Anti-Trump podcast MeidasTouch is rivaling Joe Rogan for views : NPR

[ad_1] <img src="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/4500x3000+0+0/resize/1100/quality/50/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F3f%2F94%2Fe59a1cba492b878b2b5a4445279d%2Fms-benmeiselas-0090.jpg" data-template="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/4500x3000+0+0/resize/{width}/quality/{quality}/format/{format}/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F3f%2F94%2Fe59a1cba492b878b2b5a4445279d%2Fms-benmeiselas-0090.jpg" class="img" alt="Ben Meiselas at his home in Los Angeles, CA on August 8, 2025." fetchpriority="high"/> Ben Meiselas in his house studio in Los Angeles. His left-leaning media outfit MeidasTouch has surged in Donald Trump's second time period, interesting to progressives outraged by the president. Maggie Shannon for NPR cover caption

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Maggie Shannon for NPR Ben Meiselas is pacing in entrance of his house within the foothills of the Verdugo Mountains in Los Angeles, speaking on the cellphone with one hand, a Starbucks espresso cup within the different.

He wraps his name. He has 588 unread textual content messages. However he is interested by one thing else: his frenetic YouTube schedule.

"We can have already had a video up at 4 a.m., 5:30 a.m., 7, and eight:30 is coming," Meiselas stated.

As he enters his home, three Maltese terriers scuttle round. Meiselas walks to his workplace behind glass doorways. An elevated laptop computer sits on a desk, a digital camera is affixed to a tripod and shiny lights stand on both aspect. That is the place he does his day by day dissections of President Trump's actions and phrases. It is all off the cuff, a ability he honed throughout his earlier profession as a trial lawyer.

"The perfect opening statements I've ever given weren't scripted. The perfect closing arguments weren't scripted," he stated.

He knocks out a 14-minute video riffing on the day's information, largely Trump-bashing commentary. He sends it to his group to edit. Then he grabs his cellphone to workshop a title in a gaggle chat with MeidasTouch staffers. He settles on "Trump has DISASTER THURSDAY as WALLS CLOSE IN," abiding by the all-caps model that has develop into a signature of movies by MeidasTouch, the prolific progressive media operation he runs together with his two brothers.

It isn't misplaced on Meiselas that Trump, his primary goal, made the identical all-caps textual content model well-known on social media.

"It's important to combat fireplace with fireplace lately," stated Meislas with amusing.

'I feel we'd like the other of Joe Rogan' MeidasTouch stands out in an internet streaming world dominated by conservatives and what's develop into generally known as "the manosphere," a group of on-line content material creators geared towards male audiences and led by Joe Rogan.

It is one of many few left-leaning video podcasts topping YouTube's rankings, and it has even, at occasions, dethroned Rogan's coveted No. 1 place on the platform's podcast charts. That is prompted some to wonder if Meiselas will develop into the Rogan of the left, a query he has uninterested in however solutions anyway.

"Folks needed me to be that," he stated. "I feel we'd like the other of Joe Rogan."

Although Meiselas claims he is much less divisive than Rogan, the MeidasTouch strategy will not be aimed toward bridging political variations. It is unapologetically partisan, like an amped-up MSNBC. However Meiselas rejects the comparability. He says he does not share any DNA with cable information, declaring that he does not maintain debates with the political opposition. That is by design. Persons are sick of cable information political roundtables, he says.

"They nonetheless assume that folks wish to see the cut up display. This is the left. This is the correct. Watch them combat. Let's go to a business break. Folks do not wish to see that, I feel, any extra," Meiselas stated.

Thousands and thousands do nonetheless eat cable information day-after-day, but MeidasTouch is a formidable competitor.

Figures from YouTube Meiselas shared with NPR present that the MeidasTouch YouTube channel attracts round 300 million views every month, across the identical as Fox Information and MSNBC obtain on YouTube month-to-month.

Meiselas and his brothers, Brett (a former video editor for The Ellen DeGeneres Present) and Jordy (who beforehand labored in advertising), together with about 30 different contributors — together with former Trump lawyer turned critic Michael Cohen — pump out movies on YouTube about each 90 minutes and blanket different platforms, together with Instagram, TikTok and Substack, with their content material.

