Sign up for The Media Today, CJR’s daily newsletter.
Last November, during Donald Trump’s acceptance speech for the presidency, Dana White, the CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, came to the podium to thank a succession of podcasters: Adin Ross, the Nelk Boys, Theo Von, Joe Rogan. Rogan—whose pre-election interview with Trump drew fifty million YouTube viewers—was also a prominent guest at Trump’s inauguration. The presence of these influencers on the political stage is a signal of “the new dynamics at play in Washington and the media writ large,” a team from Bloomberg wrote in a recent investigation into the podcasts that were most influential in building support for Trump among an audience of young men.
Tech companies have embraced this new media environment. Meta has rolled back content moderation on Facebook and Instagram to adapt to “the voices that matter,” as Mark Zuckerberg described to Rogan in January. The “cultural elite class,” he said, “needs to get repopulated with people who people actually trust.” Google, which owns YouTube, is also investing in conservative content, as the Bloomberg investigation noted. Elon Musk’s X is Elon Musk’s X. As alternative media—bound neither to journalistic conventions nor to traditional editorial standards—increasingly rivals traditional media, the latter will need to figure out new ways to compete for an audience. And a narrative has emerged that, in a battle for public attention, Democrats are losing badly.
Recently, I talked to Davey Alba and Leon Yin, the lead reporters on Bloomberg’s investigation, about the lessons their investigation holds for journalists, how Democrats are and aren’t competing in this new media space, and how bro podcasts might build support for Trump’s agenda going forward—or turn on him as he again becomes the establishment. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
CB: Let’s start with your investigation. Can you take me through your process for reporting this?
DA: We decided to approach these podcasts from a quantitative standpoint. There were five other reporters on the piece, and we fanned out and started listening to the podcasts. We knew that we wanted to tackle the guest networks of these podcasts. In Becca Lewis’s study from 2018 on the alternative influencer network on YouTube, she took a close look at the guest network, and that seemed like a right place to start. We also had the idea of tracking political topics that were repeated.
LY: We had a tag for masculinity at first, but then we realized they talked about that all the time. We narrowed our analysis to political talking points, or certain phrases that would come up. Like, “There are no wars under Trump.” Or, on transgender identity: “I don’t care if you’re an adult, but if you’re a child, you shouldn’t be transitioning.” We found narratives that were repeated by guests, by hosts, and also by politicians like Trump. There were six hundred and three videos with more than a million views, and we searched those transcripts for mentions of specific keywords. Then we’d watch in and around those clips to verify.
DA: There are ways that you can programmatically look at transcripts, like with the help of AI. But we felt it was really important to immerse ourselves in the world and just spend the time listening to it ourselves. The numbers, the reach of these shows, were just crazy. They have tens of millions of listeners daily. That vastly outpaces the audiences of traditional media.
Why are these podcasts so popular? What’s the core appeal for young men?
DA: The shows don’t talk about themselves as political. They style themselves as entertainment shows. They talk about big cultural moments, sports and gambling, male interests. Once they’re already reliably a part of someone’s day, then that makes a really powerful vehicle to introduce political ideas. People in our world, like other journalists, don’t necessarily consume these podcasts, and for me that was a point of tension. Because on the one hand, we’re trying to quantify and describe these shows to an audience of people like us. But at the same time, our analysis of the shows won’t reach as wide of an audience as the shows themselves. So I struggled a little bit with whether our story was actually going to make an impact. I don’t have a satisfying answer to that. It was personally clarifying for me to really dig into this and to characterize this world for people, like me, who want to understand it and its power. But if you’re talking about numbers and audience, that is so small compared to the reach of these shows.
How does Trump come off differently on these podcasts than he would on Fox News or going through traditional media?
LY: In the Adin Ross interview, for example, Ross says to Trump, “I want my audience to know that you are a real person. You’re a good person. And I want you to take this microphone and tell them why they should vote for you this November.” It’s very explicit, the intention of why he’s there. Authenticity is key. What creators and YouTubers specialize in is authenticity and character building. It’s a lot like a reality TV show; like, Here is a zany character. What are they going to do to react? When you look at the guests who do really well on these shows, they’re reality TV stars, they’re comedians, they’re internet superstars like Logan Paul. It’s all about shock and spectacle and what gets attention. When the election occurs, people want to know what they should think. They want to know what’s going on, and they want to be entertained, too. These shows kind of mishmash the culture with the politics, which is a really effective way of making sure that their audience stays entertained and also informed about topics of where men fit in society.
How much does it matter what Trump and J.D. Vance and Elon Musk are actually saying on these shows? How much does the content of their messaging matter for their popularity, compared to just their presence on the podcasts?
DA: I think they’re both important. We saw a bunch of political candidates come on the shows ahead of Trump, and one of our sources called it “salting the earth.” Certain personalities came on and then built up towards Trump coming on. That was really powerful. Once you start listening to a few of these podcasts, you see the same names come up over and over again. It lends a sense of credibility. They talk about Dana White all the time, and even outside of the show they talk about hanging out at his house, spending time with him at UFC, things like that.
