Business
I Traded My News Apps for Rumble, the Right-Wing YouTube. Here’s What I Saw.
As soon as President-elect Donald J. Trump won the presidential race, influencers on Rumble, the right-wing alternative to YouTube, flooded the platform with a simple catchphrase: “We are the media now.”
The idea seemed to capture a growing sense that traditional journalists have lost their position at the center of the media ecosystem. Polls show that trust in mainstream news media has plummeted, and that nearly half of all young people get their news from “influencers” rather than journalists.
In its place, they argue, are right-wing digital creators who have found hordes of fans online. Rumble, for instance, is tiny compared with YouTube, but it is a primary source of news for millions of Americans, according to Pew Research Center. On election night, its active viewership topped out at more than two million, and the company said in a statement that it averaged more than 67 million monthly active users in the final quarter of 2024.
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You are the news now.This is a real story.It’s not about back slaps, it’s about how now, it’s time to floor the freaking gas pedal.When you’re done with me, go watch Graham Allen.When you’re done with Graham Allen, watch Crowder.When you’re done with Crowder watch Tucker, then watch Rogan or whatever.You don’t need old school media anymore.
▶ Dan Bongino, host of “The Dan Bongino Show,” says viewers should follow his program with other Rumble creators in a bid to replace mainstream media.
If Rumble was the media now, I wondered what it would be like to consume an all-Rumble diet. So on Nov. 18, about two weeks after the election, I deleted my news apps, unsubscribed from all my podcasts and filtered all my newsletters to the trash. And for the next week, from early morning till late at night, I got all my news from Rumble.
An alternate reality
I started by visiting Rumble’s homepage on Monday morning where I saw my first recommended video. It was about the risk of nuclear war, with an A.I.-generated photo of President Biden laughing maniacally above a headline that read: “WWIII INCOMING?! Biden Authorizes Strike on Russia Ahead of Trump Taking Office!!”
Rumble was once an obscure video platform featuring mostly viral cat videos. Founded in 2013 by a Canadian entrepreneur, it was designed as a home for independent creators who felt crowded out on YouTube. But the platform took a hard right turn around the time of the Capitol riots on Jan. 6, 2021, when social networks and YouTube cracked down on users who violated their rules. Conservatives flocked to other platforms, including Rumble, which quickly embraced its new role as a “free speech” haven — and saw its valuation surge to half a billion dollars practically overnight.
Its content today goes far beyond cat videos. Video game livestreams populate its homepage alongside a bizarre face-slapping competition called “Power Slap.” But political commentary and news remain its most popular categories by far.
A screenshot from the first day of this experiment shows videos about WWIII and live categories focused on news, entertainment and “conspiracies.”The front page
I chose a selection of popular “news” shows to watch, along with political content from other areas, like its active “conspiracies” section.
Because my experiment began so soon after Mr. Trump swept to victory on Nov. 5, I expected many of the videos to feel triumphant.
There were a few moments of joy: After the hosts of “Morning Joe,” the MSNBC talk show, visited Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago, hosts of Rumble shows gleefully mocked them, saying they went to “kiss the ring and bend the knee.” Clips of N.F.L. athletes doing Mr. Trump’s dance moves were a sign, the hosts said, that Mr. Trump had recaptured popular culture from the clutches of Hollywood liberals.
▶ Stay Free with Russell Brand
Multiple shows criticized the same clip from “Morning Joe”
But their happiness quickly gave way to a relentless outpouring of anger and frustration, as they fixated on a cast of perceived enemies to blame for America’s troubles — from Democratic politicians to TikTok personalities to Republican adversaries.
Just a few hours into the experiment, it was clear that I was falling into an alternate reality fueled almost entirely by outrage. Among the claims I heard:
Some people at think tanks in Washington were “morons” and “crazier than any schizophrenic.”
The Department of Homeland Security was running a “sex-trafficking operation,” a claim apparently based on a misreading of a government report. (The report, by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General, indicated that more than 300,000 unaccompanied minors had not received a notice to appear in court or had received the notice but had failed to appear. Some conservative commentators said this meant the children were being trafficked, but experts in immigration policy said it meant no such thing.)
Progressives were trying to get Republicans killed — a claim based on death threats that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said she received.
After only one day, I could feel my perspective shifting. When I described to my wife what I was hearing on Rumble, she said I was right to feel uneasy because the world I was immersing myself in sounded genuinely awful.
