Much of the group, which refers to itself as Trump’s Online War Machine, operates anonymously, adopting the cartoonish aesthetic and unrelenting cruelty of internet trolls.
Cheered on by Mr. Trump, the group traffics freely in misinformation, artificial intelligence and digital forgeries known as deepfakes. Its memes are riddled with racist stereotypes, demeaning tropes about L.G.B.T.Q. people and broad scatological humor.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
He was delighted, he said later in a podcast interview, to see Mr. Trump play the new version at his final rally before the midterm elections, pausing his speech to watch it with well over a thousand supporters gathered at Dayton International Airport.
Led by a little-known podcaster and life coach, this meme team has spent much of the year flooding social media with content that lionizes the former president, promotes his White House bid and brutally denigrates his opponents.
Many also faithfully tune into Mr. Dilley’s daily podcast, where he talks at length about the group’s activities, interacts with a small but devoted audience and promotes his 2013 self-help book, “Still Breathin’: The Wisdom and Teachings of a Perfectly Flawed Man.”
In August, when Mr. Trump was indicted on conspiracy charges related to his attempts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, several team members produced a music video targeting the Fulton County district attorney, Fani T. Willis.
In July, one of the group’s most prolific contributors — a musician from outside San Diego named Michael Beatty, who goes by the handle Miguelifornia — mentioned that Mr. Scavino and Mr. Miller “gave us tons of great video” shot at a Trump rally in South Carolina.
If it is not compensated but is coordinating with the campaign, then it may run afoul of strict limits on in-kind contributions, said Paul S. Ryan, who serves as deputy executive director of the pro-democracy group Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation.
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