Blaze commentator Auron MacIntyre recently did an interview with Titus Techera, International Program Coordinator for NatCon, that included an extended discussion of recent criticism directed at the “podcasters.” As someone who has leveled a great deal of criticism at the Right’s peculiar podcast class, I thought MacIntyre’s defense of the podcasters was worth discussing.
It seems like everyone, including even some defenders of the Trump administration, is trying to make this into a big ideological or policy debate. These kinds of debate are beside the point when it comes to my biggest criticism.
I think the most immediate issue facing the Right is one of truthfulness: Tucker Carlson, who has at several points had the biggest rightwing podcast in the world, went on Auron MacIntyre’s show and claimed that although the Trump administration cut illegal immigration, it was accelerating legal immigration, which is in many ways more harmful than illegal. In fact, the Trump administration has dramatically decelerated and even decreased legal immigration. It cut legal immigration 2.7x more than it cut illegal immigration.
The Trump administration has made many mistakes, missteps, and blunders. However, none of these mistakes, missteps, and blunders are forcing media figures to often wildly misrepresent the Trump administration’s record and goals.
Although we can argue over the magnitude of the impact that these false statements have had on Republicans’ morale, I don’t think anyone could fairly argue that the lies have not had and are not having an impact. This is something that I saw online all the time and that I increasingly see in my real life. It is like watching a disease spread.
We must suffer the consequences of our government representatives saying and doing stupid things: If they weren’t in their positions, we would not be enjoying any of the positives that flowed from Trump’s victory. However I don’t think it’s necessary to continue to indulge our middleman disorganizer class as it continues to create and spreads lies that only have the impact of hurting us.
First, a few quotes from the interview. Obviously, there’s a lot that I’m not including here. I encourage you to just listen to the full interview.
MACINTYRE: So, I mean, we can look at the podcasters. I can look at a Candace Owens or someone and say, ‘Yeah, obviously bad motivations there, you know, toxic to the discussion, that kind of thing.’ But ultimately I think that this is a failure of leadership at the top before it is a failure of the soldiers. I think a lot of generals are running around and demanding accountability from the guys who are you know basically just reacting to the fact that there is no leadership structure. There is no momentum. There is no plan and so you are left to speculate.
I think you know a lot of people will talk about Epstein, I’m not going to argue the details of any of that case, but the bungling of something like that so publicly by the administration, you can then say, ‘Oh, well, Candace did this or Tucker did this with that or Megyn Kelly went this way.’ Okay, fine. But the only reason they could go this way is because you left everybody asking, ‘Why aren’t we doing the thing we said we were going to do?’ When you go into a war in Iran, when you fumble the Epstein disclosure, when you decide to pull back mass deportations because things go sideways in Minnesota, people have to create their own narratives because you’re not giving them one.
There was a later exchange that I thought was interesting as well.
TECHERA: There’s going to be stuff that we’re split on because coalitions really aren’t ever that coherent. You know, you get only three kinds of coherence. One of them is do you have a common adversary? What do you think about infinity immigrants and transing kids? You know, these are super bad things.
Clearly, they do not focus our mind enough because we’re all kind of, you know, taking it easy. But I think more the problem is that… You know what’s crazy about our podcasters is like the opposite of what’s crazy in the admin.
In the admin these people think it’s too easy. It’s not in reality that is you have to work all the time to remind people what the movement is, what the campaign is, what we’re trying to achieve here. And they’re really screwing that up. Uh but they’re screwing it up because they think it’s so easy. You know, it’s like ‘I won the presidency, now I get to be president.’ Haven’t we already been through that a couple of times and it turns out it’s not so in reality, but fine.
But on the outside, the problem is the other way around. Everything seems too hard. Things are very hard, but they’re not that hard. My problem with the podcasters is that they induce despair. If they made people angry, I love anger. Anger is the stuff of politics. It’s supposed to remind. Americans like people used to say like, ‘Who do you think you are? And what do you take me for?’ Those are the basic emotions and thoughts in politics. That’s what gets you to fight. That’s how you can defend something, a community, a family, whatever level you’re acting at. But the problem with our podcast [class] is that they don’t do that.