Hour by hour, Rumble’s hosts stoked fears about nearly everything: culture wars, transgender Americans and even a potential World War III.
‘Do you guys know where your fallout shelters are?’
On the second night, while catching up on the show “Redacted,” I heard that World War III was more or less imminent because of rising tensions with Russia but that most Americans were unaware of it.
Exactly what to make of this remained unclear to me, but I suspected tensions would need to rise much further before bombs started dropping. Clayton Morris, a former Fox News personality who co-hosts the show with his wife, seemed convinced that nuclear war was coming, describing the lack of fallout shelters in major cities throughout the United States. (I later read news articles that offered a fuller picture, suggesting that the risk of escalation was real but that nuclear threats were also a strategy in Mr. Putin’s saber rattling.)
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We have zero infrastructure in the United Statesthat could save lives in a critical crisis like this.No fallout shelters, no contingency if Russia,you know, fires against, you know, fires missiles into Nashville,Los Angeles, Buffalo, New York City, Los Angeles.Do you guys know where your fallout shelters are?Where you’ll be taken care of?Where food and supplies will be? No, you don’t.
▶ Clayton Morris, co-host of “Redacted,” warns there are not enough fallout shelters in major cities in the United States.
The coverage struck me as particularly scary, but I also paused to consider whether Mr. Morris had any credentials as a Russia-Ukraine analyst. Since 2017, he has pivoted his career from hosting television shows to offering investors “financial freedom” through real estate investing. He was sued in 2019 by two dozen clients who said they were sold ramshackle homes as investment properties, then relocated his family to Portugal before the lawsuits were settled — which some said complicated the litigation proceedings. (Mr. Morris denied any wrongdoing.)
On Rumble, though, he seemed authoritative: His slickly produced show had more than 560,000 followers and it aired daily with an active comments section filled with supporters. The videos were recommended to me by Rumble’s algorithm, so I kept watching.
Other shows referenced clips directly from Russian state television or the Russian government. During “The Roseanne Barr Show,” a segment about nuclear war bled into an ad for an emergency health kit. (In an email, the show’s co-host Jake Pentland, who is Ms. Barr’s son, told me their show wants to keep Americans “safe and protected from this wildly corrupt administration whether that’s through education or highlighting specific products that can protect them.”)
The prospect of an impending World War III stuck with me long after the livestreams ended. As I shuttled my son to day care or walked down aisles at the grocery store, I found my mind drifting to thoughts of nuclear bombs, a military draft or how a global conflict might actually unfold.
While watching a segment on the dire prediction, I glanced over at my wife, who was enjoying Netflix’s romantic comedy series “Nobody Wants This,” unaware about the threat of nuclear winter.
‘Who’s in charge now? We are.’
As the days ticked by, I saw how the outrage stoked online could burst into the real world.
Early in the week, multiple hosts on Rumble were furious over a Democratic official in Pennsylvania who they suggested was trying to steal the election by counting invalid ballots. The controversy gained nationwide attention and the official, Diane Ellis Marseglia, the commissioner for Bucks County, Pa., received profanity-laden emails and death threats.
Reading news articles about it later, though, it was clear the situation was more complicated than the hosts had suggested. The courts responded with additional guidance and the county followed the law.
The official eventually apologized for using a badly worded statement that stoked the backlash — and her apology video also made the rounds on Rumble.
“We are all going to learn lessons from this new media landscape,” Ms. Marseglia said in her apology. “Most of all, I am.”
Dan Bongino, the host of “The Dan Bongino Show,” relished the moment.
“Who’s in charge now? We are,” he said triumphantly. “Who made this a story? Us.”
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Who’s in charge now? We are.Who made this a story?Us.You.You’re like, I didn’t—No, you did.People like me and all of these conservative MAGA podcasters sent that video out.And you made it a story.
▶ Dan Bongino, host of “The Dan Bongino Show,” says that right-wing influencers have replaced mainstream media.
It seemed clear that actual news — the objective details about complex situations like election proceedings or the war in Ukraine — mattered far less than how these situations could be contorted to support Mr. Trump or deride Democrats. Nearly every show created a visceral feeling that the nation was barrelling from crisis to crisis.
Progressives were getting away with galling levels of incompetence or corruption, the hosts said over and over again. Even though Mr. Trump and the Republican Party would soon control the White House and Congress, and conservatives have a majority on the Supreme Court, there were more battles to come.
