- A bunch of kind of prominent conservative influencers who had talked about Epstein, got invited to the White House and they were all seen leaving the White House with these binders that said, you know, I think it was "Epstein Volume One", or "Epstein Files Volume One" on them.

That's, you know, in my opinion, that's a case of the White House using these people for good PR.

- Hey everyone from KQED in San Francisco.

This is Political Breakdown.

I'm Scott Shafer.

- And I'm Marisa Lagos.

Today on the Breakdown for decades paid lobbyists for industries, companies and causes have worked to sway politicians into voting their way on legislation and influencing policy.

But now a new generation of social media influencers are making their mark with very little regulation or limitation.

- Wall Street Journal reporter Maggie Severns has written about how corporate and foreign interests are pouring money into getting young pro-Trump MAGA social media stars to promote their political causes.

She joins us to talk about this new class of DC operatives that kind of blur the lines between consulting, advocacy, and journalism.

Maggie Severns welcome to Political Breakdown.

- Thank you so much for having me.

- Well, first of all, tell us about these social media influencers.

Who are they and how is it that they've developed such a strong online presence?

- Yeah, I mean a lot of these folks have been online, some of them only for a few years, and started building followings, places like TikTok and Instagram and when Trump was reelected, they've really become, like you said, a class of their own in Washington.

A lot of them are friends with people who work at the White House.

They're pretty deeply connected to the administration, but they also have a big audience online and that's giving them a lot of clout in Washington.

You know, a lot of companies or other folks who wanna get their agenda in front of Trump and in front of his aids are going instead to social media influencers, these people with podcasts, people with these different presences.

- So, I mean, we all know about like celebrities or other influencers trying to get us to buy products or their brands, right?

But like in a lot of those cases, these are people that have already sort of built credibility with an audience and then use it to sell something.

Is that similar in this space?

Like these are not like the chicken or the egg question.

Like are they being kind of paid to, you know, promote policies, MAGA policies because they already have, you know, a lot of sway with their audience?

- I think that it's a mix of things, right?

I think that if you can post videos of yourself at the White House or yourself at these big events, that only helps you get more of a following.

'cause it shows you're plugged in, right?

But yeah, I mean a lot of these people, I think there was a real dearth of young people out being vocal during the last campaign talking about President Trump and folks who really went hard for being a conservative influencer.

Some of them have seen a lot of success and so they, you know, they're have quite large followings.

- Give us an example or two of, you know, a couple of the more prominent influencers who are in this game right now.

- Sure.

I mean, one person that we wrote about in our story is Rob Smith.

He is a veteran.

He is openly gay and he does a pretty substantial YouTube show.

He spends a lot of time on YouTube in addition to other platforms.

He came up in our story because he went on a state sponsored trip to Qatar with a number of other influencers last November.

So the Qatari embassy had reached out to him, said, Hey, we want you to see how wonderful our country is.

Would you like to come on this trip?

And the folks that went on this trip say that they weren't paid to go.

They did receive a lot of nice perks, you know, nice hotels, nice dinners.

They all got access to see the formula of one race, special access, where you get to go down into the paddock.

They met celebrities, there were lawmakers.

So you can see how there's kind of all of these crosscurrents, you know, Smith told us that he wanted to go on that trip to see for himself because this is an important country for foreign policy in Washington right now.

And there's a shift that we're seeing from the administration in foreign policy towards them.

And as a veteran, he's someone who pays attention to foreign relations.

On the other hand, I think a lot of people look at that trip and they see a country that has a kind of complicated track record that has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into influencing the United States trying to take this select group and kind of woo them with all these "oos" and "ahs" and bells and whistles.

- Yeah, I mean, everyone loves a junket, right?

Doesn't matter where where you're from.

- And this is like a junket of junkets, right?

You know, you're meeting, you're meeting famous people.

It just, it sounds like it was quite the trip.

- So talk about that then, because like in that case, Smith obviously says that he has some interest in foreign policy, but is that generally what he's posting about?

Or are these types of folks, you know, the Qatari government, others just seeing an opening to sort of influence somebody that maybe the president has in his TikTok stream?

Or does he have TikTok?

I'm not actually sure.

- Yeah, I mean, they're posting about a variety of things.

And the thing about, you know, folks on social media note to are the same, right?

But I, you know, you can say from the Qatari perspective, they reached out to a handful of different influencers with different focuses.

