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 protesters — 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.
https://www.wired.com/story/a-white-house-staffer-appears-to-run-massive-pro-trump-meme-page/
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