The left needs to “build their own Joe Rogan”. As liberal America surveys the smoking ruins of Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, and the mainstream media looks on bewildered at how they were outflanked by alternative new platforms, this is one rallying cry that has gained some momentum. If elections are now being won or lost on podcasts, perhaps liberals can build their own?
The spark for this brainwave was clearly Trump and JD Vance’s appearances on Rogan in the days before the election – alongside the claim that Kamala Harris skipped the podcast for fear of a backlash from progressive activists for “amplifying” an anti-vaxxer meathead. Whether Rogan’s interview with Trump and his subsequent endorsement was that decisive in shifting the election towards Trump remains to be demonstrated. But it was certainly the jour de gloire of the Trump campaign’s media strategy of courting the disaffected young male voter via the podcast ecology, featuring appearances with Andrew Schulz, Theo Von, and Lex Fridman. In contrast, Harris splurged a lot of cash on celebrity endorsements and just did the usual established media junkets like Saturday Night Live.
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