If you’ve been on social media recently, chances are you’ve come across a certain viral clip in which comedian Shane Gillis explains how to do an impression of Donald Trump: “All you have to do is describe something and then say you described it,” he tells his audience before raising his voice and waving his hands to offer an example: “What a big room this is! I walked in here and said, ‘Wow, what a big room!’” It’s an old clip, dating from Trump’s first presidential term, but re-trending now that his second one is in full swing.
At first glance, it may sound like Gillis is mocking Trump. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. The comedian, who recently appeared on Saturday Night Live, is one of many whose following has grown in proportion to Trump’s rise to power. Not because he criticizes the president, the way John Oliver, Seth Meyers, and most other late-night talk show hosts do, but because much of his repertoire echoes the same values Trump represents to his supporters. By making fun of topics those on the left typically do not consider to be funny, like racism, sexism, and homophobia, right-leaning comedians like Gillis, Theo Von, and Andrew Schulz have come to serve a purpose similar to conservative reporters and commentators, shaping public opinion and electoral outcomes—including Trump’s return to the White House.
As a result, researchers now speak of a “right-wing comedy complex,” a vast, symbiotic ecosystem that encompasses a wide array of media and alternative news platforms, from X posts and TikToks to podcasts, Netflix specials, YouTube rabbit holes, and web forums. But how does this ecosystem work on a granular level?
Having built up his reputation in part through reality TV, Trump entered politics with an intuitive understanding of media, popular culture, and one’s ability to influence the other. Avoiding a televised debate with Kamala Harris after Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race, he instead spent the final stretch of his campaign appearing on comedy podcasts hosted by Von, Joe Rogan, and others where, unlike on legacy TV, he was given free rein to ridicule and demonize his opponents, promote conspiracy theories, and spread fear of the left’s “woke” agenda. Harris, following Trump’s example, employed a similar tactic, appearing on podcasts like Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy and Shannon Sharpe’s Club Shay Shay.
There are several reasons why Trump appeared on these podcasts—a strategy reportedly suggested to him by his 19-year-old son, Barron. For one, they’re a form of free advertising, arguably more effective than the impersonal, paid-for and approved-by campaign messages shown on television. Podcasts also provide a more casual and non-confrontational setting than a conventional presidential debate, allowing Trump to dominate the conversation and speak on behalf of absent adversaries without being meaningfully challenged by his like-minded hosts.
Most importantly, perhaps, these podcasts enabled him to reach a crucial part of his constituency: young male voters, a demographic which Harris—who did (and does) not have as much of a presence on social media and, despite her aforementioned podcast appearances, continued to focus most her energy on mainstream media programs with older, largely liberal audiences like Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show—struggled to reach. Indeed, while The Late Show commands an audience of around 2.5 million per episode, The Joe Rogan Experience—the most popular podcast in the U.S.— counts over 14 million followers on Spotify and 19.6 million subscribers on YouTube, 56 percent of whom are reportedly aged 18 to 34, and 81 percent of whom are male.
Considering his outspoken distaste for “fake news,” Trump—in appearing on these podcasts—may well have been aware of a development that researchers like Sophia McClennen, a professor of international affairs and comparative literature at Pennsylvania State University and author of Trump Was a Joke: How Satire Made Sense of a President Who Didn’t, have been observing for years: namely, that more and more Americans are turning to comedians not only to be entertained, but informed. This not only applies to young liberals, who may prefer watching Oliver’s Last Week Tonight episodes on abortion or inflation over reading about these topics in the Washington Post or New York Times, but also young conservatives, who are as likely to trust news obtained through social media as legacy media.
But the true power of these comedy podcasts might not lie in their audience size; rather, it may come from the parasocial relationships audiences form with their hosts. As journalist Sam Wolfson recently pointed out in The Guardian, the amount of content they churn out is nothing short of dizzying, with Rogan alone releasing more than 15 hours’ worth of interviews in a single week. Where liberal comedians like Oliver condense their material into fast-paced, 30-minute segments—a stylistic choice as much as it is a constraint of the television format—conservative podcasters maintain a slower, more drawn-out pace, featuring interviews that can, as in the case of Trump’s JRE appearance, last for more than 3 hours.
That’s “much more time than most people with busy lives can afford,” Wolfson wrote, “but if you’re working lonely days from home, driving an Amazon delivery van or just sitting around playing video games, the hosts can become friends that play in the background, much as Fox News has been to older Americans.”
