It’s another idyllic, warm day in Florida and Mitchell Jackson is waiting at a table by the water nursing a pot of Earl Grey tea. He has been patient while this masthead battled the late-morning traffic out of Miami, although over the next hour or so, I sense patience is not among his virtues.
“It’s over. It’s dying,” he says of the Donald Trump era after I profess I am glad to be out of Washington and reporting some non-Trump stories. It is one of many fads he declares passé during our lunch.
Jackson doesn’t have time to dawdle: he is one of America’s in-demand publicists, promoting a fast-expanding crop of influencers, podcasters and controversial celebrities. His client list includes far-right commentator and conspiracy theorist Candace Owens (who was refused a visa to enter Australia last year), lefty comedian Adam Friedland and, until recently, 20-year-old looksmaxxing internet streamer Clavicular.
Many more, he tells me, are calling up seeking representation – including some from Australia (though he won’t say who).
Jackson, 34, is well placed to steer these “weirdos”, as he calls his clients, into headlines or through PR storms. He came to controversy himself at 25, as a reporter on the women’s vertical at Vice, after he emailed far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos, then an editor at right-wing news site Breitbart, about feminist writer Lindy West. “Please mock this fat feminist,” he wrote.
Jackson (then called Mitchell Sunderland before marrying his husband) was sacked. “It was insanity,” he says of the reaction to the leaked private email. “But it was the best thing that ever happened to me because I have a successful business now.”
We are having lunch at Kaluz restaurant on the banks of the Intracoastal Waterway in Fort Lauderdale, which Jackson has chosen for its water views. He grew up nearby in beachside Hollywood, and lived in New York and Los Angeles before returning amid the pandemic – for tax purposes, he says, like so many who now call Florida home.
Jackson speaks fast and wastes no time ordering a tuna sashimi salad for himself and calamari rings to share. I take slightly longer to settle on a caesar salad with chicken and a green tea. We eschew wine: Jackson doesn’t drink alcohol and I have to drive to Palm Beach.
“I never thought I would live here as an adult because I don’t work in organised crime,” Jackson says. “When I grew up here, it was all sex phone operators or drug cartels – or you serviced the sex phone operators and drug cartels. It’s changed a bit, but that’s still mostly how Miami is.”
South Florida is attracting plenty of new industries, though, including many of the influencers who command eyeballs in the giant and dynamic American media market. Late last year, Jackson spotted talent in a young, handsome internet personality known as Clavicular, who lives in Miami.
“I thought that he had what it took to be a star, so we approached him. I very rarely do that. He had the right factors to be his generation’s Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian, but as a male.”
Clavicular, whose real name is Braden Peters, may not be a household name in the Australian suburbs, but he became an online sensation and a fixture of Miami’s party scene. He is best known as a leader of the so-called “looksmaxxing” movement, which promotes physical improvement through sometimes unorthodox methods, including micro-dosing illegal drugs and hammering one’s facial bones.
For some, he symbolised the decay of celebrity culture – a far cry from the Hollywood icons of decades past. To Jackson, he was a sweet, naturally charismatic young man willing to take risks. Too many risks. In mid-April, Peters was hospitalised after suffering an apparent overdose during a livestream with an Australian “looksmaxxer” called Androgenic.
So Jackson dropped him. “He has drug problems … He claims he’s sober 1780859276, I don’t believe that’s the case. I have a lot of family members with drug problems, so part of it is personal. But the other reason is: I’m not an enabler, I’m not a yes-man.”
‘I don’t really believe in cancellation.’
Mitchell Jackson
He finds the ongoing fascination with Clavicular bemusing, especially when it comes from politicians: he tells me California governor and assumed presidential candidate Gavin Newsom is trying to get the 20-year-old on his podcast, while Hollywood producers are inundating him with calls about potential documentaries.
“They’re so behind that they don’t realise this is a story from six months ago … It’s almost like a metaphor for the Democratic Party that Gavin Newsom is trying to do something in June 2026 on a story which was in The New York Times in February.”
Our food arrives: it looks fresh, and tastes it too. Jackson says his sashimi salad is “great”, and I don’t press for more detail. Jackson does not give off foodie vibes; he refused to be photographed eating (public relations 101), and our photographer, Audrey, opted to shoot the meals away from our table.
This sense that institutions – Hollywood, the Democrats, many legacy media outlets – are behind the times and severely lagging the culture pervades Jackson’s worldview. But he is right: the growth of new media in the US is astronomical, and conservative-leaning or right-coded personalities tend to dominate.
The Democrats don’t get it the way Republicans do, he tells me. The right understands that authenticity means giving unvarnished opinions, even if it means laying the boot into those on your own team.
