It was a gorgeous February afternoon in downtown Las Vegas – 73 degrees with the sun beaming down on the Arts Districts hipsters as they enjoyed their not-quite-five-o’clock craft beers. But, as with all stories that start this way, when I took a shortcut through a back alley, everything changed. I accidentally stumbled upon a political event on the back porch of a popular bar in the area and overheard a man discussing his oath to defend the Constitution of the United States and telling attendees that “we are in a state of war.” 

The candidate was Noah Malgeri, a Republican vying for Nevada’s Third Congressional District, which is currently represented by Democrat Susie Lee. The bar in question, named ReBar, is not located in the current or future boundaries of Nevada’s Third Congressional District (it turns out Malgeri doesn’t currently live in the district either), so curiosity took hold. As I listened to Malgeri, an Army veteran and patent attorney, and read his campaign literature, it revealed an increasingly disconcerting scene – a candidate promoting misinformation to reach extreme conclusions in the back porch of a bar with some 20-odd supporters.

Meet Malgeri

“IMPEACH JOE BIDEN” is the most prominent element of Malgeri’s platform and his website. His two charges? Bribery – because the “Chinese Communist Party gained further leverage over [Biden] by assisting the Biden Presidential Campaign in cheating during the 2020 presidential election, in order to steal the election” (they didn’t, and the election was not stolen); and treason – because of the same allegations of Chinese collusion, and because of Biden’s actions in Afghanistan, which Malgeri claims “China directed” (there is no evidence for this claim – in fact China’s foreign minister criticized the administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan). 

Malgeri’s campaign website is riddled with statements that are misleading at best, and outright false at worst. “The Chinese military created COVID and deployed it to cripple our economy, weaken our institutions, and kill hundreds of thousands of innocent Americans,” claims one portion of his platform. There is a lack of evidence to support such an incredibly bold statement. “China uses our corrupt elites to… devalue our currency,” runs another in a list of grievances against China. We may be able to chalk this one up to a misunderstanding as China, in fact, wants the opposite – for the dollar to be stronger against the yuan. The U.S. government under Trump labeled China a currency manipulator for this exact reason. Their currency had become too weak – which means their imports are more attractive against a stronger dollar. Malgeri has also repeatedly implied (or outright said) that the January 6 riot was a false flag operation perpetuated by the FBI, another claim that has been thoroughly debunked.

But while the rhetoric about stolen elections, January 6, and Chinese influence may be both damaging and inaccurate, it hardly sets Malgeri apart from many Republicans running in primaries these days. What does set him apart is how intense his misinformation is and the militant language he uses. After it came to light that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley had communicated with Chinese officials to reassure them that the United States would not launch an attack in the days after the 2020 election, Malgeri said that Milley should be court martialed, and if found guilty –“they should hang him on… C-SPAN.” In a later statement, Malgeri did not back down, noting “it is clear that Milley must face consequences for his treachery. If an enlisted soldier had done anything remotely approaching this level of betrayal, he or she would rightly be vilified in the media and would immediately be court-martialed, convicted, and would likely be sentenced to life in prison or perhaps even death… Espionage is a capital offense, and, the facts alleged and perhaps admitted appear to support the charge.”

Regardless of the appropriateness of Milley’s actions (which is certainly up for debate), calling for him to be hanged on live television is an extreme conclusion. When I spoke to Malgeri, he clarified that he believes in the rule of law, and when asked if he supported political violence, he replied “certainly not.” But his comments about Milley were not an isolated incident of over-the-top language. While on Wayne Allen’s radio program, Allen asked Malgeri, “Are we willing to let our children die because government wants to stab them with a dangerous jab that literally they have a much better chance of dying from the vaccine than they ever would from COVID itself? Children have a rate of zero death…. That’s child abuse, Noah.” 

“Wayne, you’re 100% right,” Malgeri replied, “it’s more than child abuse, it’s not just irresponsible, it’s diabolical. It’s demonic.” Allen and Malgeri’s statements are false. Children are not more likely to die from the vaccine than from COVID-19; this has been routinely debunked. Though the risk of death from COVID-19 is lower for children than for adults, it is not zero, and hundreds of children have died from the disease. There has not been a single confirmed death of a child from any cause related to the COVID vaccines. 

