Get ready for what could be the most online-influenced election in the history of the country. And Brenden Dilley’s Meme Team will be playing a starring role for Donald Trump.
If you’ve never heard of Brenden Dilley, it is about time you did. Dilley is one of the leading activists in Donald Trump’s “troll Army.” Dilley, who admittedly doesn’t “give a f**k about being factual,” is one of a number of video creators and meme makers that are at the former president’s beck and call. Trump has shared Dilley videos, and hosted him at Mar-A-Lago. Longtime Trump strategist Roger Stone has called Dilley someone who has “changed the course of history in this country.”
In mid-December of last year, The New York Times’ Ken Bensinger wrote: “At the center of Mr. Trump’s meme militia is Brenden Dilley, a 41-year-old podcaster, failed congressional candidate and self-described social media and political influencer. Mr. Dilley doesn’t create the memes himself, but he provides the organizing force and smash-mouth ethos driving the crew. ‘It doesn’t have to be true. It just has to go viral,’ he has said on his podcast.”
Dilley has his own coterie of followers called the hashtag #DilleyMemeTeam, who “convene in a private Telegram channel to share ideas and pick targets. Many also faithfully tune into Mr. Dilley’s daily podcast, where he talks at length about the group’s activities, interacts with a small but devoted audience and promotes his 2013 self-help book, Still Breathin’: The Wisdom and Teachings of a Perfectly Flawed Man,” Bensinger reported (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/13/us/politics/trump-meme-trolls-2024.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Fk0.Ljol.NEtZX7JMWyda&smid=tw-share).
As People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch recently noted, it is important to pay attention to Dilley “given that he has now established such close ties with Trump’s campaign, [and] it is even more important to expose how overtly racist, unapologetically misogynistic, and gleefully amoral he is.”
Right Wing Watch’s Kyle Mantyle pointed out that Dilley, who is a right-wing broadcaster and also claims to be a “life coach,” has said “that that he has no problem ‘making shit up’ because his ‘objective is to destroy Democrats’ and ‘anything that opposes President Trump.’”
“You don’t have to fact check me because I don’t give a fuck,” Dilley added. “I fucking make up shit sometimes, from time to time. I don’t care. I don’t care. Democrats know it. Republicans know it. I don’t mind admitting it. I don’t give a shit … When I get a chance to shit on the left, I don’t mind making shit up. No, not at all.”
In 2019, on his livestream of “The Dilley Show,” “Brenden Dilley told his audience that they had ‘better start developing a stomach for death’ because President Donald Trump will soon start executing his political enemies en masse in order to save the nation,” Mantyle reported.
“You better start developing a stomach for death, because you’re about to see a whole shit ton of it publicly,” Dilley said. “You can’t escape it. The crimes that have been committed against the United States of America are punishable by death, and I fucking firmly believe that should this Justice Department do their job to the fullest extent of the law, you will have to deal with and cope with more and more people being put to death as a result of their crimes.”
Dilley added: “Develop a stomach for it. Develop a will for it. You want to save your fucking country? This is what it’s going to take. It’s going to take you having the stomach and the spine and the fucking testicular fortitude to support the president of the United States and the Department of Justice firmly imposing the law of the land.”
Ultimately, the Dilley Meme Team helped take down Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ presidential aspirations. “We will meme that disloyal dog into oblivion and make him permanently unelectable just like Ted Cruz,” Dilley once tweeted. According to Daily Dot, “On X, [formerly Twitter] Dilley posted ‘The Dilley Meme Team = Trump’s Online War Machine’ in the wake of Trump sharing one of their videos.”
With memes flying all over the web, the possibility of AI distorting voices, a maelstrom of photo-shopped photos, and conspiracies galore, the 2024 presidential election promises to be the most online election in American history.
