Speaker 1: We also have a Mandana White, who has done some
Speaker 1: of yo.
Speaker 2: He's that tough guy.
Speaker 3: When Trump took to the stage to claim victory in
Speaker 3: Palm Beach, Florida, he was joined by a football team
Speaker 3: sized contingent of family and friends, including the chief executive
Speaker 3: of the UFC, Dana White.
Speaker 4: Nobody deserves us more than him, and nobody deserves us
Speaker 4: more than his family does. He deserves this, They deserve
Speaker 4: it as a family.
Speaker 3: White, who has admitted to assaulting his wife, took them
Speaker 3: like to thank some people he saw as crucial to
Speaker 3: delivering his friend Donald Trump the presidency.
Speaker 4: At the Note Boys, Aidan Ross, Theo Vaughan, Bossom with
Speaker 4: the Boys, and last but not least, the mighty and Powerful.
Speaker 5: Joe Rogan and thank you America. Thank you had a
Speaker 5: good night.
Speaker 3: Trump's appearance on podcasts like the Joe Rogan Experience were
Speaker 3: crucial to securing the support of young men across America
Speaker 3: who might not have otherwise voted. It was a sophisticated
Speaker 3: plan based on a close read of voting trends and
Speaker 3: a little help from Trump's son Baron.
Speaker 6: From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven AM.
Speaker 3: Today National political correspondent for Time magazine, Eric cordlessa on
Speaker 3: Donald Trump and the podbros who helped him win.
Speaker 6: It's Monday, November eleven.
Speaker 3: Hi, Eric, thank you so much for joining us on
Speaker 3: seven am.
Speaker 5: You bet happy to be here.
Speaker 3: So you were there in Florida when Trump claimed victory.
Speaker 3: Can you tell me about Dana White, the UFC boss
Speaker 3: who was there on stage.
Speaker 7: With him, close personal friend of Donald Trump's. Trump likes
Speaker 7: to be surrounded by his friends. He thinks they kind
Speaker 7: of loosen him up and help him hone his instincts
Speaker 7: and his impulses.
Speaker 4: This is what happens when the machine comes after you.
Speaker 4: What you've seen over the last several years, this is
Speaker 4: what it looks like. Couldn't stop him. He keeps going forward.
Speaker 4: He doesn't quit, you know.
Speaker 7: Dana White at the speech basically suggested that Donald Trump
Speaker 7: was vindicated, that his adversaries had taken all these different
Speaker 7: approaches to removing him from potentially ascending power again and failed,
Speaker 7: and that this was the culmination of a four year
Speaker 7: attempt to reclaim the White House.
Speaker 4: He's the most resilient, hard working man I've ever met
Speaker 4: in my life. His family are incredible people. This is calm,
Speaker 4: ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 7: And Dana White, aside from being a close friend of Trump's,
Speaker 7: was unwittingly in a sense, central to the formation of
Speaker 7: a core campaign strategy for how they would reach what
Speaker 7: we call low propensity voters.
Speaker 5: Those are voters who aren't reliable.
Speaker 8: Right how so, Well, after Trump's first indictment in the
Speaker 8: New York case in April twenty twenty three, Trump was
Speaker 8: on the phone with Dana White, and he was.
Speaker 7: At his mar Alago club and there was a fight
Speaker 7: upcoming that Saturday in Miami, and he basically said, kind
Speaker 7: of randomly to his close aids and advisors were with him,
Speaker 7: why don't we go?
Speaker 5: I think those guys would love me there? And he went.
Speaker 5: He showed up, and he got.
Speaker 7: A raucous standing ovation brought down the house when he
Speaker 7: walked into the arena. And while he was there, they
Speaker 7: ran into another popular podcast group, the NLT Boys, who
Speaker 7: have a really large following of young male viewers and listeners.
Speaker 7: And a few weeks later Trump went on that podcast, so.
Speaker 1: I'm here with your friends and love boys, and they
Speaker 1: are the modern day Johnny Carson.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 5: I can't say.
Speaker 1: Jimmy of them.
Speaker 5: Are these loss no, you know, you know, they.
Speaker 2: Have no ratings there.
