I'm not sure if you missed this from WESA recently:
Pennsylvania Sen. Doug Mastriano’s campaign for governor in Pennsylvania paid $5,000 for “consulting services” to Gab, a social media platform that provides a home for conspiracy theories and antisemitic content.
Or this Rolling Stone article:
Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, appears to have paid the far-right platform Gab for followers. An investigation by Huffpost found that new accounts on the website automatically follow Doug Mastriano, exponentially increasing his follower count since he paid $5,000 in “consulting” fees to the platform in April.
Lots to unpack here so let's get going.
You can find the record of that consulting fee payment here (p 142):
And based on this filing with the FEC, we're talking about the same on-line platform.
So that's all solid.
Anyway, back to Rolling Stone:
What sort of “consulting” Mastriano’s campaign received is unclear, but he is gaining an audience on the Nazi-loving platform. According to Huffpost, there are only seven accounts automatically followed by new users: Mastriano, Gab founder Andrew Torba, and a selection of right-wing media outlets. Since the payment was made in April, Mastriano’s follower base has grown from less than 3,000 to upwards of 37,000.
And here's a current (7:18 am on 7/18/2022) screen grab of Doug's Gab page:
Yep, there it is. 37K.
So let's see part of what PA State Senator (and now GOP candidate for PA Gov) Doug Mastriano got for his five large.
Well, this was posted at Gab a few days ago:
Seems fairly typical, no?
But a day or so later there's this:
At about the same time, this was posted at Doug's Gab page:
And that generated some interesting comments, too!
Take a look:
THAT'S what Doug Mastriano - State Senator from Pennsylvania and now current GOP Candidate for Pennsylvania Governor got for his five thousand dollars.
As former GOP Senate Candidate once famously put it, "Unless you denounce something, you've endorsed it."
Has Doug denounced the anti-Semites following him on Gab?
You shall know him by the company he keeps - Aesop.
