Chapter 1: Sometimes You Find Silver

0:02Speaker 1:Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.

0:08Speaker 2:Our story starts with a guy and his metal detector.

0:13Speaker 3:I got it as a Christmas present one year when I was young, twelve, thirteens or something like that. One of the cheap ones. But I just liked the mystery of it. There's this open field, nothing around, but here's a silver coin like that was magical.

0:28Speaker 2:Brian Allen grew up metal detecting in his hometown of Gainsboro, Tennessee, a teen c town in the foothills of Appalachia. People call it the Switzerland of the Cumberlands. Lush, rolling hills, sweeping vistas, and a lot of history.

0:44Speaker 3:I found a lot of moonshine sights, old shotgun show heads. You can tell modern ones because they have the plast.

0:50Speaker 2:During the Civil War, the Confederate Army would post up by Gainsboro to seize the Union Army supplies as they floated by on the Cumberland River, or stuff for the right person, horseshoes, It's a treasure trove, axes.

1:04Speaker 3:Just the mystery of just putting something together. I'm a very quiet person. If I'm talking about something i'm passionate about, then I can go.

1:13Speaker 2:There was one piece of land that backed right up to a curve in the river. Bryant had been eyeing it for years. Ninety nine acres of farmland.

1:24Speaker 3:Was over by the high school. That's the one that I really wanted to hit.

1:28Speaker 2:A place that's about to produce his biggest discovery yet. This is the summer of twenty twenty four. Bryant goes digging through public records to get permission from the owner to metal detect and he realizes it's been sold recently to a name he doesn't recognize. Now, Gainsborough is a town of one thousand people, many of whom are related, so it's a peculiar thing to find a name you've never heard.

1:55Speaker 3:Of, because most time, you know, he would sell it to Jimbob over the hole, so that stays in the family.

2:01Speaker 2:So that intrigued me because if someone local didn't buy the land, then who did.

2:06Speaker 3:I have a very inquisitive mind about things. I have far fetched ideas and some of them work outas some don't. I think that goes back to my metal detecting, Like, yeah, ninety percent of the time I'll go out there and find garbage, but sometimes you find silver.

2:25Speaker 2:So he googles some of the details on the property record and sees that it was some real estate guy who bought the land, and that leads him to a company one called Ridge Runner USA. He goes to the Ridge Runner website.

2:40Speaker 3:The first thing you see when it pops up is Pioneers in Appalachia.

2:45Speaker 2:Pioneers in Appalachia. The website is spare with that single phrase, over an image of an open field with a winding dirt road, and below an invitation to learn more.

2:59Speaker 3:Brian clicks ridge Runner is building pioneer communities in the old American heartland.

3:06Speaker 2:Ridge Runner appears to be some kind of real estate company.

3:10Speaker 3:We see rising demand for new types of communities around a shared vision for local life in America.

3:18Speaker 4:I'm like, hang on, Like that was when.

3:21Speaker 3:I was like, well, yeah something.

3:23Speaker 2:Bryant searches more and finds that Ridge Runner seems to be affiliated with a larger company called New Founding. That website is packed with even grander pronouncements.

3:36Speaker 3:We are forging an alliance to revitalize American civilization, bringing builders, creators, and concerned citizens together build the America you want to live in. And it's like, but it's already built. Like, yeah, that don't sound good.

3:57Speaker 2:From what Bryant can discern, New found is involved in all sorts of things, venture capital, media, and real estate. That's where Ridge Runner comes in. Both companies, Ridge Runner and New Founding seem ambitious and filled with big ideas.

4:17Speaker 3:Pioneers, frontier, all the words for oppression and conquering. We're going to convert these heathens like yet gave me that feel like this was their manifest.

4:29Speaker 2:Destiny Ridge Runner New Founding those ninety nine acres across from the high school. Brian is trying to figure out what's in front.

4:38Speaker 4:Of them, Like what am I missing?

4:40Speaker 2:What was happening in his quiet hometown. In the month's following, Bryant, who is painfully shy, reveals his discovery to only one person, a coworker, but he keeps tracking Ridge Runner. The real estate company finds more Land getting scooped up in and around Gainsborough. Bryant had stumbled into something the beginning of an ambitious project to make Gainsborough a new type of town filled with like minded people. This tiny town would soon realize it was part of a much larger experiment, backed by people with powerful connections and plenty of money to build the America they want to live in. Starting with Gainsborough from Bloomberg News. I'm Maraba Knight reporting along with Susan Burfield, and you're listening to our town. This is chapter one. Sometimes you Find Silver. A few months before Brian Allen, the metal detecting enthusiasts, started snooping around about those ninety nine acres, a new face started turning up at the Stolen Coin restaurant. The Coin, as it's called, is a local institution.

6:10Speaker 5:Are you.

