The Manosphere Feels Betrayed

Last night, Trump gave Americans an update on the war in Iran.

As we speak this evening, it's been just one month since the United States military

began operation, epic fury.

Trump is addressing the nation at a time when Americans are not that happy about the war.

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 10 Americans disapprove of the way things were

going.

And then there are gas prices.

I saw a station this week in DC selling gas for $5 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.

I voted for none of this.

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 shrink spending.

He's increasing.

He's increasing.

It's like everything that's-

That's a clip of Andrew Schultz from the Flagrant Podcast, one of the many influential

Manusphere podcasts.

Leading up to the 2024 election, Schultz and a lot of his fellow man-fluencers were

warming to Trump.

Schultz announced back then that he was voting for him.

Mad Gaaat!

Nailpolls coming off.

I got like three more weeks of nail polish.

Uh, if Trump's America nail polish is done, what are the new pronouns?

Their enthusiasm for Trump infected a new generation of men.

Hunger, not that ideological, not necessarily white.

Definitely not woke.

They are a rare demographic that a political poster 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 a political reporter Elaine Gottfried, who's been tracking a lot of Manusphere

podcasts lately and noticing this shift.

So you are tuning in to them as a microcosm of the general national sentiment, not because

you've discovered the Manusphere.

No, I- I had like been aware of the Manusphere.

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 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.

As voters.

Okay.

What are voters hearing about?

Yeah.

Right.

So who, Manusphere is a big term, could be any man with a microphone.

There are more influential ones.

That is the Manusphere, just a catch all term.

Who does it include?

So, I think, so for the purposes of my story, the Manusphere, it is more of the sort of

non-ideological like bro podcasts.

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 this is sort of like a spectrum.

Like the Manusphere 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 serious interview podcaster who's like former military.

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, layout Andrew Schultz's politics.

Yeah, I mean, Andrew Schultz is comedy first.

He brings up politics when it touches his life in some way or when it touches some internet

me, more joke he wants to discuss with the boys.

His politics, at least as far as the past couple years goes that I've been observing.

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.

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.

He's funny.

Donald Harris is too woke.

I'm retired to 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.

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 people like Joe Rogan, who's the most well-known.

To 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 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.

I would say Joe Rogan has actually moved into the more serious kind of category because

he takes some of this 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 Fountess, I don't think

of them necessarily as primarily podcasters, but I do think of them as influential in the

manosphere.

I think of Andrew Tate and Nick Fountess.

I mean, Nick Fountess 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 fear.

Actually, he's sort of the explicitly like provocateur kind of a full like 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 he's not doing this for entertainment.

Got it.

Okay.

So this is a loose category that 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.

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 1980s 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 endorse 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 because what we'll talk about is like, okay, so what now?

What ended the cracks first start to show because it was before Iran?

Yeah.

The cracks started to show a while ago, actually.

And I'm going to speak specifically about the Andrew Schultz podcast, the Flavorant

podcast, but the same sort of contours repeat themselves across the other shows.

So Andrew Schultz, it seemed started to get in 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 got a 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,

releasing these files.

So that was the first crack in the coalition.

And what were they saying?

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 a motion like, what was, what were they responding to?

Like did it feel real to you?

Yeah, oh, I think it did feel real.

I mean, 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 is 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, the concerted 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?

Because we, you know, that's what we want to see.

There are people that maybe would like a path to citizenship.

Did I have a lot of evidence for?

You have to start with the criminals.

I agreed.

Okay.

Look, I mean, but maybe we can, it's very tough.

Maybe we can open our hearts a little bit to the people who are trying to be, you know,

good, hardworking Americans.

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 workers at restaurants and it just becoming

this thing that felt cruel and inhumane.

So they taught, they started talking about it a lot.

There was an episode on flagrant where they talk about like, 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 if you had to?

It was a very dark conversation, but it was like, you're watching them realize this

in real time that this was a consequence that they had anticipated of voting for Trump.

And at the same time, you had Joe Rogan and others speaking out about this.

Like, this seems like a little much.

So the punctuation on that was the killing of Renee Good and Minneapolis, but then it was,

you know, I would say in an even bigger way, the killing by federal agents of Alex Prede.

So how would you characterize where they are right now?

