5 JANUARY 16-22, 2025 westword.com WESTWORD | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NEWS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | The Taming of the Crude JOE OLTMANN SAYS HE’S CHANGING CONSERVATIVE DAILY. BUT CAN THE PODCAST REALLY CHANGE ITS SPOTS? BY BRENDAN JOEL KELLEY On the last day of 2024, Conservative Daily podcast host Joe Oltmann is wrapping up a Zoom meeting. “Talking to lawyers,” he says. “It’s always expensive, but always a good idea.” Oltmann ought to know. The Castle Rock- based businessman has been at the center of a slew of defamation-related lawsuits stem- ming from an episode in late 2020, when he claimed that he had “infi ltrated” an “antifa” group conference call and heard a Dominion Voting Systems employee named Eric say something like, “Trump is not going to win. I made [expletive] sure of that!” Oltmann also showed screenshots from the Facebook page of Eric Coomer, Do- minion’s then-director of Product Security and Strategy, fi ngering him as an internal saboteur who claimed to have fi xed the 2020 presidential election. Coomer and Dominion both denied Olt- mann’s election-rigging claims, and Coomer filed several lawsuits against conserva- tive personalities and organizations that repeated Oltmann’s assertions, including Oltmann himself. (Coomer is no longer with Dominion.) And the Denver-based Dominion fi led its own defamation lawsuits, including one that Fox News settled for $787 billion. This ongoing storm of litigation makes Olt- mann a recurring char- acter in mainstream news, most recently popping up when a federal judge paused a $1,000 daily fi ne against Oltmann for failing to testify in one of the lawsuits until the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals weighs in. In that par- ticular case, Coomer is suing an Oklahoma pod- caster who platformed Oltmann’s assertions about him. Prior to his election- denial claims, Oltmann had made headlines when he funded a series of protests demanding an end to COVID stay-at- home orders in Colorado and launched a politi- cal organization, FEC United (for “Faith, Education and Com- merce”), to advocate for conservative politi- cal candidates in races small and large across Colorado. He also started a podcast, record- ing from a studio in the Denver suburbs. In an online alternative media universe, Oltmann and his Conservative Daily podcast (distributed on video via YouTube imita- tor Rumble) are featured alongside MAGA heavyweights like Rudy Giuliani and pillow dealer Mike Lindell as well as other MAGA martyrs, many of whom have been either banned or demonetized by mainstream platforms. Oltmann’s show is advertiser-supported, with regular appearances from Lindell hawking pillows, Lindell hawking a tome of advice on collecting precious metals, and Oltmann hawking supplements. It’s nearly impossible to calculate Oltmann’s reach, given the various tentacles of audio and video distribution, but he tells Westword that it’s “10 to 15 million people, depending on how you do the math.” On Rumble alone, Conserva- tive Daily has nearly 40,000 fol- lowers, and individual episodes rack up 3,000 to 5,000 views on average. Conservative Daily itself doesn’t bubble up much into the mainstream press, unless it’s to note Oltmann’s extrem- ist claims on the show. The Southern Poverty Law Cen- ter collected a list of Oltmann quotes advocating violence, and a 2022 Washington Post profi le of Oltmann noted his “violent rhetoric” in its headline. For example, Oltmann spoke of “executions of traitors” on the show, then claimed to just be “joking” about hanging Jared Polis when he suggested the governor “stretch that rope.” Oltmann’s formula of hyperbolic bluster is the modern incarnation of what was born on talk radio — hyper-partisan name-calling, but with a more violent tone than is allowed over the airwaves. So when Oltmann announces in an inter- view with Westword that he’s switching up his formula for the podcast, turning away from politics and partisanship, and going so far as to change its name to ax the word “conservative,” a healthy dose of skepticism is warranted. Now starring Tina Peters In October, former Mesa County clerk Tina Peters, convicted of several charges related to allowing an associate of Lindell’s to access the Mesa County election system, was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison along with six months in county jail by Judge Matthew Barrett. But she was still appearing on her Oltmann-produced show, The Truth Matters With Tina Peters, through the end of December — though she’d been in the Mesa County jail since her sentencing. You read that correctly: Tina Peters was broadcasting her internet show, with Olt- mann as her interlocutor, from the Mesa County Detention Center, sometimes several times a week. Peters appeared in her jail-issued orange jumpsuit, still recognizable with her plati- num white hair and eyeliner, from the day room of the jail, using Zoom’s blur effect to cover her environment. The show, in which Oltmann converses from his studio with Peters over a video connection, focused on Peters’s claims of election malfeasance. Peters is not an employee of Oltmann’s, he says, though he adds, “I’m not really at liberty to say what she does and doesn’t get paid for. I do support her.” Oltmann and Peters launched The Truth Matters while the case against her was pro- gressing, well before she surrendered to au- thorities in October. That could have halted production, but Oltmann didn’t let that stand in his way. “I don’t NEWS continued on page 6 KEEP UP ON DENVER NEWS AT WESTWORD.COM/NEWS Joe Oltmann hosts Conservative Daily, but swears he plans to change the podcast. COURTESY CONSERVATIVEDAILY Tina Peters is in jail, but also on Joe Oltmann’s podcast. GETT Y IMAGES