6:11Speaker 2:It's owned by Cassie Kessler and her husband who's the chef. Ryan Allen goes there often as too many day tripping tourists. It's right on the town square. The town square, which is one square block with an old courthouse in the middle, is Gainsborough's social hub. It's where people come to gossip, to shop, to pick up a prescription, or you to plate the biscuits and chocolate gravy.

6:37Speaker 6:It's chocolate gravy.

6:38Speaker 2:It's a Southern thing. It's an Appalachian special. It was in the midst of all this when Cassie saw that new face at a restaurant. A real estate guy.

6:49Speaker 5:I had become pretty good acquaintance for you on my first name Basis would come in. Anytime you would come in, I would sit and talk to him.

6:58Speaker 2:Cassie is energetic, a fast, urgent talker, flitting from table to table in the coins cozy dining room.

7:05Speaker 5:Hi, day baby, how are you? I just liked like a table touch, like to talk to people with a small town like I know everybody in that restaurant.

7:15Speaker 2:In this new face. The real estate guy, he was a great customer, very very personal and seemingly interested in investing in Gainsboro. And Cassie had a hot tip.

7:27Speaker 5:My lawyer at the time was looking to sell his spot.

7:33Speaker 2:The building was right around the corner from the restaurant, right off the town square, a prime location and rare find.

7:40Speaker 5:And I had mentioned it because some of the other buildings in town it's very hard for them to come there pass down through family.

7:47Speaker 2:Cassie had learned this about Gainsborough, that it was tight knit. She'd moved there about five years earlier from Florida, and the town had given her a lot.

7:57Speaker 5:I could not have been to this place point in my life without the support of this town, whether it's council members, community members, business members, employees, like it has just been an effort from everybody.

8:13Speaker 2:Cassie is a recovering drug user, sober thirteen years, so the idea of having this kind of welcome and support system to open a business, it meant everything to her.

8:24Speaker 5:It was such a bad person for such a long time, and it's really nice to like take that effort that I used to be into being an addict and put it into the good stuff in the community. And like helping it just is like, I know it sounds cheesy, and I say it does. It's better than being high, like it really is. It makes you feel good, It makes you feel valuable, all the opposite feelings you get whenever you're an addict.

8:48Speaker 2:Cassie loved helping Gainsborough grow because, like her, it too had struggled in years past, hollowed out by job losses and stagnant wages. Nearby factories had closed the shirt factory Oshkosh Bagosh. Then came the opioid epidemic. But over the past decade, people like Cassie had started opening restaurants and stores that drew tourists. So when this real estate guy showed up in town and bought the building that Cassie tipped him off to. She was delighted he bought it along with his son, who just moved from Texas to Gainsborough.

9:25Speaker 2:He was becoming a regular too. His name was Josh Abbatoy. Soon he'd started coming in with other men, men who also seemed new to the town. She wasn't sure if they were colleagues or friends.

9:40Speaker 5:As many times as they came into my restaurant or did anything, they never would talk to me.

9:46Speaker 2:But that didn't deter Cassie from chatting Josh Abbatoy up.

9:51Speaker 5:After I'd found out that they had bought it. Josh, his father, and another gentleman were sitting at the restaurant, and I can remember, I remember his table ten, and I was sitting there talking to them about you know, what are you guys doing, And oh, it's an appraisal business, just very like not putting a direct stamp on it, like we're still trying to figure out. It's gonna be a couple different things. And I was like, Oh, I'm gonna have to come down and check it out.

10:16Speaker 2:All the Gainsborough business owners were close here.

10:20Speaker 5:In town, like all the businesses on the Square we like do so many things together. We just starw each other's biggest cheerleaders.

10:27Speaker 2:But that was not the response she got from Josh Abbatoy.

10:30Speaker 5:And I can remember him looking up at me and saying, we're just gonna have to wait till it's done. We don't We're not going to let anybody in there till it's done. From right then, it was like closed off. It went from open conversation to like, now I'm just not going to talk about what this place is anymore. I should have been like, well, what, that's kind of weird.

10:49Speaker 2:Then, a couple months after Abbatoy purchased that building by the Square, the town would find out why nothing was quite the same for Gainsborough after that. More after the break.

11:05Speaker 4:A friend of mine texted me about three o'clock.

11:10Speaker 2:It was a Friday in mid November when Mark Dudney, a preservation planner an historian for the area, received a message from his friend. It was about an upcoming news story.

11:21Speaker 4:Phil Williams was going to have a piece on Monday night.

11:25Speaker 2:Phil Williams is an investigative reporter with news Channel five in Nashville, been on the air for decades and has a well known series called Confronting Hate.

11:34Speaker 7:New data appeared to reveal a disturbing trend, the rise of hate in Tennessee.

11:40Speaker 2:And the next story in the series, Mark learned was going to be about Gainsborough.

11:45Speaker 4:I feel like my blood pressure ramped up. I don't have an alarmist personality. I'm a really flat line on an ekg.

