Paid-Off ‘Conservatives’ Are Fighting For Your Right To Use Food Stamps For Soda

It’s not an earth-shattering revelation to say that the modern Left is far more concerned with dogma and orthodoxy than any kind of consistency. They are a collective in every sense. Whatever they’re required to believe at any given moment, they’ll believe it without any dissent or questioning whatsoever — even if it completely contradicts what they believed five seconds ago. We’ve seen this happen a million times in recent years, on everything from Russia to Elon Musk to Donald Trump himself.

This can be an effective strategy, up to a point. Mob mentality is a powerful thing. But as we saw in the last election, there comes a moment when relentless orthodoxy simply goes too far. When every Democrat is saying, for example, that there’s no difference between men and women, reasonable people aren’t just turned off. They’re disturbed at a fundamental level.

This is maybe the most straightforward observation in all of politics. And the lesson we should draw from it is obvious: We should not emulate these people. Marching in lock-step and reciting canned talking points ultimately leads to incoherence, weakness and defeat. That should be uncontroversial and conventional wisdom on the Right at the moment.

That’s why it’s impossible to ignore the bizarre and frankly embarrassing display that took place on social media over the last few days. Several conservative “influencers,” seemingly out of the blue, began posting carefully scripted messages on X about SNAP benefits, more commonly known as food stamps. All of these messages were essentially identical, like they were written by the same mysterious organization. Specifically, these conservative influencers complained that there was an effort underway in Washington, D.C. to ban people from using food stamps to pay for soda. According to these influencers, poor people should be able to use their food stamps to buy as much junk food as they want. Because why shouldn’t taxpayers be forced to subsidize someone else’s sugar addiction? Here’s what some of these posts looked like:

As you can see, the post from the account “Clown World” — which has three million followers — stated that, “The government wants to block soda purchases for Americans on SNAP. Remember when NYC tried this and it completely backfired? President Trump proudly had a Diet Coke button in the Oval Office. This is ridiculous government overreach. Let the people decide for themselves.”

WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show

Several other large accounts — including Ian Miles Cheong, Eric Daugherty, Chad Prather, and others — posted similar messages, all around the same time. I won’t go through all of them, but the basic idea was the same. According to these influencers, poor people should be able to use food stamps to buy whatever they want. It’s worth noting that several of these messages invoked Donald Trump’s tendency to drink Diet Coke, even though it’s not relevant in any way, since I think we can safely assume that Donald Trump is not on food stamps.

The post from Ian Miles Cheong was particularly remarkable, because back in 2021, he wrote, “Coca Cola subsidizes food stamps. They want you to become fat and addicted to sugar.”

But now, in 2025, Ian had exactly the opposite take. He wrote, “A new war on soda has begun, targeting purchases made through SNAP. I don’t believe it’s the government’s role to decide what people should or shouldn’t eat.” And then he posted the same image of Donald Trump drinking a diet coke that several other influencers posted.

For the record, not every major conservative figure on social media went along with this script, after receiving some kind of solicitation. Riley Gaines, for example, posted: “They offered to pay me to post..a big fat heck no.” And before long, the investigative journalist Nick Sortor exposed the whole operation. He posted documents that were sent out to a bunch of conservative influencers by a large PR firm, which included the talking points about SNAP and soda that they were supposed to mention.

He reported: “Influencers were given a couple templates to use by [the firm] Influenceable, with one of those templates SPECIFICALLY telling them to mention Trump’s Diet Coke habit This was done to invoke an EMOTIONAL response from loyal Trump supporters, making them feel as if banning soda from SNAP would be anti-Trump.”

At no point was it disclosed by any of these influencers that they were repeating talking points they’d been handed, or what exactly they may have received in exchange for posting these messages. And that’s not surprising. This kind of tactic is nothing new for the soda industry and their affiliated middle-men. As the journalist Lee Fang wrote on his Substack this week: “When San Francisco proposed a tax on sweetened beverages in 2012 … the industry paid protesters up to $13 per hour to attend anti-tax rallies. … The industry has also influenced the debate by funding groups that might otherwise support restrictions. Save the Children, which previously endorsed taxes on sweetened beverages to fight childhood obesity, abandoned this position while pursuing significant grants from major soda producers, including a $5 million contribution from the PepsiCo Foundation.”

Pretty clearly, something similar was going on here. And indeed, after Sortor’s reporting, some of these accounts posted apologies. Eric Daugherty, for example, wrote: “Yeah, that was dumb of me. Massive egg on my face.”

