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Sarah Longwell
Taxes was taxing. Now taxes is relaxing. When you file for free, I can file for free TurboTax Free Edition. Roughly 37% of filers qualify. Simple Form 1040 returns only. See if you qualify@turbotax.com free. Hmm, I can file for free. Now this is Taxes File for free with TurboTax Free Edition and get your maximum refund. No schedules except for earned income tax credit, child tax credit, and student loan interest. See if you qualify@turbotax.com free foreign hello everyone, and welcome to the focus group podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark, and this week we're looking forward into where the newest swingy type of swing voters are taking us. And I'm not sure you're gonna like it. Last week with Mark Caputo, I talked about what the most recent Trump voters found appealing about him and his team. And when, say, most recent, really what I'm talking about are people who've sort of come around to this guy in his eighth year of political existence. So this week we are going to take a deeper dive into the relationships between these voters, their podcasts, meaning their podcast consumption and their politics. And we're going to get their take on some recent news events and what those takes say about how they look at the world. Speaking of podcasts, my guest today is one of the top 10 podcasters on the news chart today, Tim Miller, host of the Daily Bulwark podcast. Tim, thanks for coming on, buddy.
Tim Miller
Woof. Was this a punishment? Did I do something to you in the last month? Is there some inner office kind of tension I don't know about?
Sarah Longwell
There is.
Tim Miller
Making me listen to these focus groups was torture.
Sarah Longwell
Well, it's because I need to make sure that you and JBL know that I love you equally. And therefore JVL got himself on the show last week to do the the other half that estad and I didn't get to the show that you said should be renamed and another thing and.
Tim Miller
Another thing with Sarah Longwell and Estate Harden.
Sarah Longwell
So jbl, he did the second half of that with all the sound we hadn't gotten to. So now you, you are also here, though, because I'm a bro. No, you're a podcaster. I mean, we're all podcasters, but you do have, you know, a big important podcast. You're a content man now, and I don't know if you've noticed this, but I think there's a lot of people calling this sort of the podcast election. And we've talked a lot about this on our other shows, the next level, JBL and I talk about it on the secret pod. But the fact that the Trump team was willing to basically have an everything everywhere all at once media strategy, which included just constantly sitting down with non traditional media, especially podcasts, was, I think, in retrospect, a big part of why their media strategy was ultimately better than Kamala Harris's and certainly Joe Biden's. And so we wanted to talk to voters about their podcast consumption and like, who they listen to. And so we went and got ourselves a bunch of Joe Rogan listeners. I don't know if you knew that when you watched this.
Tim Miller
Did.
Sarah Longwell
Did you know that that was the screen?
Tim Miller
I did, I did, because I like 12 minutes in and I messaged producer Connor and I was like, who are like, what? What am I watching? And he's like, oh, Biden to Trump Rogan listeners or first time Trump voting Rogan listeners. I was like, got it. That makes sense. Now actually, it all came into focus, so to speak.
Sarah Longwell
Well, look, when we think about the fact that the Democrats did uniquely less well with basically every demographic group except kind of our people, the college educated suburban voters that Dems are hanging on to, everybody else they did worse with, and that includes younger people. And we have known for a long time doing the focus groups how much people's media diets are changing and how that's influencing their politics. But I thought it was worth using it as the screen to really try to get into some of this. And so you're an optimal guest. But why don't you just start by saying, like, why do you think podcasts have become so important for political campaigns while the legacy media is dwindling?
Tim Miller
Yeah. Well, first I'd just say I think that we are slouching towards dystopia, listening to what these people are consuming and how they're processing information. It's not great. So I just bear down, everybody. Why do I think that podcasts, et cetera, are having a greater influence? I think that there are a couple of things that are happening in play and it's almost all related to our phones and how we consume stuff now. People are just so much more surrounded by information, where they're getting little updates from their friends, what's happening today, little monologues from their friends into their phones. TikToks the way that people are consuming information on their phones has made the kind of stilted traditional media just feel fake and inauthentic and not something that they connect with. Right. And so podcasts are kind of a natural transition from that where it's like, okay, I'm getting news, but it feels a little more natural. You know, you hear this in these focus groups all the time. I feel like I'm getting what people really think, you know, I'm getting a real view of the person, you know, in the interviews. And so I think, like, that is one reason. Right. Like, once you've started to see people more as they exist in nature rather than as they exist on the television screen, the more that you, like, want that. Right. So I think that's one element of it, and I think that's mostly good. Actually. The negative part of this is I think that because the Internet gives you so much access to so much information all the time, it's like, much easier to poke holes in the mainstream media and critique them. I'm stealing this from Matt Iglesias. I think it was from Matt, one of his articles I was reading. But it was like, if it's 1987 and the Los Angeles Times writes a column and the headline of the column is a little anti Semitic or a little too biased towards the progressives or whatever, you enter anything, you get a couple letters to the editor from people that notice it. A lot of people don't even really notice it, don't even pay attention. And you just move on to the next newspaper the next day. Now it's like people get to cherry pick the worst thing that any mainstream media outlet anywhere in the world does. And there is a whole cottage industry of people, including Joe Rogan and many of the people these focus groups consume. That I bring that up to be like, you can't trust them. You must trust me. Did you see this one headline in the Los Angeles Times? Like, these guys have gone woke. They're untrustworthy. Instead, you must stick with me. And it has democratized media consumption in a way that's kind of bad. Right. Because it emphasizes things that are more titillating, contrarian, you know, against the grain. Right. And just the facts, ma'am type, straight news reporting doesn't compete as well in that democratized market. But I think that those two elements, like the authenticity element and the fact that there's just so much information all at once that allows people to cherry pick and compete for attention in your algorithms has kind of warped the way people consume information.
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. So let me just hit a couple of things you said, because I think they're actually really important and really true. But one is Tucker Carlson's really good at doing this is to Say you cannot trust them. I am the only one who's going to tell you the real unvarnished truth. And it's funny because there are a lot of media companies, including Fox News, that started as an alternative to the mainstream media. And here's where you can trace this back to our days as young Republicans, where Republicans felt so shut out and ostracized from the mainstream media. You know, Jonah Goldberg would write columns for nro, you know, Conservatives in the Mist, right. Whenever a Republican would win, there was sort of the, the mainstream media was of the left. And so there was a real like, anthropological way of looking at Republicans. And at some point they said, you know what, we're going to go start our own media companies. And Fox News was right, that there was a massive market and appetite for. For at the time was alternative media and is now very much like the largest cable network. So Tucker Carlson's there being like, they're all lying to you. We're the only ones who tell you the truth. And yet they themselves are part of the mainstream media. They have reporters at the White House and. But even they then are not alternative enough. Right. The podcasting world. And I think one of the reasons that podcasts now have dominated is that there are so many of them that popped up during COVID including hours a little bit.
Tim Miller
Not.
