Meet Florida’s Racist Troll Candidate

Trump posts the Obamas as apes. Fishback keeps doing what he’s been doing for months by going after Byron Donalds. That’s the permission structure.

Welcome back to The Red Letter.

James Fishback is running for governor of Florida and what’s unsettling is that he isn’t fringe.

According to Patriot Polling, Fishback is polling at 23 percent, trailing Congressman Byron Donalds at 37 percent. In any other moment, a candidate built on provocation and victimhood might be dismissed as noise. But this is not another moment.

Fishback says being a white man in America is “unbearable,” and he’s been openly hostile toward Donalds, his Black Republican opponent. That rhetoric now echoes straight from the top: this morning, President Trump shared a video depicting Barack Obama and Michelle Obama as apes.

This is what politics looks like in 2026, racism no longer whispered on the fringes, but amplified by candidates and normalized by a sitting president.

“There is systemic racism,” he cried to me on The Tara Palmeri Show. “It is against white Christian men.”

In his worldview, immigrants and minorities are the oppressors. It’s grievance wrapped in bravado that’s familiar, loud, and increasingly mainstream.

Some readers may ask why someone like this deserves attention.

Because he’s running for governor of one of the largest states in the country. Ignoring candidates like this doesn’t make them disappear.

I’ve always believed in confronting power and controversy head-on, the way Barbara Walters did when she sat across from figures like Bashar al-Assad and Fidel Castro. She didn’t look away and neither will I. If we don’t ask hard questions now, we wake up later wondering how this happened.

This interview may be uncomfortable. There are moments that are raw. There are moments that are outright racist, like when he claimed Donalds wouldn’t be in Congress if were white.

“DEI didn’t earn it. [Donalds] did not earn the ability to serve,” he said.

“He’s kind of the token black guy,” he doubled down.

And he stood by this horrific tweet: “Don Lemon is lucky he’s not getting hanged in the public square for ransacking a church.”

Lynching? When does he cross the line into the n-word? It feels like he’s already there.

He also refused to disavow Nick Fuentes — who is a fan — and his anti-semitic, white nationalist followers. To Fishback, they’re “patriots.”

But this is what parts of American politics sounds like right now and I think it matters that you hear it for yourselves.

Fishback is defying campaign gravity by running an algorithm rather than a campaign which means being absolutely shameless in pursuit of attention. He has that familiar, phony earnestness of Vivek Ramaswamy wrapped up in the performative sincerity of the troll era. He’s preternaturally gifted at stunts, whether it’s joining Tinder to recruit supporters or manufacturing viral moments.

Fishback openly traffics in racist language. He flirts with extremism. He courts outrage. And he does it with enough skill that it demands attention.

We live in a moment where provocation travels faster than policy, where grievance beats governance, and where being transgressive is often mistaken for being brave.

He may never convert notoriety into real power. But if anyone could, it’s a candidate like this. And that’s the danger. He’s talented at being a troll and in the age of social media, and trolling can be a viable political strategy.

We have to accept that reality, not to normalize it, but to understand it.

I interviewed what may be the quintessential far-right troll candidate. Not because I agree with him but because this is what parts of our political landscape look like right now. And sunlight still matters.