Michael Chesebro awoke to the same reality as he did each morning, with pain radiating up his spine and into his shoulders before he opened his eyes. He remained still for a moment, summoning the courage to reach from his bed to his night stand. He rolled onto his back, which was fused together with metal after almost 20 years as a paratrooper in the military. He extended his arm, which he had broken several times while wrangling bulls and horses on his ranch outside Cheyenne, Wyo. Finally, his hand found his cellphone, and he logged on to the online universe where he spent most of his days.
“How’re we all doing this morning?” asked Michael, 63. “I’m hurting again — too much time spent jumping out of perfectly good airplanes.”
“You served our country well,” a retired teacher from Kansas responded.
“Hang in there, patriot,” a truck driver in Texas said. “Remember, the pain’s only real if you believe in it.”
“Distract me,” Michael said. “What part of our country is falling apart today?”
On the other end of his phone were hundreds of people in a live voice chat for Patriot Party News, one of about a dozen far-right media platforms that has grown in both size and influence over the past few years, not only by creating an ecosystem of disinformation but also by providing an authentic sense of community. The company was co-founded in 2020 by Warren Armour, a conservative with no media experience who runs a flooring company in Tennessee, but Michael admired the Patriot Party News slogan when he first saw it shared on Facebook last year: “If you hate mainstream media, you are going to love us!”
Michael started watching the site’s daily videos about election fraud and vaccine pseudoscience, some of which have now been viewed more than a million times. He signed up for the company’s social media platform and paid $8.99 a month to join the audio channel, which functions like an old ham radio and promised him the chance to “meet comrades in our battle for the soul of America.”
On some days, Michael listened to the channel for as many as 12 hours, with the audio feed piped directly into his hearing aids to drown out the tedium of his pain. He narrated his daily ranching tasks for the group and sent photos of his crops. Other members responded with recipes, virtual prayers for rain and a steady drumbeat of extremist political ideology that increasingly mirrored his own. In a fracturing country, here was an echo chamber with the power to turn fringe conspiracy theories into widely accepted political dogmas — that the Covid vaccine was poison, the mainstream media was deceitful and the federal government was controlled by a “deep state cabal” that had stolen the 2020 election from former President Donald J. Trump and was now trying to orchestrate his assassination.
“I saw somewhere this morning that the vaccine’s killed more people than Hitler and Stalin combined,” said a woman who went by the name Truth and Freedom Fighter.
“It’s genocide, 100 percent,” Michael said, as he pulled himself out of bed.
“I want handcuffs and perp walks for all those criminals,” someone else said. “Who goes first? Fauci, Obama or Biden?”
“Let me think on it,” Michael said. “That’ll keep me entertained while I feed the horses. The wife says I need to quit running my mouth and get going on my honey-do list.”
Cheryl Chesebro, 61, had known her husband to be a realist for most of his life. Michael had enlisted in the Army at 17 because he couldn’t afford to pay for college and then agreed to jump out of planes for a $2,500 sign-up bonus. But after a total of 42 surgeries on his back, shoulders, ankles and knees, he’d come to distrust the government he’d served. He invested in wind and solar power so his family didn’t have to rely on the U.S. power grid. He bought gold in case the U.S. financial system collapsed and then started collecting shoe boxes full of foreign currency from the Middle East and Africa, believing that it could eventually be as valuable as the U.S. dollar.
For the first time in his life, he became consumed by politics and then enamored with Trump, another government skeptic who sometimes spoke in the language of conspiracy theories. The former president had helped popularize lies about Barack Obama’s birthplace, widespread election fraud and the “hoax” of climate change — all of which had become part of the founding DNA of Patriot Party News.
“Whatever they’re telling you on that website, it’s all basically hogwash,” Cheryl told him.
“A lot of it’s wacky, but 10 percent is the real deal,” he said. “That’s better than anyplace else.”
“What kind of hocus-pocus are they going to come up with next?” Cheryl asked.
Michael walked outside to check on the horses while he listened to people on the audio feed talk about how Trump was anointed president by God, and how George Soros was building mansions in Hollywood to house undocumented immigrants. He turned up the volume and spoke back to the group over the wind as the unrealities in his ears continued to become the reality of his life.
“Thanks for helping me get up and going this morning,” he said. “I never thought I would be on a platform with people I’d never met and hear this many I love yous.”
“I’m so glad we’re in this war together,” said an aircraft mechanic who went by the name Oath Keeper Bill. “We need you healthy and strong. Have you been following the latest news on medbeds?”