Speaker 7: They got huge audiences on Spotify, and that became the
Speaker 7: germ for what would be a sustained strategy with the
Speaker 7: course of a campaign, to have Trump go on these
Speaker 7: kind of edgy bro podcasts that those young male audiences, white,
Speaker 7: black and Latino, and so Dana White was central to
Speaker 7: Trump and his inner orbit recognizing that this was a
Speaker 7: winning way to reach voters that their surveys and their
Speaker 7: focus group showed were the most reachable, the people who
Speaker 7: they could get in their column who were drifting away
Speaker 7: from Joe Biden.
Speaker 6: The most okay.
Speaker 3: And so how did Trump land on who he should
Speaker 3: talk to and the way that he should engage with
Speaker 3: these podcasters.
Speaker 5: Well it's a really fascinating story.
Speaker 7: So in July Trump his campaign had hired this young
Speaker 7: twenty seven year old Republican consultant who kind of doubles
Speaker 7: as a right.
Speaker 5: Wing influencer online.
Speaker 7: His name is Alex Brucewitz, and Susie Wilds, the campaign manager,
Speaker 7: knew that he was very well steeped in this world
Speaker 7: and basically said, Alex, you know these people, why don't
Speaker 7: you come up with a list for how we can
Speaker 7: go about this and shows the president can go on
Speaker 7: and then and then pitch them to DJT as they
Speaker 7: call him in Trump's in orbit, and Alex put together
Speaker 7: a list. He called Trump the next morning with another
Speaker 7: communications advisor on the campaign, Daniel Alvarez. Trump was on
Speaker 7: the golf course at the time. He said, you know,
Speaker 7: I have a list of podcasts I like to pitch
Speaker 7: you on, and Trump kind of cuts him off and says,
Speaker 7: have you.
Speaker 5: Talked this over with Baron?
Speaker 7: And Alex says, no, Sarah, I haven't spoken to Baron,
Speaker 7: And Trump says, call Baron and see what he thinks
Speaker 7: and let me know. And so then Brucewitz and Alvarez,
Speaker 7: you know, scrambled to get ahold of Baron. Baron is
Speaker 7: not the easiest person to get in touch with because
Speaker 7: Milanie has always tried shield him from the political fray.
Speaker 7: But Bruce Witz was able to get in touch with Baron,
Speaker 7: who said, you got to get him on Aiden Ross.
Speaker 7: Aiden Ross, who was known for doing these live stream
Speaker 7: collaborations on video games with the celebrities and whatnot, and
Speaker 7: that's where they started.
Speaker 10: There's a lot of people that are first time voters
Speaker 10: watching today. You know, and I want to make it
Speaker 10: very clear to everybody that you're a human being. You're
Speaker 10: a great human being, and I want you to basically
Speaker 10: talk to talk in this camera, talk to them and
Speaker 10: explain why it's very important as a first time voter
Speaker 10: to go out and vote and why they should vote
Speaker 10: for you.
Speaker 5: I'd love to do that.
Speaker 1: And I love having a young audience. This is young.
Speaker 1: I think you have some ulsters too, because I also
Speaker 1: know some ulsters that are listening and watching. But it's
Speaker 1: about the American dream right now, you don't have the
Speaker 1: American dream.
Speaker 5: They went on Aiden Ross.
Speaker 7: It got a lot of attention, five hundred thousand viewers
Speaker 7: at its peak as they were recording and doing it,
Speaker 7: and then millions in the days and weeks to come.
Speaker 1: Baron says, hello, he's a great young guy, but he's
Speaker 1: a big.
Speaker 10: Fan of yours. Let's all Baron. Yeah, Baron's awesome. He's
Speaker 10: a great kid, amazing.
Speaker 5: He's very tall.
Speaker 7: And so that set in motion the podcast strategy and
Speaker 7: from the rest of the you know, remaining weeks of
Speaker 7: the campaign, Trump went on a narrathon of podcasts like that.
Speaker 1: Is Cocaine a Stronger?
Speaker 5: Oh? Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah, so you way.
Speaker 1: Up with cocaine more than anything else you can think of.
Speaker 7: Okay, I'll turn you into a damn owl, homie, you
Speaker 7: know what I'm saying.
Speaker 9: To our segments, we re kept the NFL Weekend, and
Speaker 9: then we drop our our latest interview, which is, I mean,
Speaker 9: Donald Trump the biggest interview we've we've ever.