11:54Speaker 2:Mark had grown up in Gainesboro, then left after high school, but had recently moved back.

12:00Speaker 4:Well, this is sort of it getting into personal stuff, but I got divorced last year.

12:05Speaker 2:For Mark Lake Cassie, Gainsborough was a place to recover, to breathe.

12:11Speaker 4:My family's been here seven generations. I grew up going to a little church right down the road here, very tight knit.

12:19Speaker 2:Mark's dad had also passed away that year. Doctor Dudney, he was Gainsborough's beloved local doctor, delivered many of the town's babies. So Mark had a lot to process. Being home helped so hat turning off the news.

12:34Speaker 4:I was listening to a lot of Almond Brothers, and so that was just a pleasure to be back here. That lasted about six.

12:42Speaker 2:Weeks, more specifically until November eighteenth, twenty twenty four. The night The TV news story about Gainsborough aired.

12:54Speaker 4:That Monday night. I watched it with my sister.

12:57Speaker 7:Tonight, news Channel five investigates special report reveals to Christian nationalists who want to turn a small Middle Tennessee community into their base of operations. Phil you found that longtime residents didn't even know this was happening.

13:11Speaker 8:This has very much been developing under the radar nationalist.

13:15Speaker 4:I was glued to the television.

13:17Speaker 2:Mark pulled a chair right out to the TV.

13:19Speaker 8:In many ways, the views of some of these people are not so different from the white supremaisies we've seen marching down Nashville streets in the past year, although they dress up their ideas with intellectual buzzwords and call it Christian. And they've announced that Gainsboro, the Jackson County seat, will be the focus of their efforts to resettle like minded people from around the country.

13:43Speaker 2:The goal, from what Mark understood, was to turn Gainsboro into their own type of Christian town. The report focused on two newcomers, a pair of podcasters who'd already moved to Gainsboro.

13:56Speaker 8:They say they quote hate democracy, they're rooting for a part of dictator, and they think God made men to rule over women.

14:04Speaker 2:Williams described the two podcasters as ambassadors for the larger venture.

14:09Speaker 8:The two Christian nationalists announced the efforts of civil rights leader Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement in general. They celebrate images of whites only diners in the fifties, and they mock historical.

14:21Speaker 2:As Mark watched, he learned the real estate group running the whole venture had already bout one hundred acres right in Gainsborough and another five hundred acres somewhere in the Appalachian Hills, all to build the community.

14:35Speaker 4:We were all flat footed. We didn't have a clue.

14:41Speaker 2:The report a mere ten minutes, shook the tiny town. Mark, despite his usual flatline e KG demeanor, was feeling all sorts of feelings.

14:53Speaker 4:I do remember getting hot. Arrogance is mind blowing.

15:03Speaker 2:There was a phrase in the news report that hit Mark, especially hard Christian nationalist. With his penchant for constitutional history, he was familiar with the term Christian nationalist, though many of his fellow residents were not.

15:17Speaker 4:To me, Christian nationalism is fundamentally an American. Really, this is just about white supremacy.

15:24Speaker 2:One important note the podcasters do not call themselves white supremacists. They've called their podcast quote the number one Christian nationalist podcast in the world, but one of them told us he doesn't describe himself that way, and the guy in charge of the larger venture says he's not a Christian nationalist. Christian nationalists believe that America is a Christian nation and should be led by Christians for Christians, and more specifically Christian men. Gainsboro the Jackson County seat may have seemed like a good fit. The county is overwhelmingly white ninety six percent. It's also Christian and conservative. Eighty one percent voted for Trump, so it might be easy to stereotype.

16:12Speaker 3:What people commonly think about Jackson County and they think we're all backwoods, hateful racist and oh, he's from Jackson County. I could carry something around here.

16:21Speaker 2:Ryan Allen, the guy with the inquisitive mind and the metal detector, had also watched the report and felt an odd combo of emotions in.

16:30Speaker 3:A weird way, like vindication, but he also felt terror. This can't be real. I guess here we go moment like this isn't a fly by nine LLC that will be shut down and they're here to I guess homestead to make a town, and I didn't know how the community would react.

16:47Speaker 2:The town was practically vibrating, talking, texting, googling. It was all the talk at church on Sunday. Days later, Phil Williams returned for a follow up story. A sort of town hall of the square about forty people came.

17:03Speaker 8:When you hear them talking about coming here to build a town, what's your reaction? This town is not really.

17:11Speaker 9:It was.

17:14Speaker 2:The vice chair of the local Republican party spoke up.

17:17Speaker 10:It scares me that they are very clear about taking over.

17:26Speaker 2:Bryan stood in the back of the room, his mind racing.

17:30Speaker 3:It was more like, Uh wow, is this really happening.

17:34Speaker 2:It was all making sense now. He thought back to the ninety nine acres across from the high school that he'd investigated months before. Back then, he'd worried he was being a little paranoid. Now he realized he'd been onto something. That real estate company Ridge Runner, the one Brian had googled.

