In the aftermath of President-Elect Donald Trump’s overwhelming victory, both the left and the right have a strong interest in believing, or at least claiming, that ‘new media,’ such as social media platform X and Joe Rogan’s podcast was the secret to Trump’s success.
The problem is, that from what voters told me over the last three months, it just isn’t true.
First, let’s look at why both sides are motivated to believe that these alternative media sources were decisive. After all, wrong though they may be, it is a rare thing that Democrats and Republicans seem to agree on.
For the Harris camp and its media allies blaming Elon Musk’s X platform, or the universe of edgy, allegedly right-wing podcasts for flooding the zone with ‘disinformation,’ is a perfect excuse for how spectacularly incorrect they were about this election.
Instead of acknowledging that their incessant yammering about threats to democracy and Trump being a felon landed on voters’ deaf ears because those voters were worried about the economy and the border, the MSNBCs of the world want Elon Musk to be the problem.
Likewise, on the right we hear claims that legacy media is dead, that it is the age of citizen journalists and that this sea change portends long-lasting power for the populist GOP of Donald Trump.
To both sides, I would say not so fast.
It was the American people who decided this election, not podcasts, not X posts, and not influencer campaigns. It came down to two basic things; 70% of voters think the country is on the wrong track, and Kamala Harris was a horrible candidate.
‘I spent $100 on two bags of groceries,’ Carol, in her 70s, told me in Bedford, Pa., back in early October. That very day, she was mailing in her normally non-voting husband’s registration.
Among the hundreds of voters I spoke to, it was by far the top issue, and in places like Bedford, they don’t need the old media or the new media to tell them what they can plainly see on their grocery bills.
As to Harris’ laughable lack of political chops, it was like the soundtrack of my travels through the election.
‘I do wish she would do more interviews,’ one Democrat, a photographer in his 60s, told me in August in Harrisonburg, Va.
Fast-forward to late October and in Scranton, Pa., I had a paid Harris canvasser say to me, ‘I don’t know why she can’t answer any questions.’
But what about Trump’s success with Gen Z men? Surely, it is insisted, that was down to the Dark MAGA universe of podcasts and influencers, right?
Well, I spoke with a lot of men in their 20s voting for Trump, and none of these internet celebrities ever came up. What did come up was their frustration with a woke culture that had demonized them just for being men.
But they knew that before any streamer ever told them.
Allow me to strongly suggest that it wasn’t popular podcasters and influencers who made Gen Z more conservative, it was Gen Z already being more conservative that made these podcasters and influencers popular.
Who or what gets credit or blame for an election result only matters insofar as it offers lessons going forward, and it is fairly obvious that the left blaming Elon Musk and new media is the wrong lesson to draw.
But as easy as it is for the losing side to learn the wrong lessons, it is far easier and more consequential for the winning side to do so. Victory, they say, has a thousand fathers, but about 950 of them didn’t really contribute much.
It would be a grave mistake for Republicans to think that new media won them this race. In fact, this turned out to be a pretty standard bread and butter issues election that Harris would have lost in any media environment.
Voters handed Republicans this big win so that they would do two basic things: bring down prices and secure the border. They don’t really want to hear about moving the Department of Environmental Protection to Oklahoma, or decimating the deep state, as fine as those ideas may be.
Presidential mandates such as the one Trump has now, are like hiring a guy to fix up stuff around your house. If you tell him the sink and toilet are broken and he proceeds to improve your roof, refinish your basement, and widen your deck, but the sink and toilet still don’t work, you get a new handyman.
If Republicans can make life cheaper and fix the border then voters will reward them, no matter where they get their news. If not, then Elon Musk and Joe Rogan, will not be enough to stave off eventual defeat.