…
Getting a practical orientation again is what I’m trying to get at. Social media is supposed to drive anger, focus it on issues that are really explosive so that they can go viral and you know make everybody feel we are all in this together. It’s like how bad does something have to be that I can think that like a 100 million American citizens are going to feel the same way? Super bad actually at this point. But that’s what it is. And I still want those people to feel that way to realize this is America and it’s who they are. It cannot be anything else. It can’t be media. It can’t be some structure. It can’t be some impersonal institution. It has to be people who actually live these lives and believe these things. And if that’s what it takes to awaken people, you know, that’s what it takes. We just have to do it. So anger is better than despair or disgust or whatever.
MACINTYRE: So I have some problems with this frame. The first is trying to address podcasters as a class. NatCon has podcasts. Tucker Carlson has a podcast. Candace Owens has a podcast. John Doyle has a podcast. I have a podcast. Nick Fretas has a podcast. Lots of people who are pro the admin, against the admin. Pro the war, against the war. Pro Israel, against Israel. You know, Mark Levin, Ben Shapiro, everybody has a podcast. So, it’s strange to me to say the podcasters, especially when, interestingly, this was the number one thing that the Democrats pointed out as the thing that won Trump the election.
The fact that Trump was on these podcasts, that Vance was on these podcasts that they connected with young people, the zeitgeist, especially young men. It it was the podcasters, it, you know, the Left was scrambling to say, “How do we launch a thousand podcasts so we can get this technology?”
And now we’re pretending that it’s the podcasters. Yeah. And again, I’m not saying there are not individual bad actors here, obviously, but the idea that like this is the problem, I think is ridiculous. And I think it’s again blaming the soldiers because the generals can’t get it together.
Why are people demoralized? Well, one reason people are demoralized is that they were promised disclosure about important things in the government and then it didn’t happen. And with not only was there no excuses to why that didn’t happen, they were attacked. The people who wanted the disclosure about the Epstein Files were attacked as traitors. They were told this was a democratic conspiracy theory. That is demoralizing. That’s not the fault of the podcasters. Podcasters didn’t do that to the admin. They didn’t do that to Donald Trump. Why are people demoralized? Well, they were promised no more foreign wars. And then they were told, “We’re going to war.” And by the way, your gas prices are going up.
I was at a Trump rally literally last week. He was in my area. Guess what his speech was? I don’t care about rising prices. I don’t care about rising gas prices. It doesn’t matter to me. So, who is demoralized? Is that Candace Owens’s fault? Did Candace Owens do that to Donald Trump? Did she do that to the Trump administration? Again, she’s a terrible actor. I’m not defending her in any way, but like, we need to be honest about this. And I’m frankly getting pretty sick of people deflecting blame.
Like, yes, downstream of these mistakes, there are bad actions. I agree. but like turning around and pretending like this is something that podcasters did or that the general, you know, GOP base is just demoralized. No, they were super excited when we were closing USAID. I was singing from the rafters the praises of Trump as we closed the border as we spooled up the deportation machine. Even as people said, ‘Why aren’t we getting deportations in the first five months?’ I was like, ‘Guys, be realistic. You have to build an infrastructure. You have to hire ICE. You have to get funding. You have to secure…’ I was defending all of this stuff. Everybody was on board with this. So pretending that like now the podcast has created this demoralization. I’m sorry, but that just does not make sense.
To make it as clear as possible: The main problem with the “podcasters” (I think everyone knows who this shorthand refers to and it’s not just random nobodies, it’s some of the biggest people in media) as I see it is not that they are hitting the Trump administration where it is weak, talking about unpleasant facts that have rightly upset voters. It’s that they are hitting the Trump administration where it is strong: They are claiming that meaningful Trump administration accomplishments that might motivate voters to turn out in elections, or at least be weighed against perceived negatives and setbacks, are not real. Furthermore, the claims to that end are often objectively not true and in fact present the opposite of reality.
