Pop culture is conservative now

Summary

Podcast Summary: Today, Explained – “Pop culture is conservative now” (Dec 12, 2025)

Overview:

This episode of Today, Explained explores the rightward shift of American pop culture in the era of President Donald Trump’s second term. Host Noel King and Max Tani (media editor at Semaphore) dissect recent headline-grabbing media mergers, Trump’s direct interventions in entertainment, and why, after decades as a tool for leftist social change, the “counterculture” has become increasingly conservative. Later, cultural critic W. David Marks explains the historical forces behind this swing, considering whether it’s a fleeting fashion or a structural change in American culture.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Media Merger Wars and Political Intrigue

Timestamps: 02:14–07:40

• Netflix Acquires Warner Brothers:
  • Netflix announced an agreement to buy Warner Bros., gaining access to major franchises (e.g., DC Universe, “Casablanca”), sparking concern over further media consolidation.
  • Paramount, under the Ellison family, responded with a hostile bid, launching a campaign to appeal directly to Warner Bros. shareholders.
• Open Political Lobbying:
  • Both Paramount (with reported backing from Jared Kushner) and Netflix actively courted President Trump and his administration to support their respective deals.
  • Trump is openly involved in the outcome, with CEOs making visits to the White House; lobbying and relationships with Trump-world figures matter more than ever.

“Trump is being overt about how he wants to be involved in this deal. He literally said in an interview, ‘I'll be involved in that decision.’”
— Max Tani (05:47)

• Trump’s Interests:
  • The Ellisons have a long relationship with Trump, but he’s also said to admire Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos. Netflix’s absence of a traditional news division is seen as a strategic advantage.

“Netflix doesn't also have a news division, so there's not like this nightly or daily stream of content that’s pissing off the administration and the White House.”
— Max Tani (07:24)

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2. Presidential Influence on Pop Culture

Timestamps: 07:40–12:13

• Rush Hour 4 and Rehabilitation in Hollywood:
  • Trump lobbied the Ellisons to reboot the “Rush Hour” film franchise, in part due to personal ties with Brett Ratner (the original director, now close to the Trumps and directing a Melania Trump documentary).
  • The Trump-era approach often foregrounds figures sidelined by #MeToo or other controversies, as part of an explicit anti-‘woke’ agenda.

“Trump has no scruples, and many of the people in his circles have very few scruples about bringing back or working with people who've been credibly accused of serious misconduct.”
— Max Tani (09:54)

• Trump’s Tastes and Hollywood Allies:
  • Trump is described as having eclectic, nostalgia-driven cultural tastes — a blend of Broadway show tunes and classic macho action movies from the 1980s and 90s.
  • Notably, his “Hollywood Council” features Stallone, Gibson, and Jon Voight.

“He’s definitely proven he is interested in this kind of testosterone-fueled version of the world…he’s a classic fan of both Broadway and macho movies and movie stars from the 80s and 90s.”
— Max Tani (11:26)

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3. The Triumph of the “Red Lash” in Pop Culture

Timestamps: 12:04–13:45

• Cultural Vindication for the Right:
  • Trump’s reelection (2024) was seen by supporters as cultural as much as political victory, fuelled by the rise of independent podcasters and manosphere figures openly backing him.
  • There’s a belief that anti-Trump “gatekeeper” culture has lost relevance with the broader public.

“They saw this as a vindication that this was really the mainstream culture...the popularity of country music, bro podcasters, and Trump's reelection and said: this is mainstream American culture.”
— Max Tani (13:23)

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4. How the Counterculture Swung Right – With W. David Marks

Timestamps: 16:18–24:47

• Vice Magazine & Transgressive Conservatism:
  • Marks traces the emergence of a right-wing counterculture back to Vice's early 2000s downtown New York scene, where founder Gavin McInnes began injecting right-wing, racially transgressive content as a form of rebellion.

“In the 21st century, if you want to be transgressive, which is a big part of cool, the right wing supplies more fuel for that.”
— David Marks (17:19)

• Pop Culture’s Liberal Years and the Inevitable Backlash:
  • Under Bush, antiwar, anti-right sentiment dominated with examples like Green Day and Michael Moore. The Obama years saw earnest, poptimist culture triumph: Taylor Swift, “Glee,” “Girls.”
  • Post-Obama, alienated conservatives felt sidelined by Hollywood’s liberal values, fueling demand for an oppositional pop culture.