Sarah Longwell
We had started some of our podcasts obviously before, but during COVID basically said everyone was like, mail me a microphone, I'm gonna hook it up to my laptop, my desktop, and like, I'm a podcaster, I'm an influencer. And it created this wild west open market that also, by the way, had value attached to it in the world. Like Joe Rogan got purchased by Spotify for a gajillion dollars. So the sort of gold rush was on for anti orthodox, like counter media. Okay, so that's one thing. And there's also a bunch of channels that popped up within there where people like, ooh, I can get a big audience. I saw people there, people I was following who realized that if they talked about trans stuff almost exclusively, they could.
Tim Miller
Get enormous followings or anti Covid, counter information, ivermectin, whatever.
Sarah Longwell
That's right. The thing that's interesting to me though is that I think there's a lot of conversation. You say the phones. One of the things about our phones is that it rewards like a short attention span and we consume like bite sized information. But podcasts are long form and one of the things you hear from people when they talk about why they like podcasts is they feel like they can have these parasocial relationships. So when you talk about it's more authentic. It's also weird. Like, people are willing to hang out for hours with personalities that they like. And this goes to one of my core beliefs around what's happening in politics right now, which is how freaking lonely people are.
Tim Miller
People are lonely.
Sarah Longwell
People are, Are. Are just desperate for this connection. And the podcasts give them a world that they can hang out. And like, there was always some cable that did this. Just a little bit, like Morning Joe always a little bit had their finger on the fact that people kind of wanted to hang out with the same group of people every morning in a looser kind of way. And it's one of the reasons it was a successful cable show. But podcasts just took that on.
Tim Miller
This is your Robert Putnam theory of it, right? It's like people are bowling alone. People don't have that third place to go hang out instead of replacing it with a healthy third place to go hang out there, hanging out with podcast hosts, which is. Could be healthy if it's me and Sarah, but, you know, maybe a little less healthy than some other people. But, yeah, I think that's right for sure.
Sarah Longwell
All right, so let's listen to what folks thought about Rogan and the political landscape more broadly, how they talk about podcasts.
Focus Group Participant 1
I kind of like the kind of people that Joe Rogan has on the show, like Elon Musk. It was kind of an interesting one to listen to some big people to get these big opinions out and open. And it doesn't feel like I'm watching a newscast, and it just feels real. And I kind of like it that way.
Sarah Longwell
The types of conversations that they have, like, make the guests and himself also seem more approachable. And I don't. I don't want to say relatable, but I don't know, it kind of makes him more normal almost because, let's say someone like Donald Trump, for example, who, like, is in the media a lot, and a lot of the media attention is negative or solely political content, it makes them, like, I guess, overall just approachable.
Focus Group Participant 2
Like a lot of informed guests who I feel like are not afraid to really. I don't know if represent is the best way to phrase it, but just, like, don't shy away from being honest and candid about how they feel. And I feel like that's great because it kind of helps me build trust. Overall podcast and the Joe Rogan's gonna get good guests on there, but also the fact that helps me kind of like feel confident that what the information that I'm receiving from there is very, not only the information I should say, but also like the opinions that I'm receiving are very honest I think is the best way to put it. So like hot save America, there's another one that I really like. Tucker Carlson's another guy that I really like. So it's, it's just like a way for me to get like a variety of different opinions, a variety of different viewpoints. I, I feel like that's the best way to stay inform.
Focus Group Participant 3
What I like about the interview is the fact that there's long and it doesn't feel scripted. It's more of like a free flow conversation of wherever it goes. I'm sure he has an idea of what type of questions he's going to ask, but it's still more of a free flowing conversation. And some other podcasts I got into Candace Owens so she's usually like up to date on a lot of news. And I also kind of started realizing that I in the past four years I started leaning more conservative and since kind of finding her, she's reflecting more of my views now. Current views.
Focus Group Participant 4
I feel like the success of Joe Rogan's podcast is because he's genuine. He actually wants to learn more about certain topics and certain ideas and he allows his guests to speak freely without any type of agenda. It's not as scripted, it seems more real time. He's learning about this person's ideas and talking points and he punches on that and asks questions in real time instead of having some type of scripted narrative or whatever to ask them. So that's what I enjoy about it. His podcast. As far as other podcasts that I do follow, I definitely follow Candace Owens podcast. I think she's great. She's a great investigator. She speaks on a lot of topics. That's like other people mentioned, that's taboo in the legacy media. I also follow the Patrick but David podcast, follow some of Tucker Carlson and Piers Morgan.
Tim Miller
I think his success is, is because.
Focus Group Participant 5
He makes it a conversation.
Tim Miller
He does push back a little bit, but the way he pushes back isn't like combative. So we, we get to actually hear.
Focus Group Participant 5
The, that person, whoever he's interviewing, we actually get to hear their, their point.
Tim Miller
Of view more so than if they went on a news station. If someone would go on a news station and get an interview, you're going to get a lot of pushback. If they don't have the same ideas as that interviewer.
Focus Group Participant 5
The way it's formatted or how it's conversational, I think it really allows there to be some substance that you don't get with a lot of other interviews, the unscripted conversational aspects of it. You can really get to know who's on there and see their true feelings. They can't come in with rehearsed talking points necessarily and just stick to the scripts.
Sarah Longwell
I know there's a lot of lying in interviews, a lot, too. But I'd say for the most part, he gets people to open up to him. So I really like that. So let me zig on this for you, Tim.
Tim Miller
Okay.
Sarah Longwell
Which is to say, I actually hear a lot of good instincts and them saying what they like. Like not only are they sitting through much longer form things as opposed to just getting sound bites, right. They're exploring longer form issues and digging into them. They like the civility of it. Right. They like that people aren't having a shout fest and screaming at each other, which I think is a good instinct. And there's a guy in there, he's like, I listen to Tucker and I listen to Pod Save America. Well, those two shows don't have similar messaging whatsoever. Yeah. And there was a guy who was voting for Harris, but always listened to Tucker because he wanted to get sort of this other viewpoint. And so people don't mind kind of marinating in a world that is not with their worldview. And I think that that is also healthy to try and explore these things. Then they want the authenticity, right? They want to know what. What the real person thinks. Like the Kamala Harris sitting down for a Dana Bash interview. You know, people don't really want that. They know it's scripted. They know it's Kabuki theater, they know it's fake. And this is another thing about Donald Trump, right? Mainstream media, you hear people saying, well, he's a Nazi or he likes Nazis or praises Nazis, and then they hear him on Rogan for three hours and they think, well, that guy doesn't sound like a Nazi.
