The Dark Truth Behind The Fake Livestream Murder Case & The Pathetic Reason He's Appealing
PDS Published 07/01/2026
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This killer YouTuber story that everyone missed. It's back in the news for a shocking reason.
You've got democratic socialism and explosive diarrhea, parasite outbreaks spreading across the country, you've got a pastor now defending mock firing squads in front of kids. We're talking about all of that and even more on today's brand new Philip DeFranco Show.
Your daily dive into the news, starting with this.
This is just crazy, horrifying, heartbreaking news. But then diving right back into the news, we've got something that's just crazy, horrifying, and heartbreaking.
Because at the center of the story, you have a man who has become the, quote, "most hated man in prison," and he's trying to get out because he is scared for his life. Though I do not think that pretty much anyone is going to feel sympathy for him.
I'd like you to meet Stephen McCullough.
He's a YouTuber from Northern Ireland who amassed some 40,000 subscribers.
Seemingly the reason he's the most hated man in prison, and the reason he is serving life in prison right now, is because four years ago he brutally murdered his pregnant girlfriend, Natalie McNally.
He's now appealing his conviction, with sources saying he lives in terror every day with a giant target on his back.
But to understand that and where it goes from here, we have to go back to the beginning, which is in December of 2022.
Because less than a week before Christmas, Stephen goes over to Natalie's house and he finds something out of a nightmare. Natalie has been brutally beaten, stabbed in the neck. There are signs of strangulation.
Just everything is horrific.
He frantically calls emergency services, telling the operator that there's just so much blood, that Natalie is 15 weeks pregnant, but she feels cold.
When the police bring him in for questioning, he says it couldn't have been him that killed her because he was streaming on YouTube for six hours during the murder. He was playing GTA in what he titled the "Violent Night Christmas Live Gaming" stream.
He apparently had some technical issues, so he couldn't see the live chat or use his phone, but he spends the night drinking and gaming and shouting and just having a good overall time.
Towards the end, he even gets sentimental about the real meaning of Christmas.
"I think the message rings true that Christmas... it's not about the shops, and it's not about the lights and the tents and all that crap. It's literally just about having some time off to enjoy spending time with the people that you love."
But then Natalie's case starts getting more and more attention.
People start asking questions, thinking there's something just fishy about Stephen's story.
By the end of January 2023, police bring Stephen right back in, saying that their cyber team went through his devices and found that there was no user-generated content the night of December 18th when Natalie was murdered.
Meaning that there was no way he was actually live when he said he was.
It turns out Stephen had pre-recorded his stream a few days earlier, which explains his so-called technical issues with the live stream, and he just set the whole thing up to look like he was live that night.
Which then also gives a few of the clips from that stream a whole new vibe.
"So I thought you were supposed to, like, run them off the road and kill them... much like your woman."
"I need to kill this."
"I need to take her down."
"That's what would happen in the real world."
Notably, internationally, he gets charged with murder.
During his trial, you have prosecutors swooping in with even more damning evidence.
The night Natalie was killed, CCTV footage catches a man that the prosecution says was Stephen leaving his neighborhood with a bag and taking the bus to Natalie's.
He then gets there around 8:50 p.m., and that is the last time anyone saw Natalie alive.
But then, a little more than half an hour after he showed up, Stephen leaves Natalie's house, gets into a taxi, goes home, and once again gets caught on camera.
Except this time, he's seen throwing a couple of things over a bridge.
Then you had him the next day texting Natalie's phone a few times before then showing up at her house that night to stage his discovery of her.
He then spent the next several weeks playing the role of grieving partner, going to Natalie's wake at her family's house on Christmas Day, creating a video montage of pictures of himself and Natalie to be played at a rally held in her memory.
But then it wasn't until earlier this year that the case finally went to trial.
It took nearly five weeks.
Then, after just over two hours of deliberations, you had the jury finding him guilty, and they sentenced him to life in prison with the requirement that he serve 31 years before he even has a chance at parole.
With a judge saying:
"Stephen McCullough, you have committed a brutal and senseless murder. You planned this murder in remorseless detail. You attacked someone you professed to love in a frenzied assault, which was characterized by its excessive and gratuitous violence."
