Hours after an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis, the Trump administration was already working to shape the narrative. Official White House accounts flooded social media with clips of burning flags and clashes between locals and federal immigration agents, casting protestors — not the killing — as the story.
Among the accounts amplifying that message was Johnny MAGA, a pro-Trump X account with nearly 300,000 followers. “They’re burning the American flag right now in Minneapolis,” the anonymous account claimed, sharing a clip from the White House’s official rapid response feed. “And they really expect you to believe that ICE shot an innocent civilian.”
To its audience, Johnny MAGA looked like an independent voice, another outraged supporter in the MAGA media ecosystem. The account regularly boosts Trump’s Truth Social posts and goes to bat for the administration, attacking Democrats like California governor Gavin Newsom.
But this isn’t just a regular account. Johnny MAGA appears to actually be a White House staffer named Garrett Wade who works for the Trump administration as a rapid response manager, helping to run the very same White House account his anonymous MAGA account amplifies. A phone number associated with Wade is linked to Johnny MAGA, according to a WIRED review of publicly available records, and the connection was confirmed by a source close to the White House.
Wade and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.
The Johnny MAGA account was created in September 2021, according to its X profile. (It originally used a different handle, which referenced Wade’s birth year, according to records reviewed by WIRED.) While the account’s earliest available posts focused on NFTs, it has been a consistent pro-Trump presence since at least 2022.
The operator of the Johnny MAGA account has not disclosed an official relationship with the White House while operating the Johnny MAGA X account. Multiple media outlets, including Mother Jones, TownHall, and the New York Post, have all linked out to posts on the Johnny MAGA account seemingly as organic reflections of public sentiment on political issues.
Since Trump took office last year, the Johnny MAGA account has supported administration priorities like immigration enforcement, and allies like Turning Point USA. After Trump posted a racist AI-generated video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes earlier this month, the Johnny MAGA account boosted the White House’s claim that the president didn’t watch the entire video, posting, “the most obvious tell that Trump’s Truth Social post wasn’t intentional is that he would’ve posted the entire thing if he had seen it. It’s a masterpiece.”
While the Trump administration has long cultivated a growing cast of conservative creators to spread its messaging online, a White House staffer moonlighting as an anonymous MAGA influencer would blur the already hazy line further, making it nearly impossible to distinguish between official government messaging and what appears to be organic digital support. This lack of disclosure risks undermining public trust, disinformation researchers suggest.
“People have a right to know who is trying to manipulate public opinion, and they have a right to know whether or not they’re experiencing astroturf politics,” says Samuel Woolley, a University of Pittsburgh professor who studies disinformation and media ethics. “This lack of transparency and the conflict of interest surrounding this account and the lack of disclosure all amount to a breach of public trust.”
There is very little public information online about Wade, but Federal Election Commission records link him to former White House senior communications leadership. Donations from 2023 through WinRed made by a Garrett Wade from suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania — where Wade graduated high school — list his employer as “tech school” in March 2023 and in December that year as Opinion Architects, a digital consultancy group. The donations also list Wade as residing in the Bucks County area of Pennsylvania, where he previously lived, according to public records. The phone number associated with Wade and with Johnny MAGA — who in the past has listed his location as Philadelphia — is also geolocated to the Bucks County area.
