 | By Ian Ward |
Joe Rogan attends the UFC 277 ceremonial weigh-in on July 29, 2022 in Dallas. | Carmen Mandato/Getty Images
| THE PODCAST PRESIDENCY — On Friday afternoon, former President Donald Trump is slated to sit for an interview with Joe Rogan , the former UFC commentator and host of the most listened-to podcast in America. The sit-down will mark the culmination of a seismic shift that has remade the landscape of political media ahead of Election Day: The rise of independent podcasts as a staple of the presidential candidates’ messaging tours. With Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris also reportedly in negotiations at one point to appear on Rogan’s show, the 2024 election has officially become the “podcast election.” No species of interviewer has benefited more from this shift — or played a more decisive role in prompting it — than the so-called bro podcaster. Exemplified by Rogan, this sub-genre is made up mostly of men who have built enormous followings by engaging prominent figures in the sort of casual, testosterone-soaked banter that defines a certain type of quotidian male-to-male interaction. Many of the most popular hosts come across as loosely right-leaning — at least in a “Barstool conservative” type of way — though most tend to steer clear of blatantly partisan politics. Despite their largely apolitical bent, the bro podcasters have dominated the presidential interview circuit, especially with the Republican ticket: Trump and his running mate JD Vance have appeared on a slew of marquee bro podcasts — including the Nelk Boys’“Full Send” podcast, “This Past Weekend” with Theo Von and “The Shawn Ryan Show,” which sits at #2 on Spotify’s podcast charts between the “Joe Rogan Experience” and Tucker Carlson’s show. The mainstream media has reacted to these podcasters’ growing political influence with a mix of bewilderment and — it must be admitted — not-so-subtle envy , casting their hosts as somewhat useful idiots in the candidates’ attempts to reach out to disaffected and younger male voters. It’s true that these sit-downs are not hard-hitting interviews designed to hold candidates’ feet to the fire on tough issues. But if you spend the time to listen to them in full, it’s obvious that the bro podcasters are managing to elicit something from the candidates that traditional political reporters — and even political entertainers like late-night talk-show hosts — are consistently failing to draw out using more conventional interview techniques. Call it whatever you want: Authenticity may be too strong a word, but something like real personality and individuality shines through in these otherwise softball interviews, breaking through the tired talking points and the political truisms. In this respect at least, mainstream reporters may have something to learn from the bro podcasters. Their sit-downs with the candidates may not be “real” interviews in the traditional journalistic sense, but the podcasts this cycle have demonstrated that adversarial interview techniques aren’t the only — or always the best — way to elicit a nuanced picture of the candidate and their views. Sometimes, sitting back and letting a candidate just talk — bro-to-bro, if you must — unveils a more interesting and textured portrait than the one that emerges on the debate stage or in tense exchanges on cable news. Take, for instance, Vance’s recent interview with Theo Von, a 44-year-old comedian from Louisiana who talks regularly about his recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. In the course of an extended exchange about what it was like growing up in a family that dealt with drug addiction, Vance, whose mother is in recovery from opioid addiction, admitted to struggling with “attachment issues” and acknowledged that he is slow to trust even his closest friends and family members — a startlingly frank admission about his personal life that Vance has not made publicly on the campaign trail. Of course, this is of psychological interest to Vance’s future biographers, but it’s also of political interest to voters: The running mate of a notoriously mendacious president is openly admitting that he struggles to trust the people closest to him. Von’s questioning of Vance was hardly hard-hitting, but Vance’s responses weren’t uniformly flattering, either. In one exchange, Vance told Von that his four-year-old son had recently referred to a group of reporters on the campaign trail as “the fake news,” echoing Trump and Vance’s own criticism of the mainstream media. Vance admitted to being taken aback by his son’s comments, adding, “You gotta be careful about that shit.” The exchange raised an obvious question for viewers and voters: If you don’t want your own son repeating your views about the “fake news,” why broadcast the term for the rest of the world to hear? For just a moment, Von’s laid-back approach caused Vance’s mask to slip, suggesting that he’s more ambivalent about his own Trumpian rhetoric than he has previously let on. None of this, it’s fair to say, has come through in Vance’s numerous sit-down interviews with traditional media on the campaign trail, where he has mostly stuck to his talking points about the benefits of Trump’s agenda and the failures of the Biden-Harris administration. That’s partly a function of the difference in format — many podcast appearances run an hour or even two hours long, whereas cable news interviews rarely last more than half an hour — and partly a function of vibes: Candidates go into interviews with mainstream reporters with their guard up, regardless of how an interview actually unfolds. But it’s also a function of how adversarial interviews play in our polarized media landscape. More often than not, Vance and Trump’s adversarial sit-downs with mainstream reporters become material for Republican messaging campaigns, with Trump-friendly social media accounts sharing clips of particularly feisty exchanges as proof that Trump and Vance are willing to fight back against the “fake news.” Both the candidate and the interviewer are incentivized to look tough to satisfy their distinct audiences. Of course, hard-hitting and adversarial interviews with candidates still play a valuable and necessary role in the political mediasphere, but these podcast appearances serve as a timely reminder that pressing candidates about hot-button issues isn’t the only way to extract interesting and valuable material from them. Voters now have fewer and fewer opportunities to learn about the candidates in relatively candid and unvarnished settings. To the extent that the bro podcasters are creating opportunities for that sort of engagement, mainstream reporters should thank them — and learn something from them, too. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at iward@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @ianwardreports.
