Female MAGA influencers tend to do well on such platforms for a few reasons. They’re a relative rarity in the MAGA movement: Unlike their Gen Z male counterparts, 18- to 29-year-old women overwhelmingly skew liberal. Young MAGA women are therefore “more attention-grabbing,” Wirtschafter says, citing the uproar over the likely AI-generated “Swifties for Trump” photo Trump posted on TruthSocial during the 2024 campaign as one example.

The same logic, however, apparently does not apply to left-wing influencer accounts, as Sam learned when he created a short-lived liberal counterpart for Emily on Instagram: “Democrats know that it’s AI slop, so they don’t engage as much.” ((AI-generated MAGA girl creator Indian male med student) Sam’s explanation for why MAGA influencer accounts work is blunt: “The MAGA crowd is made up of dumb people—like, super dumb people. And they fall for it.”)

The palpable contempt that the AI-MAGA girl creator felt for his customers...