That’s a start, but it doesn’t really address the magnitude of what happened here. To be clear, no one should have any problem with people getting paid to promote products or content. I take money to promote products. Our marketing team has paid money to promote our content, especially our films. All of that is pretty standard. But it’s a completely different matter to take money to push a policy proposal or a political opinion without disclosing that you were compensated in some way, or handed talking points from a PR firm as part of a broader effort to manipulate public opinion.

In this case, it’s especially egregious because “conservative” influencers took a position that stands in direct contrast to conservative principles — and in some cases, in direct contradiction to what these influencers have already said on the same subject. And that brings me to the actual issue itself and the correct position, which is that we shouldn’t allow food stamps to be used for soda or junk food. Obviously. I should not have money taken out of my wallet with the express purpose of creating more obesity. Mountain Dew, for example, has 46 grams of sugar in a can. That’s 46 grams of sugar in 12 ounces. That is more than the amount of added sugar you should be consuming in an entire day. In one can. The idea that taxpayers should be subsidizing — that taxpayers should be forced to pay for those kinds of products, so that other people can consume them — is just asinine. Totally indefensible.

RFK Jr. and his “Make America Healthy Again” commission have made this point. Watch:

You may have noticed that the activist at the end of that clip has no argument for why we should allow food stamps to be used to buy candy or soda. She just says that, as a general principle, it’s wrong to restrict food stamps for any reason. This is a common trend that I noticed over the weekend, as some conservatives took the side of the soda companies. One after another, they presented non-sequiturs and non-arguments that didn’t remotely answer the question, which is: why should taxpayers have to pay other people to consume food and drinks that are grotesquely unhealthy and which absolutely no nutritional value at all? There are plenty of taxpayers who don’t buy soda for budgetary and health reasons. Why should they be forced to buy it for other people?

Former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis had this to say:

This is totally backwards. The “autonomy of the consumer” is not the issue here. People who use food stamps to buy soda and candy are using taxpayer money. If you’re taking our money to buy food, you’ve already sacrificed your “autonomy.” Taking our money to buy junk food is a slap in our faces as taxpayers. If you want autonomy at the grocery store, don’t go shopping with other people’s money. You cannot take my money and then claim autonomy. For the same reason that my children cannot live in my house and eat my food and then refuse to do chores on the grounds that they are autonomous individuals.

Another argument I kept seeing was that poor people don’t have “access” to healthy food, or can’t afford it. And therefore, they’re reduced to buying soda and candy out of necessity. What I didn’t hear from any of these people is one example — just one — of someone who has access to soda but no access to healthier beverages — like, say, water. I would’ve been thrilled with just one example of this phenomenon, and I repeatedly asked for one. But it never arrived because it doesn’t exist. It’s complete nonsense.

In response to my posts, someone named Correy Forrester, who says he’s a columnist with the “Atlanta-Journal Constitution,” provided his reasoning for why food stamps should cover soda and candy. Here’s what he wrote: “I can defend it: poor people deserve a treat every now and again. I thought I’d have to type more, but that was easy.”

Yes, according to columnist Correy Forrester, “poor people deserve a treat every now and again.” So what he’s saying is that taxpayers should be required to give poor people treats. He’s talking about the poor as if they’re dogs, without any sense of self-awareness whatsoever.

Actually, anyone who’s ever been broke — like I have — immediately recognizes this kind of patronizing rhetoric for what it is. It’s insulting and demeaning, even if it’s delivered under the guise of compassion. When I had very little money, there wasn’t a single moment where I felt that I was entitled to someone else’s money so that I could buy some cookies, or a bottle of Coke. That’s because I understood that I wasn’t a child, and the taxpayers were not my parents. It’s not their responsibility to treat me to a root beer float every once in a while.

But the account “Diamond & Silk” apparently disagrees. Here’s what that account wrote in response to one of my posts on this topic: “QUESTION: Can anyone name a food/soda, sold in grocery stores, that doesn’t have ‘JUNK’ in it? Even organic isn’t truly organic! So why are a few items being singled out as Junk, when Junk/Chemicals/Pesticides etc are in foods that are purchased with Food Stamps? Is this about being healthy or being a dictator?”

