A Republican congressional candidate backed by President Donald Trump has spent years mocking women’s weight and intelligence in crude, sexually explicit terms, according to a CNN review of his jaw-dropping content.
Brandon Herrera, 30, is the GOP nominee for Texas’ 23rd congressional district, which was previously held by Rep. Tony Gonzales, who resigned in April amid a House Ethics Committee investigation into his relationship with a former senior aide.
Herrera, known online as “The AK Guy” to his more than 4 million YouTube subscribers, is running against Democrat Katy Padilla Stout, a former teacher and attorney, in a Republican-leaning district that Democrats now believe could flip.
In the material reviewed by CNN, Herrera compared feminists’ weight to whales and nuclear bombs, joked he had become irresistible to “fat b----es” after rubbing ranch dressing on his body, and said liberal women who discuss guns are “both fat and wrong.”
He also directed sexually explicit insults at a gun safety advocate and her children.
Herrera has downplayed the comments as jokes tied to his online persona. In a statement to CNN, he characterized his past remarks about women the same way.
At a 2024 event alongside former Rep. Matt Gaetz, Herrera said the weight of the world’s population was equivalent to about two dozen feminists, according to the San Antonio Current and other outlets present.
In a YouTube video earlier this summer, he said, “when a blue hair on the news says that a semi-automatic AR-15 is an assault rifle, she is both fat and wrong.” Herrera routinely refers to feminists as “blue hairs.”
He also went after their intelligence. In a 2023 video, Herrera said a gun range dummy’s empty head was “full of mush—much like the average Austin feminist.”
In another clip from that year, he said Cold War-era nuclear bombs weigh “approximately four times as much as the average Austin feminist.” In a 2024 video, he compared “angry blue-haired” feminists’ weight to killer whales and elephants.
Herrera also joked on a podcast that “there’s no ugly women in Norway” because “the Vikings didn’t take the ugly ones,” adding that this is “why all the women in Siberia are built like f--king refrigerators.”
The sexual jokes about women’s weight go back further. In a 2021 video, Herrera suggested his audience was “manning the harpoons” — slang for sleeping with overweight women after a night of heavy drinking. In another clip, he shot at bottles of ranch dressing and rubbed it on his arm, saying it would “make me irresistible to the fat b----es.”
Herrera has also shared sexually explicit material involving women and guns, including the story of an adult content creator who accidentally shot herself in the vagina. In another video, he said he named a gun after adult film star Stormy Daniels “because it’s been through so much hell and abuse and we’ve run the s--t out of it to just abuse it thoroughly.”
Despite the remarks, Republican leaders, including House Speaker Mike Johnson and Trump, have publicly backed Herrera. Trump promised voters on Truth Social that “HE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!”
That endorsement came even though Herrera once mocked Barron Trump and predicted Trump would lose the 2024 election, and just weeks after Trump’s team sent Herrera a cease-and-desist letter over his use of the president’s image in campaign material.
On a February 2024 episode of his podcast, Herrera joined co-hosts in ridiculing Barron Trump, then 17. One co-host called him a “long ventriloquist-like dummy”; another said he “looks like a bully.” Herrera said Barron is “like nine feet tall” and “starting to become a meme,” before mimicking his voice: “Daddy is coming, Daddy is angry.”
Herrera’s office has been contacted for comment.
Herrera has said he expects the scrutiny to continue. “For better or worse, my entire life is on the internet. So, I am an open book in that regard,” he told the Los Angeles Times, arguing voters care more about his positions on gun rights and border security.
Democrats are betting otherwise. DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene said Herrera’s “disturbing history of extremism … and antisemitic rhetoric puts this open Congressional district squarely in play,” after announcing her group would financially back Stout.
