Trump’s Independent Media Election

As of this writing, Donald Trump’s interview with Joe Rogan is above 40 million views on YouTube. It is three hours long, expansive, substantive, and challenging, particularly regarding Trump’s 2020 election claims.

Comparatively, Kamala Harris’s only interview with Fox News, consistently cable’s most popular outlet, outpacing rivals CNN and MSNBC, had 9.2 million viewers on their channel. Released in mid-October, it has 6.2 million views on Fox News’s YouTube.

Also as of this writing, Harris is refusing to do Rogan’s show unless he travels to her and only for a 45 minute interview. Rogan says no, insisting that his format is always going to be anywhere from 90 minutes to three hours in his Austin studio, where he says he can get to know a person, including the Democratic presidential nominee, should she finally choose to join him.

As the most popular podcaster in the world, Rogan doesn’t need Harris. She might need him, as her campaign now weighs that gamble. Some speculate her campaign might see a danger in voters really getting to know Kamala the person in an extended interview. They might have a point.

J.D. Vance sat down with Joe Rogan on Wednesday.

In fact, in addition to appearing on Rogan, both the Republican presidential nominee and vice presidential nominee have made a string of appearances on podcasts far beyond the world of cable news and traditional legacy media.

Trump’s interview with the comedian Theo Von from late August sits at 14 million views on YouTube. Trump and/or Vance have also been interviewed by the comedian Andrew Schulz on his “Flagrant” podcast, WWE legend The Undertaker, the streamer Adin Ross, the YouTubers “the Nelk Boys,” and Barstool Sports’ “Bussin’ with the Boys” hosted by two former NFL players. Trump’s sit-down on the “Impaulsive” podcast with boxer and pro wrestler Logan Paul from June, now sits at 6.6 million views on YouTube. There are more interviews done by Team Trump of this sort.

As the Trump campaign is aggressively hitting independent media, particularly podcasts with large male audiences, Harris has done limited interviews with establishment media. Harris’s single independent podcast appearance, her October 6 turn on “Call Her Daddy,” which boasts a large female audience, now has about 760,000 views on YouTube.

Simultaneously, and somewhat unprecedentedly, some major traditional newspapers like the Washington Post, L.A. Times and USA Today have decided not to endorse a presidential candidate in 2024.

Facing overwhelming anger from his vigorously anti-Trump reader base over this decision, Jeff Bezos, the Washington Post’s owner, listed some reasons for his paper’s non-endorsement in an op-ed titled “The hard truth: Americans don’t trust the news media.”

“Most people believe the media is biased,” Bezos wrote. “Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose. Reality is an undefeated champion… We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility.”

He continued, “Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, ‘I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.’ None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.”

Bezos lamented that so many were now turning to podcasts instead of news institutions like his own.

“Many people are turning to off-the-cuff podcasts, inaccurate social media posts and other unverified news sources, which can quickly spread misinformation and deepen divisions,” Bezos worried. “The Washington Post and the New York Times win prizes, but increasingly we talk only to a certain elite. More and more, we talk to ourselves.”

You have to admire his sincere and brutal introspection.

Bezos continued, “While I do not and will not push my personal interest, I will also not allow this paper to stay on autopilot and fade into irrelevance — overtaken by unresearched podcasts and social media barbs….”

Bezos gets it. His staff? Washington Post editorial board members have stepped down, writers have quit, and subscribers have canceled.

Which is precisely why so many of these “off-the-cuff” and “unresearched” podcasts have larger audiences now than the Post does. Bezos is right that sometimes these podcasters get things wrong. Obviously, most haven’t gone to journalism school.

But plenty of supposed journalistic professionals have told us—with all the pomp, circumstance, and authority that they imagine they have—that Covid-19 absolutely did not come from a Chinese lab, that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation, and that Russia blew up the Nord Stream pipeline.

We know how all that turned out.

When the mainstream press lies to its readers time and again, and no one is ever held accountable after getting news so wrong, combined with the perception that these outlets only serve a certain subset of elites, people are going to stop paying attention or even having basic respect for what they do. People are going to look elsewhere.

And they have, as Bezos acknowledges.

Trump and his campaign have acknowledged this too, in a significant way. While elites like Bezos and the staff of the Post and other major outlets might look down on these podcasters and their large audiences, regular Americans see cable news outlets who lie to them and only talk about Trump in the context of January 6 and fascism, as if there’s nothing more to his candidacy. While someone like Rogan is willing to sit down with anyone from any political party and get to know them. He’s intellectually curious, like many people who don’t live and breathe politics. It’s genuine and relatable.

The appeal of Rogan and some like him is not hard to understand.

Unless figures like him are a threat to you. When it was announced that Trump would be appearing on Rogan last week, the New Republic, founded in 1914, went with the headline, “Trump Cancels All His Events in Favor of One of the Worst People Ever.”

Envious much?

In 2008, Barack Obama and his campaign were hailed for their ability to see the increasing importance of social media in elections at the time, and how deft they were compared to the Republican John McCain’s clunky, old-man campaign.

In 2024, the oldest man in the race has been quick to take advantage of a new alternative media that has risen organically in the last few years, and that now serves as the media for large swaths of Americans.

If he manages to win, don’t expect legacy media to point out how ahead of the curve Donald Trump was in harnessing independent media in this election.

And it won’t be just because they hate Donald Trump.

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