17:54Speaker 3:We see rising demand for new types of communities around a shared vision for local life in America.

18:02Speaker 2:They were the ones who'd purchased those ninety nine acres. That land was their start to building their community, to remaking Gainsborough.

18:11Speaker 3:Build the America you want to live in.

18:14Speaker 2:It was all a part of this plan. Inside the town hall, Bryant was relieved to hear his neighbor's objections.

18:26Speaker 8:What message would you have for these people?

18:28Speaker 11:We only be a part of a racialmede.

18:35Speaker 3:The bond that formed was almost magical.

18:38Speaker 2:This was the Gainsborough he knew. Meanwhile, Mark Dudney, the historian, sat second row in the town hall, listening and making all kinds of wild connections.

18:52Speaker 4:Was so close to Halloween. Now, I've been watching horror movies and I shot my mouth off and made some reference about Salem's Life.

19:00Speaker 2:Salem's Lot a novel turned film by Stephen King in which a man returns to his hometown only to discover that a strange businessman has also arrived, along with an ancient vampire, to take over the town.

19:15Speaker 4:And as far as I'm concerned, mister Barlow and mister Striker can load up the coffin and get out of Sytem's Lot. You've got somebody coming in who was trying to recruit and multiply. And it was not that far off as an analogy.

19:34Speaker 2:The town now believed it was part of a plan to build a far right community, that outside money was flowing into make it, and that podcasters far right Christians were already here in promoting it. Everything else was still a mystery. What exactly was Ridge Runner, Who were these guys and how many were already in Gainsborough. There was one person at the town hall, standing in the back near Bryan who had some answers. Cassie Kessler, the restaurant owner.

20:06Speaker 2:She'd recognized the two podcasters from the TV report. She knew them, they'd eaten at her restaurant. And what's more, the real estate guy, the one she'd help find the building for his son, Josh Abbatoy, who'd moved from Texas. He was the leader. He was the CEO of Ridge Runner, the company behind this whole thing.

20:28Speaker 5:Like I instantly shot back to the night of.

20:31Speaker 2:The election, the night of the twenty twenty four presidential election, just two weeks earlier, the last time Cassie had seen Josh Abbotoy. He'd come in for lunch that day and again for dinner.

20:45Speaker 5:We made sure nice table was set up for them. You know, Abbatoy's family was that they were all there with their whole family.

20:53Speaker 2:She and Abbatoy even made a friendly wager. I was like, who do you think is going to win?

20:57Speaker 5:And it was just like me just being like funny, Like I can remember him.

21:00Speaker 6:Leaning back like this and going, it's gonna be tripe.

21:03Speaker 5:He's gonna take it. And I was like, I'm gonna buy you beer if he went. He's like, Okay, I'm gonna hold you up to that, and we just, you know, chuckled.

21:12Speaker 2:While Cassie headed home from the restaurant for an early bedtime. A very different night was ahead for Josh Abbatoy, who left the Coin to go be on a podcast.

21:25Speaker 11:Hello and welcome to contramot him in his election night. I'm Andrew Asker. This over here is cj Engele.

21:31Speaker 2:The hosts were the two podcasters, the ones who'd already moved to town to help Josh Abbitoy with the Ridge Runner development. To many people in town, they'd become the voice of the venture.

21:42Speaker 11:Awesome, all right, CJ what are your thoughts? I am ready to doom scrown. Do scroll Twitter all night, all night.

21:48Speaker 2:Cassie hadn't seen this live stream when it aired, but now after the TV news story, she watched some It was nearly nine hours, so I was.

21:58Speaker 5:Just very angry, and I knew that I was going to see them at some point.

22:02Speaker 2:Many others in town now also watched, eager to learn what they could about these newcomers. The two podcasters were matching blue suits and ties thanks to their wives.

22:12Speaker 11:Yeah, they bullied us into matching.

22:14Speaker 2:They already seem giddy the pocket square, the podcast square. They're Trump supporters. Andrew Risker was new to Tennessee. He said he fled Minnesota for its wokeness.

22:25Speaker 11:We will win.

22:26Speaker 2:His co host c j Engel left California for the same reason.

22:30Speaker 11:I'm pleased as punch, all right, Well.

22:34Speaker 2:And now here. They were live streaming their podcasts from Gainsborough from the same building Cassie had tipped Josh Abbatoy and his father off to. It was now Ridge Runners Headquarters. The name of the podcast, Contramundum, is Latin for against the world.

22:51Speaker 1:I don't see any reason why things will continue to justify women going more and more to college, like women's lib liberation or emancipation in the career women, that's only led to despair, and I think that women are starting to recognize that, so it will probably.

23:05Speaker 12:Be easier to get rid of democracy as a whole before getting rid of the nineteen of the.

23:09Speaker 2:Men, nineteen Amendment, the women's right.

