While researching Stop The Steal’s “Wild Protest” website, I stumbled on something bigger: a website used by tens of thousands of dedicated Trump supporters to organize events across the country. It’s called CloutHub.
WildProtest.com linked to a CloutHub group where Trump supporters could help each other find rides to Washington, DC before the Capitol attack last week. At first glance, this looked like an isolated use of a normal website, similar to groups on Meetup. But one of the moderators, if not the only one, of this “Patriot Caravans for 45” group is none other than the CloutHub CEO.
Jeff Brain, proud owner of CloutHub, is also involved in groups called Women For Trump (30k members), Parler (10k), Patriot’s Corner (100k), Hunter Biden Laptop Content (2k), QAnon (60k) and the Q conspiracy #SaveOurChildren. There’s even a small group for supporters of Sidney Powell.
A search on the internet archives shows that the “Patriot Caravans” group nearly doubled in size since the Capitol attack on January 6, and Fox News may be part of the reason.
Soon after John Matze and the Mercer family rolled out Parler, Matze began appearing on Fox News to talk about the app. Their own hosts signed up and encouraged people to join them. CloutHub is receiving a similar treatment.
Just hours before Amazon Web Services shut down hosting for Parler on Sunday night, Jeff Brain was a guest on Fox Business where he was able to promote CloutHub to Lou Dobbs’ audience.
I made my own CloutHub account to check it out. The first thing I saw — before I followed anyone or joined any groups — was this on my home page…
… so it’s clearly a fun place for the MAGA crowd. When I refreshed the page, I saw something actually disturbing: a profile pretending to be a verified Team Trump account.
A quick Twitter search resulted in tweet after tweet of that exact message. (See for yourself.) The original tweet was posted by One America News correspondent Jack Posobiec.
When I joined the Patriot Caravans group and clicked “Need A Ride,” I scrolled endlessly through maybe hundreds of posts from people leading up to January 6. I gave up scrolling before I reached the bottom.
That’s the most important detail. This website has been used to organize supporters to show up at real world events since at least December. The Stop The Steal website that linked to the CloutHub group went online December 23 at the latest, but their first DC event was in November. Many smaller, local events have been organized by Stop The Steal, too.
There’s no telling how many pro-Trump events around the country have been organized on CloutHub, but last week’s events in DC certainly were. Hopefully the FBI can find out more.
Noteworthy: A quick look at the “Newsroom” and “Channels” pages of CloutHub reveals financial ties to the Media Research Center. MRC is a right-wing propaganda tool funded in large part by the Mercer family — the same family that funded Parler. You have to be logged in to CloutHub account to see these pages.
Sources
https://g.clouthub.com/group/patriot-caravans-for-45
https://g.clouthub.com/user/jeff_brain1/groups
https://www.facebook.com/LouDobbsTonight/videos/427500575064328/
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage
Photo: Anthony Crider
