Who are the rightwing influencers filling Trump’s head with visions of antifa?

Andy Ngo

Ngo is a video journalist turned pundit with 1.7 million followers on X.

Andy Ngo at the White House. Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

Since Donald Trump first shouted the word “antifa” at a rally in 2017, a week after he accused antifascists of “violently attacking” white supremacists at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, no one has done more than Andy Ngo to promote the myth that black-clad protesters around the nation are part of a secret terrorist network.

Ngo, the son of Vietnamese refugees in Portland, made his name on Twitter by posting video clips, often misleadingly edited or captioned, of street battles that broke out when far-right groups from surrounding counties descended on the liberal city to provoke antifascists.

His willingness to selectively edit his reports to blame antifascists for the violence was revealed in 2019, when video recorded by an antifascist mole in a rightwing group Ngo had embedded with, Patriot Prayer, showed that Ngo had witnessed, and chosen not to report, the Christian nationalists planning to instigate violence at a leftwing gathering.

A month later, Ngo was attacked by antifascists while filming their efforts to counter a Proud Boys rally in Portland. He was punched, kicked and doused with silly string and a milkshake he later claimed had been laced with quick-drying cement. (That accusation appears to have been a false rumor shared with the police by a rightwing activist who was caught on camera the same day dousing antifascists with grey powder.)

That assault instantly made him a sought-after guest on Fox News. Two years later, he published Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy, a best-selling book filled with exaggerated or inaccurate claims about leftwing protesters.

Ngo’s use of the term “domestic terrorists” to describe antifa, now amplified in official US government statements, is not just inaccurate, it can be dangerous. In 2022, a Portland resident who followed Ngo on YouTube went to the site of a planned racial justice march Ngo had railed against, screamed that antifascist volunteers protecting the marchers were “terrorists” and opened fire. The rightwing gunman shot four traffic safety volunteers and a protest medic. One woman died at the scene, another succumbed to her injuries later.

Katie Daviscourt

Daviscourt is a video correspondent for the Post Millennial with 260,000 followers on X.

Katie Daviscourt was invited to film protesters from the roof of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, Oregon this month. Photograph: John Rudoff/Reuters

Katie Daviscourt, a former Turning Point USA activist, is a correspondent for Post Millennial, a far-right Canadian website where Andy Ngo is an editor. A Portland police sergeant recently described her in an internal report as one of the “counter-protesters” filming protests outside a Portland Immigration and Customs Enforcement office who “constantly return and antagonize the protesters until they are assaulted or pepper sprayed”. A week later, Daviscourt was struck by a protester who tried to block her from filming by swinging a Palestinian flag in her face.

The next night, she appeared on Fox News with a black eye to accuse Portland police officers who spent 2020 battling with antifascists of being part of antifa. “The Trump administration needs to start treating antifa like Isis, the terrorists that they are, and put an end to them for good,” she told Jesse Watters.

Nick Sortor

Sortor is an influencer who confronts protesters and Democrats for his 1.2 million X followers.

Rightwing influencer Nick Sortor showed off the partially burned American flag he took from a protester in Portland at the White House. Photograph: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Nick Sortor, a former real estate agent from Kentucky, made his name during the Biden administration by going to the scenes of disasters, in East Palestine, Ohio, and Lahaina, Maui, to scream at officials and push conspiracy theories in interviews with Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon.

In February, he claimed that Elizabeth Warren, the 76-year-old Massachusetts senator, has “assaulted” him as she pushed past him to get into her car while he was peppering her with questions based on viral misinformation.

Sortor has been involved in multiple physical altercations with protesters in Portland this month, some of which he clearly initiated. Video shot by a Fox News correspondent one night showed Sortor ripping a burning American flag from the hands of an elderly protester he later described as an “Antifa thug”. Later that night, Sortor was arrested after exchanging blows with protesters, who reportedly objected to him filming closeup images of a teenage girl who had just been maced by a federal officer.

The charges against Sortor were later dropped by a local prosecutor after his arrest prompted an outcry in the conservative media. Sortor received a sympathetic text from Trump and a phone call from the attorney general, Pam Bondi, who ordered the head of the justice department’s civil rights division, Harmeet Dhillon, to open an investigation of the Portland police bureau over supposed anti-conservative bias. Dhillon was previously Andy Ngo’s lawyer.

Julio Rosas

Rosas is a correspondent for Glenn Beck’s Blaze TV with 230,000 followers on X.

Julio Rosas, a correspondent for Blaze TV. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

Julio Rosas got his start working for Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, writing last month that meeting the conservative activist “is THE reason why I have my career in politics today”.

The marine reservist spent much of 2020 filming undercover video of racial justice protests, highlighting rare instances of violence in clips that helped Fox News and the Trump White House frame demonstrations that were about 94% entirely peaceful as anarchic.

Rosas’s openly partisan approach to covering protests was reflected in his comment to Trump that the “sustained political violence that we’re seeing in this country is not a ‘both sides’ issue”.

Rosas did not tell the president that, in previous years, he had filmed two infamous acts of rightwing political violence: Kyle Rittenhouse shooting two people, one fatally, in 2020; and Trump supporters hurling a metal barricade into the doors of the Capitol, striking police officers, and attacking journalists on 6 January 2021.

Savanah Hernandez

Hernandez is a contributor to Turning Point USA and a former Infowars host with 700,000 followers on X.

Savanah Hernandez, a former Infowars host now with Turning Point USA, lambasted White House reporters during a roundtable on antifa on Wednesday. Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

Savanah Hernandez, a former host for the far-right, conspiracy theory outlet Infowars now creating videos in Portland for Turning Point USA, was celebrated on Fox News in the summer of 2020 for a stunt in which she had herself filmed holding up a sign that read “Police Lives Matter” during a Black Lives Matter protest that followed the murder of George Floyd.

