Editor’s Note: This story contains offensive language.
Brandon Herrera, the Republican nominee for a key Texas congressional district, has repeatedly made vulgar sexual statements and derogatory comments about the appearance and intelligence of women, according to a CNN review of his videos, social media, and podcasts.
Herrera downplayed his controversial comments, which he made as a right-wing online personality known as “The AK Guy,” by describing them as jokes.
But the remarks surfaced by CNN underscore the uncomfortable position top Republican leaders face as they embrace Herrera in a district where the incumbent GOP congressman resigned over sexual misconduct allegations – and where Herrera’s Democratic opponent is a woman.
In the videos and other material reviewed by CNN, Herrera compared feminists’ weight to whales and nuclear bombs, joked that he was irresistible to “fat b*tches” after rubbing ranch dressing on his body, and described liberal women discussing guns as “both fat and wrong.” He also lobbed sexually explicit insults at a gun safety advocate and her children.
Herrera, who has an audience of more than 4 million subscribers on his gun-focused YouTube channel, is seeking to replace GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales, who resigned in April amid a House Ethics Committee probe into his relationship with a former senior aide.
He now faces Katy Padilla Stout in a Republican-leaning district where Democrats believe his controversial past could give them a path to victory. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee recently added the seat to its “target” list and sent funding to Stout, a former teacher and attorney who has sought to capitalize on Herrera’s past comments.
Republican leaders, meanwhile, including House Leader Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump, have spoken up for Herrera, with Trump promising voters on Truth Social that “HE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!”
Beyond the political consequences, one expert in online speech who reviewed CNN’s findings described Herrera’s statements as representative of Internet misogyny and said such content can result in real-world damage.
“I think if we want a safer society overall, we should also be worried about candidates like this who help normalize things that we know are reliable predictors of political violence,” said Cynthia Miller-Idriss, who oversees the Polarization & Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University. Miller pointed to research her lab has done suggesting that spreading misogynistic statements can fuel extremists willing to commit real-life violence.
Herrera, in a statement to CNN, characterized his past comments about women as jokes and pushed back on Miller-Idriss’s assertion. He also criticized Stout’s legal work last year on behalf of a father seeking to restore parental rights after a domestic abuse allegation.
“It’s disappointing that CNN would allow someone to allege that jokes about feminism lead to violence when Stout is fighting to return children to the parent convicted of abusing them,” Herrera said.
Stout’s campaign, in a statement to CNN, said that she was appointed by the court to represent the father in an appeals case and that her “ethical obligation was to represent her client,” adding that “there is simply no comparison to the career Katy has dedicated to serving children and families, and the career Brandon Herrera has made mocking them.”
Herrera, 30, is a co-owner of Firearms Direct Club, which sells members weapons at wholesale prices. A self-described Second Amendment “absolutist,” he has also amassed millions of YouTube subscribers by reviewing gun memes, re-enacting historical shootings, and testing and building firearms. He also posts comedic clips performing gun-related gags, like stuffing food into a rifle.
The same edge that made Herrera an online conservative star, though, has dogged him as he’s sought to shift into elected office. When he challenged Gonzales in a primary in 2024 – arguing the incumbent was weak on gun rights for backing a safety bill passed after the school killings in Uvalde, Texas – Herrera’s online jokes about Nazis and veteran suicides emerged as liabilities.
Herrera described the comments, including a video where he called a Nazi-era gun “the original ghetto blaster,” as part of his comedic persona, posting on X that “I am not, nor have I never been a neo-Nazi.”
But the Republican Jewish Coalition condemned him in the 2024 race, referring to him as “a goose-stepping extremist,” and he narrowly lost a runoff with Gonzales.
This year, Herrera again challenged Gonzales, beating him in the first round of the March primary. Soon after, Gonzales dropped out amid the House Ethics probe.
Bombs, ‘blue hairs,’ and killer whales
In his voluminous online content, Herrera took frequent aim at women he politically disagreed with – especially feminists, whom he often refers to as “blue hairs,” and gun safety advocates.
At a 2024 event with former Rep. Matt Gaetz, Herrera said that the weight of the world’s population was equivalent to about two dozen feminists, according to the San Antonio Current and other outlets in attendance. Earlier this summer in a YouTube video, he said “when a blue hair on the news says that a semi-automatic AR-15 is an assault rifle, she is both fat and wrong.”
Herrera also denigrated feminists’ intelligence, saying in a 2023 video that a gun range dummy’s empty head was “full of mush – much like the average Austin feminist.”
In one video from 2023, Herrera said that Cold War-era nuclear bombs weigh “approximately four times as much as the average Austin feminist.”
In another 2024 video, Herrera compared the weight of “angry blue-haired” feminists to killer whales and elephants.