23:12Speaker 1:To vote, and when we are basically going to revert back to their natural station, like a natural order correction.

23:20Speaker 5:It's so crazy to me that it's freedom for them, but only people that like seem like them.

23:27Speaker 2:All their talk about women's natural order, Well, Cassie was not a mother. She had tried, really tried, but she wasn't a mother. She was a wife, an entrepreneur, a voter. She served her community in all sorts of ways.

23:43Speaker 5:If you really did your research, almost every business on this square is run by a woman.

23:49Speaker 2:A stroll around the town square reveals how many women anchor the Gainsboro economy.

23:54Speaker 5:Myself, Miss Sally's nostalgic GiB Flow.

23:58Speaker 2:The pharmacy, the real Her, next door Face Cafe, the gift shop down the street.

24:03Speaker 5:And then we have a woman judge, and we have a woman attorney, and we have women aldermen. We're all women, and we're all just keeping our heads down and we're trying to grow this town with.

24:13Speaker 12:Our eight o'clock read here and the eight o'clock hour is sponsored by pax Mail. Fellas, get off of gay email, join pasmail dot c C instead, keep the money with the brothers, the Muslims.

24:29Speaker 11:Dearborn voted for Trump. Thank you for your service, but you're going sorry, you can be deported.

24:38Speaker 2:Last, by our four, it was clear that Trump was going to win.

24:45Speaker 5:This.

24:47Speaker 2:That was Josh Abbatoy, the CEO Ridge Runner, chiming in.

24:50Speaker 11:This is our democracy, it's ours, this is our captain.

24:55Speaker 2:By our eight, it was confirmed Kamala Harris had lost to Donald Trumps.

25:00Speaker 12:He is he is the atlas holding up the world of the patriarchy right now.

25:05Speaker 4:Yes, and that's when I've got the glass ceiling and I just think the glass ceiling jokes began.

25:11Speaker 11:The glass ceiling just got ten feet taller.

25:15Speaker 4:Heritage America one, Oh, he's.

25:17Speaker 11:It's the only kind of America there is.

25:20Speaker 2:The podcaster is finally signed off by talking about their new hometown.

25:24Speaker 1:This is really cool, though, to be able to do this from Gainsboro, Tennessee. We've been building up for this moment for months and we're here. We meet here so much planned. We have great families here, we have great guys here. It's just really great to connect with the small town of Trump loving Americans.

25:41Speaker 11:Seven thousand of you watching come here to Ridgeman or USA. Doctor come move here to be with us.

25:46Speaker 1:Think this is just the beginning of a lot of things I couldn't there.

25:49Speaker 11:Yeah, amazing crazy.

25:53Speaker 2:After listening to this, Cassie felt duped.

25:56Speaker 5:And then it's like one of those retrospects in a movie where like you find out something and then you go back and all the flashbacks of like, oh my gosh, that makes sense.

26:04Speaker 2:Conversations Cassie witnessed in her restaurant months earlier now had an entirely different meaning. They're trying to sell these plots.

26:11Speaker 5:So they bring people in, give them a tour of the town, and then they would bring them to lunch, and because they get great service, they say, look, we're welcome here. Look when you move here, you can get this. Look how much they like us, They're all like us here.

26:27Speaker 2:Like in that moment, you're just thinking that some people having a conversation they like.

26:30Speaker 5:My like, do not use my hard work and my businesses and my staff and everything that they do to sell your bullshit.

26:41Speaker 2:As news of the real estate venture continue to spread through the town, so did anxiety about who might come here. After all, Josh Abbatoy had been pretty explicit.

26:51Speaker 3:The whole point of it is to plan a flag and say this small town is where our people are gathering.

27:00Speaker 2:For the TV news story dropped, Abbatoy laid low.

27:03Speaker 5:I remember not even really seeing them around town.

27:06Speaker 2:But one of the podcasters, C. J Engele, did make an appearance, a virtual one.

27:12Speaker 3:All right, thanks for a Collins, I'm gonna go ahead and give you a cj Okay.

27:16Speaker 2:On a YouTube show called Truth with Proof, hosted by a local preacher. Engle's new neighbors were eager to talk to him.

27:24Speaker 13:So are you really an American or USPI from Russia? Well, I mean, what do you do you buddy?

27:29Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm an American and I love this country and I'm here because I think it represents the American ethos much better than in California did.

27:37Speaker 9:And I got a question, why why are you and Jackson County.

27:40Speaker 1:I'm buying in Jackson County because I like the region and it it seems like you know, a good place to raise families. And this is where my my friends decided to go.

27:49Speaker 9:Here's your friends.

27:51Speaker 1:Well, Josh Abbatoy and Andrew and people like that. And we have friends here that have grown up here as well.

27:58Speaker 9:How'd you make them.

28:00Speaker 1:On the internet? And that's that's where you meet people these days. Yeah, welcome, well fresh Look, well, I appreciate your cynicism and I don't take it offensively, So thank you for calling in. And I hope to you know, you know, earn a better reputation over the next couple of years.