A couple people, or at least one person that we talked to was post a fair amount of pro-Israel content and actually kind of decided not to go.

'cause they were afraid that that would, they would be expected to not do that.

So there's a lot of different people out there and a lot of different ways in which, you know, when we talk to these folks, they'll always say, well, I wouldn't do anything that doesn't fall in line with my belief system.

I'm not gonna promote any product or any interest.

That isn't something that I already believe in.

And I think that's one way to look at how folks are trying to stay authentic online and keep their audience.

On the other hand, there's a lot of money that's increasingly going into what's essentially advertising through these folks, but it's also advertising with a very specific Washington audience.

- And so in the case of Qatar, is there, like, do they want people to come visit Qatar?

I mean, is this like a chamber of commerce kind of message?

Gee, Doha is really cool.

Who, who knew?

You know, what is what, what do they want out of it?

And what is the range of issues that you know, are trying to use these influencers to influence policy or influence the president?

- Yeah, I mean, Qatar is looking to improve diplomatic relationships with the United States.

And it has, it has a much better relationship with Trump than it did 10 years ago with the US.

So that's, I think they've actually seen some dividends from not just this influencer, but pouring a lot of money into lobbying.

But we're seeing all kinds of different things.

You know, there were influencers paid to promote solar energy, solar tax credits that got stripped last year from the big beautiful bill in Congress.

There was a whole push to have conservatives say, but I love solar energy.

I think these tax credits are great and get these provisions back in a bill that was unsuccessful.

But it's something people did try to do.

There are spaces like the kind of MAHA space, there are just a lot of MAHA influencers, a lot of people focused on health.

So that's something that we've heard about companies approaching people trying to get different priorities in front of RFK Jr's side.

So it's coming out of a lot of different directions.

Another foreign country that we talk about in the story is Israel.

Netanyahu has spoken publicly about how important he thinks influencers are to trying to beat back this turn against Israel that's happening on the right.

He feels like people who are pro, pro-Israel read need to be very vocal online to kind of push back against someone like a Candace Owens.

- Do we know usually then that one of these influencers is accepting money from a Qatar from an Israeli government, from you know, a MAHA sort of world?

Like do, do they disclose that usually?

- More often than not, we do not know.

So this story, the real reporting challenge and the thing that me and my colleagues dug in on was looking, unearthing this stuff, right?

You know, whether it be occasionally through a document, maybe sometimes it's by sourcing and talking to people, but for the most part, these transactions are going undisclosed.

They tend to be kind of more handshake deals.

A lot of the time they're not, there isn't a person who's sitting out sending an email to a hundred influencers most of the time saying, I will pay each of you $10,000 to say X, Y, and Z. No compliance officer.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean occasionally stuff like that happens and it spills, that's when things really kind of spill into the public is someone will say, oh my gosh, someone was kind of shopping this deal.

And we can talk more about that.

But this is a case where regulations really just haven't caught up to reality.

There aren't laws that properly govern what you have to disclose and what you don't.

So whereas, you know, a lobbyist, if they go to Congress and talk about a bill, the company or the lobbyist at least has to disclose that they were talking about a bill on Capitol Hill.

There are basics that they have to document publicly four times a year.

And that's just the laws are, they haven't been updated for the online era.

- Alright, let's take a quick break and when we come back more on how conservative social media influencers are turning traditional lobbying on its head.

You're listening to Political Breakdown.

I'm Scott Shafer, we'll be right back and welcome back to Political Breakdown.

I'm Scott Shafer here with Marisa Lagos.

We're talking with Wall Street Journal reporter Maggie Severns.

She's reporting on how paid online social media influencers supporting President Trump's MAGA agenda, our operating on the Washington DC political playing field.

I wonder, you know, Maggie, how when we, we kind of touched on this a moment ago, but like what are the differences between sort of traditional K Street lobbyists, you know, with their loafers and their tassels and their ties and jackets and like, and fancy dinners.

Like what's the difference between what they do fundamentally and what these social influencers do, both in terms of what they do but also how they're regulated?

- Oh, there are so many similarities and so many, this is such an interesting question 'cause I cover a lot of lobbying and so I'm used to watching, you know, traditional lobbyists.

It's an older crowd.

It's people with a lot of experience who can boast a lot of connections.

And like I was just saying, there are a lot more rules on how some people would still say not nearly enough rules, but a lot more rules on how they work.

