2016 U.S. elections Presler was employed as a regional field director for the
Republican Party of Virginia in 2015 and 2016. He also attended
Norfolk's PrideFest, an LGBT festival, later that year with Republican Party officials. Presler was present at the Gays for Trump
DeploraBall held in Maryland after the
inauguration of Trump as president on January 20, 2017,
ACT for America, 2017–2018 In a 2017
Washington Post interview, Presler said he was motivated to become a volunteer for
anti-Muslim advocacy group
ACT for America that year after hearing its founder,
Brigitte Gabriel, speak. He volunteered for ACT for America for three months. as part of the
counter-jihad movement. According to the
Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit legal advocacy organization, the marches "attracted various factions of the radical right, including
white nationalists,
neo-Nazis and antigovernment extremists" that were all "united by anti-Muslim animus." A march on the same date in
Seattle, Washington, was organized by Presler soon after. Prior to the
2017 Virginia gubernatorial election, Republican Party candidate
Ed Gillespie requested and received an endorsement from Presler, as Presler was at that time the vice chairman of the Virginia Beach Young Republicans and a volunteer for Gillespie's campaign. In April 2019, Presler held an activism workshop in the town of
Kent, Connecticut, for the
Connecticut Republican Party in preparation for the
2020 elections. A protest of Presler's event was organized by the Kent Democratic Town Committee after it failed to have his event canceled. Presler organized a small
clean-up event in
Baltimore, Maryland, through social media the month after President Trump's tweets in July 2019 which described the
congressional district represented by Democratic Party congressman
Elijah Cummings as a "rodent infested mess". The event was attended by more than 100 volunteers and resulted in 29 tons of trash cleaned from streets. In December, Presler was advertised as appearing alongside activist Dylan Wheeler at an immigration-focused event in
Bettendorf, Iowa, hosted by the
Scott County Teenage Republicans; the event concluded with a speech by
white supremacist political commentator
Nick Fuentes. In 2020, Presler continued to be involved in events in support of President Trump's
re-election campaign. On November 5, 2020, two days after polls had closed but before the election's winner had been determined, Presler led a two-day "
Stop the Steal" demonstration at the
Pennsylvania State Capitol in
Harrisburg attended by around 100 Trump supporters. A week after the victory of the Democratic Party candidate
Joe Biden in the election, Presler was involved in a
pro-Trump demonstration in downtown Washington, D.C. Later that month, he spoke at a "Stop the Steal" rally at the
Georgia State Capitol. Presler attended the
"Save America" rally on January 6, 2021, that preceded the
attack on the United States Capitol. Presler posted a video of himself near the Capitol that day in which he described the events that day as the "largest civil rights protest in American history."
Voter registration efforts and other political activities, 2021–2023 Presler was a speaker at the
2021 Conservative Political Action Conference held in
Orlando, Florida, in February 2021. According to 2023 reporting by
Newsday, in May 2021, Presler became the
brand ambassador for Rise NY PAC, a
political action committee operated by the sister of New York congressional candidate
George Santos following his
unsuccessful run for Congress in 2020. Presler was scheduled to appear at a Republican Party
voter registration event in the town of
Wilton, in
Upstate New York, on August 25, 2021. In December 2022, Presler was involved in
get-out-the-vote efforts during the
runoff election in the
U.S. Senate election in Georgia. Later in December,
Harmeet Dhillon, a lawyer and
Republican National Committee (RNC) committee member, announced her candidacy in the
2023 RNC chairman election, challenging incumbent chair
Ronna McDaniel. The day of her announcement, Dhillon said on Twitter that she would offer a job to Presler if she was elected. After posting a video on Twitter of himself standing alongside Presler, Kelly was questioned by press on Presler's presence at the United States Capitol on the day of the Capitol attack, to which Kelly responded that he was not aware of Presler's previous activities.
2024 U.S. elections Presler runs a non-profit organization, Early Vote Action, intended to "organize & mobilize Republicans to vote early." Shortly after her installation as
Republican National Committee co-chair,
Lara Trump, Donald Trump's daughter-in-law, expressed her interest to hire Presler to lead the Republican Party's "legal
ballot harvesting" efforts. The RNC later clarified it would not be hiring Presler. In the
2024 United States presidential election, Presler worked on encouraging voters to vote for Donald Trump in the
swing state of
Pennsylvania, including some
Amish communities. He cited the local case of an Amish farmer whose dairy was raided by state authorities for selling
unpasteurized milk without a permit; the raid preceded reports that two children had fallen sick due to
E. coli poisoning connected to the farmer's milk. He threatened to sue
Luzerne County at a county meeting over claims of a voter registration and
mail-in ballot application backlog, but did not ultimately file a lawsuit. He leveled similar accusations during appearances on right-wing media, notably the
War Room podcast hosted by political operative
Steve Bannon. In early 2025, after Presler's efforts to ensure a Republican victory in
an election to the
Wisconsin Supreme Court failed, fellow gay pro-Trump activist and former friend Brandon Straka, who founded the
WalkAway campaign, started a website with other conservatives, that criticized Presler as largely a beneficiary of media hype he orchestrated. They observed that the Amish vote was relatively inconsequential to the
outcome in Pennsylvania. In
Lancaster County, where most of the state's Amish population is concentrated, they noted, the total vote for Trump increased by only 6,000 over the
2020 election. He also carried the county in that election, even when it had more registered Democrats. Presler's critics also faulted him for not correcting a claim by his supporters that he had registered 180,000 Amish, since there are only 100,000 in the state. == Views ==