I recently wrote an article about the ineffective way Vice President Vance has been approaching his disagreement with Tucker Carlson. For some reason everyone keeps talking about Iran and antisemitism instead of the fact that Carlson claimed that legal immigration was accelerating when it was actually doing the opposite, that the Trump administration was largely ignoring anti-white discrimination when it had actually made it a major priority, and that immigration enforcement was shut down at a time when it was actually ramping up dramatically. There’s not a “disagreement” here, much less one on principle. Someone who was once trusted on these issues is just lying about them, or at least showing a reckless disregard for the truth. Is anyone going to talk about this?
I have yet to see a convincing explanation for this sort of behavior behavior that doesn’t involve sabotage of our electoral chances in order to punish the Trump administration for totally unrelated failures, however valid those unrelated grievances might be. At the very least, media figures who wield considerable influence and hold themselves out as authorities on these issues are constantly revealing that they know basically nothing about them. If these people aren’t telling the truth and they don’t make it more likely for us to achieve our real world goals, in fact they make our real world goals harder to achieve, what value are they offering?
For another example of this phenomenon you need look no further than Auron MacIntyre himself in the interview above. MacIntyre claimed that the Trump administration “decide[d] to pull back mass deportations because things [went] sideways in Minnesota,” contributing to the base’s demoralization.
In fact, by every objective measure we have available, immigration enforcement has increased after Minnesota’s Operation Metro Surge. Rather than a pullback of enforcement, we are currently enjoying record highs.
Again, we can argue about the impact that the Iran War and botched Epstein Files rollout have had on voters. Immigration was Americans’ #1 issue before the 2024 election. Although it’s difficult to measure this, I think it’s reasonable to believe that major media figures constantly claiming that the Trump administration’s historic success on immigration is actually a disaster and betrayal has had a devastating impact on morale.
Given that such people were usually making this argument by saying things that aren’t even true, I don’t think this is something that we just have to deal with and suffer through. It’s not a part of coalition politics, at least those of a coalition that has any hope of success. The trend started long before the Iran War. I think it’s really perverse. These guys lie constantly about an important issue, making our real world goals harder to achieve, and then claim they just care about it more than the people who point out they’re not telling the truth.
MacIntyre said “Oh, well, Candace did this or Tucker did this with that or Megyn Kelly went this way.’ Okay, fine. But the only reason they could go this way is because you left everybody asking, ‘Why aren’t we doing the thing we said we were going to do?’ When you go into a war in Iran, when you fumble the Epstein disclosure, when you decide to pull back mass deportations because things go sideways in Minnesota, people have to create their own narratives because you’re not giving them one.”
Did the Iran War or the Epstein Files make Candace Owens start claiming that Erika Kirk was involved in her husband’s assassination? Did the Iran War or the Epstein Files make Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson actively defend her as she was doing this? The collective audiences of these people numbered in the millions. Listeners who might otherwise be on our side were being pushed mainstreamed insanity by trusted figures at a time when the Right should have been presenting a united front.
Many conservative figures big and small couldn’t muster even the mildest objections to this really sick stuff when it was reaching its zenith, and today they are trying to rewrite history to cover up their shameful surrender. I don’t believe anyone when they claim that it didn’t have an impact on our situation. I think it had a really horrible impact. It was disgraceful.
The murder of Charlie Kirk was a truly devastating loss for the American Right. I suspect that a lot of people got spooked and started looking for ways to make themselves seem like less of a target, even if only unconsciously. There are few better ways to do this than adopting the role of opposition to the Trump administration, serving as an obstacle to its political power and the achievement of its goals. This is probably the most popular and inoffensive position in the world regardless of how much “based” rhetoric you might cloak your reasoning in. If we are going to make it through this, we need to find people made out of sterner stuff.
