Shortly after the recent controversial Oval Office meeting between President Trump and President Volodymyr Zensky van Ukraine, Senator Adam Schiff went on the camera to offer his assessment.
“I was shocked and sick,” said Mr. Schiff, a Californian Democrat. “This is Donald Trump who takes care of nothing of American values,” he added later.
More than 2.2 million people watched Mr. Schiff. But he didn't speak on MSNBC or on CNN. Instead, he appeared on the YouTube channel of the Meidastouch network, an UpStart Online Media Company that is known for his non-reinforced criticism of Mr Trump, supplied in a snowstorm of bare, indignation-heavy videos, clips, podcasts and social media messages.
Meidastouch is a leader among the many digital first points of sale that have quickly reformed the progressive media landscape since Mr Trump. Under progressives on the policy of the new government, Agita quickly become power brokers in democratic politics and party religious hope – finally replicating the influential media ecosystem that Republicans have built up over the past decade.
“Pod Save America”, the podcast organized by former employees of President Barack Obama, for example, has played an increase of 70 percent in hours since mid -January. And the number of subscribers on the YouTube channel for 'The Young Turkish', a left-wing news show that streams left live live live live live five days a week, 208 percent last month.
But perhaps no metriek does not underline the new attention to progressive media more than last month's unveiling that “The Meidastouch Podcast” had used the show of Joe Rogan on top of both Apple's and Spotify's rankings for downloads, a slot that the show had held for two weeks. (Mr. Rogan has recovered first week.)
“We offer a reassuring place where we channel the feelings of people in a real difficult time,” said Ben Meiselas, a lawyer who founded Meidastouch with his two brothers as a political action committee in 2020 before turning it into a media company three years ago.
For his dedicated fans, who call themselves the girl Mighty, Meidastouch presents an alternative reality in which Democrats are ascendant and Mr Trump and Republicans are in a state of collapse. Titles of recent podcast -which are also streamed on YouTube are “Trump in panic after the playing reading as a coward”, “Trump crumbles in public while his entire life unraveled” and “Democratic leaders destroy Trump in red districts.”
Today, Meidastouche has 12 full-time employees and 30 regular contributors, including the former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and 4.3 million subscribers on YouTube. When it comes to determining the agenda for the democratic discourse, Mr. Meiselas said: “I think that is more important and more important than TV now.”
Television is of course far from death. But central and left -wing networks have steadily lost terrain from Fox News, the runaway leader in reviews between cable news networks. Last month, FOX broadcast each of the 10 top homes on cable news.
That has an increasing number of democratic politicians encouraged to turn to digital media in search of a larger and younger audience.
“We became sketches in new media,” said Senator Cory Booker, a democrat in New Jersey who leads the Senate Democratic Strategic Communications Committee. Democrats, in particular former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and former vice-president Kamala Harris, were downright criticized for their reserved approach to non-traditional points of sale, which contrasted with the enthusiastic embrace of Mr Trump of right-wing influencers and podcasts.
In January the Mr. Booker's Committee and her house opposite vacancies for social media managers to process relationships with digital makers. Mr. Booker has also invited influencers such as Brian Tyler Cohen, a popular YouTube host who said he has received 250,000 subscriptions on his YouTube page in the past two weeks to lead digital media training for Democrats. They have learned how to record their own videos, use better lighting and microphones and not worry about cursing on the camera.
Mr. Cohen, a former MSNBC employee who has 3.9 million subscribers and also pumps content on Tiktok, Instagram and X, described the shift online as “existential” for Democrats and one that has long been in the coming place.
“I couldn't get anyone to do my show before,” he said. “Now I have to juggle with all the requests from A-Listers who want to come.”
Some politicians jump directly into the fight. Gavin Newsom of California started a podcast last week with interviews with what he called “some of the greatest leaders and architects in the Maga movement.” In his opening interview with Charlie Kirk, a founder of the Pro-Trump organization Turning Point USA, Mr. Newsom said that he would emulate the hectic and constant on-message, atmosphere of right-wing media.
That can be harder to be than it sounds. Podcasts organized by other Democrats – such as “Inside Maine with Senator Angus King” – have not attracted a large audience. Other attempts to be digital ahead looked more like facial plants. Last week, for example, Mr. Booker and more than a dozen other senators were criticized for placing almost identical reactions to Mr Trump's speech to the congress. Mr. Booker later acknowledged the writing of the script he and his colleagues had read.
On the internet, a podcast performance can be viewed live, downloaded to be seen later, placed on several platforms and cut into segments that can live on for hours or even days, so that more options for involvement can be created exponentially.
After Mr Trump's speech to the Congress on Tuesday, Adam Mockler, the internal Gen-Z-Influencer of Meidastouch, generated more than 250,000 views that live streaming reactions from Democrats, including representative Eric Swalwell of California and Ken Martin.
Subsequently, Akyn Torabi, an employee of Meidastouch who specializes in spotting potentially viral content and cutting into traffic -generating short clips, placed fragments from those interviews on X, who resulted in almost a million more views.
Mr. Meiselas and his brothers, Brett and Jordy, post a dozen or more 10 to 20 minutes-lasting news segments-Bijna all with the search engine optimizing word “Trump” in their title-on YouTube every day. That torrent is supplemented with other shows produced by Meidastouche contributors.
This constant power-ready content gives listeners more episodes to download, so that the ranking of the outlet on podcast hit lists is lifted. In February Meidastouchch had 57.5 million podcast downloads, according to Podsibe, a tracker, who ranked it for “The Joe Rogan Experience” and the Podcast of Candace Owens, although they had considerably more listeners per episode.
“You have to move quickly,” said Ron Filipkowski, a former Republican with nearly a million followers on X who was assumed in 2023 to edit the Meidastouch website. In September he helped start the company's newsletter on Substack; It has grown to more than 500,000 subscribers, of whom around 40,000 pay at least $ 8 per month to get advertising -free and exclusive content. He also records a weekly podcast from his own podcast, “Uncovered”, which focuses on right -wing wrong information.
“Much of what we do no one else does, and that's why our next one has grown,” said Mr Filipkowski.
Other points of sale adapt to keep up. Tommy Vietor, a co-gastheer of 'Pod Save America', who is known for profound and often fairly long interviews with democratic insiders, said that he had recently experimented with short videos he uploaded directly to Tiktok.
“Trump is the most ruthless communicator in the history of politics, and he has the largest platform,” said Mr. Vietor. “So the only way Democrats can start competing with this is by constantly, everywhere, always communicating.”
Despite the recent successes, the Links does not yet have a real analogue of the loudest right -wing voices such as Elon Musk and Ben Shapiro.
Melissa Kiesche, a senior vice -president at Edison Research, which ranks podcasts, said that although achieving the first place on Apple and Spotify was a commandable achievement, the total reach of Meidastouchch was still miles behind Mr. Rogan's. For example, she noticed that he has about five times as many subscribers on YouTube as a girlastouch.
“Nothing even comes close,” said Mrs. Kiesche.
Last week, representative Ro Khanna, a Democrat in California, invited Carlos Eduardo Espina, a left -wing influencer who supplies news updates in Spanish and has 12.3 million followers on Tiktok, to be his guest for Mr.'s speech. Trump for the congress and to post videos comment on the event. The 11 videos that Mr. Espina has uploaded to the site about the event, have yielded more than 17 million views.
But Mr. Khanna claims that until more members of his party social media influencers begin to see as an integral part of the movement, it will be impossible to catch up.
“I think the law really created a space in the digital world where people feel that they are part of a community,” he said. “And links didn't do that.”
