Dilley Meme Team: Pro-Trump group is behind video mentioning “united empire”

A video posted to Donald Trump's Truth Social account this week included a reference to the creation of a “united empire,” provoking outrage from Democrats. The Trump team later deleted the post.

The campaign attributed the creation of the post to a “random account” and said the employee who published the post did not notice the words. However, the true origin of the post was a trolling group of online influencers called the “Dilley Meme Team.”

It is a dedicated group, mostly operating under pseudonyms, that produces a lot of pro-Trump videos and images, many of which are crude, offensive, satirical or conspiracy-theoretical, while others are more traditional and religious in nature.

The Dilley Meme Team boasts of its ties to the Trump campaign, which has given it an unusual status among a host of accounts and loose organizations dedicated to online combat.

To underscore the importance of the digital battle in this election campaign, the Biden team recently published an ad for the position of “Content and Meme Pages Partner Manager.”

The 30-second clip, posted to Trump's Truth Social account on Monday, outlined a vision of the United States when he returns to the White House.

The video contained fake newspaper headlines suggesting a hypothetical Trump victory.

One of them mentioned the “creation of a unified empire,” a term often associated with Nazi Germany today. The text seemed to draw on a historical reference to German unification into a single empire in 1871.

The video sparked a wave of coverage and controversy and was later deleted – but it was just one of dozens of videos and images from the Dilley Meme Team shared by official Trump accounts in recent months.

Some of the videos and memes created by the team – which consists of around two dozen accounts – are crude and offensive parodies of music videos or other content.

Some of their clips have portrayed Nikki Haley as a prostitute, Ron DeSantis' wife Casey DeSantis as a porn star and President Biden as a pedophile. Others allude to conspiracy theories about the “deep state,” federal agents and vaccines.

Mr Trump's accounts prefer to repost some of the less aggressive content the team produces, such as a video titled “God Made Trump” that went viral in MAGA (Make America Great Again) circles ahead of the Iowa caucuses that kicked off the race for the Republican nomination.

The clip is based on an old speech by a radio host and portrays Trump as hard-working, selfless and sent directly from heaven to fulfill God's mission. Many Trump supporters were excited, but it angered some Christians.

Other videos from the Dilley Meme Team, such as a compilation of clips showing Joe Biden stumbling, were played at Trump campaign rallies.

Most members of the collective perform under false names, but the group's founder and namesake, Brenden Dilley, publishes and hosts a podcast under his own name.

Mr. Dilley describes himself as an entrepreneur, life coach, self-help author and fitness expert.

He frequently rails against Trump's opponents and uses homophobic epithets on his online show and podcast. When asked for comment, Mr. Dilley responded with several insults and profanities.

In 2018, he ran for Congress in an Arizona district and finished 11th in the Republican primary with just over 1% of the vote.

There is no evidence that the Dilley Meme Team is funded by the Trump campaign — in fact, the money flows in the opposite direction. According to Federal Election Commission records, Mr. Dilley and his company have donated at least $7,000 to Mr. Trump's campaign, Trump-affiliated political action committees and the Republican National Committee.

And Mr. Dilley and his meme-makers boasted about their access to the campaign, saying they received Trump-themed gifts, press passes to rallies and invitations to Mr. Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort.

The New York Times reported in December that Mr Trump suggested changes to a video by the Dilley Meme Team that were eagerly adopted.

Following media coverage of the “Reich” video, Mr. Dilley alluded to things in his podcast that he “cannot speak about publicly.”

“I can't discuss any of this,” he said. “They slander me in the media.”

The Trump team was asked for comment.

Mr Dilley's group has expressed its absolute loyalty to Mr Trump, and some of its worst and sharpest attacks have been directed against his Republican rivals.

He posted on X earlier this week: “I have five months left to do my part to get President Trump elected and then I will get back to my other business.”

Kayla Gogarty, director of research at Media Matters for America, a left-wing organization that monitors conservative and far-right publications, said Mr. Trump began sharing videos from the Dilley Meme Team around the time of the 2022 midterm elections.

“His rhetoric is particularly shocking considering his close ties to [Trump] campaign and with mainstream Republicans,” she said.

The group's aggressive approach was celebrated by some of Trump's biggest supporters.

“Thank you to the Dilley Meme Team!” exclaimed Trump supporter Kari Lake after a member of the team created a video with highlights of the Republican Senate candidate from Arizona.

Another conservative influencer tweeted about the Biden campaign's job posting: “You won't be able to run against the Dilley Meme Team because your Warlord Brenden doesn't play games!”

Other Trump supporters, however, believe that the furore surrounding the “United Empire” video shows the flaws and drawbacks of the scorched earth meme war.

“They exist to attack, to insult, to slander, and it's all ad hominem,” said John Cardillo, a former New York Police Department officer turned conservative commentator. “None of their attacks are political.”

Mr. Cardillo is a longtime fan of Mr. Trump who still supports the former president but backed Mr. DeSantis in the early stages of the Republican primaries.

He said the group is making a big mistake by attacking conservatives who dare to express dissenting opinions, and its tactics have backfired. He argued that the controversy over the Reich video, while exaggerated, is a gift to Democrats, and that the Dilley Meme Team is doing the Trump campaign “an incredible disservice.”

“The backlash was tremendous,” he said. “Team Biden, who I don't think I've ever said a positive word about, turned it into a very effective campaign ad.”