LY: Plus, much of what they discuss is already discussed by other guests before they get on. These themes and issues are interwoven with character building: “Who’s your favorite UFC fighter, Donald Trump?” And he’s like, “People really like Stylebender.” It’s about combining authenticity and connectability with messages that are more directly part of his platform.
DA: We heard the podcasters themselves talk a bit about their strategy. One of the hosts said that the way to grab people’s attention is to create enemies, or boogeymen, and then to frame yourself and your friends as the heroes. If you’re thinking of the election as a battle, that makes it something that fits neatly into this strategy.
LY: The hosts and their audience have certain common concerns that come up a lot. Around war, for example, because who mostly fights wars? It’s young men. Around the economy: Why can’t we get good jobs and get paid well? And the boogeyman became Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party. So, naturally, the podcasters paint themselves as the challengers, the underdogs. They often have guests who they frame as disgraced men, fallen legends they hoist up. They stand them up to say, Look, the society that has wronged you has wronged them. They’re going to tell you how they got over it. The ultimate character for that, of course, is Donald Trump. He’s the ultimate fallen man: He was president, he was on top of the world, then the world shut him down when January 6 happened. But wait, he’s actually the good guy. What you’ve been told is wrong, and we are the only ones who will tell you what’s right.
What do Democrats’ media appearances look like in comparison?
DA: We did take a look at some of Kamala’s appearances on the podcasts she went on, which were more geared towards women and Black audiences. Just from looking at the numbers, those did not make as big of a splash as this world. We have some theories for why that might be the case. The shows that she did go on were not as powerfully networked as these shows. And, for better or worse, the way she went on these shows was, she did twenty- to forty-minute conversations. She did not do the long-form, unedited conversations, the shoot-the-shit kind of thing. For me, this is a message to traditional media that we shouldn’t condescend to audiences. There’s a way that these shows frame themselves as: We’re in this with you, we’re right at the ground level, not presenting facts from on high. I think that the media should take note of this and try to weave it into our processes. I know that’s a difficult proposition, because there are many constraints of traditional media that mandate a sense of objectivity and distance from what you’re covering.
Do you think the format of these podcasts is naturally more suited to conservative, culture-war content? Maybe the conversational interview is a place more for controversial subjects and guests that rile audiences up than a place for objective, nuanced information.
DA: We can’t exactly say whether the format is the reason why these shows have espoused certain views. It’s more like that’s what’s winning. That’s what’s effective. We reached out to YouTube and asked them about the kind of content that was really ruling their platform. We spoke to one source who said that the fact that conservative voices are really thriving on a platform like YouTube helps Google combat the idea that they’re a “woke” company. I think the long-form format also helps audiences make connections to these ideas. As you’re talking, it’s easy to throw in a pretty extreme, off-the-wall view, and that’s what works. The views, the popularity, and the algorithm bear that out.
There’s an argument that was constructed in the aftermath of the election that seems convincing, which is that politics is now essentially showmanship—that the outsize personalities that lend themselves to reality TV, for example, are the same personalities that are successful in politics because they effectively get the attention of voters. So in an attentional landscape, antiestablishment conservatives or more extreme conservatives are winning by a mile, whereas Democrats are losing that bid for attention. Joe Biden was media-averse for several reasons, and Kamala Harris was extremely careful with her press appearances during her campaign. On these bro podcasts, what do you think the conservative guests are more savvy about than Democrats? What are they doing differently?
LY: I think the big question is, Can they hang? Can the boys hang with the boys? The Democratic Party can no longer hang.
DA: They’re very concerned with politeness and propriety. That’s not what these audiences are craving or looking for. That’s the real disjointedness right there.
What’s the lesson for the larger media? Does it need to change up its format to capture younger audiences?
LY: These podcasters and streamers are a conduit. They’re not creating the news. Often they react to the news, or they read an article and talk about it, or they discuss something happening in the world. But for the most part they are commentary. If you want a similar thing, you need someone who does commentary from another political perspective. There are some people like that. Hasan Piker and Sam Seder, they do that. But they only talk about political news, not all the space in between, like culture and athletics. If someone wants to show up and create that space, they have to have charisma and they have to be fun to watch. If Kai Cenat decided to do this, it would do very well because he’s very smart. He’s from the AMP content creator network. He’s a streamer on Twitch. He would be great, but he chooses not to be very political. You’d have to have someone else who keeps it real, who has interesting guests on and has their own take that people are down for.
DA: As much as the news itself plays a role in these podcasts—because the host will pull up an article to show to their viewers and then riff on it—this is an entirely separate ecosystem. It’s not a replacement—it’s a layer on top of traditional reporting; with the remove of being unshackled from the ethics and concerns of the journalistic framework, they’re able to not play by our rules and, in fact, break them overtly in many cases. Everyone is familiar with the interview format that is common in news programs, but these hosts don’t push back on their guests. They don’t challenge their views. They don’t bring in context and facts from the outside and put it to the guests and say, Well, what about this? They are in fact very derisive about news. Of course, they wouldn’t have much to riff on if the news didn’t exist.