You know, they have to document certain things about who they're lobbying and why and they're all loopholes with that.

We can talk about that.

But this new crowd, to kind of give a little context, when Trump came back into the White House for his second term, there aren't that many lobbyists.

He's close to, you know, Washington and Washington Republicans tend to be much more kind of the Paul Ryan type of lobbyists, these old kind of old school Republicans and not MAGA folks.

So there was this real dearth of people with access to the White House and access to the West Wing.

And so companies, as we've seen, have just tried all kinds of different tricks.

You know, you see CEOs having dinner with Trump, you see them making huge donations to a PAC.

And I would say this is another arm of that.

You know, companies have realized that there's a different group of people with sway in Washington and it is these largely younger online influencers.

Now, in terms of what they're actually doing, I would say it's this kind of hybrid where it's almost all of the above.

Some of what they're doing really does feel like lobbying.

Some of what they're doing feels like advertising 'cause they're kind of publicly putting it online.

And sometimes they feel more like operatives 'cause they can be very close to folks in the White House and folks on Capitol Hill.

- Yeah.

So are there any rules governing how they operate or what, you know, deals they strike, anything like that?

- Well, so you know, if you go online, sometimes someone will be selling a product and they'll like hashtag their post is sponsored, right?

If you were doing advertising, there are kind of basic rules saying that you're supposed to say that that advertising was, and I think arguably they should be marking sponsored content.

You know, this this content that's being paid for by companies, but that's not a very regulated space.

It's not, you know, there is no police going after people online when they do and don't mark their content as sponsor.

- It's more like, it's more like public pressure.

Like you said, if it gets blown up, then they get blow back and then it's like, oh yeah, right, that was paid.

- Yeah.

So if you look, if you look through it through that lens, and then some folks have argued that the kind of foreign, you know, when someone's being paid for by a foreign government, they're an actor for the foreign government and they should be filing special filings with the Justice department because if you're a foreign lobbyist, you need to do that.

But that, I mean, I haven't seen a single influencer register as a foreign lobbyist, I'll put it that way.

I, I, I don't think anyone thinks they meet that threshold.

So there are things that kind of touch on this, but we're not really seeing any of it be followed and there's not really enforcement.

- And when you think about that traditional kind of lobbying, you know, a lobbyist will come into a lawmaker's office or have coffee, have a conversation.

They kind of go back and forth.

The, the elected official or their staff may ask questions.

And there's a give and a take as opposed to like a post by a social media influencer that, you know, has a half life of like a few minutes.

So how, how, if at all, is are these new generation of influencers affecting old school lobbyists?

Are, are they changing the way they do business in in in any of this?

- I mean, in some cases the lobbyists are paying.

That's what, you know, what we're seeing is some lobbying.

There are a few lobbying and public relations firms in dcs DC that are building up and kind of spinning off branches whose job it is to, you know, if you are a big beverage company and you come to the firm and say, how do I make an impact about this?

I want people to hear you say, oh, we, we know how to hire people.

Like we know how to get these paid posts out in the ecosystem where Trump's aids will see them.

'cause that's really what a lot of folks are looking for.

It's, you know, it's one thing to kind of try and influence your public following, but it's another thing to have highly placed Republicans who are watching your content.

It's actually a very small audience.

So that's, you know, we're seeing kind of if an, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em strategy in a lot of cases.

And in other cases, I think, like I said, some of these lobbying firms were already having a hard time kinda accessing the White House and continue to, - Right.

'cause it strikes me like there's almost like potentially dual or triple missions here.

Like you could be looking to influence Trump or the people around him, or you could also be looking to influence public sort of sentiment in order to put pressure on the president and his administration.

Has it worked, like, do you have any concrete examples of like seeing these, these social media influencers out there promoting a policy and seeing the president change his mind or do something maybe he may not have otherwise?

- Yeah, I think one thing that we had in our story, you know, the president's assistant, Natalie Harp, she, she spends a lot of time printing out online conversation and then bringing to Trump.

So this is the, this is the woman with the - IPad, right?

- Yes.

She will bring, yeah, she will, she will also bring printed documents or an iPad.

So you, you know, literally you have that sometimes if there's an influencer who's known to be close to Natalie Harp, we've heard that they can command more money because she may, you know, see her friends post and bring it to the president.

And that's a way of influencing the president.

- You, you write about marijuana and how some social influencers had an impact on loosening the federal restrictions on how marijuana is classified.

