• Donald Trump successfully used podcasts to expand his reach during the 2024 presidential campaign.
• On Election day, Trump ended up boosting his support among men overall compared to 2020.
• A variety of podcast hosts are set to have a substantial level of influence in Trump's second term.

President-elect Donald Trump's love for the media is well-known — just look at how much Trump's early picks resemble a Fox News greenroom.

The president-elect made significant efforts during his campaign to get his message in front of podcasters and influencers. Now that he's set to return to power, these commentators will play a major role in setting and pushing his agenda. Or they'll just stream from the White House.

If Donald Trump Jr., who hosts his own podcast, gets his wish they might even be seated somewhere in the White House briefing room.

'The Joe Rogan Experience'

The UFC commentator and comedian Joe Rogan has become one of the biggest names in the podcast world. Rogan's persona and massive following (14.5 million followers on Spotify and nearly 19 million subscribers on YouTube) have given him the sort of platform that continues to attract a range of high-profile guests.

Trump's appearance on Rogan's podcast in October allowed him to reach a critical audience — which heavily skews male — ahead of an election where the president-elect boosted his performance with men compared to 2020. Rogan's reach is so substantial that Trump took a few hours off the campaign trail to travel to Austin, Texas, to sit in the studio with the podcast host.

Rogan, shortly before the election, endorsed Trump's candidacy, calling him "the biggest there is."

Many Democrats pushed for Vice President Kamala Harris to appear on the program before the election, but scheduling during the frenetic last weeks of the race precluded her from traveling to Austin to do so, according to a campaign statement at the time.

"My sincere wish is to just have a nice conversation and get to know her as a human being," Rogan said in October.

'Bannon's War Room'

One of the more seasoned podcasters in Trump's orbit, former White House strategist Steve Bannon, started his program during Trump's first impeachment. Trump has said he listens to "Bannon's War Room."

Bannon used the program to foment backlash to then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California. And Kash Patel, Trump's pick to lead the FBI, has made countless appearances on the show.

Former White House Trade Council director Peter Navarro, set to return to Trump's second administration, was among a handful of commentators who kept Bannon's show going while he was in prison. Like Navarro, Bannon was sentenced for his defiance of a subpoena from the House January 6 committee.

'Triggered with Don Jr.'

Donald Trump Jr., the president-elect's eldest son, has confirmed he won't be in the incoming administration. But he remains a key voice in his father's ear.

Trump Jr. pushes his message in multiple forms, including on his podcast, "Triggered With Don Jr.," which he has hosted for almost a year. He's frequently hosted some of Trump's congressional allies, along with top aides like Stephen Miller, who will return to the White House.

In a recent episode, Trump Jr. teased how the president-elect's transition team is eyeing ways to bring conservative podcasters into the White House briefing room.

'This Past Weekend with Theo Von'

In August, the comedian Theo Von hosted Trump on his podcast, "This Past Weekend with Theo Von." On the program, Von spoke openly with Trump about his recovery from drug addiction. It may not have been seen as a typical stop for a presidential candidate, but the conversation was heard by many Americans, providing Trump with another connection to a bloc of male voters who don't consume much mainstream media.

Von received a shout out from UFC president Dana White during Trump's election night victory speech in Florida.

'The Charlie Kirk Show'

Charlie Kirk, a cofounder of the conservative nonprofit Turning Point USA, has spent over a decade advocating for limited government and free markets among students on high school and college campuses.

Ahead of the 2024 general election, Kirk used Turning Point Action, the political advocacy arm of Turning Point USA, to boost Trump's bid for a second term and amplify his conservative message. Kirk appeared alongside Trump at campaign events in key swing states like Georgia and Nevada, which the president-elect went on to flip in November.

Kirk hosts "The Charlie Kirk Show" podcast, which serves as an influential vehicle for reaching the sort of young voters who were a key part of Trump's electoral gains.

'Full Send Podcast'

Few shows personify "the manosphere" that Trump spent the summer tapping into more than "Full Send," a podcast started by a group of influencers called the Nelk Boys. Trump has made multiple appearances on Full Send, even stumping with one of its members in Las Vegas. Unlike Bannon and some others on this list, the Nelk Boys are not explicitly political, which made their audience ripe for Trump's 2024 appeals but also means they're unlikely to engage in the day-to-day news cycle.

Adin Ross

Adin Ross, an internet personality and popular streamer, sat down with Trump this past August and in a departure from many interviews — gifted the Republican a gold Rolex watch and a customized Tesla Cybertruck.

Ross became a big name through his livestreams of video games, and Trump's interview with the streamer was one more way that he was able to connect with a male-skewing audience.

