Some 'Manosphere' Podcasters Who Backed Trump Are Turning From Him

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Yeah, I think people need to prepare for retirement and start being lazy now yes or now just do less everyone yeah hey there it's the npr politics podcast i'm ashley lopez i cover politics i'm elena moore i also cover politics and i'm domenico montanaro senior political editor and correspondent and today on the show we're talking about the so-called manosphere that's the term given to an ecosystem of media content tailored toward younger men then candidate donald trump went on a number of podcasts in the manosphere during his 2024 election bid with the hope of winning new voters but now that trump is back in office, some of those podcast hosts who supported Trump during the campaign are changing their tunes.

Elena, if I'm listening to one of these podcasts, like who am I listening to?

What kinds of things are these folks talking about?

Yeah, so we should say these aren't like political shows.

These are most, you know, commonly seen as a comedy show, a talk show.

They're these long form, multi-hour conversations where people kind of just chill and talk about whatever is on their mind.

And so the most famous, probably the most famous in the OG is Joe Rogan's show, the podcast, the Joe Rogan Experience.

And then, you know, there have been other shows that take on similar format and have gotten really popular in the last few years.

That's like this past weekend with Theo Vaughan, a comedian, and Andrew Schultz's Flagrant podcast.

These are also comedians.

Yeah, and who's listening to these shows?

Like, what's their audience look like?

Right.

So that's why we are talking about them.

They're not political shows, but as one political strategist told me recently, they kind of bump into politics in the same way when you're at a dinner party or at a bar and things naturally come up.

And so that's why we're looking at it, because it's an audience that is not necessarily one that you would think of as a political wonky audience, but they're voting potentially and they have really different political backgrounds and they're all kind of coalescing in this one community.

So let me step back.

In recent Edison metrics numbers, we saw that all three of these shows have audiences that are pretty ideologically split, you know, around a third, a third, a third independent Republican Democrat.

Some shows slightly more Republican, slightly more independent, but it's not a, you know, a MAGA audience, so to speak, even though we saw President Trump go on these shows last fall and these men endorse him ultimately and support him.

And in a really natural way of them just talking about feeling pushed away from the party, the Democratic Party, that some of them had talked about aligning with previously or supporting some candidates that were Democrats and kind of jumping on the Trump train.

So seeing those audience metrics are really interesting because on top of the political breakdown, they skew heavily young and they skew heavily male.

So it's a very specific group.

And Dominica, I wonder like what kind of political influence a podcast would have that doesn't really have an ideological bent.

It's sort of apolitical.

I mean, do we have a sense of how like Theo Von and all these other podcasts influenced the last election?

Politically, they had a considerable influence, even though they're mostly nonpartisan shows, you know, in theory, in practice.

They've had some real political influence.

And that's because the Trump campaign recognized their broad appeal to a certain demographic, especially young men, as you noted, who are sort of cynical about politics.

They don't believe that politics is the art of the possible.

They sort of just make fun of politics and they see it as both sides being the problem and

how they're not looking out for uh whoever right and the trump campaign recognized this they decided to get in those spaces and democrats largely ignored it to their peril

yeah and i i wonder like if you're a political like this is not the kind of voter that you're going to find at rallies either these are like particularly hard voters to reach oh yeah this is like such a a specific audience that us as reporters either in the field like you said or just trying to call people up for polls or talk to them for stories, they don't want to engage in the same way that we would see other groups might want to engage.

It's a completely different group that really doesn't have trust in some of the institutions that Trump ran to kind of fight against in some ways.

Look, and even though I think we should back up a second and understand that a lot of the people who are hosts of these podcasts, they gained a lot of attention during the COVID pandemic because a lot of them were skeptical of vaccines, skeptical of expertise.

And I think that's where the Trump campaign felt they had an opening with them to be able to say, look, this is a group of people who might be convincible to come over to our side and vote for us because, you know, we line up with a lot of what they're talking about when it comes to post-COVID freedoms and things like that.

You know, sometimes regardless of the facts, which we've seen in a lot of examples and a lot of places, but a very strong anti-expertise

strain that runs through these podcasts where they just are simply saying, look, I do my own research.

I hear this thing from these other people.

I know what I've heard from others.

And it's kind of a lifestyle brand.

It's a lifestyle thing.

It's not really aimed at politics, but the Trump campaign felt like they could mine the way they felt about what the lifestyles were, what the freedoms were that these young men wanted out of life and what the culture should be.

And we should say that where we saw a lot of those, you could say, conspiracy theories really flourish was on Joe Rogan's podcast.

He's been known for this for a really long time.

That's not like a new trend for him.

He's always been kind of questioning the norm in a counterculture type way.

But yeah, I agree with you, Dominico.

And I also think like it's an audience that's very curious.

