Cernovich, meanwhile, livestreamed himself talking about Syria for about 11 hours total on Thursday. Days ago, Cernovich was getting praise from Trump's son, who suggested he should win a Pulitzer. He spent Thursday rallying his followers to try to change Trump's mind about intervention in Syria.

"I voted for you, my whole family voted for you," said Angelo John Gage , a Marine veteran who was once the chairman of the white nationalist National Youth Front. "We all busted our a–es to destroy the fake media news, and now you're falling for it." His video reaction to rumours of US military action in Syria was a direct address to Trump, and it went viral. Both WikiLeaks and Infowars reposted it.

Cernovich was adamant that Trump might actually listen to him and his readers for a decent reason: There's plenty of evidence that Trump reads and values conspiracy-theory sites like Infowars, and Cernovich himself appears to have some readers in the Trump administration. On Sunday, Cernovich was the first to report a story about Obama national security adviser Susan E. Rice requesting the "unmasking" of anonymous Americans named in foreign intelligence reports, implying that he now has sources with access to that information. And on Thursday afternoon, Cernovich said one of his sources told him US airstrikes were possible in Syria that evening, which turned out to be right (although rumours of a possible military action were circulating around Washington much of the day).

Several hours into his livestream, however, news broke that Trump hadn't listened to them. "I don't know if this is true or not. This is not my journalism," he said, reading the news on his iPad while broadcasting live. "I certainly don't want this to be true." As it became clear to him that it was true, Cernovich said: "This is appalling really. This is unbelievable. This is not what we voted for. This is definitely not what we voted for."

Cernovich resumed taking listeners' calls. One of the first after the strikes was particularly stark: "Is the world over? Are we all gonna die now?" the caller asked. Cernovich said it wasn't. The caller responded, "I"m literally scared sh--less now. I might have to kill myself. Okay, peace out."

Another caller said that "Trump's contract with the people was essentially void."

On Twitter, the reaction from the Trump Internet was fractured and furious. Paul Joseph Watson, a YouTuber who writes for Infowars, had one of the most dramatic: