A number of leading voices in the MAGA movement who host podcasts have been oddly quiet since the midterm drubbing last week. The hosts of The Bulwark are making no secret of the fact that they love it.
On Nov. 10’s episode of The Bulwark’s “Next Level” podcast, GOP strategist Sarah Longwell admitted as much.
“I’m not going to lie. I’m doing some schadenfreude,” she said. “Some of it is like watching Trump, you know, just bring out his ‘How could this have happened? It must be rigged. It’s the voting machines.’ And then watching all of the Republican influencers go like, shut up. Like, nobody wants this right now.”
Longwell said the right-wing influencers are still trying to “come to grips” with the results, and mentioned that MAGA streamer Tim Pool lamented that Republicans have lost young men for a generation.
“It’s just fun watching their spaces right now,” she said.
“So many of them are shutting down their podcast,” Longwell said. “Laura Loomer shut down her podcast. Katie Miller shut down her podcast.”
“Yeah, we’re losing some real content creators,” one of her co-hosts quipped.
Katie Miller is married to Stephen Miller, Trump’s new chief of staff in the White House. This inspired the hosts to go on a bit of a tangent about the fact that Katie Miller has a tattoo on her lip that, according to one host, reads “YOLO.” One of the hosts said they learned this from a Bulwark colleague named Andrew Egger.
“That’s kind of a great tattoo,” said one of the hosts.
“The problem is if YOLO means to you, you only live once, so you might as well spend it with the most despicable white nationalist in the country,” the host said.
For his part, Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw celebrated Stephen Miller’s promotion and, in a post read by the hosts, appeared to dismiss the podcasters as entertainers not worth pursuing.
Longwell mocked the lecturing from a man who frequently appears on Joe Rogan, but said he had a point.
“It is true they are entertainers. They are not serious about policy,” she said. “As much as we don’t want it to be true that people are getting their political news from these types of people, it is just true that that is happening.”
But that’s the bigger problem for the Republican Party. Not only is Trump crying voter fraud, but Stephen Miller is now running the White House West Wing. And it seems like some of the people who were getting Trump’s message to young men have stopped talking.
“Guys, this is what it’s going to be like,” one of the hosts told listeners as the episode wrapped up. “It’s going to be wheels off for the next two years and perhaps beyond.”