CTH readers don’t need to spend too much time digging into the granules of this recent New York Times article about how Christina Pushaw organized an online “influencer campaign” for Ron DeSantis that has failed miserably [SEE HERE]. However, it’s still funny to see the confirmation, and the people from inside the operation telling the NYT the group gets daily email instructions.
I wrote about the obvious transparency of the effort well over a year ago, and then continued to track it as the operation unfolded and grew just before the “official launch” of the DeSantis campaign. “In late 2021, early 2022, Ms. Pushaw invited a group of “influencers” to spend time with Governor DeSantis. It’s not a debatable event. Factually, the collective group took gleeful pictures of their first visit on January 6, 2022, and continued to post frequent pictures on their social media of events throughout last year.”{link}
As the DeSantis operation collapses into a parody of itself, some of the recruited influencers are now speaking about how the astroturf operation was organized. Everyone who watched it unfold, knows it was the stupidity of Pushaw who tried to fake the support system, built the operation on fraud and then sold it to a bunch of billionaires who now -according to the Times reporting- have major regrets.
(New York Times) – In early May, as Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida prepared to run for president, about a dozen right-wing social media influencers gathered at his pollster’s home for cocktails and a poolside buffet.
The guests all had large followings or successful podcasts and were already fans of the governor. But Mr. DeSantis’s team wanted to turn them into a battalion of on-message surrogates who could tangle with Donald J. Trump and his supporters online.
