One of JD Vance’s key financial advisers in the Senate, Aaron Kofsky, is behind a Reddit account with the name PsychoticMammal that posted about using a variety of drugs, including cocaine, kratom, “gas station heroin,” and many others. The account also calls Vance a “Trump boot licker” and provides instructions on how to get drugs through TSA while traveling.

In one of the posts, Kofsky shared a video of Vance at a Senate hearing and provided a number of other pieces of identifying information. That information, paired with a Poshmark account using the same username and an image of Kofsky as its avatar, were two of the big bread crumbs that helped me confirm Kofsky was behind the account.

Kofsky’s drug use puts him in stark contrast to Vance’s policy priorities. During his Republican National Committee speech this summer, Vance spoke at length about his mother’s battle with drug addiction and how it has informed his anti-drug stances. Since joining the Senate, Vance has become one of the leading voices against fentanyl trafficking and has joined in on former president Donald Trump’s suggestions that drug dealers should be punished with the death penalty.

This is an edition of the WIRED Politics Lab newsletter. Sign up now to get it in your inbox every week.

It’s not your average politics newsletter. Makena Kelly and the WIRED Politics team help you make sense of how the internet is shaping our political reality.

• 🗞️ Read previous newsletters here.
• 🎧 Listen to the WIRED Politics Lab podcast.

Kofsky isn’t just a random staffer; he is Vance’s financial policy adviser. It’s difficult to tell just how much influence Kofsky had on Vance’s crypto policy, but it was enough to warrant a short Politico profile praising him for it. From what I could tell from his X account (before he locked it yesterday), Kofsky held many of the same deregulatory positions as Vance and the crypto industry at large. In fact, Stand With Crypto, one of the largest pro-cryptocurrency super PACs, has given Vance and Trump both a “thumbs up” rating on the issue. (President Joe Biden got a “thumbs down,” while vice president Kamala Harris isn’t rated.)

Both the Trump and Harris campaigns have made efforts to win over the crypto community in recent months. Just this week, Trump’s crypto co-venture with his sons Eric and Don Jr. launched, but only a small number of the firm’s crypto tokens were purchased, primarily due to the website crashing in the middle of the launch. According to WIRED reporting, only 8,500 people participated in the coin’s presale and collectively purchased 750 million of them.

Beyond the Trump family’s personal crypto ventures, the campaign has been raking in millions of dollars in donations from coin holders. Tuesday was the last Federal Election Commission deadline before the election, and listed in the Trump 47 joint fundraising committee filing was more than $7.5 million in donations made in cryptocurrency, CNBC reported. The joint committee includes the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee, and state party committees. While the crypto donations are only a fraction of the $145 million total raised, the donations still show the growing influence of what was once a nascent industry.

That the crypto industry clearly favors the Trump-Vance campaign has seemingly spooked the Harris campaign to some degree. Whether they’re afraid of turning off wealthy tech donors or ostracizing crypto voters (if those exist in any meaningful metric), Harris formally announced her support for the technology this week as part of a new initiative to protect Black men who have invested in these assets.

This all gets back to Kofsky. If people are taking Vance’s and Trump’s thoughts on crypto into account when it comes to their November vote, then someone like Kofsky could make a big difference. With Kofsky so integral to Vance’s financial policy, a close look at his online behaviors is telling; and at minimum, when paired with Vance’s and Trump’s anti-drug policies, It’s hypocritical to say the least.

The Chatroom

On a lighter note, one of the things I’ve been thinking a lot about in the waning days of this election cycle has been the memes and viral trends that have come of it. Brat summer was, of course, a highlight, but others, like the remixed debate audios from the TikTok user CasaDi or user-made fancams, have topped my feeds.

While Trump made a stir with his fake Swifties and the random Truth Social posts of him riding a lion or whatever, we haven’t seen AI-generated content dominating the political culture ecosystem. Since 2024, AI tools have become readily accessible for commercial use, and yet they’ve played such a small role in driving culture. Instead of an AI-generated song, the internet would much rather listen to something mixed by an actual creator.

Why do you suppose AI-generated content hasn’t completely overtaken social content given that it’s so easy to create? Are we all already exhausted by AI slop? Are the Harris and Trump campaigns so good at generating their own clips that AI hasn’t really been necessary? Would love to hear what you think! Send your thoughts to [email protected].

WIRED Reads

• The American Who Waged a Tech War on China: Issie Lapowsky profiles Jake Sullivan, national security adviser to President Joe Biden, who is leading the administration’s efforts to maintain US tech leadership.
• Anyone Can Turn You Into an AI Chatbot. There’s Little You Can Do to Stop Them: Apps like Character.AI are being used to create a variety of AI chatbots, including bots imitating private people who never agreed to becoming a digital caricature of themselves.
• JD Vance Adviser Posted on Reddit for Years About Use of Cocaine, ‘Gas Station Heroin,’ Other Drugs: My WIRED investigation found that JD Vance Senate adviser Aaron Kofsky is the user behind the u/PsychoticMammal Reddit account, which has spent the past decade tweeting extensively about drug use.

Want more? Subscribe now for unlimited access to WIRED.

What Else We’re Reading

🔗 Meet the Conspiracy-Peddling Gossip Blogger Who’s Cast Herself as a Trump-RFK Player: Jessica Reed Kraus, better known by her Substack name HouseInhabit, has grown into one of the most influential creators this election cycle, despite her willingness to entertain conspiracies. (Mother Jones)

🔗 Gen Z Advocacy Group Launches TikTok Campaign Against Voting for Jill Stein: Voters of Tomorrow, a Gen Z political advocacy group, launched a new digital effort branding Jill Stein as a “scammer” and comparing her to Anna Delvey. (NBC News)

🔗 Trump-Touted Crypto Website Crashes as Token Sale Goes Live, With Just 1.7% of Target Sold: The Trump family’s World Liberty Financial crypto company launched its token this week, and the website immediately crashed. (CoinDesk)

The Download

I’m back on the WIRED Politics Lab podcast with Leah Feiger and Tim Marchman discussing my investigation into JD Vance’s financial adviser and what it could mean about the vice presidential contender’s crypto and drug policies.

One last thing: Early voting is starting to open up across the country, and I thought this TikTok video by Emma Mont explaining the dos and don’ts of ballot selfies was pretty useful!

That’s it for today—thanks again for subscribing. You can get in touch with me via email, Instagram, X, and Signal at makenakelly.32.