The race for Senate majority leader has moved from the halls of Congress to social media as allies of Donald Trump rally around Sen. Rick Scott‘s (R-FL) bid for the Senate gavel.
On Sunday, Elon Musk took to X endorsing Scott, joining fellow Trump world insiders Tucker Carlson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in their support of the Florida statesman. Driving much of the leadership race buzz, however, is a group of lesser known Trump-aligned internet personalities flooding Musk‘s platform with pro-Scott messaging.
Here are the micro power players flexing the MAGA media machine’s muscles.
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Charlie Kirk
Charlie Kirk is the chief executive and founder of Turning Point USA, a powerful right-wing grassroots movement that promotes conservative values on college campuses by mobilizing young voters. The organization and Kirk have deep ties to the Trump family, namely Donald Trump Jr. who by and large helped drum up millions of dollars in donations for Turning Point. Kirk’s digital presence, however, has largely allowed him to dominate the MAGA media arena throughout the 2024 election season using his podcast and social media.
The 31-year-old conservative activist hosts one of the core right-wing radio talk-shows. His three-hour program, The Charlie Kirk Show is No. 7 on the Apple Podcast charts, ranked just below Tucker Carlson’s show. According to leading podcast database Rephonic, Kirk’s show draws in at least 16.8 million monthly listeners across platforms. He has used this massive platform to spread COVID-19 misinformation, election fraud conspiracy theories and racist stereotypes. In January, Kirk called Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy a “myth” and later told his podcast listeners “If I see a Black pilot, I’m gonna be like ’boy, I hope he is qualified.’”
Kirk’s reach is amplified by his millions of followers on social media, with whom he shares his unfiltered takes on American politics, clips of him debating young liberals, and his support for the president-elect. His posts on X are often reposted by fellow MAGA insiders including Musk and Don. Jr.
Benny Johnson
Benny Johnson is a highly popular right-wing political commentator and YouTuber who hails himself as “Godfather of the Conservative Internet.” Aside from his 3 million followers on X, he runs three YouTube channels—Benny Johnson, Benny On The Block, and Benny Brews—with a combined total of more than 2.7 million subscribers. Johnson’s main content arm is his weekly program, The Benny Show which he streams live to his fan base, known as the “Salty Army.”
A veteran of digital media, Johnson got his start in digital media at BuzzFeed in 2012 where he was once the “viral politics editor,” only to be exposed as a serial plagiarist and be fired two years later. He then joined the Independent Journal Review in 2015, where he was also ultimately accused of plagiarism. Although he wasn’t booted from IJR until 2017, Johnson was demoted after reports of him verbally abusing and driving staffers away from the publication surfaces. Johnson joined the MAGA media sphere officially after being fired from IJR, working first at The Daily Caller, then as a chief creative officer at Turning Point and becoming a host on Newsmax.
In August 2024, Johnson was one of several right-wing influencers embroiled in the Tenet Media scandal, during which Russian state media employees were charged with pouring nearly $10 million into a Tennessee company to produce political content that would benefit Russia by influencing the United States. Johnson, who hosted a Tenet Media podcast, responded to the saga by describing himself, and other involved influencers as “victims” in the alleged scheme. His links to Tenet Media, however, have not dissuaded key power players like Musk and RFK Jr. from interacting with Johnson regularly on social media.
Jack Posobiec
Jack Posobiec is a far-right political activist and commentator with ties to white nationalist communities. The former United States Navy intelligence officer is a highly popular pro-Trump influencer with an active following of 2.8 million on X. Posobiec, who once worked as a political correspondent for One America News Network, a far-right cable channel, and is a senior editor at the conservative news site Human Events.
Posobiec describes himself as a “Republican political operative,” and according to Semafor, he was one of the most influential voices with GOP strategists during the 2024 campaign season. His involvement with Trump began in 2016 when he became a special projects director of Citizens for Trump. In September 2024, Posobiec was hired by the Republican National Committee to train volunteer election monitors in Michigan and Wisconsin.
Once called the “King of Fake News,” Posobiec was one of the most leading promoters of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which falsely claimed that high-ranking officials were involved in a child-sex ring centered at a Washington, D.C., pizzeria. He also hawked a deepfake video depicting President Joe Biden announcing a military draft and posted fake Biden quotes from the video on X. And, for years, Posobiec has disseminated information linked to Russian intelligence operations and disinformation campaigns.
Scott Pressler
Scott Presler is a conservative voter registration “activist” who rose to social media prominence, gaining more than 2 million followers on X, by espousing far-right conspiracy theories under QAnon hashtags and entrenching himself in the “Dark MAGA” movement. The founder of Early Vote Action, he appeared alongside Trump at his second Butler Pennsylvania rally and moved to the state to drum up votes for Trump ahead of the 2024 election with the help of a $1 million donation from Musk.
Presler’s involvement in right-wing politics, however, has long been a source of controversy. In 2016, he first made a name for himself after being forced to resign from the Republican Party of Virginia following allegations that he had sex in one of its offices. Politico reported that three people familiar with the incident said Presler both engaged in sexual activity in the office and posted pictures of the encounter to Craigslist. Upon his outster, he became the 2017 chair of Gays for Trump in 2017 before taking a job with the anti-muslim group ACT for America as a coordinator for their “March Against Sharia” events.
The Gays for Trump leader also involved himself in “stop the steal” election denialism propaganda and helped organize the January 6 insurrection, which he called “the largest civil rights protest in American history” in a tweet.
