These Influencers Helped Get Trump Elected. Now They’re Ready to Party
It’s Sunday night and Lance Johnston, a 23-year-old content creator, is smiling and posing in front of a giant TikTok logo. Johnston was one of the first political content creators on the app in its early days, and amassed a six-figure following in 2020 by posting conservative commentary. After his videos ran afoul of TikTok’s community guidelines, however, he was banned and forced to pursue another career. “Every person I knew on political TikTok got banned,” he says. “It was very upsetting.”
Now, however, he’s back and creating content full-time again. He has found a dedicated audience on X (formerly Twitter) along with Instagram and Snapchat. “I told everyone back in the day TikTok would be critical for the election,” he says. He recently secured his old TikTok handle and has been working to rebuild.
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Johnston Is just one of hundreds of pro-Trump content creators who crowded into a glitzy party at Sax Restaurant & Lounge in Washington, D.C. for the “Power 30 Awards,” an event aimed at “honoring the conservative influencers who played pivotal roles in reshaping the narrative of the 2024 election.” The event is a who’s-who of the Gen Z right wing internet and packed to the brim with sweaty MAGA-merched out young conservatives.
The party was hosted by CJ Pearson and Raquel Debono, two Gen Z conservative influencers who played a key role in getting Donald Trump elected for a second time. Pearson spearheaded the RNC’s youth advisory council and wrangled young influencers into supporting Trump. Debono serves as chief marketing officer of Date Right, a conservative dating platform. She’s amassed millions of views on TikTok and has become a go-to party host in right wing circles known for her “make America hot again” parties where the next generation of conservatives meet and maybe just hit it off.
The party on Sunday night was a chance to finally celebrate their success. Right wing personalities mingle with each other, nibble on charcuterie, and sip wine and “TokTails” made of tequila, ginger beer, and lime juice. A giant screen hanging below the double story ceiling reads “MAGA 2024” while vertical screens on the sides of the parties played TikToks from right wing personalities like Ben Shapiro on loop.
“There would be no celebration tonight if it weren’t for the commitment of our keyboard warriors,” Alex Bruesewitz, a Trump advisor and key architect of the incoming president’s influencer strategy says from atop a balcony overlooking the crowd. “Each and every one of you played a role in the historic landslide victory and the president is incredibly grateful… and we’re all going to celebrate soon at the White House.”
“I think Elon [Musk] said it best when he said X is the new media,” Rogan O’Handley, a right-wing political commentator and social media influencer, tells Rolling Stone. “Independent journalists and activists are exploding in growth and influence while legacy media continues to become more irrelevant. A lot of people left their entire careers to support the Trump movement and the reason we have millions of followers is because people want to hear the truth about what’s going on and not a biased perspective skewed by marketing and entrenched institutional interests.”
The media was a big topic among those there. Substack writer and pro-Trump influencer Jessica Reed Kraus tells me that the party offers “well deserved recognition that young creators and alternative media are gaining [power] in this administration.”
“They’re going to include people like us in there among the press,” Kraus says, alluding to comments made by incoming press secretary Karoline Leavitt about welcoming podcasters and influencers into the White House briefing room.
The party was the spiritual successor to the Deploraball, an unofficial inaugural ball hosted by major pro-Trump influencers in 2017. Back then, right wing internet personalities like Mike Cernovich, Cassandra Fairbanks, and co-founder of Vice Media Gavin McInnes mingled with socially awkward online posters, forum admins, and niche internet figures from the sprawling online underbelly that helped facilitate Trump’s initial rise to power. The event felt like a bizarre sideshow to the main inauguration festivities.
But while 4chan posters and online trolls started the pro-Trump movement, the crowd at the Power 30 Awards is evidence of how mainstream the movement has become. Multi platform YouTube and TikTok stars like Bryce Hall are in attendance. Right wing commentator Michael Knowles is there, along with conservative influencer Riley Gaines, decked out in a sparkling gold necklace with the words MAGA spelled out.
The party is also a testament to the growing influence of content creators in the political arena. Trump invested heavily in building relationships with influencers, podcasters, and livestreamers this election cycle, leveraging the alternative online media ecosystem that the right has been constructing for decades. Just moments after Trump was declared the winner of the 2024 election, Dana White, the Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO, took the stage to thank the influencers who he credited with delivering Trump the victory. “I want to thank the Nelk Boys, Adin Ross, Theo Von, Bussin’ With The Boys and last but not least, the mighty and powerful Joe Rogan,” White said.
“People have coined this the influencer election, and I think it’s the first of many influencer elections to come,” Pearson told me in November. At Sunday’s party, Trump’s influencer network is on full display.
There are content creators from every platform imaginable. Many influencers speak highly of X, where they said it has become easier to monetize thanks to Musk. Others say they are excited by Zuckerberg’s perceived pivot towards the right, though all are quite wary of trusting any single platform given the fact that so many have had their accounts banned or restricted.
