The Sunday political shows are dead. Long live the podcasters.
That was the gist of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk’s talk with “Fox & Friends,” who pointed out why Donald Trump turned men 18-34 back to the red team after losing them in the 2020 election to Joe Biden, and why young women were also a strong demographic for Republicans.
Kirk credited Trump’s willingness to meet young people in their environments, drawing in influencers as part of his media strategy.
“President Trump was unafraid to do longform podcasting,” Kirk said, calling it “the new standard in American politics. If you can not sit down for three hours with no notes, people are not going to vote for you under the age of 40. That is the new standard. Gone are the days of the ‘Meet the Press,’ scripted-type dialogs for 10 minutes.”
Trump appeared on “The Joe Rogan Show” and drew an audience estimated at 47 million people. Harris did not appear on the show, making her splashiest podcast appearance on “Call Her Daddy,” which had an audience of around 1 million and required a set to be built in Washington D.C. at a purported cost of $100,000 to fit Harris’ busy schedule.
“Voters want to see authenticity and depth and understanding of the issues,” Kirk said.
Kirk noted that it was “really remarkable” that the younger generation has become more conservative, asserting that it is perhaps the most right-leaning generation in 50 years.
Why are they apparently rejecting liberal politics, at least at the presidential level? “We cannot underestimate how this generation was damaged during Covid,” Kirk argued. “They saw all the excess of the woke agenda during the summer of 2020. They said they weren’t told the truth.”
The Trump candidacy touched a nerve because that younger generation appears destined to not do as well as their parents, as has also been a problem cited by millennials and others. “They want a future,” Kirk said. “Trump said, ‘I will fix it.”