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| | | | | — Judge sounds inclined to halt Virginia voter purge: A federal judge signaled that she will likely order Virginia to restore about 1,600 people to its voter rolls after the state removed them in the past three months. Virginia says it has removed people who are not U.S. citizens. But the Justice Department and voting rights groups say that many of the removals may be erroneous — and that trimming the voter rolls so close to Election Day violates federal law. During several hours of arguments in federal court today, Judge Patricia Giles expressed skepticism about the defenses Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-Va.) and other state officials have offered for removing voters during a 90-day, preelection quiet period during which federal law prohibits “systematic” efforts to clean up the voting rolls. — Biden to apologize for Native American boarding schools: President Joe Biden plans to issue a formal apology for the role that the U.S. government played in Native American boarding schools, a brutal system that removed children from their homes and forced them to assimilate in an effort to destroy their language and culture. Biden is expected to make the announcement at the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona on Friday. It will mark the first formal acknowledgment from a president about the role the federal government played in the boarding school system and the devastating impact it had on generations of Native American families. — Eric Adams’ political challengers slam latest evidence of corruption: “Gross misuse of power,” “Tammany Hall-style corruption” and “shameless.” Those were among the searing critiques from Democrats looking to unseat New York City Mayor Eric Adams, following revelations that his friend and aide Jesse Hamilton steamrolled an official bidding process and awarded a lucrative contract to a losing applicant — who happens to be a major mayoral donor . As POLITICO reported Wednesday, Hamilton waved off the results of a request for proposals process this spring from his perch atop the Department of Citywide Administrative Services real estate division, where he oversees leases between city agencies and private landlords.
| | TRUMP BABBLE! PARDONING HUNTER — Donald Trump said today he’s open to pardoning Hunter Biden if he’s reelected — a significant reversal after years of lobbing attacks at the legal issues faced by the president’s son as part of his “Biden crime family” talking point. “I wouldn’t take it off the books,” Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt when asked if he would consider pardoning Hunter Biden, who was found guilty in June of three felonies in a federal gun trial and pleaded guilty in September to federal tax charges. UPTON EXPLAINS — Retired GOP Rep. Fred Upton got a phone call from Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz on Wednesday. But he insists his decision to endorse Kamala Harris for president less than 24 hours later was one he made on his own . “I just think people have had enough, particularly moderate Republicans,” Upton told POLITICO in an interview today, referring to former President Donald Trump. “I don’t have any hesitation. It was the right thing to do and if it makes a difference — it’s certainly worth it. And people know that there’s cover. It’s not just one [former House Republican], it’s 30 some.” IMPRESSIVE! SLAM DUNK — The most recent comprehensive study of Pennsylvania’s surging economy was almost startling in its promise, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer. The State of Working Pennsylvania report, released just before Labor Day, found that the state’s economic output was “significantly exceeding” pre-pandemic levels, unemployment rates were near 50-year lows, workers’ bargaining power was high, and working-class families were sharing in the prosperity in a more sustained way than at any point since 1980. “Historically, if you told me these would be the numbers — employment, growth, stock market, inflation back down, all these things — I’d say, ‘Wow, slam dunk for the incumbent party,’ ” said Christopher Borick, director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion in Allentown. “And that’s the Democrats.” Instead, by almost every available polling metric, the 2024 presidential race in Pennsylvania is a dead heat. And Vice President Kamala Harris’ chance of securing the state’s critical 19 electoral votes may hinge on whether the reality of the state’s bustling economy squares with the perception of its citizens.
