MAGA-friendly podcaster Theo Von was overcome with emotion as he tore into the Department of Homeland Security chiefs for using his video clips to promote the Trump administration’s latest deportation drive.
Von, one of the podcasters credited with helping boost President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, publicly raged at DHS last month after it shared a video of Von saying, “Heard you got deported, dude. Bye!” edited to promote the Trump administration’s contentious mass immigration plan.
“Yooo DHS i didnt approve to be used in this. I know you know my address so send a check. And please take this down and please keep me out of your ‘banger’ deportation videos,” Von wrote in a now-deleted post.
“When it comes to immigration my thoughts and heart are a lot more nuanced than this video allows,” he continued. “Bye!”
During Thursday’s episode of his This Past Weekend podcast, Von was visibly distraught over the incident.
“It was just something that they just used and everybody saw,” Von said. “So I’m getting a ton of hateful stuff.”
He explained that the original clip was recorded jokingly, after a fan handed him their phone and asked him to send a message to a friend who had been deported.
“My father immigrated here from Nicaragua. One of my prized possessions is… his immigration papers from when he came here—I have them in frame,” Von said.
He added, “So I have tons of thoughts about [immigration]… This was just f—ed up.”
Von said he became increasingly paranoid after the video went public. Not long after, he said he received a message from a “high government official” asking if he wanted extra security.
“I’m like, ‘What? What are you talking about? Extra security? I don’t have any… I don’t even know the code to my Ring camera,” he said.
Von added, “I don’t know, man. That really kind of shook me.”
Von—whose full name is Theodor Capitani von Kurnatowski III—has previously expressed support for Trump, while also voicing discomfort with certain aspects of the president’s policies. He has argued that although the president’s mass deportation plans are unsettling, they reflect a broken system.
On Thursday, he expressed similar sentiments.
“I’m all for tighter borders… I’m all for knowing who is in a country,” he said. “Now how do you get there? That’s the bigger question… And we don’t have to discuss that today.”
Since Trump took office, however, Von has broken ranks several times, criticizing the administration for its handling of the Epstein files and asking Vice President JD Vance what had changed after a video of Vance calling for the release of the full Epstein list on Von’s podcast in 2024 resurfaced.
He has also been outspoken on the issue of Gaza, referring to Israel’s actions in the region as “one of the sickest things that’s ever happened.”
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