What A Day - MAGA Media’s Trump Slump

Episode Date: August 13, 2026

Donald Trump’s poll numbers are trash — and numbers for right-wing influencers on YouTube, Twitter and elsewhere are going down the tubes, too. As the New York Times reported at the end of last month, some of the biggest names in right-wing media are experiencing massive declines in clicks and views to their content. David Pakman is the host of the David Pakman Show on YouTube – and he’s been thinking a lot about the algorithms that control what we watch, read, listen to and think about. He stopped by to talk about how right-wing media has become a victim of its own success.And in headlines, Karoline Leavitt is leaving the White House at the end of the month to spend more time with her family, U.S. inflation declined slightly last month and what’s behind Zohran Mamdani’s approval rating after eight months in office.Show Notes: Check out David's show – https://tinyurl.com/3eh3tczj Call Congress – 202-224-3121 Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/y4y2e9jy What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcast Follow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/ For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail]

The options I basically have as a content creator are to play the game to the extent that I think is morally acceptable in order to get better ideas out there or to leave and completely cede the space to the people with the absolute worst ideas. I'm Jane Koston, and this is What Today? The show that wonders if Minnesota voters are going to find this clip from former NFL sideline reporter and current GOP Senate nominee Michelle Tofoya as convincing as I did. I think right now at least just kind of keeping a stiff upper lip. Maybe you take one less trip to Starbucks, and so that gas goes a little further until this thing is over and these gas prices come back down again. Let's just try to be patriots about this. The clip is from March, but Defoea clinched the nomination on Tuesday. And I'm excited to see how she will update her,

Do you really need a venty black coffee? President Donald Trump needs to do war stuff, views for a general audience. On today's show, we talk about the waning influence of right-wing influencer media with political commentator David Packman. Before we get into the Benny Johnsonverse, here's what we're following today, Thursday, August 13th. For a left-wing hack, here are the facts. President Trump did nothing wrong. We are going to hold those lies accountable. He also is the most transparent president in history.

Aw, thanks for the memories, Reuters. Sweet Caroline Leavitt is leaving the White House at the end of the month, too. Spend more time with her family. Trump announced Levitt's departure on True Social Wednesday. He didn't say who might take her place, but indicated she would continue to play a role in his orbit, writing, quote, Caroline will now be one of my top outside advisors and an influential voice within the Republican Party as we worked to defy history and conclusively win the midterm elections. Sure. Leavitt, who just recently returned to the White House podium after the birth of her second child, called the decision to leave, quote, bittersweet.

for whom, I wonder. I mentioned on the show yesterday that a new MSNOW report found that conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, currently stationed in the Middle East to support Trump's war in Iran, have gotten so bad that multiple sailors have attempted to jump overboard to escape. Now lawmakers are starting to ask questions. In a letter sent yesterday to Defense Secretary Pete Higsef, an acting Navy secretary, Hung Kow, Connecticut Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal noted that the aircraft carrier has not made a port call,

as in stop for supplies and to let sailors take leave in more than 200 days, a modern record. Blumenthal added that on the ship, quote, there have been widespread reports of shortages of basic supplies, water contamination, plumbing issues, deteriorating mental health, and deck safety concerns. According to CNN, the letter follows a town hall last week where more than 200 family members expressed deep concern about their loved ones aboard the Lincoln. One woman told Acting Secretary Cow that she got a message from her husband, that, quote, he hopes he doesn't wake up tomorrow.

CNN reports that at least one soldier did go overboard last month but was rescued. The USS Abraham Lincoln has over 1,300 crew members. Earlier today, CNN reported that another aircraft carrier is headed to the USS Lincoln to bring more supplies. U.S. inflation declined slightly last month as a cost of gas and groceries slipped. The Labor Department's report found consumer prices increased just 3.4% in July from a year ago. That number is down just 18C, weensy bid from 3.5% in June. But prices are still rising more quickly than average wages, especially since Trump started his war of choice in Iran.

