Joe Rogan and the Fifth Estate: How the Podcaster and a Group of Cable News Exiles Became More Powerful Than Traditional Media
A motley crew of network and cable news defectors helped tip the scales for Donald Trump’s win over Kamala Harris.
variety.com
Joe Rogan and the Fifth Estate: How the Podcaster and a Group of Cable News Exiles Became More Powerful Than Traditional Media
ByTatiana Siegel, Todd Spangler
Did a motley crew of traditional media defectors and outcasts led by Joe Rogan, Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson help tip the scales for Donald Trump’s win over Kamala Harris — and shatter the paradigm of an influential fourth estate in the process?
As far as CNN commentator Andrew Yang is concerned, the answer is yes. On Nov. 7, while conducting a postmortem with Van Jones on the cable news network, the former Democratic presidential candidate derided the Harris campaign’s decision to snub the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast. “And they turned it down because she was too busy?” Yang scoffed. Instead, Trump hit Rogan’s Austin, Texas, studio in the final days of the campaign, racking up a massive audience. “On YouTube alone, … 48 million views,” Jones marveled. On a night when Harris could have fielded easy questions about some of Rogan’s favorite topics — from the benefits of psychedelics to the existence of extraterrestrial life — she chose to make a surprise visit to “Saturday Night Live” for a 90-second cameo.
As the dust settles on a devastating election for the Democratic Party, it is clear that Harris relied on an outdated playbook — one that opted for Howard Stern, who pioneered bro radio in the ’90s but whose influence is now negligible — and failed to see the significance of Rogan. In fact, the former “Fear Factor” host emerged from the surreal news cycle, which included President Biden dropping out of the race and two assassination attempts on Trump, as the most powerful person in media by far. He and a band of banished stars like Kelly and Carlson, along with upstarts like gaming livestreamer Adin Ross, YouTube pranksters the Nelk Boys and comedian Theo Von, eclipsed the influence of the once mighty “60 Minutes,” which Trump skipped, and the big three cable news networks.
Some in Hollywood believe the media establishment’s ostracism of conservative figures such as Carlson and Kelly made them even more ardently pro-Trump. “We can’t stand being around anybody who doesn’t agree with everything we say,” says one top self-described liberal agent. Regarding Kelly, the agent says, “We pushed her away and pushed her further right and into Trump’s arms. What did we think she was gonna do [after being fired by NBC]? Go be a housewife?”
Meanwhile, Trump was “extremely strategic” about targeting young, disaffected men through influencers, says Sally Nuamah, associate professor of social policy and political science at Northwestern. Those appearances helped him connect with a generation of young men who have coalesced around “certain conceptions of masculinity,” she says. “Trump really speaks to those same themes. They were mobilized because they feel seen through this men-first lens.”
Others are pushing back on the notion that Trump’s courting and capturing the so-called manosphere helped him sweep all seven swing states and pull off both an electoral rout and a popular-vote win. Rather, they say, Trump found traction across the board on fears about the economy and immigration.
“The bro vote is not really a thing,” says NewsNation anchor and CNN alum Chris Cuomo. “Rogan is a one-off [phenomenon]. He has a following because he has very thoughtful people on. ‘Bro vote’ is another way for the left to disparage men, especially young men, and it is a mistake. They did not win it for Trump. Harris won the demo, just not as much as Biden did, which is true for most demos.” (Upstart NewsNation also did its part to upend the media status quo when it was the first to call Trump as the victor on election night, relying on projections from election forecaster Decision Desk HQ, beating Fox News in the process.)
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Regardless, Rogan’s reach is staggering and skews overwhelmingly male (80%), according to Edison Research. The majority of his listeners (51%) fall in the 18-34 age range and cover the political spectrum (35% identify as independent or “something else”; the rest are nearly split between Republican and Democrat). In short, it is exactly the demographic Harris should have been targeting. Clips of Rogan’s interviews spread like wildfire across social media, particularly on Elon Musk’s X.
As such, Rogan is well on his way to becoming a billionaire. In 2020, he signed an exclusive deal with Spotify worth $200 million over three and a half years. In 2024, he reupped with a three-year $250 million nonexclusive deal, and his podcast now runs on platforms like Apple Podcasts and YouTube. Sources familiar with the deal say Rogan pays no commission to his WME agents, who only negotiate his stand-up appearances and Netflix specials. (He is technically an employee of WME’s sister company UFC, doing commentary for about 10 mixed martial arts fights a year.)
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Perhaps Rogan’s most remarkable feat is withstanding the intense pressure campaign to cancel his podcast during the COVID pandemic, when he credited ivermectin with helping him recover quickly from the virus. Everyone from Neil Young to Media Matters called for Spotify to deplatform or censor Rogan over what they called COVID misinformation. Disney, which owns ESPN, is said to have pushed for Rogan’s removal from calling UFC bouts. But UFC CEO Dana White refused to fire Rogan and Spotify stood its ground, prompting Young and others to pull their music from the platform. (Young later returned.)
Rogan isn’t the only podcaster who survived near cancellation to emerge with a bigger audience and more sway. Carlson was the most-watched personality in cable news when Fox pulled him from the airwaves in April 2023. Though the network has never addressed the reason for his benching, Variety previously reported that a Fox Corp. board member told Carlson that his ouster was a condition of the network’s $750 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, which sued the network for defamation over 2020 election claims. (At the time, both Fox and Dominion denied that any such condition existed.) While Fox and Carlson remain in litigation over Carlson’s claim of breach of employment agreement, the conservative host launched Tucker Carlson Network, which carries his signature podcast as well as MAGA-friendly content.
