Trump knows exactly what he’s doing by going on the Joe Rogan podcast

Donald Trump’s sit-down in Austin on Friday on “The Joe Rogan Experience” underscores a central dynamic of the race for the former president: A November victory may hinge on low-propensity, MAGA-supporting men — who have found in Trump an outlet for the sidelining and disaffection they feel in the larger cultural milieu — actually voting.

Rogan’s podcast is a good place to reach them. It’s the largest podcast in the U.S., with an audience in the tens of millions that is largely young and male.

It also comes as Trump’s opponent, Kamala Harris, is making the opposite pitch on the other side of the state in Houston, hosting a star-studded rally with Beyoncé focused on abortion rights as she looks to persuade moderate voters, and particularly non-college educated white women, to show up for her in a little over a week.

Against that backdrop, we pulled together six of our reporters to talk about what Trump’s appearance on Rogan’s podcast says about the gender gap and how men are feeling about the election more broadly.

David Kihara: Let’s start with the obvious one: What does Trump have to gain by going on Rogan’s podcast?

Natalie Allison: He gets an audience of millions, many of them the very young men his campaign is trying to mobilize to the polls, right before Election Day.

Adam Wren: Trump needs to find a way to cut his losses with women, and appealing to the men who listen to Rogan’s show — among the biggest audiences of the kind of voters he needs to turn out — is a good place to start and finish.

Alex Keeney: If you want to turn out low propensity voters, it’s never a bad idea to be in front of an NFL-sized audience.

Megan Messerly: First of all, I just want to say there’s this incredible split-screen happening [Friday] in Texas. You have Donald Trump in Austin going on Joe Rogan’s podcast, which is clearly targeted at these low-propensity, young men, MAGA supporters that he and his allies are trying to get to the polls. At the same time, Kamala Harris is rallying supporters today in Houston — a state Trump will almost assuredly win on Nov. 5 — to highlight how abortion access has crumbled in the state since the fall of Roe v. Wade. Before that rally (where she’ll appear with megastar Beyoncé), Harris will be recording a podcast interview with Brené Brown, a University of Houston professor and vulnerability researcher, as she tries to woo these moderate Republican voters, including the non-college educated white women her campaign sees as a key target right now.

There’s been all this talk about the gender gap in the election — and I don’t know if you could see it playing out any more starkly than it is today in the Lone Star State.

Meridith McGraw: Joe Rogan has more than 14 million followers on Spotify. And his audience skews young and male. Trump’s campaign views Rogan’s show as one of the most important interviews of the cycle.

Ian Ward: Rogan’s audience is made up of people who are skeptical of the mainstream media and are looking for different sources of information and authority. Going on Rogan signals to his viewers — and to the electorate more broadly — that Trump understands that and endorses it.

Kihara: A lot of talk of the male vote. How does Rogan — and by extension Trump — speak to a new, young version of masculinity? Or is it actually a really traditional version?

Ward: Rogan appeals to young men who feel like traditional masculinity has been stigmatized as society has “feminized” in the wake of #MeToo. He gives men permission to enact that traditional type of masculinity and models it for them.

Messerly: I think men — and especially young, white men — are really struggling to find their place in society right now. And they’ve found in Rogan’s podcast, and Trump and the MAGA movement broadly, a sort of refuge. They’re frustrated about the economy. They’re frustrated about cancel culture. I think one can argue — and many have — that what we’re seeing right now is a backlash to the #MeToo movement and to some of the broader pushes on the left.

Keeney: I’m not sure I would think about it as masculinity, or really anything that has a really hard-edged policy line.

If you talk to these guys — you can observe this in your own life, too — you’ll notice that a lot of young men think and feel like they’re part of a counterculture. It’s hard to pin them down on what issues they care about in a Beltway sense, but there is a sense of group identity that is organized around the cultural platforms you’re talking about. Maybe they don’t feel like they’re represented in traditional culture — they’ve certainly said as much to me and a number of scholars who have been studying the issue for a while now. A lot of YouTube celebrities Trump has leveraged — the Nelk Boys, Theo Von, etc. — grew up outside of the mainstream to fill that vacuum. Their platforms are a bit of a safe space for men and their worldview that, correctly or incorrectly, many feel is unwelcome.

Wren: One of the things young, white men lack and are seeking out is a kind of community — community that would typically come from the military or even church (notably young men are now more religious than their female counterparts for the first time in American history). Rogan’s show, in some ways, provides that community — or at least a simulacrum of it.

Messerly: I have not been able to get that article Adam linked to out of my brain for the last month! I think it speaks to how desperate men are to feel wanted in a society they feel is increasingly rejecting them (again, whether they’re feeling that rightly or wrongly). Some of them are finding that in church — but I think it also raises broader questions about the enmeshment of conservative politics and the MAGA movement with white evangelical Protestantism.

Allison: Rogan’s guest list certainly skews male, as does his audience. It’s sort of a podcast by bros and for bros. But with episodes that span two to four hours, it does go beyond simple surface-level male locker room banter (something I’m, admittedly, not familiar with). In many cases it’s a man having a three-hour conversation with another man, which is not the way we often think of men interacting and is clearly filling a void for men who want to be intellectually or in some cases emotionally stimulated while talking about current events.

McGraw: Trump during this election — as has been widely reported at POLITICO and elsewhere — has really tapped into the podcaster, UFC manosphere. Not only because they are likely to be undecided voters, but because, as Ian was referring to earlier, they’re more likely to be skeptical of mainstream media and open to the former president. Rogan’s podcast is part pop culture, part philosophy, part health, part politics, and it’s often provocative.

The longer interview format is one reason Trump’s campaign has loved putting him on podcasts this cycle. They feel like Trump is able to talk at length about issues and more personal topics, too. It can help humanize one of the most famous people in the world.