Adding:
"Despite that frenzy, the killing was cold-blooded and calculated, as evidenced by the extensive planning leading up to the murder and your actions afterwards."
As for Natalie's family, her parents were as happy as you can be with Stephen facing justice.
But more than that, they were just at a loss at the lengths that he went to trick them and cover his tracks.
"We felt so sorry for him, and we thought he was a grieving partner. Everyone moved out of the workroom and left him on his own. We were thinking, 'He's down there on his own, and we've got each other. We've got the whole family here.'"
"And I feel so guilty sometimes, you know, not doing it. How did we fall for it? How did we fall for it? What he could have done with us, you know."
You also had Natalie's brother speaking more directly to Natalie herself outside of the courtroom the day the verdict came down.
"Natalie, you were an inspirational person. Having you in our lives was the greatest joy we'll ever have. You would have been an amazing mother to baby Dean. We will love you forever, and we hope you can rest easy. Thank you all very much."
Since the start of Stephen's life sentence, it has been far from easy.
In fact, you have sources inside the high-security prison where he's being held saying that this guy has a giant target on his back from his fellow prisoners, saying he's even earned himself the title of the "most hated man in prison."
Not necessarily for killing Natalie, but rather for killing their unborn child.
With one source saying:
"That's one thing the prisoners don't like—harming innocent children. Some of the worst attacks that have happened in here have been on child killers and child abusers."
And you have to understand that the human side means staff aren't going to put their own safety at risk to intervene for the likes of him.
Because McCullough murdered a pregnant woman, he falls into that category, and so they see him as a massive security risk.
He's being held in a separate wing away from the other residential units.
With that, you had another unnamed source saying the other prisoners joke that it's for the "squealers and feelers," which is a reference to touts and pedophiles.
And they aren't far off. In reality, it's segregation without any protection.
But it now does seem like he's trying to use that situation as a way to get out.
Because the Public Prosecution Service in Northern Ireland has been notified that he's lodged an appeal against his conviction.
A move that has obviously taken a toll on Natalie's family.
You had her brother, Declan, saying:
"That he would do it just speaks to his hideous nature. His behavior since then, that he'd put us all through a horrific trial despite all the overwhelming evidence, and at the end expects to have an appeal and get the sentence reduced."
Adding:
"If they're going to look at the sentence again, the only way the sentence should be going is just completely for the whole life."
So for now, we'll have to wait to see what happens.
If he has any success, though, me personally—just my opinion—I wish him nothing but the worst.
But then, next up in the news, let's talk about MAGA and Trump's new focus.
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And that is birthright citizenship.
As you saw or heard on yesterday's show, because you tune in every day, the Supreme Court shot down Trump's effort to get rid of birthright citizenship, with a majority ruling under the 14th Amendment that children who are born in the U.S. to parents who are here unlawfully or temporarily are still, in fact, U.S. citizens.
At this point, they just affirmed that a constitutional amendment still counts.
Right.
So the way things are, we'll just keep continuing as normal.
A lot of MAGA started acting like things were about to get much worse, arguing that the Supreme Court just greenlit birth tourism: pregnant women from other countries traveling to the U.S. so that their baby is born a U.S. citizen, even though you've got policies in place to try to prevent that from happening.
You had MAGA really honing in on this, really stoking up the fearmongering about it immediately after the decision came.
So, for example, you had people like Matt Walsh saying:
"It's indefensible that a pregnant woman from Guatemala can sprint across the U.S. border, have the baby 30 minutes after arriving here, and the baby is magically a citizen of the U.S."
Which, honestly, I will say, if you can find a woman who is 30 minutes away from labor that is able to sprint across an international border, maybe we want that. Sounds like maybe a World Cup striker.
But also, I'll say, Walsh was far, far from alone, with many taking it further, saying that foreign pregnant women shouldn't be allowed in the country at all.
So you saw things like Sean Davis, the founder of The Federalist, writing a sort of manifesto on how to respond to the court's ruling with steps like:
Deny entry to all pregnant foreigners.
Deny entry to all female foreigners.
Require sterilization of all foreign visitors prior to entry.
You also had people like Jack Posobiec saying:
"The court never said we can't mandate spot pregnancy tests."
A Daily Wire reporter added:
"Congress must start acting now to remove all foreign women from the country immediately and begin attaching pregnancy tests to visa requirements."