“A giant swath of the United States [was] feeling like they were being left out of the culture and...wanted someone to come back into power and give them a little bit more symbolic glory.”
— David Marks (20:06)

• Transgression Cycles and Coolness:
  • Coolness requires an authority to rebel against, and with liberalism as the mainstream, genuine transgression became more right-leaning.
  • Conservative figures like Charlie Kirk turned traditional rebellion on its head — now, going to church and abstaining is “countercultural.”

“So much of conservative politics, all it is, is counter imitation. Now we're at a point where premarital sex and drugs are not taboo anymore. And so, if you want to show that you're not part of that group, you do the opposite.”
— David Marks (22:19)

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5. Will the Pendulum Swing Back?

Timestamps: 23:08–25:22

• Cringe Resistance and Changing Fashion:
  • Marks observes that anti-Trump demonstrations (e.g., the “No Kings” rallies) are seen as “normie” and lack pop culture punch, while the cultural memory of the Women’s March resistance (with Beyoncé and “pussy hats”) is recent but feels outdated.
  • Until a new, truly transgressive left-leaning movement emerges, the conservative cultural moment may endure.

“There was more of a linkage between pop culture and the resistance in 2016. And I think we're not quite there in terms of pop culture going back to full resistance mode. That's still in people's memory quite fresh. And there is something cringe about it in that it feels like an old, stale fashion trend.”
— David Marks (24:47)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Trump had been talking to Larry Ellison, saying that he should bring back this buddy cop comedy series [Rush Hour]…I was like, this is too good to be true. And it turned out it was exactly true.”
  — Max Tani (08:18)

• “He's a classic fan of both Broadway and macho movies and movie stars from the 80s and 90s.”
  — Max Tani (11:26)

• “If you have transgressiveness be the central value of popular culture…and that coolness is the supreme virtue of consumer culture, then…transgressiveness obviously can be re-empowered and reinvigorated on the right.”
  — David Marks (21:02)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• 02:14 — Max Tani introduces the media mergers
• 05:47 — Trump directly comments: “I'll be involved in that decision.”
• 09:23 — Discussion of Brett Ratner and the #MeToo rehabilitation trend
• 12:13 — “Red lash” and the triumph of conservative pop culture
• 16:18 — W. David Marks segment begins
• 20:06 — Conservatives feel "left out" and seek a return to symbolic glory
• 22:19 — The logic of countercultural shifts: church as rebellion
• 24:47 — Why culturally “cringe” resistance hinders a leftwards swing

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Conclusion

Pop culture is conservative now reveals how power, rebellion, and the definition of “cool” have flipped. As Trump’s administration entangles itself in Hollywood and right-wing influencers become cultural vanguards, the idea of what’s edgy or mainstream is rewritten. While history suggests the pendulum could yet swing again, for now, the right is both the establishment and the counterculture — at least in the world of pop.

Transcript

[Noel King]

President Trump said many wild things this year, but one of the wildest was on Pod Force One where he talked about this multi day aptitude test he took at the age of like 11 or 12.

[Donald Trump]

They said, you, son is brilliant at music. He'd be an incredible musician. Alas, this is not what my father wanted to hear.

[Noel King]

Right out of college, Trump tried producing Broadway shows. And he has taste. You can argue about whether it's good taste, but Trump loves music and movies and architecture, lol. And he's been using his time in office to shape popular culture. The culture was already moving, right? It was embracing the trads and the chads. And so in the waning days of 2025, we're looking at how the counterculture, long the province of lefties and hippies, moved swiftly and sharply. Right. And we're gonna ask if it'll ever move back. That's coming up on today's.

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[Noel King]

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[Max Tani]

Today is going to be explained. See you. My name is Max Tawny. I'm the media editor at Semaphore and I'm the co host of our media podcast Mixed Signals.

[Noel King]

So we have Warner Brothers, we have Netflix, we have Paramount. Walk us through what exactly happened here.

[Max Tani]

So Netflix announced that it was acquiring Warner Brothers.

