Over a year ago, I reported on a Trump social media booster who went by the name "Gary Forbes".

[Tommy_Carcetti]

You can read it here:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10027708476

This was back during the Republican primaries before Trump had clinched the nomination, let alone the Presidency.

Basically, "Gary Forbes" had a heavy presence on Twitter and other forms of social media. He produced various slides promoting Donald Trump that were easy to share with other people. The slides typically contained information that was either highly dubious or out-and-out false. For example, there was the claim that Donald Trump had an IQ in the 99.9904590555 percentile (he doesn't). There was the claim that aviation legend Chuck Yeager had endorsed Trump (he didn't). And then there were the various conspiracy allegations regarding George Soros and everything else.

Now, it only took about a half hour's worth of amateur online investigating using publicly available information to determine that the person claiming to be "Gary Forbes" was actually someone named Gary Pasquariello, who lived in New York state. There was no evidence that his purported company "The Forbes Group" (not to be confused with Forbes magazine or anyone within the Forbes family) actually existed as a legal entity, nor that any of the 5 or 6 people he claimed to be staff of the Forbes Group were actual live human beings.

What we did know is that long before the 2016 election, Gary Pasquariello had created the "Gary Forbes" persona to peddle various services and products. First, he used it to co-author a little known/little sold business self-help book called "Take This Job and Love It." When that didn't pan out, he advertised himself as an inspirational speaker. And when that didn't work, he attempted selling new age piano compositions he claimed he wrote and that he was available to perform.

Forbes' Amazon profile is still available here:

https://www.amazon.com/Gary-Forbes/e/B0041KTIUI

And his music can still be found on his Youtube page here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpyvaE9zG4uk8IVn5MfQM8Q

Back in Spring 2016, the fact that some failed author and musician going by the alias "Gary Forbes" was now peddling blatantly false propaganda for Donald Trump was enough of a WTF headscratcher. Subsequently, Forbes/Pasquariello got some attention when he apparently advocated threatening Republican convention delegates who might decline to nominate Trump:

https://wonkette.com/600818/trump-guy-has-this-one-weird-trick-to-ratfck-all-the-republican-delegates

On another front, Twitter eventually suspended the original Gary Forbes account--@gqforbes--for reasons unknown in the Summer of 2016. An alternate account--@gqforbes4--has popped up to replace it and continues to spread Trump propaganda to this day, albeit without nearly as many followers.

But at its heyday, Forbes was being rapidly retweeted over and over, including by the likes of people like Ann Coulter. And not to mention a couple of times by this guy:

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Now, there are a couple of ways to view the curious case of Gary Pasquariello/Gary Forbes and his peak of glory during the Republican primaries.

The first is that Gary Pasquariello/Gary Forbes just so happened to be a really, really, really, really enthusiastic fan of Donald Trump, and that he spent his own time and capital creating various websites and slides in support of Trump (without any respect to the actual truth, mind you), and that over the Twittersphere people like Ann Coulter and Donald Trump himself picked up on this enthusiasm and threw him some love out of a mere sense of appreciation.

The second possibility, however, is that Gary Pasquariello/Gary Forbes was being paid to churn out enormous amounts of Donald Trump propaganda by someone else. The question in that situation is....who?

Was it the Trump campaign itself?

A Trump surrogate?

Someone with money in the US?

Someone with money outside the US, like say, a large certain Eurasian country ruled over by a shirtless autocrat?

So much attention has been paid to the efforts for Donald Trump to beat Hillary Clinton in the general election, and potential collusion by the Trump campaign with Russia to make that happen.

But far less attention has been paid to how Trump got to the nomination in the first place, because without that, we wouldn't have gotten to the efforts to derail Hillary at the end. And there was a full court social media press by shady sources like "Gary Forbes"--as well as dozens of others--to sway opinion in favor of Trump and against other potential GOP nominees.

What's fascinating about this is that there's a real person behind this effort--Gary Pasquariello aka "Gary Forbes". As far as I know, there's been no efforts by either the media or any type of investigating agencies to interview or speak to Mr. Pasquariello. But I wonder if he might offer some sort of insight into the online campaign to prop up Donald Trump from the moment he descended the escalator and announced his candidacy for Presidency.

And if so, how and why would someone with such an innocuous--and almost comical--background be recruited into being an influential Donald Trump social media booster?

It might just be the tip of the iceberg, but it could possibly reveal a whole lot more.

Any thoughts?