“Republicans have infighting – you don’t see that among the Democrat influencers. And if you speak to most Democrat influencers, and you try to get them to say what they really think about each other, they won’t do it.
“Whereas right-leaning people are much more willing to fight within themselves, hence putting on a better show. You have to be willing to take shots at your own side and be honest. I don’t think everyone on the right is honest, but the ones with viewers are.”
Jackson points out that the most successful conservative podcasters and content creators – Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly – are not Trump sycophants. Quite the opposite.
“The ones who are going against him are the ones who are winning because they’re authentic and they’re willing to criticise him. People like authenticity – it’s not rocket science. But you have to be bold enough to take a stand, which a lot of people aren’t.”
Trump, says Jackson, has lost his way when it comes to the media. “I think we’re past peak Trump. And these wars are not popular. With anyone. No one likes their oil prices to be that high.” Even here in Trump-loving Florida? “I doubt anyone here reads,” Jackson replies instantly. “I’m not here for the literacy rate.”
Jackson is a voracious consumer of media – it’s a job requirement – and to prove the point, he shows me the contents of his tote bag: The Hollywood Reporter, Vanity Fair, New York Review of Books, The Spectator (the American and UK versions), The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. There’s also a copy of the latest Opera magazine. “We want to rep one of the operas because I have an evil idea,” he says.
Old media still matters, Jackson tells me. If you had to choose the top 1 per cent of things that matter, he says, it’s probably TikTok and the Times. Other brands matter to catch the eye of Baby Boomers who write cheques. “Boomers still control a lot of the money. It’s a very nuanced situation.”
Jackson prefers working with Gen-Z clients because they don’t suffer what he calls “Millennial brain” – the mistaken belief that certain cultural products, such as movies or the American Music Awards, are still relevant. “When Clavicular was mentioned at the Oscars, he didn’t know what the Oscars were, and neither did any of his friends.”
Still, there is a certain nostalgic quality to Jackson. His go-to cultural references are all from times gone by; he says America’s default cultural settings are PT Barnum and MTV; he makes references to Madonna or Michael Jackson’s Bad tour. When he says much of America has forgotten how to put on a show, he explains it through Roseanne.
‘I think the culture is going to get more and more irreverent, and eventually, it will have another woke moment.’
Mitchell Jackson
“Why did Disney cancel Roseanne? Not because of the ratings or because of a business reason, but because they didn’t want to offend people they got dinner with at night. That’s why [Rupert] Murdoch has been so successful. Because he never really cared about any of that. He followed the audience. I just think a lot of them got lost in their own bubble.”
As far as his own politics, he says he is a registered independent who voted for Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, but has supported Republicans in some state and local elections. He happily works with both sides, but often finds conservatives easier. With Democrats and Hollywood, he says, everything is decided by committee: “They’d rather have 30 Zoom calls than win.” Jackson has no interest in policy. “To me, this is all showbusiness.”
This worldview makes him well suited for the times. When Jackson has been profiled in the past, headlines have inevitably focused on his promotion and rehabilitation of controversial or “cancelled” celebrity clients. He doesn’t see it that way.
“I don’t really believe in cancellation – I think that’s a choice people make,” he says. They fixate instead of just moving on. “I think people get frozen in the year they get cancelled … If the definition of cancelled is you’re not working, my clients are dominating the charts. So how are they cancelled?”
The return of Trump and a post-COVID backlash to being told what to do have led some people to declare that “woke” politics has passed. Jackson says it will return, but less intensely.
“I think the culture is going to get more and more irreverent, and eventually, it will have another woke moment, it won’t be as big as the last one. That’ll sputter out. American cultural is cyclical. You go from Ronald Reagan to Nirvana, and then you go to George Bush, then Obama, and then wokeness, and then Trump. That is a circle.”
I ask Jackson if he tips Vance or Rubio to be the next Republican nominee. He counters with a dark horse: Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “He hasn’t had a scandal since he’s been in office – and also he, unlike Vance or Rubio, could probably build a coalition.”
Really? I suggest that a man whose spasmodic dysphonia makes it difficult for him to speak clearly is an unlikely president, not to mention his views on vaccines. Jackson scoffs. “This is America. It doesn’t matter if you sound weird; all that matters is you’re not boring.”
Jackson has started to compulsively check his phone. He tells me he has 39 new texts since we sat down an hour ago. I figure it is time to let him go. He calls an Uber and obliges a few more photographs (sans food) inside the restaurant, before jumping into a waiting Chevrolet Suburban.
A showbusiness exit, to be sure.
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Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X or email.