Scott Presler has built a persona as a tall, very friendly, and gay face of the MAGA movement. His long brown hair flows past his shoulders, his cowboy boots accentuating his 6’5” frame. His profile on X lists his location as “Make Kindness Cool Again.” Last week he smiled for every photo and shook hands with every fan who followed him to a county commissioners’ meeting in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The meeting itself was less chipper, with Presler’s acolytes repeatedly shouting “TRAITOR!” at a Democratic official, but Presler himself stayed upbeat.
“For the first time in modern history, there are more registered Republicans than Democrats here in this county,” Presler said as he addressed the commissioners. “This speech I’m doing right now is going to be seen by millions across the country, the Commonwealth and the world, and I have a message: Congratulations to President-elect Donald J. Trump, the 45th and 47th president of the United States of America!”
It was a bold claim for a fluorescent-lit local government meeting, but it was true. Presler’s speech was clipped and shared across YouTube, X, Rumble (a video streaming site that’s often home to the canceled), and elsewhere.
Presler told CNN one reason he was at the meeting was to take a victory lap after Pennsylvania voted for Donald Trump in the 2024 election, cracking the Democrats’ “blue wall.” He took credit for the change, having created a PAC, Early Vote Action, to register new Republican voters, targeting groups like the Amish, frat guys, and hunters. The PAC got a $1 million donation from Elon Musk. This fall, he spoke about his get-out-the-vote efforts on tons of right-wing podcasts, a core part of the pro-Trump media ecosystem, including those hosted by Donald Trump Jr, Steven Bannon, Megyn Kelly, Dan Bongino, Benny Johnson, and Charlie Kirk.
On Kelly’s show, Presler called himself “a data guy,” and got into the weeds on voter registration numbers. It’s a remarkable shift given his background. He first gained fame with provocative stunts that often landed him on local news, like organizing a “March Against Sharia” in 2017, even though there is no sharia law in America. He organized a cleanup in Baltimore after Trump tweeted that it was a trash-covered city. He was also involved with Gays for Trump. He was at the insurrection of January 6, 2021, and called it: “The largest civil rights protest in American history.”
Presler built a name for himself with social media outrage and has used that fame to move into more concrete political action. You don’t have to take the mainstream media’s word on that — that assessment is shared by Steven Crowder, whose YouTube channel was demonetized repeatedly and suspended for homophobic comments and cyberbullying, and now streams on Rumble.
“A lot of people come up as social media influencers and then they just fizzle out. They don’t really do anything — it’s just outrage porn,” Crowder said on his Rumble podcast as he introduced Presler. “But you actually took the opportunity and started doing something quantifiable.”
“I have grown in how I approach politics,” Presler told CNN. “I see my work and my evolution in politics as — I laid a foundation and now I am meticulously building on that an esoteric understanding of how politics is going to win elections, focusing on demographic groups, get them registered, get them mobilized, get them out to vote.”
Asked what he meant by esoteric, Presler gave the example of the topic of voter registration: “That’s good. But how about voter registration at every single gun show? At every single archery (event)? Taking it and honing it in on particular groups of individuals that I know are going to vote more conservatively.”
In the runup to the election, Presler talked extensively about those small groups, including “our beautiful truckers” and “our beautiful hunters.” On Kelly’s podcast, he said, “In talking to our beautiful Amish, there’s kind of a stigma that they shouldn’t be voting. Some of their Amish elders are against it, and you know what? We’re using the Democrat strategy of mail-in with the Amish. And when I tell the Amish that they can vote a private, secret ballot that is mailed to their house, and they don’t have to have their buggy seen going to a polling location, they love the mail-in ballot.”
Trump won all seven swing states, despite spending less money and with a smaller get-out-the-vote operation than Kamala Harris, so it seems unlikely Presler’s work is solely what made the difference. And an early assessment of turnout by LancasterOnline said that, while some precincts in areas with a significant Amish population saw higher turnout, some saw lower.
Pat Poprik, chair of the Bucks County Republican Party, said, “There’s been an effort with the Amish for years. So, I know Scott might have helped there, but I can tell you that’s been an ongoing effort for the party to get them, and they finally have started to do it.” She was generally very complimentary of Presler, and asked about his future within the party, she said, “He’s very active. He motivates people. He’s got a great following … So, I think, yes, he’s definitely got a place to help us.”
The crowd at the Bucks County commissioners’ meeting was thick with adoring Presler fans. Julie Ambolino praised his “phenomenal efforts.” She said, “He has done incredible amount of work, boots on the ground,” though she had mostly viewed that through social media. Miriam Logan said she used the Early Vote Action app to reach out to voters with handwritten postcards.
“He’s the most dynamic Republican in Pennsylvania,” Edward Mackhouse said. “He’s the most brilliant dynamic leader I’ve seen … The way he just stands up and excites the crowd is amazing. I’ve never seen anyone do it that.”
The sunny positivity before and after the meeting didn’t quite match what happened inside it. Presler and his followers had targeted the session after a Democratic county commissioner, Diane Ellis-Marseglia, had wanted some unsigned and undated ballots to be counted. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court had already ruled that would not happen, but there was still tension in the air.
Ellis-Marseglia apologized profusely. “I made a mistake, and because I am an elected official, I am held to a far higher standard than everybody else. So, to the citizens I serve, I apologize.” She received many boos and jeers.
“I think what you heard today is the frustration of people that have been told they are election deniers, and here we have a sitting commissioner that’s an election denier,” Presler said in explanation. “It’s almost karmic, and yes, that’s why, in part, we were here to take a victory lap. We won, and we did it fair and square.”