Tim Miller
I want to take that point first, okay? The Trump point. And then I'll talk to broader observations. Like, I had two thoughts in my mind at the same time after watching Trump on Rogan, right? The one was, and whatever, my brain is mush from consuming so much of this. I forget what exactly was on Rogan. But, you know, there were two or three things he said that were insane, right? So, like, we pulled that out and talked about them, and I don't regret that. I think that's Right. Like, you should talk about the two or three totally insane things that he said over the course of three hours and make sure that people know about that. People didn't consume the Rogan interview at the same time, though. I watched it and was like, I think the people watch this are going to be like, this guy seems fine. Because there are two or three things that seem insane, and then there are another two or three things that if you're super engaged, like us, or really know the facts about something like the 2020 election, you would be like, okay, this guy's full of shit and he's a liar. But if you're not that steeped in all that information, they're like, oh, well, crazy. Uncle Donald has a couple weird views here on a couple of things, but, like, on the rest of this stuff, it's like, this guy doesn't seem like a Nazi. I don't know Hitler in my mind, but Hitler must be much meaner than this. Would Hitler know this much about MMA fighters? And he's affable, right? Like, there's something that is de Radicalizing about just sitting in a session for two and a half hours. And to me, I think that's why Kamala actually would have benefited from it. I don't actually really care. I think that was the reason why she lost. But, like, you know, this notion of, well, they'll pull out the worst thing. Yeah, that's true. But for the people that listen to it, it'll be like, wait, this person is not a Marxist. Actually. Like, this person is right. Or an idiot. So I think that that is a good lesson just for all politicians. Like, be less worried about the one clip that gets pulled out. And for outlets with big audiences, maybe it's not worth the risk for the one clip if you're talking to somebody with a tiny audience or a meaningless audience. Like, that was my big takeaway from the Trump part of it. The other thing on this building trust, that I don't know how the legacy media fixes this or resolves this or deals with it, but it's their number one problem, right? The reason why Joe Rogan and us, to a certain extent, and others that do formats like this have built trust is because the people listen, and they're not actually consuming Rogan through the little clips you see on your social media. They're listening to all the hours, and they gain trust through all those hours. Right? And so put yourself in the shoes of, if you're a big consumer of us, right, and you're consuming 10 hours of bulwark a day, right? And then you see on your social media, some person's like, Tim was talking about how the Boston Marathon bomber was hot. Isn't he terrible? Right? You've consumed 10 hours of Tim of me. You know, now I'm speaking like Bob Dole, right? But, like, you know that I was being tongue in cheek and being funny and that, like, I actually had a much more serious, like, thoughtful take about all of this, right? Like, right. That is how the Rogan consumers are viewing those little clips that go around social media that make many of our listeners who don't consume any of Rogan think, well, that guy must be crazy. The only clips I ever see is when he sounds like an idiot or when he's talking about somewhere he has no idea what he's talking about. But the consumers of rogan are consuming 10, 20 hours of him more a month. And so they're like, well, you know, everybody misses one every now and then, right? So you get graded on this curve because you've built this trust with your audience because they know you. They've seen you correct yourself. They've seen you, you know, deal with complicated issues and work through them, and they've seen you change your mind and be transparent about it, right? So you build this trust with them. The mainstream media doesn't have that trust, though, right? So when the mainstream media messes up one thing, people are like, oh, well, no, that's biased, that's fake. We can't trust them because they don't have the same relationship. I don't know how you fix that if you're the Times of CNN or whatever. To me, like, that explains, like, this tension. Why does Joe Rogan, who says conspiracy theories relatively regularly have trust but the New York Times doesn't? And it's because he's built trust through all of that time.
Sarah Longwell
I'll also say that one of the things about being the media I say with air quotes for people listening to the POD and not watching it is that you pay for the sins of other people in the media. So maybe you screw up once or like there's a screw up at the New York Times, but people are going to throw that in to a pile of sins from the LA Times and cnn. And so the distrust is with the media, meaning corporate media, legacy media, in a way where JBL and I were doing the secret podcast day. And like, we didn't know if our facts were right. Like, we were bringing up actually who wrote something. We thought maybe it was Sam Or Stein. And we were like, but we don't know. And so people don't judge you by that. Like, we might be wrong. And we tell people the point of this podcast is so that we can work through ideas that we not sure we're committed to.
Tim Miller
Right.
Sarah Longwell
And people appreciate that because they too, sit and think about ideas and try to figure out how they feel about things. Now people do this to us, though. They pull clips of us and try to, like, hang us with them.
Tim Miller
I mean, I just said. Just happened to me this week.
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. My point is, is that we get grace where the mainstream media does not. What do you think that this portends for sort of legacy media, given the fragmentation that's taken place over the last few years?
Tim Miller
It's bad. And the Times has kind of figured it out because they've just became so big, right? And their reporting is so authoritative across a huge range of issues that they're going to be able to survive people being mad about them about politics stuff. Right. Or whatever. And they also have gained revenue through cooking and the games, apps. So the Times has figured this out in a way to be sustainable. The Wall Street Journal has figured out a way to be sustainable in CNBC because they have a niche where that people trust their expertise to all business stuff. And so if their other reporting loses credibility, that's fine. They're still going to have their business verticals. Right. So some TV outlets can have to figure out how to do the Times thing, right, where they have other ways where they're bringing in revenue. The local media part I don't know how to fix. Like, that part is, I think, very challenging. One idea I have, just as well, we're throwing around no bad ideas. In a brainstorm, I was talking to a nonprofit group that supports local media outlets, and I was like, you know who I have trust with in local media? My sports team's podcasts. Right. Because it's the same thing as Rogan. Kind of like after the game, I want to see what three people that I like thought about the game. And I'm like, maybe you can get revenue that way by creating podcasts about community things, sports, weather events, cultural things that are happening in the city and use that to kind of subsidize the other stuff. But I don't know, the legacy outlets, if they don't have expertise like the Journal does in a specific vertical, they're going to have to figure out how to compete on trust and doing so in some of these more informal environments. And that's kind of Hard to do on, like, hard news, but maybe they can do it in adjacent, you know, kind of spaces to support the hardness.
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. So one of the things that I talk about a lot when I talk about communications philosophies and who people trust, you just use the word trust. And I think trust is sort of an essential piece of this conversation and how low trust voters are. Like, one of the things that's happening is people talk about loss of faith in institutions. That is really, really real. It's true of the media. It's true of the government. It's true of health care. Like, it's true of, like, almost most verticals. Maybe not sports, although I don't know enough about sports sports to say, like, whether cynicism, you know, is coming and eating that, too. But people trust people like me. Not me, Sarah Longwell, but people like them. Which, again, I think speaks to why there is more trust in the podcast format. Because people feel like they are in. And we get this all the time. People are like, I feel like you're my friend. I feel like I know you. But I meet people who are fans of ours, and I'm like, start talking to them like a human. And I'm like, oh, do you have kids? I got two boys. You know, they'll be like, yeah, I know. You know, I listen to you all the time, right? They know you in a real way. So people trust these personalities, which is another thing I think the media is struggling with, is that they are institutions. They are a collection of many talented people, and some of those people have personalities. Those personalities often live on editorial pages, which oftentimes can be out of sync, like in the Wall Street Journal's case, with their actual reporting, where the reporting is very sober and good and filled with expertise, and the editorial page is filled with nonsense. But, like, listening to these groups and how little they trust everything. So one of the things that obviously was in the news. What are you thinking about this week? And one of the things was we asked people about Trump's confirmation stuff. And so we were asking about Pete Hegseth. Nobody had heard of Pete Hegseth. Like, they're hopeful that Donald Trump's going to make good choices, and they're praying about it and they're, you know, whatever, but they are not following it. You know what they're following? They're following the United Healthcare CEO. Everybody had heard about that. Nobody knew about Pete Hegseth. There was, like, one Marco guy who was, like, happy with Marco, but, like the rest of it, they just like weren't tracking that hard. So we conducted these couple of groups that you're hearing sound from right after the murder of the United Healthcare CEO, including one after the shooter was taken into custody. So while this might not seem like the usual topic for this show, we were curious about their reactions like through the lens of this preferred media diet. So let's listen to how they thought about the news coverage of the shooting and subsequent manhunt.
