YouTube has allowed and apparently profited from conservative streamer and serial plagiarist Benny Johnson’s false claims of election fraud, enabled by the platform’s decision to roll back its election misinformation policy last year. 

In a new study, Media Matters reviewed Johnson’s YouTube channel, where he livestreams his program The Benny Show, uploads videos of show segments, and posts Shorts. We found that at least 38 of Johnson’s videos streamed or published between May 1 and August 31, 2024, had been monetized and pushed election misinformation. These videos — which each included preroll ads, paid promotions, and/or Super Chats — have earned millions of views.

Johnson — whom the Department of Justice recently alleged was unwittingly paid by the Russian state media broadcaster RT to produce content — has used his YouTube show to push and rehash baseless claims that former President Donald Trump was the victim of “regime change” in 2020 as a result of a “rigged election,” and even echoed the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, suggesting that Democrats are “importing 30 million voters” and “want illegal criminal aliens to vote in our election.”

Conservative streamer and serial plagiarist Benny Johnson has repeatedly and baselessly alleged that the 2020 presidential election and 2022 midterms were “rigged” against Trump and the Republican Party. 

Johnson also has a history of bigotry, once calling for the Black national anthem to be made illegal and on another occasion suggesting American cities are under siege by a “Mongoloid horde” of “woke intersectional failures.” Johnson has claimed without evidence that “the modern trans/gender ideology movement … is now radicalizing activists into terrorists” and called Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis “a deeply, deeply corrupt individual” in a “ratchet county” and an “emissary of the globalists, somebody who is here to destroy, and sanction, and bring in the end of America.” 

Johnson has also pushed absurd, extreme, and baseless conspiracy theories to his audience, claiming that President Joe Biden “believes in child sacrifice” and suggesting “COVID was a woke virus” that was “used to take away Donald Trump's three biggest political weapons.” On multiple occasions, Johnson has reported disasters — such as the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse — as intentional terror attacks without any evidence, once alleging that the 2023 East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment was “leftist ecological and racial terrorism” against an “almost entirely white community.”   

Starting in November 2023, Johnson streamed the show In the Arena on YouTube and Rumble for Tenet Media, the group that the Department of Justice recently alleged (and reporting identified) was part of “a $10 million scheme to create and distribute content to U.S. audiences with hidden Russian government messaging.” Johnson is not accused of wrongdoing and issued a statement saying the indictments “make clear that myself and other influencers were victims in this alleged scheme.” Johnson has seemingly not streamed on Tenet Media’s channels since the DOJ announced its allegations. (YouTube removed Tenet Media’s channel following the indictment, and Tenet Media reportedly shut down.)

In early December 2020, after states certified their election results, YouTube began removing content with false claims that widespread fraud changed the outcome of the presidential election.

YouTube reversed that election misinformation policy in June 2023, allowing content with false claims about the 2020 election and other past U.S. presidential elections on the platform. In a statement, YouTube announced:

Over the last year, right-wing creators have exploited YouTube’s rollbacks. Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump has repeatedly engaged in election denial on her YouTube show, suggesting Biden was elected through “nefarious activity” and even echoing the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory by suggesting Democrats allow migrants to cross “because they want voters.”

Other right-wing creators have also used the platform’s apparent failure to enforce other existing policies to spread — and sometimes profit from — extreme and bigoted content, including anti-trans vitriol, white nationalist ideology, and climate change denial. Even figures explicitly banned from YouTube, including white nationalist Nick Fuentes, serial misogynist Andrew Tate, and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, have returned to the platform through guest appearances on other channels.

YouTube monetizes content and allows creators to earn revenue from their videos in a variety of ways, including through the use of preroll ads and paid promotions. Creators can also receive Super Chats on livestreams, which “let your viewers purchase live chat messages that stand out and sometimes pin them to the top of a live chat feed.” According to YouTube, creators receive 70% of the revenue from these donations, with the platform apparently receiving about 30%.

Media Matters identified at least 38 monetized videos — with preroll ads, paid promotions, and/or Super Chats — that were posted by Benny Johnson between May 1 and August 31, 2024, and pushed election misinformation. Combined, they have received more than 7.6 million views.

Of the 38 videos, 25 were livestreams that included preroll ads and received donations through Super Chats, earning at least 5 million combined views; an additional 10 were streamed or uploaded that included preroll ads, earning more than 1.9 million combined views; and another 3 were livestreams that earned donations through Super Chats and included paid promotions, receiving at least 720,000 combined views.

Some Super Chats that we found on Johnson’s livestreams included commentary claiming November 5 would be “democrat treason” and even mentioning a known QAnon slogan “WWG1WGA” (short for “where we go one, we go all”).

