Posted originally on the CTH on October 21, 2023 | Sundance

CTH readers don’t need to spend too much time digging into the granules of this recent New York Times article about how Christina Pushaw organized an online “influencer campaign” for Ron DeSantis that has failed miserably [SEE HERE].   However, it’s still funny to see the confirmation, and the people from inside the operation telling the NYT the group gets daily email instructions.

I wrote about the obvious transparency of the effort well over a year ago, and then continued to track it as the operation unfolded and grew just before the “official launch” of the DeSantis campaign.  “In late 2021, early 2022, Ms. Pushaw invited a group of “influencers” to spend time with Governor DeSantis.  It’s not a debatable event. Factually, the collective group took gleeful pictures of their first visit on January 6, 2022, and continued to post frequent pictures on their social media of events throughout last year.”{link}

As the DeSantis operation collapses into a parody of itself, some of the recruited influencers are now speaking about how the astroturf operation was organized.  Everyone who watched it unfold, knows it was the stupidity of Pushaw who tried to fake the support system, built the operation on fraud and then sold it to a bunch of billionaires who now -according to the Times reporting- have major regrets.

(New York Times) – In early May, as Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida prepared to run for president, about a dozen right-wing social media influencers gathered at his pollster’s home for cocktails and a poolside buffet.

The guests all had large followings or successful podcasts and were already fans of the governor. But Mr. DeSantis’s team wanted to turn them into a battalion of on-message surrogates who could tangle with Donald J. Trump and his supporters online.

[…]  Four months later, those worries seem more than justified. Mr. DeSantis’s hyper-online strategy, once viewed as a potential strength, quickly became a glaring weakness on the presidential trail, with a series of gaffes, unforced errors and blown opportunities, according to former staff members, influencers with ties to the campaign and right-wing commentators.

Even after a recent concerted effort to reboot, the campaign has had trouble shaking off a reputation for being thin-skinned and meanspirited online, repeatedly insulting Trump supporters and alienating potential allies.

[…]  Ms. Peck exercised little oversight of the campaign’s online operations, which were anchored by a team known internally as the “war room,” according to the three former aides. The team consisted of high-energy, young staffers — many just out of college — who spent their days scanning the internet for noteworthy story lines, composing posts and dreaming up memes and videos they hoped would go viral.  At the helm was Christina Pushaw, Mr. DeSantis’s rapid response director.

[…]  In early August, the aerospace tycoon Robert Bigelow, who had been by far the largest contributor to Never Back Down, the pro-DeSantis super PAC, said he would halt donations, saying “extremism isn’t going to get you elected.” Money from many other key supporters of Mr. DeSantis has also dried up, including from the billionaire hedge fund manager Kenneth Griffin.

Terry Sullivan, a Republican political consultant who was Senator Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign manager in 2016, said the bizarre videos amounted to a warning sign for donors that Mr. DeSantis’s campaign was chaotic, undisciplined and chasing fringe voters.

[…]  The existing network of DeSantis influencers has presented challenges for the campaign. Online surrogates for Mr. DeSantis have repeatedly parroted, word for word, the talking points emailed to them each day by the campaign, undermining the effort to project an image of widespread — and organic — support.

Last month, for example, three different accounts almost simultaneously posted about Mr. Trump getting booed at a college football game in Iowa. Bill Mitchell, a DeSantis supporter with a large following on X, said the identical posts were coincidental.

“I talk with all of the team members when necessary but other than the daily emails get no specific direction,” he said. (read more)

The pathetic nature of the failure is ironically apropos for Ron DeSantis.

Everything about the DeSantis operation was/is fabricated, fake, constructed to give appearances, inauthentic and astroturf.  Voters are not stupid; they can see it and feel it in the construct as delivered.  The effort of the DeSantis operation, from Sea Island to Christina Pushaw, highlights how little they think of the American electorate.  They actually believed this con would work.

Pushaw thought she could mold DeSantis into the next Zelenskyy by using the same operation in the USA that was used in Ukraine.   It didn’t work.

[BACKSTORY Previously Outlining the Nonsense]