What’s Behind Donald Trump’s Right-Wing-Bro Podcast Binge

Podcasts are hardly a new medium in American politics. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t disrupting the dynamics of the 2024 presidential race. Consider hotshot hosts like Theo Von, Ezra Klein, and Adin Ross; all of them have been able to give listeners an intimate glimpse at politicians from Donald Trump to Tim Walz, say Atlantic staff writer Helen Lewis and Bloomberg reporter Ashley Carman on the latest episode of Inside the Hive. However, as we’ve seen in the case of JD Vance—whose past audio appearances have come back to haunt him—the medium can cut both ways. “They do kind of lure people into this much more kind of confessional, chatty mode,” Lewis says. “And I think that’s why maybe they could become quite dangerous…politicians might not realize how that might look in the cold light of day to other people.”

To fully understand the appeal of podcasts, you have to appreciate their historical progenitor: radio. “Conservative talk radio is certainly a might in that industry and really important to the space, and we’ve really just seen them make that digital transition…in many other media formats,” Carman explains. “Trump went on Sean Hannity’s podcast. Trump went on Dan Bongino’s podcast, [which] took over Rush Limbaugh’s spot on the live radio version. So some of these folks are still in the space, and they’ve made this transition to podcasts and now are finding their audience there.”

Later in the episode, Lewis discusses some of the big distinctions between podcasting and conventional journalism. “Traditional journalistic norms are completely out of the window when it comes to this stuff,” she says of audio. “Lex Fridman, who is a very interesting interviewer and clearly a very smart guy, posted on LinkedIn last year that he had spent Thanksgiving with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. And now [Fridman is], you know, doing one of the big flagship interviews of the [Trump] campaign.”

“You know, these people often talk about the kind of terribly corrupt, cozy nature of the mainstream media,” Lewis added. “But they’ve just kind of ended up recreating the idea that everybody goes on holiday to the same places, hangs out in the same clubs, you know, has the same set of mutual friends.”