After just a week, this alternate reality started shifting how I instinctively reacted to the world outside Rumble. I would catch a stray story on the local news radio about something innocuous, like train delays or traffic jams, and wonder: “Can I really trust this?”
It’s true that listening to any single news source long enough will shift your perspective. But few sources have as many ties to Mr. Trump and his incoming administration as Rumble. Its top personalities are frequently seen with Mr. Trump at events or at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home, with hosts suggesting they will have special access to the administration.
⏸︎ We told you we were going to go to Mar-a-Lagoand we’re gonna, we’re gonna, we’re gonnaget some interesting access in the next couple of years.And, because so many people that’s been in the administrationhave been, like, true friends of us.Been on this program, been a part of this audiencelocked in with you.
▶ Benny Johnson, host of “The Benny Show,” said he expected to have “interesting access” to the Trump administration.
Vivek Ramaswamy, Mr. Trump’s pick for a new government efficiency initiative, and Howard Lutnick, the likely commerce secretary, owned millions of dollars worth of Rumble shares when it went public in 2022.
So did Craft Ventures, which was co-founded by David Sacks, an investor who sits on Rumble’s board of directors and was recently named Mr. Trump’s pick for cryptocurrency czar.
Christopher Pavlovski, Rumble’s founder and chief executive, has emerged as a Trump ally, too. In a post on X, he shared a photo from after the election of him standing next to several people, including Elon Musk, one of Mr. Trump’s most prominent backers. At the back of the frame and grinning was the soon to be 47th president of the United States.
“Free speech saved,” Mr. Pavlovski wrote. Rumble and Mr. Pavlovski did not reply to multiple requests for comment on this story.
I received a statement from Tim Murtaugh, a representative for Rumble who was also Mr. Trump’s communications director for his 2020 campaign. He said: “The New York Times and its fellow legacy media outlets have lost their monopoly on deciding what information people can have, so of course they’re rushing to attack Rumble, a key alternative in the news marketplace.”
The ‘planet might be saved’ by Trump.
The fear and outrage that infused every show was offset by a sense of hopefulness that the president-elect would fix everything — even that the “planet might have been saved” because he was re-elected.
⏸︎ It is not an exaggeration to saythe planet might have been savedby the fact that we won the election two weeks ago today.
▶ Charlie Kirk has credited Mr. Trump’s re-election with potentially saving the world.
Blame for any hiccups in Mr. Trump’s strategy was assigned to Democrats or even Republicans who were not sufficiently obedient.
Senator Tommy Tuberville, an Alabama Republican, said on one show that while Republicans controlled the Senate, the party remained “a third MAGA, a third Republican and a third RINO,” meaning “Republican in name only.”
“We’ve got control, but do we have control?” Mr. Tuberville summarized.
Perhaps the biggest cheerleader for Mr. Trump was Mr. Bongino, the eponymous host of Rumble’s most-watched show, with 3.4 million followers.
Mr. Bongino is a former Fox News host who ran three unsuccessful bids for elected office before striking gold in the right-wing commentary business. The podcast version of his show consistently ranks among the top news podcasts in the country. Rumble’s financial documents show that his company, Bongino Inc., owned 5.8 percent of the company when it went public in 2022, now worth more than $100 million.
Though I listened to an hour of Mr. Bongino’s opinions each day, it seemed like I learned mostly what various progressive or mainstream media figures had said about different culture war topics, and Mr. Bongino’s predictable reactions to them.
Many segments on Mr. Bongino’s show included comments from liberals or mainstream news media, along with Mr. Bongino’s predictable reactions to them.
Note: Times are approximate
Bongino’s focus
On his Thursday show, he talked about the nation’s intelligence apparatus — but it was in response to what a CNN host had said about its effectiveness.
He talked about cancel culture — but in response to a comment on “The View” about Matt Gaetz, Mr. Trump’s first pick for attorney general.
He talked about identity politics — but in reaction to what a Democratic congresswoman said about race.
He talked about the murder conviction of an undocumented migrant — but in reaction to what a news anchor had said about the case on ABC News.
Nearly every show I watched on Rumble framed issues this way, focusing on how news was discussed by mainstream media, and then complaining about it.
