Anika Begay
Who wants to be the last con man off a sinking ship? Last week, some prominent right-wing podcasters began to answer that question with their feet, abandoning Team Trump, though at least one seems to have been cowed back into line. It’s been a rough week for the aging Republican candidate, who has shown a dip in some polls, emerged from semi-isolation to give a rambling, disconnected press conference, and fantasized on his Truth Social account about Joe Biden lurching back into the race. As goes the Führer, so goes the volk; by the end of the week, many of Trump’s most influential, ultra-online supporters seemed to be wavering in their support.
For the long list of influencers, podcasters, cryptocurrency scammers (a category that now seems to include Trump’s Children), and the small-town tyrants who have snuck into MAGA Nation’s wallets, the prospect of Trump losing in the fall, again, is both a political and a business problem. Some are trying to triangulate their position, finding a way to remain loyal to Trump while acknowledging that his campaign is stalling. Others are defecting to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or demanding changes in Trump’s campaign. And a good number are simply going nuts.
Joe Rogan, America’s most popular podcaster and lifestyle guru to millions of slacker men, announced in an interview last week that he favors Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “He’s the only one who makes sense to me,” Rogan said, praising Kennedy’s temperament and his work cleaning up the East River. (It was the Hudson River.)
In short order, an anti-Rogan backlash took hold on social media. Trump posted on Truth Social suggesting that Rogan should be booed at the next Ultimate Fighting Championship fight he attends. (Rogan is a longtime UFC commentator and, like Trump, is friends with UFC boss Dana White.) On X, Rogan insisted that his comments were not an endorsement, but rather a meaningless piece of character analysis. “I’m not the person to get political information from,” he wrote.
Nick Fuentes, the proudly anti-Semitic leader of the Groyper clique of young American bigots, took to X to express his dissatisfaction with the direction of Trump’s campaign. “Tonight I have declared a new Groyper war on the Trump campaign,” Fuentes wrote. “We support Trump, but his campaign has been hijacked by the same consultants, lobbyists, and donors he defeated in 2016, and they are ruining everything. Without serious changes we are heading for a catastrophic loss.”
In subsequent posts, Fuentes called for the firing of some of Trump’s campaign advisers. And like all online influencers, she sought to parlay this new wave of attention into a cross-promotion opportunity for her brand. She urged her followers to stay tuned to her channel on far-right platform Rumblewhere he allegedly revealed his plan to save Trump’s campaign.
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Meanwhile, Tim Pool, the far-right YouTuber with a hat on his head, published“OK, now I’m voting for RFK Jr.” The third-party candidate immediately reposted the endorsement, adding, “I’m so grateful to you, Tim, for your faith in me, but most of all for your steadfast defense of the Constitution and your unflagging love for our country.” Kennedy punctuated his show of gratitude with an American flag emoji. It’s not at all clear how Tim Poole steadfastly defended the Constitution, but He has many weapons.
Pool’s promise to vote for RFK Jr. didn’t last long. As the Washington Postright-wing observer Will Sommer observed“Pool, after facing criticism from Cat Turd and other prominent MAGA figures for abandoning Trump, says he was just kidding and won’t vote for RFK after all.”
“Oof I really fell for it this time,” Pool wrote on X. “Ahahaha Holy shit I’m voting for Trump WTF.”
If this all sounds very stupid, you’re right. But we live in blatantly stupid times: The clowns are in charge and they’re making a fortune by hyping up MAGA loyalists to believe in migrant invasions, Covid denial, deep state plots against Trump, and any other patently ridiculous viral conspiracy that pops up on the timeline. A Trump defeat in November would likely mean a mortal threat to their positions in the MAGA political firmament and its media economy. As a result, some of them are doing the social media equivalent of a panicked stock market crash to prepare their audiences, and themselves, for a Trump defeat.
Trump is helping the process, especially by taking potshots at an immensely popular entertainer like Rogan, who has gone out of his way to praise Kennedy without even naming, much less denigrating, the former president. Trump has recently made an interview with Adin Rossan incel-friendly influencer who, like Trump, has associated himself with Fuentes. It’s the kind of interview that might appeal to a niche group of very online and right-wing young men who should already be in the GOP nominee’s pocket. Ross Trump introduced with a Tesla Cybertruck customized with a photo of the former president raising his fist after being shot. Inside was a Rolex watch.
As Trump’s campaign flounders, trying to regain lost momentum, he belies the humiliating displays of influencers within his base. Trump and his advisers are still trying to escape the “weird” accusations of their Democratic rivals, trotting out perpetually defective hillbilly cosplayer JD Vance to various campaign stops. Meanwhile, the actual candidate looks sullen and angry, going through the motions at his sparsely attended rallies and recent panicked press conference, and posting crap on Truth Social. But this time, Trump’s posts and public appearances reek of desperation and stupidity. He recently created a completely unnecessary mini-news cycle around his false memory of a rough helicopter landing with Kamala Harris’s former political mentor, Willie Brown. (The event in question involved a different black political figure (in California, former state senator Nate Holden, a misunderstanding that is unlikely to curb the black vote’s abandonment of the MAGA agenda.)
By virtually every measure of campaign success, Trump’s prospects are dimming. And while he continues to command his following to cow critics like Rogan and Pool into renewed servility, he can’t reverse the damage he’s done. That’s a fundamental political truth that even terminal online podcasters can’t avoid.