If you scroll through MacIntyre’s timeline, you will find countless accusations that the Trump administration has failed to crack down on the Left after Charlie Kirk’s murder. Wired just revealed that the Trump administration has been running one of the largest anti-Left surveillance operations in American history, authorized by an executive order signed by Trump shortly after the assassination. The administration’s approach to political violence is working. The Trump administration secured the first ever terrorism convictions against Antifa militants, along with massive sentences. Antifa’s international network of financial and technical support is being dismantled.
Political violence is extremely rare in America today and seems to be getting more rare. The murder rate is near historic lows and getting lower. Violent crime in America just underwent its largest drop in recorded history. Although many people are emotionally and financially invested in the idea that America is currently undergoing its own Italian “Years of Lead” or a second Bleeding Kansas, claims that this is the situation we must grapple with today are simply divorced from reality.
In response to a video where a Brazilian graduate student made despicable comments about Charlie Kirk this week, MacIntyre claimed that “[Y]ou can openly mock the assassination of Charlie Kirk and call for more violence and nothing will happen to you,” adding that “We know what it looks like when the administration wants to protect a group of people, they simply don’t care about protecting their own voters.”
In reality, the State Department has been revoking the visas of foreigners who responded in this way to Kirk’s murder. Many people were fired or suspended for their comments on the assassination. Apparently the Brazilian woman from the clip (which was only posted three days ago) is a naturalized US citizen, so if anything can legally be done about her it will probably be complicated. Still, there’s no reason to be making broad and false claims of betrayal or indifference when something you don’t like happens.
It’s obvious that lies have just become a style of communication for many commentators. It’s not that the administration is failing to give our people a narrative they can defend, big media figures are giving them fake narratives that harm us.
Would telling conservatives that the Trump administration simply doesn’t care about protecting them make them more or less likely to vote for Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections? I think less likely. If conservatives don’t vote for Republicans and then Democrats win, will our goals on immigration and counter-terrorism be easier or more difficult to achieve? I think more difficult. Is now the right time to be making these false claims? Is any time?
You don’t have to get into a big argument about Iran or the Epstein Files in order to object to people saying things that are not true and only have the effect of harming us. In fact, you should not get into an argument. Discourse has become a trap. You’re not going to argue someone out of a view they don’t meaningfully hold.
It is true that lots of podcasters provided invaluable support to the Trump campaign in 2024. Many have had long and remarkably positive careers, particularly Tucker Carlson. I don’t think any media figure played a more positive role than Carlson in 2020. Still, no one has earned the right to just lie about the Trump administration, especially if these lies harm our electoral prospects and thereby endanger the important work being done in government to fix our country. It turns out that liberals didn’t need to create their own podcasters, they just needed trusted people “on our side” to abuse the trust of their audiences.
The election is less than a week away. I don’t think anyone has a good sense of what the final results will end up being. I already voted and feel optimistic. If you haven’t voted yet, do so, it really does make a difference. I know that lots of people in politics and government are working hard to benefit us all for little recognition and low pay. We should be very grateful to them no matter what happens.
However, since circular firing squads are a bit inevitable in this sort of moment, I think it is important that when the history of this painful and uncertain time is being written, everyone remember the indefensible lies that these people have been telling over the last year and beyond. The behavior cannot be excused or dismissed with whataboutism about Iran or Epstein. It’s unsustainable and has to stop. I agree with MacIntyre that there has been a failure of leadership: Our leaders have so far failed to forcefully push back on lies and hysteria and as a result they have reached epidemic proportions.
Without radical changes, I think we will have a difficult time winning in 2028.
Lying is so bad
I have a really hard time gauging how much of this stuff actually reaches the average person. Are there that many people paying attention to Tucker? How many even know who the hell Auron is?