Following the death of Covid in August, new information is emerging on Robert David Steele, the frequent Alex Jones host who claimed NASA operates a child slave colony on Mars.
According to Steele’s former tour manager, ex-CIA officer, QAnon acolyte, 9/11 truther, anti-vaxxer, COVID denier, anti-Semite, and “Big Lie” proponent Robert David Steele stiffed the production crew working his national “Arise USA!” roadshow out of $50,000 when he suddenly claimed he was out of money after blowing enormous sums on luxury coaches and lavish spreads of Champagne, smoked salmon, and brie.
Join the live stream today at 2pm CST w/Scott McKay in Dallas, TX for the start of The Arise USA Tour 👇👇👇 pic.twitter.com/xAGlL3XuOu
— Amy 🇺🇸🙏🍀 (@amy_deedee) May 16, 2021
However, collecting will be difficult: Steele died in August from the virus he claims was a hoax, which his tour manager, Jon Stensland, believes he contracted while out spreading his fringe beliefs.
“Robert Steele and his minions knew they were fucking over working-class people when they pulled the plug and refused to discuss any sort of buyout or severance on the employment agreement Steele signed,” said Stensland, an experienced road warrior who has worked with such artists as Poison, Stryper, and Ratt.
“For a group of people who claim to be good, family-oriented Christians, they certainly had no problem screwing over the crew that worked day in and out to make their events happen.”
Last May, Steele launched the Arise USA! tour to draw attention to former President Donald Trump’s false claims of election rigging, as well as “to illuminate for the public the treason and high crimes represented by the fake pandemic, unconstitutional lockdown, mask idiocy, and the deaths and sterilization and mutations associated with the untested toxic ‘vaccines’ that are neither approved nor warranted—junk science is now criminal science.”
I am no longer participating in the ARISE USA Tour.
— Cynthia McKinney PhD (@cynthiamckinney) April 29, 2021
“As a former spy intimately familiar with bribery, blackmail, and brainwashing, I have this to say: Elected and appointed ‘leaders’ at the federal, state, and local levels have become tools of the Deep State,” Steele wrote on a now-defunct website he created to promote Arise USA! “Most—not all but most—are more often than not bribed, blackmailed with Satanic Pedophilia entrapment a la Jeffrey Epstein, or brainwashed (MKULTRA). Only the sheriffs, pastors, and LOCAL magistrates represent the interest and will of the local people.”
Along with Steele, some of today’s most extreme conspiracy theorists spoke onstage during the “tour of the century, riding for faith, family, and freedom.” There was at least one member of the so-called Disinformation Dozen, a group of 12 people who, according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate, are responsible for roughly two-thirds of anti-vaccine misinformation spread on social media. A far-right antigovernmental extremist identified by the Anti-Defamation League as an Arizona “constitutional sheriff” was also featured, as was a devoted QAnon-believing anti-vaxxer lawyer for the Church of Scientology who filmed herself storming the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Last spring, a Steele associate contacted Stensland and asked him to join the upcoming Arise USA! tour.
Stensland was tasked with overseeing the tour’s day-to-day operations as well as providing production personnel for the tour’s planned 110-day run. He claimed he had no idea about Steele’s beliefs at the time, and that after a year of inactivity due to COVID-19, he was simply relieved to be working again.
Inside the Disastrous Arise USA Election Fraud Roadshow That Likely Killed COVID Denier Robert David Steele https://t.co/a5GDlhcp9K
— Fernando Oliver, Esq. (@Fernand46357857) December 20, 2021
“He called me up and was like, ‘Hey, how do you feel about doing a political speaking tour?’” Stensland told The Daily Beast. “And then he told me this guy’s got a good budget. And I’m like, well, count me in.”
Stensland said that to him and the other three crewmembers, “it was just another gig. We didn’t care about the politics of the tour, we just wanted to work.”
Pre-production began in April, with a scheduled start date of May 17. The tour was set to begin in Atlanta and would include stops in each of the 50 states. But there were problems almost immediately.
“This tour didn’t go to real venues, because Robert couldn’t get event insurance,” according to Stensland, who said they often found themselves working in parking lots, retail stores, and disused hay barns. “I mean, I went to insurance companies that will insure a GWAR concert. And they wouldn’t touch Robert. But they had no problem insuring a band that was going to go in there and spray stuff all over the venue and destroy equipment.”
What do you get when you combine a far-right paramilitary “Constitutional Sheriffs” group with a QAnon-style hardcore antisemite? Arise USA! The Resurrection Tour. Coming to recruit a sheriff near you.https://t.co/P6AfYWAtij
— Devin Burghart (@dburghart) July 3, 2021
Nonetheless, Steele—”a prolific purveyor of antisemitism who…deems Jews ‘a secret society that believes itself to be exempt from all laws and customs of others,’” according to the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights—hit the road with six brand-new luxury tour buses, complete with sleeping quarters and lounges for talent and crew.
Each bus was wrapped from head to toe in Arise USA! advertising with Steele’s face flanked by his sidekicks, and Stensland said Steele insisted on only driving them during daylight hours so people could see them clearly.
