MAGA Influencers Are Making One Last Push for Donald Trump

November 5, 2024:

Pro-Trump influencers and surrogates are flooding social media with resources encouraging supporters to get out the vote in the final days of the 2024 presidential election.

“Patriots, I’m partnering with the Trump campaign for a final election push and we need your help,” David Leatherwood, a Republican influencer whose username is BrokebackPatriot, posted to X on Sunday. “The portal helps ensure your voter registration is active to make sure you’re [sic] VOTE COUNTS!”

“TEAM TRUMP NEEDS YOU,” Morgonn Blaire McMichael, an influencer and Turning Point USA contributor, posted to X on Sunday. “This is how we will WIN! COMMIT YOUR VOTE!”

Dozens of these creators and supporters are posting links to a Trump campaign site where voters can check their registration status, find their polling locations, or where to drop off their ballots.

Republican creators are planning to be all over the country supporting Trump’s campaign come Tuesday night.

CJ Pearson, a conservative creator with more than half a million followers X, said he’ll be in Palm Beach, Florida, the home of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, for election night. McMichael will be joining a New York Young Republicans party where she expects to see other conservative creators. Some pro-Trump creators told WIRED that they plan to host live streams of the election results on their platforms or join other streams hosted by their friends. The Peter Thiel–backed conservative dating app, Right Stuff, is throwing an election-night party in New York City on Tuesday.

Groups of pro-Trump influencers have been gathering throughout the campaign. During the October vice presidential debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz, the Trump campaign set up an influencer war room, amplifying Vance’s jabs and positive coverage. Popular social media personalities including Pearson, Jack Posobiec, Ashley St. Clair, and Rogan O’Handley sat in a Philadelphia conference room with their phones and computers posting debate-related content.

Even with these well-organized influencers, the Trump campaign’s get-out-the-vote effort has been mired in chaos, with Turning Point USA and the Elon Musk-backed America PAC taking over canvassing efforts in hotly contested battleground states. Last week, WIRED reported that out-of-state canvassers and door-knockers hired by an America PAC contractor were subjected to shocking working conditions, like being driven around in the back of a U-Haul and threatened with paying for accommodation if they didn’t meet canvassing quotas. A dozen of these paid canvassers were fired and stranded in Michigan after speaking out.

America PAC has not revealed the scale of its canvassing operations, but The New York Times reported on Sunday that it averaged around 1 million doors in each battleground state, including Arizona, Georgia, and Michigan. There are reportedly around 2,500 total canvassers who are asked to hit 150 doors per day.

Musk’s field operations, meanwhile, appear to pale in comparison to the Kamala Harris campaign’s ground operations. On Saturday alone, the Harris campaign says it knocked on more than 807,000 doors in Pennsylvania, 215,000 in Wisconsin, and 265,000 in Michigan. By Sunday evening, the Harris campaign said that more than 90,000 volunteers knocked on over 3 million doors in battleground states. Pro-Harris influencers and supporters are expected to gather at Howard University in Washington, DC, for the campaign’s watch party.

Terrace Garnier, a content creator and model who was recently diagnosed with heart failure, traveled from her home in Maryland to Pennsylvania on Sunday to get out the vote for Harris.

“This was my call. This was my mission. This is my calling,” says Garnier. “That’s why I felt it was so important to drive six, almost seven hours to canvas in a neighborhood that doesn’t even belong to me, because that’s how important it is to me that we cannot let this election slide. We cannot show any slack.”

You can follow all of WIRED’s 2024 presidential election coverage here.

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