Focus Group Participant 3
I am wondering how within a week they were able supposedly found the guy, but President Trump elect had pretty much two attempts and we still don't really know a lot about the first shooter. That just blows my mind. And it also makes me question since there is so much publicity about this recent shooting, is there something else going on that everyone's pay attention to the shooting so people don't pay attention to something else.
Focus Group Participant 4
I feel like this is a distraction or some type of psyop in the news cycle where everything seems fishy. It doesn't seem like everything. The logistics of how he got caught, what he was caught with, the gun, the manifesto, all this stuff. It's like I'm reading about it, I'm looking into it, it doesn't seem as realize that it should be. I'm questioning the authenticity of who this individual they've caught, is it the right one? These type of things are going through my head. But I'm also, you know, I find it silly that they're trying to make this guy a motor for activism, for revisiting the healthcare system. I feel like it doesn't solve anything at all.
Focus Group Participant 5
I'm not really surprised by the reaction or how much coverage is getting just because it's high profile violence. A high profile figure in the heart of Manhattan. And it brings out a lot of rightful anger about the American health care system. So to me it makes perfect sense. And it's gonna draw eyes and ratings and clicks and everything. So I think we're going to continue to see coverage of it, unfortunately.
Sarah Longwell
So this was the group that we talked to after he'd been caught. But we talked to the other group about this as well and there was a ton of personal angst. Like they all talked about dealing with healthcare industry bureaucracy and how unhappy they were with the industry. Although I would say there was nobody in these groups that were like celebrating this guy getting shot.
Tim Miller
Which one?
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, but, but it goes to the anonymity of online and the way that people feel much more emboldened online to use their like most heartless take in a way that in a Group of people where like your name was there and you're talking to somebody. People did not really behave that way. There was like a. I can see why people are this mad and like did this. So when I was a teenager, it was before you had iPads or laptops, but I had like a Trapper Keeper thing that had a sticker on it that said question everything. I had another one, I think it's on my bunk bed that said question authority. Right. Cause I was a really edgy teen. But I just. Every time I listen to folks in these focus groups, I think they're just like all manifesting the bumper stickers of a 17 year old. Right. But like the extent to which people now are primed to question everything, like, oh, this is getting so much news coverage, it might be a psyop. I hear this stuff all the time. This isn't just some fringy thing. This is how a lot of people are thinking nowadays.
Tim Miller
Yeah. It's a complex world and people are looking for stuff to grab onto. So I get it. But you know, the psyop element of this, that clip segment could have gone on for it kind of. It's 15 minutes. People that weren't really sure that it was Luigi, but there were still a couple people like that. They're focused on the unibrow. One guy was and the picture that didn't match his eyebrows at the McDonald's. And the views weren't coherent, which I think is important. Jon Favreau wrote something in the Atlantic this week that's very good. People should go read about how a lot of high info people, you can kind of fit us in a box of some kind. You know, you're like, oh, that's a person that's kind of a Bernie ish progressive or a Warren ish progressive. And this is kind of a moderate, never Trumper type or, you know, this is an establishment Democrat. These groups, the views were totally not coherent at all within each individual and certainly across the groups. The idea that it was like, oh, they were all people that were really mad at the healthcare system. Nope. There were some that were. There were a couple people that worked in the healthcare system that were worried about their own safety. That one guy that was like, this feels like a psyop. But also I don't think we should glorify him. Their views are not formulated. The one thing that ties it all together is your point. This kind of rebellious contrarian, like, I just don't trust. I don't believe anything is true. And I think that was to me the more interesting takeaway. The Rogan appeal to like the high low voter was also interesting because like the groups had like 2/3 of people were these kind of low info, you know, like the psyop guy, like exactly what you expect to hear from a Rogan voter. I don't mean that as pejorative. I just mean like we shouldn't say.
Sarah Longwell
That they're not consuming information, they just don't consume tons of political information. Like that guy was going deep on the healthcare stuff.
Tim Miller
Ye sure, Exactly. And so their archetype is different than the crypto investing college educated white guys, you know, that were very well versed on the Trump nominees and what was happening in the news. And you know, we're probably Mitt Romney voters but have gotten sucked into some of this contrarianism stuff, particularly around RFK vaccines, particularly around crypto.
Sarah Longwell
You know, JBL and I had this argument on the seeker pod about COVID and its lasting implications and or impacts on the American psyche. And to me it was pretty clear from these groups there was a major inflection point in recent years that had brought out some of the like deep skepticism they had. And that was around Covid. People who had been questioning Covid all along, like Joe Rogan or others, they questioned the vaccine, but they also questioned the efficacy of masks. And JBL got really mad when I said this as his, his one because he was like, we talking about a million people dead. But like I remember putting on my 3 year old one of these cloth masks. They had to wear them at school and we'd have to give him lots of them because he would drool, they'd get wet, he'd get chapped face. We were constantly, always putting like Vaseline on his face and like I hate it, hate it. The period of masking and you do it and then you find out later that the cloth masks were useless. It was like a kabuki theater. We were all engaged in.
Tim Miller
Oh, the cloth masks.
Sarah Longwell
No, I mean the cloth masks. I'm not saying all my snow the N95s but you remember there was a really long time. I remember it because of my kids and how I had to put them on them. But like we were all wearing cloth masks for a really long time before we started with the K95.
Tim Miller
I know. No, no, trust me, I'm with you. I had also a preschooler, she was in a French bilingual preschool. And I was like, this is pointless. Literally she'd be learning more if I put her in front of Sesame street eight hours a day than having a teacher speaking a different language in a mask while she's wearing a mask was. It just. It was ridiculous.
Sarah Longwell
We're still dealing with learning issues that have to do with, you know, like speech. And so to find out later that the cloth masks were really. They kind of told us that because there weren't enough K95s to go around and until we had produced enough like that made a lot of people angry. JBL's point, and I'm sympathetic to this too, is like once in a lifetime pandemic. Everybody's trying to rope their way through. And you know, people are doing their best and I agree with that. But it's frustrating to act like it had no consequences. So let's play the COVID mistrust sound and how Covid affected things for the Rogan crowd and these Biden to Trump groups.
