{"id":85481,"date":"2020-10-09T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-09T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/this-crypto-billionaire-is-running-for-president-with-akon-at-his-side\/"},"modified":"2020-10-09T15:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-10-09T12:00:00","slug":"this-crypto-billionaire-is-running-for-president-with-akon-at-his-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/this-crypto-billionaire-is-running-for-president-with-akon-at-his-side\/","title":{"rendered":"#This crypto-billionaire is running for president with Akon at his side"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_85 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a37a4a94db4c\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a37a4a94db4c\" checked aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><ul class='ez-toc-list-level-3' ><li class='ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/this-crypto-billionaire-is-running-for-president-with-akon-at-his-side\/#Hes_he_only_candidate_with_Akon_advising_him\" >He&#8217;s he only candidate with Akon advising him.<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/this-crypto-billionaire-is-running-for-president-with-akon-at-his-side\/#The_Daily_Dots_2020_election_coverage\" >The Daily Dot\u2019s 2020 election coverage<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<p>&#8220;<strong>#This crypto-billionaire is running for president with Akon at his side<br \/>\n<\/strong>&#8221;<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"article-sub-head\"><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Hes_he_only_candidate_with_Akon_advising_him\"><\/span>He&#8217;s he only candidate with Akon advising him. <span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<p><\/p>\n<div class=\"article-content-wrapper\">\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve been doing impossible things for a long time,\u201d said Brock Pierce. A former child actor who is now one of the wealthiest people in cryptocurrency, Pierce told me that his whole life he\u2019s been \u201ctesting the idea\u201d of whether something is impossible, or simply, \u201coutside of the scope of reality in its present form.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In November, when Pierce turns 40 years old, he\u2019ll take on \u201cthe biggest, most impossible mission there is.\u201d Twenty-four years after he starred alongside Sinbad as the mischievous son of fictional United States President Paul Davenport in the movie <em>First Kid,<\/em> Brock Pierce is running for president of the United States.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>We spoke on the steps of the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul on the morning of Sept. 3, moments after Pierce\u2019s official announcement. Pierce was clean shaven and upbeat, and had his shoulder length hair swept back under a red, white and blue trucker hat with his campaign\u2019s logo, the letter B written with a bolt of lightning.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m not sure there\u2019s a more dangerous job,\u201d said Pierce, of trying to break the United States much-maligned two-party duopoly. \u201cI\u2019m not sure there is a bigger or bolder job.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Brock Pierce is, in short, the most famous man running for president you\u2019ve never heard of, and to match, he\u2019s assembled the most bizarre campaign team you\u2019ve ever heard of.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Pierce\u2019s running mate is a fellow tech entrepreneur named Karla Ballard, who is light on political experience but is drawing on her heritage as <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/susanhollowayscott.com\/blog\/2019\/6\/9\/when-historical-fiction-and-reality-come-together-in-a-starbucks\">a descendant of the third U.S Vice President Aaron Burr<\/a>. Pierce\u2019s campaign manager is <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.harpercollins.com\/products\/targeted-brittany-kaiser?variant=32206057930786\">digital data activist<\/a> Brittany Kaiser, the <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=hecptCIksuU\">former Business Development Director turned whistleblower <\/a>at the infamous British data firm Cambridge Analytica. The last addition to the team was<a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/cheddar.com\/media\/exclusive-musician-akon-joins-crypto-investor-brock-pierces-presidential-campaign\"> his new chief strategic advisor<\/a>, a personal friend of his, the multi-platinum Senegalese-American recording artist Akon.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In recent years Akon has become a well-known philanthropist and an enthusiastic proponent of cryptocurrency, <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/newsbeat-44560789\">saying in 2018<\/a> that it could be \u201cthe savior of Africa.\u201d The day before Pierce\u2019s ceremony in St. Paul, Akon <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/APEntertainment\/status\/1300890199308763145?s=20\">laid the first stone<\/a> of <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/akoncity.com\/\">AKONCITY<\/a>, what he plans to be <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/travel\/article\/akon-city-senegal-wakanda-intl\/index.html\">a futuristic utopia akin to a \u201creal life Wakanda.