The Splintering MAGA Media Rage Machine
6/7/20261 hr 3 min
Will Sommers, author of The Bulwark's "False Flag" newsletter, sits down with Tommy to talk about the MAGA media world — including the right-wing personalities who may be considering a political future (Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens), those whose influence is crumbling (Ben Shapiro), and some of the most troubling — and strangest — rising voices. Tommy and Will then break down the ways some of MAGA's leading voices are abandoning the president, what their world will look like and whether it can even survive in a post-Trump future.
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First 90 secondsTommy Vietor· Host0:00
[upbeat music] Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Tommy Vietor. Uh, as we speak, the MAGA media world is fracturing, and many of its leading voices are desperately trying to figure out what a post-Trump MAGA movement will mean for them. For some, this is about business. They wanna know if they can maintain the same level of clicks, of ad sales, of paid promotion deals in a post-Trump political world. But for others, it's about influence and a desire to steer the Republican Party to a new place, in some cases, a much more extreme place. What we're talking about is ultimately a battle for the soul and attention of the MAGA movement, and it's being fought, as we speak, in the podcast, YouTube, and TikTok trenches, often on shows or on platforms that most Democrats have never heard of but have enormous reach and influence in conservative circles, especially younger conservative circles. So to help me understand and track where the MAGA movement is going, I'm joined today by Will Sommer from The Bulwark. Will's newsletter, False Flag, is a twice weekly deep dive into right-wing online culture and the communities around it, and it is a must-read for me every week. He has an unparalleled understanding of who makes up this world, where it's going, what they're talking