Forget the campaign trail: the real Trump-DeSantis fight is spilling out on Twitter. Conservative influencers who support the respective campaigns are duking it out on Elon Musk’s app — and it’s getting personal.
The Twitter beef ostensibly started with Trump supporters growing antsy over the prospect of a “disloyal” DeSantis running against the president who swung his governor’s race, then devolved into policy fights over DeSantis and Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and Trump’s ability to win the general. The arguments have since spiraled into nasty scuttlebutt.
One prominent example featured New York Young Republicans chairman Gavin Wax and a handful of DeSantis surrogates. Wax demanded some of the pro-DeSantis tweeters disclose whether they were being paid by the DeSantis campaign or its associated PACs. They responded by pointing out Wax technically received money from Chinese fraudster Miles Guo, because Wax used to work for the Guo-backed social media app, Gettr, and following a report by the OptOut Foundation that suggested he and other conservative influencers had been recruited to “publish flattering articles.”
Wax rejected any tacit accusations that he was involved with fraud, and sent an uncouth tweet chastising DeSantis rapid response director Christina Pushaw for “liking” some of the tweets. His employer, the Christian satire website the Babylon Bee, fired him over it. Wax is now pursuing legal action, as Cockburn’s colleague Amber Athey first reported last week.
Pushaw has been the target of other squabbles. Avid Trump supporter Laura Loomer, the online activist known for stunts such as handcuffing herself to Twitter headquarters, dumping a batch of illegal immigrants on Nancy Pelosi’s lawn and getting banned from Uber Eats, used a photoshopped picture of Pushaw’s knees to accuse the campaign official of engaging in some X-rated sexual acts.
In another recent post, Loomer threw up photos of Pushaw smoking hookah and having cocktails — is that a vodka cran? — in what appears to be a college or study-abroad setting. Cockburn isn’t sure if those were supposed to make Pushaw look bad, but supposes it had the opposite effect.
Pushaw, meanwhile, has been enjoying retweeting Ian Miles Cheong, a newly svelte Malaysian and onetime Milo Yiannopoulos staffer who went to Oxford and doesn’t live in the United States. Surely there are other political prognosticators who are more in tune with the concerns of American voters?
Also in the fray is Pedro L. Gonzalez, the Bernie Sanders supporter-turned-Trump supporter who defected to DeSantis on the grounds that Trump didn’t complete construction of “the Wall” and is supposedly balking at truly taking on wokeness and culture wars. Gonzalez has said that “MAGA Inc” is full of “grifters” who will defend Trump no matter what, while Trump supporters such as the National Pulse‘s Raheem Kassam have alleged that Gonzalez is the real grifter because of his leapfrogging from candidate to candidate. Gonzalez said he would no longer post photos of his kids online because “because MAGA people on Twitter are incapable of refraining from insulting a two-year-old.” He added that people like Loomer target “people who have what she doesn’t: families.”
Speaking of Kassam, he and Representative George Santos staffer Vish Burra have been embroiled in a seemingly endless online fight with a woman named Evi Kokalari. Cockburn was unfamiliar with Kokalari, but a friend described her as a “wannabe NYC socialite” who is “bitter that she hasn’t become famous” in New York Republican circles. The trio have been debating over who is the most “America First” among them. Kokalari has referred to Kassam’s British nationality as proof he is a fraud, questioned his involvement in the Brexit campaign, and accused him of racism and homophobia. Kassam claims Kokalari has “antifa/LGBT friends” and is a “dumb… Albanian gypsy.” Ouch.
Then there’s radio host Clay Travis, the Outkick and the Coverage founder, who was busted attending a DeSantis donor event. Travis claimed he attends events for different candidates all the time so he can hear from them directly, that the events inform his coverage on the radio and that he is not endorsing anyone in the primary. A video later surfaced of Travis actually giving a speech to attendees at the event. Incidentally, Travis’s attendance at the event became known after Pushaw sent out a photo of the group of donors while identifying one of them as the source of a different leak. Campaign consultants tell Cockburn it’s typically a big no-no to send out photos of donors without permission.
For Travis’s part, he still contends that he has not donated to any candidate and blasted the “Trump versus DeSantis purity contest.”
It’s “not healthy,” Travis stated. “Both are infinitely better than Joe Biden.”
Cockburn is also not a fan of Bolshevik-esque loyalty tests. Don’t most Republican voters like both DeSantis and Trump, after all? Yet he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t extremely entertained by the new Twitter battleground for the top two candidates in the 2024 primary. Do you share his intrigue? Email cockburn@thespectator.com with any tips…