Many Americans are struggling to pay for groceries, gas, and health care. As a reminder, inflation had fallen to 2.4% before the war, so we're still worse off than before. Thanks, Trump. Democratic socialists are making waves in this year's primary elections, but the brand isn't doing so hot. A recent poll from Sienna College found that only, 30% of voters view the Democratic Socialists of America favorably.

It's a different story in New York City. In that same poll, 69% of voters have a favorable view of Mayor Zeramam Dani, a Democratic Socialist after eight months in office. Pretty good for a city that famously hates its mayors. So how did he do it? Much of the credit goes to a so-called pothole politics, that is, finding ways to make residents' daily labs better no matter how small. Think fixing water fountains, or, you guessed it, filling potholes at a record pace.

Here's a clip of Waterday's Matt Berg talking with New York's deputy mayor for economic justice, Julie Sue. People should be able to expect a level of public excellence from their government, and we are going to deliver it. Whether that is in the day-to-day things, like making sure that your potholes get fixed and we filled 100,000 potholes within the first 100 days. It's the most of any administration by far. Or if it's bigger initiatives that affect your quality of life, like affordable child care. You know, he's announced just 2,000 seats in 2K or affordable housing for which we also have really ambitious plans. If it's for access to arts and culture, today we just announced over 2,000 tickets to high school students in New York to be able to go to a show. Finally, justice for theater kids.

And that's the news. Let's talk about right-wing media. A year and a half ago, the right was celebrating. Donald Trump had won the White House and the popular vote. right-wing influencers weren't just welcome in the Oval Office they were given pride of place in the White House briefing room. They were at, as New York Magazine called it, the cruel kids table. And you weren't. But a lot has changed since January 2025.

As I keep telling you, Donald Trump's poll numbers are trash. Trash! And right-wing influencers on YouTube, Twitter, and elsewhere are going down the tubes too. As in New York Times reported at the end of last month, some of the biggest names in right-wing media are experiencing massive declines and clicks and views to their content. David Pacman is the host of the David Packman show on YouTube, and he's been thinking a lot about the algorithms that control what we watch, read, listen to, and think about. His new book, Pay Attention, How the Algorithms and Media Wars are suppressing truth and rewiring your brain is out in September. He stopped by to talk about how right-wing media has become a victim of its own success.

Hey, David. Welcome to What Today. Thank you. So I talk about this all the time, but I'll say it again because I love saying it. Donald Trump's approval rating is in the gutter. And a lot of the people who voted for him are not happy. And the people who propped him up throughout his campaign, the Benny Johnson's, Megan Kelly, is Tucker Carlson's the world. They've been kind of left in a free fall as the numbers behind them are starting to drop. So can you tell me what is Trump's plummeting popularity doing to the right-wing media sphere that helped elect him? And also it seems to be the only people he cares about. A couple different things going on. Some of these creators are starting to think about the future. And in the same way that Trump is playing these games of Rubio or Vans and some of the

creators are also starting to think the way Fox was back in 2015 when they didn't believe that Donald Trump was ultimately going to be the nominee, where they were positioning themselves for what comes next. And some of these creators, I think, are realizing that in a post-Trump environment, which eventually will come one way or the other. They need to start maybe distinguishing themselves so that they can have a positive message and say, we are still the ones with credibility. We're the ones who can point you in the right direction as far as where this party, the Republican Party is going post MAGA. And they're doing that in different ways. And to some degree, this is skepticism of the

Iran War. You've seen some of the creators start to say, hey, look, objectively, the pricing stuff, the affordability stuff has not been delivered on. And we need to be clear about that. This isn't what we were promised. And so they're kind of picking and choosing their spots to start drawing a little bit of distance so that they can have the credibility later to say, I now am going to tell you what the future of this movement is. But it seems like they're stuck between a rock and Donald Trump because they have people who listen to them because they wanted Trump to do something for them, people who had a transactional relationship with the president. But Trump is, I think, fairly unique in that he has acquired what I would call a cult of personality. And so it's as if

