Lobbyist reveals how easy it is to 'manipulate' Trump administration

The news site Semafor held a forum on Tuesday where a lobbyist confessed how easy it is to manipulate President Donald Trump's administration.

Ethan Lane, a lobbyist for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, commented: "You don't need $2 million in TV spend anymore to manipulate a conversation. You need the right few influencers and the right bots," he said.

Lane said that the administration doesn't appear to distinguish between real people and bots, making it much easier for an organization to create momentum than to recruit legitimate people concerned about an issue or company.

"They don't seem to have a huge amount of concern about whether those are real or sort of a creation of the internet," Lane said. "That's, I think, a lot about, sort of, their assessment of where their voters' heads are and how perception is playing out for what the administration's doing, but it can lead to a target-rich environment for whoever, right, to really manipulate a narrative with a pretty modest investment, quite frankly."

"We're a grassroots industry, so we take pride in the fact that we don't need that," he added. "But when you're getting outspent and outgunned by computers, it's a very frustrating situation."

Trump places a high value on social media, he explained. So, influencers or large groups of people who can tweet or comment on posts have a huge impact.

"It's not expensive to fire up a bot farm and have a bunch of, you know, shills on the internet, put on some fake cowboy hats. I mean, you know, truly, and that's been our reality for months now," Lane told Semafor.