A Shocking Sex Scandal Rocks the Trad Right
Sex, lies, and audiotape—and the hypocrisy of the trad lifestyle project.
THE ONLINE RIGHT HAS BEEN SHAKEN this week by a recording that suggests far-right podcaster Elijah Schaffer—one of the biggest proponents of traditional or “trad” family values—may have had an affair. Even more scandalous: that the affair was with his employee Sarah Stock, an e-girl1 and influencer so ostensibly traditional that her marriage was blessed by the pope himself.
One MAGA figure has dubbed it the “trad hoe scandal.” Others have said it’s proof you can never trust an “e-girl.” Many more are starting to suspect that their trad heroes may not be so trad after all.
To understand how we got here, let’s go back a bit.
For much of the past decade, Schaffer has been a regular presence on the far-right conservative media scene, as a podcaster, commentator, and, in his latest incarnation, as CEO of the outlet the RiftTV. Schaffer and various sidekicks would often discuss trad values, of which he—married in 2020 and now the father of two young children—was not just an outspoken supporter but presumably an exemplar.
A few months ago, Schaffer took a mysterious month-long absence from his livestreamed show on Rumble, the right-wing video platform. And when he returned last week, on January 26, he looked rough. Schaffer admitted his face was unusually red—he blamed the lights in his new studio—and said he had developed a “permanent black eye” from crushing mental stress that, as he put it, would cause lesser men to commit suicide.
Schaffer certainly had plenty to be stressed about. FBI Director Kash Patel’s girlfriend is suing him for suggesting she’s a Mossad agent. He claimed that people were trying to kill him.
But unbeknownst to his listeners, something else was weighing on Schaffer. Despite being one of the digital right’s most vocal boosters of traditional families, he had filed for divorce from his wife four days earlier.
Ditching his usual material aimed at whipping up hate toward Indian immigrants and Muslims, Schaffer instead used his return show to launch into a baffling rant straight out of family court. He vowed that he wouldn’t give up his sons “without a few shots fired.” He told his viewers that he wasn’t necessarily speaking metaphorically.
“I’m not going to go down without—without, you know, a few shots fired,” Schaffer said. “Figuratively, of course, we’re saying. But physically too, if needed.”
Then Schaffer appeared to address his estranged wife.
“Mama bear, mama bear, fuck you!” Schaffer said. “What about dad? What about dad? Don’t fuck with me! Don’t fuck with my kids. Don’t fuck with my income, don’t fuck with my ability to take care of my kids. I will fuck you up.”
The monologue grew stranger. Schaffer urged his fans to learn from him and overcome their addictions, their thoughts of suicide, their impulse to commit criminal behavior, and their “sexual proclivities.” Still, he couldn’t help but lament how far his star had fallen.
“I’d really like to regrow, and like, get back to where I was a couple years ago,” he said.
WHY WOULDN’T HE? Schaffer was once a rising star on the right—not as a commentator on trad issues, but as an ad-libbing political loudmouth. His coverage of the 2020 riots in the wake of George Floyd’s murder propelled him into a job hosting a popular show for mentor Glenn Beck’s network, the Blaze. Schaffer’s boozy, racist frat-boy persona was a hit, and it seemed that not even asserting that Mormons like his boss Beck would burn in hell could stop him. He literally was in Nancy Pelosi’s office on January 6th—and saw his stature grow because of it. But in 2022, Schaffer was fired from the Blaze after allegedly groping a coworker. He also provoked another harassment lawsuit against the outlet from his female cohost.
This was when he took his trad turn: Schaffer emerged from that initial disgrace by becoming a vocal family man, touting his wife and children frequently on social media, and shaming other influencers who didn’t have strong marriages and households. It worked for a time. But it apparently wasn’t enough to stave off financial trouble for the RiftTV, an online channel Schaffer launched last May. The platform has seen its public staff list dwindle in the last few months.
“This job has destroyed me, and I’m not even very popular!” Schaffer said during a January 28 show.
Worse was to come. On Monday, Schaffer posted a bizarre video that showed him wandering around empty hotel conference rooms as they were flooded with water.
“No one believes me that my life doesn’t make any sense right now,” Schaffer said, seemingly in a daze, as water gushed from the ceiling and soaked his shoes.
On Tuesday, Schaffer made strange X posts about his family being “kidnapped” and claimed the FBI was out to murder him, prompting worries on the right that he himself had hurt or endangered his own family.
In a mark of how twisted the online right has become, far-right YouTuber Jean-François Gariépy, whose own wife disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 2023 and was never found, wondered openly whether Schaffer was smart enough to murder his spouse without being discovered.
“Poor Elijah,” Gariépy asked. “Does he have the brains to get away with it?”
Fortunately, Schaffer’s family members appear to be safe. But the scandal engulfing him only grew wider.