You even had Tennessee Representative Andy Ogles saying that he's introducing the Anchors Aweigh Act to ban pregnant aliens from entering the USA.
"If you are a pregnant woman, you can't come into this country. You've got to be a citizen, be here legally, or be a green card holder."
Then you also had Senator Rick Scott using the ruling to push for the Safe Kids Act, which would prevent adversarial nations, including Communist China, from using American surrogates to obtain U.S. citizenship for their children.
You also had a senior White House official going on Fox News to say:
"If a person comes here nine months pregnant to go look around, tour some things, and in a couple of weeks that is the mother of a lifetime American citizen and a direct line into American cash and welfare for the rest of that child."
"So you have to rethink women coming from abroad. Are we banning foreign pregnant women?"
"Well, what I'm saying, Jesse, is that you have to now think very carefully about who you let into your country, even on a temporary basis. There's a lot of things we're going to have to take a hard look at."
And then this morning you had DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin going on Fox News.
He tried to spin a restriction like this as something to benefit the pregnant travelers.
"One thing you're doing is looking at the territories, where China especially is abusing places like Guam and saying, 'Okay, you're eight and a half months pregnant. Maybe you shouldn't get on that plane.'"
"Well, because where they go to and they show up late, it can cause a health issue for the mother."
"Yeah, we're concerned about the mother, especially traveling that late."
And then you have all of this playing out.
You also have some people pointing out that there is this sort of massive reaction from the right, this massive meltdown.
For example, one New York Times columnist wrote:
"It is absolutely bizarre that these people believe that the continued application of a rule that has existed for generation after generation, as we've grown into the most powerful and prosperous free nation in world history, is somehow the root of our national demise and so clearly wrong that we need to end it."
Here's the thing.
While birth tourism is a real thing, it's hard to actually tell how widespread it is.
You've had The New York Times previously explaining:
"There is no official tally of babies born to tourists on American soil."
But in 2020, you did have the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports immigration crackdowns, estimating that it's between 20,000 and 26,000 babies per year.
So if that's true, you'd be looking at less than 1% of babies born in the country.
And again, those are just estimates. Some estimates are even higher, while some are as low as 2,000.
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And then we've got more that we've got to dive into in just a minute.
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But then diving right back into the news, you've got two things that have spread from New York to Colorado that you should probably know about.
Right, first is a fun little parasite that causes explosive diarrhea.
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The CDC is tracking 145 cases in 17 states so far, and we have no idea where this came from or exactly how it is spreading.
And then the second is seemingly democratic socialism.
Following Zohran's sweep in New York with his primary, backed candidates—including two DSA members—everyone was asking the question: Can this work in other parts of the country?
Well, the answer for everywhere right now is no.
Last night in Colorado, the answer there was yes.
With Meri "Meriam" (Kyra/Kiros) — a 29-year-old democratic socialist, Ethiopian immigrant, former barista, lawyer, and doctoral student in public policy who was endorsed by Bernie Sanders — taking the nomination for the district covering most of Denver.
"We will not wait to take the fight to Donald Trump and the oligarchy.
We will not wait to abolish ICE and pass Medicare for All.
We will not wait to put an end to the politics of the past, to get big money out of our politics, and to reject corporate PACs and AIPAC.
And no, we will not wait to end the genocide in Palestine.
We are taking back our party and our country."
She's now all but certain to cruise through the general election into the House next year, and it'll make her the first Gen Z woman elected to Congress.
And also, who she took down—who she's replacing—is kind of the standout here.
Her opponent was Diana DeGette.
She's a 68-year-old, 15-term incumbent. Actually, when she won her first election in 1996, Kyros hadn't even been born yet.
While DeGette was technically the establishment pick, she wasn't a centrist. She's actually progressive. She even got endorsed by Pramila Jayapal.
And just like Kyros, she's in favor of Medicare for All.
But DeGette argued that, unlike Kyros, she could actually get it passed because, assuming Democrats take back the House, she would chair the health subcommittee.
Whereas if Kyros replaced her, then both the committee post and other accumulated seniority would just be gone, arguably for very little gain.
Kyros countered that by saying that seniority doesn't count for much if you're bought and paid for by the very industries that you're supposed to rein in.
