The Friday Brief

September 6, 2024

The Big Picture

Putin’s Whores

The MAGA media ecosystem is chock-full of digital natives who’ve mastered the arts of clickbaity engagement, rage-porn production, and sluicing a daily helping of fetid chum into the eager maws of their rube audience. These aren’t necessarily smart people, but they know the rules of social media, and they play the game with a shameless aplomb.

They’re very, very skilled at making Americans on the left side of the education curve feel like they’re the possessors of the secret information that the Establishment Elite Lizard Alien Catholic Satanist Trans Illuminati don’t want you to know. Their clickbaity headlines hook the oppositional defiant disorder audience every time. “Benny OWNS LibTard Plan to Feed Kids Breakfast!” “Listen to Tim Pool’s beanie DESTROY Cuck Shills.”

There are thousands, but a few dozen at the top of this crapulous pyramid wield disproportionate audience numbers.

Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, Lauren Southern, and Dave Rubin weren’t the biggest names in the MAGA media universe — they’re smaller than Ben Shapiro and Joe Rogan by a good stretch. Still, they’ve shown a certain moral flexibility and a shameless willingness to produce content so larded with lies and falsehoods in service to Trump and Trumpism.

Which is why Russia bought them.