TikTok is the platform most on people’s minds. The party was sponsored by the beleaguered app, which was temporarily banned on Saturday night thanks to a law Biden championed and signed into effect last year that would force the app to shut down in the U.S. unless it was sold to a U.S. company. After first threatening to ban the app back in 2020, Trump has now promised to save it, posting to Truth Social on Sunday that he planned to work out a deal to keep the app operational. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is expected to attend the inauguration and just hours before Sunday’s party kicked off, TikTok blasted out a message thanking Trump for bringing the app back online in the U.S.
“I think Trump’s going to renegotiate,” Knowles, the Daily Wire host known for his anti-trans rhetoric, tells me. “I don’t think he’s particularly ideological… He’s probably trying to get concessions from both [sides].”
TikTok, meanwhile, has been eager to make conservative stars feel welcome. The party was covered with the TikTok logo from a TikTok photo booth, to TikTok floor lights, TikTok napkins, and even custom TikTok ear-muffs in the gift bags, even though the ceremony on Monday had already been moved inside. “TikTok will be here forever,” says Bryce Hall, a content creator who got his start back when the app was called Musical.ly.
Hall is roaming around the VIP area, chatting with friends while MAGA rapper Forgiato Blow is dancing in a corner balcony. Shortly before midnight the rapper Lil Pump shows up before a performance by fellow rapper Waka Flocka Flame.
For many influencers and attendees, the event feels like a coming out party. Some say they’d been nervous to openly identify as conservative prior to Trump’s win. During Trump’s first presidency, brands were hesitant to partner with creators who were overtly political or pro-Trump. Now, things are changing.
Xaviaer DuRousseau, a 27-year-old conservative content creator based in Los Angeles who flew in for inauguration weekend, says that part of what makes the MAGA movement appealing to young people is that it feels like a rejection of the mainstream media, which many in his generation view as corrupt. “This party represents a new beginning,” says DuRousseau. “You have all these different creators and influencers coming together to celebrate this new chapter in America’s history.”
“Young people have always been inherently rebellious,” he adds. “So when you are constantly having mainstream media telling Gen Z that we’re not allowed to think this, or we’re not allowed to say this, or we’re not allowed to be vocal about voting for Trump, a lot of us just became so fed up and tired of it that it pushed us into a corner. And finally, we just became non-apologetic.”
Nearly all of the influencers at the event seem to have a lingering frustration with the tech industry. They speak about being censored and losing access to accounts and struggling to reach people online.
Shane Ginsberg, known online as @shaneyyricch, says that he’s been banned 10 times from social media, once losing access to a TikTok account that reached nearly 500,000 people. He says he has been banned twice from YouTube, both times after his account surpassed 100,000 subscribers. Ginsberg says he hopes Trump can make it more difficult for the social media companies to kick people off.
The ideology of the influencers in attendance was diverse. A content creator who posts under the handle @chelly and often parodies Vivek Ramaswamy is dancing with Lindsey Lugrin, founder of FYPM, an app that functions as a Glassdoor for influencer brand deals, neither of whom are overtly ideological. Mark Moran, a finance content creator and reality TV star who appeared on the dating show FBoy Island, isn’t inherently a political creator but showed up to party.
“I think this party shows that a new great awakening is beginning,” he says, “and it’s the start of a much larger cultural shift where we see the digital-first generation coming to the forefront.”
While nearly everyone else is a MAGA supporter, the party is a mix of vaguely conservative recent college grads there to pop bottles and dance, a handful of old school D.C. politicos and lobbyists, and a grab bag of influencers. A couple people at the party say they are primarily there because of Trump’s work to restore TikTok. Others say that they’re attending to show support for the president broadly and it looked like fun. Some influencers speak about Trump’s more hard line policies, saying that they hope Trump will enact harsher policies on the border.
Ginsberg says that he hopes Trump will institute things like a Bitcoin national reserve, make election day a national holiday, ban trans people from the military, and deport the CEO of YouTube. “Send him to an island, Guantanamo,” Ginsberg says of YouTube CEO Neal Mohan, as retribution for banning right wing creators. He then asks his girlfriend if she has any opinions. She bows her head. “She doesn’t think women should vote,” Ginsberg says.
A little before 1 a.m., the party begins to peter out. Several people had stayed hoping to see TikTok’s CEO, who was rumored to attend. Alas, he never arrived, and people give up and begin shuffling into the freezing night air. Waiters encourage guests to grab a late-night snack of burgers and fries that they pass around on silver trays. People also grab the black and white furry earmuffs emblazoned with the TikTok logo to keep warm.
As traditional media continues to implode and the lines between entertainment, social media, and politics blur, the creators at Sunday’s event are poised to gain even more power. “Trump has already shown the mainstream media is a bunch of losers,” says Dan Joseph, the 21 year old administrator of the page @furiouspatriot on Instagram. “No one gets info from the MSM anymore.”
Johnston echoes that sentiment, but says that he hopes the entire internet doesn’t just become conservative. “I hope liberals and conservatives can have good debates without the fear of getting banned [from social media platforms],” he says. “I hope there’s complete free speech. We want to have good discourse with the other side.”
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