And, well, looking into it, yeah, it's true.
DeGette notably takes PAC money from defense contractors and pharmaceutical companies.
Those types of donations accounted for most of her campaign funding during this race.
And Kyros really honed in on that.
"Frankly, sometimes the thing that corporations and special interests get out of donating to a campaign isn't proactive legislation on their front.
Sometimes it's just that they sit there and keep a seat.
She is the least effective member of the Colorado Democratic delegation."
Measured how?
By the Center for Effective Lawmaking.
The Center for Effective Lawmaking rated DeGette below average for eight of her terms, average for five, and above average for only one—her very first term.
And while DeGette tried to defend her record in Congress, it wasn't just healthcare and campaign finance that were really the issues cutting up this race.
Another big one that we saw here—and we've also seen elsewhere—was Israel.
And that's not so much because DeGette is a staunch defender of the Jewish state, but rather because Kyros made it such a central part of her campaign.
And a story that she kept highlighting was that she got fired from an elite law firm after she refused to recant a letter that she posted one month after October 7, 2023.
Kyros, in that letter, called Israel an apartheid state, criticized her law firm's response to activist law students, and accused it of conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.
On the note of anti-Semitism, Kyros herself was accused of it after this particular moment from an interview that she did recently.
Where you had an interviewer asking her about the deadly firebombing of protesters in Colorado who were demanding the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
And some felt that her answer was wishy-washy.
Question: "Was that firebombing attack on them an act of anti-Semitism?"
Answer: "I don't know what was in the heart of the perpetrator.
All I know is that he went and attacked innocent people because of what they might have believed.
And I don't even know what the people who were at that protest believed, too.
In fact, most of them were probably just there to ask that the people who were kidnapped during October 7 be returned home to their families.
That's not a political statement in and of itself.
I think the fact that we're having a conversation about whether it was anti-Zionism or anti-Semitism is a political debate that everyone has the freedom to have.
But to me, it was a loss of innocent life, regardless of what the perpetrator had in mind when he took those lives."
But also, after the blowup from that interview, she told The Wall Street Journal that she's committed to combating anti-Semitism and that her comments had been misunderstood.
Saying:
"I did call it a hate crime.
What happened in Boulder was a horrific attack on a group of Jewish people who were peacefully protesting."
And overall, what we found was that the controversy—the debate around that—was not a problem for Denver voters.
Because not only did Kyros beat DeGette, she won by roughly a ten-point margin.
So right now you're looking at four new likely DSA members in Congress.
You've got Kyros, Claire Valdez, Daria Salis, and Chris Rabb from Philly.
Which triples the number of self-declared democratic socialists in the House, joining Rashida Tlaib and AOC.
Then one of the things you've had a lot of people pointing out are the voices that are really trying to lift these people up.
And there, you've had people pointing to Bernie Sanders, Mamdani, and now Hasan Piker.
Because not only was he reportedly in New York getting out the vote for candidates last week, he did the same in Denver, even personally knocking on doors.
"All right, listen.
DeGette has represented this district for 30 years in Congress and is saying nothing about the data centers because she's in the pocket of big corporations.
Meri Kyros, on the other hand, is going to fight back on the data center moratorium.
She got endorsed by Bernie Sanders too.
They want to put a stop to these data centers getting propped up left and right.
You guys are stuck between a Purina factory and a data center.
And that's not good for these little guys.
Their district's poisoned.
But you only have until 7:00 to vote.
Do you have a ballot in your house currently?"
"Yes."
"You have three?
Did you guys see that when we brought up the data center?
Say, 'Hell no.'
Straight up.
And I think that's a voter right there."
And then actually just really hitting on the power of the internet, on top of putting his name behind Kyros and encouraging people to vote, his community reportedly phone-banked over 110,000 calls for her in just three days.
"For far too long, you all plugged your nose and you went out and you voted against the Republicans.
But now you have an opportunity to do something amazing.
You have the opportunity to vote for something.
No more.
No more expenditures from corporations that dumped millions of dollars into these races that tried to defend Diana DeGette.
After 30 years of incompetence, we say no more."
But then putting that aside, in Colorado it's also important to know that Kyros wasn't the only win for the progressive left.
Because in another district, you had Manny Rutin beating the moderate Democrat Shannon Byrd by some 25 points.