\u201d<\/a> Outside of Dakar, Senegal, concept plans have it set to be <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.prweb.com\/releases\/ke_international_awarded_us_6_billion_construction_contract_for_akon_city_senegal\/prweb17165260.htm\">constructed by 2030<\/a>, and Akon plans for it run entirely on his own form of <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.akoin.io\/static\/wp\/Akoin-WP.pdf\">cryptocurrency<\/a>, <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.akoin.io\/\">Akoin<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>(There <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/decrypt.co\/17612\/why-akon-city-probably-wont-be-a-cryptopia\">are many reasons<\/a> to doubt the feasibility of the project, such as the fact that under 40% of the Senegalese population owns a cell phone that would be necessary to access Akoin, and early stills on <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-africa-44574969\">Akoncity\u2019s website had borrowed<\/a> images from another futuristic planned Senegalese city, Diamniadio Lake City. But just like Pierce, the goal is to <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">app<\/a>arently aim for the impossible).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps Pierce selected Akon for his campaign because of his own crypto-utopian ambitions. Pierce moved to Puerto Rico in 2018 after Hurricane Maria devastated the island, as part of a movement of \u201cPuertopians,\u201d who have been said to think of the island as their own blank canvas. In an article in the <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/02\/02\/technology\/cryptocurrency-puerto-rico.html\"><em>New York Times<\/em><\/a>, Pierce was portrayed as the de-facto political and spiritual leader of Puertopia. But, \u201cmake no mistake,\u201d <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2018\/03\/20\/puerto-rico-hurricane-maria-recovery\/\">wrote the best-selling journalist Naomi Klein<\/a> of Puertopians in her book <em>The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists,<\/em> \u201cthe true religion here is tax avoidance.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Pierce wanted to come home to the Twin Cities to <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=llMOjklnPD4\">formally announce his insurgent candidacy<\/a>. He grew up in St. Louis Park, a suburb west of Minneapolis and in the early 1990s Pierce attended an audition to play a young Gordon Bombay (portrayed by Emilio Estevez) in the first two installments <em>The Mighty Ducks <\/em>film trilogy<em>, <\/em>which were set and shot in the Twin Cities. \u201cI think everyone wants to come back and do something good for their community. The place that gave them life,\u201d said Pierce.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I arrived at the plaza in St. Paul to see a crowd on the steps of the capitol building, outfitted with campaign signs and shirts, chanting \u201cBrock the Vote.\u201d The number of Pierce staffers outnumbered the <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/social-mediaa\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"1\" title=\"Social Media\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">media<\/a> scrum, which included only this reporter and a handful of camera crews from local television <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/news\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"2\" title=\"News\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">news<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Kaiser, the campaign manager, began the ceremony by declaring that in the midst of the Pierce campaign, she had learned that there is something \u201cevery single American agrees upon,\u201d that can unite us all. Kaiser didn\u2019t divulge what that was, and her own personal politics are hard to pin down. She described herself to the <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=krY8DW3V2NU&amp;feature=emb_logo\"><em>Guardian<\/em><\/a> in 2018, as, \u201cmore libertarian these days, to be fair, but I\u2019ve always been a far left, human rights activist.\u201d Yet, Kaiser also took on a key role in what turned out to be an ethically disastrous company owned by the right-wing billionaire Robert Mercer, and said she used to have a spare key to \u201cThe Embassy,\u201d the D.C townhouse that former Trump campaign manager and Cambridge-Analytica board member Steve Bannon used as the headquarters of Breitbart News.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>After Kaiser left Cambridge-Analytica and became one of their foremost public critics, she was remorseful at what she had wrought. \u201cTo be honest, I regret not spending all those years only working for causes I believed in,\u201d she said to the <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=krY8DW3V2NU&amp;feature=emb_logo\"><em>Guardian<\/em><\/a>. \u201cI\u2019m not so interested in standing up for powerful white men who don\u2019t have everyone\u2019s best interest at heart.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>If that\u2019s her desire, it would seem that Kaiser has chosen the wrong new job, because soon after the ceremony in St. Paul, an appellate division of the Supreme Court directed the New York State Attorney <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/general\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"3\" title=\"General\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">General<\/a> to <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/michaeldelcastillo\/2020\/07\/09\/ny-supreme-court-approves-investigation-into-10-billion-cryptocurrency-created-by-a-presidential-candidate\/#1e2f7a72783b\">further investigate<\/a> the cryptocurrency that Pierce created called Tether \u201cstablecoin,\u201d and whether it\u2019s backers are misrepresenting the value. Then Pierce was served with securities fraud papers at his own campaign rally in New York City on September 15, <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/jameskoutoulas\/status\/1305584521170104323?