[David Marks]

Netflix has inked a deal with Warner Brothers Discovery.

[Max Tani]

Netflix is about to buy Warner Brothers and it's actually a huge deal for the Lord of the Rings community. Let me explain. I hate this. I don't want fewer studios. I want more studios. This goes back to earlier this summer when the Ellison family finalized its purchase of Paramount. As soon as the merger was completed, they moved and turned their attention to Warner Brothers.

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Warner Bros.

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Rejected not one but two bids from Paramount.

[Paramount/Corporate Representative]

Paramount made three bids to buy the company over the past couple of weeks.

[Max Tani]

It has now made six different offers for Warner Brothers discovery. It's been rejected each time. So they made this attempt to kind of to quickly combine with Warner Brothers with the idea that then they could be a true competitor in streaming with Netflix. Netflix, on the other hand, realized, saw that this was coming and also saw an opportunity to get its hands on one of the major Hollywood entertainment companies in the Warner Brothers studios, which has produced some of the most iconic series and franchises and movies in the world. You know, Casablanca is looking at you, kid. They have the rights to the DC Cinematic Universe, which is Batman. Why so serious? As well as a lot of prestige television in hbo, in the Sopranos. All this from a slice of Gabagool and White Lotus.

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[Max Tani]

These great television properties. And in the end, I think a lot of people see this as the CEO of Warner Brothers, David Zaslav, preferring the bid from Netflix.

[Noel King]

And yet Paramount being Paramount, the Ellisons being the Ellisons, had to respond. How did they respond when Netflix won?

[Max Tani]

They announced that they were launching a hostile takeover attempt of Warner Brothers and that they were going to essentially appeal directly to the Warner Brothers shareholders saying that they have a better deal.

[David Marks]

It appears that maybe the seventh time is the charm for Paramount.

[Paramount/Corporate Representative]

We literally submitted three thirty dollars a share in cash. Never got a phone call, never got a response. And that's why we're here today. We're here to finish, to make sure that we can take directly to shareholders the offer that we sent to the board. So you never got a response.

[Max Tani]

They've offered an all cash bid for the entire company. So Paramount is saying, hey, we're willing to go directly to shareholders. They're also hinting that they have a better relationship with the Trump administration and federal regulators. It was revealed this week that Jared Kushner is one of the individuals who is providing some money backing Paramount's did for Warner Brothers discovery. Trump, crucially, when he was asked about this this week, said, I don't know.

[Donald Trump]

I've never spoken to him.

[Max Tani]

We don't really know if that's true or not.

[Noel King]

There is a world in which the President of the United States is not remotely involved in business dealings such as these. However, that is not the world in which we live. Donald Trump is the president and he is involved here. How exactly?

[Max Tani]

Trump is being overt about how he wants to be involved in this deal. He literally said in an interview, I'll.

[Donald Trump]

Be involved in that decision.

[Max Tani]

All of the parties who are, who have some sort of a stake in this deal are acting that way as well and appealing to Trump. Ted Sarandos, the CEO of Netflix, has made multiple trips to the White House, one in which he met with Trump and talked about this. The Ellisons, David and Larry Ellison, have both appealed to Trump, saying, arguing their side of this situation. Both sides are staffing up with lobbyists and people who are from Trump's orbit, thinking that they can kind of get the inside track that way. And Trump is repeatedly kind of weighing in here, saying that he is going to take a look and that he is concerned about some monopoly situations. At least in the case of Netflix.

[Donald Trump]

I have to see what percentage of market they have.

[Max Tani]

But that, as he, as he put.

[Donald Trump]

It, none of them are particularly great friends of mine.

[Noel King]

You know, the narrative around the Ellisons, you know, a month ago, two months ago, was Donald Trump is friends with the Ellisons and he is going to allow them to get what they want. Here they are. Ted Sarandos and Netflix do not seem to have accepted that as fact. And so it's worth asking, Max, what. What does Trump want here?

[Max Tani]

Hilariously enough, that's the big question and the one that none of us really know the answer to. You're right that the Ellisons have a long standing, good relationship with Trump, and that's something that they've made no secret of. And Trump has spoken very highly of the Ellisons and said that he really liked the way that they were stewarding Paramount. On the flip side, Trump has been reporting, reportedly has been very impressed by Ted Sarandos and seems to like him. And, you know, crucially enough, Netflix doesn't also have a news division, so there's not like this nightly or daily stream of content that's pissing off the administration and the White House. And so I think that that also plays a role here.