'The Dan Bongino Show'

Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent, is so firmly entrenched in the conservative space that he was selected to replace the late Rush Limbaugh in his coveted time slot. Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio and other influential leaders on the right have pushed Trump to name Bongino to run the agency tasked with protecting the president. In the meantime, Bongino has been a vocal proponent of Trump's other nominees and helped lead a pressure campaign to push Sen. Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican, to back Trump's pick to lead the Pentagon.

'Verdict with Ted Cruz'

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has repeatedly offered his full-throated support to Trump, a stark contrast to the bitter end to his 2016 GOP primary run. Like Bannon, Cruz launched his podcast amid Trump's first impeachment battle. He has since used his platform to shed light on Congress and to discuss the news of the day.

With a 53-47 Republican Senate majority beginning in January, Trump can't afford many defections if he wants to get his agenda through the upper chamber. Cruz is well-positioned to serve as a narrator for a far more supportive group than the one that repeatedly vexed Trump in his first term.

'The Megyn Kelly Show'

Many in Trump's orbit once detested former Fox News journalist Megyn Kelly after she asked him during a 2015 GOP presidential debate about past inflammatory comments directed toward women.

"You've called women you don't like fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals," she asked at the time. "Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president?"

Trump repeatedly blasted Kelly after the interview.

But in the intervening years, Kelly left Fox and was hired by NBC News before a tumultuous departure. She's since become a major conservative voice in the podcast world and interviewed Trump on her show in September 2023.

Ahead of the 2024 election, she appeared alongside Trump at a Pennsylvania rally, voicing her support for his campaign and calling him a "protector of women."

'All-In Podcast'

Key venture capitalists embraced Trump ahead of the 2024 election, including former PayPal executive David Sacks. Sacks and fellow venture capitalists, Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, and David Friedberg, hold court on their podcast, "All-In," which was launched during the pandemic.

It remains to be seen how involved Sacks will be going forward on the podcast now that Trump has named him his AI and crypto czar. Trump made an appearance during a June episode.

• It used to be that leaving Fox News or other big media outlets was the end of your career.
• Not anymore. Ask two former Fox hosts, Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, or Bari Weiss, an ex-New York Times editor.
• Chris Balfe, who helps those stars find audiences and make money via podcasts and YouTube, says there will be more people doing the same thing.

The 2024 election was a podcast election and a YouTube election.

There was also something else new at play here: It was an election where several people who used to have high-profile, influential perches at big mainstream media organizations found new, influential perches on the internet, at companies they built and own themselves. People like the former Fox News stars Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, and the former New York Times writer and editor Bari Weiss.

This was an idea we've heard about for a long time, and one we saw put into practice back in 2011 — when Glenn Beck split with Fox News and started TheBlaze, his own subscription streaming service. But until recently, we hadn't seen many people follow in his footsteps. Now it's becoming a well-worn path.

I wanted to understand why this is happening now, and how it's working, so I asked a man who's directly involved: Chris Balfe, the CEO of Red Seat Ventures — a company that has helped Carlson, Kelly, and Weiss set up their podcast and streaming businesses, and sells ads for them. Not coincidentally, Balfe used to work with Beck at TheBlaze (the duo had a messy divorce).

As Balfe explains, the Big Media-to-the-internet route isn't going to work for everyone. I also don't want to overstate the trend. Even though traditional media like cable TV is in decline, it's going to be with us for some time. See: Donald Trump, who wants to stock his administration with people he's watched on Fox — just like he did in his first term.

But talking to Balfe gives you a good sense of what's happening behind the scenes, and the challenges that still remain for stars who want to make the leap. You can listen to our entire conversation on my "Channels" podcast; here's an edited excerpt of our chat.

More than a decade ago, you were working with Glenn Beck, who left Fox News and started TheBlaze. At the time, it seemed like we would see more people doing what he did — leaving mainstream media, going to digital, and building an audience there. But that didn't happen, really, until the last couple years. Why did it take so long, and why is it happening now?

Two things. One is that the technology and tools have caught up in a big way. When we launched TheBlaze, we had to mail people Roku boxes and say, "Hook this up to the back of your TV. You might need something called an HDMI cable. We'll send you one of those if you want one."

You would literally mail your subscribers Roku boxes?

Yeah. And explain to them how they would download an app and watch it. And so clearly, with every TV in the world having connectivity, and every toaster in the world having connectivity, that technical hurdle and user-behavior hurdle is gone.

Sixty million people just watched Mike Tyson and Jake Paul.

Exactly. The second change is the monetization side. Where are the dollars?

When we think about people who are in both a linear-network space and a digital space, it's easier to scale, quicker to scale, and potentially more lucrative in the digital space.