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1305584521170104323%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ibtimes.com%2Fpresidential-candidate-brock-pierce-gets-fraud-suit-papers-own-campaign-rally-3045905\">reported on Twitter by the lead counsel in the lawsuit<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Then in an <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/meet-brock-pierce-the-presidential-candidate-with-ties-to-two-pedophiles-who-wants-to-end-human-trafficking\">interview with the Daily Beast<\/a>, reporter Tarpley Hitt noted that Pierce\u2019s own contributions reveal someone who shouldn\u2019t be described as an arbiter of independence. Although he did support former Obama advisor Brian Forde\u2019s run for California\u2019s 45th Congressional District in 2018 (a campaign buoyed by the cryptocurrency community), Pierce\u2019s political contributions\u2014like most people who are worth hundreds of millions of dollars\u2014appear to be driven by his own financial interest. That is to say he\u2019s donated large sums of money to Republicans, including President Donald Trump, as recently as last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fec.gov\/data\/receipts\/individual-contributions\/?contributor_name=Brock+Pierce\">FEC filings<\/a> show that in 2019 alone Pierce donated $50,000 to the Trump Victory PAC, $44,400 to the Republican National Committee and $17,800 directly to Donald J Trump For President, Inc. There are also past contributions for smaller sums to Republicans like Marco Rubio, Rick Perry, and John McCain. Pierce <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2020\/09\/12\/mighty-ducks-child-star-seeks-to-upend-presidential-race\/\">claimed to the<em> New York Post<\/em><\/a><em> <\/em>that his contributions to Trump were based purely on getting access to lobby him on Puerto Rico relief efforts.<\/p>\n<p>More troubling for Pierce, Kaiser, Ballard, and Akon than Pierce\u2019s political contributions and potential financial malfeasance is the fact that anyone running through Brock Pierce\u2019s biography will quickly run into the words \u201cchild sex abuse scandal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"> * * *<\/p>\n<p>Learning about Brock Pierce\u2019s life after acting is like staring at a funhouse mirror of tech eccentricity. He doesn\u2019t like to talk about his wealth, but he said <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/venturebeat.com\/2018\/10\/29\/blockchain-billionaire-brock-pierce-interview\/view-all\/\">in an interview that<\/a>, \u201ca billionaire is someone who\u2019s positively impacting the lives of a billion people.\u201d He had his wedding at Burning Man, and <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/culture\/culture-features\/brock-pierce-hippie-king-of-cryptocurrency-700213\/\">he\u2019s been known to carry a bag full of traditional plant medicines everywhere he goes<\/a> (\u201cThis idea of making nature illegal? It doesn\u2019t sound right to me,\u201d said Pierce.). He said he once accidentally tossed a hard drive that contained 50,000 Bitcoin, what today amounts to a few hundred million dollars. If that sounds like something someone on HBO\u2019s <em>Silicon Valley <\/em>would do, <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ygZ10y_R1qQ&amp;t=9s\">it\u2019s because it was<\/a>. Pierce may have shared this story with the writers when he served as a <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0682302\/\">technical consultant on one episode Mike Judge\u2019s tech satire<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But the more you look into the details, Brock\u2019s funhouse looks more like a haunted house.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Pierce\u2019s first business foray was the video streaming start-up <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2003\/11\/11\/a-den-of-iniquity-after-3-year-exile-web-exec-faces-perv-charges\/\">Digital Entertainment Network (DEN)<\/a>, a predecessor to Youtube and Netflix that was flush with investment money in the late 1990s. At age 17, Pierce moved in with his business partners Marc Collins-Rector, who was in his early 40s, and Chad Shackley, who was in his early 20s, and they all lived in a mansion in Encino, California. One of their first programs, <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.buzzfeed.com\/hunterschwarz\/the-tv-pilot-with-eerie-similarities-to-the-bryan-singer-sex\"><em>Chad\u2019s World<\/em><\/a>, seems to have been partly inspired by their living arrangement. It featured a pre-<em>American Pie<\/em> <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=umNuvwNO_pQ\">Seann William Scott in a story<\/a> about a teenage boy grappling with his sexuality who leaves home to escape a traumatic incident and moves in with two adult men in a Los Angeles mansion.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><em>Chad\u2019s World <\/em>and DEN <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/archives\/la-xpm-2000-may-07-mn-27448-story.html\">never got off the ground<\/a>, because in 1999 Collins-Rector, Chad Shackley, and Pierce resigned after criminal allegations arose accusing Collins-Rector of abusing underage boys at the Encino mansion. Then in 2002, Pierce, Collins-Rector, and Shackley were arrested in Marbella, Spain and Interpol found weapons and child pornography in the house they were staying at. Collins-Rector would later end up pleading guilty to multiple charges of child enticement, serve out his sentence and flee the country for Europe, where <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.buzzfeednews.com\/article\/ellievhall\/found-the-elusive-man-at-the-heart-of-the-hollywood-sex-abus\">BuzzFeed located him in 2014<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Aside from <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/meet-brock-pierce-the-presidential-candidate-with-ties-to-two-pedophiles-who-wants-to-end-human-trafficking\">paying $21,600<\/a> to a lawyer of one of three plaintiffs in a 2000 sexual-abuse lawsuit, Pierce has made out of the DEN scandal without any criminal charges. He adamantly claims that though he was close to Collins-Rector, he was totally unaware of his sexual abuse, and refers to reporters to a <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/brockpierce.io\/den-fact-fiction\/\">document<\/a> when asked about this episode in his life.