Meet the MAGA porn stars

I’ve worked in the porn industry for nearly two decades — through the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations. Yet this year, I have heard more porn stars than ever before vocalizing their support for former president Donald Trump and his MAGA movement. How did the industry of free-speech icons and Democratic donors Larry Flynt and Hugh Hefner skew to the personality cult devoted to a man who helped overturn Roe v. Wade and screwed Stormy Daniels in more ways than one? The answer is complicated. 

To understand, you have to grasp what happened in porn throughout the past eight years. Porn wasn’t always MAGA. “The Republicans are still the anti-porn party and the anti-reproductive freedom party,” Adam22, host of the podcasts No Jumper and Plug Talk, explains. Many porn stars still hold old-school Democrat views — freedom of speech; your body, your choice, et cetera — but the current political environment and 2020s Democrats turn them off. 

One of the biggest changes is the economic environment. The number one reason to vote for Trump “is the economy,” says gay performer Michael Doherty, brother of YouTuber streamer Jack Doherty. Doherty and most adult performers produce, own and distribute our own content via OnlyFans. Remove the salacious element of our businesses and we are in the same situation as any other small business owners. 

“The Republican Party believes in the free market and encourages entrepreneurship,” says adult film director Porno Dan, who will not be voting for Trump.  “The overall tax burden was lower,” when Trump was president, adds performer Brandi Love, who also plans to vote Republican on Tuesday. “Everyone and everything was working like a well-engineered machine.” 

While OnlyFans took off during the pandemic, porn is also more than just that site. Many performers make a portion of their income as highly paid one-night- only “feature” dancers at strip clubs. Others diversify their income between OnlyFans, custom-made videos, stripping, camming, porn studio shoots and even old-fashioned prostitution. “It’s very easy to hop on between OnlyFans, SexPanther or stripping,” adult performer Richelle Ryan explains. “It’s very easy for us to come by quick money.” But money disappears fast when you go to fill up your car and gas is $5 a gallon. And while inflation hits everyone hard, when prices rise and bills pile up, the first expense to go is often adult purchases. 

“In terms of adult industry production studios, if people can buy less adult content, they will produce less, which limits employment opportunities for me,” explains Tiffani Madison, a Trump-supporting adult performer. “The economy also directly affects my career as a content producer and as a feature dancer touring clubs around the country.” 

When it comes to specific Trump policies that appeal, adult performers are vague, but it mostly comes down to finances. As OnlyFans stars, many make a small fortune. They don’t want that fortune overly taxed. They also don’t want inflation continuing to cut into their profits. The porn stars I spoke with long for the financial days of the Trump administration.  

But there’s also an aesthetic kinship between porn and MAGA. Porn stars see themselves in Trump, but not in Kamala. Trump tans, we suntan. Trump screams, we moan. The only place where you’ll see more gold than Trump Tower is at the AVN Awards. You don’t need a poli-sci degree or to work as a pollster to know Americans vote on culture and aesthetics as much as, if not more than, policy. When an adult performer looks in the mirror, they look way more like a Trump than an MSNBC wine mom.

More importantly, Trump faces similar public ridicule to the controversies that adult performers face. Trump gets their support partially because of “the relentless attacks,” Love says. “Left and right, the system has tried to destroy this man. When a system hell-bent on driving a wedge between Americans tries to destroy a person for disrupting the system, we should all jump in to support the disrupter.” 

Disruption comes in many forms. Long before conservatives cried about Twitter censoring the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden, porn stars dealt with censorship, shadow-banning and a slew of other big tech problems that MAGA types now know well. Big tech disrupted porn stars, big and small. “We are banned or censored on Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, TikTok,” Love continues. “We are banned from PayPal, certain banks and told we are ‘high-risk.’ Those are some of the most ‘woke,’ liberal platforms on earth.” 

But what about Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-penned agenda for the Trump administration that proposes criminalizing pornography and has been a central tenet of the Harris campaign’s case against Trump? It goes so far as envisioning a future where the federal government imprisons pornographers.

