The very online spoiler campaign that could re-elect Trump
Anti-vax presidential candidate RFKJr. is reaching massive audiences online - will he peel away potential Biden voters?
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This year’s presidential election is shaping up to be extremely chaotic, with several breaking news moments and unexpected twists and turns that could influence the outcome in November. Strategists from Washington to Waukesha are dealing with a range of external factors that could push or pull just enough voters in the wrong direction. Will TikTok be banned? Will Trump actually be on trial? What will our far-right Supreme Court throw at us next? What about foreign interference? Are young people going to sit this one out?
The presence of third-party spoiler candidates in the presidential race is among the many factors that will undoubtedly impact Biden or Trump’s vote share this fall. Currently, the most visible third-party threat comes in the form of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
RFK Jr. is a conspiratorial anti-vaxxer and longtime environmental activist who has built a cult following online. He’s basically the Connor Roy of the Kennedy family and has some kind of chip on his shoulder large enough to make him want to run for President.
A starring role on TikTok
Presumably because of his family name or sharing eyebrow-raising anti-vaccine conspiracies, Kennedy has built a huge following online. He has amassed over 6.7 million followers across Instagram, TikTok, X/Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Threads, and Rumble.
His candidacy has particularly taken off on TikTok. With over 1.1 million followers, he has one of the largest followings of any American politician on the platform, and his posts receive an enormous amount of traction. Since creating an account in May 2023, his TikToks have totaled over 146 million views. For comparison, @thedemocrats, which joined the platform a year before RFK Jr. did, has received 142 million total post views, and the new @bidenhq account has thus far earned around 43 million total post views.
One recent piece of content particularly caught fire: Kennedy’s State of the Union rebuttal video was viewed 12 million times, received 1.6 million likes, and garnered nearly 30,000 comments.
Boosted by the Right
On Facebook, where the reach of political content is limited, his candidacy has been heavily promoted by conservative personalities and shady news accounts. According to CrowdTangle, the majority of the top 20 most engaged posts mentioning RFK Jr. in the past year came from right-wing sources like The American Wire, Franklin Graham, and Breitbart.
Digital advertising
Aside from this fringe viral fame, his operation seems to be running like a legitimate campaign. His team and affiliated Super PAC have been able to raise millions of dollars online and off, including from pro-Trump megadonors. And in the past 90 days, Kennedy’s campaign has spent more on Facebook and Instagram advertising than the Trump campaign, dropping over $900,000 on Meta’s platforms alone.
Many of their ads are sleek vertical videos introducing his candidacy to a nationwide audience.
Others are kind of bizarre. For example, one recent Facebook ad promoted an all-day campaign fundraiser “on private land just outside of Austin” featuring an “Opening Blessing and Motivational Talk,” “Cold plunging + Biohacking,” and a “Tea Ceremony with Shiva Rose.” The minimum ticket cost was $1,500 - so this was a pretty unusual thing to promote widely on Facebook.
His campaign has only run a handful of ads on Google, one of which “demands the immediate release of Julian Assange.” Not exactly an issue that appeals to a broad swath of the American public.
According to the Boston Globe, Kennedy is relying on an unconventional line-up of consultants to keep his operation running. His campaign manager is Amaryllis Fox, a former CIA case officer who has been accused of exaggerating much of her memoir, and who - in true Trumpian fashion - also happens to be the candidate’s daughter-in-law. Their team has hired mostly corporate marketing firms to buy its digital ads.
The threat
Because of (1) American polarization, (2) Ballot access, and (3) the way the Electoral College works, an independent candidate like Kennedy has a sub-zero chance of winning the Presidency. Instead, his campaign could have an outsized impact on helping or hurting either Trump or Biden.
That’s why Democrats are taking RFK Jr.’s candidacy very seriously, while some notable Trump supporters are gleefully cheering him on. Scott Presler, a leading pro-Trump operative, recently tweeted that “we need help getting (Kennedy) on the ballot in every state.” Meanwhile, the Democratic National Committee has built an entire team to focus on communications and research around third-party spoiler candidates. “With so much on the line, we’re not taking anything for granted.” a DNC spokesperson told NBC News. “We’re going to make sure voters are educated and we’re going to make sure all candidates are playing by the rules.”
By the numbers
FWIW, political advertisers spent just over $8.7 million on Facebook and Instagram ads last week. These were the top ten spenders nationwide:
On Tuesday night, Trump-endorsed candidate Bernie Moreno won the Republican primary election for the U.S. Senate in Ohio. Despite the importance of the race, his campaign spent nearly nothing advertising on Meta or Google platforms (he only ran one Facebook ad this year). It’s a throwback to the 2022 midterms when GOP Senate campaigns were outspent by Democrats online 5 to 1. Moreno will face Democratic incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown in November, who has been spending heavily on Facebook for over a year to build a grassroots war chest and highlight his legislative record.
Meanwhile, political campaigns spent $3.2 million on Google and YouTube ads last week. Here were the top ten spenders nationwide:
The Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity is running a large wave of video ads on Google and YouTube attacking “Bidenomics” and hitting the president on inflation. Although their ads don’t mention candidates for U.S. Senate, they are targeting voters in U.S. Senate battleground states of Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Montana, Maryland, and Nevada, in addition to the DC area.
On Snapchat, political advertisers in the U.S. have spent $535,500 on ads year to date. Here are the top spenders:
As part of the large-scale advertising push I mentioned last week, the Biden campaign launched a new advertising campaign on Snapchat—its first time on the platform this cycle.
…and lastly, here are the top spending political advertisers on X (formerly Twitter) in 2024:
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Your 2024 digital dispatch
FWIW, here’s how weekly digital ad spending (Facebook/Instagram, Google/YouTube) compares between the Trump and Biden campaigns year-to-date:
This past week, the Biden campaign made its biggest digital investment of 2024, spending a whopping $1.7 million just on Meta and Google platforms. Their team appears to be running on all cylinders, pushing an enormous variety of persuasion videos and boosted news ads on Facebook and Instagram while spending a ton on Google + YouTube.
Those ads include this one featuring Trump’s wild “bloodbath” comments and this excellent video featuring Democratic strategist (and FWIW reader!) Keith Edwards. The latter ad tackles the President’s age issue head-on while slamming the out-of-touch old men who fill Trumpworld—and it’s just targeting voters under 34 in core swing states.
From around the internet:
Facebook’s algorithm is boosting AI-generated spam content, according to 404 Media’s Jason Koebler. It’s very clear that this content is performing incredibly well on Facebook, despite Meta’s pledge to regulate it. Instead, AI Shrimp Jesus is trending.
A GOP congressional candidate in Ohio accidentally conceded his race before polls closed, including sharing this video of a pre-taped concession speech at like 2 pm on Election Day
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Gen Z is discovering the “poke” feature on Facebook… and they love it. In fact, pokes are up 13x over the last month. Facebook is apparently making updates to the feature in order to improve poking capabilities.
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One more thing: “Chasing clicks in the jungle”
MAGA internet influencer Laura Loomer traveled all the way to the Darien Gap - the dense jungle on the border of Panama and Colombia - to exploit migrants for clicks. In a video being widely shared on the Right, Loomer conducts an ambush-style interview with a few Somali 20-somethings who hope to one day make their asylum claims in the U.S.
Ken Besinger at the New York Times reported on Loomer’s spectacle as part of a new, deranged travel trend on the Right. Read all about it here >>
That’s it for FWIW this week. This email was sent to 19,782 readers. We are *so close* to hitting 20,000 subscribers! If you enjoy reading this newsletter each week, would you mind sharing it on Twitter or Threads?