[Noel King]

All right, so President Trump clearly wants to be involved at 3,000ft in the business of all of this. But the President recently has also expressed some interest in being in the mix of what is getting made in Hollyw and elsewhere. Tell me about Rush Hour four, Max.

[Max Tani]

Yeah, so last month I got this amazing tip that, that Donald Trump had been telling people that he was lobbying the Ellisons to make another installment of the movie Rush Hour.

[David Marks]

The amount will be $50 million.

[Max Tani]

$50 million. And who you think you kidnapped Chelsea Clinton? It was one of those tips that I was like, this is too good to be true. There's just no way. And it turned out it was exactly true. Trump had been talking to Larry Ellison, saying that he should bring back this buddy cop comedy series starring Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker. And, you know, it kind of raised some questions for me, like, is Trump a huge fan of this series? Is he, like, watching the reruns of this on TNT or something? But actually, it turned out, as it all, as many things do with Trump, to have a lot to do with his own personal relationships. The longtime kind of overseer, creator, director of the Rush Hour series, Brett Ratner, also has a personal connection to Trump. He is the director of this upcoming Amazon documentary about Melania Trump. I have heard that he spent more time hanging around Mar A Lago and has a friendly relationship. The president. One imagines that that played a certain role here.

[Noel King]

Brett Ratner kind of got drummed out of Hollywood because he was credibly accused of sexual misconduct. And this is one of those things that, for the Trump administration, feels like a bit of a hobby horse. You find someone who's been accused of, you know, me too, or racism or whatever, and you're like, the woke warriors went wild. This never should have happened. Do you see the attempted rehabilitation of Mr. Ratner as like, part of a whole when we talk about the Trump administration's approach to culture?

[Max Tani]

I think that certainly Trump has no scruples, and many of the people in his circles have very few scruples about bringing back or working with people who've been credibly accused of serious misconduct. And they found that often some of these folks have common enemies in the kind of censorious media, as they kind of put it. I think also in a certain way, they feel that some of these figures can be kind of like, acquired on the cheap, essentially. And you see this in a lot of cases with people who. Trump, who gets close to Mel Gibson, who has not been accused of those things, as far as I know, you guys maybe should check that. The comedian Russell Brand and others certainly.

[Noel King]

What do we know about what kind of culture President Trump really likes?

[Max Tani]

Donald Trump's taste in culture and entertainment really is all over the place with a few uniting themes. I would say Trump loves classic action, macho kind of content. You see this with the people who are on his Hollywood Council. Sylvester Stallone. Hi, my name is Rocky Balboa. Their tires tie. Jon Voight.

[Donald Trump]

Do not tell me it can't be done.

[Max Tani]

Mel Gibson. They may take our lives, but they'll.

[Donald Trump]

Never take our freedom.

[Max Tani]

He's definitely proven that he is interested in this kind of Testosterone fueled version of the world. Now that doesn't keep him from blasting Cats. It's so easy to leave me in the Phantom of the Opera. Think of me, think of me fondly at campaign events and at the White House. But he's a classic fan of both Broadway and macho movies and movie stars from the 80s and 90s.

[Noel King]

You wrote that Trump's return to power marked the triumph of a cultural red lash that has been brewing for years. What did you mean?

[Max Tani]

I think a lot of people close to Trump and a lot of people who supported him believed that 2024 and his reelection was a vindication of their worldview. And they saw this in the strength of the growth of independent podcasters and the kind of manosphere figures like Joe Rogan and Theo Vaughn and their willingness to openly support Trump and kind of chop it up.

[Donald Trump]

So you weigh up with cocaine more than anything else you can think of.

[Max Tani]

Cocaine will turn you into a damn owl, homie. You know what I'm saying?

[Donald Trump]

I always got more publicity than other people and I didn't. It wasn't like I was trying. In fact, I don't know exactly why. Maybe you can tell me why.

[David Marks]

Oh, I can definitely tell you.

