Rightwing influencer with White House ties turns focus to Minnesota

A rightwing influencer, who appeared to admit that he recently drove his truck at protesters in Minneapolis, has for years cooperated with the Trump administration even while he has been repeatedly accused of escalating conflict for video content he pumps out to 1.2 million followers on X.

Nick Sortor has received full-throated support of the Trump administration after an October arrest in Portland, and attended an October 2025 White House influencer roundtable on “antifa”.

Sortor’s close relationship with the administration exists despite his previous DUIs and a misdemeanor conviction for criminal mischief and his having absconded from probation in his native Kentucky, where he was reportedly subject to arrest as of last November.

Sortor, 27 of Washington DC, is just one of a new crop of Maga influencers who monetize red meat content for audiences on X and other platforms, and whose depictions of protesters and immigrants as violent criminals appears to be feeding directly into the forceful escalation of Trump administration enforcement actions in Minnesota and around the country.

The Guardian twice emailed a detailed request for comment on this reporting to Nick Sortor on the address listed on his X account as his primary contact point. He did not respond by deadline.

Critics have drawn a “direct line” between the content produced by the likes of Sortor and other video influencers like Nick Shirley and the violent, and occasionally lethal actions of federal immigration agents in Minnesota and beyond.

Jeff Tischauser, a senior researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said that for content creators like Sortor, “It doesn’t matter what your political affiliation is. If they deem you to be un-American or insufficiently loyal to their goals they will drag your name, they will call you domestic terrorists, they’ll call you a criminal, they’ll call you a violent thug.”

He said the goal of such content creators was to engender “loyalty to Trump administration’s goals above all else. The script is to go out and create content that will falsely label their perceived enemies as domestic terrorists so that they can drum up support within Trump’s base”

A violent incident

Sortor recently posted a video on X which he claimed showed “anti-ICE rioters SURROUNDING my vehicle, smashing my windows, and attempting to kiII” him and fellow rightwing influencer Cam Higby.

He also added an apparent admission that he had driven at the protesters: “I was forced to drive away to save our lives, repeatedly warning those standing in front to GET OUT OF THE WAY. They didn’t listen, so I had no choice but to go anyway.”

Sortor’s version of events was amplified by fellow rightwingers on X, YouTube, and other social media sites. It was also uncritically echoed in many local news reports, and on Fox News.

Mercado Media founder Andrew Mercado offered a different perspective on the exchange of blows between the pair ahead of Sortor’s post.

In successive posts with videos embedded, Mercado first claimed that “NICK SORTOR HITS A FEMALE – she was seen blocking him from filming her friend with a plastic shield, Sortor then knocks it to the ground, blocks her from retrieving it and things escalate and flashbangs, pepper balls are deployed”, adding: “[Sortor] and Higby] have escalated every situation they have entered into. Whether it be Portland, Chicago, D.C. and now Minneapolis.”

Mercado then posted a different view of Sortor’s escape from protesters, writing: “Protesters called police after Sortor hit a female protester. They tried to block him from leaving until police arrived, but Sortor drove through them.” In Mercado’s footage, there are no protesters behind Sortor’s car, and Sortor is seen accelerating rapidly towards protesters in front of the car.

The Guardian emailed Mercado to clarify his understanding of events.

Sortor in Minneapolis

Nick Sortor’s social media feeds indicate he traveled to Minneapolis from Washington DC between 24 December, when he last posted a watermarked video in DC and 29 December, when he posted videos in which he followed DHS officers on door to door visits of “potential fraud sites”.

His visit came in the wake of fellow influencer Nick Shirley’s claimed exposes of day care center fraud by Somali immigrants, which saw influencers flock to the city along with more border agents.

Once there Sortor stood outside Tim Walz’s house with a plush pickle, published video of a Minnesota Hilton hotel that was refusing to book DHS agents, leading Hilton to withdraw the hotel’s franchise. He appeared on Laura Ingraham’s show.

