The Men Who Helped Elect Trump Are Walking Away

Joe Rogan called MAGA "a movement of a bunch of fucking dorks." Andrew Schulz told his listeners, "I voted for none of this." Former military podcaster Shawn Ryan warned Republicans: "Don't come to my door this November."

The men who helped put Donald Trump back in the White House are having second thoughts — loudly, publicly, and in front of millions of listeners.

How the Manosphere Built Trump's Unlikely Coalition

The term "manosphere" covers a lot of ground, but the figures at the center of this story aren't the fringe provocateurs. They're comedy-first, entertainment-forward podcasters: Joe Rogan, Andrew Schulz and the Flagrant crew, Tim Dillon. What makes them politically significant isn't that they're explicitly political — it's precisely that they're not.

When a guy who just wants to talk about sports and jokes suddenly says "I'm voting for Trump," it lands differently than a pundit saying it. It reads as authentic. And authenticity, more than any policy position, is the currency of this media world.

Andrew Schulz's politics boil down to a few things: pro-free speech, anti-woke, anti-earnestness, and a deep allergy to politicians who feel fake. He didn't back Trump because of tax policy or immigration numbers. He backed him because Trump felt like he wasn't one of them — the usual political class. Kamala Harris felt too pious. Trump felt like a disruptor.

Trump's campaign understood this. Barron Trump reportedly introduced his father to the podcast world, and Trump showed up — including a 3-hour appearance on Rogan's show watched by tens of millions. These channels didn't just reach existing MAGA voters. They reached ideologically fluid young men who'd never much cared about politics before.

The Cracks Started Before Iran

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The first fracture appeared in July 2025, when Trump signed the "big, beautiful bill" — a spending package that swelled the federal deficit, not shrank it. Israel-Gaza hadn't wound down. Ukraine-Russia hadn't wound down. And then came the Epstein files.

Trump and his allies had campaigned loudly on unmasking the predators, releasing the files, naming names. When Trump reversed course and blocked their full release, the reaction in the manosphere wasn't just disappointment. The word that kept coming up was betrayal. They'd believed Trump was genuinely outside the system — and suddenly he was playing the same game as every other politician they'd despised.

Immigration crackdowns deepened the wound. On Flagrant, Schulz had asked Trump directly to prioritize criminals over law-abiding immigrants. Trump agreed, on air. Then came the footage: cleaning ladies, restaurant workers, children being swept up by ICE. In one episode, Schulz and his co-hosts spent several minutes asking each other, seriously, whether they'd hide a migrant from federal agents. It wasn't a bit.

Then Operation Epic Fury began. According to a recent Pew Research poll, 6 in 10 Americans disapprove of how the Iran war is going. Gas in Washington, D.C. hit $5 a gallon. Tucker Carlson called the Iran strikes "absolutely disgusting and evil." Schulz asked his audience: "Do you feel existential anxiety about the war?"

What This Means for the GOP — and Beyond

These men are not about to vote Democrat. Nobody serious is arguing that. The real danger for Republicans is quieter and more damaging: they just won't show up.

Midterms run on enthusiasm. The party in power needs its coalition fired up to offset the historical pattern of losses. Right now, a significant slice of Trump's 2024 coalition is broadcasting apathy. Trump won't be on the ballot in 2026. The calculus for a young man who voted for Trump as a vibe — not as a party loyalist — to bother voting in a House race is not obvious.

The fracturing inside MAGA itself is also worth watching. Marjorie Taylor Greene, as hardcore a MAGA figure as exists, has expressed frustration with Trump over the war. The ideological hardliners and the non-ideological podcast crowd are converging on the same grievance from different directions.

That convergence creates an opening. A future candidate could claim the MAGA label, reject the Iran war as un-American, champion true fiscal conservatism, and position themselves as the candidate Trump promised to be but wasn't. The Flagrant podcast recently hosted Zohran Mamdani, the left-wing New York City mayoral candidate. Schulz loved Bernie Sanders in 2020. This audience doesn't sort by left and right — it sorts by authentic versus fake, outsider versus establishment. Whoever figures that out next will have a head start.

There's also a darker current running through some corners of the manosphere: a tendency to blame Israel for pulling Trump into the war, rather than Trump himself. Researchers tracking online discourse say anti-Semitic content in these spaces has risen sharply. The anger is real — but where it gets directed matters enormously.