Ex-MAGA influencer reveals Trump's Hollywood gimmicks to create 'fake legitimacy'

Fans of President Donald Trump's MAGA movement regularly claim that they hate what Hollywood represents, but the two worlds are much closer than once thought, according to one ex-MAGA influencer.

Ashley St. Clair, a former influencer, said during an interview on "The Lincoln Project Podcast" with Rick Wilson that Trump uses several Hollywood-learned tricks to create a sense of "fake legitimacy." They include using nefarious paid campaigns to coordinate messaging among influencers, and finding the right people to deliver specific messages, such as hiring attractive young women to push messages that sound "abrasive" coming from a man.

She also noted that a lot of the "culture change" within the movement to embrace Hollywood was driven from the top down by Trump, and they have helped ingrain Trump's own identity issues in the movement.

"They really cultivate, as much as they claim to hate Hollywood, everything they do is mimicking and mirroring what they do in Hollywood to try to fake this legitimacy," St. Clair said. "That really stems from someone like Donald Trump, who was upset that he wasn't invited to the nice, glitzy parties back in the day and said, 'I'll throw my own at Mar-a-Lago.'"

"So that really comes from the top down, this culture of wanting to be important," she added. "And ... it's so fascinating that they're so fixated on the issue of identity and the trans issues because these people have more identity issues than anyone I've ever met. They have no idea who they are. They're constantly clamoring to be something or someone. And so I always found that fascinating to contrast."