‘Every day is a new conspiracy’: behind Trump’s ironclad grip on rightwing media

In the last few months, Donald Trump has done interviews with rightwing Twitch streamer Adin Ross and a host of podcasters, including Dr Phil, comedian Theo Von, computer scientist Lex Fridman, and YouTuber Logan Paul - part of what the Atlantic has dubbed Trump's "red-pill podcast tour".

He's posted incessantly on his own social media platform, Truth Social. He did a live space on Twitter/X with the platform's owner, Elon Musk. He talked with Fox's Laura Ingraham and called into Fox & Friends and spoke to other Fox hosts and personalities.

His media strategy aligns with the current state of the rightwing media landscape: Fox is still a dominant source, but for the most Maga-adherent, it's not Trumpy enough, despite some of its hosts embracing election denialism around the 2020 US election. Instead, there's increasing fragmentation thanks to influencers and lesser-known outlets built around Trumpism.

This is the first election since Tucker Carlson, once Fox's loudest voice in a primetime spot, was reportedly fired by the network, and his solo ventures so far haven't taken on the prominence he had on TV. It's also the first election since longtime Republican heavyweight Rush Limbaugh died. These big changes have left holes in rightwing media, which were filled by an increasing cadre of influencers, content creators and smaller outlets.

Adrianna Munoz, a 58-year-old from Queens, New York, who attended a Trump rally earlier this year in the Bronx, told the Guardian that she mostly gets news from YouTube, X and conservative commentators she follows, such as Tim Pool and Benny Johnson.

"I used to watch TV news every morning - network news and the local news channel in New York," she said. "Now I don't. They sold out. They don't tell you the truth. I don't want to hear that rubbish."

Trump's grip on rightwing media is ironclad, said Julie Millican, the vice-president of Media Matters, a progressive center that tracks conservative media. In the past, the Republican party and its candidates would follow what rightwing media did and align its policies that way - but now, the media follows Trump, she said.

"If you don't capitulate to what Trump and his enablers and his supporters are looking for, then they'll shut you out," Millican said. Since his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, his influence has only increased, and "now he has a stronger control over the entire media ecosystem than he did previously", she added.

As rightwing outlets rise, the stories they cover differ more from what's on mainstream news, furthering the bubbles a divided United States lives within. While in years past, you'd find different takes on the day's news in left- and right-leaning outlets, you'll now find stories that exist solely on rightwing media, Millican said.

"It's like every day is a new conspiracy or a new attack, and it's just hard to even keep up on it anymore," she said. "Half the time, when you listen to somebody who consumes nothing but rightwing media, you have no idea what they're talking about."

Traffic to news websites, including rightwing sites, is down compared with 2020. Howard Polskin, who tracks conservative media on his site The Righting, said a few factors play into the decrease. Facebook and other Meta social media de-emphasize news content now, sending less traffic to news outlets. And 2020 had several major news events colliding: a pandemic that kept people online more, nationwide protests over racial justice and a hotly contested election.

Polskin tracks monthly visits to rightwing sites and produces traffic reports. The top 10 for August 2024: Fox, Outkick (a sports and commentary site owned by Fox), Newsmax, Epoch Times, National Review, Washington Times, Daily Wire, TheBlaze, Washington Examiner and Daily Caller. Gateway Pundit is not far behind, and InfoWars, the once-maligned site headed by bankrupted conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, is in the top 20.

No single star has taken the place that Carlson or Limbaugh once held. Some conservatives told the Guardian they stopped watching Fox as often after Carlson left or because the network isn't Maga enough. Fox agreed to pay $787m to settle a lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems over defamation claims for spreading lies about the voting machine company's role the 2020 election. Carlson abruptly left the network shortly after the settlement, and he has claimed his firing came as a result of the settlement. Fox denies that his removal had anything to do with the Dominion case.

Frank Lipsett, a 63-year-old from the south Bronx who works as a residential housing superintendent, said he watches Fox because it's "the most honest and most informative outlet, though I'm not saying they are perfect".

Like many on the right, he has stopped reading mainstream newspapers because "they are not telling the truth." He said he sometimes reads the New York Post, a rightwing tabloid paper owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, the same owner as Fox.

Another paper, Epoch Times, a far-right and anti-China outlet associated with the Falun Gong religion, continues to rank highly among conservative news outlets despite a justice department lawsuit that alleges it operates as a money laundering and cryptocurrency scam. Its stories are often shared by rightwing politicians or influencers. "Their cultural impact and political impact seems much smaller than the distribution," Polskin said.

