Tom Zawistowski, president of the We the People Convention, compared Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign to “astroturf,” explaining how the Democratic candidate is reportedly paying social media influencers and other discreet tactics to promote her campaign leading up to the November 5 general election.
Zawistowski said Harris, who was formally nominated as the Democratic Party’s 2024 presidential nominee on Monday as a result of a virtual roll call vote, will depend on ‘phony’ social media influencers to promote her campaign while she avoids public events – just as President Joe Biden did as a candidate in the 2020 election under the guise of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The whole Kamala Harris campaign is nothing but astroturf and gaslighting. There’s evidence out there that they’re paying people and picking up homeless people to take to her rallies to make it look like she has support. There’s overwhelming evidence that they’re paying supporters on TikTok to promote her and being exposed for that. Now, we saw a story this morning where the Kamala Harris campaign is paying influencers $20,000 to go to the convention in Chicago and promote her. It’s astroturf,” Zawistowski said on Monday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
Zawistowski’s prediction came days after the Democratic National Convention announced that it will host over 200 social media influencers in Chicago to promote Harris’ campaign.
“It’s a TV show. That’s what it is,” Zawistowski explained, comparing Harris’ campaign to a production aimed at wooing voters. “It’s a Joe Biden redo: Put Joe in the basement and claim it’s COVID as to why he’s not out there and do the same thing with Kamala.”
However, Zawistowski added that Harris’ tactic to use influencers and deceitful support to boost her campaign will be competing with other social media users who are widely sharing videos of Harris touting unpopular policies that do not resonate with a majority of Americans.
“They’ve got a couple of problems. First of all, there’s this thing called the internet where there’s all of these videos of Kamala Harris, in her own words, stating the policies that Americans hate. And the second thing is that unlike 2020 – when you and I had all of our social media just taken away from us because we beat them to death in 2016 and brought Trump to victory – that’s not the case now. Now, the American public, at least a large percentage of it, has found out that you can be on Twitter and learn things. You can be on Rumble. You can go to your radio show and my podcast and get some truth. So I don’t think that this strategy is one that’s from an old playbook. I don’t think that playbook is valid. We’ll see because it’s pretty scary how people can be ‘influenced’ by these phony influencers,” Zawistowski said.
Zawistowski also addressed the media and Democratic Party’s unison attack on Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance saying that the Ohio U.S. senator is “weird,” stressing that such an attack is an indication that Vance is seen as a threat to Harris’ campaign.
“This is the propaganda machine…that JD Vance is ‘weird.’ That’s psychological warfare. That’s psyops. And when you see everyone saying the same words, there’s your clue. Don’t believe what they’re saying because it’s contrived. So JD Vance, not only is he not weird, it tells me they’re afraid of him…He’s really good on camera compared to Kamala Harris, who is really bad,” Zawistowski said.
Watch the full interview:
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