28:17Speaker 9:And here's another problem, buddy. Sure with y'all.

28:19Speaker 13:Coming in buying land from Jackson County paper, you're taking that land away. Then you're marketing that land the people from Minnesota, Cayli Larn y'all home in Colorado wherever.

28:30Speaker 9:It is you're trying to get them from.

28:32Speaker 13:That land will never be able to be back in the hands of young people from Jackson County who want to buy a house and two acres, five acres, fifteen acres, whatever. They'll never be able to get it because it's going to be in y'all's little Nazi park. I don't understand how you think that's good for our people.

28:49Speaker 9:You're not welcome.

28:51Speaker 2:Not everyone who called her texted was opposed to rich Runner.

28:54Speaker 11:Someone says, hey, CJ.

28:55Speaker 4:You're handling all the calls. Well, those who watched the podcast and full will see your free and your attentions.

29:01Speaker 2:But by and large people were suspicious and very confused.

29:05Speaker 10:Okay, I have a question about you all stating that you were going to plant a flag and start a town. I don't understand that exactly because we are currently a town, so I wasn't really for sure what that meant.

29:20Speaker 2:That's what everyone wanted to know. What did it mean when they said they were building a town and would plant a flag.

29:27Speaker 1:It's probably analogous, you know, plant like I don't think I don't have any plans to start a town.

29:33Speaker 2:I mean, instead, he brushes it off as just tom, but.

29:36Speaker 1:I don't have any plans to and I say this very very seriously. Our plan is to assimilate into the culture of the area and to participate in making Gainsboro a better place to live.

29:51Speaker 2:Engel was as civil as can be, even said he'd gotten plenty of sympathetic messages in the weeks after, but those who wanted more details were frustrated his answers on the show didn't reveal much. Then he and the others seemed to disappear from public life in Gainsborough, so residents decided they needed to take matters into their own hands. That's after the break. The Gainsboro Resistance, as it's come to be known, started with seventy year old retired our teacher Nancy Prewett.

30:27Speaker 6:My family goes back to, you know, when Gainsborough was form.

30:31Speaker 2:Nancy knows the town gossip, even has a police scanner on her kitchen counter, always chattering in the background.

30:39Speaker 5:Nancy actually was the one who came and told me about it.

30:41Speaker 3:You know, Nancy can tell you that Nancy was talking about that at one point.

30:45Speaker 5:If she wants you to know something, she will make sure you know it.

30:48Speaker 2:Nancy taught in the local public schools for many years. Since retiring, she's been living her best life, traveling the world volunteering.

30:57Speaker 6:This town is very special. To think that people wanted to come in and change everything. I was very disillusioned. It was a very sad day and it changed my life forever.

31:09Speaker 2:Nancy, who grew up staunchly Republican and voted as one until twenty sixteen, had never heard the term Christian nationalist, and now the two men behind the so called Number one Christian Nationalist podcast were living on her street.

31:25Speaker 6:CJ lives down here four houses from me.

31:29Speaker 2:Nancy worried about how the town might be fooled by Ridge Runner, not because they were uninformed, but because they had other things on their mind. Jackson County, where Gainsborough is located, is one of the poorest in the state.

31:43Speaker 6:And I did not know how many people were going to be concerned because they had to figure out how they were going to get their next meal. That couldn't get people to understand the gravity of the situation.

31:55Speaker 2:Gainsborough has a live and let live kind of attitude. There were some folks who had concerns at first, but those faded, Some weren't worried at all. Others likely couldn't pass up a top dollar offer for land.

32:08Speaker 6:We have such a low voter turnout in the city that they knew that this was a place that they could take over and plant their flag.

32:17Speaker 2:As they said, Gainsborough has just six hundred and five registered voters and.

32:22Speaker 6:If they moved fifty families in, then they could take over of politics and the government. And I was a city alder woman, okay, and I know that I had a landslide with one hundred and thirty votes, and the next person was one hundred votes. So if they got fifty people to move in here, yes they could take over our little town. Gainsborough's protests kicked off with a small gesture. One of the podcasters had gone to social media to say how much he hated what white educated women had done to America. So Nancy being Nancy, walked to the square and asked the owner of a local gift shop to print a T shirt with a slogan on it dangerous educated women.

33:15Speaker 2:She wore it around town. It was her first public act of resistance. I just was trying to figure out what I personally could do. Nancy began contacting her neighbors, old co workers, a local pastor, restaurant owners. She estimates she spoke to fifty people, and.

33:34Speaker 6:Then slowly people started getting on board.

33:39Speaker 2:Nancy was consumed. She spent an hour every morning researching while she had coffee and in the middle of the night when she couldn't sleep.

33:48Speaker 6:My closest friends they were concerned because they said, you're so obsessed by this. I said, I think we all need to be.

