Call it the “podcast election.” President-elect Donald Trump’s interviews with influencers were a key factor that helped him reclaim the presidency.
President-elect Donald Trump’s ability to humanize himself on podcasts with candor and quips is widely credited for having helped win him back the White House in 2024.
Since the election, both Republicans and Democrats have analyzed why Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris. One key factor that commentators across the political spectrum can agree on is that podcast interviews appeared to affect the election more than celebrity endorsements or liberal legacy media.
The data appears to back this up, as the Poynter Institute noted that some have even dubbed 2024 the “podcast election,” as both Trump and Harris made multiple appearances on programs that reach specific, large audiences.
While Harris’ trip to the podcast circuit ranged from appearances on “Club Shay Shay,” hosted by former NFL player Shannon Sharpe, to the popular “Call Her Daddy” podcast, hosted by former Barstool personality Alex Cooper, Trump came out on top. His choice to lean into podcasts, particularly male-oriented ones, paid off with Gen Z men and millennials. The Fox News Voter Survey published earlier this month found that men aged 18-44 supported Trump at 53% compared to Vice President Kamala Harris’ 45%.
A Kamala Harris aide’s interview with Semafor after the election included a telling remark about the waning influence of legacy outlets.
“There’s just no value — with respect to my colleagues in the mainstream press — in a general election, to speaking to the New York Times or speaking to the Washington Post, because those [readers] are already with us,” deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty said.
From coining “the weave” to joking about a failed attempt on his life, Trump’s podcasting tour in 2024 included several memorable moments and demonstrated the rising influence of the medium.
Trump’s late-October marathon appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience” has been viewed over 53 million times on YouTube alone and is believed to have been a turning point in the election. Rogan, known for drawing raw and off-the cuff commentary from his guests, did not disappoint when he interviewed Trump.
“The biggest mistake,” Trump said of his first presidential term, was that “I picked a few people that I shouldn’t have picked,” citing “neocons or bad people or disloyal people.” One specific example Trump recalled was White House National Security adviser John Bolton, whom he fired in 2019. Trump said Bolton was useful as a threat to make other countries think, “Man, Trump’s going to go to war with us,” but argued, “He was with Bush when they went stupidly into the Middle East. They should have never done it. I used to say it as a civilian, so I always got more publicity than other people.”
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Trump then expressed his wonder at how he somehow gets more publicity than others, inviting Rogan to suggest why.
“I could definitely tell you,” Rogan replied and laughed. “You’ve said a lot of wild s—.”
“Maybe,” Trump replied with a smile. Trump later went on to explain, “You know, it’s funny. You need at least the attitude of a comedian when you’re doing this business, this is a very dangerous business.”
Long after the interview, Rogan marveled to later guests at Trump’s “ability to just keep going” in their approximately 3-hour podcast interview without so much as a bathroom break. He went on to endorse Trump on the eve of the election.
Trump appeared on the “Flagrant” podcast hosted by stand-up comedians such as Andrew Schulz and Akaash Singh, but managed to have them cracking up throughout the interview.
In the interview, Trump slapped President Biden with a backhanded compliment.
“He has one ability that I don’t have — he sleeps,” Trump said as the hosts laughed, later marveling at Biden’s ability “to fall asleep while on camera.”
Trump also quipped, “Somebody convinced him he looks good in a bathing suit, and when you’re 82, typically bathing suits aren’t going to make you look great.”
During another viral moment in that same interview, Trump said, “I don’t ramble,” arguing instead, “I do a thing called the weave,” a technique where he says he can go on a tangent in a conversation and then circle back to the main point.
“You need an extraordinary memory, because you have to come back to where you started,” he said, boasting as the hosts laughed that he “can go so far here or there, and I can come back to exactly where I started.”
Schulz later reflected on the interview with his co-hosts that “my reaction is Trump is winning by a landslide. It’s not close anymore,” a sharp departure from his initial belief that Trump “don’t got a chance.’”
On “The Brilliant Idiots,” another podcast Schulz co-hosts with radio host Charlamagne Tha God, Charlamagne made Schulz crack up by telling him an anecdote about how the podcast was received by young men. Charlamagne told Schulz that a young Black man he knew, but refused to name, reacted to Schulz’s Trump interview with a shocked, “’Flagrant’ is going to get Trump elected.’”
Schulz burst out laughing, “The interview was fire, bro, I don’t know what to tell you.”
Comedian and podcaster Theo Von interviewed Trump in August, who accepted the invitation after being encouraged to do so by his son, Barron.
This episode of the “This Past Weekend” podcast has gained 15 million views since it was released in August. Trump made use of his time to blast not only Harris, but the Democratic Party behind her. At the time, America was still reeling from Biden relinquishing the nomination under extreme pressure from party luminaries like Nancy Pelosi. Von asked Trump for his theory on what happened.
“It was a coup,” Trump said, later suggesting, “[Chuck] Schumer, Pelosi, and numerous other people — the heads of the Democrat Party,” Trump speculated. “And they did — they threatened him violently, I think. And he didn’t want to get out, remember he said, ‘Only God will get me out?'”
The president-elect also took time to criticize Harris, arguing, “She’s the worst vice president ever, he’s the worst president ever, a deadly combination.”
He went on to dub Harris the “worst border czar in the history of the world,” to the point that there are “hundreds of thousands of murderers” in the United States.
In late October, Mark Calaway, best known as “The Undertaker” from WWE wrestling, interviewed Trump on his podcast “Six Feet Under,” reaching nearly 1 million views.
Trump spoke candidly about the second assassination attempt on his life that occurred just weeks before. Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, has been accused of pointing an AK-47 at Trump while he was visiting the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Fla. Authorities said Secret Service agents fired at him after seeing the muzzle of his rifle pointing through a chain-link fence one hole ahead of where Trump was playing.
“I’m standing over a putt,” Trump said as he recalled the incident, before joking, “He could have at least let me putt it out, right?”
Trump went on to credit an “incredible woman” who took photos of the suspect as he fled the scene after exchanging fire with Secret Service.
“A woman… it could only be a woman, because men maybe aren’t smart enough, right?” he joked. “A woman sees this guy running, he’s running across the street – now who would do this – it’s a fairly busy street… and she sees him, and she said, ‘He’s suspicious.’ I see people running all the time that don’t look so hot! But she follows him for one block, he gets into the car, she stops her car, starts taking pictures of his license plate and starts taking pictures of the type of car it was. It was a whatever, a van of some kind, and she then takes the pictures and sends them to the sheriff! Who would do this?”
Trump appeared on Logan Paul’s “Impaulsive” podcast in early June, where he talked about topics ranging from the war in Ukraine to UFO’s, but took the time to specifically knock his Democratic opponent for a lack of interviews.
“He couldn’t do this interview,” he said of Biden, who was still the Democratic Party nominee at the time. “Have you asked him questions like this?”
When the hosts said he had not been on their show yet, but they would love to host him, Trump seemed to like the idea, making the hosts chuckle as he said, “I think he should. You know what chance you have of getting him on? I’d say less than 1%. If you did that, I’d actually watch that one, okay? See how long it lasted.”
Paul then asked Trump what he knows about UFO’s/UAP’s, and while Trump said that he has spoken to respectable pilots who have experienced unexplained phenomena, he remains skeptical. That said, one kind of alien indeed concerns him.
“I know there are illegal aliens that are out there,” Trump joked. “But those are the ones that come through the border, we have plenty of them. Those are the ones I know. When you say ‘aliens,’ I say, ‘Are they illegal aliens?’”
The video interview reached nearly 7 million views at the time of this report.
