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Notes -
This, AOC and others testing the waters for dropping trans issues, and the sale of InfoWars to Jeff Lawson and Ben Collin's Global Tetrahedron makes me think James Carville is back in the seat and the 2026 DNC playbook has dropped.
The Onion is playing up the sabotage of a (sort of) right-wing cultural institution to pacify the base, but really what they're after is the subscriber database which is filled with the contact info for an ethnically diverse group of men without college degrees demonstrably susceptible to tenuously plausible messaging.
I expect once the sale is completed there will be a hardcore attempt to astroturf a whole new podcast market, probably sometime next year, likely officially divorced from any current media stakeholders. I honestly don't know what hay if any they'll be able to make from it unless Trump's term is tangibly a shitshow for men. I think about the centrist and right-wing dissident podcast circuit and I can't currently conceive how they could both appeal to working class men (specifically Latino and whites) and also lead them to vote blue in 2026. Neo-Bernie bro? Blue Mike Rowe? Pro-establishment Jimmy Dore? Maybe all they can do is try to spread FUD about Trump and try to keep them home in 2026.
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