like a thumb type looking guy he said they've called me a rhino and I thought well he

kind of does look like a rhino and he was really like I can't believe they called me a rhino and i thought well he kind of does look like a rhino and he was really like i can't

believe they called me a rhino and all this and i was like well that's kind of a cute little

insult if they're throwing that around but obviously it's not that cute so it is republican

in name only it's like calling someone a shill say they're simping for the democrats but what you're

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