Carlene, a 58-year-old from the Upper East Side who attended the Trump rally in the Bronx, said she gets news from the Epoch Times, Daily Wire and X and sometimes tunes into CNN and MSNBC to get the other side.

"I watch less Fox News now after they got rid of Tucker Carlson," she said. "It made me think Fox was just like everyone else."

For the less online Republican, talk radio shows, especially those that run the airwaves in rural areas, play a strong role in setting the conservative message. As newspapers in rural areas have shuttered, creating a crisis in local news, these radio shows are "reaching voters that aren't tapped into the same media spaces that we often see in these large metropolises on either coast", Tripodi said.

To fill Fox's void on TV, some conservatives have turned to Newsmax or One American News Network, which are farther to the right than Fox.

"One American News Network and Newsmax did a very good job at establishing themselves as a place that would verify whatever Trump was saying," Tripodi said.

David Fiedler, a 67-year-old retiree from Rock county, Wisconsin, told the Guardian at the Republican National Committee's Protect the Vote tour in September that he and his wife don't watch Fox or local news, but they stream podcasts by the Daily Wire or watch Rumble, the rightwing video platform.

"Our biggest news thing we watch is Newsmax," he said.

Beyond television and news sites, a rightwing news consumer will find a growing landscape of podcasts, YouTube channels, Substack newsletters, documentary film-makers and social media influencers all trying to build a following.

The top of the podcast charts on Spotify and Apple shows a host of conservatives: Shawn Ryan, Candace Owens, Carlson, Megyn Kelly.

Ben Shapiro, the conservative commentator, has his own podcast, and his network, the Daily Wire, hosts some of the biggest rightwing pundits. "In terms of just influence and power in the media landscape, to me, he would be someone that's at the top of that space," Millican said. Polskin called Shapiro the "800lb gorilla of rightwing podcasts".

Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, is also a major player. His organization is focused on turning college-age people conservative, and he's been on a tour around the country to college campuses in recent months, in addition to his podcast and social media presence.

"He's almost become like an establishment media figure in his own right, except you would never actually see him on Fox News - his audience tends to be pretty old," Millican said.

While he doesn't grab a huge share of the podcast market and he's currently in prison for defying a congressional subpoena related to the January 6 investigation, Steve Bannon has an outsize influence on the right with his War Room show. He gets big-name rightwing politicians as guests and still has Trump's ear, but he's never cracked the top 20 in Polskin's ratings.

"Because of him, Project 2025 got on our radar last year because he was one of the early backers in hosting people who were involved with writing it, promoting the key tenants in it," Millican said. "Small audience, but still influential audience."

Then there are also conspiracy-based websites and social media accounts from unnamed creators, such as End Wokeness, that spread rightwing attack lines that can filter up to the mainstream.

David Jansen, who attended a Trump town hall event in La Crosse, Wisconsin, in August, said he watches FrankSpeech, a platform founded by pillow salesperson and election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell, which streams conservative content, often centered on election denialism.

Alongside the rise in rightwing influencers and outlets, social media platforms have loosened their content moderation and made changes to how they manage political content. Republican elected officials and outside legal groups have attacked platforms, government employees who interact with them and misinformation researchers, claiming a broad censorship plan is at work to limit conservative voices online.

Some organizing on the right happens on closed-off apps such as Telegram, where public figures from the conservative mainstream and the far-right fringes have channels to share news and commentary.

The underbelly of Telegram skews darker than other social media: the New York Times called it a "global sewer of criminal activity, disinformation, child sexual abuse material, terrorism and racist incitement". Neo-Nazis have used the platform to coordinate their activities and have been scrambling after the app's founder, Pavel Durov, was arrested in France for facilitating criminal activity on the app, Frontline reported.

But rightwing organizing isn't happening solely in far-flung corners of the internet. There is increased rumor-making and amplification on Musk's X, including by Musk himself, who has shared a wide variety of election-related falsehoods. Trump returned to the platform last year after he was kicked off after the insurrection, but he still posts mostly on Truth Social, where he often rants in all-caps, shares clips from his rallies or reposts content from rightwing media who boost his campaign.

Munoz, one of the Bronx Trump rally attendees, uses Telegram and Truth Social. Munoz loves Musk and his changes to X because "you can talk freely now", he said. "I left Facebook and Instagram because they don't let you talk."

Ed Pilkington and Alice Herman contributed reporting to this story