News of the Trump Administration’s policies — including its immigration and deportation policies — have been all over the mainstream news, from newspapers to TV and radio.
But Adrian Carrasquillo writes the Huddled Masses newsletter, which focuses on immigration, at The Bulwark, says, stories about people being deported, and being wrongly deported, have also started to appear in nontraditional news outlets, as well, which often reach a different audience.
Carrasquillo joined The Show to talk more about what he’s seen and began with what first brought his attention to the fact that media outlets that might not normally talk about immigration related stories were talking about them, and were maybe talking about them in a different way than they would have before.
Full conversation
ADRIAN CARRASQUILLO: When you have a beat and when you are covering something day in and day out, there are times or you’re like, “Wow, I’m surprised. This isn’t breaking through. Wow, I would have thought that this story would have gotten more attention, and it kind of dropped like a log.”
And then there are times that you see, for example, Guantanamo Bay started up, the Trump administration was sending men to Guantanamo Bay that they said were gang members. And we actually had access to focus groups where people who had supported Trump — they had been like Biden in 2020 and then Trump 2024 supporters — and I noticed early on that they did not like the Guantanamo Bay stuff.
So that was sort of like the first data point for me, and I kept an eye on that. So then when El Salvador started up, I realized that this was along those same lines. And so I think the first moment that I saw it breaking through was Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan famously sort of like, “The interview with Kamala Harris never happened.” He is the 8,000 pound gorilla. And everybody after the election was talking about how Democrats need their own Joe Rogan and things like that.
And so for him to say that it’s horrific that an innocent gay hairdresser was lumped in with the gang members, that really made me take notice. “OK, wow, something’s happening here.”
MARK BRODIE: Well, it’s interesting reading your description of that incident kind of reminded me of the very famous moment during the Vietnam War, when Walter Cronkite came back from a trip to Vietnam and was fairly critical of the war effort on the air. And — reportedly, anyway — Lyndon Johnson, who was president at the time, said, “If we’ve lost Cronkite, we’ve lost America.”
It does not seem, though, as though this is a “if we’ve lost Rogan, we’ve lost America” in this situation.
CARRASQUILLO: Yeah. And sometimes when I speak to Democrats and, they sort of are concerned. I’ll speak to lawmakers and they’ll say, “Wow, if we’re 4 or 5 months in, what’s going to be happening 2 or 3 years in?” But then along those same lines, then they say, “Well, what do you expect to be going on? Do you think this is going to hurt the Trump administration in the 2026 election?”
I think they think it will. And I don’t think that they think the Trump administration cares that much. I mean, they’ve got this view of how they want to carry out immigration and how punitive they want to be, and they’re doing it, sort of everything else be damned.
BRODIE: What do you think all of this says about the kind of power that maybe nontraditional media outlets might have in impacting politics, political discourse and maybe even political actions?
CARRASQUILLO: Oh, 100%. I’ve covered immigration and Latino politics basically my whole career. And one of the foundational stories that I would hear about Cesar Chavez, back with his labor movement, the farm workers, would be that it wasn’t that — again, like I sort of used the example that I use in the story.
It’s not that this is like in The New York Times or The Washington Post that that makes it, cut through to every American. The stuff with Cesar Chavez was that suburban housewives and mothers were in the supermarket and were sort of realizing, “Oh, wait, I get my grapes. The farm workers are the ones that that get the produce to the supermarket.” And so that sort of cut through.
And so I think that those are kind of the important moments. And it has to get to — when stories get to People Magazine magazine or to the Joe Rogans, the manosphere or the man podcast, the stuff that is like ostensibly entertainment, but then people are also getting their news.
I’ll use another example of these focus groups that I got access to that were actually not Bulwark. In these focus groups, there were these men, they were Arizona voters and they had supported Donald Trump in November. And previously to that, I believe they were Joe Biden voters, Democratic voters in the past.
And all of them were just saying, like, “I don’t trust the media.” And they were saying stuff like, “I consider CNN to be the same as Fox News.” And then without fail, all of them had heard about Kilmar Abrego Garcia being wrongly sent by the administration to El Salvador.
So the stories are breaking through. They may not trust the traditional media outlets, but the stories are breaking through. And I think that that definitely is something to look at and something that could hurt the Trump administration in the future.
BRODIE: Well, one of the other places that you write about where these kinds of stories are seemingly breaking through is in the area of sports broadcasts. You reference, for example, A Pablo Torre podcast where they spent an hour talking about issues like this.
And I wonder if there’s sort of a balance here because you hear the idea — and you’ve talked about it — of sort of these nontraditional outlets, these non-news outlets talking about stories like this. But then there’s also sort of the “shut up and dribble” kind of argument from viewers or listeners that sports are kind of the escape from everything else you might be hearing about on CNN or on the Joe Rogan Experience or anything like that.
What’s the balance there between especially sports folks talking about these issues while still serving as maybe a way to get away from some of these issues?
CARRASQUILLO: It’s a fascinating dynamic. For me, I love sort of like the fandom, the Marvel, the Star Wars stuff. And when I’m stepping away from news, I want to be able to have my place where I can just sort of enjoy and just kind of have some mindless entertainment.
Along those same lines, when you look at sports, you hear this stuff like “shut up and dribble” or you see comments online about “leave politics out of sports.” Sports has always been one of the front lines for political conversation, including things like Jackie Robinson breaking into baseball and stuff that reflects what’s going on in our society. So ultimately you if you have an audience — I think Pablo Torre tells me that, he learned being a magazine writer that people may start reading your story because they like the team or you’re talking about or the player, but they’re going to finish your story because something resonates with them and something touches them, and they find that they’re learning something interesting.
So I think along those lines, if somebody like a Pablo Torre or sports-focused journalists are interested in looking at the aspect of a former undersized goalkeeper who had a Real Madrid tattoo, and that now is being used as the basis to disappear him into a Salvador, or to say that he’s a gang member because he has a soccer ball and a crown tattoo.
I mean, I think he mentioned it, and it’s something that I keep coming back to in this immigration space: the absurdity of some of these things. And oftentimes parody and absurdity can elevate a story. And maybe you’re not going to read it in the Washington Post, but you’ll see it in one of the platforms you trust, one of the messengers you trust, and it’ll resonate with you.
BRODIE: What do you see the future holding in terms of some of these nontraditional media outlets influencing political outcomes and political actions? We hear so many people referring to the 2024 election as the “podcast election.” Is this sort of the new normal in your mind?
CARRASQUILLO: I think a lot of times, political folks, campaign folks make mistakes when they try to sort of run the last election. 2028 will not be under the all the things that happen in 2024. Different issues will rise to the forefront. And I’ve talked to Democrats, and if they’re still talking about podcasts in August of 2028, they’re in trouble.
They need to sort of have messengers that people trust, platforms that people trust and get out of their bubbles. And so I think that that’s going to be really important. Once people sort of find you interesting and they’re hearing your human story, and then you can say, “Oh, hey, by the way, here’s what’s going on in politics you should be paying attention to.”
