The “journalist” at the centre of a viral clash over alleged Somalian welfare fraud once paid Hispanic laborers to protest outside the White House in support of President Joe Biden.
Nick Shirley, 23, is currently being praised and amplified by the MAGA right, including FBI Director Kash Patel and billionaire Elon Musk, for a video purporting to reveal “Minnesota’s Billion Dollar Fraud Scandal.”
While the YouTuber with no journalism background and only a high school-level education claims to “bring the truth to all” of his 1.35 million subscribers, he has previously been shown to be staging his content.
Last year, in a video titled “I Took Migrants to Visit Joe Biden,” Shirley rounded up people in Washington, D.C., loaded them into a van, and brought them to the White House to demand an audience with Joe Biden. He pays them all $20 for their time.
The stunt aligns with Shirley’s history of Mr. Beast-style shock content, but is deeply problematic for the self-described “100% independent journalist” as it contravenes several professional ethical codes.
The Utah native who has been making right wing-aligned content for the past few years is part of the new wave of conservative influencers blurring the lines between journalism and agenda-pushing who have been embraced by the Trump administration.
“This dude has done far more useful journalism than any of the winners of the 2024 Pulitzer prizes,” Vice President JD Vance wrote in response to his Minnesota video published on Dec. 26.
The video causing political waves purports to reveal that millions of dollars in government funding are being fraudulently claimed by child day-care center operators in Minnesota and are allegedly being funnelled to terrorist organisations in Somalia like Al-Shabaab.
The claims made in the video have been thoroughly discredited, while the story itself is at least five years old. Five of the centers Shirley visited have previously been the subject of federal investigation into fraudulent benefit claims and cleared of wrongdoing, while dozens of individuals were otherwise convicted.
Still, the Department of Health and Human Services threatened to freeze all child care payments to the state while the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI have both said they are ramping up investigations into the issue.
In a race-baiting rant at his Mar-a-Lago New Year’s Eve party, President Donald Trump claimed the Minnesota fraudsters had stolen $18 billion—a figure which appears to correspond with total federal funding for 14 social programs in the state since 2018.
“Can you imagine, they stole $18 billion,” Trump told guests at his Palm Beach club. “That’s just what we’re learning about.”
Shirley, who has been confronted by CNN over issues with his reporting, has claimed that the “mainstream media” is attacking him and politicizing his claims.
The child care centers involved have reportedly received hundreds of death and bomb threats, while Somali-run day cares in Ohio have reportedly been harassed.
“This is a targeted attack on our community,” Ayan Jama, manager at Mini Childcare Center in Minneapolis, has said.
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