[Max Tani]

You said a lot of wild shit. They saw this as a vindication that this was really the mainstream culture and that, you know, kind of this anti Trump culture cultural backlash that had kind of emanated from the traditional gatekeepers in Hollywood and these other place just had lost some currency with a lot of mainstream Americans. They pointed at the popularity of country music. There's been these big debates over whether people like Morgan Wallen, is he kind of a Trump supporter? I think that a lot of people who like Trump and are very pleased by this have pointed at all of those signs and the popularity of country music, bro podcasters and Trump's reelection and said this is mainstream American culture.

[Noel King]

That was Semaphore's Max Tani. Coming up, everyone's a critic. Jk, jk, jk. But our next guest is and he's going to explain how culture moved so far to the right.

[Max Tani]

Foreign.

[Noel King]

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[Max Tani]

Mm.

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[Noel King]

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[Noel King]

Today Explained W. David Marks, no relation, is a cultural critic and author of the new book Blank Space, A Cultural history of the 21st century. So David writes that in the waning years of the 20th century, pop culture got very stale. That dominant culture was liberal, it was centrist, it was Clintonian. And so, so a counterculture emerged, embodied.

[David Marks]

By Vice magazine and Vice magazine in the 21st century in New York City was, you know, primarily a hedonistic and nihilistic kind of downtown subcultural product. But Gavin McInnes, one of the founders, started inserting very quietly these right wing transgressive ideas into it. But what I enjoy most is infiltrating different subcultures to figure out what really makes them tick. And that started with with boldly using racial slurs in which he, you know, became very controversial. I don't think there's anyone who knows Gavin in any way that hasn't heard him drop the N bomb.

[Max Tani]

Oh, constantly.

[Donald Trump]

He loves it.

[Max Tani]

Yeah.

[David Marks]

But then also doing a essay for the American Conservative in which he said he was going to convert hipsters to conservatism.

[Max Tani]

Finally, the dumb community's days are numbered. Young liberals are slowly but surely being replaced with a new breed of kid that isn't afraid to embrace conservatism.

[David Marks]

I don't think necessarily that everything starts from there, but it begins the idea that in the 21st century, if you want to be transgressive, which is a big part of cool, that right wing supplies more fuel for that. And so then you get to 4chan and these Internet anonymous Internet sites where people are trying to be as transgressive as possible, and where they end up is being often quite bigoted and anti liberal. And as that kind of, you know, snowballs into the broader culture, there, there's the sense, you know, with, with the ascendancy of woke to break the chains of this liberal oppression that we have to be very conservative. And so white men in particular have kind of re embraced this transgressiveness as their call to power.

[Noel King]

What leads me to look at something like Vice at that time and think, oh, that's so cool. I'm having a response to what came before, what was it?

[David Marks]

So I think especially in the Bush years, with the Iraq war and the Iraq war being increasingly a disaster, you have things like Green Day's American Idiot, don't wanna be an American Idiot, Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9 11. Of course, not a single member of.

[Max Tani]

Congress wanted to sacrifice their child for the war in Iraq.

[David Marks]

Hail to the Thief, the Radiohead album. So this kind of anti Bush sentiment powers a lot of the pop culture that is happening. Obama really comes out of that groundswell of looking for somebody who can be a new form of resistance against conservatives. Yes we can. Yes we can. And yet the culture that follows from those years, I think is more marked by what you would call kind of poptimist music and culture, which is a real kind of embrace of earnestness and straightforward pop and melodies. And so you have things like Katy Perry's California Girls, you have the rise of Taylor Swift, and you have shows.

[Max Tani]

Like Glee, 25% show tunes, 25% hip hop, 25% classic rock, 100% gay.

[David Marks]

Ideas of liberal inclusivity did float to the top. HBO Girls is kind of like a hybrid of that Vice aesthetic and the earnestness.

[Max Tani]

I am 13 pounds overweight and it.

[Noel King]

Has been awful for me my whole life.

