In the wake of the Democrats’ midterm wins, CNN’s Van Jones and Kaitlan Collins reveled in one of the more successful deceptive strategies the left used to overwhelm Republicans on economic issues like “affordability.”
Jones admitted that the economy really isn’t as bad as portrayed, and that the Democrats knew this (surprise!), but rather than simply program their candidates and campaigns with duplicitous messaging, they took it several steps further. And the Republicans never figured it out.
Jones told Collins how the Democrats discreetly organized tens of thousands of people to serve as chartered trolls as part of the “American Accountability Network.” Jones did not make clear whether these people were compensated or not.
"The Republicans never figured out what we were doing," Jones said in-studio to a smiling Collins. "There's something called the American Accountability Network (AAN), tens of thousands of online humans, not bots, coordinated to make the affordability message a winning message online. 32.5 million people hit on Instagram every day. 88.8 million hit on Twitter, X, every single day. And 185 million Facebook hits every single day. And they never figured it out."
"The Republicans could not understand it wasn't bots. It was actual human beings," he said.
Oil crashed the day after Democrats took Congress. Then Van Jones went on CNN and admitted the quiet part out loud. The day after the election, Brent crude fell 8.7% in a single day. WTI fell 13% on the week. Worst week for oil since COVID. Nothing about the war changed overnight. Only the election ended. And it is still falling this morning. WTI is down near $87 a barrel. Tankers are still getting hit near the Strait of Hormuz. But the fear is gone, right on schedule. The official story is that traders think a Democrat Congress will force Trump to end the Iran war. Maybe. Hold that thought. Because then Van Jones went on CNN and bragged about how they did it. His exact words: 'The Republicans never figured out what we were doing.' Jones said Democrats ran something called the American Accountability Network. Tens of thousands of real people. Not bots. Coordinated to post the same message, everywhere, every day. And the message never changed. Everything is unaffordable. Gas costs too much. And it is all the Republicans' fault. Jones said they tied kitchen table pain to Democrats on a positive and Republicans on a negative. The scale he claimed: 32.5 million hits a day on Instagram. 88.8 million on X. 185 million on Facebook. That is not a campaign. That is a flood. And it was aimed at your gas tank. This was not some random group either. The network's own partner list includes the DNC, the DCCC, the DSCC, MoveOn, the AFL-CIO and the SEIU. The whole machine, working one message. So here is the question people are asking now. If the crisis was real, why did oil fall off a cliff the morning after the votes were counted? Inventories actually went down that week. Less oil sitting around usually means higher prices. Prices crashed anyway. They did not win on policy. They won on volume. They manufactured a crisis, pointed it at your gas tank, and flooded every feed in America until it worked. And Jones said the network is not going away. What were you paying for gas on Election Day? https://t.co/yr71yF4D2l
— Gentry Gevers (@gentrywgevers) November 9, 2026
I hate to say this, but a lot of us did see what was going on, and we were saying things about it on our social feeds. I blocked hundreds of these people. Although I never realized exactly who they were, I saw the pattern. I could even predict how these people would respond if I posted on certain topics, like affordability, the economy, and the fakeness of Texas Senator-elect James Talarico.
It’s a wonder that the Republicans did not see this and have an answer for it.
According to the American Accountability Network’s (AAN’s) website, some of the names on its long list of past clients include AFL-CIO, AFSCME, American Federation of Teachers, DCCC, Human Rights Campaign, League of Conservation Voters, MoveOn, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, Joe Biden, SEIU, Sen. Jon Ossoff, Kamala Harris, and VoteVets.
In his victory celebration on the CNN set, Jones told Collins that the end result of the propaganda campaign was, “everywhere you go, people are talking about affordability.”
He added that Democrats were having trouble getting any “traction” on culture war issues, but thanks to the AAN, the left “figured out how to get around all that.”
So, it’s not just all the door knocking that was done which was amazing. It’s not just our amazing candidate quality. We had something called the American Accountability Network.
Don’t get mad at me, I was given permission to reveal this. They never figured it out and that network is going to continue to push for kitchen table issues and hold our democratic lawmakers accountable, Jones added.
Collins found all of this “fascinating.” Of course, it’s fascinating when Democrats do it, but if Republicans did it, it would be criminal to Collins and her ilk.