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Documentarian Sean Stone, the son of Oliver Stone, debuted his docuseries “All the President’s Men: The Conspiracy Against Trump” on TCN this month. Though Stone does not consider himself a Trump supporter and says he didn’t vote, he felt that Carlson’s platform was the best match for his project, which chronicles a so-called Deep State ploy to bring down Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Rudy Giuliani and others.
“Unfortunately, in this charged political climate, our docuseries does not necessarily fit into the left’s agenda about the first Trump administration,” says Stone. “As a result, we had to think about doing independent distribution, but we ultimately aligned with Tucker Carlson, because he also came from a mainstream journalism and hosting background to start his own alternative network. And as we’ve seen in recent years, that seems to be the path forward for truth seekers to not be beholden to corporate overlords.”
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Like Carlson, Kelly was shunned by the mainstream media after NBC fired her in 2018 following backlash over her on-air comments about people using blackface in Halloween costumes in the ’70s, calling it “OK as long as you were dressing up like a character.”
But Kelly emerged with far more pull as a right-wing podcaster. In 2021, she took “The Megyn Kelly Show” to SiriusXM, signing an exclusive two-year deal. Sources peg that deal at $20 million. In September 2023, she landed a new multiyear contract that saw her payday skyrocket. Kelly stumped for Trump at a Pittsburgh rally on the final day of his campaign despite once being called “nasty” by the former and future president.
“He will be a protector of women, and it’s why I’m voting for him,” Kelly said at the rally. “He will close the border, and he will keep the boys out of women’s sports, where they don’t belong.”
Kelly’s appearance in Pittsburgh likely shored up some undecided female votes in the key state of Pennsylvania. Still, even she critiqued the vibe of the Trump campaign at times, blasting his Oct. 27 Madison Square Garden rally as “too bro-tastic.”
When it comes to bro-tastic, perhaps no one embodies that label more than White, another soon-to-be billionaire, who survived a cancellation campaign after a video surfaced of him slapping his wife at a 2023 New Year’s Eve party. The California Legislative Women’s Caucus called for White’s removal from his UFC post in an open letter to Ari Emanuel, CEO of UFC parent company Endeavor. (White released an apology statement, and Emanuel ignored the demands.)
On election night, White stood at the lectern in West Palm Beach, Fla., after Trump delivered his victory speech. White, the muscular 55-year-old dude who leads Endeavor’s crown jewel, gave a boisterous shoutout to several online influencers, including the Nelk Boys, Ross and Von — and “last but not least, the mighty and powerful Joe Rogan!”
Though he didn’t get name-checked by White, Jake Paul, an influencer (with more than 70 million total followers) turned professional boxer who is fighting Mike Tyson on Nov. 15 in an event livestreamed on Netflix marked a key Trump endorsement. In a YouTube video, Paul suggested Trump’s 34 felony convictions made him a kind of outlaw challenger akin to America’s founding fathers in their fight for independence from the British monarchy. “To be frank, I’m not concerned with Donald Trump’s ‘character flaws’ or what he’s done in the past,” he said. “What I’m concerned with is how good a president is he.” (Tyson, who endorsed Trump in 2016, also signaled his support for the president-elect this cycle, telling Semafor, “If I never saw Donald Trump and didn’t know he was white, I would think that he was Black. The way they were treating him in the papers and in the press? Think about that, the way they treat him in court? That’s the way they did Black people.”)
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During the campaign, Trump often credited his 18-year-old son Barron for introducing him to the prominent voices in the new media landscape.
“Gender was absolutely operative in the election,” says Kathleen Dolan, distinguished professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
That said, the distinct gender gap among voters in the 2024 election was nothing new. Harris’ 11-point gap between women (53%) and men (42%) was in line with every Democratic candidate going back to the 2008 election, Dolan says. Other issues that arose, like abortion rights, could not “overcome people’s lizard brains that say, ‘Cereal is more expensive, and I can’t buy a house,’” says Dolan.
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Ultimately Musk, who is the world’s richest person, may have made the biggest difference for Trump. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO invested millions in helping the candidate get elected and relentlessly promoted him on X. He also drew condemnation for speech deemed misogynistic, like offering to impregnate Taylor Swift and protect her cats after she signed her Harris endorsement as “Childless Cat Lady.” He “almost single-handedly” backed the pro-Trump America PAC to the tune of more than $175 million, per The New York Times. That funded get-out-the-vote efforts, a $1 million-per-day sweepstakes program for voters (which was unsuccessfully challenged in court) and digital advertising, including on outlets like the bro-friendly Barstool Sports.
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But Rogan’s role can’t be minimized. Ironically, he, too, initially drew Trump’s wrath when he praised presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as “more reasonable and intelligent” than traditional Republicans or Democrats this summer. Trump was steamed; he wondered on social media “how loudly” Rogan “gets booed” the next time he arrives at a UFC match. Rogan quickly clarified that he wasn’t endorsing RFK Jr. And he added a manly remark that certainly played to his podcast fans, if not Trump’s ego.
“I also think Trump raising his fist and saying ‘fight!’ after getting shot,” Rogan wrote in a post on X, “is one of the most American fucking things of all time.”
On the eve of the election, Rogan did endorse Trump. And as Axios and Politico co-founder Jim VandeHei noted on MSNBC in its aftermath: “Joe Rogan is more important than any of us.”
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