It's actually kind of instructive, how if you have a smallish cadre of organized actors you can hack this stuff.

He's just got a discord full of diehards who harangue people until he can juice content out of it. After they've done it long enough, they raise his profile with the target until the target is so annoyed that they feel like they have to address it.

Then they meet with him and, win or lose, it makes him seem more like a legitimate public figure.