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Not long ago, plagiarist-turned-MAGA-influencer Benny Johnson stood in a parking garage underneath Chicago’s Trump International Hotel and Tower. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem emerged; the two embraced, then loaded into SUVs to drive outside the city to ICE’s Broadview detainment facility. Johnson filmed the road in front of him for a video, which he posted to his 6 million subscriber YouTube channel, snapping his fingers in excitement. Upon arriving, demonstrators—whom Johnson referred to as “left-wing orcs”—were being watched by armed, masked agents who looked, he said admiringly, “ready to conquer Baghdad.”

Johnson seamlessly blends fawning Trump coverage, PR, rage-bait, and apologism.

When the video cut to a group of handcuffed protesters, looking glum, Johnson beamed: “These are exactly the kind of people we want to be pissing off.” 

Johnson trailed Noem through the building as she spoke to underlings at their desks, “raising the esprit de corps,” he declared. Throughout his tour, Johnson repeatedly claimed that the facility had been “attacked” so many times that it had been necessary to install a “sniper’s nest.” A rooftop shot shows Noem, her mouth stretched into a deep frown, gazing at a turret-mounted gun aimed at the street. “These are very dangerous times,” Johnson added.

“What’s going on homie?” Johnson asked, turning to an ICE agent in a black balaclava and orange sunglasses, his face completely hidden. He shook the officer’s hand vigorously. “We’re here to support you guys.” 

Johnson’s role that early October day was somewhere between adoring observer and fringe participant, as captured in a video in his typical style: reasonably professionally produced, with the jumpy, fast-talking, quick cuts beloved by influencers; studiously provocative; and slavishly devoted to the Trump administration. 

In the journalism world, Johnson is best known for leaving two publications in disgrace after his plagiarism was discovered, and for taking—inadvertently, he has said—money from a Kremlin-backed media organization, and for being a hard partier, a difficult boss and colleague, and an almost surreally dedicated self-promoter. (“I met him once at a party,” says a colleague of mine. “His whole vibe is so weird that I thought at first he might be fucking with me.”) 

Now, he’s something like the administration’s propagandist and content creator in chief, with his work seamlessly blending fawning coverage, PR, rage-bait, and apologism. While ostensibly an independent vlogger and podcaster, Johnson’s role is premised on access to—and lavish posts about—both administration initiatives like Noem’s raids or touring Alligator Alcatraz with the president, and more social engagements, like watching UFC fights ringside with Trump, smoking cigars at the vice presidential residence, and a Christmastime tour of the White House with his family. All of this more or less lives up to Johnson’s social media tagline: “Your front seat to the golden era.”

Reporters and others who have watched Johnson’s evolution aren’t exactly surprised by where he’s ended up, describing him as “a charismatic motherfucker,” as one former colleague put it, a political and social chameleon, and someone whose work seems untethered by normal moral and ethical considerations. 

“It’s ended at the place where it was inevitable that he would end,” says one person who socialized with him in DC about a decade ago. 

His politics then were “sort of a libertarian inflected conservatism,” another person who knew him at the time says, “skeptical of power and government. And it’s absurd to look at him now.”  

“The thing you need to know about Benny is he’s a chameleon,” says a former colleague from BuzzFeed News. “Drop him into any environment and he’ll reflect that environment because he wants to be liked.”

Johnson’s particular notoriety is a useful key to understanding a core value of the Trump administration: shamelessness. The president’s circle is full of people with notable—and, in many cases, ongoing—public scandals. For Johnson, like so many others, not running from their past is a feature, not a bug.

“One of the great virtues to have is that you got caught doing bad things and not giving a fuck,” says John Stanton, a former DC bureau chief at BuzzFeed News, who was involved in the outlet’s 2014 decision to fire Johnson. “That’s the definition of Donald Trump’s career. He’s been caught over and over again. I think they value that greatly.” 

“His whole vibe is so weird that I thought at first he might be fucking with me.”

Another thing Trump values is intense toadying, and Johnson today has no qualms about being in open alignment with power. He depicts himself as part of a battle for the future of America, one with Trump fearlessly at the helm and his fellow pro-Trump media members manning the guns. Their targets are Democrats, the mainstream media, LGBTQ visibility, political correctness, immigration, and any other object of hate the president might identify on any given week.

“True freedom is a functional, peaceful, orderly society where you can get a piece of the American Dream,” Johnson tweeted recently. “We must protect and fight for it at all costs. This is our generational battle. This is our Normandy and Iwo Jima. The enemy is already inside the gates.”

The results are making themselves felt. Johnson has cast himself as an heir to the throne of his former boss, slain Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk. Johnson’s wife, Katelyn Rieley Johnson, has bragged that he got Jimmy Kimmel pulled off the air after the late-night host discussed Kirk’s death. In a podcast within a week of the shooting, Johnson, who has said he was a close friend of Kirk’s, seemed to get FCC Chair Brendan Carr to endorse a claim that Kimmel’s monologue had been a “clear cut violation” of policy against “news distortion.” 

“Look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr told Johnson. “These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action on Kimmel or, you know, there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” ABC’s suspension soon followed.

Johnson is pushing the boundaries of even what the Trump wing of the Republican Party is willing to say. He’s launched an attack on H-1B visas, those granted to skilled workers in specialty occupations, and called for a halt to legal immigration too. He’s also one of the far-right voices amplifying unproven claims that welfare fraud among Somali immigrants in Minnesota has funded the terrorist group al-Shabaab. 

“Your tax dollars are being stolen and shipped over to people who hate us and want us dead,” Johnson tweeted. “You should be furious. This is a direct result of careless immigration policies. We must ramp up mass deportations and halt all legal immigration.” 

More and more overtly, Johnson is depicting nonwhite immigrants as an existential cultural threat, an increasingly stark and baldly racist us-or-them approach. And he’s using the tips and tricks of virality and traffic-mongering he learned at places like BuzzFeed to do it.

Johnson, 38, is trim and nondescript, with sandy brown hair, black-rimmed glasses, and an absolutely immobile forehead. His speaking style is usually bland, a mildly incredulous cadence and lowered volume that can be reminiscent of Tucker Carlson under light sedation. In what seems like an effort to sound younger, he sometimes greets his viewers with “yo,” or proclaims things to be “wild.” 

Johnson’s company, Benny Media, produces an extraordinary amount of content: His YouTube channel churns out one to four videos a day. His five-day-a-week podcast, The Benny Show, interviews members of Congress, Cabinet members, various Trumps, and conspiracy peddlers back to........

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