I don’t remember seeing Mr. Bongino criticize Mr. Trump — not once. He spent the first part of the week saying that Mr. Gaetz, the former Republican congressman who was briefly a contender for attorney general, would surely be confirmed. He seemed to dismiss a federal sex-trafficking investigation into Mr. Gaetz by saying it was impossible to find “good” people for top roles. (Mr. Gaetz denied any wrongdoing and the Justice Department declined to file charges.)
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So all I’m trying to say to you is if you’re using good or bad,as a metric to appoint people who could change the country for the betteryou’re going to lose,because they’re all badso forget it.
▶ Mr. Bongino said anyone seeking political power who could “change the country for the better” is a bad person.
When Mr. Gaetz withdrew his name from consideration later that week after significant pushback, Mr. Bongino never faulted Mr. Trump for the whole ordeal. Instead, he blamed Republicans and said it was part of Mr. Trump’s strategy to intentionally overwhelm his critics with controversial picks.
‘You’re going to become part of the show.’
After watching Rumble nonstop for days, I realized this very article was likely to fuel its own cycle of outrage on the platform. But I was surprised when that happened before it was even published.
I wrote to everyone mentioned in the article to ask for their perspective about Rumble and its popular shows, but few replied. Instead, people like Russell Brand, the former actor turned political commentator, took one of my emails and made an entire segment out of it. Mr. Bongino called me “public enemy No. 1” and claimed my story would focus on Rumble’s fringiest voices in a bid to get the site banned.
“Don’t ever email us,” he warned. “Don’t. Because you’re going to become part of the show.”
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We’re in charge now.Chew on that —-.I’m serious by the way.Don’t ever email us.Don’t.Because you’re going to become part of the show.
▶ Mr. Bongino says any journalists contacting the show will “become part of the show.”
Mr. Pentland, the co-host of “The Roseanne Barr Podcast,” posted the email I sent him to his X account. Rumble’s chief executive reposted it, then Elon Musk reposted that to his more than 200 million followers. My phone number was visible, and apparently seen more than 50 million times on the platform, so I was soon flooded with angry phone calls and texts calling my article (which hadn’t yet been published) a “hit job” focused on World War III.
On his show, Mr. Pentland referenced my email and said his original ad for a nuclear fallout health kit was meant to “educate our audience” about alternative medicines.
Then that segment bled into another ad for the health kit.
Stephen K. Bannon, host of “War Room,” relayed a message through his producer, saying that his show “exists as the information arm for the activist cadre at the tip of the spear of the MAGA movement.”
Candace Owens, the host of the “Candace Show,” was the only one who called me back. She said she was focusing less on political outrage lately after growing weary of chasing negativity.
“I realized I was waking up every day and I was looking for things to be angry at,” she said. “And that wasn’t healthy for me.”
Dear Liz: When I retired, I had a small 401(k) with about $12,000 in it. Instead of rolling that money into an IRA, I took a distribution and paid taxes on it. I had no immediate need for the remaining funds, so eventually I opened a new IRA account and deposited the money.
I now realize I should have put it in a Roth IRA so I wouldn’t face double taxation on the money. This is the stupidest thing I’ve done in recent memory. Is there any legal mechanism I can use to get that money out and into a Roth without paying taxes the second time?
Answer: You made a mistake, but probably not the one you think.
You can’t contribute to an IRA — or a Roth IRA, for that matter — if you don’t have earned income. So if you’ve fully retired, you should contact your IRA administrator and let them know you need to withdraw your “excess contribution” as well as any earnings the contribution has made.
If you contributed this year, you have until your tax filing deadline — typically April 15, 2026 — to remove the funds without penalty. If you contributed in a previous year, you’ll typically face a 6% excise tax for each year the money remained in your account.
Now, a warning about financial mistakes: They tend to become more common as we age. That can be incredibly unsettling, especially to do-it-yourselfers used to handling finances competently on their own. Retirement is a good time to start implementing some guardrails to protect ourselves and our money.
Hiring a tax pro would be a good first step. Anything to do with a retirement fund should be run past this pro first to make sure you’re following the tax rules.
Dear Liz: In response to a reader who asked about creating a will, you suggested options for low-cost online resources. That is great! But, I would encourage you to remind readers to designate beneficiaries on accounts and assets where that option is available.
While they should still have a will, many readers may not know that they can add beneficiaries to brokerage, checking, and savings accounts (in addition to IRA and retirement accounts) so that their assets will pass directly to the designated beneficiaries and not have to go through probate with the extra hassle, time and expense.