Focus Group Participant 4
One particular figure that I feel like should be prosecuted or investigated is Dr. Fauci. Just constant, constant lies with these band aids and saying the statistics of how many people got killed, what it was been reported, what news was supposed to report, and then the cancellation of people who bring up questions regarding this. They try to cancel Joe Rogan, a lot of other different people. That's why a lot of people woken up from that and realized that the information we see on TV or it's providing us is totally unreliable. So I think it's like a lot of the power transferred over to X elon. There's a lot of censorship going around during the pandemic. You can't question the vaccine, you're ostracized. If you're to say anything about it, people will label you conspiracy theorist, looney tuned person. Like everything's coming to the light where the whole pandemic was just basically a lie. Like it was like a flu. But you could. The survival rate is like 90% or something like that.
Focus Group Participant 1
So I was working in the hospital, I was working the testing tents to test for Covid. We were kind of one of the first to try to like learn how to test for people, you know. But as far as like we had doctors that were like, why are we just doing these masks like this? Like the only ones that are actually that help are like the N95. Like why are we masking? You know, of course if you're like, you have a cold and you're just like coughing over the place, prevent splatter. But these masks on these kids that are in their mouth being shared, it's ridiculous. Like, why are these kids Having to wear these masks in school or having to be forced to do homeschooling at home. But for me, in the hospital, I was going to lose my job if I didn't get 2 of the COVID vaccines. I felt like I was forced to get these shots or I was going to lose my job, which I felt is really ridiculous on my part, where I felt, well, I'm not ready to get this. Only option that came into the hospital, you know, the certain brand. And now they like, well, we're not doing that one anymore. It causes blood clots.
Focus Group Participant 5
I mean, the last four years, especially before Elon bought X, I mean, the censorship and the disinformation label was really out of hand, in my opinion. You couldn't question anything without getting deplatformed or questioned. As a conspiracy theorist, I think stuff he did by simply just questioning vaccines and Covid and Ivermectin, that kind of stuff, I thought that was really important, be able to have conversations again. You couldn't question anything. People were getting censored, kicked off social media, you know, labeled conspiracy theorists. I mean, it's come out now that the whole 6ft thing was just made up. I mean, statistics constantly getting altered, the efficacy of masks that's been shown have been made up. I mean, you could just go back and look at everything the damage it's done did to children who were forced to homeschool. I mean, you had people masking kids when there is no need for that.
Sarah Longwell
Okay, so before I get Tim's reaction, which looks like it'll be intense, I do want to do a quick peek behind the curtain, because we've had an issue with a few recent focus groups because YouTube has flagged what they consider medical misinformation to be contained in them, in the sound that we post. So for YouTube system, I am not endorsing these people's opinions. I am merely presenting them as opinion research information. The opinions of focus group participants do not necessarily reflect objective truth or the editorial position of the Bulwark. And I have to say that because we couldn't send the clips to each other on YouTube like we normally do, because they took them down for medical misinformation, which I do think validates just slightly what some of these people are saying.
Tim Miller
Yeah, sure. I. I don't like people being deplatformed or whatever. I don't think it's necessary. I just like the intensity of their views on this and like the idea that Joe Rogan is being canceled and Elon is being canceled and like they're the two most influential people in the world. World. I think they're doing great. So this whole thing just frustrates me, the notion that people are really being silenced. Look, here's my constructive thought. There's something about human nature and the nature of human trust that makes it much more appealing to be anti the establishment, anti elite, to be giving it to the man. Like there are people that score high on agreeableness if you take those Myers Briggs tests or whatever. But like there is a big majority of society and it might be a uniquely American element to this too, where people like to feel like they're independent, you know, and the Democrats used to have this. Right. Like the Democrats were anti war, anti.
Sarah Longwell
Corporate Democrats used to have Joe Rogan.
Tim Miller
Yeah. And as the parties have sorted among, like, where all the low trust people on one side, all the high trust people on the other side, the Democrats have lost their ability to do that. And I think that's a real problem for them and something that they're gonna have to think about going forward, how to remedy. Because I just listened to all this on the COVID thing and I basically agree with all of these people's critiques. I was much closer to Jared Polis or to some of the Republican governors on Covid than I was to my state governor at the time, Gavin Newsom. I still have my libertarian 17 year old trapper Keeper question, everything streak somewhere inside of me. But I also have grown up and have gotten a lot more information and I have a lot more respect for people who have to do challenging things. And I look at this situation and I'm like, well, the government had some big follow ups, but the experts were also the ones that created the damn vaccine that got us out of this thing. And so there was an old kind of Republican appreciation for the entrepreneur side that would have been like, hell yeah, America. These scientists and these experts, and we did Operation War to speed. We created this vaccine that was kind of like the Republican instinct that I was drawn to, but that always lived in pairing with the tear down the government. The government sucks. And the first part is gone. And now it's all anti elite, anti establishment. And it's very frustrating to me because it's like Fauci is held accountable for all of his mistakes, of which there are definitely some. But like these guys, the contrarian Covid people, they had some of the worst predictions out there. A lot of these guys were like, I think that there's only going to be between 5 and 20,000 deaths worldwide. You know, and it's like, you couldn't have been more wrong than they were on some of this stuff. But the people that have positioned themselves as the contrarians and as the anti establishment people, they didn't have to carry the baggage of any of their mistakes because all they were charged with doing was poking holes at the people that were actually doing stuff right. And that makes their life a lot easier. And that's frustrating and that pisses me off.
Sarah Longwell
It's also frustrating that a great many of the mistakes that were made were made with Donald Trump. Like Donald Trump, he was constantly injecting, to use the term stupid information into the ecosystem. He also lied to people about.
Tim Miller
Downplayed it at the beginning.
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. And he knew better. And it came out later in Woodward's book that he had information about how bad it was, was telling people it would be fine. He, you know, we got the zoped by Mike Pence. There'll be no Covid second wave. Like, yeah, they were all wrong too. Here's the thing. None of us knew what was going on. None of us knew anything about this. Everybody was kind of wrong. And like we were a country trying to do our best in the moment. And I think there's a lot of things that we can look back and say, you know what? Once we figured out where the risk was really stratified, which is that the risk was very low for children and was really for people with preexisting conditions and who were older, get kids back to school. And teachers unions put up a big fight over that and Democrats capitulated. And like, that is annoying to me. And it's annoying for reasons that are like, why are we listening to?
Tim Miller
And here's one more thing on this that I actually don't understand. I just want to put this out there because I understand the appeal of the contrarian, of the anti establishment. I understand the people who are annoyed by the COVID rules and are frustrated, want to lash out. The thing I don't get though, is just one example, this comes to mind. But there's so many in my husband's county in West Virginia. There was all of this anti vax misinformation out there. And I went back, I think it was for a funeral, not Covid related. And all the talk was about the football coach who was in his 40s and had a bunch of kids, hadn't gotten the vaccine and had died of COVID at the time. It was during COVID So, you know, I was interested. I was like, what's happening? In the community. Like they anti vaxx is there are all this anti Fauci stuff. And like the consensus in this moment was like, I don't know, people are kind of dialing it back a little bit because this guy died and it's been a shockwave through the community and yet that stuff didn't stick. And like, I really just don't understand.
