In the wake of the extraordinary bust-up between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, another bitter feud has erupted between other darlings of the MAGA movement over accusations of grift, deception and betrayal.
Right-wing influencers Scott Presler and Brandon Straka were once good friends, rising up MAGA ranks to become well known social media identities with millions of followers and fans between them.
Presler, with his trademark long brown hair, cowboy boots and towering frame is well known in Republican circles for his voter registration drives, targeting everyone from frat boys and farmers to hunters and the Amish.
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Last year, his PAC, Early Vote Action, also scored a $1 million donation from Musk, helping to wrest the battleground state of Pennsylvania from Democrats.
Straka, meanwhile, came to Republican fame through his campaign #WalkAway, which was launched ahead of the 2018 midterms to encourage disenchanted Democrats to leave the party.
Both are gay, outspoken, and lay claim to bringing new demographics into the GOP.
But according to a new report in the Wall Street Journal, things between the pair soured last month, after Straka accused Presler of being a phony who faked his voter registration success and, in turn, weakened the party’s get-out-the-vote efforts.
The allegations, contained in a series of social media posts as well as an audio chat posted on X last month, have divided MAGA acolytes on both sides of the tiff.
“For anybody who doesn’t understand why I am calling out Scott Presler- I get it. TRULY. He duped me, too. And he duped everybody,” Straka wrote in a Facebook post on May 4.
“He blatantly lied about registering 50,000 voters in PA. He lied about “delivering” the Amish to the polls. He raised millions of dollars based on these lies–but worst of all–he has made people believe that he has a magic formula for “flipping“ states red.
“This deception just contributed significantly to costing the Wisconsin Supreme Court election a few months ago and a Pennsylvania Senate seat that Republicans have held for 136 years. Scott told everybody he had flipped these states. It was never true.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to both men, whose brawl is not the only one causing deep divisions among the MAGA movement.
Straka’s tirade generated thousands of responses online, many of which backed Presler or urged the pair to cast their differences aside for the good of the party.
“We need you to be reunited to fight our mutual enemy,” one woman wrote.
“I think kindness might be a better way,” wrote another. “We need everyone on board.”
Amid the Musk-Trump fallout last week, Infowars host Alex Jones also set off angry MAGA backlash by calling for Trump to address Musk’s explosive allegation that the president’s name appears in the Epstein files.
“Catturd,” a pro-Trump influencer with 3.7 million X followers, hit out at Jones, describing him as a “fraud” and “sellout” for amplifying Musk’s claims.
And in other corners of the internet, conservative activist Laura Loomer has been trading blows with health care entrepreneur Calley Means, the brother of Trump’s pick for US surgeon general, Casey Means.
Tensions spilled over last month, around the same time the Straka-Presler feud erupted, when Calley Means took to X to accuse Loomer of “taking money from industry to scuttle President Trump’s agenda.”
Loomer, a conservative firebrand known to have the president’s ear, fired back in a lengthy post saying Means was “full of s–t” and a “Never Trumper”.
She also made a series of allegations against both siblings, including the suggestion that Means was paying right-wing podcasters to back his sister for surgeon general “despite her lack of qualifications.”
“You are a PR spin master (funny how you never talk about your career in PR and crisis management) and you are threatened by my access to President Trump and the fact that White House officials called me to discuss the posts I made about your sister,” she wrote.
