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When Saturday Night Live introduces host Shane Gillis—the comedian who was hired and quickly fired from the cast in 2019 over his history of racist, homophobic, and transphobic comments—on Feb. 24, some viewers will inevitably find their way back to his podcast. Those who keep listening will eventually meet Bill McCusker, the brother of Gillis’ co-host Matt McCusker, and Andrew Pacella, their longtime friend. The two have appeared nearly 20 times since 2019 on Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast, currently Patreon’s top-ranked podcast with more than 80,000 paid subscribers. They have hosted a podcast of their own, War Mode, since 2020. Thanks in part to the exposure they received on Gillis’s platform, Pacella and McCusker have grown their audience to more than 12,800 Patreon subscribers, generating more than $32,000 in monthly income. Also, they’re Holocaust deniers.
McCusker and Pacella have dedicated their podcasting career to exploring conspiracy theories, of which they subscribe to quite a few. They are Sandy Hook truthers, arguing in two separate episodes of Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast that the slaughter never happened. They are 9/11 truthers who believe, per Pacella, that “the Israelis” knew about the attacks in advance and may have orchestrated them “to take over our media and destroy our country.” They believe in Pizzagate, the conspiracy theory that inspired a gunman to fire three shots at Comet Ping Pong, a Washington, D.C., pizza shop. In 2021, Pacella and McCusker walked their listeners through a lengthy document that argues Comet Ping Pong owner James Alefantis—who they said may be “a bastard Rothschild”—trafficked and perhaps even murdered children. “Do I want Hillary Clinton to be eating fucking children with Huma Abedin, her lover, ’cause she’s a lesbian?” McCusker asks in one of these episodes. “No. But this is where it’s brought us.”
Even more concerning than their embrace of Pizzagate is their Holocaust denial. In the very second episode of War Mode from March 2020, about 26 minutes into their conversation, Pacella tells McCusker that he’s been watching “sick YouTubes” about Robert David Steele, a Holocaust denier, recurring Alex Jones guest, and 2020 election truther. “He’s talking about the evil Zionists in the government,” Pacella says. “Jews are good, Zionists bad. Jews are good.”