The Future of Political InfluencersNEWS | 14 November 2024Since 2020, President Joe Biden’s and Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaigns have pushed influencers and content creators into our political media ecosystem. The Biden administration invited these creators to policy briefings on issues important to young people, and they tagged along on the campaign trail—you know this, I’ve reported on it in the newsletter before.
Trump’s answer to this captured grassroots energy has long been his stranglehold on conservative news outlets, on cable and online. But his online support was largely dominated by groypers, conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones, and white nationalists lurking in obscure forums.
Trump would acknowledge them with a wink and a nod on occasion, but it wasn’t until this year that his digital outreach expanded—and became a pillar to his campaign. The groypers haven’t necessarily gone away (my colleague David Gilbert can tell you that much), but a fresh professional class of podcasters and influencers, willing to platform Trump’s message with little pushback, grew outside of them.
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Yesterday, I wrote that Trump’s presidential victory was cementing a new era of campaigning online.
Joe Rogan and the other Trump-aligned podcasters have millions of followers that tune in to their shows weekly, if not every day. The industry has grown and changed dramatically since the last presidential contest, eclipsing the traditional media in viewership in some cases. This size and power is a legitimizing force, despite the racist and misogynistic rhetoric some share with the manosphere.
And it appeared to work.
“Theo Von and Andrew Schulz did such a fun and unique job of getting President Trump to kind of open up a little bit more and show a different, more fun side to him. Before he was doing those interviews, the media was able to shape this picture of Donald Trump that just is not who he is. They portrayed him as an angry person,” Alex Bruesewitz, a Trump campaign adviser, tells me. “Through these podcasts, people were actually able to hear his compassion, and I don’t think that traditional media has ever given him the ability to do that, because I think traditional media thrives better off of conflict than conversation.”Author: Alyssa Walker. Makena Kelly. Tess Owen. Wired Staff. Leah Feiger. Vittoria Elliott. Source
