At the Power 30 party sponsored by TikTok, conservative content creators leaned into their newfound patrons, dancing to top 40 hits for hours in Make America Great Again hats with TikTok-labeled ear muffs stretched over them. At another TikTok-sponsored party at the Capital One arena Saturday night, conservative creators received company merch, like a koozie with a graphic of Trump dancing or ear muffs in the company’s highlighter pink and blue colors. (Behind the scenes, TikTok appeared to be in turmoil. The app had gone offline Saturday night ahead of the presumptive ban, but returned Sunday and pushed a notification assuring its users that Trump would save the app once he took office.)
“One of the best parts about my job is actually getting to spend time with our YouTube Creators, because they really do set the culture,” Neal Mohan, the CEO of YouTube, said in a statement following the company’s Sunday creator event. “They are experimenting with new ideas in the media landscape, and it was amazing to have a front row seat this past year.”
At Sunday’s influencer awards party, Trump campaign advisor 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 Left, a book instructing Republicans on how to use social media for electoral gains.
“Social media has created an entirely new battlefront for us,” Bruesewitz wrote in 2022. “We have to fight back, we will make them listen, and we will reopen the marketplace.”
Bruesewitz saw the potential podcasts had to bring Trump’s message to voters who weren’t already hearing it. The podcasts played a major role in Trump’s election, providing him with massive audiences of what Bruesewitz described as “medium and low propensity male voters” in an interview WIRED after the election. It was these voters, who Bruesewitz said don’t usually consume mainstream media, that secured the win.
Others agreed: Shapiro told WIRED on Sunday that 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 creators on how to communicate their politics with 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 recruited and trained at least 400 conservative influencers in what is essentially an incubator. Some of the most popular influencers on the right have come out of Turning Point’s program, including Alex Clark, Benny Johnson, and Candace Owens. The training typically takes place at summits held around the country where Turning Point leadership, like Charlie Kirk and Tyler Bowyer, teach attendees how to post. Once an influencer is onboarded onto Turning Point’s influencer program, the organization’s public relations team actively pitches them to producers on networks like Fox News. They’re invited to special events where speakers (including Trump and Tucker Carlson) give speeches and allow for creators to network and collaborate to grow their audiences.