they can't, they can't just say, this guy sucks. So where does that leave these creators where they can't say Donald Trump failed us, but they kind of want to because they need to be thinking of a world post Trump? Well, the practical in between is what Megan Kelly has started to do with Iran, where a couple of weeks ago, she said something along the lines of, yes, this has been a disaster. It's not clear that this is winnable. Someone must have tricked Donald Trump into doing this, which is sort of like criticizing the outcome and the actions, but not giving Trump the full agency that he deserves for the decision. It's a similar situation to where a lot of the elected Republicans are in, which is they're starting to realize, I don't really have a case to go back to my constituents

to make to say, hey, reelect me because things are going so. well, but they also are aware that if they simply throw Trump under the bus, they risk being targeted by Trump who starts to say, hey, primary this person or vote for their opponent or support a write-in or something like that. It's a similar situation for the creators. And I think that it's fundamentally driven by they don't want to lose access to those that are in power, but they also don't want to lose their audiences. And I don't know what the solution is, and I'm certainly not the one to advise them on it,

but they don't want to be on the outs with those who are in power right now. But they're also realizing that just insisting that this is a president who's delivering on promises is not something their audiences are going to believe because he's not. Wow. Imagine being afraid to attack Trump because you're worried about what your audience will do. Couldn't be me. If that's something you're into, stick around. We'll get back to my conversation with David Packman in a moment.

In the meantime, make sure to subscribe. Leave a five-star review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Watch us on YouTube and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. You've heard me talk about BetterHelp for a long time, but I don't know that we've ever actually talked about how much people love this service when they use it.

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That's better, help.com slash wad. What a day is brought to you by Acorns. So many people are focused on where their money is today. Acorns is a financial wellness app that cares about where your money is going tomorrow. And with the Acorns potential screen, you can find out what your money is capable of. Acorns is a smart way to give your money a chance to grow. Acorns is easy. You can sign up in minutes and start automatically investing your spare money, even if all you've got is spare change.

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Tier 2 compensation provided. Potential subject to various. factors such as customers accounts, age, and investment settings. Does not include Acron's fees. Results do not predict or represent the performance of any Acorn's portfolio. Investment results will vary. Investing involves risk. Akron's advisors, LLC, and SEC registered investment advisor. View important disclosures at acorns.com slash WOD. Let's get back to my conversation with David Packman. I want to back up for a second because you have a new book coming out that's all about the algorithm, and it's called Pay Attention

what have you learned about how the internet and different social media platforms work to amplify certain content? Well, there's sometimes an assumption, especially for us in the political space, to attribute political bias to how the algorithms work. So whoever owns Facebook or controls the TikTok algorithm has personal political biases and they're basically moving levers to put the content they agree with politically at the top. Which I think is really harmful because there's this idea that like, you know, If Elon didn't control Twitter anymore, people would stop being supportive of right-wing extremists or conservative content. But that doesn't seem true. It's really not. And what these algorithms are biased towards is what is going to keep people on the platforms for the longest period of time.

This is time on platform. And the answer to that is that it has nothing to do with messages that are true. Messages might be true or they might be untrue. That doesn't really affect how successful they are on social media. It's what is triggering a reaction that keeps people scrolling, sharing, commenting, and engaging. And unfortunately, for us on the left, the rights messaging lends itself to do well in these algorithms because they're really good at finding villains and scapegoats. This is something that creates a big emotional reaction for people.

They use fear. And that lends itself to people engaging with the content more. That's really what these algorithms are optimized towards. And you can see that where. you have a lot of right wing figures who are now, for example, becoming more and more outwardly racist, not just because they may hold those views, but because they know that those views are going to get a reaction, get a lot of attention. As someone who is a content creator yourself, but also is on the left and also not vigorously racist, how are you impacted by knowing how this works? How has your work been impacted? Is it weird to see how the sausage is made and then make your own sausage?

