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Got to say, I find this one puzzling. Does Trump not already have Rogan’s core audience — MMA fans, online young men, etc — already locked down? It seems like he has few supporters to gain but many to lose if he has a gaffe.
Does a majority of online young men even support Trump?
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Young men, particularly the Rogan type, don't turn out to vote. If Trump can actually get a decent fraction of Trump-leaning Rogan fans to vote, it could make a huge difference - I don't think the timing within most states' early voting period is coincidental.
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I think Trump support levels with young male minorities- a major Rogan demographic- are not a sure thing.
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How many supporters would Trump really lose from a gaffe? Doesn't Trump do pretty much nothing but gaffes and his supporters love him for it?
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Trump is going on Rogan because it's Trump on Rogan. CNN and the New York Times can only dream of having the sort of veiwership, and cross-cultural appeal that The Joe Rogan Experience enjoys. Trump is going on JRE for the same reason that Obama went on Oprah, unless he completely stuffs it (which he is presumably confident that he wont) there is little to lose and a great deal to gain.
What you're effectively saying is that you find it "puzzling" that a reality TV star would participate in what is likely to be the media event of the season. Think about that for a bit.
Events like this are just another nail in the coffin for the mainstream media. Could you imagine a single man having more political influence and ability to be a 'kingmaker' than an entire news network a couple of decades ago? Just amazing.
But society does need genuinely trustworthy, credible institutions. Trumps has been going on mostly comedy podcasts. They might be bigger and better than the dying MSM, but they're not a solution for what is needed.
I'm not so sure about that. Most millennials and zoomers grew up on 'comedy politics' as their primary method of political indoctrination in high school through college, be it "last week tonight" with John Oliver, 'The Colbert Report' with Stephan Colbert, 'The Daily Show' with John Stewart, etc. Political comedy has been around for the past 70 years and has been an important part of at least informing, if not indoctrinating, the past few generations.
Those were comedy politics shows written and produced by teams of people that covered politics. These are podcasts hosted by stand up comics who just talk to people extemporaneously about whatever. It'd still be a valuable cultural commodity if people could open the NYT, or WaPo, or watch CNN or Fox News, and go "yeah, that's probably true enough".
Where do comedy podcasters get their discussion topics? When Joe Rogan goes 'Jamie, look that up' where do you think Jamie gets his links? All podcasters did is eliminate the middlemen of a team of writers between the personality and the news.
As I said, its clearly an extemporaneous conversation. They shoot the shit with their guests. They warn listeners repeated not to get their info from them. They have no pretense about being news or doing research. Its just stand up comics shooting the shit and occasionally googling things, often for as little as 30 seconds. This is what makes them enjoyable. I like the format. I listen to them all the time. The real novelty (and value add imo) is the long format and lack of editing. Its awesome. In some ways I find them more illuminating and informational than short news segments. But they're distinct from comedy news shows which have production budgets and teams given at least a week to craft a narrative and write a (hopefully) comedic script.
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JRE is so large that, even if the core audience were all MMA fans and young men, the non-core audience would dwarf the size of the audience of the next largest non-core creator / space. Eg, 32% of JRE listeners are parents, which is low, yet it’s still probably the most popular podcast among parents.
I second that his gaffes will be bad though.
Has he gaffed on the other podcast appearances? I figure if he had I would have heard it about many times from mainstream media sources.
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This really is Trump's to lose. He should prepare for it as much as he did for the debate. Good or bad, anything coming out of this interview will be signal boosted to the heavens.
That's the Trump strategy in a nutshell.
When it comes to politics, more exposure is almost always good, even mostly negative exposure. Every time that woke scolds is the media attack Trump he just gets bigger. The whole Trump movement could have been avoided if the media just ignored him, but they can't help themselves.
Trump will reach tens of millions of people with the podcast and tens of millions of more when his critics try (and mostly fail) to dunk on him. Trump is probably going to win despite spending a third of what Harris does on media.
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Rogan is a very deferential interviewer. Both Trump and Harris would do fine on it, assuming they don't find a way to hang themselves on their own.
Rogan's fans are diverse and not ideological, and any candidate going on has the opportunity both to sway their vote and to increase the likelihood of existing supporters to actually vote.
Harris recorded that cringey video for the Al Smith dinner(seriously, if you skip a charity dinner because you don’t like the influential hosts how hard is it to realize that the optimal political move is to shut up), and Trump is Trump, so that’s a big assumption.
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