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Following the 2024 Presidential election, it seemed like there was one big winner who wasn’t on a ballot: Joe Rogan. The podcast host seemingly succeeded in putting his finger on the scale and using his platform to help propel Donald Trump back into the White House. But ever since Trump took office, Rogan’s numbers have been slipping. According to The Daily Beast, he got knocked out of the top spot on the charts by anti-Trump podcast MediasTouch, and he’s not taking it particularly well.
On Twitter, Rogan sent out a not-at-all bitter “Who?” in reply to a post about MediasTouch’s snatching the top spot. It’s the type of thing that you’d say to show that you aren’t bothered by someone’s success even though you really are.
Per The Daily Beast, citing data from Podscribe, the MediasTouch Podcast has managed to rack up 56 million downloads and views across all platforms through February, jettisoning it ahead of the Joe Rogan Experience and its combined 48.6 million downloads and views during the same time period. The audience for MediasTouch has grown 101% in the past month, while Rogan’s viewership has shrunk by nearly one-third.
Rogan’s diehards online seem to think that the growth of MediasTouch is inauthentic, but there have been some signs that Rogan may be pissing off parts of his audience. Politico recently ran a story about fans who have grown disillusioned by Rogan’s obsessive and uncritical views of Elon Musk, who the podcaster has repeatedly referred to as a “super genius.” Politico cites a growing disgruntled contingent of subscribers to the the r/JoeRogan subreddit, where at least some listeners are starting to wonder just how anti-establishment the guy who keeps sucking up to a billionaire and his buddy and backing the acting administration really can be.
There’s little question Rogan has leaned heavily into being a Trump Train guy—a decision that seemed to be helping grow his influence, as he got invited to the inauguration and has lots of access to Trump orbiters. But Rogan just keeps having guests from Musk’s circles, and those guys tend to reveal themselves as know-nothings when they talk at length about just about anything. You don’t have to scroll far on Twitter to come across a clip of a recent Rogan episode where someone like Marc Andreessen says something provably wrong like claiming the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is “debanking” tech founders—a thing that someone with even a moderately critical ear hears and knows it doesn’t sound right.
It’s understandable, in a way, that Rogan would lean into this world as it helped him skyrocket to unprecedented success and influence after a shaky period during covid lockdowns where it seemed like he might actually face consequences and backlash for hosting anti-science cranks all the time. But he may have gotten a little too high on the technofascist supply—at least for some portion of his audience.
Now, to be fair to Rogan, “Who?” is kinda a valid question when it comes to the guys behind MediasTouch. You’ve almost certainly seen the account on Twitter, posting clips that rack up views and sharing anti-Trump news with slightly sensationalized headlines. But the actual people behind the account, and the hosts of the podcast, are three brothers you’ve probably never heard of: Ben, Brett and Jordy Meiselas. They caught fire in the 2020 presidential election running some evocative and well-produced attack ads against Trump and his Republican allies that were successful enough that they were able to rack up funding and expand their operation.
(That said, it’s not like they haven’t been on Rogan’s radar in the past. A MediasTouch affiliate, PatriotTakes, got Rogan in hot water back in 2022 by surfacing clips of him saying the n-word.)
If you’ve been invested in the whole “the Left needs its own Joe Rogan” story, the Meiselas bros are probably not the ideal people to fill the role. They’ve certainly managed to fill a role in the left-of-center media ecosystem, making sure right-wing lunacy gets lots of exposure. But their content is extremely #TheResistance coded, and a cynical view of their operation might see them more as marketers than as genuine activists.
Rolling Stone pointed out in 2021 that the group has succeeded in fundraising, but what it does with that money has not demonstrably benefited Democratic candidates or causes. It has benefited the brothers, though, who now—at least for a moment—have the biggest podcast in the country. What they do with it will likely determine just how long they stay in that top spot. Hopefully, it’s not just brown nose their own preferred billionaires.