| | | A man looks at destroyed buildings hit by Israeli airstrikes in Dahiyeh, Beirut on Oct. 7, 2024. | Hussein Malla/AP
| HELPING HAND — France has helped raise $800 million in humanitarian aid and $200 million in security assistance to support Lebanon and the more than 1 million people displaced there by the recent Israeli invasion, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said today. President Emmanuel Macron’s government helped secure the donation at a conference in Paris, where senior officials from 70 countries and international organizations have gathered. In his opening speech this morning, Macron said France would give €100 million. Macron also used the address to call for the war to “end as soon as possible” in southern Lebanon, where the Israel Defense Forces are attempting to dismantle the Hezbollah militant group through a combination of airstrikes and ground operations. NOW DEPLOYED — Military units from North Korea have left their Russian training grounds and entered the zone of combat between Russian and Ukraine forces for the first time, the military defense intelligence service of Ukraine (HUR) said in a statement this evening. Ukrainian spies recorded the troops in Russia’s Kursk region on Wednesday, HUR said. North Korean soldiers are being trained at five military sites in the far east of Russia, and have to pass a training course lasting several weeks before being deployed in the war against Ukraine, HUR said. The United States confirmed Wednesday that thousands of North Koreans are training in Russia alongside Kremlin troops.
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$6.2 million The amount the Senate Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC, announced today it would invest in the Senate election in Nevada, a state where it had not previously spent. Positive early-voting trends for Republicans and former President Donald Trump’s polling in the state have spurred GOP optimism in the face of Sen. Jacky Rosen’s (D-Nev.) lead in most public and private polling. MUST READ! SCRUTINIZE SAM BROWN'S HISTORY BEFORE SUPPORTING HIM. HAS NEVER HELD ELECTED OFFICE - DEFEATED IN TEXAS, NO EDUCATION REPORTED DON'T MAKE YOUR DECISION BASED ON SUPER PAC PROPAGANDA!
EXCERPTS: Brown, a Purple Heart veteran, has gripped Nevadans’ attention with his story of surviving an explosion while on duty in Afghanistan. He previously ran for office in Texas and then in Nevada for the Senate in 2022 but didn’t make it past the primary. The Reno resident, who moved to Nevada in 2018, worked at an Amazon fulfillment center and founded a business that provides emergency pharmaceutical drugs to veterans. He has prioritized the economy in his fight against the sitting junior senator, calling her a rubber stamp for the Biden-Harris administration that exacerbated rising costs. Democrats, on the other hand, have picked apart Brown’s positions on abortion and Yucca Mountain.
GOP PROPAGANDA! THAT'S NOT WHAT CAUSED PRICES TO RISE & LIES ABOUT HOUSING COSTS BECAUSE HE'S ANOTHER MAGA GOP REGURGITATING MANURE! THERE'S NO INDICATION HE HAS ANY EDUCATION - JUST ANOTHER CARPETBAGGER!
Brown wants to stop what he calls reckless spending in Washington that caused prices to skyrocket, and he wants to lower taxes on food, gas, medicine and energy, according to the voter guide. He also wants to create better energy and monetary policies that lower costs for production and transportation of goods. To help with housing, Brown pledges to enact legislation to release federal lands in Nevada for housing on a “regular and reliable timetable,” as well as cut regulations that slow down housing development projects.
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| | | DO IT FOR THE ‘GRAM — Influencers with a huge reach online are only getting younger. And as high school students routinely amass hundreds of thousands — or even millions — of followers across platforms like Instagram and TikTok, they are beginning to make deeply consequential life decisions based on what fits with their “aesthetic.” That starts with where they’re deciding to go to college . One 17-year-old, for example, said that she wants to make sure the campus looks pretty in a particular way, and that there are large scale football games to attend, in order to keep making content that connects with her existing base of followers. For Teen Vogue, Fortesa Latifi reports on this new generation of influencers — and the future consequences of how they’re making decisions, both for them and their followers.
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On this date in 1985: Coretta Scott King (center), wife of slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and members of Congress hold a news conference on Capitol Hill to discuss plans for the first annual holiday honoring King. | Scott Stewart/AP
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