Reddit, Again: the Donald Trump Electoral Subreddit

Now that we are past the primaries, the continued existence of The_Donald subreddit is utterly bizarre, and proof that his supporters on Reddit are mostly there to troll actual politics. "The_Donald" was begun by CisWhiteMaelstrom (who was kicked off Reddit and had to return under a misspelled version of his handle), and heavily backed by the now-banned jcm267 (he finally stepped on too many toes) and NYPD-32, members of the r/conspiratard crew and associates of the repeatedly-banned nolibs, though there are claims that jcm267 was nolibs. The "Trump for president" subreddit has only been around for eleven months, but all the banning and curb-stomping and drahma above happened during most of the life of that forum. We are more interested in the aftermath.

Board of Sockpuppet Moderators

We began noticing that that the number of moderators radically changed after jcm267 was given the boot in May. This is what the moderator list looked like on May 23:

lil-z (11029)	1 month ago	full permissions
TehDonald (1)	6 days ago	full permissions
yiannopoulos_m (667)	4 days ago	full permissions
PrinceCamelton (38165)	3 days ago	full permissions
richmomz (11702)	3 days ago	access, flair, mail, posts
bobstooder (175827)	3 days ago	access, flair, mail, posts
RedStarDawn (7700)	3 days ago	access, config, flair, mail, posts
Bananagans (7192)	3 days ago	access, flair, mail, posts
TalktoberryFin (40325)	3 days ago	access, flair, mail, posts
realpizzapartyben (3849)	3 days ago	access, flair, mail, posts
scientistthrowaway23 (16276)	3 days ago	access, flair, mail, posts
Trumpshaker (13465)	3 days ago	access, flair, mail, posts
StarBat57 (68630)	3 days ago	access, flair, mail, posts
lolmonger (10832)	3 days ago	access, flair, mail, posts
Suturetech (208)	3 days ago	access, flair, mail, posts
USofTrump (3384)	3 days ago	access, flair, mail, posts
raider02 (2019)	3 days ago	access, flair, mail, posts
Adda717 (10231)	3 days ago	access, flair, mail, posts
usatrump (11734)	3 days ago	access, flair, mail, posts
Taylor814 (21547)	3 days ago	access, flair, mail, posts
theunstumpable (28432)	3 days ago	access, flair, mail, posts
pancakees (1775)	3 days ago	access, flair, mail, posts
TrumpWinning (10003)	1 day ago	access, flair, mail, posts
Fredfredbug4 (4243)	22 hours ago	access, flair, mail, posts

It began shifting almost immediately, picking up more members. And yes, yiannopoulos_m is supposedly Breitbart "tech editor" and agitator Milo Yiannopoulos.

Above is the list on May 25; they picked up purpletricycle, who has only been on Reddit for a month and is a moderator of two other subreddits based on fixations you see on "The_Donald": getting Bernie Sanders supporters to abandon his campaign and join Trump's, and for those supporters to "disavow Sanders." The nolibs crew were very big on defaming Ron Paul for similar reasons - it created drama.

....And this is what it looked like yesterday, June 10. They now have 49 moderators for a forum that mostly agrees with what is being posted. Many of these people barely have anything to do with the subreddit; yiannopoulus_m last made a post 21 days ago. If you look at a number of these people (and we encourage the reader to do so), you get the vibe that a lot of these accounts are either old "alternate accounts", purchased accounts, or raw new future throwaway accounts that will be abandoned once the Trump campaign ends, or Reddit shuts the subreddit down for being more of a troll hangout than an actual campaign forum. And then there are the links to other drama subreddits; RedStarDawn claimed to be in charge of r/GamerGater 11 months ago. That forum is now "private" and his moderator list shows no signs of it.

So Who is Behind This?

It can't be the Trump campaign, it's too disorganized. This isn't like how the Bush-era GOP encouraged college conservative bloggers* and tried to create "Hipublicans" to slow down the formation of campus anti-war groups in the lead-up to the Second Iraq War while creating a voting base for the 2004 elections; from all the indications, this is a Reddit homebrew. The trolls found a troll candidate and they are backing him for "teh lulz" until he wins or collapses, and then they will go on to the next target, feigning outrage the whole time.

___________

* Many of the bloggers that site used to link to came out of the Leadership Institute, Morton C. Blackwell's factory for making Republican policy wonks and politicos. Ralph Reed, the former head of the now-zombie Christian Coalition came from LI, as did Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.