Podcasters who backed Trump suffer massive losses

President Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election with a lot of help from conservative podcasters like Joe Rogan, Theo Von, Tucker Carlson and Andrew Tate. Flash forward two years and right-wing influencers like those four are paying the price for Trump's unpopularity — in their ratings.

"Trump took to podcasts like The Joe Rogan Experience and This Past Weekend with Theo Von to boost his numbers among economically disaffected young white voters, while Kamala Harris failed to gain ground with them," reported The Daily Beast's Christopher Buchanan on Tuesday. "But amid his tumultuous term, Trump has had a contagious effect on most of the figures who propelled him back to the top."

Buchanan added, "Puck has revealed that individuals in the right-wing media sphere, including Tucker Carlson, Andrew Tate, and Joe Rogan, have all experienced double-digit drops in approval ratings since publicly backing Trump in 2024. War with Iran marked a turning point for the young men who helped to carry Trump to victory, devastating the economy and breaking key policy promises that distinguished it from the Harris campaign, a polling expert told Puck."

He also pointed out, "After feeling the blow of Trump’s newfound unpopularity, nearly all of the so-called Pod Bros have attempted to make like the voters and distance themselves from Trump."

Speaking with AlterNet in August, cult expert Dr. Steven Hassan explained how popular podcasters like Rogan help indoctrinate people into political cults like Trump's movement.

"It really comes down to what information sources they're relying on and who their network is that they identify with," Hassan explained to AlterNet. "So if they really love Joe Rogan, they're going to follow a lot of his views. And consequently, when he turns against Trump, Trump loses a lot of followers. What I'm trying to convey is that we're living in an age of digital manipulation that's never been seen before, with people's personal data being used to silo information — to drive them further left if they're already progressive-leaning, or further right if they're already Republican or conservative-leaning. And it's quite strategic in its use of algorithms. So it's not simply about looking at personality type, Matthew — the disposition of a person who becomes a Trump follower — but the social and information environment people are being subjected to."

Hassan also noted that, while Rogan had invited him on the program to discuss cults before Trump's presidency, he refused to speak with him when he wrote a book called "The Cult of Trump."

Rogan has indeed tried to separate himself from Trump recently, from accusing him of trying to rename Lake Ontario to distract from the war in Iran to outright saying in March that Trump "betrayed" his own voters because "he ran on, ‘No more wars,’ ‘End these stupid, senseless wars,’ and then we have one that we can’t even really clearly define why we did it.”