‘Fat B*tches!’ GOP Candidate in Key Texas Race Defends Comparing Women to Whales

Brandon Herrera, a Republican congressional candidate for Texas’ 23rd District, speaks during an event, Thursday, Feb. 26, 2026, in Somerset, Texas. (AP Photo/Brenda Bazán)

A pro-gun GOP candidate in a key Texas Congressional race who goes by ‘The AK Guy’ on YouTube is on the defensive after CNN catalogued years worth of vulgar online comments he’s made about women.

Brandon Herrera is running to replace GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Tx), who stepped down in April while under probe from the House Ethics Committee for having an affair with one staffer while inappropriately messaging another.

Herrera, who has 4 million followers on YouTube and earned condemnation from the Republican Jewish Coalition after he joked about Nazis, narrowly lost to Gonzales in 2024. He insisted the remarks cited by CNN were jokes.

The commentary highlighted by the network included:

In the videos and other material reviewed by CNN, Herrera compared feminists’ weight to whales and nuclear bombs, joked that he was irresistible to “fat b*tches” after rubbing ranch dressing on his body, and described liberal women discussing guns as “both fat and wrong.” He also lobbed sexually explicit insults at a gun safety advocate and her children.

The 30-year-old is now battling Democrat Katy Padilla Stout in November.

At various times, Herrera has called women critical of semi-automatic weapons “both fat and wrong;” cracked that the dummy at a gun range had a head “full of mush – much like the average Austin feminist;” and said nuclear bombs from the Cold War-era weighed “approximately four times as much as the average Austin feminist,” the network reported.

He also compared feminists to whales and elephants, according to CNN.

One expert told CNN remarks such as Herrera’s “help normalize things that we know are reliable predictors of political violence.”

Cynthia Miller-Idriss of American University’s Polarization & Extremism Research & Innovation Lab added the remarks were a “way to put women in their place, to diminish their power, their authority, to belittle or degrade.

“If you’re referred to as an animal, you’re not actually even fully human, right?” she noted.

Herrera issued a statement slamming Miller-Idriss as well as Stout’s work as a lawyer, in which she was appointed to defend a dad in a domestic abuse case.

“It’s disappointing that CNN would allow someone to allege that jokes about feminism lead to violence when Stout is fighting to return children to the parent convicted of abusing them,” Herrera told the network.

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