In my work in crisis and issues management, I’ve come up against organizations like the AAN and their clients. While I can’t speak to how the AAN waged this specific campaign, to give you a little inside baseball, here’s how they typically operate.
Many compensate their “volunteer” trolls with stringer or freelancer cash, or sometimes with gift cards. The trolls are given metric goals to hit to make more money or win prizes like those gift cards. So, if you’re one of the trolls they recruit, the more active you are at “engaging” with your opponents and getting clicks and shares, the more money you make.
The trolls are trained and given key messaging documents. They may role-play with each other to practice techniques for baiting conservatives into debating them online. Their goal is to drive you crazy and, in the process, create the perception that you’re the unhinged side of the debate, in this case, on the affordability issue.
Their audience is people who are scrolling TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and X.
It’s not hard for them to find their army of trolls. Since Democrats own the labor unions, teachers’ unions, Antifa types, and professional agitator sector, all they have to do is put the word out, and the would-be trolls come calling.
Troll farms and their organizers have sophisticated monitoring systems in place so that they are alerted whenever a social media user posts one of the keywords they are watching for. If you use one of their keywords, as soon as your post pops up on their screen, they attack. Sometimes in swarms.
Over the years, one type of post I’ve made has always brought the paid trolls out of the woodwork. Whenever I’ve seen a fake protest, I have posted something to the effect of, “Who’s paying for this?”
That’s like throwing red meat into a hyena’s cage. “No one is paying for it!” is the message from the mob. The attacks get personal real quick.
Another technique these firms like to use is something they used to call a “Twitter storm.” That’s a pre-planned, scheduled attack on an unsuspecting target. One telltale sign of a Twitter storm is when you see the term “recently discovered social media posts.” Usually, that’s a pre-planned social media storm. They’ve been sitting on those posts for a long time, most likely, and they already have the campaign ready to take those posts out of context and smear the poster. This is how, overnight, you start hearing about a particular celebrity or politician who didn’t bow to the left’s sacred cows on cue.
Speaking of sacred cows, one example was in the waning days of the Abdul El-Sayed campaign. Republicans attacked the now-Senator-elect for refusing to disavow the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood.
While I can’t know whether the AAN was involved with this, I did see the obvious pattern of paid trolls trying to reframe the issue on social media as MAGA attacking El-Sayed for how he practices his faith. I pointed this out on October 20.
That was when I wrote about a “spontaneous” outbreak of posts that supposedly came from authentic Christians with no political agenda. They all featured the term “As a Christian,” just before launching into a defense of El-Sayed amid his refusal to distance himself from radical Islam.
The two-pronged strategy in this op is first to shift the focus away from El-Sayed’s consistent association with and support of radical Islamic figures and organizations, and to reframe it all as El-Sayed being a man of faith, just like President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was a misunderstood Catholic when he ran for president, I wrote.
On October 16, I wrote about the same sort of propaganda on social media, but with a different term. This time, the campaign was built around the term “Lifelong Republican.”
Apparently, the term is performing quite well in Democrat research when coupled with related content on how said 'lifelong Republican' is dissatisfied with President Donald Trump, his administration, and Republicans in general. By 'performing quite well,' I mean it’s effectively working to give Republicans pause and perhaps influence them to give up on voting in the midterms, I wrote.
Even now, don’t think the propaganda has stopped. You’re being bombarded with supposedly rational explanations as to why the Democrats won in so many places where they had never won before.
To be sure, the propaganda techniques the Democrats are still using are powerful. They likely swayed no small number of independents and squishy Republican voters. But in cases where other shenanigans are at play, that’s where the Democrats are still on the offensive, attacking anyone who might question the results and calling their targets “conspiracy theorists.”
If you think the election is over, it’s not. The campaign now is to kill any attempts to re-examine the midterm results and suspicious activities, and to set the stage to intimidate anyone who might try to hold the new Democrat majorities in Congress and the Senate to account.
Reader’s Note: Find out what you’re missing behind the members-only wall. It’s time for you to take advantage of the full catalogue of common-sense thinking that comes with a PJ Media VIP membership. You’ll get access to content you didn’t even know you wanted, and you’ll be hooked. The good news is, PJ Media VIP memberships are on sale! Get 60% off of an annual VIP, VIP Gold, or VIP Platinum membership! Use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off a VIP membership!
Join the Conversation
VIP members get the ability to comment on articles.