The Benny Show, streamed live on weekdays on YouTube, has become a consistent home for election-related misinformation since the platform’s policy rollback. Over the last few months, YouTube has seemingly been profiting as Johnson has laid the groundwork for 2024 election denial — with Johnson and his show's guests falsely claiming the 2020 election was “rigged” and stolen from Trump, arguing Democrats “cheated” by selecting Kamala Harris as the presidential nominee, and echoing the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory by suggesting Democrats “want illegal criminal aliens to vote in our election” in monetized videos and streams.

Johnson and his guests have repeatedly spread misinformation about the 2020 and 2022 elections

• Johnson celebrated new election changes in Georgia, citing a number of debunked conspiracy theories to claim that Biden’s 2020 victory in the state was due to “sloppy processes and … shenanigans.” Johnson repeated a number of allegations relating to “luggage carts” and ballots being “scanned a million different times” — baseless claims dismissed in a post-election report by the Georgia secretary of state’s office and even undermined by The Heritage Foundation, which found “no cases of fraud in the 2020 or 2022 general elections” in the state. [YouTube, The Benny Show, 5/8/24; Media Matters, 6/22/23; Brookings Institution, 11/22/23] 
• Johnson told Arizona Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake that “they rigged an election against you” and “broke the machines … to ensure that you wouldn't be declared the winner at 7 p.m. on election night in Arizona.” Johnson affirmed Lake’s baseless claims that her 2022 loss in the state’s gubernatorial race was due to “fraudulent mail-in ballots” and intentional interference with electronic voting machines — claims which were defeated in court and led to the sanctioning of her lawyers. [YouTube, The Benny Show, 5/30/24; CNN, 1/31/23; Arizona Central, 12/1/22]
• Following Trump’s conviction in his hush money trial, Johnson claimed, “If they had a fair election in 2020, they wouldn't be doing what they're doing today.” Johnson argued: “The actions of the Democrat party today is the actions of a guilty party that is behaving like guilty people who committed crimes, which they did.” [YouTube, The Benny Show, 5/31/24]
• Johnson claimed the CIA “hated Trump so much that they executed a regime change here in America” to remove him from office. [YouTube, The Benny Show, 6/26/24]
• Johnson baselessly claimed that Biden “literally cheated and stole” to get elected to the Senate in 1972 and “continued to cheat and steal to keep himself in office.” Johnson added that Biden “continues to cheat and steal all the way up to the White House.” [YouTube, The Benny Show, 7/3/24] 
• Johnson said the 2020 election was “the most rigged election in American history.” [YouTube, The Benny Show, 7/21/24]
• On The Benny Show, former Trump adviser Stephen Miller claimed “noncitizen voting is an existential threat to American democracy,” alleging that “in every single state, illegal aliens can vote simply by checking a box” and promoting his organization’s lawsuit against Maricopa County, Arizona — which he called “a hotbed for election malfeasance.” Miller’s organization, America First Legal, has expanded its lawsuit to 14 other counties despite little evidence. According to Votebeat, “about 40,000 registered voters” have not provided documentation proving their citizenship, but analysis by the nonprofit has found these individuals “are more likely to be young and living on or near college campuses” or to be naturalized citizens. [YouTube, The Benny Show, 8/7/24; Votebeat, 9/4/24]

Johnson and his guests have laid the groundwork for his audience to deny the results of the 2024 election should Trump lose

