For the first few minutes, talking to Jessica Reed Kraus feels like trading notes with any other busy parent, swapping gripes about having too much to do and not enough time to do it. “Things get so busy towards the end of the year, don’t you think?” asks Kraus. In the background, the familiar soundtrack of domestic life bleeds through the phone, cupboards banging, children laughing. “Sorry, it’s all happening here,” she says.

Kraus is calling from the 1960s-style ranch house in San Clemente, California, she shares with her husband, Mike, and their four sons. “I’ve barely been home in the last few weeks, so there’s a lot to unpack, and tomorrow, I’m off again for work.”

Last-minute family holiday before the festive season? “No, I’m on a red-eye to Mar-a-Lago; the Trump kids are screening a family documentary and invited me along.”

Welcome to the curious world of blogger and influencer Jessica Reed Kraus – better known by her online handle @HouseinHabit – where visiting Mar-a-Lago is just part of the job description.

In fact, this will be Kraus’ fifth visit, but not her final one. “Well, I assume that’s where Donald will have his election night party,” she explains. “And ideally, I’ll be back there again documenting it.”

In an election year defined by media fragmentation, where candidates are just as likely to visit pop culture podcasters as they are to sit down with traditional media outlets, Kraus has become a key player, thanks to her enormous social presence.

She has more than a million followers on Instagram, while her Substack, House Inhabit, is top-ranked in the platform’s culture category, with 395,000 subscribers, many of whom pay $7 a month for her paywalled posts. According to Kraus, there are 20,000 paying subscribers, meaning the Substack brings in more than USD $1.5 million ($2.3 million) annually.

Aside from turning a tidy profit, Kraus wields the exact kind of nontraditional influence that has become a cornerstone of the MAGA movement. A self-described “civic journalist”, she doesn’t report as much as she romanticises, a style that has seen her embraced by Trump (as well as former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr).

“I treat my audience like we’re on a 1-million-person text thread,” explains Kraus. “I’m not sitting with an editor and discussing what I’m going to post; I just say what I feel.”

In exchange for unprecedented behind-the-scenes access, Kraus fills her Substack with lengthy essays about days spent whale-watching with the Kennedys and weekends falcon hunting with Donald Trump Jr and his children. By her own admission, she’s more about mood than minutiae.

“There are enough journalists who are focusing on stuff like policy,” she says. “Whether you like it or not, the majority of people don’t care about politicians unless they’re attracted to them in some way, whether it’s emotionally, intellectually or sexually; my goal is to humanise them.”

Sandwiched between the slices of life are salacious gossip stories about Trump’s opponents or glowing appraisals of his allies. A personal favourite: Women across America Just Fell in Love with JD Vance.

So how did a one-time lifestyle blogger end up influencer in chief? On the surface, Kraus’ trajectory might seem simple. In the 2010s, she developed a small online following as a mumfluencer who passionately supported Hillary Clinton. “I was devastated when Hillary lost; I protested Trump’s win,” she says.

Then came the pandemic, which upended almost every aspect of society and triggered a shift in Kraus’ views. She refused to vaccinate herself or her children against COVID-19, despite World Health Organisation advice at the time.

“I started to research things on my own and decide how I felt about vaccinations and the media; I was waking up to the manipulation being forced on us,” says Kraus, who has still not been vaccinated against COVID-19.

“I went through that publicly, which was hard because I had a very liberal audience, but I found myself empathising with Trump and his supporters.”

Her reinvention coincided with a new focus online: conspiracy theories and celebrity trials. Kraus covered Britney Spears’ conservatorship in 2021, Ghislaine Maxwell, and the Harvey Weinstein case in 2022.

However, it was her daily dispatches during Johnny Depp’s defamation case against Amber Heard that saw Kraus’s influence explode. In 2022, Depp sued his ex-wife, Heard, for defamation over an opinion article she wrote for the Washington Post, alleging she was a domestic abuse victim, though it did not mention him by name. Jurors awarded Depp - who denied abusing Heard - USD $15m ($22.6 million) in compensatory and punitive damages.

The case was heavily covered by traditional and new media, becoming a culture war that polarised people along ugly fault lines. Known as the trial by TikTok, the case saw issues like domestic violence, the #MeToo movement and sexual assault picked apart on social media.

Taking Depp’s side, Kraus shared salacious stories from anonymous sources about Heard’s personal life, with the sole intention of casting doubt on her as a witness. New York Magazine described her as the “chief instigator of the anti-Heard storyline”.

“I loved that line,” says Kraus. “I suppose I wasn’t politically correct in framing my coverage, but I just reported what I thought was happening, including my opinions on Amber Heard.” The pro-Depp coverage doubled her following overnight from 500,000 to nearly a million, but mainstream media really took notice when she said she landed the only interview with Depp.

Tucked behind a paywall on her Substack, Kraus gave Depp a hero’s welcome. “On the other end of the line, the greeting that booms through the phone is a vibration that needs no introduction,” wrote Kraus. “Johnny Depp, voice bathed in slow southern charm, greets me with ‘hello’.”

Since Depp, Kraus has continued to court controversy while unashamedly perfecting her unique brand of content.

The success of her Substack, combined with her unorthodox style – Kraus rarely cites sources, relies on anonymous insiders and uncritically platforms proven conspiracy theorists – has led to a chorus of criticism.

Last month, she shared a photo alongside Alex Jones, the right-wing TV host who repeatedly claimed the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings never happened. Relatives of the Sandy Hook victims later sued Jones, winning nearly $1.5 billion in judgments against him.

Even for Kraus’s most ardent supporters, the Jones picture was a step too far, the comments section on her Instagram largely condemning the photo.

“At that time, I was tracking Tucker Carlson, not Alex Jones and my interest was, what does Tucker see in him?” says Kraus. “But at the end of the day, I’m allowed to be curious about anyone in culture, and he is a relevant person in culture.”

Meanwhile, there is an entire Subreddit dedicated to debunking her stories. Not that Kraus seems to mind.

“My sources mostly go unnamed because that’s just my style. If I’m at Mar-a-Lago for a party or at the Kennedy compound for a clambake, they forget that I’m media, so I’m not about to go around with a recorder,” says Kraus.

“If I’m at Mar-a-Lago for a party or at the Kennedy compound for a clambake, I’m not about to go around with a recorder.”

Jessica Reed Kraus

“At the end of day, my audience don’t care about sources, they think I’ve been right enough for them to trust that they’re legitimate.”

Admittedly, Kraus has been wrong plenty of times. Earlier this year, she claimed Catherine, Princess of Wales, had undergone bowel surgery, citing an individual connected to hospital staff. This turned out to be false, but, perhaps taking a leaf out of Trump’s playbook, Kraus isn’t about to admit defeat. “I was never proven wrong about this theory, officially,” she says.

Ultimately, it’s difficult to determine what Kraus’ endgame really is. Does she genuinely believe Trump is the saviour of democracy, or is this part of a larger play to Make America Gossip Again?

Either way, whatever happens come election night, it is likely that Kraus has guaranteed herself a front-row seat to the strangest show on earth. “If Trump wins, I’d be in a good place. I think his campaign and his family like me, and they like the coverage, right?” she says. But what if he loses? “Well, there’s going to be uproar, all sorts of chaos, so I guess I just stand back and track that too.”

Find more of the author’s work here. Email him at thomas.mitchell@smh.com.au or follow him on Instagram at @thomasalexandermitchell and on Twitter @_thmitchell.

Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.