For those without a trust, designating beneficiaries may be the easiest way to pass on many of their assets. In California (and some other states), even houses may pass without probate with a transfer-on-death deed. Many readers may not know about the option to add beneficiaries, and you would do your readers a service by educating them about it.
Answer: Anyone adding beneficiaries to accounts needs to be aware of some major potential drawbacks.
A big one involves settling the estate. If all available funds are transferred directly to beneficiaries, the person settling the estate may not have enough cash to do their job.
Beneficiary designations can also result in unintentionally unequal distributions if there’s more than one heir, and complications if the beneficiaries die first or aren’t changed appropriately as life circumstances change.
That’s not to say that beneficiary designations are the wrong choice, but they’re certainly not a one-size-fits-all option.
Dear Liz: Your recent column about advanced directives said that people could get a free version at PrepareForYourCare.org. I found there is a charge. Is this for all online directives?
Answer: Prepare is a free site supported by donations, grants and licensing agreements. If you were asked to pay, you either clicked the donate button or weren’t on the correct site.
Liz Weston, Certified Financial Planner, is a personal finance columnist. Questions may be sent to her at 3940 Laurel Canyon, No. 238, Studio City, CA 91604, or by using the “Contact” form at asklizweston.com.
To understand how Mr. Trump has achieved this omnipresence, The New York Times reviewed the first 329 days of his second term, finding at least one instance each day when he attracted the public’s attention to himself and his actions.
The review encompassed more than 250 media appearances, more than 320 official appearances, and more than 5,000 Truth Social posts or reposts. The analysis shows that while Mr. Trump has lagged his predecessors in his number of official appearances, he has pursued a raft of innovative methods to force himself into the public consciousness on a daily, and sometimes even hourly, basis.
The battery of activity started from the moment he was inaugurated, when he traveled from the Capitol Building to the Capital One Arena to publicly sign a flurry of executive orders.
Since then, he has stayed in the public eye in part by doing things no president has ever done. High-stakes Oval Office meetings, like his negotiations with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, are held on-camera and broadcast live on global news networks. His Q.-and-A. sessions with reporters frequently last an hour or more.
He regularly airs his opinions – on social media, in discursive asides at rallies – about idiosyncratic subjects that range widely across the zeitgeist, from Sydney Sweeney’s sexy denim ads to the redesigned logo of the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain to the mysterious fate of the aviator Amelia Earhart, who vanished over the Pacific Ocean in 1937.
And his engagement with the news media has soared well beyond the start of his first administration.
Through Dec. 14, Mr. Trump took reporters’ questions on 449 occasions, compared with 223 during the same period of his first term. On average, Mr. Trump has interacted with journalists roughly twice a day, doubling his rate from 2017, according to Martha Joynt Kumar, a Towson University political scientist who tracks presidential press interactions. Mr. Trump limits which news outlets can ask questions at small events, but in sheer volume, he is the most media-accessible modern president, and far outpaces his predecessor, Joseph R. Biden Jr.
“Reporters will be in my office asking me for the president’s reaction to a breaking news story,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in an interview. “And I’ll just say to them, ‘I don’t know, why don’t you ask him yourself in 30 minutes?’”
President Trump’s media appearances have soared this year, more than doubling both the Biden administration’s and those of his own first term.
Finding the Cameras
Many of his public moments go viral online, like his diatribe about restoring the name of the Washington Redskins, or the A.I.-generated video meme he posted of himself dribbling a soccer ball with Cristiano Ronaldo in the Oval Office. They take on a life of their own, rippling across social media and dissected and amplified by influencers and mass media platforms alike.
The result is a president whose not-so-inner monologue is injected into our daily lives in myriad ways, when we are watching TV on the weekends or idly scrolling the web – a Greek chorus for our national narrative.
“He’s the most ubiquitous president ever,” said Douglas Brinkley, the presidential historian.
The media strategy aligns with his political strategy.
Dating back to his years as an outspoken real estate developer and reality TV star, Mr. Trump has relished being unavoidable for comment. But at age 79, he has been outdoing his younger self. And there is a logic to his logorrhea.
Mr. Trump’s allies often speak of the political benefits of flooding the zone: pursuing so many policies, ideas, and dramatic restructurings of the normal ways of governance as to overwhelm the system. “All pedal, no brake,” as Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s one-time adviser, has called it.
