Online ‘influencer’ antics reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of Trump supporters.
You may have missed it, but something called Sodagate went down on X over the March 21-22 weekend. Online influencers tried to harness the principles of MAGA for their own, decidedly less pure, ends – with Big Soda footing the bill. It’s an inescapable problem all successful grassroots movements must face, and the dominance of social media today only makes the issue more palpable.
“Exposed: ‘Influenceable’ – the company cutting big checks to ‘influencers’ on behalf of Big Soda,” is how podcast host and “accidental journalist” Nick Sortor titled his explainer on the affair. Sortor has 942,000 followers on X and thus holds a considerable amount of sway himself in pro-Donald Trump circles on the platform.
Why Did They Think This Would Work?
“Over the past 48 hours, several large supposedly MAGA-aligned ‘influencers’ posted almost identical talking points fed to them, convincing you MAHA [Make America Healthy Again] was out of line for not wanting soda purchases with food stamps (SNAP),” Sortor revealed in a March 22 post. “Some even slimely invoked President Trump as an emotional manipulation tactic, referring to his Diet Coke button. Not a single one of them disclosed they were paid for these posts, which led readers to believe a general soda ban was in the works.”
This is not something to be shrugged off. Extremely popular MAGA-identifying X posters who wield substantial pull on the social media goliath owned by close Trump associate Elon Musk were paid money to post a targeted political opinion without informing their followers and other readers of that fact. One of the accounts caught with its hand in the Big Soda cookie jar has three million followers.
This corporate online astroturfing campaign was specifically designed to challenge a general MAGA consensus against allowing those on government food assistance to use taxpayer money to purchase a product with zero nutritional value. But perhaps more disturbing than Big Soda’s clunky fumbled manipulation is the persistent mindset driving it: that America First supporters are mindless sheep with no strongly held personal beliefs of their own who can be counted on to cluelessly fall prey to every viral meme or trending buzzword of the day.
It’s the same comforting argument Democrats have leaned on to explain the Trump Phenomenon since the summer of 2015. Look where that’s gotten them today. Yet there apparently are figures on the political right, including inside the Trump White House, who still ready to believe this delusional myth.
Heinous Crimes Are Not MAGA Entertainment
In late February, Attorney General Pam Bondi ended up with egg on her face when her ballyhooed rollout of the “First Phase” of the “Jeffrey Epstein Files” turned out to be a Big Nothing.
Making matters far worse was the manner in which the supposedly blockbuster documents were released. They were handed out at the White House as dossier binders to a handful of X “influencers.” These would-be MAGA celebrities then embarrassingly preened for the cameras as they teased their coming “exclusive” public naming of powerful individuals who joined the notorious child sex trafficker on junkets to his private “Pedophile Island” as if they were about to host a TV game show.
This is a monumental insult to the multitude of MAGA grassroots supporters who sincerely believe highly-placed personages guilty of sex crimes against children are escaping justice due to their moneyed connections. It’s not a Netflix movie to them. To treat these Trump backers in such a shabby way was as great a failing on Bondi’s part as the total lack of substance behind her overhyped flop of a report.
Whether Bondi is guilty merely of gross political miscalculation or something more egregious isn’t really the point here. If it wants to achieve its higher goals, the onus is on MAGA as a movement to instinctively and forcefully react against any such attempts to reduce its populist form to political prop. This appears to have happened in both these instances. The ground-level reactions to the Epstein File Influencers and Soda Gate payola was immediate and overwhelmingly negative.
“Call them out,” was a widespread response to Sortor’s thread on the Big Soda shills. “Post the names.” Those outed were left to desperately scramble to stave off the fury of followers, many of whom were quick to hit the unfollow button.
“This is a horrible look. We’re talking about Jeffrey Epstein here with over 200+ victims and powerful elites and we have influencers posing for a photo op,” X user JosiahRises posted after the Bondi fiasco. “Release everything unredacted to the public now.”
This was a common sentiment after the Epstein doc disaster. Has the message been received? America First does not want political theater. It wants results. And it does not need and never has desired a pack of cheesy online celebrities playing Meghan Markle for a movement fired by a deep-seated thirst for profound social, cultural, and political change.
Donald Trump has climbed to the very precipice of power in America today because he fundamentally understands this about his supporters. After all this time, it remains truly surprising that so many others still don’t get it.
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