MAGA Influencers Paid to Promote WIND ENERGY in Texas
"We are generally paid per signature."
Another under-the-table paid political campaign has come to light.
An investigation by Current Revolt has uncovered that MAGA/Pro-Trump Republican influencers across the US are being paid to promote wind energy in Texas!
Gunther Eagleman (David Freeman), an X/Twitter MAGA political influencer with over 1.1M followers, posted the above message with a link to a petition for promoting wind energy. He later deleted the post after his pay-to-promote message was called out by State Republican Executive Committee member Rolando Garcia.
Other users quickly noticed:
Current Revolt reached out to Gunther/Freeman to ask how much he was paid to promote the petition and why he later deleted his post. We did not receive a response at the time of reporting.
The link Gunther posted takes you to a page asking Texas residents to sign a petition for “clean, renewable energy” with photos of windmills in the background:
The petition is being promoted by American Energy Action. Their webpage heavily features wind and solar energy information.
Current Revolt also reached out to AEA multiple times for comment on their petition but received no response at the time of publication.
We asked former candidate for Texas Railroad Commission, Tom Slocum, his thoughts on undisclosed paid promotion of wind energy in Texas:
Texas First Republicans across our great state have fought hard against the proliferation of economically and environmentally harmful wind turbine farms in Texas for years and continue battling the powerful D.C. “green energy” lobby despite efforts currently being made to influence our Republican voter base using popular “right-wing” social media influencers.
-Tom Slocum
Other MAGA influencers, some not even living in Texas, promoted the wind energy campaign.
Bo Loudon, who has over 323,000 followers on Instagram and lives in Florida was one account we found promoting the petition. So why is he pushing wind energy in Texas? Likely because he’s paid to.
One influencer we spoke to who asked to remain anonymous told us he wasn’t familiar with the campaign, despite it being promoted on his page. He told us his manager runs his page and he is generally paid per signature or “fee” advocacy.
Political influencers continue to run political messaging without disclosing they’re being paid, which often leads to their followers being tricked into thinking their messages are genuine and without financial incentive like this X user who replied to Gunther’s now deleted post from above:
Companies like Urban Legend pay “creators” to promote specific issues or content.
Talking points, graphics, and other information are provided by Urban Legend:
This makes it easy for the influencer to simply copy and paste content without much thought. Some even copy and paste their messaging word-for-word:
If the country of Israel can offer money to American influencers to push their propaganda/messaging, what other foreign countries are paying American influencers to promote their messaging? Where is the disclosure? What laws are in place to protect Americans from foreign-propaganda?
Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie has noticed the undisclosed paid political promotion is a problem, even calling out influencer DC Draino (Rogan O’Handley) who has over 2M followers on X.
One X user even provided financial records that show that DC Draino’s LLC “Drain the Swamp Media, was paid $164,000 to promote a legalized marijuana in Florida!
(We’ve updated our post to reflect that Draino labeled at least one of his ads to reflect he was being paid)
Draino labeled his paid posts with the unassuming hashtag #SafeAndSmartPartner (which is inaccurate for the company who paid him, Smart and Safe) as seen here:
After raking in $164,000 to post in favor of legalized marijuana, DC Draino, a Florida resident, has recently started posting about Texas politics…
Texas politicians have signaled they plan to address the issue of undisclosed paid political promotion in the upcoming session.
All I know is DC Draino seems gay.
DC Draino is a moron.