33:56Speaker 2:Nancy realized she needed to do even more something. The podcasters on her street would be sure to see. We need to let them know that everybody on their street and surrounding them are not okay with their views. So in came the lawn signs.

34:12Speaker 6:They said hate has no home in Gainsboro.

34:15Speaker 2:On November thirtieth, ten days after the town hall, Nancy posted on Facebook, anyone want a yard sign? Message me. The requests rolled in, Yes, please, amen, I want one. I need six of them.

34:31Speaker 6:We had signs all over this town, in everybody's yard, on the side.

34:36Speaker 2:Of the road, three hundred signs in all. In a small town. It felt like they were everywhere. Someone put up a billboard too, right on the main road into town. It read small town, big heart here, nasty notions play no part Gainsboro, where all are welcome. A few weeks past, the holiday is offered a bit of quiet and much needed normalcy for the town. Then, at the start of the year, Josh Abbatoy, the head of Ridge Runner, made a surprising overture an invitation to talk, not to Nancy, but to her neighbor, who promptly shared it with Nancy.

35:19Speaker 6:And he said, I'm reading quoting. I moved to Gainsborough over the summer Phil's mistaken reporting is not how I would have chosen to be introduced to my new neighbors. I would love to grab coffee sometimes and dispel what Phil has said about me and my company, hopefully the warm welcome to all.

35:38Speaker 2:Abbatoy has denied being a Christian nationalist. He says the podcasters are not Ridge Runner ambassadors their customers, and they don't speak for the company. Ridge Runner says its community will be built around a shared ethos of land, liberty and legacy. As Nancy kept reading Abbatoy's invite, she saw opportunity.

36:01Speaker 6:We've been happily invited several times to the Dairy Queen morning coffee and have gotten the ability.

36:06Speaker 2:He was talking about a weekly coffee clatch of local veterans that he and c J the podcaster have been joining.

36:13Speaker 4:To meet people.

36:13Speaker 6:So you're welcome to come as well, and so we did. We just took more than one person.

36:20Speaker 2:It would be the first time everyone who had been anxious and alarmed would gather in the same place as their new neighbors and they'd have breakfast at the local Dairy Queen.

36:30Speaker 4:A group of people in the community wanted to just do a show of community unity.

36:36Speaker 2:That's Mark Dudney, the historian. What's your mindset like walking in that morning?

36:42Speaker 4:We need some bacon and eggs.

36:45Speaker 6:Dairy Queen is not yours, and we are aware of what you're doing.

36:51Speaker 2:That same morning, Brian Allen, the metal detector guy, got a text from a friend telling him go to Dairy Queen.

36:58Speaker 3:Now, okay, I'll go get this such biscuit, I don't know. I walk in and I'm like, all these people say, what is going on? Like it free Daily Bar or something, free blizzard.

37:09Speaker 2:The place was packed, every booth taken.

37:12Speaker 3:I was like, what's going on? Like it is, Oh, there's a sit in.

37:16Speaker 2:It would come to be known as the DQ sit in.

37:21Speaker 3:People that I argued with on Facebook politically are there and they're mad, and I'm.

37:27Speaker 4:Like, oh god, thank you.

37:28Speaker 3:The both sides of the political spectrum being there was chill inducing. Like it was like, all right, we got this.

37:36Speaker 4:We were expecting about thirty thirty five people in about seventy five showed up. I've never been so proud of my community. The one thing that you have to process is that this is so foreign to us. There is no guidebook available, you know, about what to do.

37:57Speaker 3:I come in, and so I see AVATOI standing over.

38:01Speaker 2:There, Josh Abbatoy, the CEO of Ridge Runner.

38:04Speaker 3:Just seeing him like a jump scare like.

38:08Speaker 6:Abbatoy came in and I went straight to him.

38:11Speaker 2:Nancy wanted to talk about the house across the street from her, where one of the podcasters lived.

38:16Speaker 6:I introduced myself and I said, I know you purchased that, and he goes, no, I didn't purchase that.

38:22Speaker 2:Josh Abbatoy's right. Actually his dad bought it. But to Nancy. All Abbatoys led to Ridge Runner and I.

38:29Speaker 6:Said, yes, you did. He said, how do you know that? And I said, well, I give one hour of my life to you every morning over coffee doing research. So I called the owner that sold it.

38:41Speaker 2:To Nancy decided it was time to say her piece you.

38:45Speaker 6:So obviously you purchased it and then you did a quick deed and put it in their name for whatever reason. I said, I don't know, and I said and then Iskra moved in that next day, I guess, and that's when he got frustrated and didn't want to talk to anymore.

39:01Speaker 5:I sat down next to CJ.

39:04Speaker 2:Cassie Kessler, the restaurant owner slipped into a booth next to the podcaster.

39:09Speaker 5:And I said directly to him, I'm like, you know, why are you here? And he said, you know, we're from all different parts of the country. You know, we have a bunch of woke people that got elected into office and then came in and changed the whole town, and it just didn't align with us anymore.