Speaker 11: Done, we've ever had by far, and either one of
Speaker 11: the most polarizing individuals in the world right now. It
Speaker 11: is a long time coming. Obviously, wanted to give a
Speaker 11: big shout out to Dana White for making this whole
Speaker 11: entire thing happen.
Speaker 1: You fight this past week and how did it work out?
Speaker 5: How you think, mister President.
Speaker 1: I think he probably did pretty good.
Speaker 7: I've watched enough Holming and ultimately and Joe Rogan Show,
Speaker 7: who has the most popular podcast in America.
Speaker 2: You're making fun of Elon one time.
Speaker 5: You're doing it in Elon and President.
Speaker 6: It's great.
Speaker 2: You have like comedic instincts, like when you said to
Speaker 2: Hillary you'd be in jail, Like that's great timing. But
Speaker 2: it's like that kind of stuff was unheard of as
Speaker 2: a politician, Like no one had done that.
Speaker 1: And I think it's funny you need at least the
Speaker 1: attitude of a comedian when you're doing this business. This
Speaker 1: is a very dangerous business versus it's a very tough business.
Speaker 2: When it's the most dangerous. Well for a job, yes,
Speaker 2: I mean other than going for and being a firefighter
Speaker 2: or being a cop. It's the most dangerous.
Speaker 1: It's the most us for being president is the most dangerous.
Speaker 5: Especially you.
Speaker 2: I mean when you haven't even got through the election.
Speaker 5: There's been two.
Speaker 3: Assassinations coming up after the break the Joe Rogan Effects.
Speaker 6: Eric.
Speaker 3: During the election campaign, Donald Trump appeared on several podcasts
Speaker 3: that appeal to young men. Joe Rogan's audience is reportedly
Speaker 3: eighty percent mail, with more than half of those men
Speaker 3: under the age of thirty five. And in the fortnight
Speaker 3: before the election, Joe Rogan had Elon Musk on his show,
Speaker 3: He had JD Vance and he also spoke to Donald
Speaker 3: Trump and ultimately Rogan endorsed Trump.
Speaker 6: So did this strategy work well?
Speaker 5: From what we've seen thus far, Trump did much.
Speaker 7: Better with those voters than he did in the previous
Speaker 7: go rounds. I mean, he made strides with young voters
Speaker 7: overall on all age brackets eighteen to forty four Latino men,
Speaker 7: black men. I mean, the campaign's strategy was really to
Speaker 7: max out the men and hold the women. As a
Speaker 7: top aide to president former President Trump and President Electrump
Speaker 7: now told me, and so, you know, the podcast.
Speaker 5: Strategy was a way of reaching these viewers.
Speaker 7: I mean, they found in their data analysis that the
Speaker 7: voters who were most susceptible to changing their mind one
Speaker 7: way or the other, because the reality that they had
Speaker 7: determined was just glaring was that Americas had deeply entrenched
Speaker 7: views of Donald Trump.
Speaker 5: You know, they love them, they hate them, whatever.
Speaker 7: But the voters who were not reliable voters, but who
Speaker 7: preferred him to first Biden then Harris were this sort
Speaker 7: of young male demographic, this young male group, and they said,
Speaker 7: they're not super politically engaged. They don't follow traditional media.
Speaker 7: They engage and they interact with news and politics through
Speaker 7: these sort of nonlinear, unconventional sorts of media, and that
Speaker 7: podcast were most efficacious way to reach them. And as
Speaker 7: far as what we can tell from the data so far,
Speaker 7: they did an effective job at getting those votes that
Speaker 7: they determined they needed to win the election.
Speaker 3: And Eric Joe Rogan has a long history of making
Speaker 3: a defensive comments.
Speaker 6: Aiden Ross is friends.
Speaker 3: With Andrew Tait, who's been charged with sex trafficking and rape.
Speaker 3: So was there a risk here that Trump would turn
Speaker 3: some voters off while chasing the young men who love
Speaker 3: these guys.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean I think, you know, there's a certain
Speaker 7: segment of the American polity that views a lot of
Speaker 7: these podcast hosts as quite misogynistic. They're laddish, right, these
Speaker 7: there are sort of these testosterone laced bull sessions, if
Speaker 7: you will. But I think what Trump really tapped into
Speaker 7: was a kind of tyrannical imposition of political correctness in America.
