From Far-Right Hero to Outcast: What Ammon Bundy's Fall Reveals

97% of Fox News viewers once chose him over the federal government. In 2014, Ammon Bundy marshaled 1,000 armed militiamen in the Nevada desert to face down federal agents. He was the face of America's far-right Patriot Movement.

Today, he's politically adrift—abandoned by the very movement he helped create. His crime? Calling Trump's immigration crackdown a "moral failure."

The Making of a Pariah

In November, Bundy self-published a lengthy essay titled "The Stranger," condemning the Trump administration's treatment of undocumented immigrants. "To call such people criminals for lacking official permission" to be in the country, he wrote, "is to forget the moral law of God, the historical truth of our own founding, and the Constitutional ideals that continue to define justice."

After Renee Good was killed by ICE agents in Minnesota, Bundy livestreamed his outrage: "ICE's conduct clearly looks like tyranny." Hours after Alex Pretti was shot and killed by federal immigration agents, Bundy told me it was "sickening to see the parallels of history repeating itself."

Most shocking to his former allies: "When it comes to the more humanitarian side of it, I think the left has it much more correct than the nationalist right."

The Ideological Betrayal

Bundy hasn't gone woke. He still calls Democrats "communist-anarchists" and Republicans "nationalists." He opposes government social services, considers homosexuality a sin, and rejects vaccination requirements.

But his core belief—the inviolability of individual liberty—has remained consistent. It's his former allies who've changed.

Eric Parker, who famously trained a semiautomatic rifle on federal agents at Bundy Ranch in 2014, now praises the agent who killed Good. "I mostly think it's important to note how impressive it was to get those first two shots off in under a second," he told me, adding that Good's wife should face criminal charges.

Lee Rice, a longtime Bundy supporter who participated in the Oregon standoff, once told me he didn't "believe in the government running roughshod over you." Now he says, "I'm supportive of what's going on, because we need to get these clowns out of here."

A Movement's Transformation

Bundy's isolation reveals less about his own evolution than about a broader realignment on the far right. The same people who once rallied against "government tyranny" now cheer masked federal agents using deadly force.

"We agreed that there's certain rights that a person has that they're born with. Everybody has them equally, not just in the United States," Bundy explained. "But on this topic they are willing to completely abandon that principle."

This ideological betrayal baffles him completely. "I can't understand how they think..." he starts, then trails off. "It doesn't make sense to me. It's scary, actually."

The Lonely Patriot

Bundy finds himself politically homeless. He sees no place among the "communist-anarchist" left, nor does he identify with the "nationalist" right and its authoritarian tendencies. The party that once embraced him and the people who supported him have largely left him behind.

"I feel a little bit alone," he admits.

It's a remarkable fall for someone who was once 97% of Fox News viewers' choice over the federal government. Several Republican senators publicly defended his family. Sean Hannity repeatedly featured his father on his show.