The Manosphere Feels Betrayed

42.668 - 51.637 Unknown

Thanks to the progress we've made, I can say tonight that we are on track to complete all of America's military objectives shortly, very shortly.

51.877 - 76.825 Hannah Rosen

According to a recent Pew poll, 6 in 10 Americans disapprove of the way things are going. And then there are gas prices. I saw a station this week in D.C. selling gas for $5 a gallon, which has apparently been common in a few states. I'm Hannah Rosen. This is Radio Atlantic. A big question right now is how discontent over the war will affect the midterm elections.

77.507 - 82.637 Hannah Rosen

And there is one important demographic that's becoming increasingly discontented.

83.107 - 94.16 Andrew Schultz

I voted for none of this. He's doing the exact opposite of everything I voted for. I want him to stop the wars. He's funding them. I want him to shrink spending, reduce the budget. He's increasing it.

175.534 - 198.381 Elaine Godfrey

No, I had like been aware of the manosphere. I listened to Theo Vaughn just generally because I think he's funny. I hadn't really listened to like a lot of these other guys. But no, I was just interested in like, OK, why? What are their listeners hearing from them on this issue? Like, are they still getting pro-Trump content? What are they getting? Like, how critical are these guys willing to be?

198.421 - 199.802 Elaine Godfrey

And it turns out, like, pretty critical.

200.162 - 217.738 Hannah Rosen

And listeners meaning voters. That's why you who are a political reporter care. Exactly. As voters. What are voters hearing about? Yeah. Right. So who, manosphere is a big term, could be any man with a microphone. There are more influential ones. What is the manosphere? It's just a catch-all term. Who does it include?

217.718 - 247.725 Elaine Godfrey

So I think for the purposes of my story, the Manosphere is more the sort of non-ideological like bro podcasts. And I focus mostly on comedians, interviews for entertainment, basically like chatting with the guys. These are the people that I think have a lot more cred actually with voters because they're not explicitly political. And so when they say political stuff, I think.

247.705 - 271.225 Elaine Godfrey

It reads as more true or more authentic. But I'm talking about people like Joe Rogan. And this is sort of like a spectrum, like the Manosphere is not, they're not all the same. But this is like Joe Rogan, Tim Dillon, Andrew Schultz and all the guys on Flagrant. Sean Ryan is not really part of this. He's sort of more of a serious individual. interview podcaster who's like former military.

438.41 - 463.062 Elaine Godfrey

Yeah, I think of Andrew Tate and Nick Fuentes. I mean, Nick Fuentes specifically is like a provocateur influencer type. He's a streamer. He is a podcaster. He's explicitly political and cultural. He's got things he wants to say and like ideas he wants to push. So he's sort of I wouldn't even put him in this sphere, actually.

463.102 - 483.828 Elaine Godfrey

He's sort of the explicitly like provocateur kind of hateful like section of the Internet. I think like some people put someone like Tucker Carlson in the manosphere and I don't think he really belongs there. I think he's pretty explicitly political. So he's not doing this for entertainment.

484.089 - 498.982 Hannah Rosen

Got it. Okay. So this is a loose category. The people you're primarily interested in are more entertainment forward, as you said, because they are likely to be more akin to the average voter who's not like politically obsessed, not like Tucker Carlson.

499.002 - 510.312 Hannah Rosen

They're just like guys who are listening and then they pay attention to politics when it impacts them or like they see gas prices or something like that. They're not like obsessed. Okay. Okay. Got it.

510.733 - 536.963 Hannah Rosen

So here is how I remember this love affair starting, is that Barron Trump, Trump's son, tells Trump, who primarily lives in 1980s media culture, that there are these podcasts and they're influential and he should go on them. And then Trump does go on them. And then that turns out to be a grand and successful move. How's that as a summary?

691.285 - 703.131 Hannah Rosen

OK, so that's the word. The word is betrayal. It's interesting because Trump does break the system, the norms in a lot of ways, but just not in the ways that they wanted. So then what other things started coming up as you were listening?

703.111 - 727.212 Elaine Godfrey

There was a lot more Epstein chatter throughout the fall. Then what happened is the world started noticing how indiscriminate a lot of the ICE deportations were. And the guys on Flagrant had actually talked to Trump about deportations when he was on the podcast. And they had said, you know, something to the effect of, can you prioritize criminals? Because, you know, that's what we want to see.

727.192 - 741.552 Unknown

There are people that maybe would like a path to citizenship that I have a lot of empathy for. You have to start with the criminals. I agreed. Okay, look. But maybe we can— It's very tough. Maybe we can open our hearts a little bit to the people who are trying to be, you know, good, hardworking Americans.

742.113 - 766.33 Elaine Godfrey

In late fall, you start to see them reacting to a lot of stories about ICE deporting like women and kids and cleaning ladies and workers at restaurants and it just becoming this thing that felt cruel and inhumane. So they started talking about it a lot. There was an episode on Flagrant where they talk about like, and this was apropos of nothing, I think. There wasn't like a specific news story.

766.35 - 787.874 Elaine Godfrey

They just started saying, dude, would you hide a migrant from ICE if you had to? Yeah. It was a very dark conversation, but it was like you're watching them realize this in real time, that this was a consequence that they hadn't anticipated of voting for Trump. And at the same time, you had Joe Rogan and others speaking out about this. Like, this seems like a little much.