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Just When You Thought Trump’s Joke of a Presidential Campaign Couldn’t Get More Pathetic…

Published Jun 18th, 2015 12:50PM EDT
Donald Trump 2016 Announcement Paid Actors

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Donald Trump has no chance of winning the Republican nomination, let alone winning the presidency. He is disliked by a large majority of Americans — a recent ABC poll showed that 71% of Americans had an unfavorable view of him, which is a worse mark than either Jimmy Carter or George W. Bush ever had even at the peaks of their unpopularity. Because of this, we were a little surprised to see that Trump had any enthusiastic supporters attending his big announcement speech earlier this week… but it turns out that many of them were actually just paid shills.

BACKGROUND: America’s most hated clown billionaire is really running for president

The Hollywood Reporter found a casting call that was posted last Friday that asked for actors who would be willing to wear Trump 2016 t-shirts and to cheer him on during his big speech.

“We are looking to cast people for the event to wear t-shirts and carry signs and help cheer him in support of his announcement,” the casting call reads. “We understand this is not a traditional ‘background job,’ but we believe acting comes in all forms and this is inclusive of that school of thought.”

Each actor was paid $50 for their troubles, though we think anyone who had to suffer through an hour of Trump talking should have asked for significantly more cash.

And that’s not all: Business Insider has posted some analysis written by Vocativ showing that less than half of Trump’s supposed “fans” on Facebook are from the United States — in fact, it turns out “most come from developing nations including the Philippines, Malaysia, India, South Africa, Indonesia, and Colombia.” All of these countries, in case you’re wondering, are infamous for their “Like Farms” in which brands pay to have their social media pages liked by thousands of accounts to artificially boost their popularity.

This is all particularly rich because Trump is very fond of calling everyone else on the planet “losers,” but we doubt any of his targets have ever had to pay for friends as Trump has.

Brad Reed
Brad Reed Staff Writer

Brad Reed has written about technology for over eight years at BGR.com and Network World. Prior to that, he wrote freelance stories for political publications such as AlterNet and the American Prospect. He has a Master's Degree in Business and Economics Journalism from Boston University.