The Mystery Firms Behind the Liberal Facebook Ads Dubbing a Hawaii Rep a ‘CWILF’ – By Lachlan Markay (dailybeast.com) / Sept 20 2018
One calls Tulsi Gabbard ‘the hottest member of Congress on either side of the aisle.’ And it’s part of a series of pages from four companies traced to one Democratic law firm.
A handful of newly incorporated limited liability companies is using a huge network of Facebook pages to mount a series of social-media attacks on Republican Party policies, donors, and political candidates, with some of the ads hitting some conspicuously sexist notes.
A pair of posts promoted this week on a Facebook page titled The Keg Bros contained two videos, one attacking Republican megadonor Rebekah Mercer and one hailing Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard. “Hawaii’s Tulsi Gabbard makes us want to go Democrat,” reads text in one of the videos, interspersed with footage of Mike Myers’ Austin Powers mouthing “hot hot hot.” It adds, “America’s voted, and she’s the hottest member of Congress on either side of the aisle.”
The ad ends by declaring Gabbard a “certified C.W.I.L.F.,” presumably short for “congresswoman I’d like to fuck.”
The other ad, focusing on Mercer, dubs the wealthy Trump donor “FILTHY rich,” emphasis on filthy. “Her only job was making sex cookies with names like ‘creamy seduction,’” it says, a reference to a story about a bakery owned by Mercer. “It’s no wonder her husband was desperate to get away from this BEAST,” the video concludes in a shot at Mercer’s reported divorce proceedings.
Given the content of the videos and the name of the Facebook page posting them, they might appear to be your standard internet bro fare, a la Barstool Sports or the Lad Bible. But the promoted videos are actually part of a sprawling network of Facebook pages running ads paid for by a handful of companies traced to a Democratic law firm in Colorado.
The Keg Bros video ads were paid for by a company called Right Call Media LLC. The same videos popped up in promoted posts by a similarly named page, The KEG. Those ads were paid for by a company called Smashbutton Media LLC. Right Call and Smashbutton were both incorporated in June by Tierney Lawrence, a self-described “progressive law firm” in Denver that does business with a number of Democratic Party candidates, party organs, and interest groups at the state and federal levels.
An examination of incorporation records and Facebook ad data shows that Tierney Lawrence is behind a handful of such companies that have bought Facebook ads through at least 42 different pages, all created since July, targeted to various demographics, in efforts undercut Republican political and policy efforts.
Right Call and Smashbutton both share a mailing address—a Denver P.O. Box—with another company involved in the effort, New American Media Group LLC. That firm has purchased ads by way of a Spanish-language page called Corazon Coqui. The only other company to buy ads on that page is a company called News for Democracy LLC.
Tierney Lawrence acts as the registered agent for the companies, all four of which were formed this summer. Right Call, Smashbutton, and New American Media Group, all three incorporated on the same day in June, list the same Denver mailing address; News for Democracy, formed in late August, lists a P.O. box in Brooklyn. Cara Lawrence, the Tierney Lawrence partner who filed incorporation records for all four, refused to discuss the Facebook ads, or put us in touch with someone who could.
Together, the four companies have purchased more than 2,000 Facebook ads targeted at groups including—in addition to bros and Spanish-language speakers—women, seniors, military veterans, Christians, and even, in underhanded fashion, Trump supporters.
It’s a sophisticated social-media strategy that comes as Democratic political groups in particular begin exploring novel ways to use Facebook and other social media to promote their messaging, often in a manner that conceals their explicitly political objectives. But unlike cases documented by PAY DIRT in the past, this effort is going on without any public indication of who is behind it.
Though many of the network’s ads fall short of being overtly political, some go explicitly after Republicans facing tough electoral fights in November. The network has paid for ads attacking North Dakota Senate candidate Kevin Cramer, Florida Senate candidate Rick Scott, and Florida Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart.
Some of the Facebook pages, such as Left Out Loud and Left AF, are explicitly liberal in their outlook. But others, with vaguely patriotic names such as Self-Reliant Republic, My America, and Our Flag Our Country, seem tailored to Facebook users that might be less amenable to ads from a group more upfront about its political leanings. Comments on non-promoted Self-Reliant Republic posts, for instance, are filled with perturbed conservatives. “Why does this bullshit page keep popping up on my timeline, and how the fuck do I block them?!” one asked recently.
Still others appear to be covert attempts to sow discontent among conservative readers. Smashbutton bought a series of ads through the page Drain The Swamp News in July, after Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, that sought to stoke conservative suspicions of the judge. “Brett Kavanaugh investigated the death of Vince Foster and cleared the Clintons. What does he know?” some of the ads declared. Others called him “the Clintons’ personal investigator.” One dubbed him “FRIEND OF BUSH. NOT TRUMP.”
Other pages through which the four companies have bought ads are made to sound like news organizations. They include World News Reporter, Pacific Sun Chronicle, Lone Star Tribune, Golden State Observer, Heartland Gazette, Gulf State News, and Mountain West Standard. But all of them are being used to mount digital ad campaigns, often employing the same memes and videos, to boost Democratic policies, candidates, or ideas, or knock down the opposition.
Much of the ad content consists of minute-long videos, all nearly identically stylized, and memes tailored to current events and the pages’ political leanings—Trump’s face superimposed on Scumbag Steve, for instance. Various ads hit Trump and the GOP on policies including immigration, trade, criminal justice, health care, entitlement, and student loans. Some are less concerned with policy, simply dubbing Trump, in the words of one Left AF ad, the “worst. president. ever.”
It’s a sweeping social-media strategy, and one that appears designed to conceal the identities and motives of the people behind it—at least from the Facebook users viewing their ads. Facebook’s new ad-disclosure tool has provided valuable new insights into the individual organizations paying for ads on its platform, but obtaining information about the sponsors themselves remains difficult.
In the meantime, many of the pages this network is using to buy ads have already shuttered. Though their videos are still available in Facebook’s ad archive, The KEG and The Keg Bros themselves are no more.
