Brandon Herrera, the Republican nominee in Texas' 23rd Congressional District, was a guest on the Painkiller Already podcast on February 8, 2025. During that episode, one of the hosts started questioning how many Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.
Herrera didn't push back. He laughed, and then he added his own line: "Don't ask the Cookie Monster how many cookies were in Europe before the war."
A clip of the exchange was posted on the evening of October 30 by the account PatriotTakes, and MeidasTouch transcribed it on November 2.
What was said
According to MeidasTouch's account of the clip, the co-host, identified as Kyle, called the Holocaust a "conspiracy theory" he had supposedly "disproved," and said that after doing the math, "maybe 6 million isn't the number." Herrera chuckled.
Kyle then played the bit both ways, saying the toll was "probably 10 million" and that "we're undercounting the Jews." MeidasTouch notes that inflating the number is a known trolling move among Holocaust deniers, a way of mocking the real figure. He then went back to doubting it: "Show me the smokestacks, Taylor. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't add up."
That's when Herrera delivered the Cookie Monster line.
Why the Cookie Monster line is not just a joke
The "Cookie Monster" bit is a Holocaust-denial meme. It swaps Cookie Monster in for the Nazis, cookies in for murdered Jews, and an oven in for the crematoriums, then asks whether 6 million "cookies" could really have been baked. The point of it is to make the documented murder of 6 million Jews sound like arithmetic that doesn't work.
MeidasTouch says the line appears to reference a version of the analogy used on a show hosted by Nick Fuentes, whom it calls a known Holocaust denier. The meme is common enough in those circles that a podcaster wore a Holocaust-denial hoodie showing Cookie Monster behind an oven to Turning Point USA's AmericaFest.
Herrera didn't invent the joke. He knew it well enough to deliver its punchline on cue, in a conversation about whether the Holocaust death toll is real.
This is a pattern, not a slip
Herrera is a gun YouTuber, and his on-camera history keeps catching up with him.
- He filmed himself holding up his copy of Hitler's Mein Kampf and said he'd read "a good chunk" of it. In earlier gun videos he called a Nazi submachine gun "the original ghetto blaster" and played Nazi marching music.
- On another Painkiller Already episode, he joined a bit mocking people with Down syndrome and said on air that "any fucking 20 minute section of this show would be a career killer if I was still running."
He's running anyway, with Donald Trump's endorsement.
Why it matters to the voters of the 23rd District
Whoever wins Texas' 23rd District gets a vote on everything from veterans' benefits to how the country responds to antisemitism.
A member of Congress is supposed to be the person in the room who says "that's not true" when someone calls a genocide a conspiracy theory. On this podcast, Herrera was the one supplying the punchline.
The bottom line
On a February 2025 podcast, while a co-host called the Holocaust a "conspiracy theory" and questioned whether 6 million Jews were killed, Brandon Herrera laughed and added a line from a Holocaust-denial meme about Cookie Monster counting "cookies" in Europe. It sits alongside his Mein Kampf video, his Nazi-gun jokes and a separate episode of the same show in which he said the podcast would be a "career killer" if he were running. He is the Trump-endorsed Republican nominee in Texas' 23rd District.
Source
Brandon Herrera Participated in a Holocaust Denial Segment in 2025 — MeidasTouch, November 2, 2026