• In May, Johnson claimed the Democratic “machine” in Chicago “pumps out enough ballots … that can be harvested from these slums” in order to “rig, effectively, the entire state” of Illinois. Johnson continued: “It's how Democrats are able to roll the state of Illinois up into their column when there's only one county that votes for them. It's crazy. Every other county is red in Illinois. There's one county that votes blue and they're able to, like, rig, effectively, the entire state by weaponizing that county, so it's tough, it's a tough one." [YouTube, The Benny Show, 5/10/24]
• On The Benny Show in May, Article III Project founder and Trump ally Mike Davis claimed that Trump’s criminal hush money trial was “obviously Democrat lawfare and election interference.” In another appearance on The Benny Show, Davis also promised “retribution” if Trump won in November, saying, “We are going to crush you after January 20, 2025, after what you've done. … There is absolutely going to be retribution.” [YouTube, The Benny Show, 5/13/24, 5/31/24]
• While previewing polling in Minnesota in June, Johnson alleged that “there's an enormous amount of fraud that takes place” there “thanks to mail-in balloting,” referencing debunked claims by right-wing operative James O’Keefe to attack Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN). Multiple outlets fact-checked these 2020 claims, finding that one of Project Veritas’ videos purporting to show vote buying was a “staged dramatization,” and the individual accused even alleged that he was bribed by Project Veritas to say he was harvesting ballots. O’Keefe has since been ousted as the founder of Project Veritas and has been trying to build up O’Keefe Media Group as a new outlet for his right-wing sting operations. [YouTube, The Benny Show, 6/7/24; Media Matters, 10/7/20, 2/2/24]
• Johnson complained in June that Democrats win Illinois only because the “hellscape city” of Chicago is a “rigged system.” Johnson: “There's your rigged system right there. How many of those people are actually voting, right? How many of those people knew that they voted?” [YouTube, The Benny Show, 6/7/24]
• Johnson said in July: “I’m a firm believer that Hispanics don’t actually vote Democrat. If those ‘votes’ do exist, then there's harvesting.” Johnson argued this by referencing the case of Guillermina Fuentes, an Arizona grandmother who was “sentenced to a month in jail and two years of probation for collecting four completed mail ballots that belonged to community members during the August 2020 primary.” [YouTube, The Benny Show, 7/9/24; The Guardian, 2/11/23]
• Republican National Committee co-chair Michael Whatley promoted “election integrity” efforts in July on The Benny Show, suggesting the Biden administration is “trying to get illegal immigrants registered all across the country, and we think that's ridiculous, and we've told them that they need to stop.” [YouTube, The Benny Show, 7/15/24]
• Johnson attacked Pennsylvania's Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, blaming him for “vote dumps in the middle of the night” in 2020: “That guy, the guy who has photos with George Soros and his creepy little kid to ‘secure access to the ballots.’ Yeah, we know what that means.” Johnson appeared to be referencing Shapiro’s meeting with Alexander Soros in March of this year. [YouTube, The Benny Show, 8/6/24; Facebook, 3/20/24]
• Johnson insisted that Democrats “cheated” by selecting Harris as their presidential nominee, arguing: “They're hoping that the sugar high is enough to, like, get them within the margin of fraud, right? And then shenanigans.” As Biden was not yet the official nominee, his decision to withdraw from the race weeks before he was to be nominated at the Democratic National Convention was not illegal, according to multiple election law experts interviewed by PolitiFact. [YouTube, The Benny Show, 8/13/24; PBS, 7/24/24]

Johnson has also echoed tenets of the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, alleging that Democrats are “importing” voters to create a “permanent Democrat majority forever”

The “great replacement” conspiracy theory is a far-right, xenophobic conspiracy theory that posits that “there is an active, ongoing and covert effort to replace white populations in current white-majority countries.” The conspiracy theory has been linked to acts of real-world violence. 

Right-wing media and politicians have continued to claim that Democrats are “replacing the electorate by allowing millions of illegals in.” But noncitizen voting in federal and state elections is a crime and deportable offense that rarely occurs; a study of the 2016 election by the Brennan Center found only an estimated 30 suspected incidents out of 23.5 million votes cast, and even The Heritage Foundation’s “election-fraud” database found only 85 incidents “involving allegations of noncitizen voting from 2002 to 2023.”

For years, Johnson has repeatedly pushed the conspiracy theory, such as saying in February that the goal of mass migration was “insurrection” and the creation of a “permanent political underclass that could be exploited for power.” 

• Johnson claimed Democrats are “importing 30 million voters and having them vote illegally.” Johnson additionally complained that Democrats would not support “permanent mail-in voting and 30 days of voting and ballot drops at 3 a.m. if they loved democracy.” [YouTube, The Benny Show, 6/19/24]
• Johnson alleged that “illegal criminal aliens voting … seems to be the way that they have it wired now.” Johnson: “It does make you wonder what they have rewired behind the scenes, and every single new article is one of the welfare offices offering voting rights to criminal aliens who’ve come across the border.” [YouTube, The Benny Show, 6/25/24]
• Johnson: “If you let 30, 40 — who knows how many — million people who aren't American citizens vote in your election, you don't have a — I don't know what that's called. It's definitely not a democracy.” [YouTube, The Benny Show, 7/8/24]
• Johnson claimed opponents of the SAVE Act “want illegal criminal aliens to vote in our election.” The SAVE Act, promoted by congressional Republicans, is rooted in baseless claims that noncitizens can “simply go to their local welfare office or the DMV and register to vote.” [YouTube, The Benny Show, 7/11/24; Media Matters, 7/11/24; PolitFact, 5/20/24]
• Johnson asserted that “communists” are seeking to import “30 million new Democrat voters and a permanent Democrat majority forever.” [YouTube, The Benny Show, 8/30/24]