This is one of the arguments that you see a lot from the soda lobby. They’re basically saying that it’s impossible to define “junk food,” and therefore we shouldn’t restrict food stamps in any way. Of course, there’s some truth to the idea that, as with any line-drawing exercise, there are going to be edge cases. But at the same time, there are obviously plenty of foods that wouldn’t qualify as junk by any rational definition of the term. These people are acting like we can’t ban soda from the SNAP program without also banning apples and carrots. They’re suggesting that, if we ban Mountain Dew Code Red and Monster energy drinks, then we have no choice but to ban water as well. Therefore, they’re saying we shouldn’t implement any regulations at all.

This is the kind of frankly braindead logic that has led to extraordinary amounts of waste and fraud in the food stamp program. Because food stamp applicants aren’t vetted carefully, it’s extremely easy for people to qualify for food stamps even if they don’t really need them. That’s why there’s a big resale market for these food stamp cards. And by the same token, there’s a lot of people buying items with food stamps that they don’t really need for themselves. The Economic Policy Innovation Center reports, citing government data, that: “The food stamp program makes billions in improper payments each year. …These improper payments often include fraud, abuse, and waste, but are not always indicative of illegal activity. The USDA has reported more than $45.75 billion of improper payments between Fiscal Year 2003 and Fiscal Year 2022. The reported improper payment rate was 11.5% in 2022.”

MATT WALSH’S ‘AM I RACIST?’ NOW STREAMING ON DAILYWIRE+

Yes, more than 10% of food stamp payments were “improper,” according to government records. Of course, that’s almost certainly a vast under-count of the actual amount of waste that’s occurring. And that shouldn’t surprise us. Any government program that involves handing out “free money” — meaning, your money — is going to be abused, to a comical degree. Any effort to curb that abuse is good.

Conservatives have understood this for a very long time. But at the moment, for reasons that are obviously self-serving, some conservatives are pretending otherwise. It’s a useful reminder to remain skeptical of any kind of political pitch you see online, even if it’s from someone you trust. It’s also a good opportunity to highlight that, on the Left, this kind of thing happens every day. They’re given their marching orders, and they follow them — no matter how absurd they might be. Even after what happened this past week, this is still a rare occurrence on the Right. When it does happen, it’s called out immediately. The moment that stops being true is the moment the conservative movement will falter, just as the Left is now faltering. That’s why, now that this whole debacle has been exposed, it simply cannot be allowed to happen on our side ever again.

​[#item_full_content]  

​[[{“value”:”

It’s not an earth-shattering revelation to say that the modern Left is far more concerned with dogma and orthodoxy than any kind of consistency. They are a collective in every sense. Whatever they’re required to believe at any given moment, they’ll believe it without any dissent or questioning whatsoever — even if it completely contradicts what they believed five seconds ago. We’ve seen this happen a million times in recent years, on everything from Russia to Elon Musk to Donald Trump himself.

This can be an effective strategy, up to a point. Mob mentality is a powerful thing. But as we saw in the last election, there comes a moment when relentless orthodoxy simply goes too far. When every Democrat is saying, for example, that there’s no difference between men and women, reasonable people aren’t just turned off. They’re disturbed at a fundamental level.

This is maybe the most straightforward observation in all of politics. And the lesson we should draw from it is obvious: We should not emulate these people. Marching in lock-step and reciting canned talking points ultimately leads to incoherence, weakness and defeat. That should be uncontroversial and conventional wisdom on the Right at the moment.

That’s why it’s impossible to ignore the bizarre and frankly embarrassing display that took place on social media over the last few days. Several conservative “influencers,” seemingly out of the blue, began posting carefully scripted messages on X about SNAP benefits, more commonly known as food stamps. All of these messages were essentially identical, like they were written by the same mysterious organization. Specifically, these conservative influencers complained that there was an effort underway in Washington, D.C. to ban people from using food stamps to pay for soda. According to these influencers, poor people should be able to use their food stamps to buy as much junk food as they want. Because why shouldn’t taxpayers be forced to subsidize someone else’s sugar addiction? Here’s what some of these posts looked like:

As you can see, the post from the account “Clown World” — which has three million followers — stated that, “The government wants to block soda purchases for Americans on SNAP. Remember when NYC tried this and it completely backfired? President Trump proudly had a Diet Coke button in the Oval Office. This is ridiculous government overreach. Let the people decide for themselves.”

WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show

Several other large accounts — including Ian Miles Cheong, Eric Daugherty, Chad Prather, and others — posted similar messages, all around the same time. I won’t go through all of them, but the basic idea was the same. According to these influencers, poor people should be able to use food stamps to buy whatever they want. It’s worth noting that several of these messages invoked Donald Trump’s tendency to drink Diet Coke, even though it’s not relevant in any way, since I think we can safely assume that Donald Trump is not on food stamps.