He was also in the city when Renee Good was shot dead by ICE officer Jonathan Ross. In one of many posts responding to the situation, he wrote: “Liberal white women have been radicalized to TERRORIZE ICE.” In the wake of the shooting, Fox News treated Sortor in multiple broadcasts as an authoritative on the ground reporter.

He also had a post on the shooting, which blamed Walz, boosted by Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff who is widely seen as a crucial architect of the deportation crackdown.

‘Keep pushing, ICE! Patriots have your backs’

Sortor bills himself as a fearless journalist. His X bio styles him as “On-scene covering stories MSM won’t”; on Linktree he is “An independent journalist taking deep dives into stories via on-scene reporting”; on TikTok he is simply a “journo”.

In Minneapolis, however, as in his previous excursions to Portland and Chicago, Sortor’s output has comprised little more than partisan cheerleading and celebrations of violence.

In recent days, Sortor has cheered on ICE brutality against protesters in a series of posts on X and Telegram, often reposting videos from a broader network of rightwing influencers, or from independent journalists who monitor protests.

In a Monday post, Sortor wrote in a post to Telegram and X: “LMAO! More and more leftists are getting SPRAYED in the face for harassing ICE agents in Minneapolis.” He added: “ICE agents have HAD ENOUGH, and they’re getting NO HELP from local police” and: “KEEP PUSHING, ICE! PATRIOTS HAVE YOUR BACKS.”

The video shows a plain clothes ICE officer pepper-spraying two people through the open window of his car. In the footage, the officer says “Get back” before spraying and “Get the fuck back, bitch!” after first spraying the people. This is followed by close-up footage of an elderly woman in visible distress.

His X post references a video posted two minutes earlier by fellow rightwing news influencer Eric Daugherty, who writes for pro-Trump website Florida Voice News and spinoff site Rightline News.

The same day, in another Telegram post, Sortor wrote: “ LMAO! A leftist agitator is in TEARS after being sprayed in the FACE by a DHS agent in Minneapolis”. He added: “I could watch this on loop. STOP IMPEDING, and you won’t get sprayed! It’s really pretty simple.”

In the video, an ICE officer pepper sprays a man at close range, incapacitating him.

His video references the original video posted by independent journalist Amanda Moore, who is well known for in-person coverage of protests and other events.

In another post, Sortor reposted a video from Fox News reporter Matt Finn adding: “BREAKING – FAFO IN MINNEAPOLIS: A woman HIT a Border Patrol vehicle with agents inside, while another spit on it, and BOTH of them felt the wrath of Border Patrol’s Tactical Unit”

The video only showed the violent apprehension of the protester, not the incident he claimed had caused it. Nevertheless he added: “This is SO satisfying to watch. NO MERCY!”

Apart from celebrating DHS’s use of force, Sortor has called relentlessly over the last year for Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would permit the deployment of the US military to American cities.

On 12 December, he posted: “DHS agents are being forced to throw TEARGAS into INTERSECTIONS in Minneapolis to stop vioIent leftists from blocking them with their cars

He added: “This situation is CONTINUING to devolve. Agents are sitting ducks right now. We need TROOPS here!”

Arne Holverscheid, a PhD candidate in Political Science at Northwestern University, who has published research on the relationship between fringe political actors and mainstream politicians in the US, said that the relationship between rightwing “citizen journalists” and the Trump administration was “symbiotic”.

“There’s a symbiotic relationship between much more extreme figures who exist primarily online and more established figures who are elected from the Republican party.

He added, “It’s mutually beneficial in that the fringe are not directly affiliated so there’s a plausible deniability for the politicians, but it does help them to sort of move the Overton window”

Sortor’s rise from obscurity in Kentucky to the upper echelon of pro-Trump influencers coincides with Elon Musk’s ownership of X, which critics say tilted the algorithm in favor of rightwing accounts, and incentivized the production of low quality material.