“We joke internally that he is our ultimate director of communications,” Ms. Leavitt said. “He has incredible media instincts, and he is the final decision maker on all policy, and he has been in a ‘flood the zone,’ ‘do as much as possible’ mindset since he walked into the Oval Office on Jan. 20.”
All presidents benefit from the awesome news-making powers of the office, with its agenda-setting influence over a dedicated global press corps. But Mr. Trump has outstripped his predecessors in whipsawing the public’s attention onto matters small and large – and limiting the level of scrutiny that any one shocking remark or policy proposal receives.
“People can really only focus on a handful of things a day,” said Bill Burton, a deputy White House press secretary under former President Barack Obama. “This attention flood is working for Trump because he is able to do an extraordinary amount of executive actions and very little of it can get attention.”
Or as Mr. Brinkley put it: “He plays to win the day, every day, around the clock.”
His commentary takes on a life of its own.
One of Mr. Trump’s political assets is his instinct for virality.
With a natural feel for the web, Mr. Trump has a knack for amplifying wacky memes and pop culture curios that can drive days of online discourse. Sometimes, coverage of his offhand remarks or late-night social media posts can crowd out the more significant, norm-shattering changes he is making to American governance.
Late one Friday night in May, the president posted an obviously A.I.-generated image of himself as the pope. It struck a nerve.
Mr. Trump had already courted controversy days earlier, after the death of Pope Francis on April 21.
“I’d like to be pope,” the president told reporters who asked about who should become the next pontiff. “That would be my number one choice.”
The comment disturbed some Catholics, who said the notion was crude and insensitive. That reaction seemed only to prompt Mr. Trump to double down, posting the A.I.-generated image to his Truth Social account days later. By the weekend it had become a cultural phenomenon, mocked on “Saturday Night Live” and called out by experts as an example of misleading A.I. content.
After Mr. Trump posts the A.I. image …
May 2
Trump posts A.I. image of himself as Pope
There is nothing clever or funny about this image, Mr. President. We just buried our beloved Pope Francis and the cardinals are about to enter a solemn conclave to elect a new successor of St. Peter. Do not mock us.
May 3
NYS Catholic Conference says “do not mock us”
May 3
“Saturday Night Live” covers fake image
May 3 Vatican asked about image, declines to comment
May 4
Cardinal Joseph Tobin of New Jersey criticizes image as “not good”
May 4
JD Vance defends Trump on X, calling it a joke … some Catholics were outraged, prompting a news cycle focused on the controversy …
5
Says “the Catholics loved it”
… before Mr. Trump suggested he had nothing to do with it.
Mr. Trump, who is not Catholic, had plenty of defenders, too. They said his commentary and the A.I. image were simply jokes, part of the president’s unique comedic style.
“As a general rule, I’m fine with people telling jokes and not fine with people starting stupid wars that kill thousands of my countrymen,” Vice President JD Vance, who is Catholic, wrote on X.
In his quest for attention, the president is often aided by a cottage industry of right-wing influencers and activists who are primed to syndicate, reinforce and defend whatever content he pushes out each day. For this conservative media ecosystem, Mr. Trump’s messaging and commentary are the raw fuel that drives clicks, shares and views.
On June 7, the president’s visit to a raucous U.F.C. fight – complete with a “Trump dance” entrance into the arena – generated an immediate spike in online interest, including about 50,000 posts on X. Five days later, when he promoted a “Trump gold card” visa, his announcement led to roughly 30,000 posts on X.
A barrage that distracts from bad news.
One pattern in Mr. Trump’s behavior: When his administration is faced with bad news, he launches a fusillade of distraction.
This can take the form of outlandish, out-of-left-field claims about political opponents. Or he might weigh in on a pop culture subject far afield from Washington politics – from the ratings of late-night hosts like Seth Meyers to the physical appearance of a megastar like Taylor Swift.
The events of July 2025 offer a case in point.
As the Jeffrey Epstein files returned to the news – along with speculation that Mr. Trump might appear in them – the president embarked on a breathtaking series of tangents. Mr. Trump claimed without evidence that former President Bill Clinton had bankrolled an effort by senior intelligence officials to frame him for a crime, mused about stripping the actress Rosie O’Donnell of her U.S. citizenship, and accused the singer Beyoncé of accepting millions of dollars to endorse his erstwhile rival, former Vice President Kamala Harris.
