The ‘Mainstream Media’ Has Already Lost

This October, in the closing days of the presidential election, the podcaster Joe Rogan said something extraordinary. He had just hosted Donald Trump for a three-hour conversation in his studio in Austin, Texas, and wanted to make clear that he had discussed a similar arrangement with Kamala Harris’s campaign. “They offered a date for Tuesday, but I would have had to travel to her and they only wanted to do an hour,” he posted on X. “I strongly feel the best way to do it is in the studio in Austin.” And so Rogan declined to interview the vice president.

What a diva, some people said. If you’re offered an interview with a presidential candidate, get off your ass and get on a plane! But Rogan could dictate his own terms. He is not competing in the snake pit of D.C. journalism, where sitting opposite a major candidate delivers an instant status bump. He is the most popular podcaster alive, with a dedicated audience of right-leaning men who enjoy mixed martial arts, stand-up comedy, and wild speculation about aliens (space, not illegal); they are not political obsessives. Rogan knew that Harris needed him more than he needed her.

Nothing symbolizes the changed media landscape of this past election more than Rogan’s casual brush-off. Within a week, his interview with Trump racked up more than 40 million views on YouTube alone, and millions more on other platforms. No single event, apart from the Harris-Trump debate, had a bigger audience this election cycle. By comparison, Harris’s contentious interview with Bret Baier on Fox News, the most popular of the cable networks, drew 8 million viewers to the live broadcast, and another 6.5 million on YouTube.