At the White House roundtable, she directed her rage at reporters from the White House pool covering the roundtable. “The same media that’s sitting in this room with us, has declared all of us at this table Nazis and fascists, and they’ve been doing this for years,” Hernandez said. “This is why Antifa feels emboldened to attack us.”

What Hernandez was apparently not aware of is that, since the Trump administration now selects members of the press pool to be admitted to events with the president, many of the people she was yelling at actually worked for pro-Trump outlets.

Cam Higby

Higby is a Turning Point USA media activist with 190,000 followers on X.

The Turning Point USA influencer Cam Higby criticized the media during a roundtable on at the White House. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

Cam Higby is a Turning Point USA activist who got his start creating videos for PragerU, a rightwing media outlet that promotes climate-crisis denialism and soft-pedals the brutal reality of American slavery in educational films now approved for use in K-12 schools in 10 states.

In recent weeks, Higby has spent time in Portland, but has also been emulating Turning Point’s murdered founder Charlie Kirk, by setting up tables on college campuses and challenging students to debate him.

At the White House roundtable, however, Higby cast himself as a reporter unfairly targeted by antifa. “I’m attacked every time I do my job. When I leave my house to go to work, I’m violently assaulted. I’ve had guns pulled on me. I’ve been bear-sprayed. I’ve been beaten down. I’ve been almost killed,” he said.

Nick Shirley

Shirley is a YouTube influencer with 880,000 subscribers.

The pro-Trump influencer Nick Shirley at a protest against Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in New York last month. Photograph: John Taggart/EPA

Nick Shirley, 23, started out making prank videos during his high school years in Utah but last year he began to make YouTube videos aimed at boosting Donald Trump.

In February 2024, Shirley recorded himself asking migrants if they supported Joe Biden and shared video on X of several saying they did with the caption: “Confirmed: Migrants for Biden 2024”. Three months later, Shirley hired Latino day laborers at a Home Depot parking lot and paid them $20 each to appear in a video holding signs outside the White House with the slogans: “I Love Biden” and “I Need Work Permit for My Family.”

Last month, he produced a friendly profile of the English racist organizer Tommy Robinson, and called a protest he attended in Paris an “antifa riot”.

Shirley has been in Portland in recent weeks, making a video he titled, “Portland has Fallen... ANTIFA Take Control of City”, and telling Fox News that Oregon’s governor, who refused to give him an interview during a protest march, had “sided with antifa”.

Jonathan Choe

Choe is a Turning Point USA correspondent with 180,000 followers on X.

Influencer Jonathan Choe spoke during a roundtable with Donald Trump on antifa in the White House. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

Jonathan Choe, now a Turning Point USA correspondent, was fired from his job as a reporter for the ABC affiliate in Seattle in 2022 for producing what looked like a promotional video for the Proud Boys, set to a song by a white supremacist, in his spare time.

In addition to reporting on leftwing protests for rightwing outlets, he covers homelessness in Seattle as a fellow at the Discovery Institute, a Christian conservative thinktank .

In May, Choe was filmed striking a protester in the face with a baton and then insisting to police that he was the victim. “He assaulted me,” Choe shouted, in video recorded by Daviscourt.

Last week in Portland, Choe filmed a man he identified as “Maga patriot Thomas Allen” punching a protester and knocking them to the ground during a skirmish initiated by Sortor. When Allen was then arrested by the police, Choe suggested it was unjust because “antifa militants” had earlier in the night briefly seized Allen’s red Maga cap.

Allen was arraigned last week for misdemeanor assault.

James Klug

Klug is a Turning Point USA ambassador with 617,000 YouTube subscribers.

James Klug attends last week’s roundtable on antifa at the White House. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

James Klug is affiliated with Turning Point USA and known for videos in which he argues with and mocks liberals.

On inauguration day 2021, Klug offered his followers a behind-the-scenes look at how influencers like Rosas go undercover to capture violence at leftwing protests in the city and then appear on Fox News to put all the blame on antifa.

The violence in that case was from a small group of anarchists who smashed windows at the Oregon Democratic party’s headquarters in Portland, as Joe Biden was sworn in as president.

Rosas told Laura Ingraham on Fox it was the work of antifa, although Rose City Antifa, the Portland group that helped revive the Nazi-era concept of antifascist organizing, said in a statement this was an anarchist action antifascists played no part in.

Brandi Kruse

Kruse is a former local TV reporter from Seattle who has 165,000 followers on X.

Brandi Kruse scolded White House reporters during a roundtable on antifa. Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

Brandi Kruse, a Republican podcaster who quit her job as a reporter for Seattle’s local Fox affiliate in 2021, recently spent 48 hours in Portland for her podcast, a city she subsequently described as a “shithole”. She told Trump that she was a former critic who now endorsed him.

Kruse also claimed the president’s antifascist rhetoric had already had an effect. “I genuinely believe there would be people at these tables who would be dead today, and would have been killed in Portland, had you not called them a terror organization and said we’re going to bring the full weight of the federal government to bear.”

Jack Posobiec

Posobiec, who has 3.2 million followers, hosts a podcast sponsored by Turning Point USA

The far-right influencer Jack Posobiec was a featured speaker at the memorial for Charlie Kirk last month. Photograph: Ross D Franklin/AP

Jack Posobiec, a former One America News host who left the fringe cable channel to start a show on the far-right network Real America’s Voice sponsored by Turning Point USA, is best known for promoting the Pizzagate conspiracy theory.