The Manosphere Feels Betrayed

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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. According to a recent pew poll, six in ten Americans disapprove of the way things are going. And then there are gas prices. I saw a station this week in DC selling gas for five dollars 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. And there is one important demographic that's becoming increasingly discontented. İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. 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 sh shrink spending, reduce the money he's ex increasing it. It's like everything

That's a clip of Andrew Schultz from the Flagrant Podcast, one of the many influential Manosphere podcasts. Leading up to the 2024 election, Schultz and a lot of his fellow manfluencers were warming to Trump. Schultz announced back then that he was voting for him. Three more weeks of nail policy. Done! What are the new- Their enthusiasm for Trump infected a new generation of men, younger, not that ideological, not necessarily white. Definitely not. They are a race.

Demographic that a political pollster might call soft, possibly persuadable, definitely prone to apathy. So what does their shift away from Trump mean? For MAGA, for the Republicans, maybe even for the Democrats? We talked to political reporter Elaine Godfrey, who's been tracking a lot of Nasphere podcasts. Noticing this shift. So you are tuning into them as a microcosm of the general national sentiment, not because you've discovered the manosphere.

No, I I had like been aware of the Manosphere. I listened to Theo Vaughn just generally because I think he's funny. Um I hadn't really listened to like a lot of these other guys. But no, I I was just interested in like, okay, 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? And it turns out like pretty critical.

And listeners meaning voters. That's why you who are a political reporter care. Exactly. Exactly. As voters. Okay. 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? So I think so for the purposes of my story, the Manosphere i is more the sort of non ideological like bro podcast.

And I focused 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 it reads as more true or more authentic, but I'm talking about people like Joe Rogan. And th 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 a serious interview podcaster who's like former military. Um, but I sort of lumped them all in here because their audience is not specifically there for politics.

So give me an example of how politics comes up because it is a curious cultural phenomenon. Like if you zoom out, you have to wonder why are people who started out as comedians then became podcasters who talk about a huge range of things. Why do they have this kind of political significance? For example, lay out Andrew Schultz's politics. Yeah, I mean Andrew Schulter is comedy first.

He brings up politics when it touches his life in some way, or when it touches some internet meme or joke he wants to discuss with the boys. Um, his politics, uh at least as far as, you know, the past. couple of years goes that I've been observing. Um it's very like pro free speech, pro jokes, anti woke. He does not like when people talk about identity politics in a serious way. Um So no earnestness. Right.

And just this sort of eagerness to be contrarian and I think all of these reasons are primarily why he preferred Trump. I don't think any of it came down to like specific policies. It was more You know, he's not one of the regular politicians. Uh he's funny. Um, Kamala Harris is too woke. Like we're tired of the Democrats being so pious.

Which is totally just like that's a vibes thing. And I think a lot of voters I mean, I know a lot of voters say that to me, like this is the reason we don't like Democrats. So I would say his politics are very much like what the average kind of independent, frustrated, like young American would say. And just to compare, so there's Andrew Schultz, there's also a lot of other other people like it Joe Rogan, who's the most well known. What's the spectrum?

I think the difference between those two in particular is their willingness to engage in conspiracy thinking. Rogan has entertained a lot of conspiracy theories. He's had on um a lot of folks talking about UFOs. Ancient aliens, vaccine skepticism, that kind of thing. So I would say that's a difference between them. The spectrum kind of is. More entertainment versus a little more serious. So I would say Joe Rogan has actually moved into the more serious.

kind of category because he takes some of the stuff so seriously. Right. Andrew Schultz and the guys on Flagrant are more like they just want to have fun on the podcast. And they have these moments of earnestness, but like mostly not. And then in this taxonomy, where does someone like Andrew Tate, Nick Fuentes? I don't think of them necessarily as primarily podcasters, but I do think of them as influential in the manosphere.

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. He he's sort of the explicitly like

provocateur kind of hateful like uh 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 I i this is he's not doing this for entertainment.

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, 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. And they're not like obsessed. Okay. Got it. So here's how I remember this love affair starting is that Baron Trump Trump's son tells Trump, who primarily lives in nineteen eighties 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?

So that is the common summary. But I would say like these guys, Joe Rogan, Tim Dillon, this whole like Trump friendly podcast world. whether they endorsed Trump or not explicitly, some of them didn't explicitly do so, they were really Trump friendly and like they brought him to their listeners. And so I think that they really were a big reason why Trump went back to the White House for sure.

Right. Okay. So just for the purposes of this conversation, maybe we'll just give them credit for helping to create an unexpected coalition around Trump. Like not the usual MAGA Republican. They kind of broaden the coalition. Maybe we can at least say that'cause what we'll talk about is Like, okay, so what now? When did the cracks first start to show? Because it was before Iran.