Sarah Longwell
Why like, like a million people dying.
Tim Miller
Yeah.
Sarah Longwell
Wasn't enough for people to be like. But also it was really bad guys.
Tim Miller
Yeah. Right. I'm also still annoyed. Kind of just hearing you Talk about your 3 year old having to mask makes me a little bit annoyed inside my body. So I understand why people are still annoyed about 3 year olds having a mask. At the same time, I don't understand why that annoyance has managed to persist while people orphaning their children because they were fed misinformation by assholes who had a political agenda. Why that hasn't stuck, that's one that flummoxes me.
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, I'm not sure if I can solve the nonlinear way of these things.
Tim Miller
That paradox. You can't solve that paradox for me.
Sarah Longwell
All right, that's it. No more shouting into the void, because the void isn't listening. In this post election moment, there is a subreddit, a meme page or newsletter for every one of your opinion bubbles. But if you want to stay involved with political news by understanding why the other side feels the way they do, you need Left, Right and Center. It's a weekly roundtable with representatives from both sides of the aisle because you want to understand stand, not just hear someone agree with you. I'm David Green, hosting Left, Right and Center from kcrw. New episodes drop every Friday wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so I want to get to some more sound. I do want to talk about asking these voters about the nominees, but from here on out, these are not exclusively the Rogan listeners. They're still first time Trump voters, meaning they voted for Biden previously. So obviously the allegations against Pete Hegseth for alcohol abuse and sexual assault have been in the news, even though many of the Joe Rogan listeners had not been following it. But some of the other groups had. So let's listen to what they said about Pete Hegseth.
Focus Group Participant 3
I did watch an interview with him and a little more details on the smear, on the alcohol issues, on what his mother said, who subsequently apologized for the email. And I think it's just not even good. Look, breaking into his emails, trying to get that information for me, it's not a really effective way of putting somebody in a bad light anymore. So given how information was obtained, it doesn't really affect the way how I feel about his credibility. Again, I don't know him too much. Hopefully he will get approved and we'll see what comes out of it. But the negative news does not really affect how I feel about him one way or the other.
Focus Group Participant 2
I could touch in a little more broad since I'm actually not familiar with him. But overall, when it comes to like, allegations like that, I. Whether they're true or not, and this may sound a little insensitive, but I guess I'm not too concerned about it. To me, it doesn't really matter what kind of allegations you have in your personal life. I just, to me, I'm more concerned about, like, what are your political views? And that's why, like, to me, I'm. I'm typically indifferent about allegations like that.
Focus Group Participant 6
Tbd. It's so hard because, you know, there's so much rhetoric out there, you know, and there's so much character assassination because there as people who have agendas, you know, and don't want certain things to go a certain way. So I think, you know, it's. It's pretty overwhelming to try to keep track of all this. It is for me, anyway. It's just, you know, it's a ton of stuff and I am to a certain degree just placing some trust in the new administration that the right thing is going to be done. Yeah, there'll be mistakes, there might be some oversights and what have you, but I got to think at the end of the day that they're going to.
Tim Miller
Do the right thing.
Sarah Longwell
Is he the one that there was some controversy? It was something that I actually just saw like yesterday where he was in his swim trunks. I might be thinking of the wrong person at the 911 monument. She does have the right person because Hegseth appeared in his swim trunks at the 911 memorial because he was doing a charity swim across the Hudson River. We, you and I and the mainstream media are paying a great deal of attention to Trump's picks and their lack of qualifications. This is what voters do, though. They voted for Trump and they're like, I don't know who this guy is, but I'm tapping out now, like, Trump's gonna pick who he's gonna pick, and I hope they're good and I'm gonna give him a chance. This skepticism that comes from somebody on their side and by their side, I don't even mean like Republicans in this case. But like they voted for Trump. He's Trump's picks. And so there really is this, like, I don't know, you know, the media goes after everybody and they say everybody's controversial. And like in the post me too world, the extent to which voters are just primed for a bunch of controversy and like don't care about it is kind of startling.
Tim Miller
Yeah, that part is startling. And I don't know that I have much more to add other than it's a little dispiriting. I will say this to your point about how like a lot of these people are like, yeah, I want to see how it goes. It supports one of my theses, which is all the autopsy stuff of the Democratic Party. Like Trump failing would really be the best elixir for the Democrats because there are a bunch of people in here that are just kind of like, yeah, if he gets us into a stupid war and things go bad, I'll be like, okay, I'll throw him out and we'll try somebody else new and I'll want some anti establishment Democrat next time probably. To me, that's the interesting thing about listening to these groups. And I know some of these weren't Rogan people, but even just broadening it out to the new Trump voter group altogether, they're kind of like, are these categories of people? There's three that I want to highlight. There's like the totally red pilled. I'm watching Candace Owens and Patrick Bet, David and Joe Rogan and like the Tucker. And that's my world now. And I love that Cash Patel is in there and I hope that he's going to go after his foes. Like there were a handful of those people.
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, we're going to play the retribution.
Tim Miller
Okay, great. So we'll get to that next. Then there was the group that's like, I'm not really paying that much attention. Things aren't going that great. I don't trust anybody. I don't trust these elites. And we're taking a flyer on Trump. That was the low info, kind of casual. And then you had the very familiar to you and me, traditional Republican type guys that didn't like Trump's personality but have been sucked back in via some combination of COVID and Crypto and, and hating Democrats. Hating Democrats. Right. And so to me, a, there's something to be learned there from Democrats about like who of those groups are gettable? Obviously the lowest info group. So like how do you communicate to them? And that takes me to this communication question. Which is kind of like, I think the subtext of doing a Joe Rogan focus group, which is this whole convo about like the Dems need their own Rogan. And like, to me the secret sauce there of that audience is that he has the high info and the low info. Right. He's doing both. And like there were some people that were listening, they're like, oh yeah, I tune in when it's this kind of thing, but I don't tune in when it's that kind of thing. Right?
Sarah Longwell
Yeah.
Tim Miller
And like that's something that's missing. Right. Like doing a. Just straight. I'm a liberal question everything straight talking, progressive that just talks about how the Republicans are corrupt and terrible. Like that's got a ceiling on it. The people that are getting drawn into this net are like some super politically obsessed people and then a bunch of people who kind of like, like just like hearing interesting conversations about unexpected things and then they're getting tangentially having some pretty Trumpy politics really injected into their feeds. And like that to me is the media challenge for Democrats, like replicating that model. You know, not like the, oh, we need more progressive Trump sucks media.
Sarah Longwell
This is exactly right. This is why it's so important that Democrats figure out how to go everywhere. Because I can't remember which of my podcasts I really focused on this. But like if you think about the different verticals that there are on social media where people are really invested in something that isn't politics. So wellness, for example, is a massive vertical on social media. And RFK has a toehold within that wellness community. It's some of the anti vax stuff, but it's also about like what you eat and like the colors that are in process things. Seed oils.
