Follow the money is the tried and true rule. A lot of right-wing media is financed by Russia and now we find out that Johnny MAGA, an “influencer” with a yuge following is really a guy who works for Trump at the White House. So you and I pay his salary. Is that depressing enough for you?
According to Wired, “To its audience, Johnny MAGA looked like an independent voice, another outraged supporter in the MAGA media ecosystem. The account regularly boosts Trump’s Truth Social posts and goes to bat for the administration, attacking Democrats like California governor Gavin Newsom.”
The account also pushed images of flag-burning demonstrators in Minneapolis after the killing of Renee Good, saying, “They’re burning the American flag right now in Minneapolis, and they really expect you to believe that ICE shot an innocent civilian.”
The account was created in January 2021 and has often been at the front of pushing far-right, pro-Trump content. It was also active throughout the 2024 election, going after former Vice President Kamala Harris often in very personal ways.
However, underneath the surface, Johnny MAGA was anything but organic.
“Johnny MAGA appears to actually be a White House staffer named Garrett Wade who works for the Trump administration as a rapid response manager, helping to run the very same White House account his anonymous MAGA account amplifies,” said the report. “A phone number associated with Wade is linked to Johnny MAGA, according to a WIRED review of publicly available records, and the connection was confirmed by a source close to the White House.”
Wade did not reply to Wired’s request for comment.
The use of fake accounts to look as though a politician or organization has more outside support than it has, also known as “sock puppets,” goes back years. In 2013, Fox News was revealed to use sock puppet accounts to counter online criticism. More recently, an account called @BasedMikeLee, which initially appeared to be an enthusiastic supporter of Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), was revealed to in fact be the senator’s personal account.
This may seem trivial on its face, and certainly compared to the other crushing inequities that we get from this administration, but look at it this way: propagandists are pretending to be people other than who they are, so they can spread their propaganda. And in this case, the taxpayers are footing the bill for this misuse of the First Amendment.
This is horrifying.
Some cancers are invasive and hide behind a ‘sugar coating’ of sorts, don’t they, whilst they suck the life out of their legitimate support system. His time will come, and not too soon.