"That the son of a single mom who grew up filling out food stamp and Medicaid forms and working at McDonald's can go on to become an economist in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, serve in the state House, and now become your nominee for Congress..."
And very importantly, it's not a sure thing that he's going to be elected.
He's vying for Colorado's most competitive congressional seat in the general election.
He'll be going up against the sitting Republican, Gabe Evans.
And that's definitely one that's going to be important to watch.
Because while it's definitely not a one-to-one type of situation, one of the interesting things that's come from the primaries is the push for people who are further left and further right than the more moderate candidates these days.
Whether it be the push for more leftist DSA candidates, or Trump pushing for more Trump-loyal rather than moderate Republican candidates.
What happens when you take those people and put them into a general election?
Do they still do as much?
Is there any sort of alienation?
Or do people generally stick to their teams?
Though this whole conversation and thinking is probably not going to extend to the Colorado governor's race.
Because they haven't elected a Republican governor in more than two decades.
So the primary here was kind of seen as the main show.
And what you saw was the state's Attorney General, Phil Weiser, beating Senator Michael Bennet for the Democratic nomination.
A nomination that was definitely seen as an upset because Bennet was the clear favorite to win when the race first began.
But Weiser steadily rose past him with anti-establishment messaging.
Since they were largely on the same page when it came to policy, one of their biggest clashes was over who would be better at fighting Donald Trump.
As Weiser pointed out that Bennet voted to confirm eight of Trump's Cabinet nominees.
And Bennet pointed out that Weiser didn't join some lawsuits against the first Trump administration as attorney general.
And well, at least with the people who voted, Weiser won that argument.
So he's likely going to be the next governor.
Then with all of this, I should note that moderate Democrats did score at least one win yesterday.
That was Senator John Hickenlooper fending off a primary challenge from Julie Gonzales, a former DSA member who was backed by Hasan Piker as well.
But even there, the race ended up tighter than expected, especially given that the incumbent Hickenlooper outraised her by more than seven to one.
And so that's why you have people out there saying that even when they're losing, there are signs that democratic socialists and progressives are beginning to present a real threat to the full Democratic Party establishment—or at least the leadership.
And apparently, if the reporting is accurate, Kamala Harris has even realized that.
Because you have Axios now reporting that she privately called Mamdani last week and has been holding lengthy closed-door meetings with other prominent progressives, including pro-Palestinian activists.
As Axios interpreted this as an attempt to mend the relationship with her left flank ahead of a potential 2028 run for the White House.
And then there's even more that we're going to dive into in just a minute.
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You need to know, starting with the news that Idaho just became the first state to make death by firing squad its primary method of execution.
They ended up spending more than $1 million to build a literal death chamber at a maximum-security prison, along with $24,000 worth of AR-style rifles.
Now, three shooters, whose identities have been kept under wraps, are set to fire on the state's death row inmates.
Because you had the governor signing this into law last year, and now they've got the death chamber finished just in time for the law to go into effect.
You're seeing people out there calling it state barbarity and labeling firing squads archaic.
Then, on the other side, supporters are claiming it's a foolproof way to avoid the drawn-out executions that we've seen from prisons not being able to get the drugs for lethal injections or botching the process.
Arguing firing squads are certain, they're quick, and they bring justice for the victims and their families in a more expeditious manner than other methods.
The idea being that with a firing squad, they hit a specific part of the heart that just kills you instantly.
But also, it can just be a mess if they miss their target.
And that could leave the prisoner suffering for who knows how long until they actually die.
And actually, with that, you have people pointing to last year, when Mikal Mahdi faced death by firing squad for killing a police officer back in 2004.
When his day came, the firing squad reportedly missed their target, leaving him in, quote, "excruciating conscious pain and suffering" for up to a minute.
Then on top of that, there were three shooters, but Mahdi was only hit by two bullets.
Something that a forensic pathologist said was extraordinarily unusual.
Some claiming that the firing squad intentionally botched the job out of revenge for the officer that he killed.
You've got folks like an expert who studied execution practices raising questions about it being a quasi-lynching, asking:
"Did corrections officers in a Southern state intentionally torture a Black man who murdered a police officer? Historical records suggest this is far from out of the question."
