I’ve been accused many times of being paid by Team DeSantis when I highlight actions by Trump that I disagree with or simply praise DeSantis over things he’s said or did.
While I wish I were being paid, as it would be nice to have the extra income, the things I post here are things I believe and not something I’m paid to say. That’s how I’ve always operated TRS and that will not change.
But it turns out that Trump’s online shadow army, while not working directly for his campaign or his super PACs, is trying to get paid for their campaign work and they want to do it without FEC oversight.
A New York Times article explains:
The video, called “Let’s Get Ready to Bumble,” is a slick mash-up of President Biden’s verbal slip-ups and his stumbles set to a thumping 1990s dance track. And when it was played on a big screen at Trump rallies late last year, it consistently drew laughs and jeers from the crowd.
But Donald J. Trump thought he could improve it.
So the former president asked an adviser to pass along a few notes to one of the video’s creators: It should include a clip of the president falling off a bicycle, he suggested, and another of him flubbing a line in a recent speech.
The video’s co-creator — Bryan Heestand, a product engineer in Ohio who goes by the anonymous handle C3PMeme — rushed to incorporate the former president’s edits. He was delighted, he said later in a podcast interview, to see Mr. Trump play the new version at his final rally before the midterm elections, pausing his speech to watch it with well over a thousand supporters gathered at Dayton International Airport.
“He had some suggestions. We made it happen,” Mr. Heestand said.
Mr. Heestand doesn’t work for Mr. Trump, but he belongs to a small circle of video meme-makers who have effectively served as a shadow online ad agency for his presidential campaign. Led by a little-known podcaster and life coach, this meme team has spent much of the year flooding social media with content that lionizes the former president, promotes his White House bid and brutally denigrates his opponents.
At the center of Mr. Trump’s meme militia is Brenden Dilley, a 41-year-old podcaster, failed congressional candidate and self-described social media and political influencer. Mr. Dilley doesn’t create the memes himself, but he provides the organizing force and smash-mouth ethos driving the crew.
“It doesn’t have to be true. It just has to go viral,” he has said on his podcast.
The group’s more than two dozen members, posting under the hashtag #DilleyMemeTeam, convene in a private Telegram channel to share ideas and pick targets. Many also faithfully tune into Mr. Dilley’s daily podcast, where he talks at length about the group’s activities, interacts with a small but devoted audience and promotes his 2013 self-help book, “Still Breathin’: The Wisdom and Teachings of a Perfectly Flawed Man.”
Most of the meme-makers post anonymously. The Times used podcast transcripts, photographs, news footage and public records to identify Mr. Heestand, who declined to comment.
Mr. Dilley and other members of the meme team often claim they receive no financial compensation for their efforts.
“Everything they do, they do it for free and out of love of country,” said Alex Bruesewitz, a Republican strategist close to Mr. Trump, who frequently shares Dilley Meme Team posts.
Federal Election Commission records show no payments from any political committee to Mr. Dilley or other members of the meme team.
“Mr. Dilley has been clear that he is looking for more than just thank-you gifts.”
Mr. Dilley has claimed to have received gifts from Mr. Trump. Last March, he posted video of a box filled with 28 Make America Great Again hats, each signed by the former president. The package was sent by the campaign in thanks for assisting with “rapid response” during President Biden’s State of the Union address, Mr. Dilley said.
Signed MAGA hats can sell for as much as $1,000 on the secondary market.
Mr. Dilley also said he got access to dozens of V.I.P. tickets to a Trump rally in Hialeah, Fla., on Nov. 8, which he gave to supporters of his show. It is unclear how much the tickets were worth, but tickets for other rallies have sold for as much as $1,500 apiece.
Mr. Dilley has been clear that he is looking for more than just thank-you gifts.
In October, he told his podcast audience that he wanted to use limited liability companies to receive money from Trump donors to fund his team’s work. The idea, he said, is to avoid “a ton of red tape” and “a ton of oversight” that come with operating as a super PAC or being paid by the campaign.
“If you go super PAC or official campaign, you can get paid, but the problem is a lawyer has to watch every single thing you put out, and we don’t want that,” Mr. Dilley said on his podcast in October. “What we need is people that were going to give huge dollar amounts to the super PACs and the campaigns to just give directly to us.”
“We already have L.L.C.s formed,” he added. “We’re ready to rock ’n’ roll.”
Dilley wants to solicit money from Trump donors to pay for their campaign work but they want to evade public disclosure, which is required by the FEC for this kind of political work. This was happening as of October and I’m guessing Dilley has already made this happen.
Say what you will about all of this, but I thought getting ‘paid’ for campaign work was a bad thing. I’ve been accused of it by Trump supporters and have been denigrated in ways I won’t share here, as have many others who support DeSantis. It looks to me like just another double standard being used to attack those who they disagree with while doing it themselves.