The post from Ian Miles Cheong was particularly remarkable, because back in 2021, he wrote, “Coca Cola subsidizes food stamps. They want you to become fat and addicted to sugar.”

But now, in 2025, Ian had exactly the opposite take. He wrote, “A new war on soda has begun, targeting purchases made through SNAP. I don’t believe it’s the government’s role to decide what people should or shouldn’t eat.” And then he posted the same image of Donald Trump drinking a diet coke that several other influencers posted.

For the record, not every major conservative figure on social media went along with this script, after receiving some kind of solicitation. Riley Gaines, for example, posted: “They offered to pay me to post..a big fat heck no.” And before long, the investigative journalist Nick Sortor exposed the whole operation. He posted documents that were sent out to a bunch of conservative influencers by a large PR firm, which included the talking points about SNAP and soda that they were supposed to mention.

He reported: “Influencers were given a couple templates to use by [the firm] Influenceable, with one of those templates SPECIFICALLY telling them to mention Trump’s Diet Coke habit This was done to invoke an EMOTIONAL response from loyal Trump supporters, making them feel as if banning soda from SNAP would be anti-Trump.”

At no point was it disclosed by any of these influencers that they were repeating talking points they’d been handed, or what exactly they may have received in exchange for posting these messages. And that’s not surprising. This kind of tactic is nothing new for the soda industry and their affiliated middle-men. As the journalist Lee Fang wrote on his Substack this week: “When San Francisco proposed a tax on sweetened beverages in 2012 … the industry paid protesters up to $13 per hour to attend anti-tax rallies. … The industry has also influenced the debate by funding groups that might otherwise support restrictions. Save the Children, which previously endorsed taxes on sweetened beverages to fight childhood obesity, abandoned this position while pursuing significant grants from major soda producers, including a $5 million contribution from the PepsiCo Foundation.”

Pretty clearly, something similar was going on here. And indeed, after Sortor’s reporting, some of these accounts posted apologies. Eric Daugherty, for example, wrote: “Yeah, that was dumb of me. Massive egg on my face.”

That’s a start, but it doesn’t really address the magnitude of what happened here. To be clear, no one should have any problem with people getting paid to promote products or content. I take money to promote products. Our marketing team has paid money to promote our content, especially our films. All of that is pretty standard. But it’s a completely different matter to take money to push a policy proposal or a political opinion without disclosing that you were compensated in some way, or handed talking points from a PR firm as part of a broader effort to manipulate public opinion.

In this case, it’s especially egregious because “conservative” influencers took a position that stands in direct contrast to conservative principles — and in some cases, in direct contradiction to what these influencers have already said on the same subject. And that brings me to the actual issue itself and the correct position, which is that we shouldn’t allow food stamps to be used for soda or junk food. Obviously. I should not have money taken out of my wallet with the express purpose of creating more obesity. Mountain Dew, for example, has 46 grams of sugar in a can. That’s 46 grams of sugar in 12 ounces. That is more than the amount of added sugar you should be consuming in an entire day. In one can. The idea that taxpayers should be subsidizing — that taxpayers should be forced to pay for those kinds of products, so that other people can consume them — is just asinine. Totally indefensible.

RFK Jr. and his “Make America Healthy Again” commission have made this point. Watch:

You may have noticed that the activist at the end of that clip has no argument for why we should allow food stamps to be used to buy candy or soda. She just says that, as a general principle, it’s wrong to restrict food stamps for any reason. This is a common trend that I noticed over the weekend, as some conservatives took the side of the soda companies. One after another, they presented non-sequiturs and non-arguments that didn’t remotely answer the question, which is: why should taxpayers have to pay other people to consume food and drinks that are grotesquely unhealthy and which absolutely no nutritional value at all? There are plenty of taxpayers who don’t buy soda for budgetary and health reasons. Why should they be forced to buy it for other people?

Former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis had this to say:

This is totally backwards. The “autonomy of the consumer” is not the issue here. People who use food stamps to buy soda and candy are using taxpayer money. If you’re taking our money to buy food, you’ve already sacrificed your “autonomy.” Taking our money to buy junk food is a slap in our faces as taxpayers. If you want autonomy at the grocery store, don’t go shopping with other people’s money. You cannot take my money and then claim autonomy. For the same reason that my children cannot live in my house and eat my food and then refuse to do chores on the grounds that they are autonomous individuals.