[David Marks]

The kind of anti liberal side of the right wing was getting more and more alienated from what they're seeing on TV or the music they're listening to which is it did not reflect their particular values. And so, so much of the backlash against the Obama years was not just even a political one. It was a cultural one. A giant swath of the United States feeling like they were being left out of the culture and that they really wanted someone to come back into power and give them a little bit more symbolic glory. And it's easy to see Trump in those kind of cultural terms. So in many ways, this swing to the right is inevitable. There's just a natural pendulum swing. If you have transgressiveness be the central value of popular culture and that coolness is the supreme virtue of consumer culture, then if you have a sense that liberals have the power, and that power can be political power, it could be economic power, it could be cultural power, then transgressiveness obviously can be re empowered and reinvigorated on the right because they're fighting against that system.

[Noel King]

I remember hearing someone talk about Charlie Kirk after he was assassinated, and they characterized it as he would go to a college campus and say, you are allowed to have sex out of wedlock. You are allowed to drink. You are allowed to do drugs. You are allowed to do everything that the kids in the 60s and 70s like, marched in the streets so that they could do. Like, this was cool, but it's not anymore, because you don't have to fight. You don't have to fight the authorities to have sex with your boyfriend or girlfriend. You don't have to fight the authorities to smoke weed. The. The true. The true rebellious thing is to get married. The truly rebellious thing is to go to church. The truly rebellious thing is to not smoke weed. Help me understand the relationship between a guy like Charlie Kirk. Understanding kids today don't need to rebel to smoke weed. They actually need to rebel and tell their parents, like, guys, we're gonna go to church. And where this country is, politically.

[David Marks]

Culture is about conventional decision making. And so there's a part of everything we do where we're asking, you know, what is the group that we're in and what is the beliefs that we have? You know, we imitate the people in our group at the same time. What that breeds is something called counter imitation, which is that a group that says, we're not. That group just does the opposite practice to show that they're different. And so I think so much of conservative politics, all it is, is counter imitation. Now we're at a point where premarital sex and drugs are not taboo anymore. And so if you want to show that you're not part of that group. You do the opposite of that. And so the idea that it is to be cool and rebellious by going to church is just a very simple counter imitation of the counter imitation.

[Noel King]

So at the end of the day, the pendulum is going to keep swinging, right. President Trump may be in the Oval Office demanding to have Rush Hour 4 and doing whatever he's doing at the Ken, but I wonder if already we're 12 months into his second term. I wonder if already you see the pendulum starting to swing back in the other direction. Or do you think a kind of conservative culture will hold on for a while longer, be cool and transgressive for a while longer?

[David Marks]

I do think the fashion trend, and it really is, feels like a fashion of being anti liberal, has some legs in the sense that if you compare the women's march and the no Kings rallies. No Kings. The general aesthetic sense of that rally is that it is boomers. It's people's parents. It's very normie.

[Noel King]

So we now move on to the antiquefa portion of our coverage of the no Kings of rally.

[Max Tani]

These inflatable suits, everywhere you go, people are partying. Where'd you get that suit? I bought it. Amazon. But, you know, I don't really.

[David Marks]

It doesn't really have this kind of pop culture edge to it. And then you go back to the Women's March, massive crowd of women marching behind me. This is the front line and they're pretty amped.

[Max Tani]

Donald Trump has got to go.

[Donald Trump]

Hey, hey.

[David Marks]

Obviously, there's the use of Beyonce's formation as kind of a major pop cultural moment there. There's the pussy hat. And then you have things like Black Lives Matter protest and Kendrick Lamar's all right being associated with that.

[Max Tani]

We gonna be all right.

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We gonna be all right.

[Max Tani]

We gonna be all right.

[David Marks]

So there was more of a linkage between pop culture and the resistance in 2016. And I think we're not quite there in terms of pop culture going back to full resistance mode that's still in people's memory quite fresh. And there is something cringe about it in that it feels like an old, stale fashioned trend. And so really, until that gets forgotten or there's a new kind of resistance that does feel properly transgressive, I think it'd be hard for this political wave against Trump to be fully enmeshed in a pop cultural moment.

[Noel King]

W. David Marks. His book is Blank Space, A Cultural history of the 21st century. Peter Ballanon Rosen produced today's show. Jolie Myers edited Laura Bullard checked the facts Patrick Boyd and David Tadashore engineered. Many thanks to Vox's Constance Grady, Kendall Cunningham and Christian Paul. Cause I'm Noel King. It's Today Explained.

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