Yeah. The crack started to show a while ago, actually. And I'm I'm gonna speak specifically about the Andrew Schultz podcast, the flagrant podcast. Um, but the same sort of contours repeat themselves across the other shows. So Andrew Schultz, it seemed, started getting cold feet about Trump in July when the big, beautiful bill was signed, which added to the federal deficit. This is the big spending package.

when Israel Gaza conflict had not wound down and the Ukraine-Russia conflict had not wound down, and most importantly, when Trump reversed himself and blocked the release of some of these Epstein files. That last thing specifically was like such a big about face because I mean, we all remember Trump and all of his allies campaigned on, you know, unmasking the predators, right? Releasing these files. So that was the first crack in the coalition. And and what were they

I'm torn here because on the one hand it feels really naive to be like the politician didn't keep his promise. I'm outraged, you know? But was there something deep? Was there emotion? Like what was what were they responding to? Like did it feel real to you? Yeah. Oh I I think it did feel real. I mean it it also seems naive.

for people who followed this and probably for all the people who didn't vote for Trump. But no, I think they thought he was sincere in his desire to release the files, to name names. I think they saw him or at least his team as like one of them, as someone who was not part of the deep state, who wanted to sort of, you know, let's arrest the criminals. And I think it gave them this sort of like shock of is Trump just like any other politician? That was I think what the betrayal felt like. Yeah.

A betrayal. Okay, 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? 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?'Cause we you know, that's what we wanna see. There are people that maybe would like a path to citizenship that I have a lot of empathy for. Okay. Look. It's very tough. Maybe we can open our hearts a little bit to the people who are trying to be good hardworking. American.

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 and workers at restaurants and and it it just becoming this thing that felt cruel and inhumane. Um so they taught they started talking about it a lot. There was an episode on Flagrant where they talk about like and and this was apropos of nothing, I think. There wasn't like a specific news story. They just started saying, dude, would you hide a migrant from ICE?

Uh, if you had to. It was a very dark conversation, but it was like you were 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 and others speaking out about this. Like this seems like a little much. So the punctuation on that was the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis, but then it was, you know, I I would say in in an even bigger way, the killing by federal agents of Alex Pratty.

So how would you characterize where they are right now? Like I just heard a clip of Joe Rogan calling what did he say? MAGA's a bunch of fucking dork. Uhhuh.'Cause a lot of them are dorks. A lot of them these really weird fucking uninteresting, unintelligent people that have got something and they cling to and y and there's a lot of Now it's funny'cause

Them are not strong words like dorks. I would I wouldn't talking dorks is not like I will never vote for you again and you have betrayed us. So how like are they done with Trump? Like how would you characterize it? Yeah, I think um you have to be careful here'cause there's a spectrum on what people are willing to say. So

I mean after Alex Prattys this was in January, after Preddy was killed, Andrew Schultz said, you know, this is fucking disgusting. The the way that the administration has handled this. Like he's rarely earnest on the podcast, as I as I said, and he and the guys took like five minutes to just sort of absolutely go off on this.

Very shortly after that you have Iran. And now I would say the feeling is kind of like th they feel almost comically betrayed. Um I think it's different for someone like Joe Rogan, who I think is still giving Trump Y you know, I I don't think you see him saying, I'm so done with this guy. But in this world you also have people like Sean Ryan, former military guy, podcaster, he he's saying Republicans better not fucking come to my door this November.

I don't wanna hear it. I don't wanna hear more of those fucking lies. I I hear that from a lot of people. Hear that from a lot of people. It's everything, Joe. Everything. So that's the spectrum. But none of it's good for Trump. They're b uh somewhere between totally baffled and really fucking angry.

After the The political implications of all this anger, what losing the Manosphere could mean for MAGA in the midterms. Leadership today is defined by how you move, how you think, how you listen, how you choose your next step. The Drive to Lead, a new series from Range Rover and Atlantic Rethink. Explore us how influential minds across industry shape the moment with intention and clarity.

Others for a deep look at what it means to be a thought leader today. Watch the films at theatlantic.comslash drive to lead. So we care about the manosphere because it has a lot of cultural influence, but we also care because of the political implications of everything you're saying. Trump is not on the ballot in twenty twenty-eight. These guys maybe were never reliable down ballot Republican voters. So why are you paying attention to that?

What this does for Republicans is bad in that the midterms are already gonna be low turnout. Midterms typically are. the incumbents party, Trump's party, needs enthusiasm to win. No one thinks that the people who voted for Trump in twenty twenty four are gonna be so pissed they vote Democrat, at least not in math. The risk is they're gonna stay home. They're gonna be like, you know what, whatever, like this guy's just like all the other politicians.