“Nothing I have seen or heard convinces me that Project 2025 is something that President Trump cares about even remotely,” Madison says. Love points out that Trump himself denounced the “Project… and Republican leadership in positions of actual power laugh about aspects of it.” Of course, many people who worked in the first Trump administration worked on Project 2025. It’s possible they discussed the plan with Trump. At the same time, Trump famously doesn’t read policy papers. 

Either way, many adult performers still wouldn’t be phased because they’re used to both Democrats and Republicans attacking them. “I just celebrated eighteen years, and I’ve been through these scare tactics; they don’t work on me; I’ve been through it all,” Ryan says. “I’ve been through Prop 60, I’ve been through Visa and Mastercard not wanting to pay out people on cam-sites. I’ve literally been through it all.” 

“I am not concerned,” Love agrees. 

Although Doherty supports gay marriage and gay adoption, he opposes Democrats, such as Governor Gavin Newsom, mandating trans-identifying children receive puberty blockers. “One of the biggest crimes against humanity is transitioning your child and telling them they are not perfect the way they are,” Doherty explains of his rationale. “I don’t think Trump cares about the LGB community as long as we aren’t trying to go into school and indoctrinate children.”

Other MAGA porn stars, such as Christian Ryder, disagree with the right on numerous issues but go towards Republicans because of what they consider a far-left agenda. “I don’t really support the Republican Party, and labels are for cans of peas and carrots; however, it’s become obvious over the last ten years that Democrats have truly gone way far left to the point of insanity,” Ryder says. 

Adam22 thought sex would be a great way to work out the political division in the country, so he began organizing a debate between Democratic and Republican porn stars. The film would end in an orgy that he and his wife, adult actress Lena the Plug, could stream on their Plug Talk OnlyFans. Adam22 presumed he’d struggle to find Republican porn stars. The opposite was true. “We were able to find ten MAGA performers, easily,” Adam22 says. “We couldn’t find any Democrats.” 

Adam22 has gone all in on Vice President Kamala Harris since she took over the ticket. “God fucking damnit I can’t wait to vote for Kamala,” he wrote on X. 

But other adult performers, especially those who have worked as California- based street sex workers, oppose Harris because she supported FOSTA-SESTA — an overbroad attempt to crack down on sex trafficking — and targeted the free speech of the owners of the online marketplace Backpage. They argue that Harris harmed their lives more than Trump ever did — and they have a point. 

Harris led the campaign to takedown the website Backpage, where many sex workers advertised their work. She said she was fighting sex trafficking, but over and over again, sex workers have argued taking down Backpage pushed many of them back onto the streets. Online, they could screen clients. On the streets, they were unable to protect themselves. A number lawyers joined the fight against Backpage, but Harris’s colleagues credit her with launching the war against the site. Maggy Krell, a deputy in the California DA’s office, told Politico, “What’s unique about Harris is she started it all. She literally started it all.” 

Many of the Backpage cases fell apart in court (not before one of the accused could commit suicide), but then Harris went to the US Senate, where she co-sponsored FOSTA-SESTA. According to the Nation, FOSTA-SESTA “created a loophole in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the so-called ‘safe harbor’ provision that allows websites to be free from liability for user-generated content (e.g., Amazon reviews, Craigslist ads).” The bill resulted in sex workers losing banking and, once again, getting pushed back onto the streets. For years, sex workers have claimed the law made their work more dangerous in the name of “protecting sex trafficking victims.” Adult performers haven’t forgotten what Harris did to their profession. 

“I find it ludicrous and incredibly frustrating that, even after disavowing it several times, President Trump keeps getting tied to Project 2025, while Kamala Harris is allowed to distance herself from any past positions that are now inconvenient,” Madison says. 

“Just because someone’s liberal doesn’t mean they are pro-sex work,” Richelle Ryan says.

And just because someone does sex work doesn’t mean they hate MAGA. In fact, they just may vote for Trump.