“Oh yeah. They’re here, and they can heal anything,” someone else responded. “Cancer. Dementia. Broken bones. Arthritis. Forty-five minutes in one of those beds, and you’ll never be in pain again.”
“Come on,” Michael said. “Really?”
Of all the wild conspiracies he’d discovered on Patriot Party News, the concept of medbeds had initially struck Michael as the most far-fetched, even if it was also among the most popular. Every few days, someone else on the platform shared an illustration of a futuristic-looking chamber, sometimes with a doctored image of Trump superimposed in the foreground. The founder of the site, Armour, sometimes mentioned videos or podcasts about medbeds that had become popular on the far-right corners of Telegram, Discord and Rumble, and Michael clicked on the links, as did millions of others.
The videos claimed with no evidence that the U.S. military was already in possession of advanced, or possibly even alien, technology that could cure all disease and extend human life. There were said to be at least three types of medbeds already in existence in secret military tunnels. One, a “holographic medbed,” scanned the body to instantly diagnose and then heal any sickness, no matter how severe. Another bed was able to regenerate personal DNA so people could regrow missing limbs in a few minutes. A third was designed for reverse aging and could rewind people’s bodies to the age and condition of their choosing.
The only holdup, according to the videos, was that a collection of liberal billionaires kept hoarding the technology for themselves. On the Patriot Party News audio feed, people speculated that medbeds wouldn’t be available to the public until Trump was back in control of the White House, at which point everyone would be invited to make appointments for free at a secret underground military base.
“We are about to cross that start line into our medbed future,” said an Australian woman who called herself Skye Prince and claimed to be a military expert, in a video shared on Patriot Party News that has been viewed several million times. “We are leaving a life of poverty, ill health, uncertainty, and moving into wealth, abundance, perfect health. You could almost say we are about to be born again.”
“Thank God the wait is almost over!” Michael heard someone say on the audio channel in the last days of spring. “Medbeds are finally coming. I hope I can get my mom to the front of the line since she’s Stage 4.”
“Amen. I need an appointment for my husband after his latest stroke,” someone else responded.
“I hate to rain on the parade, but are we sure this isn’t too good to be true?” Michael said. “Sounds like it could be a scam. Why haven’t we heard about this anywhere more mainstream?”
“Right,” someone responded. “Because the mainstream media is always trustworthy.”
“OK, true,” Michael said. “But nothing from doctors, hospitals — ”
“You expect to hear the truth from corporate medicine?”
“Look, it sounds great,” Michael said. “If I can lay in a bed and choose my age, my wife will be changing my diapers at the beginning of my life and not at the end, but I’d like more evidence.”
Instead, there was only repetition — the same medbed fantasies repeated over and over each day on the audio feed until the initial shock wore off within a few weeks and Michael’s skepticism wore down into curiosity and then into the beginnings of hope. He knew from experience that the military was capable of harboring secret, advanced technology. He remembered talking to members of his unit on a satellite phone years before one was made available to the public. “The military always gets the fancy toys way ahead of anyone else, so I suppose it’s plausible,” he said on the audio channel.
He’d already tried and failed to treat his pain by scheduling dozens of appointments each year through his health care with Veterans Affairs. He’d tried fentanyl, Percocet, Vicodin, acupuncture, water therapy, nerve blockers, deep-tissue massage and light therapy. Following his doctors’ advice had resulted in only temporary reprieves, along with dozens of opioid prescriptions and an elective surgery that led to a life-threatening staph infection. “The conventional route hasn’t done me any good,” he said on the channel. “When you’re desperate, you’ll try anything. This whole medbed thing has become personal for me.”
It was part of Armour’s strategy when he first started Patriot Party News from his home after the 2020 presidential election: to build an audience by focusing on personal issues such as religion and health. He’d watched other far-right media sites like Victory Channel, The Elijah List and Right Side Broadcasting Network amass millions of subscribers in what Armour called the “Christian, MAGA universe” by mimicking Trump’s tendency to favor emotional appeals over facts.
“It’s almost like selling something,” Armour said, outlining the strategy behind Patriot Party News. “How do I wake more people up? Before we launched, I tried to share some of these out-there political ideas with my parents, and they were like, ‘Oh Lord! Let’s put him in an insane asylum.’ You need to get people just tasting a little bit first. I don’t start out by saying we have five different Bidens wearing masks. I go there on different things that people have strong feelings about, like the Covid jab, the stolen election or your personal health.”