RIGHT-WING PROVOCATEUR Milo Yiannopoulos posted recordings and transcripts on social media on Tuesday that, he said, raised questions about Schaffer’s hypocrisy and mental instability.
In one recording, a man that sounds very much like Schaffer supposedly talks about having a drinking problem. Another purports to feature Sarah Stock, who for the last year has been a “political commentator, street interviewer, debater, and contributor” for RiftTV. That recording captures part of a conversation between an unnamed man who is not Yiannopoulos and a woman as she describes some sort of sexual relationship with Schaffer that began at the Conservative Political Action Conference (presumably in February 2025). The woman, who Yiannopoulos claims is Stock, says that she had a sexual encounter with Schaffer after he offered her Benadryl and shots of alcohol, prompting her to black out.
Yiannopoulos is a notoriously shifty figure. That said, the same audio recordings were also sent to me (not from him). And while I have not been able to authenticate them, neither Schaffer nor Stock has directly denied them. On Wednesday, Stock did post on X that many of the claims about her were false. But she also apologized broadly for her actions.
“There are mistakes/unwise decisions I have made that I deeply regret,” Stock wrote. “I apologize to everyone who has been scandalized by this.”
Then she deleted her X account entirely.
Neither Schaffer nor Stock responded to requests for comment.
Stock, who became a right-wing Catholic influencer after converting to the faith less than a year ago, gained some prominence online after she delivered a racist rant during a YouTube debate show featuring liberal commentator Sam Seder. Since then, she has been a fierce opponent of extramarital sex, denouncing “fornication.”
Stock is also a familiar figure to False Flag readers because of the drama that started last year when she posted a picture of her engagement ring. Rival influencers deemed the diamond far too small, setting off a vicious round of female MAGA infighting.
Stock’s alleged affair with Schaffer ended once she got engaged, according to the recording. But on the MAGA right, the widely discussed episode has dented both her and Schaffer’s images as strict moralists.2
In fact, the brewing scandal has provoked what can only be described as an outpouring of schadenfreude. Both Schaffer and Stock have made many enemies on the online right, in part because of their vigorous moral policing. Much of the criticism that has been directed at the pair has centered on the fact that Stock apparently entered into a sexual relationship with a married man right before she decided to have her own marriage blessed by Pope Leo.
“The trad stuff is performative BS,” declared MAGA influencer “Emily Saves America,” who had clashed with Stock in the diamond-size debate.
Sydney Watson, Schaffer’s former Blaze cohost who sued the company over his alleged harassment, posted a picture of an intrigued Pepe the Frog character peeking through blinds. RiftTV personalities dropped their affiliations with the site listed on their X accounts. Even an Indian account on X dredged up an old attack Schaffer made on the Hindu god Vishnu, declaring that his current scandal vindicated the Hindu pantheon.
“Never speak on Vishnu ever again!” it declared.
And yet, some people were likely not terribly surprised to see Schaffer involved in a scandal like this. Back in 2022, sassy right-wing influencer Christian Walker accused Schaffer of cheating on his wife at a Republican event.
“Not even a year ago at a conservative conference, he did my friend four times in one night, unprotected, while he was married!” Walker said at the time.
Schaffer had also made numerous strange, thirst-trap style photos in recent months. In a November Instagram post captioned with a message about how much he loved his family, the photo showed him smoking an old-timey pipe while wearing an Orthodox Christian cross. But this was immediately followed by a steamy shirtless selfie that cut off right above his groin. (I’ll spare you the actual image.)
Schaffer’s downfall isn’t just a personal Shakespearean tragedy—a modern adaptation set in the most idiotic corner of our hyper-online world. It also adds fodder to the right’s ongoing civil war. Yiannopoulos, who plays a sort of mythic trickster role in MAGA media, hates white nationalist podcaster Nick Fuentes. In the hierarchy of the online right, Schaffer is a restless vassal of the far more successful Fuentes—meaning Yiannopoulos can undermine Fuentes by going after Schaffer. (No surprise, then, that in one of the recordings Yiannopoulos releases, there’s discussion about how Schaffer quietly “talks so much shit” about Fuentes out of envy.)
But the biggest damage may have been inflicted on the online trad brand as a whole. Conservative podcaster Allie Beth Stuckey complained that the affair demonstrated that women posing as tradwives had become a “fetish” for right-wing men.
Far-right commentator Vrillium—who recently cut ties with Schaffer after being exposed himself for making posts years earlier about being gay—summed it up.
“It’s all bullshit,” he said of the trad lifestyle.
Generally speaking, “e-girls” are very online women who are seen as appealing to men via their appearance, like they’re internet girlfriends. Given the pervasive misogyny of the online right, just about any woman involved in far-right politics—heck, just about any woman who develops an online following—will end up getting called an “e-girl.”
The most trad story of all, including the part about blaming the woman.
Will should get hazard pay for working this beat. I feel like I've taken psychic damage every time I finish an article.