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justinspoliticalcorner · 1 month ago

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Bloomberg: The Second Trump Presidency, Brought to You by Right-Leaning Male YouTubers

Davey Alba, Leon Yin, Julia Love, Ashley Carman, Priyanjana Bengani, Rachael Dottle, and Elena Mejía at Bloomberg:

As Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th US President on Monday, he was surrounded by his family, donors and wealthy tech executives. Just a few feet farther away stood a political newcomer who’s been credited with encouraging lots of votes: Joe Rogan. The fact that Rogan, the host of the world’s most popular podcast, watched from the Capitol Rotunda as Republican luminaries like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis were confined to overflow speaks volumes about the new dynamics at play in Washington and the media writ large. Over the past two years, a set of massively popular podcasters and streamers cemented themselves as the new mainstream source of information for millions of young men, and, according to a new Bloomberg analysis, used their perch to rally these constituents in support of Trump and the political right.

In an effort to understand the media diet of a generation, Bloomberg watched and analyzed over 2,000 videos from nine prominent YouTubers. Reporters reviewed nearly 1,300 hours of footage from their channels, mapped out the podcasters’ guest networks and quantified the frequency of key political messages that they distributed to tens of millions of subscribers each day. To hear them tell it, America is in a desperate place, destabilized by soaring inflation, migrants streaming across the border and the beginnings of a third world war. Gender politics have gotten out of hand while schools and the medical establishment duped the public. The same messages were communicated in Trump’s inaugural address on Monday. Now that Trump is back in power, the broadcasters are well-positioned to help build support for his political agenda, transforming grievances into policy that could have lasting effects even beyond Trump’s term in office.

In the months leading up to election, hosts had more politicians and pundits on their shows and discussed the issues more frequently. Of the broadcasters’ videos that reached over 1 million views on YouTube during the time span Bloomberg reviewed, more than a third of videos mentioned voting or the US elections — often with the host explicitly calling on listeners to vote. None of the broadcasters style themselves as political pundits, and their conservative talking points were sandwiched between free-wheeling discussions of sports, masculinity, internet culture, gambling and pranks — making the rhetoric more palatable to an apolitical audience. Still, their popularity is sparking a “very big sea change in terms of who are the voices that matter,” Mark Zuckerberg, Meta Platforms Inc. chief executive officer, said in a conversation with Rogan published Jan. 10. “There’s this wholesale generational shift in who are the people who are being listened to.”

According to Edison Research, close to 50% of people over the age of 12 listen to a podcast monthly. Rogan’s three-hour interview with Trump in late October drew about 50 million views on YouTube. Zuckerberg, for his part, recently loosened Meta’s policies on Facebook and Instagram to allow more of the type of rhetoric that’s common among the podcasters, such as disparagement of transgender people. He added Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White, who encouraged Trump to join as a guest on such podcasts, to Meta’s board. Elon Musk, the owner of X, has made product changes to allow longer video streaming, in support of podcasters — and joined several as a guest himself. Google, meanwhile, wants to work through some Republican perceptions of its liberal bias and show that YouTube has already long been popular with conservatives, according to a person familiar with the company’s thinking. Over the weekend before the inauguration, many of the podcasters were coveted guests at parties hosted by YouTube, Spotify and other organizations. YouTube declined to comment. Spotify said “podcasts offer candidates a direct and influential way to engage with their audiences,” noting that both Trump and Democratic rival Kamala Harris took advantage of the medium. With the podcasters’ audiences skewing about 80% male on average, according to people familiar with the shows’ listener demographics, the hosts connected directly to a voting bloc that helped propel Trump back to the White House. Of the 903 podcast guests tracked by Bloomberg in the past two years, only 106 people, or 12 percent, were women. Men, and particularly white men, have long made up Trump’s core support base. But in November’s election, young men swung especially hard to the right. More than half of men under 30 supported Trump, according to the AP VoteCast survey of more than 120,000 voters, though outgoing President Joe Biden won the group in 2020. Exit polls have shown that Trump received more support from young men than any Republican candidate in more than two decades.

“We definitely helped with the young male vote,” Kyle Forgeard, a member of the Nelk Boys, said in an interview. “On the podcast, we just speak our mind, try to be true to ourselves and say what we think.” Above all, the broadcasters described American men as victims of a Democratic campaign to strip them of their power — a comforting message to a disspirited audience. These days, young men are lonelier than ever, with those aged 18 to 23 the least optimistic about their futures, and having the lowest levels of social support, according to Equimundo’s 2023 State of American Men report. Trump and his allies showed up for young men in the places where they were already spending their time — and supplied them with answers.

[...] The male-oriented podcasts tracked by Bloomberg each have their own style of show. Theo Von often discusses substance abuse issues and childhood experiences with his interviewees, while Lex Fridman focuses on expert opinions and tech topics. Shawn Ryan chats with people associated with military and law enforcement, saying he exposes the inner workings of the US government. Logan Paul, the Nelk Boys and Adin Ross tend to focus on humor, sports, pranks and creator drama. Of the programs reviewed, The Joe Rogan Experience, Flagrant by Andrew Schulz and The PBD Podcast by Patrick Bet-David follow the most typical host-and-interview talk show format, discussing news and popular culture, all while challenging political correctness. The hosts largely do not push back against their guests’ ideas. Von, Rogan and Schulz are also comedians, and they often recast controversial content as edgy humor. Yet even as the podcasts have tried to brand themselves uniquely, similar themes and characters appear across the network. Bloomberg’s analysis of 2,002 episodes across the shows reveals how closely interconnected the podcasters’ relationships are, and how much the shows’ talking points overlap. Over the past two years, 152 guests made an appearance on at least two of the shows. Recurring characters are common, not just as guests, but as “friends of the shows,” including the UFC CEO White and comedian Shane Gillis. The effect gives viewers a sense of being inducted into a virtual, close-knit friend group from home.

Read the full story at Bloomberg.

Bloomberg reports on how 9 male YouTubers that have a mostly right-leaning audience, such as Joe Rogan, Logan Paul, Patrick Bet-David, and Nelk Boys, helped push young male voters toward Donald Trump this recent election.