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Stories of DEN <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/news\/strange-saga-jeffrey-epstein-s-link-brock-pierce-1240462\">resurfaced after the death of the notorious billionaire pedophile Jeffery Epstein<\/a>. When Epstein\u2019s extensive social network began to be revealed, it came out that Pierce had attended Epstein\u2019s Mindshift Conference in 2011 in the Virgin Islands. Pierce\u2019s Bitcoin Foundation <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/news\/strange-saga-jeffrey-epstein-s-link-brock-pierce-1240462\">also had a formal partnership<\/a> with the former director of the MIT Media Lab, Joi Ito, who resigned for trying to conceal MIT\u2019s close relationship with Epstein. Pierce maintains that he had no idea who Epstein was before Mindshift, but given Pierce\u2019s past associates, the affiliation will likely trail him.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In the early aughts, Pierce found his next endeavor turning virtual gold to legal tender in the Multiplayer Online Role-Playing <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/game\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"7\" title=\"Game\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Game<\/a> industry. In fantasy games like World of Warcraft, virtual weapons could be sold for real-world money. As <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20080117004139\/http:\/\/radaronline.com\/from-the-magazine\/2007\/11\/den_chads_world_marc_collins_rector_1.php\">Radar Magazine wrote in 2007<\/a>, Pierce\u2019s company Internet Gaming Entertainment (IGE) \u201chires gamers\u2014thought to be Chinese nationals working in virtual sweatshops\u2014to rack up items inside the games and sell them for real-world dollars to participants who have more money than skill. While not illegal, such deals do run afoul of game rules and are detested by many players.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>At IGE Pierce hired a man named Steve Bannon, and they worked together closely for seven years. As the journalist Joshua Green wrote in the 2017 book <em>Devil\u2019s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency<\/em>, it was there that Bannon saw the untapped political potential of discontented gamers. <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/tech\/talkingtech\/2017\/07\/18\/steve-bannon-learned-harness-troll-army-world-warcraft\/489713001\/\">\u201cThese guys, these rootless white males, had monster power<\/a>,\u201d he told Green. Bannon\u2019s time at IGE provided him the \u201cconceptual framework\u201d that he would use to \u201c help marshal the online armies of trolls and activists that overran national politicians and helped give rise to Donald Trump,\u201d <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=2vOPDwAAQBAJ&amp;pg=PT135&amp;lpg=PT135&amp;dq=%E2%80%9Cconceptual+framework+that+he+would+later+draw+on+to+build+up+the+audience+for+Breitbart+News,+and+then+to+help+marshal+the+online+armies+of+trolls+and+activists+that+overran+national+politicians+and+helped+give+rise+to+Donald+Trump,%E2%80%9D&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=N82OQsal5N&amp;sig=ACfU3U3cNJzdWlPeNlidoKxqtpThrO22dw&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=2ahUKEwjNq4HGvYzsAhVJHs0KHZzsAKgQ6AEwAHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&amp;q=%E2%80%9Cconceptual%20framework%20that%20he%20would%20later%20draw%20on%20to%20build%20up%20the%20audience%20for%20Breitbart%20News%2C%20and%20then%20to%20help%20marshal%20the%20online%20armies%20of%20trolls%20and%20activists%20that%20overran%20national%20politicians%20and%20helped%20give%20rise%20to%20Donald%20Trump%2C%E2%80%9D&amp;f=false\">wrote Green<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI haven\u2019t had any business with him for over a decade,\u201d Pierce said of Bannon. \u201cBut I pay attention.\u201d What Pierce learned from Bannon\u2019s rise is that \u201cthe establishment is losing its power.\u201d But for Pierce, that\u2019s where the similarities between he and the man who built a platform for the \u201cAlt-Right\u201d end. Still, he couldn\u2019t help but take a little bit of credit for Bannon\u2019s rise. \u201cIt seems to be a regular occurrence in my life,\u201d said Pierce. \u201cPeople who work with me go on to do big things.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Pierce told me he believes Akon will likely vye for elected office soon, and that he\u2019s just one of many to be inspired by the Brock For President campaign. \u201cAkon and dozens, soon to be hundreds of entrepreneurs, artists, business people, educators, scientists, they\u2019re all telling me \u2018Brock, I might run for office. I\u2019ve never thought of this in my life but you\u2019ve given me permission to think about this,\u2019\u201d Pierce said. Pierce\u2019s measurement of success if whether he can spark a movement. If he can do that, he\u2019s a winner. Even if he doesn\u2019t get one vote.