Like I just heard a clip of Joe Rogan calling, what did he say?

Mag has a bunch of fucking dorks.

Because a lot of them are dorks.

A lot of them, these really weird fucking uninteresting, unintelligent people that have got

something they cling to.

And there's a lot of people that are just, now it's funny because them are not strong

words like dorks.

I wouldn't, I wouldn't dorks.

Looking 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 you have to be careful here because there's a spectrum on what people are

willing to say.

So I mean, after Alex Prede, this was in January, after Prede was killed, Andrew Schultz said,

you know, this is fucking disgusting.

The way that the administration has handled this.

Like he's rarely earnest on the podcast, 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 a run.

And now I would say the feeling is kind of like, they feel almost comically betrayed.

I think it's different for someone like Joe Rogan, who I think is still giving Trump,

you know, 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's saying Republicans better not fucking come to my door this November.

I don't want to hear it.

I don't want to hear more of this fucking lies.

I hear that from a lot of people.

I hear that from a lot of people.

It's everything, Joe.

It's everything.

So that's the spectrum.

But none of it's good for Trump.

They're somewhere between totally baffled and really fucking angry.

After the break, the political implications of all this anger, what losing the manosphere

could mean for MAGA in the midterms.

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 2028.

These guys maybe were never reliable down ballot Republican voters.

So why are you paying attention to this?

What this does for Republicans is bad in that the midterms are already going to be low

turnout.

And the terms typically are the incumbent party, Trump's party needs enthusiasm to win.

No one thinks that the people who voted for Trump in 2024 are going to be so pissed they

vote Democrat, at least not in mass.

The risk is they're going to stay home.

They're going to be like, you know what, whatever.

Like this guy is just like all the other politicians.

He's lied so many times.

Now we're in another war.

They're frustrated.

They're going to stay at home.

You have so many voices in his coalition saying we're disappointed in Trump.

He's betrayed us.

That isn't going to get people out to vote.

It's not going to get people out to volunteer.

So I think what could have been 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.

So even the most hardcore MAGA voters like Marjorie Taylor Greene are frustrated with

Trump about this stuff.

So the non-ideological podcast guys and the hardcore MAGA guys and women have that in

common.

What you'll see is different candidates trying to pick up this fallen mantle of Trumpism

and take it to its conclusion.

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 truly be America first.

Cut off funding to Ukraine, for example.

And be also a fiscal conservative.

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 going to do that and

win, I think you have to be charismatic.

You have to 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 how a future candidate could position themselves.

And Flagrin had Mamdani on the show.

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.

They're not that committed.

They don't care that much about politics, but they kind of gravitate in almost the same

manner that voters gravitate.

So the fact that he had Mamdani 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 semen 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 2020.

And he talks about it all the time.

So I think for them, Mamdani fits this same thing.

He's charming.

He doesn't sound like other politicians.

And this is part of the risk with this coalition is the moment you betray them like a politician

would.

The moment you sort of seem an authentic 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.

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 atmosphere over the war?

So this is a really interesting dynamic at play.

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.

So you have people like Andrew Schultz who talk about Israel but that's sort of as far

as they're willing to go.

They mostly blame Trump for a lot of his choices 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'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 really depends on how things play out at this point.

But I think in my view, there's no way he's stitching this back together before November.

Oh really?

So you don't think there's anything he could do that would win them back.

I think if prices generally were to magically drop somehow and Trump started talking more

about affordable housing and healthcare costs, maybe.

But a couple of things.

I mean, a lot of these guys feel like he's betrayed them.

I don't know how you undo that betrayal, a series of betrayals.

I don't know how you undo that in just a few months.

They may also just feel fine about Trump and not want to go vote.

Trump's not even going to be on the ballot.

So 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 things that Trump would have

to do that I just don't think he will.

Well Elaine, thank you so much for spending a lot of time listening to Manosphere podcasts

and sharing with us.

It was fun.

Thank you so much, Hannah.

This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by Janae West and Rosie Hughes.

It was edited by Kevin Townsend, Rob Smurciak engineered and provided original music.

Isabel Rool and Alex Moronio Porto fact check.

Claudina Bade is the executive producer of Atlantic Audio and Andrea Valdes 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 Rosen.

Thank you for listening.