The midterms were an absolute disaster for Republicans, and there’s lots of blame to go around. The right deserves a serious postmortem. And nobody is off limits. Of course, the Trump administration and the congressional and gubernatorial candidates were important factors. But we also need to accept an obvious reality that so much of the right is twisting themselves in pretzels to avoid. Some of the most popular personalities inside of the right wing podcast ecosystem spent the run-up to this election telling Republican voters that their vote doesn’t matter and their movement was a fraud.
Welcome to Podcastistan, where consensus in this foreign land tells us we must destroy the GOP entirely to save the country, or something like that.
Democrats won both chambers of Congress and pulled off some massive upsets along the way. And that blue wave was materialized in part thanks to Podcastistan. No, it didn’t happen single-handedly or in some equally quantifiable way. But they took pains to cultivate a voter suppression effort through endless demoralization campaigns.
The least ambiguous example is one Nick Fuentes, the ultra popular Gen Z leader of the Groypers, who explicitly urged his followers to vote Democratic. The message to his youth followers was crystal clear: punish Republicans by electing their opponents, then use the wreckage to demand control of the right.
Meanwhile, Hasan Piker, his horseshoe equivalent on the left, was campaigning with Democratic candidates, like Rep Ilhan Omar and Senate-elect Abdul El-Sayed. Both the left-wing streamer working to elect Democrats and an ostensibly right-wing streamer said it was time to elect Democrats.
Tucker Carlson, often ranked as the number one podcaster on the right, turned opposition to the Iran war into a much broader moral campaign against President Trump and his supporters, arguing on an almost daily basis that the president is the puppet of a Jewish control conspiracy. He has, without evidence, relentlessly suggested Trump will use a nuclear weapon against Iran, always citing anonymous sources in the process. His latest claim that America was going to nuke Iran came just a day before the elections.
Candace Owens, the onetime darling of the right wing media ecosystem, is perhaps the longest tenured major brand to embrace Podcastistan. Like Carlson, she has accused Trump of all kinds of betrayals, and has encouraged her followers to disassociate from the Republican Party.
Megyn Kelly is the latest personality to join the Podcastistan circuit. She now routinely condemns the president and engages in absurd third world conspiracism.
Yes, independent media should challenge governments and presidents. It’s always important to hold one’s side accountable. But that’s not what Podcastistan is doing. They are not merely challenging and holding a coalition accountable. They are deliberately tanking the coalition by trafficking in low grade garbage and telling voters that their participation in elections is pointless and even shameful.
Critics in Podcastistan do not deliver tenable alternatives, whether through policy or through elections. They just want to burn it all down and be in position to pick up the scraps when it all goes to hell.
They are demoralization agents to a tee. And they very deliberately have worked for many months to sabotage Republicans at the ballot box. On Tuesday, they got their wish.
As has become clear especially with Tucker Carlson, an American political commentator can build an international audience, sell subscriptions, and attract attention without helping a single American citizen in the process. Carlson has spent the last couple of years flying between Qatar, UAE, and Saudi Arabia getting paid wads of cash to shill for their respective sovereign wealth funds, while declaring himself a champion for American values. His rhetoric benefits America’s adversaries, and he doesn’t seem to care whatsoever, because he’s securing boatloads of Islamic supremacist cash in the process.
America’s biggest podcasters in Podcastistan are entirely detached from positive American outcomes. All they seem to care about at this point is boosting audience growth, no matter where it comes from.
Of course, the buck stops with President Trump and Republican officials. They cannot blame podcasters for the entirety of the blue wave that materialized, and political dissatisfaction cannot be entirely dismissed as something viewers were simply tricked into feeling.
But the reverse alibi is equally absurd. These are individuals with massive platforms. Podcastistan wanted the authority to define the right’s priorities. Its leading voices should now answer for what they did with it.
The midterms postmortem is truly incomplete without it.
LOL no
Trump betrayed his MAGA base, and started working plan z, following his financiers orders. Journalists who have a semblance of a spine reported on this, and were subsequently called out…..because that’s the price of truth.