And then also you have execution protocol experts saying:
"We tend to forget that human beings are conducting this, and human beings have emotions such as wanting to set things right—an eye for an eye—and revenge."
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And then also in the news, you had people doing a mock firing squad in front of toddlers at a church.
So, not something on my 2026 bingo card.
But you now have this viral video coming out of Mount Olivet Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky.
And in it, you see simulated, heavily armed commandos lining up in front of a room full of kids, pointing weapons at a figure and staging a full-on mock firing squad.
To make it crazier, you hear the pastor leading the kids in a chant of:
"Take him out! Blow him up!"
As the weapons fire and the kids cheer.
People online immediately slammed this, calling it incredibly traumatizing, wildly inappropriate, and completely over the line for a children's church.
But then, following the massive backlash, you had Pastor Dewayne Walker hitting back with a seven-minute video to defend it.
You have him saying that this is actually part of a 30-year-old theme called "Commandos for Christ," or "Scouts for Jesus." He called it both things at various points.
That person that's being executed? It's actually not a human being.
It's a representation of the devil.
Walker literally says the clip you saw was simply "killing the devil."
While Walker did end up apologizing to anyone who was genuinely offended and invited critics to actually come visit the church to see what they're really about, he also claimed that a lot of the internet outrage was fueled by misinformation and missing context.
Though we've been there.
You have plenty of people saying:
"No, we understand the context."
It's still disturbing.
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It's still disturbing.
Then also in the news, you've got Donald Trump's massive new federal financial disclosure just dropping, and it's insane.
Right.
He is now officially a $1 billion crypto man.
But also, the details of how he made that money have a lot of people screaming conflict of interest and scam.
So you have people trying to claim that he made the money off of the stock market, but the massive 927-page federal disclosure form makes it clear that crypto is a driving force.
He took in $1.2 billion from his new crypto businesses last year and is probably worth around $6 billion now, up from $2.3 billion just before taking office.
And these new digital startups completely eclipsed the revenue of his vast real estate portfolio that took him decades to build.
Over $500 million came from his World Liberty Financial business selling governance tokens.
And another $600 million came from selling souvenir meme coins stamped with his own face.
And that's why you're seeing a lot of the backlash.
Because you have people pointing out that Trump locked in these massive profits while everyday investors got completely destroyed in what many people have been calling rug pulls or pump-and-dump schemes.
It's something we've covered in detail in the past, but it's been so blatant that you've had people like crypto investigator Coffeezilla declaring:
"Crime is legal now."
The price of the World Liberty tokens has plummeted 80%.
And those Trump meme coins peaked at $74.
They're currently trading for under $2.
And then you've got the connections that many have called suspicious.
Chinese crypto billionaire Justin Sun had a federal fraud lawsuit dropped around the same time that he happened to buy $275 million worth of Trump's tokens.
And Sun is hardly the only person who spent a lot of money with Trump or his allies and then had lawsuits dropped or pardons handed out.
For many, it looks like Trump's just seemingly fine with crypto scams because right when he came back into office, he rolled back regulations and continued to quash a federal crackdown on the industry.
And while the White House has strongly denied any wrongdoing, saying that Trump's businesses are in a trust run by his sons and that there is zero conflict of interest, at the end of the day, his administration's policies are directly boosting the industry, making his family billions of dollars.
If that's not a conflict of interest, then nothing is.
But then, my friend, you beautiful bastard, that is the end of your Wednesday.
Of course, I'd love to have you check out Crashing Out, because it is Wednesday, which means a brand new episode of my podcast Crashing Out with myself and Alex Pearlman is out.
You can check it out using the top link in the description.
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Thank you for watching.
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End Screen
"Birthright citizenship is here to stay."
"To me, it should be a 9–0, because it's literally a constitutional amendment. It should be 9–0."
"We now have Mike Johnson's reaction to learning that birthright citizenship is here to stay."
"Can I tell you, I've never been..."
"After hearing that list, homie, we've all seen the video of you running. You're not running for anything."
"I'm huffing that so wrong."
"They acted like it was a war criminal for fucking jumping in a public pool with a suit on."
"On behalf of Benjamin Franklin, the Postmaster General, he is genuinely trying to kill mail-in ballots."
"Go ahead and click that—of me crashing out."