Weeks before his event in the Arts District, Malgeri attended the “Defeat the Mandates” rally in Washington, DC, calling Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s speech – which received media attention for comparing American vaccine policies to Nazism – “inspirational.” But when I asked if he agreed with Kennedy’s statement weeks after the event he said he didn’t “necessarily agree with that, I haven’t thought about it at all.” He also said that he “didn’t even notice” Kennedy said it in the first place. Kennedy himself has apologized for these remarks.

“We are in a state of war”

While Malgeri may not endorse political violence, his comments about Mark Milley and statements decrying vaccines as “demonic” are similar to past rhetoric that has in fact culminated in violence. Before he told his supporters on January 6 that “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” Donald Trump told them “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” This call to action invoked dramatic and apocalyptic language and buried the caveats; it’s not hard to guess which directions his supporters took the most notice of that day. In the last decade, numerous incidents of violence against police officers have been tied to anti-cop rhetoric. And before James Hodgkinson shot House Republican Whip Steve Scalise and other congressional employees practicing for a baseball game in 2017, he posted increasingly dire language on Facebook that compared Republicans to the Taliban and decried President Trump as a “traitor,” who, along with Vice President Mike Pence, should be removed from office for “treason.” 

When intensified polarization fuels this “othering” of those outside of your group – creating a perception that they are evil, or less human than you and your group – hateful, dehumanizing, or incendiary rhetoric can beget real-world violence. University of Delaware Professor Erin Cassese describes this dehumanization of the other: “Seeing your opponents as subhuman is a way of saying they don’t warrant moral consideration and moral treatment… you’re more likely to see the opposition as evil rather than just wrong. You don’t just want to win, you want to exterminate your enemies.” When a candidate like Malgeri, who calls vaccination “more than child abuse” and evangelizes about the capital acts of treason at the highest levels of government, then warns of war, it sets him far outside the political mainstream. 

At Malgeri’s speech at ReBar, he emphasized a divide between the “us” (he and his supporters) and the “them” (Democrats, the media, big tech, and corporations). He asserted early on that “the Democrat Party is effectively operating as the regional branch office of the Chinese Communist Party.” Later in the speech, he stated that China is “literally at war with us.” The throughline is drawn: war with China means war with the opposing political party. “The US has been taken over in a political coup co-sponsored by the Democrat Party, the [Chinese Communist Party], and the government-media complex,” he described in his own op-ed.

“I will not rest until every criminal involved in the current war against Americans is brought to justice… the evil forces that are clinging desperately to control the downward trajectory of this country could never afford to let somebody like me into office… but like I said, I’ve been in combat before. This is familiar territory, this is what it feels like,” Malgeri said at the end of his ReBar speech. “But just remember this folks, this is the time to stand up and fight because Communism is coming and you can’t vote your way out of Communism. You have to shoot your way out.”

It’s difficult to separate Malgeri’s insistence that he does not support political violence from what was said at his campaign event. And his rhetoric is, whether inciteful or not, not normal, even in the wide realm of American political discourse. That’s why his event, regardless of the political leanings of the venue or city in which it took place, stood out.

Enter ReBar

While Las Vegas may be considered politically moderate, the city as a whole generally votes for Democratic candidates. The last time Clark County, which contains the Las Vegas metropolitan area and several rural outliers in southern Nevada, voted for a Republican at the presidential level was in 1988. Biden won 53.7% of the county. In 2018, Democratic State Senator Yvanna Cancela ran unopposed to represent the portion of the city where Malgeri’s event took place.

The venue, ReBar, opened in 2016 and operates and markets with Davy’s, the bar next door. It fashions itself as part bar, part antique store. The day after Malgeri’s event, the bar hosted former NFL quarterback Eli Manning as its guest bartender and was featured in a Super Bowl commercial to boot. It’s a popular place among locals, driving loyalty via its funky interior and unique atmosphere, boosted by the tight-knit community downtown. 

After struggling against an economically-devastating pandemic, venues are under undue strain to keep their businesses afloat. Running a bar in the last two years has not been easy, and ReBar’s owner, Derek Stonebarger, told me they’re “just trying to keep his staff coming to work every day in this post covid environment.” 