Can you talk a little bit about that example?

- Yeah.

And you, you know, this isn't a case where we know for certain exactly, you know, that they had that effect.

But you have a Trump campaign aid who's very popular online, Alex Bruesewitz.

And there was another popular account who also at one point was tweeting similar content called DC Draino who has a large following.

There was this whole conversation about reclassifying marijuana in the last year and making it a less dangerous drug.

And what we saw in this case, the industry took money from a pack that it had and gave it to these influencers, gave it to Alex Bruesewitz, and he started tweeting about how marijuana really should be classified as a less dangerous drug and how a lot of people would support this.

I think at one point he called the move a no brainer, and he didn't at any point disclose that this pack had paid him around $300,000 within days of him doing these posts and giving these interviews.

Right?

And by, let's see, December, I believe it was Trump actually scheduled an executive order reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug.

So this is a case where you had industry, these kind of big industry players taking money, moving it to at least one influencer that we know of that was talking about this.

And a few months later, the president did exactly what industry was hoping.

- Wow.

You also have an example of something that didn't go as well and it, and it seemed like a bit of a counterintuitive policy push, which was a pro solar MAGA influencer.

Tell us that story.

- Yeah, I, you know, I mentioned this at the top, but it was this whole debate, you know, there was a point at which Republicans had this big tax bill last year, and folks started posting folks on the right, pro MAGA folks were posting about solar and about how great solar was.

And it turned out it was this attempt from industry to build support for these solar tax credits that had been stripped from the bill.

And that wasn't, it wasn't successful, but it was one of those kind of moments where you got a peek behind the curtain as what's going on.

So, interesting.

- You know, journalists traditionally have sort of ethics restrictions depending on the newsroom, how much money you can take on a trip or accepting gifts.

I mean, sometimes it's very low, like $25 threshold.

And I, I'm just wondering what about ethics as it applies in this case to these social influencers?

I mean, are they just kind of this loose federation of people that don't really have any quote unquote "boss"?

- I mean, yeah.

'cause when we talk about these folks too, that's kind of their other role, right?

We're talking about them as lobbyists, but they're also media.

They, they're creating content online that people consume and disseminating information for the most part they don't have, you know, I think that people have their own ethics and things that they try and abide to, but like you said, you know, as a journalist at the Wall Street Journal, and I don't think that a lot of public thinks about this much, but I am, I have all kinds of ethics rules and things we agree to, you know, I'm not buying or selling stock in a company I cover, for example, I am, yeah.

I'm not accepting gifts from people if I go out to lunch or so much as buy someone a drink, I'm always paying for it.

No one is buying me, you know, a $7 beer.

Like this is a, we are very, by the book influencers, it's very different because I think that those perks, the getting wine and dined and free vacations and all that stuff is part of what a lot of them like about the job, right?

And it's part of what makes the lifestyle good aside from getting paid.

You can really kind of live large on this and folks that we talk to, I think that when you are the person making the calls, it's a lot easier to feel like all of your calls are good, right?

And that you've kind of set up this, the right scheme for ethics then if you have kind of things imposed on you.

But I, you know, most of the influencers we talked to said, you know, I'm real.

That's the thing that we heard a lot.

You know, my, my audience likes me because I'm real and I'm authentic and I myself online and I make good decisions and they trust me.

And there is that real bond of trust between the audience and a person they see on video all the time.

So it's a very, very different ecosystem than the one that I am used to in print journalism.

- Yeah.

Well it is this interesting nexus because, you know, we talked about the overlap with traditional lobbying and then it's, they're also sort of media.

I mean, they've, we've actually seen this White House approve a bunch of influencers as quote unquote new media and, you know, get White House access, be in the briefing room.

Is there any pushback from within MAGA world, from within influencer world?

Like do you see anybody having any heartburn about these sort of murky, ethical and other boundaries?

- You know, I think the ethical part kind of comes up when there's friction among people and people start kind of trashing each other saying, oh, this person is bought and paid for by X, this person is, you know, this and this.

But I feel like the, the general energy that you get in DC right now is that it is a party for influencers for, you know, other young successful aides for people who really didn't expect that Republicans would have this much power in Washington.

And this is really a boom time.

You know, one thing that we talk about a little bit in our stories that Democrats don't have an ecosystem like this.

And I think they would love to, this would be a big deal to have a lot of popular folks on the left who are capable of talking to and mobilizing voters.