Tischauser, the SPLC researcher, said: “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Sortor becomes popular or decides to take this route in 2023 after musk purchases X and monetizes X and shifts the algorithm to favor voices like Sortor”.

His earliest successes in attracting widespread attention on X included his coverage of the East Palestine train derailment in February 2023, and traveling to Hawaii in August 2023 to report on the Maui wildfires, both of which he portrayed as a failure of the Biden administration. During his visit, during a live cross for Steve Bannon’s War Room, Sortor was confronted by residents over his coverage of the tragedy.

But his partisan coverage was appreciated by candidate Trump, and eventually by his new administration.

Just a month before the 2024 election, Sortor posted a picture of a personally addressed letter from Trump which began “Thank you for being a social media warrior in the fight to save our country from the Radical Left!” and added: “Comrade Kamala has the Fake News, Big Tech, the Deep State swamp creatures, but I have YOU!”

Since Trump was re-elected, Sortor has traveled to flashpoints elevated by rightwing discourse and administration policy, often appearing to escalate tensions on the scene.

This travel has included cities singled out by the Trump administration for increased immigration enforcement and National Guard occupation.

Last October, he spent several days in the Portland, Oregon, during which time, as The Guardian reported, he had “been involved in multiple physical altercations with protesters in Portland this month, some of which he clearly initiated”.

On 3 October, Sortor was briefly arrested on suspicion of disorderly conduct on an evening in which he grabbed a burning American flag from an elderly protester he described as an “Antifa thug”, and later exchanged blows with other protesters.

Multnomah County prosecutors declined to press charges.

In the hours following his release on 3 October, Sortor reportedly received a message from Trump via a White House aide: “Great job. We’re behind you 100%. Let us know if there’s anything we can do. … President DJT.”

The same day, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, defended him from her podium, and criticized Portland police bureau, claiming: “Instead of arresting these violent mob members night after night … the police arrested a journalist who was there trying to document the chaos.”

Then, Trump’s Department of Justice issued threats to city authorities in support of Sortor.

Sortor posted on 3 December: “Attorney General Pam Bondi has ORDERED a full investigation, led by Asst. AG Harmeet Dhillon, of the Portland Police Bureau, following my wrongful arrest last night, Bondi confirmed to me.”

Harmeet Dhillon immediately confirmed this in a repost, writing: “Portland: it’s FO time. Buckle up.” The next day, Dhillon posted: “Portland police arresting journalists such Nick Sortor while giving Antifa goons a free pass is unjust, and will NOT stand in this @TheJusticeDept”.

Before her appointment to the Trump administration, Dhillon previously represented rightwing social media personality Andy Ngo in a largely unsuccessful lawsuit against people who were alleged to have been involved in various alleged attacks on Ngo.

Sortor subsequently filed a tort claim against the city of Portland in December, saying that he planned to sue the city for $10m.

Days after his arrest, Sortor flourished the flag he had obtained in Portland at a Trump-convened roundtable on Antifa at the White House.

Sortor’s Kentucky roots

Apparently the administration is unaware of, or unfazed by Sortor’s own criminal history.

According to November reporting in the Lexington News Observer, Sortor “has been charged twice and convicted once for driving under the influence in Kentucky, was arrested for menacing a police officer in downtown Lexington and was put on probation after pleading guilty to criminal mischief for an incident with a woman who accused him of being violent”.

Journalist Jacqueline Sweet reported on the details of the arrest and court records covering the 2020 incident that led to Sortor’s conviction and probation.

Sortor was charged with 2nd degree burglary, per Sweet, which was reduced to criminal mischief on a plea deal. He was sentenced to two years probation in January 2022, and by June 2023 he had absconded. On 23 June 2023, a judge issued a warrant for his arrest.

Kentucky’s state department of corrections still lists Sortor as an absconded offender online. The Guardian contacted the department of corrections to confirm that the online notice was still current and did not get a response.