July 8
F.B.I. publishes memo about Epstein files On July 8, the F.B.I. said it would not declassify more Epstein files.
10
Claimed intelligence officials tried to frame him
10
Pushed to defund NPR and PBS
10 Directed ICE to arrest protesters
12
Threatened Rosie O’Donnell’s citizenship
15
Claimed Adam Schiff engaged in mortgage fraud Over the following days, Mr. Trump seemed to lash out in every direction.
On July 18, the Justice Department filed a request to unseal grand jury testimony about Mr. Epstein, again raising questions about Mr. Trump’s involvement. The president promptly lobbed insults at late-night talk show hosts, dismissed the Epstein affair as “fake news” and shared fresh claims about a supposed Obama administration plot to undermine him after the 2016 election.
July 18
Request filed to unseal grand jury testimony
On July 18, the Department of Justice filed a request — later denied — to unseal grand jury testimony.
20
Criticized Washington Commanders name
21
Called the “Russia hoax” the “crime of the century”
22
Called Epstein controversy “fake news”
22
Criticized Kimmel and Fallon
24 Criticized Federal Reserve chairman
Over the following days, Mr. Trump bounced from topic to topic.
On July 25, The Wall Street Journal published a major scoop: The paper had unearthed a risqué birthday letter that Mr. Trump had apparently written to Mr. Epstein in 2003. Mr. Trump responded with his attack on Beyoncé and revived his threat to revoke the broadcast licenses of TV networks. Then he announced the imminent construction of an enormous gilded ballroom at the White House, at a cost of $200 million. (He has since revised the cost upward to $400 million.)
Asked if there was a deliberate strategy to distract from negative news, Ms. Leavitt noted that every administration seeks to minimize unhelpful headlines.
“Yes, there have been times in which we’ve tried to do that, but also often it just happens naturally, because the president is willing to weigh in on so many subjects,” she said. “Sometimes it’s really not deliberate. It’s just him speaking his mind on whatever news cycle or news story is brought to him in that moment.”
He has added tricks to his arsenal.
Mr. Trump’s devotion to Truth Social mirrors the hair-trigger Twitter habit of his first term; on one recent December evening, he posted 158 times between 9 p.m. and midnight. And he has continued to appear on Fox News with certain preferred hosts.
But this year, he has added to his media arsenal by appearing in many more public spaces that fall outside of a president’s typical itinerary.
Mr. Trump has stopped by a Washington Commanders N.F.L. game, popped up in the New York Yankees locker room, attended the Ryder Cup golf tournament and the men’s tennis final at the U.S. Open, sat ringside at numerous U.F.C. fights, and traveled to the Daytona 500. He is the first sitting president to attend a Super Bowl. When FIFA staged the Club World Cup final in New Jersey, Mr. Trump not only attended, but joined the winning team onstage for the trophy ceremony.
The net effect is a sense of inescapability, that no corner of American life remains Trump-free – which itself amounts to a potent expression of presidential authority and command. “His power, in part,” said Mr. Burton, the former Obama aide, “comes from the attention that people give him, or that he forces on them.”
Can it ever be too much?
In the fall of 2009, President Barack Obama appeared on David Letterman’s talk show, gave interviews to CNBC and Men’s Health magazine, and made the rounds of all five major network Sunday shows. Washington was abuzz about whether he was overexposed.
That debate sounds quaint today. But the question of whether a president can be too visible remains open.
“The public is being desensitized” to Mr. Trump’s omnipresence, argued Mr. Brinkley, the historian. “It starts becoming blather. The enemy for Trump isn’t Democrats; it’s the public being bored with the show.”
Ms. Leavitt said that if there was a risk to his ubiquity, “President Trump would not be president right now.” She added: “He is a businessman who speaks his mind and tells it like it is, and sometimes people don’t like that. But obviously the vast majority of our country does, or else he wouldn’t be in this office.”
During Mr. Trump’s first term, the public eventually tired of his frenzied pace. And in some ways, Mr. Trump appears to be slowing down physically as he approaches his 80th birthday in June (which he will celebrate in part by staging a nationally broadcast U.F.C. fight on the White House lawn). He has appeared to doze at some Oval Office meetings, and he is holding fewer formal public events than he did at this point in 2017.