Tim Miller
Right.
Sarah Longwell
And so fitness, huge vertical also.
Tim Miller
Ghee. Ghee is very important. G H E E. Oh, oh, is.
Sarah Longwell
That, that's a, that's a tallow supplement or something?
Tim Miller
I don't know. What the fuck do I know? You think I do?
Sarah Longwell
Geesh, I don't know. But like fitness and being a man is like a whole vertical. Yeah. There's all of these places where Republicans are going into those spaces to figure out how they inject a little bit into those audiences. Those people are not there fundamentally for politics, but their politics gets informed by these other things that they're much more passionate about. Low info political types who catch their politics by osmosis. They don't watch the news, but it comes in through these other verticals. You know, Kellyanne Conway and I, when we were at this thing and I, she was just like, kept yelling in my ear while I was trying to make a point. One of the things I was saying is like, yes, people believe these things because you lie to them and tell them false things. But then they're like trying to hide behind the voters. You know, they're like, well, Americans believe X. As though they played no role in getting Americans to believe X. Like the election was stolen. But they are much better at working the media channels. And I mean media in the biggest, broadest sense of all the things that people are consuming in a way that Democrats still use this old tired playbook of, well, we're going to go on cnn. This isn't against cnn. It's just more like we're going to do very conventional things. Dwindling audience of people who basically consume politics as their dominant vertical, which is different. So you brought up Cash Patel, and I want to get to this. So when we asked about Cash Patel as the nominee for FBI director and the possibility of investigating or prosecuting Trump's political opponents, we heard a lot of these first time Trump voters struggle with that a bit. Let's listen. Starting with one woman talking about Patel's FBI investigating Trump's opponents. I think if he does, good for him, because they've been doing that on the Democratic side. For everybody else, that is more of a Trump supporter. So tit for tat, I guess my.
Tim Miller
Gut is, yes, like, investigate them. But I think we've gotten into now.
Focus Group Participant 1
A dangerous precedent where we're using the legal system to go after political opponents. And I just, I think we need.
Tim Miller
To move away from that. Not saying they shouldn't be held to the same justice system that all of us are. But I think a lot of times.
Focus Group Participant 1
Now we fall into the trap where.
Tim Miller
We'Re going after people just because they're a political candidate for a different party. And I think it's dangerous to keep doing that.
Focus Group Participant 6
You don't want this to turn into like a vendetta, right? Personal vendetta and revenge, that sort of thing. But if there is an injustice that's taking place and our institutions that we rely on to protect us and to uphold justice, if there's corruption on that end, that needs to be found out, that needs to be routed out, that can't go on. That's a big part of the problem that we're facing, is corruption on a systemic level in so many ways.
Focus Group Participant 3
So far, with the information that I could gather about Cash being the FBI nominee, I'm excited to see what's coming as. I think there's a lot of information that needs to come out. And just in general, having that force branch of government, I think it's kind of been going the wrong way for a long time. And the fact that it doesn't feel like the government really serving people, but a lot of secrets being kept away from people for their own protection, I think it's kind of getting too much and people are getting tired of it.
Focus Group Participant 4
I don't think that it's going to be politicized and he's going to go after people that need to be prosecuted. And I feel like he has the credentials and just the wherewithal to actually approach certain situations without being hesitant. I think that he has a serious demeanor that we need for that specific position.
Focus Group Participant 5
So I'm a big fan. I feel like he's not some lifetime bureaucrat and that he's going to get in there and kind of make the FBI about what it should be. And it's not going to be politicized anymore. Yeah. That he's not going to be afraid to prosecute. Who needs to be prosecuted. I guess my main thing is I don't think it's going to be politicized anymore. And that's exciting for me. I'm a little torn on it. Maybe I should have said it shouldn't be weaponized rather than politicized. That makes. I'm a little torn on it. I think Trump had a good comment the other day about he wasn't going to go after Biden because he wants to look forward. Not in the past. However, the other side of that is maybe they need to be investigated so this kind of stuff never happens again. So set a precedent so it can't happen again.
Sarah Longwell
Okay, so the last part of that last guy's answer was where we asked him about Patel doing things like prosecuting Liz Cheney, and he was struggling around with that idea a little bit.
Tim Miller
That guy gave the most interesting exchange. They're doing this thing at once and it's working, I guess, with this audience, which is like, the deep state has been really politicized against Mr. Trump. The deep state's coming for Mr. Trump. We must stop that. We must clean it up. These are bad people that are all going after him. And the Justice Department has never been politicized like this. And so you hear that in some of the answers, people are like, oh, okay, well, great. A new guy, an outsider that's not going to politicize. And then when the question is, well, should they Go after their enemies. It's like, well, I don't know, maybe. Maybe a little politicization is good. It's like, yeah, maybe it does seem better. Ooh, I'm kind of torn on that. But yeah, I don't know. I guess, let me downgrade. Maybe politicization is fine, but maybe not weaponization.
Sarah Longwell
Yeah.
Tim Miller
And so, you know, for my friends, everything from enemies, the law is definitely sinking in with the voter base there.
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. I mean, I was going to ask you if you think that in the coming years you could activate these voters skepticism of man. Right. When Trump oversteps his bounds. Right. When they do go after people, are people going to revolt and say, hey, no, no, no, we said we didn't want this? Or do most of these voters simply view Trump as the good guy and the more establishment opponents is the bad guy?
Tim Miller
I think the latter. I think, yes, some of these people are able to be activated when Trump oversteps in ways that are tangible, that they can see and feel. Say what you want about COVID Long Tail ended up helping Trump, but it hurt him in 2020 short term because people didn't like what he was doing. I'm sad to say if Kash Patel starts investigating Liz Cheney, I don't think that there's going to be a principled backlash among the people in these groups. I'm not seeing that coming.
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, I think in the red pilled groups there's not. I think the question remains whether sort of more institutional Republicans say no, I see why we cannot live like this and try to, like, end the tit for tat, as that woman called it.
Tim Miller
I like your naive optimism there. I'm not seeing it.
Sarah Longwell
Don't call it naive.
Tim Miller
I'm seeing it. In other words, suggesting it's possible. Yeah, I'm not really seeing it in the Justice Department, but we'll see. I'd love to be wrong. I've been wrong before. Who knows?
Sarah Longwell
All right, Tim Miller. Sometimes wrong, not always. Tim Miller, thanks so much for coming on and thanks to all of you for listening to the focus group podcast. We're not going anywhere, guys. We'll be back sometime around the inauguration time for season five.
Tim Miller
This is it, though. This is the end of season four.
Sarah Longwell
Oh, yeah.
Tim Miller
You're our closest stone.
Sarah Longwell
You're our closer.
Tim Miller
Guys, I have to tell you, it's a beautiful podcast. And just the fact that Sarah does this for you every week, I mean, I just hope you appreciate it because it is unbearable to listen to these focus groups. So thank you to Sarah and to all the listeners for, you know, I don't know, this sort of nutritious podcast material.