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But that doesn\u2019t mean he doesn\u2019t see a path to victory. Remember what he said about impossibility and the scope of our present reality?<\/p>\n<p>In the case that the electoral college has no outright winner, the decision is made by the House of Representatives in what\u2019s called a contingent election triggered by the 12th Amendment. It\u2019s happened once, in 1824, but Pierce believes that if there would be a 269-269 electoral college tie between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, he could step in to unite the deeply polarized nation. That\u2019s why <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fec.gov\/data\/disbursements\/?data_type=processed&amp;committee_id=C00750745&amp;recipient_name=Accelevate+2020+LLC&amp;two_year_transaction_period=2020\">he\u2019s spent over $500,000<\/a> on payments to a ballot-access firm called <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.accelevate2020.com\/\">Acelevate 2020<\/a>, to get him on the ballot of 15 states, three more states than the biggest third party sideshow attraction, Kanye West. He thinks his best chance for an upset is in the increasingly crypto-friendly Wyoming.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI talk to a lot of the top political operatives and strategists and I explain this to them, and they say, \u2018who are you?\u2019 And I say well I\u2019m not a guy who is limited by the status quo,\u201d said Pierce.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd they\u2019re like, \u2018whoa,\u2019\u201d he said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Still, it remains to be seen whether Brock Pierce For President genuinely excites anyone beyond Brock Pierce. \u201cThere is something about rapidly becoming rich from money that you literally created \u2014 or \u201cmined\u201d \u2014 yourself that lends an especially large dose of self-righteousness,\u201d Klein wrote of the Puertopian movement. After witnessing Pierce\u2019s bizarre campaign rally, it might also lend a sense of self-delusion.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Between his associations with convicted pedophiles from Collins-Rector to Epstein, the thousands of dollars in donations to the Republican Party, his affinity for Carribean tax havens, and formerly close working relationship with Steve Bannon, Pierce seems to have all too much in common with the types of rich guys most Americans have become all too familiar with over the last decade.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>There were three young women who had shown up late to the rally midway through Pierce\u2019s speech and found a spot amongst the throng of \u201cBrock Stars.\u201d They seemed excited to be there. After the speech I approached them and asked who they planned to vote for in November.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cProbably Biden,\u201d they answered.\u00a0<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\">\n<h2 id=\"h-the-daily-dot-s-2020-election-coverage\"><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"The_Daily_Dots_2020_election_coverage\"><\/span>The Daily Dot\u2019s 2020 election coverage<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table is-style-stripes\">\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>In the 2020 election, killing Section 230 is the only bipartisan issue<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>The right wants you to believe Kamala Harris is now an anti-vaxer<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Asked to condemn white supremacists, Trump tells them to \u2018stand by\u2019<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>The internet agrees Chris Wallace\u2019s debate performance was catastrophic<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Mike Pence makes Arthur meme while meeting Joe Biden at 9\/11 memorial<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<div class=\"dd-article-leadart-image-credit\">\n<p>                                                                                                <span class=\"dd-article-leadart-image-credit-segment\"><br \/>\n                                        <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/ter-burg\/29033321593\/in\/photolist-M4zira-Lezn1e-Lezmj4-LezmUH-MbLz9H-jx8oa2-jqcVS4-req6WE-q5TCyZ-q5TDQM-p97agf-q5SG3w-pLP24a-q297eL-p7rVFb-p7uybv-p7rXPQ-q4nsV3-p7uDba-pLSpgt-q295kW-q297Rh-pLU4s9\">Sebastiaan ter Burg\/Flickr<\/a><br \/>\n                                    <\/span><\/p>\n<p>                                                            <span class=\"dd-article-leadart-image-credit-segment\">(CC-BY-SA)<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">For forums sites go to <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.buradabiliyorum.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more Like this articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/social-media\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Social Media category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailydot.com\/debug\/brock-pierce\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;#This crypto-billionaire is running for president with Akon at his side &#8221; He&#8217;s he only candidate with Akon advising him. \u201cI\u2019ve been doing impossible things for a long time,\u201d said Brock Pierce. A former child actor who is now one of the wealthiest people in cryptocurrency, Pierce told me that his whole life he\u2019s been&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":85482,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.dailydot.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/brock-pierce.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}