The Patriot Party News feed included regular segments on essential oils, unproven supplements and ivermectin, and one morning Armour came onto the platform and introduced another “truth-seeking health expert.” His name was John Baxter, and he had spent his career in the Florida mattress industry before founding a company called Anti-Aging Beds, which had received a warning letter from the Food and Drug Administration in 2020 for selling unproven medication. Baxter introduced himself as an inventor and the author of a self-published book: “The Med Bed Story — Restoring the Health of Humanity.”
“We are the only ones in the medbed movement that actually have a bed,” Baxter said, as Michael listened with hundreds of others. “It’s available, and it’s ready for you to try.”
Michael booked a medbed appointment for late June and loaded his camping trailer for the long drive. One of his friends on Patriot Party News, Andrea Stimson, had bought several pieces of Baxter’s equipment and opened a wellness spa in Sheridan, Wyo., 300 miles north. Michael had already visited once to tour and try some of the equipment, and now he was returning for treatments with Cheryl, their daughter and a granddaughter.
“I’ve been busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest trying to get on the road,” Michael said on the audio channel as he pulled onto the highway.
“I’m jealous,” someone responded. “You’ll be walking out a brand-new man.”
Michael talked into his speakerphone as he drove and described the cattle herds of central Wyoming, the rising gas prices and the farms with billboards for Trump 2024. He posted a photo of the sun setting over the highway and played the group one of his favorite songs by the country singer Chris LeDoux.
“Quit being a jackwagon and pay attention to the road,” Cheryl told him.
She’d agreed to come along because even if she had begun referring to Michael as the “crazy old man on the mountain,” she’d also learned over the past 30 years that some of his wild plans had a way of working out. Michael had taught their two children to hunt and shoot from long distances, and their son had ended up getting a marksmanship scholarship to the University of Alaska. Michael had convinced Cheryl to move out of urban Michigan to an off-the-grid mountaintop, where they dug their own well and farmed much of their own food, and now she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.
Her husband was happiest when he was self-reliant and purposeful — working as a rodeo clown, coaching wrestling, training horses or traveling to military contracting jobs across the world. But lately his back had made it difficult to work long hours, and Cheryl sometimes teased him for being her “house husband.” He rested for stretches of the day in an easy chair in their living room and spent hours on the phone.
“Hello, hello?” he said on the audio channel as they passed by the Laramie Mountains. “Somebody say something. I think I’m going deaf.”
“Maybe it’s quiet because for once you’re not doing all the talking,” Cheryl said loudly enough that her voice carried into his microphone.
“Hey, I like her,” someone on the platform teased. “She’s a smart woman.”
“Yeah, the wife gets tired of me,” Michael said. “When she needs space, she tells me to go out for breakfast. She says somewhere about 300 miles away is about right.”
He liked his persona on Patriot Party News: a jokester known for his dry humor and relied upon for his military knowledge. Armour, the site’s founder, had made him an unpaid moderator and sometimes called him directly to ask about military tactics. Michael talked often on the platform about his “high-level intel,” which sometimes came in the form of Facebook posts from friends he had served with in the 82nd Airborne Division or later in the Marines. Online, he wasn’t a house husband on disability but a survivalist cowboy with clout, expertise and dozens of like-minded friends.
There was Bill, a farmer in central Wisconsin whose frequent raves about Trump were sometimes difficult to hear over the roar of his tractor; and Val, a retired art teacher who sometimes read aloud from the Bible; and Keith, who had recently been paralyzed from the knee down by an infection and was relearning to walk; and Meagan, a single mother of five who requested prayers for her child’s flag football games; and Janel, who was facing foreclosure on her house in Illinois and trying to rehome all 30 of her cats; and Jay, a real estate agent who spent his free time bass fishing; and Beverly, who was taking care of her husband, who had advanced dementia, because she couldn’t afford to pay for help. “I’m hanging on by a thread,” she said one night. “He’s very difficult to handle, and now he hallucinates. Most days I’m ready to give up, but going to bed listening to the chat on this platform is what saves my sanity.”
And then there was Andrea, the new owner of a medbed spa. She was a nail technician and certified wellness coach who had specialized in diet programs until she decided in January to buy Baxter’s products and rent a building across the street from a hospital in Sheridan.
“We’re still hoping to get F.D.A. approved, but that whole process is so corrupt anyway,” she said on the audio channel. “You can’t totally grasp the magic of it until you try it. Honestly, it’s a God thing.”