Stensland, on the other hand, claimed that no one slept on the buses because Steele was paying for hotel rooms at high-end Marriotts every night, defeating the purpose of leasing the more expensive sleeper coaches.
“Everything with Robert was, ‘Nothing but the best,’” said Stensland. “‘We will take nothing but the best, we want the finest.’ I mean, I don’t know how many times I heard that.”
On July 21, Robert David Steele – who claimed to be the first to call COVID-19 a hoax, spoke at the “Arise USA” rally in Beaver, PA alongside fellow anti-vaxxer Wendy Bell.
On August 30, Robert David Steele died from COVID-19. https://t.co/GTw8Ec7Aiz pic.twitter.com/Flmg9A2RhD
— Jim (@Lokay) August 31, 2021
According to Stensland, Steele began his speeches by telling the audience that he was nearly bankrupt, living on Social Security in his “soon-to-be ex-wife’s basement.”
“And then he’d go back to his bus and drink Champagne and eat brie and smoked salmon,” Stensland said. “That’s what the man lived on, Champagne, smoked salmon, and brie—as he rides around the country on a million-dollar bus.”
Steele did his best to convert those behind the scenes as well as those in the audience, according to Stensland.
The tour had barely begun when Steele declared that everyone on the crew was being bombarded by electromagnetic fields, or EMFs, and that they needed to protect themselves.
They had events planned on Robert David Steele’s sedition tour “Arise USA” “through at least August.”
Aww. He missed the end of his own tour. 🥲🤡https://t.co/JX36blMHwX pic.twitter.com/BQ3R3H4ASQ
— Jim Stewartson, Antifascist, #RIPQ 🇺🇸🏴☠️ (@jimstewartson) August 29, 2021
Stensland claims Steele told them they needed to buy an anti-EMF bracelet from him for $20 in order to do so. (Experts say that EMF blockers are quackery and that low levels of EMF radiation are not harmful in the first place.)
Stensland told Steele that he had spent most of his life as a roadie in the presence of various radio-frequency-emitting devices and refused to spend his money on one.
“I walk around with an earpiece in my ear all day,” Stensland laughed. “If EMF is what’s gonna kill me, then I’m too far gone.”
Steele “started bitching about money” in mid-July, according to Stensland, who resisted the urge to say, “I told you so.” But he kept his emotions to himself, hoping to persevere until the end and earn the remainder of what he had been promised.
Behind the bunting and vinyl bus wraps, Arise USA is a fusion of two far-right strands: deeply antisemitic Qanon-style conspiracies combined with a return of the Posse Comitatus as the solution to the “Deep State.”
— Devin Burghart (@dburghart) July 2, 2021
Steele called a meeting on July 20 and informed everyone that he was cutting the tour short five weeks early due to his dwindling finances.
According to Steele, the final event would be held on July 30, giving the crew only 10 days to find other work. Steele later changed his mind and informed the crew that the following day would be their last.
Here is Robert David Steele talking about his plan to recruit “constitutional sheriffs,” i.e. red-pilled sheriffs on his “USA Arise!” tour, to put people in jail if they enforce mask or vaccine mandates.
“It’s working!” Well, I guess you could say that Robert. ☠️ pic.twitter.com/slRx6Av95M
— Jim Stewartson, Antifascist, #RIPQ 🇺🇸🏴☠️ (@jimstewartson) August 30, 2021
“I’m like, ‘You’re giving me less than 24 hours notice to tell my crew they’re out of work?’” said Stensland. “And I laid into him.”
Stensland demanded that Steele make a good-faith severance payment to the crew, knowing that all other tours were already fully staffed, making it nearly impossible for anyone to get hired on for the rest of the season.
He told Steele that paying everyone for the final five weeks of their contracts would be ideal. “‘I said, ‘Three weeks would be very noble of you.’ And I said, ‘Two weeks is what we’ll accept as a last resort.’”
Stensland requested that Steele sign a promissory note guaranteeing that he would follow through on the deal. Stensland responded by telling Steele that he would “overlook the breach of contract.”
Steele’s final offer was $10,000 in cash, which was $39,000 less than the $49,000 owed to the crew.
“So we all walked away, the entire crew walked off,” said Stensland, who began booking flights home for himself and his team. “And Robert is shutting the [credit] cards off, as we’re booking flights.”
~”An ex-CIA officer, QAnon acolyte, 9/11 truther, anti-vaxxer, COVID denier, antisemite, and Big Lie proponent stiffed the production crew of his Arise USA! roadshow out of $50,000 when he claimed to be out of money after blowing vast sums on Champagne, smoked salmon and brie… https://t.co/KZPOvV89XK
— Harry Siegel (@harrysiegel) December 19, 2021
They were eventually able to obtain tickets home on Steele’s dime.
By this point, some of the speakers, including Steele, were becoming ill with what Stensland, who is fully vaccinated, suspected was COVID. Steele, on the other hand, blamed his persistent, hacking cough on having recently quit smoking cigars.
Steele continued as a one-man show, driving his car to the remaining dates for town hall-style meet-and-greets in hotel lobbies and other such locations. And, in fact, he had contracted COVID during the tour, despite Steele’s continued denial of the virus’s existence.
Steele died a few weeks later in a Florida hospital from COVID-related complications at the age of 69.
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