Donald Trump’s recent, brief flirtation with appointing Dana White as his press secretary showed his attempt to recapture the raw, combative energy that defined his 2024 campaign.
While the president later dismissed the idea as a joke, the instinct was clear: he is searching for a way to recapture the attention of the “manosphere”—a loosely defined cluster of male content creators who have a direct line to America’s bored and aggrieved young men.
The political marriage between Trump and the bro-media ecosystem was a defining cultural force of the 2024 election. On the night of the 2024 election, White stood at the victory podium reading out “thank yous” to the Nelk Boys, Adin Ross, Theo Von, Bussin’ With The Boys, and Joe Rogan. Trump ended up winning 63% of young white men that night.
Two years later, the political environment has fractured. In the 2026 midterms, only 43% of young white men voted for a Republican US House candidate. The transition from cultural juggernaut to political liability has left the manosphere’s most influential voices either distancing themselves from the president or openly mocking the movement that once gave them a direct line to the White House.
From Kingmakers to Critics
The disillusionment appears rooted in a blend of shifting policy priorities and a collapse of the “strongman” brand. In April, Von said that Trump’s policies around Iran were “fucking baffling” and suggested he had been compromised by the “dark government” in Israel.
Mariel Barnes, assistant professor at the La Follette School of Public Affairs who researches manosphere spaces, says that some podcasters were opposed to the Iran War for one unexpected reason. And they hate that.”
The shift is also reflected in the airtime dedicated to the president.
Analysis by Media Matters for America of nine manosphere podcasts that hosted Trump or JD Vance in 2024, including Rogan’s and Von’s, found that mentions of Trump dropped off from an average of 35 per podcast episode at the start of 2026, to just five mentions in the weeks leading up to the midterms. For many, the focus has returned to pop culture and sports.
The Politics of Masculinity
The withdrawal of support is not merely a policy disagreement; it is a fundamental aesthetic and reputational shift. “It’s true that a lot of these guys have stopped talking about Trump, but they haven’t abandoned the politics that led them to Trump in the first place,” said Seth Simons, who analyses comedy’s rightwing bent on his Substack, Humorism.
Simons said that figures like Andrew Schulz praised Nayib Bukele, the Salvadorian dictator, for his mass incarceration policies, while others, like Tim Dillon, wished that Trump had pursued a “smart” immigration policy.
The perception of Trump himself has suffered a collapse within these circles. After the midterms, Carlson told his listeners: “a lot of men who voted for Trump two years ago imagined that this was a masculine, vigorous leader. But then … here’s a guy who’s vain and venal and indecisive … he seems more like a bitchy old woman than an alpha male.”
In the darker corners of the manosphere, the repulsion was even more evident. The far-right Christian podcast NXR, for example, announced: “Maga is dead, Maga is gay … Maga is effeminate, Maga is for losers.”
The Future of the Bro-Media Circuit
The Republican Party faces a high political cost from this drift. I think our side has to pay a lot of attention to them because without them, we don’t have any media.”
While the administration plans to make winning back young men a focus of the tenure of Stephen Miller, the newly appointed White House Chief of Staff, according to Axios, the influencers themselves are facing a decline in their own reach. Research by the Sam project indicates that favorable ratings among young men have dropped by 11 points for Rogan, 12 points for Carlson, and 30 points for Tate since 2024.
John Della Vope, the director of the youth-polling firm SocialSphere, told Puck the research suggested that because the brocasters had “endorsed and basically kind of carried water for Trump and said, ‘trust us’”, they were now tied to his agenda and each of those figures has a little bit less influence among younger people.
Despite the audience fatigue and the cratering of Trump’s approval within these spaces, the underlying ideology remains a potent, independent force. “The manosphere existed before Trump got elected, it has existed independently of Donald Trump and while Maga were very successful in appealing to those kind of disaffected men, it will go on without Trump,” Barnes said.
“Manosphere participants want to know, ‘what’s going to make this better for men?’ and also ‘what is going to hurt women?’ Those are ideas that can ignite at any time.”
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