But this is something that really is much more evolved on the right than on the left right now.

- I'm just wondering, you know, unlike past presidents, Trump spends an inordinate amount of time watching television and scrolling the internet, posting all kinds of things at all hours of the night.

Does that make him particularly ripe as a candidate for this kind of persuasion?

Like I, it's hard for me to imagine Joe Biden or you know, Barack Obama being influenced by this, but maybe it's just that the times are different now.

- Yeah, and you know, I'm not the president.

I can't say exactly what he sees or thinks when he is seeing things.

You know, there's this kind of belief in Washington that the last person in Trump's ear, the last person to really make a case to him about something might have out, you know, outsized influence, which is one of the reasons that people are so obsessed with kind of targeting him.

But, but yes, I mean, like you said, I think that he is someone who's very attuned to what people are saying about him.

And we're living in a world where you would imagine a lot of future presidents will similarly be, - Yeah.

I know Joe Biden did have a big like summit for influencers when he was still in the office.

I wonder like about the back and forth here.

'cause as you noted before, like you would get more credibility as an influencer if you have access to the White House, if you're at these parties and events with these, you know, well-known celebrities or politicians.

And then when you build that credibility, does that mean then the loop kind of comes back and the White House and others are trying to use the influencers to, you know, influence them?

Like, or, or to, to pick up something like maybe it's not a case of like being paid to do it, but, but do you see the White House kind of using the influencers for their own sort of, you know, political goals?

- I think that when you see things like, most notably last year there was a meeting, it must've been last spring, spring of 2025 at this point as the Epstein's conversation was really heating up and a bunch of kind of prominent conservative influencers who had talked about Epstein got invited to the White House and they were all seen leaving the White House with these binders that said, you know, I think it was "Epstein Volume One" or "Epstein Files Volume One" on them.

That's, you know, in my opinion, that's a case of the White House using these people for good PR right?

Like here you all can't see the files, but we're letting these people in, we're showing them the secrets.

The White House has had a number of events for influencers as head agencies where they try and kind of, you know, get people on their side, get people to say positive things and anyone who's seen kind of how, even just like access journalism works, you know, the closer you are and the more you're kind of being wooed by those in power, the more likely you are to say positive things about them.

- You write that lobbyists are laundering their message through influencers.

Describe what you mean by that.

- Oh, you know, this gets back to what I was saying.

Sometimes there are companies who are trying to get a message across, and the best or easiest way to do it, you know, if a lobbyist isn't getting through with that message in the White House, or if they feel like they need a louder voice is to actually just pay an influencer, right?

We talked about a lot of the time these posts might, you know, a post might go from 5,000 to 10,000 to $20,000, depending on who you're asking and what you're asking them to say.

You know, we already talked about this example with the marijuana pack where someone was paid $300,000.

So we know it gets quite expensive, but the, I, you know, it's not uncommon for actual lobbying firms and PR firms to be putting feelers out and hiring these folks to help on a campaign that they're working on.

- Yeah.

Well, looking ahead, it seems unlikely that we're gonna see a big push in this administration to, to regulate this or crack down on it, but it could happen in the future.

What could that look like?

What will you be watching?

- Gosh, it's so hard because Congress has not passed a campaign finance law in like so many years, and you're kind of waiting for, you know, the Federal Elections Commission, which is what oversees kind of super PAC spending and those things is almost defunct.

Like this is not a time for pro-regulation, for regulation over kind of, you know, ethics and campaign spending in Washington where you're not in that era.

But those things, you know, I would say that kind of positive thing to say about that is it's never time for that kind of thing until it is like these, you know, changes to ethics and roles tend to come about because there's a big scandal or something happens that really kind of enrages the public and makes people say, Hey, we need to clean things up in Washington.

So you never, you never know when there could be some kind of update.

- Yeah, we'll see.

Maybe after mid election, hope Springs the turn.

Who - Knows?

Yeah, exactly.

- Maggie Severns.

Yeah.

Maggie Severns Wall Street Journal reporter, thank you so much for joining us today.

- Thank you so much for having me.

- That is a wrap for Tuesday, February 10th.

Political Breakdown is a production of KQED.

- Our engineer is Jim Bennett, our producer is Izzy Bloom.

And our video team is Matt Morales and Vivian Morales.

I'm Marisa Lagos.

- I'm Scott Shafer.

Thanks for listening.