The MAGA media machine has a new folk hero—and the backstory is ugly. The pro-Trump YouTuber now being boosted by conservative elites for a viral video alleging massive welfare fraud has a documented habit of paying people to stage political theater. That’s not journalism. It’s content farming with a budget.
According to The Daily Beast, Nick Shirley, a 23-year-old influencer with no formal journalism background, previously paid Hispanic laborers to participate in a protest he filmed outside the White House in a stunt framed as spontaneous outrage in support of President Joe Biden. They were paid $20 each. The camera rolled.
The stunt was designed to manufacture a narrative, not reflect reality. And it collapsed the moment anyone asked basic questions.
That history matters now because Shirley is being lauded by MAGA power brokers—including FBI Director Kash Patel and Elon Musk—for a new video claiming to expose “Minnesota’s Billion Dollar Fraud Scandal.” Shirley’s pitch is classic: bold claims, ominous music, and the promise that only he is brave enough to tell the truth to his 1.35 million subscribers.
Staged Content, Sold as Reporting
Shirley markets himself as “100% independent.” The record says otherwise. In a previous video titled “I Took Migrants to Visit Joe Biden,” Shirley rounded people up in Washington, D.C., put them in a van, and delivered them to the White House to demand an audience. He paid them. The performance was the point.
That’s not an ethical gray area. Paying participants to simulate outrage violates basic journalistic standards. It’s MrBeast-style shock content dressed up as accountability reporting. And yet, this is exactly the kind of material that has found a warm reception in Trump-aligned media circles, where virality trumps verification.
The Minnesota Claims Fall Apart
Shirley’s latest video alleges that child care operators in Minnesota are siphoning government funds to terrorist groups in Somalia. The problem: the claims are old, distorted, and in key cases wrong. The story Shirley repackages dates back years. Several of the child care centers he features were previously investigated and cleared, while other individuals were convicted long ago. There is no fresh bombshell here—just reheated suspicion.
Despite that, the video detonated online. Federal agencies signaled stepped-up scrutiny, and the Department of Health and Human Services threatened to freeze payments. At a Mar-a-Lago New Year’s Eve event, Donald Trump inflamed the situation further, claiming—without evidence—that $18 billion had been stolen, a figure that appears to mash together total federal funding across multiple programs over many years.
Consequences Don’t Stay Online
This isn’t a harmless misinformation cycle. According to The Beast, child care centers named in Shirley’s video have received death and bomb threats. Somali-run day cares in Ohio have reported harassment. Ayan Jama, who manages a Minneapolis center, described the fallout plainly: “This is a targeted attack on our community.”
Shirley, confronted by CNN about flaws in his reporting, has defaulted to the familiar script: blame the “mainstream media,” claim persecution, and keep the clicks coming. It works because the ecosystem rewards spectacle, not accuracy.
Here’s the self-own MAGA media doesn’t want to confront: when your new star has a paper trail of paying people to fake political moments, you’re not exposing corruption—you’re manufacturing it. Elevating staged content as evidence corrodes credibility and invites real-world harm.
If the right wants to argue that legacy media can’t be trusted, it can’t simultaneously anoint influencers who rent outrage by the hour. That’s a credibility bonfire—and the smoke is choking communities that did nothing wrong.