Still, Mr. Trump and his team have embraced the everywhere-all-at-once nature of modern media. Average Americans, busy with work and family, do not tune in for daytime news conferences or Cabinet meetings. And 6:30 p.m. newscasts and local newspapers are no longer the primary vessels by which Americans learn about their commander-in-chief.
Instead, politics now suffuses our lives as a kind of ambient noise – via TikTok videos, social media posts, YouTube talk shows and family Facebook messages – never fully separate from our leisure pursuits. “Right now the game is attention, in terms of what’s culturally breaking through,” Mr. Burton said. “The fact that so much message exists is the point.”
Mr. Trump has both propelled this merging of culture and politics, and continues to strategically exploit it. In December, he became the first president to personally host the Kennedy Center Honors, comparing himself onstage to Johnny Carson and musing that he would do a better job than Jimmy Kimmel.
“This is the greatest evening in the history of the Kennedy Center,” Mr. Trump told the crowd. “Not even a contest. There has never been anything like it.”
His performance will air in prime time on CBS on Dec. 23.
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President Trump’s media company is merging with a nuclear fusion energy firm in a $6-billion deal aimed at generating more power amid growing demand from power-hungry artificial intelligence data centers.
The merger between Trump Media & Technology and TAE Technologies could lead to one of the world’s first publicly traded fusion energy companies, the two companies said Thursday.
What is TAE Technologies?
TAE Technologies is a private company based in Foothill Ranch, Calif. It has been raising funds for commercial-scale nuclear fusion, a method of energy production that supporters say could revolutionize access to electricity. Founded in 1998, the company has built and operated five fusion reactors and raised more than $1.3 billion.
Fusion uses the same process that powers the sun to produce potentially limitless energy. Experts say it hasn’t been achieved on a large scale because the process is volatile and expensive. TAE is trying to develop the technology needed to reduce the size, cost and complexity of fusion reactors.
“Our talented team, through its commitment and dedication to science, is poised to solve the immense global challenge of energy scarcity,” TAE Chief Executive Michl Binderbauer said in a statement. “Recent breakthroughs have prepared us to… commercialize our fusion technology.”
What is the political history of Truth Social?
Truth Social was launched in 2022 as Trump created an alternative to mainstream social media, which was increasingly restricting and blocking his posts and profiles, as well as those of his allies and supporters. It began trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange through a 2024 merger with a special purpose acquisition company.
While most social media platforms have lifted restrictions on Trump’s posts, he still primarily posts on his own platform.
Though Trump and companies he is associated with control more than a 40% stake in the company, much of his investment is managed by others to avoid a conflict of interest during his term as president. Some analysts suggest his indirect association with a new company in a highly regulated industry could also lead to issues.
TAE will need significant investment and regulation to advance, which makes Trump’s ties a major conflict, Richard Painter, a former White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, told the Associated Press.
“He’s jumping into this industry just like he jumped into cryptocurrency a couple of years ago,” Painter said. “Just as the United States government is gonna get all involved in it. And it’s so obvious that there’s a huge conflict of interest.”
Trump Media shares, which had fallen more than 80% from their 2024 peak, have skyrocketed around 50% since the deal was announced.
The company now has a market value of more than $4.5 billion.
Why are the companies merging?
The parent company of Trump’s social media site, Truth Social, Trump Media & Technology, previously had little to do with energy production. The company agreed to merge with Alphabet-backed TAE Technologies, with the aim of paving the way for easier access to abundant electricity.
The merger aims to help both companies diversify and raise more money.
It is an attempt to combine Trump Media’s “significant access to capital” with TAE’s “leading fusion technology,” the companies said in a release.
They plan to begin construction in 2026 on the first-ever utility-scale fusion power plant.
“Fusion power plants are expected to provide economic, abundant and dependable electricity that would help America win the AI revolution,” the release said.
The boom in popularity of AI chatbots such as ChatGPT has created a seemingly insatiable new demand for power.
The Georgia Institute of Technology says modern AI data centers use as much electricity as a small city. As AI models grow, they demand even more power.
What are the terms of the deal?
The all-stock transaction announced this week values each share of TAE Technologies at $53.89, although it is a private company. Trump Media has agreed to provide $200 million in cash to TAE upon closing, expected in mid-2026.
When the merger is complete, TAE and Trump Media shareholders will each own about 50% of the combined company.
Trump Media will be the holding company for TAE, TAE Power Solutions and TAE Life Sciences.
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