At the TikTok-sponsored Power 30 party, conservative content creators leaned on their new patrons, dancing to Top 40 hits for hours in Make America Great Again hats with muffs. ears with TikTok labels stretched across the head. At another TikTok-sponsored party at the Capital One arena on Saturday night, conservative creators received company merchandise, such as a koozie featuring Trump dancing or earmuffs featuring the company's signature pink and blue colors. (Backstage, TikTok seemed to fall into chaos. The app went offline on Saturday night ahead of the expected ban, but return Sunday and issued a message assuring users that Trump would save the app once he took office.)
“One of the best parts of my job is getting to spend time with our YouTube Creators, because they really set the culture.” “They are testing new ideas in the media landscape and it has been great to have a front row seat this past year.”
At the influencer awards banquet on Sunday, Trump campaign advisor Alex Bruesewitz, the architect of this winning online- and influencer-focused strategy, received an award celebrates his digital contributions. Years before joining Trump's team, Bruesewitz ran X Strategies, a political communications 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 Tidea book instructing Republicans on how to use social media for electoral gain.
“Social media has created a whole new front for us,” Bruesewitz wrote in 2022. We must fight back, we will make them listen and we will reopen the market.”
Bruesewitz sees potential podcasts having to bring Trump's message to voters who have never heard it. Podcasts played a key role in Trump's election, providing him with a huge audience of what Bruesewitz describes as “moderate and low-propensity male voters.” in a WIRED interview after the election. It was these voters, who Bruesewitz said often did not consume mainstream media, that ensured victory.
Others agree: Shapiro told WIRED on Sunday that the podcast “offers a look at 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 those coming 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 basically a nursery. Some of the most famous influencers on the right have come out of Turning Point's program, including Alex Clark, Benny Johnson and Candace Owens. Training often takes place at summits held around the country, where Turning Point leaders, such as Charlie Kirk and Tyler Bowyer, Teach attendees how to post. Once an influencer is included in Turning Point's influencer program, the organization's public relations team will Proactively advertise for them to network producers like Fox News. They are invited to special events where speakers (including Trump and Tucker Carlson) speak and allow creators to connect and collaborate to grow their audiences.