Vanity Fair Comes for Fuentes — but He Lays Out ‘The Veto’
A glossy hit piece leans on an ex-follower’s swatting claim, which Fuentes denies. Buried inside: his own explanation of the strategy that has the GOP worried.
Vanity Fair’s Oct. 29 feature on Nick Fuentes is headlined “The Undoing of Nick Fuentes, the Far-Right Kingmaker Who Wasn’t.” Read past the framing, though, and the magazine concedes the point that matters: Fuentes, it writes, “is positioned to be a kingmaker in conservative politics” and “seems to control a loyal voting bloc” of young men — “one of the most coveted demographics in electoral politics right now.”
The piece builds around Andy O’Brian, a 21-year-old former member of Fuentes’s circle known online as Chad Champion. O’Brian claims he was swatted at his Los Angeles home in June after criticizing Fuentes’s endorsement of James Fishback in a group chat, and that Fuentes called him “disloyal” and labeled him an “antifa” collaborator. Those are O’Brian’s allegations. Fuentes denies ever targeting O’Brian or labeling him “antifa,” the magazine reports, and nothing in the article ties Fuentes to the swatting.
The magazine also cites a Washington Post estimate that Fuentes earned nearly $900,000 from “superchat” donations between early 2025 and March 2026 — the sort of audience support few political commentators can match.
When Vanity Fair reached out, Fuentes first texted back: “Groyper gossip? Boooooo.” He then called the writer to explain his actual strategy — the part of the story worth reading.
Fuentes rejected the claim that he is sitting out the midterms out of spite. “People say I’m just sour grapes over Trump or Peter Thiel,” he said. “But I’m very open about my problems with these people. It’s all ideological.” He described his approach as correcting a “generational mistake” by earlier America First figures like Pat Buchanan, whose followers ultimately lined up behind the Republican Party.
So he has told his followers to withhold their votes, estimating the bloc could add up to some 3% of the general-election vote. “We can exercise the veto, and I think that’s the source of our power,” he said.
The article also notes that Ohio is one of the rare races where Fuentes has backed a candidate: Democrat Amy Acton over Vivek Ramaswamy. With forecasters predicting a Democratic wave, Tuesday will show whether the veto is real.