The dizzying amount of content also ensures a degree of topical, even ideological variety, making podcasts a potential tool for converting undecided voters. Where legacy media platforms like Fox News are run by shareholders and legions of data analysts who ensure the network covers everything from a consistently conservative perspective, the podcast landscape is more akin to Wild West, its programming determined by the personal tastes of the hosts. Rogan’s JRE (2,531 episodes), Von’s This Past Weekend (679), and Schulz’s Flagrant (640), engage with—and, consequently, appeal to—people with a larger variety of political viewpoints. Rogan has not only hosted alt-right and right-wing figures like Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, Darryl Cooper, and Alex Jones, but also left-wing ones, such as reporters Glenn Greenwald and Abby Martin, while Von interviewed Trump and Bernie Sanders before the election. Outside the realm of podcasts, Gillis’ aforementioned appearances on SNL suggest that his appeal, too, is not restricted to conservative hardliners only—a claim that could also be applied to other big-name comedians like Dave Chappelle and Louis C.K., the latter of whom is returning to Netflix seven years after the New York Times published allegations of sexual misconduct. This suggests a wider, anti-cancellation shift in the comedy world.
The result of such ideological diversity is that, while an already-decided voter might be attracted to these entertainers for their most extreme views, undecided ones may come for something relatively liberal, mundane, or apolitical—like Rogan’s interviews with physicist Michio Kaku or actor Jamie Foxx, people you typically don’t find on Fox News—and stay for his talks with Elon Musk, Trump, and Vivek Ramaswamy, potentially picking up some of their messages along the way, washed down with a helpful dose of humor.
Emphasis on “helpful,” as research indicates that laughter can be a useful tool in political messaging on both sides of the spectrum. In Trump Was a Joke, McClennan argues that comedians have done a better job at scrutinizing the Trump presidency than conventional news media, not in the least because of satire’s ability to “reframe faulty logic and false narratives.” For example, in a 2018 episode of SNL, Alec Baldwin’s Trump dismissed a hypothetical alien invasion as a “Democratic hoax,” mocking his demonization of the party through exaggeration and hyperbole.
Laughter has also become an integral feature of political criticism on the right, whether used by professional comedians or pundits and politicians, including Trump himself. But where voices on the left typically use humor to expose the seriousness of social issues, those on the right often use humor those make those issues seem less important than the left believes they are—a comparison illustrated by these two jokes, made by Oliver and Chapelle, respectively:
Oliver, earlier this month: “Yeah, it’s not gambling. It’s a social, free-to-play sweepstakes with micro-transactions that pay out real cash if you win, available to teens when their brains are the most impressionable. What could possibly go wrong there?”
Chappelle, in 2019: “I’m not for abortion, but I’m not against it either. It all depends on who I get pregnant.”
The ubiquity of hyperbole, irony, and satire in the political sphere is dangerous for several reasons. Although laughter can bring us together, it can also drive us apart, with various studies showing that humor, and specifically disparaging humor—i.e., jokes made at another person’s or minority group’s expense—can increase prejudice, inhibit cognitive ability, normalize radical or controversial opinions, and expressly empower populist political movements, MAGA or otherwise.
While some elements of the right-wing comedy complex view themselves as apolitical—internet trolling, as practiced by ordinary social media users as well as well-known alt-right sketch comedians like Sam Hyde, aims, in the words of one researcher, only to “disrupt, offend, and exasperate” without making an ideological point—this does not neutralize disparaging comedy’s aforementioned effects. Others see laughter as an inherently political tool, a means to poke fun at and resist oppressive forces. “Legalize comedy!” Musk shouted at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland last month, echoing the widespread belief among the right that liberal pieties infringe on humor.
Rogan, talking about politics rather than comedy specifically, raised a similar point during his recent interview with Trump. “The rebels are Republicans now,” he said. “You want to be a rebel, you want to be punk rock, you want to, like, buck the system, you’re a conservative now.”
In the wake of the 2024 elections, countless academics, reporters, and commentators have turned to economic, geopolitical, and historical reasons to explain Trump’s return to the White House. Although inflation and the missteps of the Democratic Party, among other factors, undoubtedly contributed to his victory, an equally important yet often overlooked piece of the puzzle is the president’s rapidly evolving relationship with comedians and podcasters, and their ability to act as mediators between Republican politicians and the general public.
“2024 will be remembered as the Podcast Election,” Steve Johnston, former COO of FlexPoint Media, a political advertising agency that works with Republican campaigns, committees, PACs, and advocacy groups, posted on X in November. “Not because podcasts are new (they’re not), but because 2024 was the first time presidential nominees and their running mates leveraged them in a meaningful way.”
