MSNBC Host Does Victory Dance Over Anti-Trump MeidasTouch Podcast Beating Out Rogan: ‘These Guys Are Hitters!’
MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle celebrated the news that podcast host Ben Meiselas has dethroned Joe Rogan’s The Joe Rogan Experience podcast as the number one podcast in the U.S.
Meiselas is the co-founder of the anti-Trump Meidas Touch PAC and podcast host for MeidasTouch Network, for whom he scored an exclusive interview with then-President Joe Biden during the heat of the election. According to Newsweek, his show has surpassed Rogan for the number one spot based on Podscribe data:
The Joe Rogan Experience has long dominated the podcast chart, but this month he slipped down into the second spot, according to Podscribe. His podcast was downloaded and played 48.6 million times, a 32 percent decrease from the previous month. The MeidasTouch Podcast took top spot with 56 million downloads and plays, increasing in reach by 101 percent this month.
On Wednesday night’s edition of MSNBC’s The 11th Hour, Ruhle relished the news, and told her panel that Meiselas and his crew “are hitters” — unlike many Democrats:
STEPHANIE RUHLE: The left leaning podcast MidasTouch has just done the unthinkable! Dethroned Joe Rogan to become the country’s most popular podcast.
Do you see this as a sign of a bigger political shift? Because even these three guys, specifically, they are not your touchy-eely progressives, though, like three brothers from Long Island.
JOEL PAYNE: Yeah. Look, I think that this does signal one Democrats and let’s just call it the non-conservative ecosystem catching up to where the kind of Rogan Right has been.
STEPHANIE RUHLE: And they’re not policy guys. They’re anti-Trump guys. They crank it out all day, every day.
JOEL PAYNE: And and I do think the fact that this is organic. This is not a part of the ecosystem that was just built up, you know, with heavy investment from millionaires and billionaires.
These are folks who’ve been grinding and working. And my suspicion is they probably were going to get to this point anyway.
But it does, I think, signal where where groups and where organizations and where candidates on the Democratic side are going to focus a lot of their effort going forward.
You’ve got to dominate this space. That’s where conversation is. That’s where a lot of people get their news, is on YouTube. Online.
You have to be present there. You have to have messengers that are fearless and that know how to talk to these folks comfortably. And messy conversations that are often complicated.
STEPHANIE RUHLE: People often say that Democrats don’t know how to hit. These guys are hitters!
JOHN AVLON: Yeah. And look, Democrats should have the confidence to go anywhere and make a case. We’ve got a fragmented media ecosystem, so it’s good to see a little more political diversity in that.
Democrats are going to have to play offense and stop just preaching to their choir. Right? The essence of evangelism is winning converts. So you got to get out there with the confidence to make the case and not simply play to your base.
Watch above via The 11th Hour.
