“I wish to thank the Nelk Boys, Adin Ross, Theo Von, Bussin’ With the Boys, and final however not least, the mighty and highly effective Joe Rogan,” stated UFC CEO Dana White when handed the microphone throughout Donald Trump’s victory speech on election evening. Relatively than shout out a slew of Republican senators, White singled out a handful of fashionable podcasters and influencers who arguably had extra to do with Trump taking the stage at about 2:30 a.m. that evening than your run-of-the-mill politician in Washington.
White’s remarks spoke to the Trump marketing campaign’s savvy media technique of courting giant male audiences—and was a harbinger of the “Democrats want a Joe Rogan” discourse that has followed the occasion’s resounding defeat. In conversations I’ve had since with outstanding voices on the best and the left, in addition to with journalists steeped in web tradition, it’s clear the Democrats want to interact extra successfully by way of nontraditional media. And whereas there are alternatives for the occasion to attach, there’s additionally no fast repair to match a right-leaning, male-centric media ecosystem, or manosphere, that’s rising right into a MAGA megaphone.
“This shift has been occurring for literal years,” says Taylor Lorenz, a tech journalist and writer of the e-book Extremely Online. “You’ll be able to take a look at the evolution of one thing like Barstool Sports activities, which is a part of this as properly. The appropriate has all the time succeeded in personality-driven environments. They acknowledged again within the ’90s, within the days of speak radio, that personality-driven media is simply far more practical at reaching individuals and selling their messaging.” She additionally factors to the sports activities, gaming, and YouTube prank tradition as delicate ways in which younger individuals have been progressively uncovered to more and more conservative ideology.
Lorenz, who produces a web based tradition publication on Substack, User Mag, says that the content material area leans proper as a result of the individuals who created the surroundings have all the time felt “shut out” from conventional media channels, Hollywood, and mainstream popular culture, which they really feel is “managed by liberals.”
Within the closing stretch of the 2024 election, Trump appeared on quite a few podcasts and livestreams, together with The Joe Rogan Expertise, This Previous Weekend With Theo Von, Full Ship, and extra, whereas stiff-arming the mainstream media. (JD Vance additionally appeared on Rogan’s present, as did Elon Musk, who satisfied the podcast host to give an eleventh-hour endorsement.) Trump’s 18-year-old son, Barron, has been credited with encouraging such appearances, which allowed the president-elect to succeed in a youthful demographic in a extra conversational, even meandering method—a far cry from a policy-driven Sunday-show interview.
Because of this, conservative host Candace Owens tells me, the general public was capable of entry a “completely different facet of Trump and that’s what individuals wish to see.” Owens claims that “90%” of mainstream media “is principally dismissing individuals on the best.”
“They impart in that method with piety and conceitedness. And persons are simply bored with it,” she provides, arguing that the best is successful within the impartial media area as a result of they foster extra “human conversations.”
Don Lemon, a former CNN anchor who has drawn praise for his man-on-the-street movies across the nation this election cycle, tells me that Trump has “realized, well, the impression that streaming, digital, and social can have on a really a lot waning conventional, company, old-school media.”
In the meantime, Kamala Harris’s marketing campaign, he says, “actually missed out on that.”
“She is a way more vibrant, younger individual” than Trump, Lemon argues. “She’s not a sourpuss and people individuals needed to embrace her,” particularly referencing Black impartial media. “There’s so many locations, form of heart or center-left individuals, who’re simply not in that loopy right-wing, white boy, bro area that she may have gone on to.”
Lemon means that the Harris marketing campaign was just too cautious, involved by which podcast hosts may trigger undesirable controversy, after they may’ve been tapping into the net ecosystem. “The principles are completely different,” he says, noting that shouldn’t have been a priority for Democrats when Trump surrounds himself with individuals who “spout off, every day, conspiracy theories and far-right-wing speaking factors.”
One voice on the left who has achieved comparable success in viewers development, in line with Lorenz, is Hasan Piker, a streamer, influencer, and political talker who gives an alternative choice to hypermasculine Trump boosters whereas remaining “culturally related.” On election evening, Piker was the one left-leaning streamer to rank within the high 10 on Twitch. Within the rankings, Piker, at quantity three, is flanked by conservative talkers like Dan Bongino, Steven Crowder, PBD Podcast (which featured Owens), Charlie Kirk, and Tucker Carlson.
Piker, in an interview, identifies completely different strands of commentary on the best, from the extra explicitly political “propaganda” retailers, like The Every day Wire, to the “centrist content material circuit,” pointing to podcasts Trump has appeared on like Von’s This Previous Weekend. “Von isn’t an overt right-winger,” he says, including that Rogan “falls someplace in between there,” however has not too long ago “turn out to be this right-wing man who went from endorsing Bernie Sanders in 2020 to endorsingDonald Trump in 2024.”
Notably, Sanders appeared on Rogan’s present through the 2020 Democratic major marketing campaign and seemingly gained over the assist of the host, which led to criticism from some on the left given Rogan’s controversial comments, together with concerning transgender athletes. (On Sunday, Sanders recalled being “vilified” for happening Rogan’s present whereas urging Democrats to not ignore the “various media on the market.”)
