Ellie Leonard joins The Mayday Network to discuss latest scoop from The Guardian on Brendan Carr's Sex Cult past. https://substack.com/@redpencilscript

Per The Guardian, Trump's FCC Chair Brendan Carr — who is only 47, despite looking like he's been drafting broadcast regulations since the Reagan administration — spent nearly a decade, starting at age 17, inside a rogue Washington D.C. Alcoholics Anonymous group called Midtown. At the center of it was Michael Quinones, described by one former member as "the Epstein of AA."

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/sep/22/fcc-chair-brendan-carr-midtown-aa-group

Brendan Carr, a MAGA extremist, has famously threatened to withdraw broadcasters’ licenses over news coverage that he finds "unfair" to Donald Trump. One former member of the cult said “A man who has the power to control what types of stories the mainstream public have access to is a man who should expect the narrative of his own life to fall under scrutiny.

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 – Intro +Welcome Ellie Leonard 0:46 – Setting up Brendan Carr and why the FCC chair matters 1:25 – The "Midtown" AA group: sex cult allegations 4:00 – The French fry story: Carr as the group's "safe space" 4:32 – Parallels to Scientology and other high-control groups 9:41 – The real issue: sneaking fries treated as heroism, not complicity 10:38 – Epstein parallel: staff who saw abuse and stayed silent 14:33 – How addiction, isolation, and coercion made girls vulnerable 22:35 – Quinones's own words: the group leader's predatory quote 24:38 – Age-of-consent loophole allegedly exploited across state lines 27:44 – The moral case against Carr: sin of omission 29:32 – Carr's need for approval and his LSAT breakdown story 31:53 – MAGA as a replacement structure for his cult past 36:32 – Why community/belonging drives cult and MAGA adjacency 44:11 – Trump's naming obsession as a parallel authoritarian pattern 50:33 – Why this story isn't over — more accusers likely 55:16 – Personal stories: Ellie and Julie on normalized abuse growing up 59:16 – The arts/modeling pipeline and how predators used access as bait 1:11:07 – Christine Blasey Ford and the cost of speaking first 1:14:38 – Closing: Ellie's Substack, sign-off