Conspiracy theorist Brenden Dilley got press passes to the Trump campaign’s Iowa caucus “War Room”

Brenden Dilley, a podcaster who has previously supported the QAnon conspiracy theory and leads a “meme team” that creates pro-Trump content, revealed on his show that he received press credentials from former President Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign for its Iowa caucus “War Room.” 

Dilley, who hosts an online show, is the leader of a “meme team” that reportedly refers to itself as Trump’s Online War Machine. He has openly admitted that “it doesn’t have to be true; it just has to go viral,” and that he “make[s] shit up” to further Trump’s agenda and destroy his opponents. As noted by The New York Times:

Cheered on by Mr. Trump, the group traffics freely in misinformation, artificial intelligence and digital forgeries known as deepfakes. Its memes are riddled with racist stereotypes, demeaning tropes about L.G.B.T.Q. people and broad scatological humor. 

Dilley himself is a known conspiracy theorist, previously promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory — wearing QAnon hats and covering posts from QAnon’s central figure “Q” on his show — and being banned from then-Twitter for spreading misinformation about the 2019 El Paso mass shooting. He has since returned to the platform, which is now known as X, and dubiously claimed that he “never was all in for Q.” 

Trump and his campaign have reportedly shared the group’s content and “have privately communicated with members of the meme team, giving them access and making specific requests for content,” and, “in at least one instance, the campaign shared behind-the-scenes footage to be used in videos, according to members of the team.” Trump has also “sent personalized notes to several of the group’s members, thanking them for their work.” 

Now, Dilley has disclosed that the campaign also gave him press passes. During a January 17 episode of his show, Dilley showed press credentials for the campaign’s Iowa caucus night, and said they gave him credentials “because I’m Brenden Dilley of the Dilley Meme Team.” He also bragged that he got a “special” and “exclusive” press credential that had “Dilley 300” written on it, which he claimed got him into the “Trump War Room,” where “you hang out with all these wonderful people, and Don Jr. comes through, and Eric Trump comes through, and pretty much the entire Team Trump comes through.”

According to Dilley, he was in the War Room with another member of the meme team Michael Beatty — who has also previously supported QAnon and is known online as “Miguelifornia” — and they got “the most royal treatment” from Trump’s team, with the campaign even offering “to bring guests soon” for The Dilley Show that day.