“I’m becoming more open to this kind of stuff, but I don’t totally grasp all the technology or understand how it works,” Michael said.
“Me neither,” Andrea said. “It’s a lot, and I’m still learning. But I believe in the results.”
Michael and his family were the first customers to arrive the next morning, and Andrea greeted them at the door with cups of Baxter’s “anti-aging water.” She led them into the back of the spa and showed them the equipment while she ran through a rote disclaimer. “It’s not meant to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease,” she said. “It hasn’t been clinically proven yet, so we have to avoid saying all of that.”
But what she could say was what Michael had heard hundreds of times already on Patriot Party News: that medbeds represented “the most advanced technology in the world.” That Baxter’s model was a “first-generation, civilian medbed,” and that even if it couldn’t cure all disease and regrow limbs in 45 minutes like the military version, it was still “capable of miracles that you won’t even believe.” That she had gone to try the equipment for herself at Baxter’s warehouse in Florida and walked out a few days later feeling “so euphoric and transformed” that she had decided on the spot to open a wellness center. One of her best friends had shingles in her brain and another had cancer; they didn’t have time to wait. Andrea sold her favorite horse, refinanced her car and spent much of her savings to purchase five pieces of equipment for $140,000.
Several other companies had started producing their own versions of medbeds in the last few years. One company, Tesla BioHealing, had purchased a half-dozen old motels in places like Tampa, Fla., Dubuque, Iowa, and Butler, Pa., and then turned them into “medbed centers,” where each room came equipped with proprietary canisters under the bed that provided what the company called “life force energy.” Other groups were running scams on Facebook and charging $800 for “redemption cards” with a photograph of Trump’s face and a code that they said would provide secret passage into the underground military bases where medbeds were said to be ready for use.
Baxter’s company was still in its infancy, and he had sold some of his products to churches, private clubs or millionaires who he said were “invested in longevity.” The medbeds at Andrea’s spa were the first to be available by appointment to the public, and he planned to expand into spas across the United States and Mexico. Andrea had decided to charge $85 an hour for use of the beds, but insurance didn’t cover the experimental treatment, and she didn’t believe in turning anyone away. In the past few months, people had arrived from across the West hoping for answers for their late-stage cancer, A.L.S., chronic depression and dementia, and Andrea let some of them use a medbed for free. She cooked for them, found them places to stay and often held their hands to pray before they lay down in the medbed.
“I don’t care if it means I’m losing some money,” Andrea told Michael. “I feel like I landed smack dab in the middle of my purpose on this planet.”
Michael’s daughter climbed into the Tesla medbed, a cylindrical hyperbaric chamber that sold for $90,000, and that Baxter said combined light frequency, sound frequency and intermittent electrical stimulation into “the future of health.” Michael went into the room next door and lay down in a frequency medbed, where he could punch in different codes to receive vibrations and stimulation allegedly tailored to specific medical issues.
He picked up the menu of options and looked at the alphabetized first page, which had more than 50 choices beginning with the letter A: “Acid Reflux,” “Acne,” “Alzheimer’s,” “Alcoholism,” “Aneurysm,” “Anthrax,” “Anxiety Relief,” “Arthritis,” “Asperger’s,” “Autism.”
“Wow, it can really correct all this?” Michael asked.
“Over time, it’s possible,” Andrea said. “As long as you believe, and your mind and body are in alignment with the right frequencies.”
He flipped through the book and landed on a page for the letter H. “Heel Spurs,” Herniated Disc,” “Hepatitis,” “High Blood Pressure,” Hissing in Ear,” “H.I.V.”
“I’ve got so many issues I barely know where to start,” he said. “I guess let’s do it for back pain and inflammation.”
Andrea punched in a few codes and the bed began to recline and then vibrate. Michael pulled a blanket over his chest and took out his phone to type a quick note into the chat forum on Patriot Party News. “FOMO!” he wrote. “Haven’t been on for a bit because I’ve got the whole family getting Baxter treatments.” He checked back a few moments later to track the flow of replies.
“Thank God! Medbed miracle!”
“Can’t wait until Trump makes these available for all true Patriots.”
Andrea came back into the room and stood by the doorway, holding up her own phone. “People on the platform are so excited,” she said. “Is your back starting to feel better at all?”
He shifted in the bed and stared up at the ceiling, trying to believe, working to align his mind with the right frequencies.
“You know what?” he said, after a moment. “I think it does.”
The post Racked by Pain and Enraptured by a Right-Wing Miracle Cure appeared first on New York Times.