And I think that's the thing that Republicans kind of capitalized on.

And now we're seeing some Democrats kind of enter this space too.

It's an audience that wants to know more.

And we're hearing that from these hosts who are bringing on politicians.

Yeah.

And I do wonder if all of the vaccine hesitancy and all the sort of misinformation that was like around, I do wonder if that's maybe why Democrats didn't go on these shows and maybe whether they're rethinking that now.

You know, I think some Democrats are rethinking it.

I do think that that was a reason why a lot of Democrats didn't go on the shows.

And we saw that there was a huge sort of,

you know, degree to which, arguably, some Democrats, many Democrats are painting themselves into a corner to say, you know, that's not the kind of people we want to be catering to or trying to win over because they're not winnable, right?

And I think there's a lot of Democrats now who think that was a humongous mistake, that you you need to be in the places where people are because we're in such an a la carte media climate that if you're saying something, you know, and you're just getting through through one media strain, if the people that you need to vote for you aren't there in that stream listening to that, then you're not going to be able to win them over because they don't hear your argument.

That's a good point, Dominico, because also I think it wasn't just Republicans capitalizing on, you know, some of these threads of anti-establishment and wanting to talk to young people because of that, but a lot of young men have reported feeling like the Democratic Party didn't understand them or didn't see them, didn't want to talk to them or appeal to them.

And I think now we're seeing politicians, you know, on the Democratic side go on some of these shows and really make an effort to explain their point of view and kind of cut past some of the narratives that the right has laid out and talk about stuff that they actually might agree with them on.

And an example was recently the former Transportation Secretary, Democrat Pete Budigej went on Andrew Schultz's flagrant, and he gave them this example about

why government funding is important and

the reason that the government funds research.

And he gave the example of the internet, which was partially

came to be because of government funding.

So here's the reaction that Schultz gave.

This is the whole idea of public goods.

Sure, sure, sure.

Why we have governments, why we collect taxes.

God, we're turning into such libs already, dude.

So, yeah, you hear there, like, this is an audience that obviously, like, they have a lot of like jokes about politics and a lot of skepticism, but they like want to hear what people are saying.

They're curious.

Yes, and they're also malleable, it sounds like.

Yeah.

We're going to take a quick break more in a moment.

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And we're back.

And not all of the prominent podcasters who backed Trump in 2024 are still supporting him now.

Elena, what are you hearing from folks about how they're, like folks in the manosphere, about how they see Trump now?

Yeah, I don't think they're, you know, necessarily not supporting him, but I think it gets back to that.

thread we've seen them talk about for years, which is, oh, everything's corrupt, everyone's bad, which was, is a change because like like we said, like Trump ran as being anti-establishment, different from that, but he's the president.

He's a second term president, so he's kind of part of the establishment.

A big example of where that's kind of festered recently is over Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender, disgraced financier.

There have been conspiracy theories for years around Epstein.

That's really taken off, especially in this space.

And there were prominent Trump officials, before they were Trump officials, who talked about this a lot and amplified it.

And it's been a really interesting thing to watch in these spaces because a lot of these podcasters have been in their words kind of disappointed and frustrated that the administration hasn't kind of made good on what they say they were going to do, expose some of, you know, the government red tape around this issue, release what they saw as these documents containing a client list of this network that Epstein allegedly had.

And it's really striking to me to see them kind of express that disappointment in the Trump administration after rallying behind them.

I mean, listen to Joe Rogan a few weeks ago on his podcast.

People are cynical because you had all this hope for change, and then you realize like, oh, the same people that are pulling the strings are still pulling the strings.

And like Trump capitalized on that resentment in last year, especially with young men who didn't feel seen, who felt like the party was out to get them, the Democratic Party, the government.

And, you know, there's some initial polling from this Democratic-leaning firm social sphere.

They do a Gen Z tracker monthly about Epstein and how it's resonating with young men.

It found that, you know, for a young man who listens to Joe Rogan, they're more likely to be resonating with this Epstein issue.

Yeah, I have to say, it's not just about Epstein, though.

I mean, a week ago, for example, you had Joe Rogan talking about immigration and saying how he felt that it was crazy that the administration was cracking down on college students, for example.

And one of the things that he noted was that deporting people because you don't like who they're criticizing, he said that gets kind of shifty.

And I think that that's something that in this universe, right, it's almost a, it's not quite libertarian, but there's a libertarian adjacent sort of sensibility about freedom, freedom of speech, and all of that.

And, you know, he feels like it's been an over-correction on immigration.

So you have a few cracks obviously emerging here.

And I think it's really important

because if this is a group that helped Trump sort of get those persuadable voters on board or bring out people who didn't vote, don't vote normally, they are, this group of people, you know, younger men, are one of the lower propensity voting groups.