Kihara: This sense of a lack of community … Trump serves the same role, just on a larger scale?

Keeney: Maybe. But also, Trump is competing hard for their votes. And the big takeaway for political operatives is that there is a large contingency of men who don’t feel like people really care about their issues or offer them the encouragement they need to mature emotionally and professionally. So it’s not hard to see why a candidate like Trump would have an appeal. To some extent, he’s filling a void. He is courting them! He wants their votes! He is one of the guys!

Ward: Trump’s model of community is a racket — everyone’s out for themselves, and he’ll help you get ahead. The bro podcasters’ is a frat house — you’re among the bros, who have your back, so you can do and say things you wouldn’t say in normal society.

Allison: The MAGA movement, the culture surrounding it, the surrogates speaking on Trump’s behalf, certainly Trump himself — all have opened their arms wide to guys who say they’re tired of feeling like they have to apologize for who they are. So, to answer the question: Sure. Their masculinity, their desire to avoid political correctness, all of that is celebrated in the Trump-adjacent online sphere.

Messerly: I would just add that Harris is still leading with young male voters. But, there’s a huge gender gap. According to the latest Harvard Youth Poll, Harris leads likely male voters under the age of 30 by 17 points. She leads with young women in the same age range by 37 points. You’ll notice the poll looks at likely voters. The challenge here for Trump is getting the young men who aren’t likely to vote off the couch and into the voting booth.

McGraw: Yeah, that has been one of my big questions here and one of the X factors surrounding Trump’s campaign for young male voters. He’s obviously capturing their attention and entertaining them, but is he motivating them to actually get out and cast a ballot?

Keeney: This is an interesting point, and pollsters can’t get their stories straight on this.

Wren: When people would once go to social or civic clubs for church, I do think Rogan’s podcast — and even Trump’s rallies — provide a new kind of not necessarily religious but moreso identitarian community. I had one sociologist suggest to me today that in the world of white evangelicals, as people search for the next Billy Graham, there’s been such a fracturing that there isn’t a next Billy Graham. The next Billy Graham now is a one-time confirmed Presbyterian who no longer considers himself to be one, but is now the leader of the evangelical movement: Trump.

Kihara: Does Trump going on Rogan’s podcast, or embracing this segment and even picking JD Vance as his running mate, alienate women?

Wren: Is there more he could do to alienate them? I’m not certain.

Kihara: Fair.

Wren: Women for Trump seem to be a sunk cost.

Keeney: There’s definitely a question here about whether Trump’s “bro podcast” strategy is the humdinger we’re making it out to be, or if it’s just Trump acknowledging the reality of his poor position with women.

McGraw: I highly doubt there is any woman who was on the fence about Trump but for whom an appearance on Rogan’s show was the final straw.

Allison: You could argue that his selection of Vance in July alienated some women, but I don’t think going on Rogan’s podcast a week before the election will be what does it for the remaining undecided female voters.

Messerly: Absolutely agree. I mean, going after the bro vote is itself a sign that likely voters’ opinions of Trump are fairly baked in. That’s why he’s going after low-propensity voters. So no, I don’t think it measurably changes anything with women.

McGraw: The gender divide and political splitscreen Megan referred to earlier is really stark today, though: Harris with Beyoncé, a massively popular Black female artist, and Trump with Rogan, a massively popular white male entertainer.

Messerly: With Beyoncé and talking about abortion, a highly motivating issue for female voters, no less.

Ward: I’ll go out on a limb and say that there’s probably a subset of women who like that he’s going on Rogan. The show itself is definitely male-coded, but there are certainly women who identify with his anti-woke, anti-liberal establishment vibe.

Kihara: What role do you see influencers and podcasters playing in elections going forward? Already, the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post aren’t endorsing in the contest, a traditional role of mainstream media. In 2026 or 2028, will traditional media be simply irrelevant and everyone will look to Charlamagne tha God or Joe Rogan or Hawk Tuah Girl or Call Her Daddy?

Keeney: Who says a podcast with 15 million followers isn’t mainstream media?

Wren: To borrow a phrase from Kamala Harris: We’re not going back. Mainstream media is forever fractured. And this is the new normal.

Messerly: I like to think that traditional journalism will continue to play an important role, particularly during primary season, when the general public will still look to us to ask tough questions and figure out where folks stand on the issues. But … this has not been a very issues-focused election, to say the least.

Allison: I, for one, will go on record saying the nation will not be looking to Hawk Tuah Girl for an endorsement in the 2028 presidential election. I pray not, at least (and also praying that traditional media won’t simply be irrelevant in four years!). That being said, podcasters undoubtedly are more of a factor this time than they were four, or certainly eight years ago. They likely still will be in four years!

Ward: I’ll just say (as I wrote in Nightly last night) that I think the bro-podcaster interviews are actually a lot more substantive than a lot of people give them credit for. They’re not hardball interviews, but they do something like what a good, old-school magazine profile would have done — they give a sort of expansive, candid view of the candidates that cuts through the talking points. So I would encourage people to listen to them — even if you don’t like the candidate or the host!

McGraw: Podcasters and influencers are having a moment in the 2024 election. But they also just afford Trump or Harris a different, often friendlier forum where they can go on a deep dive about an issue they otherwise wouldn’t with a mainstream show. A lot of times on the trail, a reporter will throw Trump a quick question on news of the day, or in a TV interview, hosts like to move things along quickly to get to all the topics. The podcasts can be more personal. Think of Trump talking about addiction and sobriety with Theo Von, or goofing around with the Nelk Boys. Trump’s team has always believed that if the election is about policy they win, if it’s about personality, it’s a little tougher for them. These forums let them show a different side to their candidate.