Tonight, a TV exclusive, The son of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes. He's now running for office as a Democrat. In just moments, he joins me. But first, a little bit of a reminder. His father was convicted of conspiracy for his actions around January 6th. Remember that he organized the militia members during the Capitol riot. Oh, and he's currently behind bars serving an 18 year sentence in federal prison. Now, Dakota Adams and his mother escaped Rhodes control in 2018, and he is now running
for Montana's state house. And joining me now is Dakota Adams. Dakota. Thank you so much for joining me this evening. Why are you running for this state House seat? Well, fundamentally, and thank you for having me on. I as an advocate for more ordinary people stepping up to be part of the political process and fix this country. I have to practice what I preach or I'm just another guy yelling at other people to do something, anything on Twitter. I have to walk the walk. And beyond that, fundamen
tally, I think that the Republican Party has become an unstoppable disaster that needs to be gotten rid of. And I am doing all that I can to help uproot that mistake at every level of government. And why do you think they have gotten to this level, as you describe, in terms of being unsaleable? Well, internally, I believe there has been a lot of putting strategic goals ahead of morality and accepting corruption and accepting creeping authoritarianism for the sake of short term wins or to advance
a long term agenda. And we've had the point now where the Republican Party is completely beholden to corrupt ideologues at the highest level and even down to the state level is overrun by frothing demagogues and small time grifters alike, all pulling it in whatever direction most benefits them, but always advancing power and control for their own ends in the hands of a close circle of friends effectively. You paint a very bleak picture, yet what you describe it sounds like, is in part on your p
ersonal experience. Your father is Stuart Rhodes. Tell me what it was like growing up with him. We lived in an extreme bubble of fear and isolation and paranoid ideology, starting well before the founding of Oath Keepers. In an environment of general terror at the coming downfall of society. Hmm. That served as inspiration for Stuart to capture the now aimless energy that was left in the wake of the collapse of the Ron Paul movement and direct it into his own thing, into what was inevitably goin
g to become a radical private army, answering only to him just because down to his bone marrow. Stuart Rhodes is a pure authoritarian. And that was very much reflected at home, where an environment of fear was cultivated just inside the house, that anyone we talked to would be a government informant who was out to get us. And the good example is the sabotage of our home schooling as children to make sure that we were always behind and so that Stuart could use the threat of Child Protective Servi
ces being involved as a lover of control to get all of us to conceal what our home lives are like other people inside the militia movement. Because as long as the house was maintained and in a state of chaos and we were all educationally and medically neglected, then fear of outside authorities worked with Stuart as a lever to maintain control and the cultivation of just everyday fear. Isolation of feeling, of constantly having to hide yourself and hide your activity from some kind of all seeing
authority. That all very much played into his hands and also reflected how he sees the world and the kind of change that people like Stuart would like to work on the country. My God, Dakota, to hear you describe it, it's it is heartbreaking to think of, one, just how you're able to articulate that what must have been a terrifying and painful experience as a childhood and and in your family to a greater degree. And it strikes me as you're talking about that isolation, about sort of living in the
shadows, a lot of the conspiracy theories, a lot of the messaging from extremists and beyond. At one point in our own political history, they were in the shadows. Now it's become far more mainstream. It's far more accepted that they're more vocal about it. What do you think caused it to go from the shadows to more mainstream? Well, we have a long running trend in this country of what begins as legitimate mistrust of the government paced based on past misdeeds that is then used as a catalyst and
ground by groups who want to encourage a specific brand of fear or paranoia for their own ends. Obviously, you are not your father. You have distance yourself clearly from him as well. But I am curious as to what made you make the change to have the clarity that you speak of now? Well, a lot of it is that my two choices were to fall apart in fear and isolation and succumb to paranoia in a basement surrounded by freeze dried foods or to lean into every single thing that frightens me. All through
the Trump administration, the foundations of the belief system I was raised in were being increasingly undermined by the actions of Donald Trump and specifically by the eerie similarity between, for example, how Trump ran his cabinet and how Stuart Roads ran the Oath Keepers Board of Directors in the aftermath of January six. I had to look back and really reckon with the fact that all of the people I been raised to see as political enemies living in a world of delusion separate from the objecti
ve truth, had been right the entire time. You know, you mentioned January 6th and some of the beliefs and statements that have been made. The former president, Donald Trump, has called people like your father hostages. He has saluted them. What is your reaction to that? I think that if it becomes convenient to Trump, he will pardon any crime and really only believes that treason exists as far as reason exists as a personal betrayal of him being the embodiment of the United States as effectively
a king. I think that his belief that the January six insurrectionists are political prisoners is performative, and if it's not convenient to him, he will allow them to continue to rot in prison and not care. But if it becomes convenient to him regaining or keeping power, he will pardon them, including my father, who would become immediately a threat to the country again, the instant it gets the streets. It all depends on what personally benefits Donald Trump. There's no morality in Dakota. It st
rikes me that you are running for office in Montana's House District number one as a Democrat. By the way, it's mostly made up of Lincoln County and the northwest corner of the state. And that county supported Trump in 2020, I think to the tune of something like 73%. Now, obviously, with numbers like that, perhaps a shot of running as a Democrat will be described as a long shot. What do you hope to achieve in this campaign? Well, fundamentally, voters deserve to have a choice always. They especi
ally, I believe the people of Montana deserve to have candidates competing for their approval to do a job for them and to serve the people. And more to the point, I believe that the Montana Republican Party in particular, as failed the people of the state with a disastrous legislative session of mismanagement, performative virtue signaling culture, war issues over and over, real problems and utter disregard for the welfare of the people of the state that is about to, I believe, blow up in their
face. And I need to do my part to kick that legislature out so that the damage can be undone. As far as being a county that has gone very heavily for Donald Trump, there are a lot of people who feel left behind, voiceless and unrepresented in national politics, who because of the information that they consume and the culture that they're in, see Donald Trump as an outsider to corrupt power structures who is not beholden to the same forces that are running the country into the ground. And while y
ou would have a very hard time convincing a lot of people that Biden is doing a better job, you might have an easier time reaching a lot of them on other important issues than you might think. And that is where I'm at. That's where I'm at is I believe that I don't have to flip people away from still supporting Donald Trump for the presidency based on that outsider politics perception in order to convince them to vote for a progressive Democrat who is honest about going to how long that's a fight
for their best interests and to protect their rights. Dakota Adams I found this conversation really fascinating and I thank you for joining me.
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