Speaker 7: That they felt that there was a censoriousness overtaking American society,
Speaker 7: and that what they liked when Trump would go on
Speaker 7: to these podcasts with people who speak in a kind
Speaker 7: of natural vernacular, they speak like the common man and women,
Speaker 7: and that Trump had a kind of cultural fluency where
Speaker 7: he could relate in this level. A sort of initial
Speaker 7: analysis of the way American voters responded to Trump on
Speaker 7: the podcast circuit was that he was authentic, he was natural,
Speaker 7: and that you know, if there was a controversy based
Speaker 7: on something he said, then they could just sort of
Speaker 7: deride it as oh, look, you know, the progressive media
Speaker 7: is castigating him again because he talks like normal people.
Speaker 7: I mean, and that was kind of I think a
Speaker 7: big sense of what he was tapping into and what
Speaker 7: was a major cultural grievance at this moment in time.
Speaker 5: His voters were making their mind up.
Speaker 3: And while doing that, presumably Trump and his team had
Speaker 3: to make sure that they didn't lose women voters or
Speaker 3: too many women voters. So how did they thread the
Speaker 3: needle on that?
Speaker 7: That was a tough one, and I think Trump and
Speaker 7: his top lieutenants knew it at the outset because this
Speaker 7: was the first presidential election post Dobbs after Supreme Court
Speaker 7: that was, you know, tilted heavily by three of Donald
Speaker 7: Trump's appointments, you know, took away a constitutional right to abortion.
Speaker 7: I think their idea on abortion was to thread the
Speaker 7: needle of saying, we're just going to leave this to
Speaker 7: the states.
Speaker 5: This is a states.
Speaker 7: Rights issue, and we're not going to weigh in on
Speaker 7: any kind of national federal restrictions.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 7: When I interviewed Trump in April, I mean, I asked
Speaker 7: them some very pointed questions about the functional outcome of
Speaker 7: that policy stands. I sort of asked them at one point,
Speaker 7: do you think states should be able to monitor women's
Speaker 7: pregnancies to know whether they've gotten an abortion after the
Speaker 7: band and he basically said, states can do what they want,
Speaker 7: and so basically, states could I have an abortion policy
Speaker 7: in any which direction and that it would be under
Speaker 7: their prerogative. And so at some point that was insufficient,
Speaker 7: as top lieutenants decided, and then Trump in October came
Speaker 7: out and said that he would veto a national abortion ban.
Speaker 7: I think the other big thing that they tried to
Speaker 7: do was make the election about the economy, immigration, and
Speaker 7: crime as much as they could, because those were the
Speaker 7: issues where you could.
Speaker 5: Tap into the anxieties of well.
Speaker 7: To do suburban women who were the most willing to
Speaker 7: vote for Trump in this cycle per the data, and
Speaker 7: so far from what we've seen, it did turn out
Speaker 7: that way.
Speaker 6: Eric, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 5: Thank you great to be with you.
Speaker 3: Also in the news today, Qatar has withdrawn from being
Speaker 3: a mediator between Israel and Tamas, citing a refusal by
Speaker 3: both sides to negotiate in good faith. Hamasa's political office
Speaker 3: has been based in Qatar's capital Dollar since twenty twelve.
Speaker 3: And a country has played a key role in trying
Speaker 3: to broke a deal between the two sides since October
Speaker 3: seven last year. A diplomatic source told newswire AFP that
Speaker 3: the Qataris have informed the US government that they would
Speaker 3: be ready to re engage when both sides demonstrate a
Speaker 3: sincere willingness to return to the negotiating table. And President
Speaker 3: Joe Biden is preparing to host President elect Donald Trump
Speaker 3: in the Oval Office this week, a tradition not kept
Speaker 3: by Trump when he refused to accept the results of
Speaker 3: the twenty twenty election. President elect Trump has been working
Speaker 3: on building his team in recent days ahead of being
Speaker 3: inaugurated on January twenty. In this first major move since
Speaker 3: his victory speech, Trump picked campaign co chair Susie Wilds
Speaker 3: to be his chief of staff. She'll be the first
Speaker 3: woman ever to hold the role.
Speaker 6: I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. See you tomorrow.