Anti-Trump podcast MeidasTouch is rivaling Joe Rogan for perspectives : NPR via NewsFlicks

Ben Meiselas in his house studio in Los Angeles. His left-leaning media outfit MeidasTouch has surged in Donald Trump’s moment time period, interesting to progressives outraged via the president.

Maggie Shannon for NPR

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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 at the telephone with one hand, a Starbucks espresso cup within the different.

He wraps his name. He has 588 unread textual content messages. However he is occupied with one thing else: his frenetic YouTube time table.

“We will be able to have already had a video up at 4 a.m., 5:30 a.m., 7, and eight:30 is coming,” Meiselas mentioned.

As he enters his area, 3 Maltese terriers scuttle round. Meiselas walks to his administrative center at the back of glass doorways. An increased computer sits on a table, a digital camera is affixed to a tripod and vibrant lighting stand on all sides. That is the place he does his day-to-day dissections of President Trump’s movements and phrases. It is all off the cuff, a ability he honed throughout his earlier profession as an ordeal legal professional.

“The most productive opening statements I have ever given weren’t scripted. The most productive last arguments weren’t scripted,” he mentioned.

He knocks out a 14-minute video riffing at the day’s information, most commonly Trump-bashing remark. He sends it to his group to edit. Then he grabs his telephone to workshop a identify in a bunch chat with MeidasTouch staffers. He settles on “Trump has DISASTER THURSDAY as WALLS CLOSE IN,” abiding via the all-caps taste that has develop into a signature of movies via MeidasTouch, the prolific modern media operation he runs along with his two brothers.

It is not misplaced on Meiselas that Trump, his major goal, made the similar all-caps textual content taste well-known on social media.

“You must struggle fireplace with fireplace in this day and age,” mentioned Meislas with amusing.

‘I believe we’d like the other of Joe Rogan’

MeidasTouch stands proud in an on-line streaming global ruled via conservatives and what is develop into referred to as “the manosphere,” a choice of on-line content material creators aimed toward male audiences and led via Joe Rogan.

It is probably the most few left-leaning video podcasts topping YouTube’s scores, and it has even, from time to time, dethroned Rogan’s coveted No. 1 place at the platform’s podcast charts. That is caused some to wonder if Meiselas will develop into the Rogan of the left, a query he has uninterested in however solutions anyway.

“Folks sought after me to be that,” he mentioned. “I believe we’d like the other of Joe Rogan.”

Despite the fact that Meiselas claims he is much less divisive than Rogan, the MeidasTouch method isn’t aimed toward bridging political variations. It is unapologetically partisan, like an amped-up MSNBC. However Meiselas rejects the comparability. He says he does not proportion any DNA with cable information, mentioning that he does not dangle debates with the political opposition. That is via design. Persons are unwell of cable information political roundtables, he says.

“They nonetheless assume that individuals wish to see the cut up display screen. This is the left. This is the fitting. Watch them struggle. Let’s move to a business wreck. Folks do not wish to see that, I believe, to any extent further,” Meiselas mentioned.

Tens of millions do nonetheless eat cable information on a daily basis, but MeidasTouch is an impressive competitor.

Figures from YouTube Meiselas shared with NPR display that the MeidasTouch YouTube channel attracts round 300 million perspectives each and every month, round the similar as Fox Information and MSNBC obtain on YouTube per 30 days.

Meiselas and his brothers, Brett (a former video editor for The Ellen DeGeneres Display) and Jordy (who in the past labored in advertising and marketing), together with about 30 different individuals — together with former Trump legal professional grew to become critic Michael Cohen — pump out movies on YouTube about each 90 mins and blanket different platforms, together with Instagram, TikTok and Substack, with their content material.

Jordan Meiselas, Ben Meiselas and Brett Meiselas on the twenty ninth Annual Webby Awards on Might 12, 2025 in New York Town.

Dave Kotinsky/Getty Pictures

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Dave Kotinsky/Getty Pictures

Different common modern media corporations together with Pod Save The united states, Extra Easiest Union and the Younger Turks also are capitalizing on the second one Trump presidency, however whether or not it is the Meiselas brothers’ affable personalities, the sheer quantity of content material, their knack for running the algorithms, or some undetermined aggregate, MeidasTouch is the pacesetter of the pack.

Meiselas says audience revel in the way in which he zooms in at the frequently rambling asides of Trump’s speeches — what Trump has described as his “weave” — which Meiselas says lots of the mainstream media ignores.

“They’d say, ‘Donald Trump is speaking about making issues inexpensive.’ And I might watch those speeches and be like, ‘Actually did you watch those speeches that I simply watched?’ That is not what he mentioned. Perhaps that used to be thirty seconds. Why’d you do his paintings for him? You edited the speech to offer him the most efficient 30-second soundbite,” he mentioned. “That used to be the craziest speech I have ever observed.”

From political advertisements to streaming powerhouse

In the beginning from Lengthy Island, Meiselas, 40, the eldest of the brothers, used to be in his felony profession attracted 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, in the middle of the pandemic, the brothers shaped a political motion committee and launched political advertisements 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 moment time period.

MeidasTouch is raking in thousands and thousands of greenbacks in promoting income a yr — Meiselas would not say precisely how a lot — via tapping into an target market of annoyed progressives, a few of whom really feel deserted via conventional media.

Meiselas sees his function as now not simply an up to date model of a political surprise jock, however as anyone who’s informing the general public.

Maggie Shannon for NPR

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Maggie Shannon for NPR

“The target market is shifting in those instructions. And quite a lot of mainstream information organizations simply don’t seem to be supplied to enchantment to them at the types of phrases as the ones other folks may need,” mentioned Invoice Grueskin, a professor at Columbia College Faculty of Journalism and a former editor at The Wall Side road Magazine.

In Trump’s first time period, retailers together with The Washington Put up and MSNBC won 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 mentioned.

“There are simply more than one resources of shock on a daily basis,” he mentioned. “And outrage is the most important driving force of subscriptions, of loyalty, of other folks’s time.”

On most sensible of that, as a result of on-line streamers don’t seem to be sure to the journalism business’s requirements of equity and neutrality, they may be able to give an explanation for and remark at the information in edgier and extra livid tactics than maximum mainstream retailers, mentioned Edward Wasserman, journalism professor on the Graduate Faculty of Journalism on the College of California, Berkeley.

“I don’t believe the media are ready to try this. They may be able to give you the ammunition for that more or less assault on Trump, however they may be able to’t actually give it a voice the way in which those podcast other folks can.”

Meiselas perspectives his function within the information ecosystem in relatively lofty phrases — now not simply as an up to date model of a political surprise jock, however as an unbiased 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 administrative center, even supposing the president is now the central driving force of his trade.

“I don’t believe that the theory of being up to date and eating information and being a professional is ever going to leave. Sadly, there may be at all times going to be threats to democracy, to peoples’ freedoms, to peoples’ rights,” Meiselas mentioned, sounding like the previous civil rights legal professional he’s. “There is the daily reaction of seeking to put out fires, however then there may be the generational development. We are seeking to stay this community development.”