You're saying it's potentially more lucrative than a traditional big-dollar TV contract?

That definitely depends on the talent. We talk to folks who want to leave traditional media, and we hear how much money they're making, and we say, "Wow, that's a great deal for you. And if I model out how long it's going to take you to make that, if we're successful, it might be three years before you can make that kind of money again. And that's if we're successful — we might not be."

So for a lot of people, we suggest hanging on to those big, fat media paychecks as long as you can. If you're trying to replace a $2 million-a-year paycheck, it's going to take time. Unless you're Tucker Carlson.

Is there a certain kind of person that works well in traditional media that can also succeed in digital?

What doesn't work is someone who's there by virtue of the time period that they're on TV. So if you're a nightly news anchor — no offense to the nightly news anchors — you are unlikely to be successful as a podcaster because you're being paid $5, $10, $15 million a year. And if you were out that night and your "B" host goes in, the [ratings] probably are exactly the same.

But shouldn't the exposure you're getting on mainstream media be enough to bring a portion of your audience to digital?

I'd say mostly not. There's really a fandom component to it, and that's the dark-arts part of this — when each person comes to us, and we try to evaluate [the power of their fandom].

People — agents, in particular — always say, "Is it the number of Facebook followers, or followers on X or whatever?" It's not really any of those things. It's watching the show. It's listening and talking to people about how they react to this person. And would you kind of proverbially walk across broken glass [for them]? Because we're switching you from a push medium to a pull medium. And that means people are going to want to have to pull.

When Tucker Carlson was pushed out of Fox, did you have any concern that his work would not translate to digital?

Definitely not. I felt very strongly that Tucker was going to have the No. 1 podcast in the country. Or No. 2, depending on how quickly Joe Rogan grows.

Why him, compared to any other person who's on TV with a big audience?

The answer is his ability to be at the forefront of the creation of media moments rather than covering media moments.

This is one of the things we talk about a lot in news, and especially in right-of-center news: There are a lot of podcasts, YouTube shows, TV shows, and radio shows where news happens, and they react to it. It's interesting because they're interesting people, but that's sort of the end of it. There are a few personalities who have the ability to create news cycles rather than react to news cycles.

Glenn Beck was a big one of those back when he was at Fox News, in particular, but also on TheBlaze. And I would point to Tucker Carlson, absolutely, and say, "This is a person who's a must-watch — not just for the right but for everyone to try to figure out what the heck he's talking about."

He's intriguing, inflammatory. Both. He's visiting Vladimir Putin.

And Megyn is doing that increasingly right now. The coverage that Megyn is getting across the entire internet for every single thing that she says or does right now is really astounding. I haven't seen anything like it since the Glenn Beck Fox News days, where there is a newsworthy piece of content that comes out of every one of her podcasts these days.

I also think that goes toward this shift that we've been talking about, where for a long time, whatever happened on podcasts happened between the ears of the people listening and didn't make it successfully out into the rest of the world.

And now the top podcasts are making news more often — not because the shows have gotten better but because people are paying more attention and realizing great content is happening there.

How is the money working? There used to be a stigma about advertising on right-wing, conservative spaces in general, and podcasts in general, for different reasons. It seems you're still struggling with that — you're not getting blue-chip advertisers on Tucker Carlson's show.

It's correct that it's rare that we see any Fortune 500 company spending a lot of dollars in any controversial space: news, true crime, right-of-center politics, left-of-center politics. "Brand safety" is still something that big brands are concerned about — obsessed with, in certain cases — and therefore they avoid all politics and all news and all true crime and all other things that people like to listen to.

What's most valuable to you right now, a podcast listener or a YouTube viewer?

A podcast listener, if they subscribe to the podcast feed on Spotify or Apple, is the most valuable because they're the stickiest. They spend the most time with a given show. There's automatic downloads, in the case of those two apps. And once they follow or subscribe, they're going to get every episode. They're more likely to stick with us. They have more lifetime value.

They haven't pulled out a credit card, but it's almost as if they have. They've committed to you in some way.

And then they start making a mental appointment in their own brain about, "How often is this show coming out? When am I going to make the time in my daily life to listen to that show?" There's really more of a commitment to podcast listening.

Whereas on YouTube, it's still super valuable to us. But of the people who are coming and watching on YouTube, 70% of those people are not subscribers to our channel. They're being recommended algorithmically.

And the two concerns that I have about that is one — clearly they're not as big a fan. So they may not be as responsive to advertising. Or they may watch one video and not the next. And two — we've all gone through algorithmic hell in the past with Facebook and every other platform.

The algorithm that brought them there is an algorithm that could not bring them there tomorrow.

For sure.