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At the TikTok-sponsored Power 30 party, conservative content creators leaned on their new bosses, dancing to top 40 hits for hours in Make America Great Again hats with TikTok-branded earbuds draped over them. At another TikTok-sponsored party at the Capital One arena on Saturday night, conservative creators received merchandise from the company, such as a koozie with a Trump dance graphic or headphones in pink and company blue. (Behind the scenes, TikTok seemed to be in turmoil. The app had gone offline on Saturday night before the alleged ban, but turned on sunday and pushed a notification assuring its users that Trump would save the app once he took office.)
“One of the best parts of my job is actually spending time with our YouTube Creators, because they really set the culture,” YouTube CEO Neal Mohan said in a statement after the event. Sunday creator of the company. “They are experimenting with new ideas in the media landscape, and it was amazing to have a front row seat last year.”
At Sunday’s influencer awards party, Trump campaign adviser Alex Bruesewitz, an architect of this winning influencer and online-focused strategy, received an award honoring his digital contributions. Years before joining Trump’s team, Bruesewitz ran X Strategies, a political media agency, working with young online political candidates like Matt Gaetz. In 2022, he published Winning the Social Media War: How Conservatives Can Fight Back, Reclaim the Narrative, and Turn the Tides Against the Lefta book that instructs Republicans how to use social media for electoral gains.
“Social media has created a completely new battlefront for us,” Bruesewitz wrote in 2022. “We have to fight, we make them listen, and we reopen the market.”
Bruesewitz saw the potential for podcasts to bring Trump’s message to voters who haven’t already heard it. Podcasts played a big role in Trump’s election, providing him with a massive audience of what Bruesewitz described as “middle and low propensity male voters.” in a WIRED interview after the election. It was these voters, who Bruesewitz said don’t usually consume the mainstream media, that secured the victory.
Others agree: Shapiro told WIRED on Sunday that the podcasts “gave a window into the authenticity of the candidates.”
And according to Pearson, this year’s conservative influencer takeover is just the beginning.
Over the summer, Pearson hosted an event with the Heritage Foundation to train more than two dozen conservative creatives on how to communicate their politics to voters online. Savannah Chrisley, Sean Mike Kelly, and Emily Saves America, some of whom came out of the Turning Point USA ambassador program, attended the event.
Since 2019, Turning Point has been recruiting and training at least 400 conservative influencers in what is essentially an incubator. Some of the most famous influencers on the right have come out of the Turning Point program, including Alex Clark, Benny Johnson and Candace Owens. Training typically takes place at summits held around the country where Turning Point leadership, such as Charlie Kirk and Tyler Bowyer, teach participants how to post. Once an influencer is onboarded into Turning Point’s influencer program, the organization’s public relations team actively throws them to producers on networks like Fox News. They are invited to special events where speakers (including Trump and Tucker Carlson) give speeches and allow creators to network and collaborate to grow their audience.