Sarah Longwell
All right. Thanks, Tim. In the meantime, be sure to rate and review this show on Apple Podcasts and subscribe to the Bull Work on YouTube and become a Bull Work plus member at the bull work.com guys. We make a great stocking stuffer. Go give the gift of sanity and the Bull Work to all your friends and family members and have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and we will see you in.
The Focus Group Podcast: S4 Ep62: It's Not Like a Newscast (with Tim Miller) – Detailed Summary
Release Date: December 21, 2024
In the 62nd episode of Season 4 of The Focus Group Podcast, hosted by Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark, the discussion centers on the evolving landscape of media consumption among new swing voters and the rising influence of podcasts over traditional legacy media. Sarah is joined by Tim Miller, host of The Daily Bulwark podcast, to delve into how podcast listenership shapes political opinions and the broader implications for political campaigns.
Sarah Longwell opens the conversation by highlighting the shift from traditional news consumption to podcast listening among swing voters. She emphasizes the Trump team's adept use of podcasts as part of their media strategy, contrasting it with Democratic approaches.
Tim Miller responds by explaining the appeal of podcasts:
"Podcasts are kind of a natural transition from that where it's like, okay, I'm getting news, but it feels a little more natural. [04:14]"
He elaborates on how the authenticity and conversational nature of podcasts make them more relatable compared to the often rigid and scripted legacy media formats.
A central theme of the episode is trust. Both hosts discuss how podcasts foster parasocial relationships, making listeners feel connected and trusted.
Sarah Longwell notes:
"People feel like they're in. And we get this all the time. People are like, I feel like you're my friend. I feel like I know you. [09:20]"
Focus Group Participants echo this sentiment, praising Joe Rogan for making guests seem approachable and genuine. For instance:
"I kind of like the kind of people that Joe Rogan has on the show, like Elon Musk. It was kind of an interesting one to listen to some big people to get these big opinions out and open. [10:59]" – Participant 1
These authentic interactions build a level of trust that traditional media struggles to achieve, as Tim Miller discusses the democratization of media consumption:
"That is one reason. Right. Like once you've started to see people more as they exist in nature rather than as they exist on the television screen, the more that you want that. [04:14]"
The hosts critique legacy media for its perceived bias and lack of authenticity. Sarah points out the paradox within Fox News:
"Tucker Carlson ... they have reporters at the White House and ... but even they then are not alternative enough. [08:46]"
Tim Miller adds that the cottage industry of media criticism allows podcasts to undermine legacy media by highlighting their flaws:
"If it's 1987 and the Los Angeles Times writes a column ... Now it's like people get to cherry pick the worst thing that any mainstream media outlet anywhere in the world does. [04:14]"
This relentless critique erodes trust in traditional media institutions, making podcasts a more appealing source of information.
A significant portion of the discussion revolves around COVID-19 and its impact on public trust in institutions. Participants in the focus groups express skepticism about the pandemic response, mask mandates, and vaccine efficacy.
Sarah Longwell reflects on personal experiences with mask mandates:
"I remember ... my kids ... having to wear masks ... it just seems so much news coverage ... [10:33]"
Focus Group Participants share grievances, such as:
"One particular figure that I feel like should be prosecuted is Dr. Fauci ... The whole pandemic was just basically a lie. [25:38]" – Participant 4
Tim Miller acknowledges the complexity of the situation:
"There's something about human nature and the nature of human trust that makes it much more appealing to be anti the establishment, anti elite, to be giving it to the man. [37:22]"
This distrust extends to how information was disseminated during the pandemic, fueling conspiracy theories and anti-establishment sentiments.
The focus group explores opinions on various political and media figures, highlighting the nuanced trust voters place in them.
Joe Rogan is lauded for his unscripted and authentic style, fostering deeper trust:
"His podcast ... make the guests and himself also seem more approachable. [11:16]" – Participant 1
Conversely, figures like Pete Hegseth, nominated for FBI Director, receive mixed reviews. Participants express indifference to personal allegations but focus more on political credibility:
"I just, I think we need ... but I think the Democrats have lost their ability to do that. [43:07]" – Participant 3
The hosts discuss how media fragmentation affects political polarization. Sarah emphasizes the need for Democrats to replicate the podcast model to effectively reach diverse audiences:
"Republicans are going into those spaces to figure out how they inject a little bit into those audiences. [48:49]"
Tim Miller concurs, suggesting that Democrats need to create more authentic and relatable media formats akin to successful podcasts to rebuild trust:
"Not like the, oh, we need more progressive Trump sucks media. [48:49]"
This fragmentation results in echo chambers where voters consume information that reinforces their existing beliefs, further entrenching political divides.
Trust emerges as the cornerstone of the discussion. The hosts explore how building and maintaining trust is crucial for both media and political entities.
Sarah Longwell asserts:
"People trust people like me ... people trust these personalities. [21:10]"
Tim Miller reflects on the sustainability of legacy media, noting that outlets like The New York Times may survive by diversifying revenue streams but struggle with trust issues:
"So if their other reporting loses credibility, that's fine. They're still going to have their business verticals. [23:22]"
The conversation underscores the challenge legacy media faces in regaining trust in a fragmented media environment dominated by trusted podcast personalities.
In conclusion, the episode paints a complex picture of the current media landscape, highlighting the growing influence of podcasts and the diminishing trust in legacy media. The discussion emphasizes the need for media organizations, especially within the Democratic Party, to innovate and adapt by embracing authentic, relatable formats that can compete with the trust established by podcasts like Joe Rogan’s.
Tim Miller offers a cautionary perspective on the future of trust in media, suggesting that without rebuilding authentic connections, legacy media may continue to struggle:
"The main issue is trust. ... the mainstream media messes up one thing, people are like, oh, well, no, that's biased. [20:20]"
The episode closes with reflections on political accountability and the enduring trust deficit that podcasts have capitalized on, leaving legacy media to grapple with how to re-establish their role in an increasingly fragmented and trust-challenged environment.
Tim Miller on podcast authenticity:
"I feel like I'm getting a real view of the person, you know, in the interviews. [04:14]"
Focus Group Participant 3 on media skepticism:
"I am wondering how within a week they were able supposedly found the guy, but President Trump didn't? ... [25:38]"
Sarah Longwell on trust:
"People trust these personalities, which is another thing I think the media is struggling with... [21:10]"
Tim Miller on media fragmentation:
"But I think that's one element of it, and I think that's mostly good. [04:14]"
Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller provide a nuanced analysis of how podcasts have reshaped political communication and voter trust. The episode underscores the critical role of authenticity and relatability in media consumption and highlights the challenges legacy media face in adapting to this new landscape. As political campaigns increasingly recognize the importance of podcast platforms, the episode suggests that sustaining trust and engaging meaningfully with diverse audiences will be pivotal for the future of both media and politics.
For listeners interested in understanding the intricate dynamics between media consumption and political trust, this episode offers valuable insights and thoughtful analysis backed by real focus group data.