This is a new era of power for politics, and I think it’s important for us to pay attention to how this network works moving forward. This could soon transform into a real platform for the Trump administration, by pushing its agenda and building support for its policies. We’re already starting to see the beginnings of that with some of the executive orders that have been put out, which really seem like they’ve been taken straight from the discussions that occur on this platform. These hosts have media press passes and will probably be in the White House listening to briefings. Moving forward, it’s important to keep an eye on what this network is doing and the ideas that they’re espousing, and if and how they build support for Trump’s policies.
You’re making a crucial point that these podcasts are commentary, and not beholden to journalistic standards by design, but at the same time, there’s a blurring of the lines where in some cases they are acting as newspeople, and now they are at press conferences, and posturing to younger audiences as a credible alternative to mainstream news.
DA: It’s sort of whatever is convenient. They can pretend to be a replacement for traditional news when at the same time they rely on traditional news. There’s a lot of contradictions.
LY: I think it goes back to what their motives and perceived motives are. They’re largely trusted because they’re seemingly independent. They’re not seemingly beholden to billionaires or other forces at play that might be shaping the world. We’ll see if that’s true. I think they operate primarily to optimize audience engagement. They want what’s epic. Is it epic to just say what the president’s saying? He’s back in a position of power, so that changes the dynamic significantly. There are also things developing that go against much of his platform. If you think war is bad—and how to get out of wars was the second-most-discussed topic on these shows—all the geopolitical stuff about Greenland and Gaza sure sounds a lot like war. Trump’s current actions may be going against the beliefs of this audience and the hosts. When the power dynamic is flipped, and Trump’s directions shift, we’ll see what happens. Once things stop being epic, I think the stance will change. Trump is now another form of establishment, another form of authority. He might even become an opponent again.
Other notable stories:
- Last night, Fox News aired a joint interview, hosted by Sean Hannity, with Trump and Musk, in which the pair heaped praise on each other. (Musk: “I love the president.” Hannity: “You love the president?” Musk: “I think President Trump is a good man.” Trump: “That’s nice, the way he said that.”) The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols described the interview as a “rambling and sometimes weird conversation” between “three men who have no idea how American democracy works.” Hannity’s first question—on a recent legal settlement between Trump and Musk’s X—was tough-ish, but he otherwise pitched softballs, Deadline’s Ted Johnson notes. And the answers were mostly predictable: The Bulwark’s Sam Stein quipped that “you have to admire” how Hannity scored an exclusive sit-down with the two most powerful men in the US and made “absolutely NO news.”
- In actual news out of the White House, Jake Lahut reports, for CJR, on how Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, is (and maybe isn’t) shaking up the briefing room—and on her emerging habit of using “new media” interlocutors to field friendly questions. Meanwhile, Trump confirmed to Axios that he will continue to restrict the Associated Press’s access to the White House until the agency starts calling the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” (In related news, Google, which has made the change for US users, is now facing a lawsuit from Mexico unless it limits the renaming to the part of the continental shelf that the US controls.) And after Trump said that Ukraine started its war with Russia, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, replied that Trump is in a “disinformation bubble.”
- Recently, reporters at CNN filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Office of Personnel Management, seeking records related to security clearances granted to Musk and his aides within the government—only to receive a reply that read “good luck with that, they just fired the whole privacy team.” CNN now reports that in addition to these staffers, communications officials and others tasked with handling FOIA requests have lost their jobs. The firings appear to contradict Musk’s (already paper-thin) promises of transparency, but do mirror his move to fire media-relations staffers after taking over X, after which all press queries got back an automated reply featuring the poop emoji.
- Nieman Lab’s Sarah Scire reports on a new study, based on survey data from nearly two dozen European countries, finding that age may be a more important predictor of news-consumption habits than nationality. Those under and over thirty-five were equally likely to cite civic duty as a reason for staying up to date with the news, but otherwise diverged. Older news consumers were more “motivated to seek information, gain knowledge, and understand current events,” Scire writes, while younger ones are more motivated by “personal and intellectual growth,” “entertainment,” and “social purposes.”
- And in this newsletter last week, we reported on a diplomatic rupture between France and Algeria, and noted controversy around a novel by Kamel Daoud, a Franco-Algerian writer (and former journalist), about the Algerian civil war, a taboo topic in the country. Now a survivor of the war who has accused Daoud of basing the novel on her life story without her consent (she has said that she shared it with Daoud’s wife, a psychiatrist) is taking Daoud to court in France for violating her privacy. Daoud and his publisher have denied the claim, and suggested that the Algerian regime might have orchestrated it.
Has America ever needed a media defender more than now? Help us by joining CJR today.
