Since Donald Trump burst onto the political scene in 2016, Hollywood and the mainstream media mostly have treated MAGA voices “like garbage,” says publicist Vanessa Santos. So in 2021, at the height of industry conservatives being sidelined or canceled over their views on hot-button issues, she saw a massive opportunity, quit her job in the publishing industry and launched Renegade PR, an agency based in Washington, D.C., that represents Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles, Drea de Matteo, Roseanne Barr, Riley Gaines and Tim Pool — a who’s who of names most publicists wouldn’t touch.
“I knew that Trump was going to win, and so I knew that business was going to bang,” she says.
In the wake of the 2024 election, Renegade and its staff of three was poised to capitalize on the thawing that followed as the industry scrambled to reach conservative audiences. New York-based Mitchell Jackson, whose clients include Candace Owens and YouTube star Brett Cooper, is the only other publicist working with a roster of so-called deplorables. With Trump regaining the White House and titans like Larry Ellison, Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos cozying up to the administration, conservatives have begun to shed their pariah status. Consider that Matthew McConaughey — who never endorsed Trump — ventured onto “The Megyn Kelly Show” in September, while Joaquin Phoenix and Timothée Chalamet both sat down with Theo Von — a superstar podcaster derisively called part of the “manosphere” — to plug recent movies.
“That Michael Jordan quote, ‘Republicans buy sneakers too,’ lives in my brain,” Santos says. “Like, you can’t just cut off that many people.”
Wearing jeans and a white T-shirt bearing the remnants of breakfast with her two preschoolers, Santos looks like a young suburban Everymom as she takes a long pull from her “Golden Girls” coffee mug. But that visage is deceptive, says de Matteo, a lifelong Democrat who was dropped by her agent when she spoke out against COVID vaccine mandates in 2021. Amid the fallout, the “Sopranos” star was interviewing publicists to “troubleshoot my certain demise,” she says. But Santos had a different vision: Lean in rather than apologize and hide.
“Vanessa was a fucking tiger,” de Matteo says. “She flew here. She wouldn’t leave me alone. I was like, ‘Holy shit. I’ll let this kid run with this.’ And my life changed because of her. I never anticipated that I would ever be talking about what I believed in.” (In the run-up to the November election, de Matteo appeared on “Jesse Watters Primetime” and “Club Random With Bill Maher.”)
Santos is a Michigan native and proud Republican who remembers watching “Hannity & Colmes” as a child and marveling as Ann Coulter gave the late Alan Colmes a tongue-lashing. She insists that conservative voices can only elevate programming that has become stale in siloed times.
“I am obsessed with Scott Jennings,” she says of the CNN pundit. “What he has done on Abby Phillip’s show is what our evening discourse should be like. I am so sick and tired of everybody just existing in their own echo chambers. And the fact that Abby Phillip is opening up her show to this is really smart.”
After all, Santos believes right-leaning voices shouldn’t cower just because their positions deviate from the Hollywood norm.
“I really want to foster the ability for people to talk about politics without fear of being canceled,” she says. “I’ve had a lot of conversations with celebrities who are conservative curious and want to speak out. They’ve talked to their current representation [whose] position is like, ‘If you want to do this, then you’re on your own.’ There’s a lot of people out there who are afraid of being dropped by their representatives. That’s crazy. Why on earth is a publicist trying to control their messaging for them?”
For most of the Trump era, Hollywood gatekeepers have ignored anyone ideologically aligned with the president, particularly audiences. But Santos feels that strategy results in leaving money on the table. Last year, she worked on the rollout of Walsh’s satire “Am I Racist?” The film became an unlikely breakout and smoked the competition as the highest-grossing documentary of 2024 despite scant coverage from the mainstream media. Santos points to A24’s “Eddington,” arguably the most MAGA-friendly mainstream movie since the birth of the movement with its skewering of COVID lockdowns and Black Lives Matter protests, as a missed opportunity. A24 did create Truth Social handles to promote the film and Phoenix did appear on Von’s “This Past Weekend” to discuss the film, but Santos would have advised a much more aggressive approach.
“I remember thinking, ‘Why the hell didn’t they do some sort of collaboration with like Tim [Pool] or in Nashville with the Daily Wire. Like ‘Eddington’ was made for their audience,” she says. “That movie is so good. It has something for everybody. Austin Butler’s character, the psychotic conspiracy theorist, was hysterical. They should have been on [Joe] Rogan, on Tim pool. They should have been screwing it for all of these podcasters. They should have had Austin Butler do something with Russell Brand. All of those things should have happened. I just think people are so scared.”
About four hours after Santos and I wrap our interview, Charlie Kirk is assassinated in a shocking escalation of political violence. Although Santos didn’t represent the conservative activist, she had worked with him on projects. While many of her clients frequently face death threats, she now is grappling with a climate where cancellation isn’t the worst possibility. But clients like former “The View” co-host Meghan McCain say there is no one they would rather ride out uncertain times with than Santos.
“I have someone that I don’t have to explain why I’m scared,” McCain says, referring to an Oct. 1 Kennedy Center appearance. “Just having discussions with her about crazy people possibly showing up — I don’t have to explain to her, and it’s wonderful.”