“I do not believe we have ever refused to host a political event based on a person’s views or platform, but I’m not saying that we wouldn’t, especially going forward – as I obviously may need to do more due diligence,” Stonebarger told me in an email after noting it was “disappointing to hear” about Malgeri’s past controversies. “We’re a very liberal bar in the heart of the most liberal part of Las Vegas,” he said. “I am worried about being associated to hate speech or anything that causes harm.” Malgeri advertised the event on his Facebook page and website, as did Brown Chicken Brown Cow, a band that performed at the rally. “Join us patriots this Saturday w/ some drinks and music… Freedom event & fundraiser,” they wrote on their Facebook page, using a graphic that included Davy’s and ReBar’s logos.

ReBar acknowledged that there was an in-kind donation made to the Malgeri campaign to cover setup and cleanup for the event, but that it was “very nominal to what they paid to hold their event on our patio” and that providing an in-kind donation to campaigns which use their space is not unusual. “For political mixers, we have historically offered in-kind donations for many campaigns… over the years, usually without doing much research on their past,” wrote Stonebarger, who singled out events held at the bar for Nevada Democrats Aaron Ford, Zach Conine, and Brian Knudsen.

Not a Novel Problem

The issues ReBar faces regarding the delicate circumstances involving hosting political events are not novel. In January, a venue canceled an event for Ohio Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance when it came to light that controversial Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene would speak. Greene and Florida Representative Matt Gaetz had a trio of venues in California cancel events scheduled to be held in their space for them in mid-2021. Javad Mirtavoosi, general manager of one of the venues, went so far as to say, “As soon as we found out who the speakers were we immediately canceled it.” At a macro level, many companies halted donations to lawmakers who objected to certifying Biden’s victory in 2021. And while there has been some deescalation from this promise, most companies have stuck to it. Last year in Las Vegas, Caesars Entertainment pulled out of providing a venue to a QAnon conference scheduled to be held on their property, though they did not provide an explanation as to why.

This kind of pressure can often place an unreasonable burden on small businesses and venues operating in an already difficult landscape. Vetting and confronting the potential fallout from accepting – or declining – a controversial candidate is more than what many of these business owners signed up for. These are challenges they never thought they’d face as they navigate an increasingly polarized and politically violent era, lest their establishments be swept up in controversy. While providing a platform and a donation of space or labor for conspiracies and vitriolic campaign rhetoric – or blatant misinformation – is lamentable, it’s not unreasonable to see why so many venues haven’t given it much thought until recently. For many, heated political rhetoric and violence has been a wake up call in terms of being more careful with who they provide a platform to. And these things do matter.

Thanks to the results of redistricting in Nevada, in which Democrats prioritized an incredibly efficient map that handily sweeps three seats in a Democratic-leaning year but that leaves them on a knife’s edge in a year that is not, the district in which Malgeri is running leans only two points more Democratic than the nation as a whole. In a year like 2022, where the generic ballot gives Republicans a margin greater than 2%, whichever Republican wins the party’s primary is primed to win a seat in Congress. Malgeri believes his national security and international experience give him an edge, but he may very well go down to April Becker, the frontrunner in the Republican primary for that district. Every little bit matters – Malgeri has been closing the gap by raising (mostly from contributions from himself to his own campaign) over $114,000 in the third quarter of 2021.

That small businesses such as ReBar find themselves in a position where vetting candidates and speakers may become a necessity is regrettable. Fringe candidates who take advantage of these venues to promote their positions are not the fault of politically-disconnected small businesses who have not had to face this level of polarization before. For his part, Malgeri told me in a phone interview that he was not aware of any venue turning him down for his views. He singled out the venue at ReBar, saying that they “don’t discriminate on the basis of political affiliation… they’ll have events from either side.” But it is the truth of the trade now. Who and what is associated with your business is important, especially if you are donating space or resources to them. As candidates like Malgeri and Greene proliferate in the American political environment, it will continue to place an undue burden on these establishments. 

It is an unfortunate if-not-quite-partisan reality that businesses big and small must consider which campaigns they’ll accept payment from – and which they’ll donate their space or labor to. But perhaps there is some positive growth to be celebrated in traditionally apolitical industries slowly coming to terms with the concept that what happens in your time, in your space, and on your dime, will always matter. 

Over the course of working on this story, Stonebarger made a personal donation of $50 to The Postrider so that we could continue the work we do. While we appreciate any contributions to support the site, to avoid the appearance of any impropriety, we opted to donate this money (less the Paypal fee) to the Committee to Protect Journalists.