He's lied so many times, now we're in another war. They're frustrated, they're gonna stay at home. You have so many voices in his coalition saying, we're disappointed in Trump, he's betrayed us. That isn't gonna get people out to vote. It's not gonna get people out to volunteer. Um so I think what could have been a a pretty like bad year for Republicans might be an absolute disaster for Republicans, thanks to this.

How about the MAGA movement? As you are listening to all these podcasts, what tea leaves are you reading about the future fracturing of the MAGA movement, what the splinters might be, where the power might shift, all of that? Yeah. Even the the most hardcore MAGA voters, like Marjorie Taylor Green, are frustrated with Trump about this stuff. So the non-ideological podcast guys and the hardcore MAGA guys uh and and women. Have that in common. So what you'll see is different candidates

trying to pick up this sort of fallen mantle of Trumpism um and and sort of take it to its conclusion, right? And that could mean different things, but I think there's an opening now for someone to call themselves MAGA, call themselves a Trumpist, but Actually, not want to go to war with Iran and and sort of truly be America first, right? Like cut off funding to um Ukraine, for example, and be like

also a fiscal conservative. Like I I think there's a lot of room there for someone to do that. Now, I think it's really hard at the same time, because if you're gonna do that and win, I think you have to be charismatic. you have to sort of have the kind of juice that Trump has which has allowed him to unite this complicated coalition. I don't know that anyone has that at this point.

But yeah, but you're saying there are openings. We can start to see like how a future candidate could position themselves. And Flagrant had Mom Donnie on the show, right? So it seems like what they're into, this is interesting. Is I can see why you were into them because they are kind of canary on the coal mine. Like

They're not that committed. They don't care that much about politics, but they kind of gravitate in in in almost the same manner that voters gravitate. So the fact that he had Mom Donnie on the show means what? So this is such an important dynamic which is So many of these podcaster guys are interested in anti establishment seeming candidates. This is why they like Trump, but it's also why a lot of them like Bernie Sanders. Andrew Schultz loved Bernie Sanders back in twenty twenty.

And he talks about it all the time. So I I think for them, Mom Donnie fits this same thing. He's charming, he doesn't sound like other politicians. And this is part of the risk. Uh with this coalition is the moment you betray them like a politician would. Th the moment you sort of seem inauthentic or two-faced is the moment that they drop you. This is such an old American story. We are stuck in a permanent cycle of

Charismatic politicians who portray themselves as being different from other politicians and against the system and win over a certain number of people and then betray them. That's our future. That's right. Um, by the way, did you talk to any of these guys? No. I reached out to Andrew Schultz and they declined. So I know some of these guys are specifically angry about Israel's role in all of this and Israel potentially coercing Trump into this war.

Sometimes this tips into anti Semitism. How does that fit into the broader anger of the manosphere over the war? So this is a really interesting dynamic at play. A a sinister dynamic at play in the manosphere right now. I think you can separate a lot of these guys by how much they blame Trump himself versus how much people blame

Israel. Um so you have people like Andrew Schultz who talk about Israel but but that's sort of as uh far as they're willing to go. They mostly blame Trump for for a lot of his choices. Um, with Iran, you can sort of separate out the others, like Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes. They talk a lot about this being some big plot.

by Israel to rope Trump into it. It it's their way of criticizing the war without criticizing Trump himself. The experts I talked to said they've actually seen a ton more anti Semitism in this space than they had previously. Okay, we are in the middle of what seems to be an incredibly unpopular war. What's your sense of how big an issue this becomes?

I think this could become a very, very big issue. I think it's already a very big issue. But there are many months until November. So I think it it really depends on how it depends on how things play out at this point. But I think You know, g in my view, there's no way he's stitching this back together before November. Oh really? So there's you don't think there's anything he could do that would win them back?

I I think if prices generally were to magically drop somehow and Trump started talking more about affordable housing and healthcare costs. Maybe but Uh a couple of things. I mean, a lot of these guys feel like he's betrayed them. I d I don't know how you undo that betrayal. Uh uh um a series of betrayals, right? I don't I don't know how you undo that in in just a few months.

they may also just feel fine about Trump and not wanna go vote. Trump's not even gonna be on the ballot. So I I don't really see a bunch of these sort of Manosphere types, Manosphere listeners getting really excited suddenly in the midterms. I just think it would take a really special combination of of of things that Trump would have to do that I just don't think Well, Elaine, thank you so much for uh spending a lot of time listening to Manosphere Podcast. and sharing with us.

This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by Janae West and Rosie Hughes. It was Rob Smurf. Engineered and provided original music. Alex Moronia Porto Fatcha. Claudina Bade is the executive producer of Atlantic Audio and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor. Listeners, if you enjoy the show, you can support our work and the work of all Atlantic journalists when you subscribe to The Atlantic. At the Atlantic dot com slash listener. I'm Hannah Rose. Thank you for listening.

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