Former President Donald Trump has never run a traditional campaign. But as the 2024 election season enters its home stretch, several journalists have noted an intriguing trend in Trump’s media strategy.
For weeks now, Trump has dedicated hours of his time to long, free-wheeling conversations with podcasters, YouTubers and livestreamers. Few of them are household names, but all of them command massive online audiences. So is Trump mining an under-valued resource, or wasting his time?
Makena Kelly, a senior reporter at Wired, is a close observer of this burgeoning corner of the political media ecosystem. As she told The Show, she was particularly intrigued by Trump’s recent appearance on a show hosted by 23-year-old Adin Ross, who rose to fame by livestreaming himself playing video games.
Full conversation
MAKENA KELLY: He was able to get Donald Trump on his stream on Kick.
[CLIP OF LIVESTREAM]
KELLY: And it was about an hour-and-a-half-long program where Trump was able to say about anything that he wanted to say.
[CLIP OF LIVESTREAM]
SAM DINGMAN: This for me fits into kind of a broader, interesting phenomenon about the, the Trump campaign this cycle because since that appearance, we, we have also seen Trump sit down with Lex Fridman and Theo Von for these very long, freeform podcast interviews. I, I also sort of think, tell me if you disagree, we could count Trump's chat with Elon Musk on X as kind of a podcast interview. Do you think that's fair to say?
KELLY: No, that's definitely fair to say. I, I think the important part when discussing all of this isn't necessarily if it was a podcast or stream or something like that. But just realizing that this is long form, these people aren't journalists, and they're basically just having this like casual conversation. Where unlike the debate where he was being fact checked on a lot of the things Donald Trump said, Adin Ross, all those people are not going to fact check Trump.
DINGMAN: So as an observer of this corner of what I, I guess we would now call the media because many of these folks have very, very large audiences in the millions. What do you think, or who do you think Trump is trying to speak to in appearing on these shows?
KELLY: Well, when you ask, you know, there was questions being asked to Trump, like, why did he go on Adin Ross? Well, he said it's because his son, Baron, watches Adin. It's like, young males, disaffected males, people who, you know, these people who get engaged in this like hypermasculine, disaffected part of the internet, oftentimes incel folks. And I don't want to call Baron an incel. Right? But I'm just looking at demographics.
And that seems to be it, which is kind of wild compared to 2016 and 2020, where it's, you know, Trump had a really tight grasp on that demographic. And maybe it's, maybe these people just aren't as excited.
DINGMAN: Yeah. Well, I, I'm curious to know your take on this. There was a piece in The Guardian recently that looked at this same constellation of influencers, content creators.
And the argument in that piece was essentially that by engaging with them to the extent that he did in, in 2016 and 2020, Trump very much elevated these folks to the point where, you know, we're now talking about them here on public radio.
But that a big part of what resonated with that community about his message was this idea that you can't trust anything, and that these sort of like traditional levers of power and influence are all fake and full of lies. And that the long tail of that has actually been that the folks who watch these shows are tuning out from politics and, and declining to participate.
So am I, am I hearing you right that it seems like a possible justification for Trump in making these appearances is to try to salvage their votes?
KELLY: This is where they are now, right? They are tuning into these podcasts, they are tuning into these streams. And even since like 2016, and I think even 2020, the internet has changed tremendously. Back in 2020, Trump could just tweet and that went everywhere.
You had reporters who were just like reporting on his tweets and now, right, he's on Truth Social. They don't get spread as widely. He's back on Twitter, but he's not using it as much because I probably think he doesn't see it to his advantage anymore.
And now the internet has become so much more fractured. We have so many different types of Twitter, so many different types of, you know, video platforms from Reels to TikTok that these campaigns, including the Kamala Harris campaign, they've had to find people in these specific niche communities who have these large followings in order to reach the same people that they were doing easily, you know, even four years ago.
DINGMAN: So in that vein, I'm curious to know, did you happen to watch Trump's or listen to Trump's appearance on Theo Von?
KELLY: Yes, I did.
DINGMAN: OK. What did you make of the part of that conversation where Von kept asking Trump about his brother?
[LIVESTREAM CLIP]
DINGMAN: Tell me, Makena, what you made of that sequence because it, for me, it was a version of Donald Trump that I had not seen previously.
KELLY: I think that mostly has to do with the interviewer, right? People love Theo Von because of the people that he has on and the conversations that they have. Specifically he'll bring on someone who's just like a lunch lady, right. And they'll talk about what, what is it like being a lunch lady, right. And he's able to kind of get at the heart of this kind of like human heart.
It's not just this like small segment of men that watches Theo Von. A lot of women on TikTok love him. If Trump's team thought Theo was one of these creators, they, they were wrong. And I think that's the main reason why Theo was able to get that out of Trump.
I think, you know what it really says is how much the information ecosystem has changed. Trump can bypass traditional media really. At this point, he can't do it entirely. But it's getting to the point where the way that you reach people is these people with extremely niche audiences and it may make it easier for these candidates to engage with the right group of people that they're trying to reach out to. But at the same time, right, it really kind of defeats any overarching narrative.
DINGMAN: Interesting. So as the ecosystem gets more fragmented, so, too, does the narrative that the ecosystem is supposed to help build.
KELLY: Right. Because you're driving home a message on abortion rights to one group of people, whereas you might be trying to do a funny goofy meme to young people or something like that. And it's interesting to think, you know, how do you create that kind of cohesive narrative in an information ecosystem that really doesn't like it?
