A White House roundtable of far-right social media influencers — proudly promoted by Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt as among the recipients of the so-called "Epstein Files" — drew jeers even from some ardent MAGA supporters Thursday.
Leavitt announced that she assembled a team of right-wing influencers, including "DC Draino," Chaya Raichik, creator of the anti-LGBTQ "Libs of TikTok" social media account, and Pizzagate promoter Mike Cernovich. The group received some documents concerning the prosecution of deceased child sex trafficking wealth manager Jeffrey Epstein.
In doing so, Leavitt took a moment to bash the traditional media.
"Great meeting today with some very influential social media content creators!" Leavitt posted to X. "These folks have larger followings than most mainstream media 'reporters'; The media landscape has changed, and we are fully embracing it here at the Trump White House!"
The pictures she posted were met with some predictable mockery from reporters on social media; with CNN's Andrew Kaczynski writing, "It’s all the people that randomly have been put into the 'for you' tab" — a reference to how tech billionaire Elon Musk's X appears to promote right-wing influencers.
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Leavitt, who recently banned The Associated Press from White House briefings over their refusal to acknowledge Trump's renaming of the Gulf of Mexico and has decreed journalists will get slots based on whether the administration approves of them, clearly expected the broader MAGA movement to voice its approval of this outing.
However, much of the broader right-wing community, already angry the Trump administration hasn't been as forthcoming as they wanted with the Epstein files, hardly gave Leavitt's post a better reception.
"It was a photo opp," wrote Trump ally and failed congressional candidate Laura Loomer. "Influencers posed for pictures with cheap binders given to them by @PamBondi who still doesn’t want to explain why she never held Epstein accountable even though she was the Attorney General of Florida the entire time he was raping young girls in Florida."
"There are some hard feelings among MAGA influencers who weren’t invited to today’s WH briefing with content creators, where they received 'Epstein binders,'" wrote The Washington Post's Natalie Allison, who noted that right-wing reporter Raheem Kassam "reports the meeting was a 'clusterf--' after Bondi distributed stale Epstein info."