<img src="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/6000x4000+0+0/resize/1100/quality/50/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F6a%2F59%2Ff939904e469695af0ca87c8f7b71%2Fgettyimages-2214791313.jpg" data-template="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/6000x4000+0+0/resize/{width}/quality/{quality}/format/{format}/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F6a%2F59%2Ff939904e469695af0ca87c8f7b71%2Fgettyimages-2214791313.jpg" class="img" alt="Jordan Meiselas, Ben Meiselas and Brett Meiselas at the 29th Annual Webby Awards on May 12, 2025 in New York City." loading="lazy"/> Jordan Meiselas, Ben Meiselas and Brett Meiselas on the twenty ninth Annual Webby Awards on Might 12, 2025 in New York Metropolis. Dave Kotinsky/Getty Pictures cover caption

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Dave Kotinsky/Getty Pictures Different well-liked progressive media corporations together with Pod Save America, Extra Excellent Union and the Younger Turks are additionally capitalizing on the second Trump presidency, however whether or not it is the Meiselas brothers' affable personalities, the sheer quantity of content material, their knack for working the algorithms, or some undetermined mixture, MeidasTouch is the pacesetter of the pack.

Meiselas says viewers take pleasure in the best way he zooms in on the usually rambling asides of Trump's speeches — what Trump has described as his "weave" — which Meiselas says many of the mainstream media ignores.

"They'd say, 'Donald Trump is speaking about making issues inexpensive.' And I would watch these speeches and be like, 'Actually did you watch these speeches that I simply watched?' That is not what he stated. Perhaps that was thirty seconds. Why'd you do his work for him? You edited the speech to present him the perfect 30-second soundbite," he stated. "That was the craziest speech I've ever seen."

From political adverts to streaming powerhouse Initially from Lengthy Island, Meiselas, 40, the eldest of the brothers, was in his authorized profession drawn to high-profile instances that thrust him into the highlight. He represented former NFL quarterback and racial injustice activist Colin Kaepernick, and he filed a class-action lawsuit for attendees of the ill-planned Fyre Competition.

Throughout Trump's first time period, within the midst of the pandemic, the brothers shaped a political motion committee and launched political adverts mocking Trump that went viral on-line. Ultimately, they morphed the political operation right into a rapid-response anti-Trump information group, which is now being supercharged within the president's second time period.

MeidasTouch is raking in hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in promoting income a 12 months — Meiselas would not say precisely how a lot — by tapping into an viewers of annoyed progressives, a few of whom really feel deserted by conventional media.

<img src="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/4500x3000+0+0/resize/1100/quality/50/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fa3%2F0a%2F390a80b4432a950e4a5b8c89e625%2Fms-benmeiselas-0197.jpg" data-template="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/4500x3000+0+0/resize/{width}/quality/{quality}/format/{format}/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fa3%2F0a%2F390a80b4432a950e4a5b8c89e625%2Fms-benmeiselas-0197.jpg" class="img" alt="Ben Meiselas at his home in Los Angeles, CA." loading="lazy"/> Meiselas sees his position as not simply an up to date model of a political shock jock, however as somebody who's informing the general public. Maggie Shannon for NPR cover caption

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Maggie Shannon for NPR "The viewers is transferring in these instructions. And a lot of mainstream information organizations simply are usually not geared up to attraction to them on the sorts of phrases as these folks may need," stated Invoice Grueskin, a professor at Columbia College College of Journalism and a former editor at The Wall Avenue Journal.

In Trump's first time period, retailers together with The Washington Publish and MSNBC acquired what analysts known as a "Trump bump" for confronting the president and his insurance policies. This time round, on-line streamers are rising as the largest winners, Grueskin stated.

"There are simply a number of sources of shock day-after-day," he stated. "And outrage is a really highly effective driver of subscriptions, of loyalty, of individuals's time."

On high of that, as a result of on-line streamers are usually not certain to the journalism trade's requirements of equity and neutrality, they will clarify and touch upon the information in edgier and extra livid methods than most mainstream retailers, stated Edward Wasserman, journalism professor on the Graduate College of Journalism on the College of California, Berkeley.

"I do not assume the media are ready to do this. They'll present the ammunition for that type of assault on Trump, however they cannot actually give it a voice the best way these podcast folks can."

Meiselas views his position within the information ecosystem in considerably lofty phrases — not simply as an up to date model of a political shock jock, however as an impartial voice informing the general public in regards to the happenings in Washington.

He argues audiences will nonetheless flock to his media outfit lengthy after Trump leaves workplace, even when the president is now the central driver of his enterprise.

"I do not assume that the thought of being up to date and consuming information and being educated is ever going to go away. Sadly, there's at all times going to be threats to democracy, to peoples' freedoms, to peoples' rights," Meiselas stated, sounding like the previous civil rights lawyer he's. "There's the day-to-day response of making an attempt to place out fires, however then there's the generational constructing. We're making an attempt to maintain this community constructing."