The Amount Biden Spent On Influencers is STAGGERING!

older man speaking in close-up portrait — Photo: Maverick Pictures / Shutterstock

The Biden White House paid nearly 100 online influencers to sell Americans on the COVID vaccine while federal officials leaned on tech platforms to bury reporters who questioned that same vaccine.

Quick Take

The White House recruited almost 100 influencers, including pop star Olivia Rodrigo and TikTok comedian Benny Drama, to promote COVID vaccines starting in 2021.
Federal courts later found the administration likely violated the First Amendment by pressuring social media companies to remove COVID-related content.
The Gateway Pundit reports it was censored for covering vaccine dangers and the virus’s origin in Wuhan at the same time the influencer campaign ran.
The Justice Department has since settled multiple lawsuits over the censorship claims, with some agencies barred from similar conduct for ten years.

An Army of Influencers Sent to Sell the Shot

Washingtonian magazine reported in September 2021 that the White House had recruited almost 100 online influencers to spread vaccine messaging. The list included comedian Seth Phillips, known as Dude With Sign, along with Olivia Rodrigo, Benny Drama, and wildlife personality Coyote Peterson. These were not fringe accounts. They were some of the biggest names on the internet, brought in to reach young Americans skeptical of the shot.

Olivia Rodrigo met with President Biden and Doctor Anthony Fauci at the White House to film vaccine videos for her millions of followers, ABC News reported in July 2021. Weeks later, Benny Drama posted an Instagram video playing a White House intern pushing the vaccine message, part of what Fox News called an “eyebrow-raising” digital push. The administration also built a wider coalition of community, religious, and celebrity partners under a campaign called We Can Do This, aimed squarely at hard-hit and hesitant communities.

Courts Found a Pressure Campaign on Platforms

While influencers sang the vaccine’s praises, a separate legal fight was building over how the government treated critics online. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Biden administration “ran afoul” of the First Amendment by pressuring platforms over COVID-19 content, according to Fox News coverage of the 75-page opinion. House investigators later released emails showing top officials pushing Facebook and Twitter to remove posts the government labeled misinformation.

The Supreme Court eventually threw out the broader lawsuit, ruling the plaintiffs lacked legal standing to sue, the Wall Street Journal reported. That decision did not erase the underlying record of contacts between officials and platforms. It simply meant the specific plaintiffs in that case could not proceed. Separate settlements followed anyway, suggesting the government saw legal exposure worth resolving rather than fighting further.

Gateway Pundit Says It Paid the Price

The Gateway Pundit says investigative journalist Natalie Winters uncovered records showing the same administration paying influencers to promote the vaccine while censoring outlets that reported on its risks and on the virus’s origin in Wuhan. The outlet frames this as a coordinated effort: fund friendly voices, silence unfriendly ones. That is a serious charge, and the paid-influencer piece of it is well documented by mainstream outlets years before Gateway Pundit’s own report.

The censorship half of the claim also has real teeth. The Justice Department settled a lawsuit alleging the Biden State Department silenced disfavored speech through its Global Engagement Center. Another settlement, reported by The Hill, bars the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the Surgeon General’s office from pressuring social media firms for ten years. Agencies do not accept decade-long restrictions over conduct they consider innocent.

Two Truths That Do Not Sit Well Together

The administration has always said its outreach to platforms was about stopping dangerous misinformation, not muzzling critics. That defense deserves a fair hearing. But it strains credibility when the same government spending public trust on Olivia Rodrigo videos was, by court findings, also pushing tech companies to bury Americans asking hard questions. Openness about the influencer campaign does not excuse quiet pressure on the censorship side.

For readers who lived through 2021, the pattern feels familiar. Officials picked winners and losers in the information war, using charm on one side and coercion on the other. Courts have already confirmed part of that record. The rest, including Gateway Pundit’s specific claims about targeted censorship, deserves the same scrutiny that exposed the influencer payments in the first place. The public paid for both campaigns. It deserves the full truth about each.