He also joked in a podcast appearance that “there’s no ugly women in Norway” because “the Vikings didn’t take the ugly ones.” He went on to say that “is why all the women in Siberia are built like f*cking refrigerators.”
Herrera also made sexually explicit jokes aimed at women’s weight.
In a video from 2021, Herrera suggested his audience was “manning the harpoons” – online slang for sleeping with overweight women after a night of heavy drinking. In another video, Herrera shot at bottles of ranch and rubbed dressing onto his arm, saying it would “make me irresistible to the fat bitches.”
Miller-Idriss argued that the comments went beyond attempts at humor – particularly Herrera’s comparison of women’s weight to animals, which she described as a “way to put women in their place, to diminish their power, their authority, to belittle or degrade.”
She added, “If you’re referred to as an animal, you’re not actually even fully human, right?”
‘MILFS,’ ‘thots’ and ‘gunbunnies’
Herrera also employed crass sexual language when discussing women, according to the content reviewed by CNN.
Over the summer, Patriot Takes, a social media channel dedicated to posting old videos of Republicans, resurfaced a 2022 clip of Herrera denigrating gun-safety advocate Shannon Watts by using offensive sexual slang to describe Watts and then saying that her being a mother “doesn’t mean I have to give a shit about your political opinions.” He also used a vulgar term to describe her children – an action he bragged about in a follow-up tweet.
When a reporter from the Austin American-Statesman asked him about the comments earlier this summer, Herrera doubled down — and his campaign responded with a joking photo referring to the vulgar remarks.
Watts and her group Moms Demand Action faced other insults from Herrera, CNN found.
Earlier this year, Herrera referred to the women in the group as “M’s” and not “MILFs,” a slang referring to sexually desirable mothers.
In an interview with CNN, Watts said that the online abuse she faces on both sides of the aisle is “worse than it’s ever been” – amplified by social media feeds rewarding inflammatory content like Herrera’s statements.
“When I started Moms Demand Action, I had no idea I would receive threats of death and sexual violence,” she said. “What I noticed right away was the attacks on me were much different than men who supported gun safety. It was obviously very gendered and misogynistic.”
In his videos, Herrera also shared sexually explicit content of women inappropriately using guns, like when he shared a story of an adult content creator who accidentally shot herself in the vagina.
In another video, he told his audience that he named a gun after the adult film star Stormy Daniels, explaining that it’s “because it’s been through so much hell and abuse and we’ve run the shit out of it to just abuse it thoroughly.”
In a separate video posted a few months later, he bragged that his team has buried, blown up, and generally “been an asshole” to the gun, again calling it by the Stormy Daniels name.
Herrera also repeatedly referred to “thots” – a slang term meaning “that ho over there.” In one video from 2019, Herrera said he wore a wedding ring despite being unmarried as “thot repellant.” During one of his “meme review” videos, Herrera responded to a picture of a cartoonishly sexualized young model inside of a gun safe by dramatically shouting “be gone, thot.” He added that “she’s probably got diseases I can’t pronounce.”
And although Herrera at times talked about his respect for female gun owners, he also belittled “gun bunnies” – online slang for scantily clad women who post content with weapons. In videos reviewed by CNN, he joked several times that they would do anything for gun discounts and attention. In another video, he shared an online post saying that “gun bunnies” wore masks to hide herpes.
As he pushes toward the midterm election, Herrera said he expects his online commentary to continue to be an issue.
“For better or worse, my entire life is on the internet. So, I am an open book in that regard,” he said in a recent LA Times interview, arguing that voters will care more about his stances in favor of broader gun rights and tighter border security.
Cognizant of the razor-thin margins needed to maintain congressional control, the GOP has largely coalesced around Herrera, with major figures like Speaker Johnson rallying with him in San Antonio earlier this summer. In his endorsement of Herrera, Trump wrote on Truth Social that “Brandon is strongly supported by many Highly Respected MAGA Warriors in Texas, and Republicans in the US House.”
But some other conservatives have continued to push back – including the Republican Jewish Coalition. The group continues to criticize him, with a spokesperson telling Politico it “has a longstanding policy of speaking out against those who traffic in Nazi ideology, and this is another case.”
Democrats are aiming to turn his work as “The AK Guy” into an electoral liability.
“Brandon Herrera’s disturbing history of extremism … and antisemitic rhetoric puts this open Congressional district squarely in play,” said DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene after announcing her group would financially back his opponent.
Watts, the gun-safety advocate who has sparred with Herrera online, told CNN she hoped his comments about women would resonate with voters.
“The idea to me that this would be a man who had the power and control to take away women’s rights… That should be terrifying to all women,” she said.
CNN’s Morgan Leason contributed to this report