And we know that in midterm elections, for example, lower propensity voters are the lowest propensity voters.

So getting them out in a midterm election when your guy isn't on the ballot and you're already sort of having lukewarm feelings about that guy, that spells some real potential problems for the Republican Party in 2026.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: It's also not just Rogan.

I mean, he's one of the biggest voices here, but even Andrew Schultz, again, who has talked about, you know, kind of moving more right ahead of November last year, he's been angry about Epstein.

He did a whole podcast a few weeks ago focused on this issue.

But it's not just that.

I mean, he also has been really frustrated around something I've heard from a lot of younger folks over the years covering this demographic, but he's talked about being frustrated by the U.S.

response to the Israel-Hamas war and the destruction in Gaza.

Listen to this clip from a recent podcast episode talking about just like reflecting on all of these issues.

If I wanted to vote for somebody that was going to keep the Epstein files under wrap, that was going to extend the foreign roads and

was going to increase the budget, I would have voted for Kamla.

I don't think we can say they're necessarily not going to support Trump anymore, but there's, you know, cracks in that support.

And I think that's a very telling thing for a group that maybe doesn't have as much political history.

Yeah.

And I wonder how much trouble this spells for the GOP.

Like, is this disillusionment with Trump just Trump, or does this go to conservative politics more broadly?

Do we have a sense of that yet?

Well, a lot of the criticism has not been Trump-focused, which I think is really interesting, is a lot of it has been, oh, these officials are, you know, are

going back on their word or is, you know, a lot of criticism towards Israel around the war.

And there are occasionally some swipes at Trump of, oh, he ran on doing X, Y, and Z, ending the wars, releasing the Epstein files and stuff like that.

But I think, yeah, there's still definitely a bit of a blame game here, and Trump is in his own category, which lends the question exactly like when you have different candidates on the ballot, do they get the same level of grace?

Aaron Powell, politics is about making the argument and who can make the argument and win the argument.

I think there was a big criticism of the Biden administration and of Joe Biden himself that he was never somebody who was able to do that, to be able to get out there, make an argument, win the argument.

Barack Obama was able to do that.

That's why he will go down as one of the best campaigners of all time, because he's able to make those kind of common sense arguments go anywhere.

I mean, I remember during the 2008 Republican National Convention, for example, where was Barack Obama?

During a prominent period in the RNC, he was on Fox News talking to Bill O'Reilly.

And now there's been this kind of movement against Democrats going and doing that.

And I think there's a rethinking of that among some Democrats about being able to do it.

But to do it, you have to do it well because these folks are articulate.

They may not always have the full facts at their disposal, but what they do have is conviction.

And when they say things with conviction, you have to be able to come back at them, being able to say something that's backed up by facts and research.

And that's why you've seen people like Pete Buttigieg, who's probably one of the best Democratic messengers, and someone like Gavin Newsome, the California governor, who's out there trying to do the same thing, even starting his own podcast,

even though that's probably not something that's easily replicable of something like Joe Rogan, because he's native to the podcast platform and is already somebody who has trust within that group of people.

But that's where the arguments are going to be able to be won:

having people go in and be able to do that with these folks.

There are still some people on the left who think that it's a wasted effort.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: I mean, but do we think that the political power that these podcasts podcasts in the quote-unquote manosphere had during the 2024 election will persist through a midterm, like, you know, next year?

Do we think that these shows are going to be as important moving forward?

I feel like midterms are already hard to rally voters, let alone young voters who are historically lower turnout voters, let alone maybe someone who may feel politically disaffected.

And that's when I think some of these issues, though we're a year out, could have some weight.

Because I talked to one Republican strategist who, who, you know, he was hesitant to say there was any real tangible impact Epstein could have at the ballot box, but it could affect enthusiasm.

And that's kind of key for a lot of these voters.

Vibes aren't votes, but if you're down on all politics again and maybe Trump pulled you out of that for a few months last year and then he kind of let you down, why would you show up in November?

You know, to paraphrase our colleague Mara Lyason, it's often the incumbent versus the couch, right?

And you're going to have people, you know, when a president

has an an approval rating that is below 50%, and we've seen that often in the last 20, 25 years,

it becomes more difficult to get your base to be enthused and to show up in a midterm election.

And that's why often incumbent presidents wind up having midterms that are not so great for their party

because you don't have that same level of enthusiasm.

And when you're talking about this kind of group of people who don't generally show up to vote in great numbers anyway, that's something that's going to make it more difficult for either party to win them over.

I think this is really a conversation for 2028 in some respects, because when we talk about Newsom, talk about Budijic, you can almost guarantee that those are names you're going to hear running for president in 2028 as well.

All right, well, let's leave it there for today.

I'm Ashley Lopez, I cover politics.

I'm Elena Moore, I also cover politics.

And I'm Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

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