39:24Speaker 2:So we left.

39:25Speaker 5:And I'm like, so, what's the difference in what you're doing now to us? And he goes, well, you know, we're not trying to change your town. I looked right at him. I said, you say all these things about women. I said, but I own my building, I pay local tax, I pay sales tax, I pay liquor tax, I have employment, I have a nonprofit. But because I can't physically have children, I'm not worth anything. And he says something God, something to the effect of, I have different beliefs than you, and I will tell you, and I hope he's listening.

40:00Speaker 2:You were shaking like a leaf. Josh Abatoy declined to speak with us for this story, but you'll hear directly from the podcasters c. J Engel and Andrew Isker later in this series. A couple weeks after the sit in came the biggest standoff to date. Ridge Runner applied to join the local Chamber of Commerce, guaranteeing them public ribbon cuttings and gripping grin photos with the town's business leaders. Cassie Kessler, who was on the Chamber's board, said, the news landed with a thud.

40:38Speaker 5:As a board, we were not fans of letting them on, but we live in a democracy, so we wanted to leave it open to the people.

40:47Speaker 2:We held an open.

40:48Speaker 5:Meeting and there was not one member in that room that wanted them to be a part of it.

40:55Speaker 2:Next, the board hired an attorney.

40:58Speaker 5:He said, you don't have to act because things that they were saying discriminatory. That went against pretty much everything in our morality clause.

41:07Speaker 2:So the Chamber rejected Ridge Runner. From what folks remembered, the Chamber had only denied a few businesses. Some years back. It rejected a topless auto repair shop called Boob and Loub. Now the Chamber was denying Ridge Runner. It was Gainsborough's first official repudiation of the venture.

41:25Speaker 5:We had a certified letter drawn up and we sent it to them with a full refund I think they thought we were going to all cower with our tail between our legs and run away.

41:37Speaker 2:After the denial, the Chamber received a letter from a lawyer in Missouri notifying it that ridge Runner intended to sue the Chamber and possibly individual members who, it claimed quote knowingly discriminated or conspired to discriminate against Ridge Runner.

41:53Speaker 5:That we were infringed, we were discriminating, we were discriminating against them.

41:58Speaker 13:Beginning.

41:59Speaker 2:The letter demanded the Chamber preserve all communication regarding its decision to deny ridge Runner, all emails, texts, faxes, floppy disks, metadata, video, audio, thumb drives, everything.

42:13Speaker 5:Then you're gonna sue us. So then we're going to tie up whatever little money we have in legal fees, which means our Christmas parade gets canceled, our tree lighting gets canceled because we have no funding to do that. So now you get to go tell the town that you canceled Christmas. Go ahead, as a bunch of Christians, tell this town that all of our Christmas festivities cannot be put.

42:34Speaker 2:On because your feelings a lot harked.

42:37Speaker 5:God, you didn't get into the Chamber and you didn't get your propaganda picture.

42:40Speaker 2:Get the fuck out of here. The threat letter hung over Gainsborough. So did Ridge Runners, growing stockpile of land, which they almost always paid for in cash. Then, exactly a week after the DQ sit in, Ridge Runner announced its largest land purchase yet, four hundred and fifty the acres, an old family farm that acquired for two and a half million dollars, a stunning price by local standards. All told, Ridge Runner now controlled upwards of twelve hundred acres in the county and beyond. Ridge Runner's footprint was growing so rapidly it now eclipsed the size of Gainsboro itself. Locals would soon discover that this venture was connected to something much bigger, a vision of turmoil, collapse and a new America next time on our town.

43:37Speaker 4:Tell us the response to this, this dangerous venture of yours.

43:41Speaker 11:And someone already bought the land.

43:42Speaker 4:Yes, yes, it was being divided up and sold.

43:45Speaker 11:As we speak.

43:46Speaker 3:We need cities on a shining hill. There's no question that they were brought here intentionally.

43:50Speaker 11:It means I was chosen by God.

43:52Speaker 2:The old order was all coming to an end.

43:55Speaker 8:She was determined to see what they were about.

43:58Speaker 1:They're pouring money into this and they have a lot more to pour.

44:02Speaker 6:They will start with one state, and they have chosen Tennessee as that state.

44:14Speaker 2:Our Town is written and reported by me Maraba Knight and Susan Burfield. Rebecca Lax is our senior producer. Ken Armstrong edited the show with additional editing from Rebecca Lax. Original score and sound design by Alex Sugira, fact checking Byonica Robbins. Additional production and editorial support from Julia Weaver, David Fox, and Laura Newcombe. Special thanks to Bloomberg's Elana Sussnow, Bob Blau, Kristen Powers, Anthony Mancini, the Big Take podcast team, and Will Pearson at iHeart podcasts. Our executive producer is Nicole Beemster Boor