Another argument I kept seeing was that poor people don’t have “access” to healthy food, or can’t afford it. And therefore, they’re reduced to buying soda and candy out of necessity. What I didn’t hear from any of these people is one example — just one — of someone who has access to soda but no access to healthier beverages — like, say, water. I would’ve been thrilled with just one example of this phenomenon, and I repeatedly asked for one. But it never arrived because it doesn’t exist. It’s complete nonsense.

In response to my posts, someone named Correy Forrester, who says he’s a columnist with the “Atlanta-Journal Constitution,” provided his reasoning for why food stamps should cover soda and candy. Here’s what he wrote: “I can defend it: poor people deserve a treat every now and again. I thought I’d have to type more, but that was easy.”

Yes, according to columnist Correy Forrester, “poor people deserve a treat every now and again.” So what he’s saying is that taxpayers should be required to give poor people treats. He’s talking about the poor as if they’re dogs, without any sense of self-awareness whatsoever.

Actually, anyone who’s ever been broke — like I have — immediately recognizes this kind of patronizing rhetoric for what it is. It’s insulting and demeaning, even if it’s delivered under the guise of compassion. When I had very little money, there wasn’t a single moment where I felt that I was entitled to someone else’s money so that I could buy some cookies, or a bottle of Coke. That’s because I understood that I wasn’t a child, and the taxpayers were not my parents. It’s not their responsibility to treat me to a root beer float every once in a while.

But the account “Diamond & Silk” apparently disagrees. Here’s what that account wrote in response to one of my posts on this topic: “QUESTION: Can anyone name a food/soda, sold in grocery stores, that doesn’t have ‘JUNK’ in it? Even organic isn’t truly organic! So why are a few items being singled out as Junk, when Junk/Chemicals/Pesticides etc are in foods that are purchased with Food Stamps? Is this about being healthy or being a dictator?”

This is one of the arguments that you see a lot from the soda lobby. They’re basically saying that it’s impossible to define “junk food,” and therefore we shouldn’t restrict food stamps in any way. Of course, there’s some truth to the idea that, as with any line-drawing exercise, there are going to be edge cases. But at the same time, there are obviously plenty of foods that wouldn’t qualify as junk by any rational definition of the term. These people are acting like we can’t ban soda from the SNAP program without also banning apples and carrots. They’re suggesting that, if we ban Mountain Dew Code Red and Monster energy drinks, then we have no choice but to ban water as well. Therefore, they’re saying we shouldn’t implement any regulations at all.

This is the kind of frankly braindead logic that has led to extraordinary amounts of waste and fraud in the food stamp program. Because food stamp applicants aren’t vetted carefully, it’s extremely easy for people to qualify for food stamps even if they don’t really need them. That’s why there’s a big resale market for these food stamp cards. And by the same token, there’s a lot of people buying items with food stamps that they don’t really need for themselves. The Economic Policy Innovation Center reports, citing government data, that: “The food stamp program makes billions in improper payments each year. …These improper payments often include fraud, abuse, and waste, but are not always indicative of illegal activity. The USDA has reported more than $45.75 billion of improper payments between Fiscal Year 2003 and Fiscal Year 2022. The reported improper payment rate was 11.5% in 2022.”

MATT WALSH’S ‘AM I RACIST?’ NOW STREAMING ON DAILYWIRE+

Yes, more than 10% of food stamp payments were “improper,” according to government records. Of course, that’s almost certainly a vast under-count of the actual amount of waste that’s occurring. And that shouldn’t surprise us. Any government program that involves handing out “free money” — meaning, your money — is going to be abused, to a comical degree. Any effort to curb that abuse is good.

Conservatives have understood this for a very long time. But at the moment, for reasons that are obviously self-serving, some conservatives are pretending otherwise. It’s a useful reminder to remain skeptical of any kind of political pitch you see online, even if it’s from someone you trust. It’s also a good opportunity to highlight that, on the Left, this kind of thing happens every day. They’re given their marching orders, and they follow them — no matter how absurd they might be. Even after what happened this past week, this is still a rare occurrence on the Right. When it does happen, it’s called out immediately. The moment that stops being true is the moment the conservative movement will falter, just as the Left is now faltering. That’s why, now that this whole debacle has been exposed, it simply cannot be allowed to happen on our side ever again.

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