WeBlogy

• As President Joe Biden's 2024 campaign makes a concerted effort to engage social media influencers in its digital strategy, Republicans face several obstacles to counter that content.
• Prominent conservatives with large online followings—Tomi Lahren, Amir Odom, Rob Smith and Will Witt—talked to Newsweek about the challenges of creating content in the current media landscape.
• Some GOP influencers are calling on the national Republican Party to invest more heavily in the culture space, including social media.

President Joe Biden's reelection campaign is increasingly looking to use social media influencers to boost his policies among young voters, and Republicans realize there's no clear strategy for conservatives to counter his messaging.

The Biden administration has already brought several high-profile online personalities to the White House to promote their policies, and Biden's reelection campaign is set to team up with an army of social media influencers. Last month, Axios reported that the campaign's digital strategy team is inviting hundreds of independent content creators to the White House as part of an effort to reach "'young people" and other Americans "whose main way of getting information is digital."

For conservative influencers, coming up with a collective response might be difficult to do because of divisions over who their leader is, an emphasis on differing opinions within the party and commitment to their own personal brands.

"If we want to win [the 2024 election], we're going to have to understand what our best chances of actually winning are and be honest: Is what we're influencing about winning an election or about, what I call, personal grifting?" Tomi Lahren, conservative commentator and the host of OutKick podcast "Tomi Lahren is Fearless," told Newsweek.

Trump vs. DeSantis

The world of conservative influencers, like the broader Republican Party, is divided over who should be the GOP nominee to run against Biden. The battle over former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has presented an obstacle when it comes to constructing an effective digital strategy that could counter Biden's 2024 campaign.

"I wish [conservative messaging on 2024] was more cohesive and more thought out," Amir Odom, a conservative influencer with 212,000 Instagram followers and more than 55,000 YouTube subscribers, told Newsweek, "That's not the case, especially regarding the beef between Trump and DeSantis. The different fan bases have just become so toxic."

Trump supporters have lambasted DeSantis for considering a 2024 bid, attacking the governor for challenging the man who claims to have launched DeSantis into political stardom and accusing DeSantis of failing to focus on the job he was just reelected to do in the midterms.

DeSantis' supporters argue that the governor doesn't carry the baggage Trump does. They point to Trump's indictment in Manhattan, as well as a string of other federal and state investigations into his alleged misconduct. They also see DeSantis as a successful leader, having navigated the COVID-19 pandemic without the economic fallout seen in other states.

The battle over the two candidates has sparked an online war between the sides and it's even turned into a legal issue.

Last month, former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis, who recently praised DeSantis, sent a cease-and-desist letter to Republican strategist Alex Bruesewitz, who has been affiliated with Trump's Save America PAC, over a meme that Bruesewitz and his allies shared comparing Ellis to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.

Trump was arrested on April 24 and pleaded not guilty to 34 charges related to the alleged payment of hush money to Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Trump is also facing an ongoing civil case in New York from writer E. Jean Carroll, who alleges that he raped her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s. He denies the allegations in both cases.

In a tweet, Ellis said while she's not new to attacks, she's never experienced the "blatant sexism & vulgarity that 'MAGA influencers' do now," adding that she does not "even work for DeSantis."

Conservative influencers who spoke with Newsweek, however, want the party to focus on one candidate that would give Republicans the advantage in the general election.

"I love Donald Trump. I loved him as my president. He was the greatest president of my lifetime. I wish he was my president now," Lahren said. But, she added, "I'm afraid that Donald Trump, as the nominee, will cause people to vote for Joe Biden just because they hate Trump."

Lahren, who has 2.3 million Twitter followers and 1.9 million Instagram followers, said that for Republicans to take back the White House in 2024, they can't risk losing states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Arizona. And after analyzing the "facts on the ground," Lahren isn't confident Trump can win those battleground states.

"Am I willing to be loyal to a losing candidate just to be loyal? No, I have to be loyal to my country first and if I see another candidate that embodies the America First principles, but can win, I would be stupid to not advocate in that direction," she said.

GOP's 'Big Tent' Goes Digital

The struggle to find enough common ground to develop one principal digital message also comes at odds with one of the building blocks of the Republican Party. Conservatives have long prided themselves on being welcoming to differing opinions and bringing in as many people as possible under the GOP's "big tent."

The focus on individualism and open debate of the conservative movement has extended to the conservative influencer space, which Rob Smith, founder and CEO of advocacy group Stop Woke, described as "very, very, very large."

"You have a lot of people who have a lot of different ideas, that have a lot of different expertise," Smith, who has more than 279,000 Twitter followers and 237,000 Instagram followers, told Newsweek.

In a political climate in which liberals tend to wholly agree on their core values, the Republican Party has spent the months following its lackluster midterm elections in a series of intraparty feuds. The November results showed that abortion rights were enough to sway a sizable number of right-leaning voters, despite the long-held belief that Republican voters supported an end to legalized abortion.

The one overarching message that Smith has observed among conservatives, and that he believes would bode well for Republicans, is: How bad has life gotten since Biden took office?

"Your groceries are likely more expensive. Your gas is likely more expensive. Your quality of life has likely gone down in these past two and a half years and these things are a direct result of the people who are in charge right now," Smith said. "If you look at the conservative influencer space, there are a lot of people who probably have this same message who are going about it in different ways."

Biden Influencers vs. Conservative Influencers

Even with a cohesive message and a unified rallying cry around one 2024 candidate, Republicans are likely to still struggle in the social media space. Will Witt, a conservative influencer with more than 1.6 million views on TikTok and 502,000 followers on Instagram, said the nature of the conservative movement makes it difficult to appeal to the demographics of social media users.

A 2021 Pew Research study shows that some 84 percent of Americans aged 18 to 29 use social media, compared to 73 percent of 50- to 64-year-olds and 45 percent of those 65 and older. The majority of regular news consumers on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok are Democrats or lean Democratic, according to Pew data.

"It's harder to be a conservative because it asks you to conserve something, rather than push for something new," Witt told Newsweek. "There are a lot of young people out there who haven't really heard these ideas and it's very difficult to get them to beat on that."

Analyses of the 2020 election show that young people were instrumental in Biden's victory. Among those under age 30 who were voting in a presidential election for the first time, Biden led Trump 59 percent to 33 percent. Nearly half of Biden voters were under age 50.

While Fox News has regularly dominated ratings and conservative influencers are able to gather large followings, another problem they face is that they're significantly outnumbered on social media.

"It's apples to oranges," Smith said about the world of political influencers. He argued that the number of conservative personalities pales in comparison to the household names in the sports and entertainment industries who have previously campaigned for Biden and the Democratic Party.

Investing in Republican Content Creators

Smith criticized fellow Republicans for being "myopic" in their focus on day-to-day partisan politics, while Democrats have spent the last few decades successfully "infiltrating every segment of American society" with their values.

He urged the Republican National Committee to build up conservative influencers, rather than waiting around for a popular figure to come around to their side.

"When any mainstream Hollywood celebrity happens to say something conservative or anything semi-Republican, the conservative movement sort of embraces them and says, 'Hey look, we're cool, too,'" Smith said. "It's ridiculous and it's embarrassing.

"Until conservatives and people with right-leaning values start participating in culture and start developing and putting their resources to people who are trying to create cultural movement—as opposed to purely funding candidates and PACs—they will continue to lose."

Odom agreed, saying that politics stemming from culture is much "easier to digest" for the average person, compared to the nitty-gritty details of specific policies.

"Candidates should still highlight different aspects of the laws that they have to pass," Odom said, "but I think there needs to be some strategy in talking about culture."

Uncommon Knowledge

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

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