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August 21, 2024 - 10:09pm
Donald Trump has recently featured on numerous popular podcasts in an apparent attempt to court the youth vote.
Most recently, the former president was interviewed by comedian Theo Von, which has so far garnered over four million views. During the one-hour conversation, Trump spoke at length about his lifelong sobriety and his late brother’s struggle with alcoholism, which eventually led to his death — a much more personal subject matter than what he usually discusses.
Over the summer, the former president has sat down for interviews with YouTuber Logan Paul, the All-In Podcast, streamer and Gen-Z influencer Adin Ross, and former daytime television personality Dr. Phil, which generated a combined 27 million views on YouTube alone. Last week, Trump also had a two-hour conversation with Elon Musk, which was live-streamed on X. According to Musk, the conversation was viewed 73 million times, alongside 998 million subsequent views of various postings of the interview on X.
The shift from traditional to alternative media comes alongside a shift in polling. While Donald Trump lost by 24 percentage points among voters under 30 in the 2020 election, he has polled strongly with Gen Z voters in this election cycle, leading Biden in several polls from the past year. With Biden now replaced by a younger candidate who’s beating Trump in the polls among young voters by 20 percentage points, Trump has lost a great deal of this support.
Harris, for her part, has not taken any interviews since Biden exited the race, though she’s nonetheless been the subject of countless glowing articles on her ‘joy’-themed campaign and online fandom. Memes drawing on her oft-repeated catch-phrases have drawn considerable media attention, as has the trend of linking Harris to Charli xcx’s new album, Brat.
In past campaigns and during his presidency, Trump’s media strategy was focused on mainstream outlets, granting interviews and exclusives to the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, who has made a name for herself as the ‘Trump whisperer.’ Elsewhere, some of his most memorable past interviews have been with mainstream outlets including Axios and 60 Minutes, wherein hosts tended to push back against Trump’s claims. In the new format, podcast hosts are less inclined to challenge Trump, preferring instead to allow the conversation to run without interruption.
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