POLITICO reports that “Christian” influencer Riley Gaines — who has built a huge following with her bigoted anti-transgender posts and supporting 34-time felon President Donald Trump — has been receiving payments from the gambling website Polymarket:
At least 20 of the content creators identified by POLITICO promoted Polymarket on social media after they started receiving money from Modabber, according to the payment records and POLITICO’s analysis of their social media activity.
During the 14-month span reflected in the payment records, they posted about Polymarket at least 490 times on the social media platform X without clearly disclosing a paid partnership. The analysis of payment records and concurrent social posts highlight the company’s under-the-radar campaign to generate buzz in the political world around the highly controversial prediction market.
Among those paid: conservative influencer Alex LoRusso, progressive political commentator Brian Krassenstein, and Riley Gaines, a collegiate swimmer-turned-Fox News contributor who has campaigned against trans women competing in women’s sports…
Riley Gaines, who was paid at least $6,600, according to the records, shared the DOGE news with well over 1 million followers on X, opining: “This is awesome!”
…The PayPal transaction records were shown to POLITICO by a person with access to the data, who was granted anonymity for fear of retribution.
A Polymarket spokesperson told POLITICO the partnerships with influencers were part of its standard business practices…
The Federal Trade Commission says social media influencers have a responsibility to disclose any “material connection” to products they endorse, but the agency did not respond to questions about how those rules apply to posts about prediction markets.