Venezuela Is the First Big Test for the Pentagon's Influencer Press Corps—and It's Failing

In the days following the kidnapping of Venezuela president Nicolás Maduro, members of the Pentagon’s new right-wing influencer press corps weren’t reporting on the operation. Instead, they were enforcing loyalty in a manner similar to the Iraq war bloggers of the early 2000s.On Monday, Laura Loomer tried to crowdsource information on Pentagon press officials who may have leaked information to the mainstream media. “The White House account better be cooking up a sick edit,” Cam Higby, a right-wing influencer and member of the Pentagon press corps, wrote on X Saturday morning, as news of Maduro’s arrest broke. Monica Paige, a reporter for Turning Point USA, opted to slam the former Biden administration, reposting a 2020 post from Joe Biden about Trump admiring dictators with the now infamous image of a blindfolded Maduro. Joey Mannarino, an influencer with more than 650,000 followers on X, spent Sunday debating whether to support vice president JD Vance or Marco Rubio as president for 2028.These influencers were all granted Pentagon press credentials in November after the Pentagon rolled out a new press policy forbidding journalists from accessing information the Defense Department—which the administration styles as the War Department—does not make readily available to them. Most mainstream outlets—including ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox News—refused to sign on to it, forcing an exodus of military beat reporters from the ranks of the Pentagon’s official press corps. Weeks later, the Pentagon replaced them with Trump-friendly influencers from organizations like Turning Point USA, as well as independent creators like Tim Pool, a right-wing political commentator.The new press corp has only received one official briefing from Defense Department press secretary Kingsley Wilson, who leveraged the moment to attack the old-guard journalists who had left. Before joining the Pentagon, Wilson ran digital media for the Center for Renewing America, a pro-Trump think tank.“Legacy media chose to self-deport from this building,” Wilson said. “We’re not going to beg these old gatekeepers to come back, and we’re not rebuilding a broken model to appease them. Instead, we’re welcoming new media outlets that actually reach Americans.”This model has clearly not been about journalism, or access to information. So far, the Pentagon’s crew of right-wing influencers haven’t reported any new information related to the Venezuela raid. Several of them, including Higby, have turned their attention to alleged childcare fraud in Minnesota, chasing the same story that right-wing creator Nick Shirley claimed to uncover in a viral YouTube video last week. (Local Minnesota outlets have been covering this story for years.)This moment feels reminiscent of the early days of the Iraq war, where pro-war bloggers promised a similarly unrestrained alternative to mainstream coverage. These bloggers built entire audiences attacking writers in the mainstream press and other independent blogs who criticized the war, pushing narratives that supported the US’s invasion of Iraq. In the days since Maduro’s capture, creators like Lancevideos, who is part of the Pentagon’s official press corps, have called congressional critics like Thomas Massie “libtards” for criticizing the operation. He’s gone on to call for additional raids as well, writing “Could Iran be next? USA kidnapping spree must continue” on X.So far, it doesn’t appear as if any of these newly credentialed Pentagon press members have reported any real news on the raid or even received a single briefing on the matter. Instead, they’ve created countless memes and posts blindly supporting the operation—which is likely why the Pentagon brought them on in the first place.The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment from WIRED.“The influencers, they sound like these armchair warriors who wrote their blogs at home and parroted a lot of what the military said,” says Melissa Wall, a journalism professor at California State University, Northridge, who has written extensively about the warblogging movement of the 2000s. “Are they actually getting any real information? Are they just taking press releases or whatever is given to them?”On Monday, defense secretary Pete Hegseth launched what the Pentagon is calling an “Arsenal of Freedom Tour.” During the tour’s first stop at a Virginia shipyard on Monday, he was accompanied by only one mainstream outlet, CNN, and a host of right-wing media figures, according to Status News. One of these figures, John Konrad, was overheard trying to find an opportunity to get Hegseth to autograph a book he authored. (Konrad told Status that the autograph was “not for me.”)“They can just flood the zone,” says Wall of the Pentagon’s new press corp. “They can just put out so much content you can't really find the truth.”This is an edition of the Inner Loop newsletter. Read previous newsletters here.