It is a little weird. I mean, the way that I analogize it is that the options we kind of have, it would be great to change the environment. That would be a phenomenal thing. The options I basically have as a content creator are to play the game to the extent that I think is morally acceptable in order to get better ideas out there or to leave and completely seed the space to the people with the absolute worst ideas. That second option is really bad because if I leave and if you leave, people are not going to get off of these platforms. And so I think we have to find a way to play the game to a degree the way you have to play it to get maximum audience without being dishonest, without stooping to deliberate extremism of the kind that you're talking about. It's a negotiation with yourself really every time you put a piece of content together. But the way I've explained it is if I take the time to think about a piece of content, produce it, my team edits it and we've published it,

Once we've done that, of course, I want it to get the maximum audience possible up until the point that I'm being dishonest or immoral in some way. And so YouTube thumbnails and titles, it evolves over time, but they've got to look a certain way. And this is just kind of the reality of the space. Yeah, at a certain point, there are only so many ways to say that Donald Trump was destroyed. Or you won't believe what Donald Trump did. So something I worry about personally and think a lot about is audience capital. And you mentioned that in the book. Yeah.

And audience capture is basically that you tell people what they want to hear, but your audience keeps saying that they want more and more of this. And eventually you're just being directed by your audience, sometimes in really harmful directions. How do you avoid audience capture? Is that something that you're concerned about or you think about in terms of what you're doing? Yeah. Audience capture is not always destructive in the sense that it can reveal. the priorities and concerns of your constituents, the constituents being your audience. That's really useful. And so I want to understand from if I have, you know, former Trump people in my audience

who have come over because of two or three specific things that Donald Trump promised and didn't deliver on, that's really useful for me to know. And that actually can be an instructive force in thinking about the content that I want to make. Where I think audience capture gets really destructive is there have been some creators who we don't have to name names, but over the last decade, they've basically done political 180s. They've gone from being on the left to being totally on the right. For example, I struggle to believe that these are genuine political awakenings, especially when people are in their 30s and 40s, unless you've just not been paying attention. How does that happen? That is where you are starting to get a little bit of a signal that there may be

money or audience if you take these 180s and they don't represent what you genuinely, believe and they really are just a cynical cash grab. That's the audience capture that I think is really dangerous. And then the third one is the algorithms can also push you by showing you, hey, the most extreme thing you said is what's performing the best, only do that or do more of that. And I think that's really destructive to the discourse. So what I try to do is the low information feedback, YouTube comments or TikTok comments, I try to kind of make that secondary or tertiary.

and really pay attention to the people who take a moment to go and write me an email about what they believe. People who aren't just doing a drive-by comment and are thinking more about what they want to communicate, I think that feedback is much more useful. I think the thing that I'm really curious to hear from you is that so many people, I'd say most people right now, are consuming information through algorithms. And that goes across the political spectrum. That goes across platform. I know that my Instagram is informed by algorithms.

I look at something and I see more of it. then I see more of it, so I look at more of it. Is there a way to break out of these loops if you want to better inform yourself of other positions and other perspectives without just falling into another algorithmic wormhole? Yes, there are. There's three things that I think are important to do. Number one, you should spend more time not consuming algorithmically delivered news content. You should think about what outlets do I trust and which outlets are delivering me the sorts of views that I'm interested in getting more of, subscribe to them and get their newsletter or their daily email rather than scrolling and then how much time you spent or how you reacted,

directing what you get next. You've said, here's three media outlets I want to hear from every day or every week. So that's one thing, being more proactive. The second one is just understanding that just your algorithm is not representative of what everybody is seeing. And so sometimes we fall into this thing of going, when I go on TikTok, this is all I see. Everyone must. be seeing this, how don't they get it? And what's important to understand is not everybody is seeing it. Not in any way. The Mitch McConnell story of the last couple months is one that a lot of people are not even aware of it's not being algorithmically delivered. They don't know that he had been gone for months in the hospital. They just have no idea. So of course, if people aren't

getting the same information, they're not going to be able to evaluate it in the way that you are. And then the third thing is that you can modify your algorithms on a lot of these platforms. Instagram has a feature. It's buried pretty deep. Where it'll tell you, here's the 10 things we believe you are interested in. And I had a friend recently say, you know, I'm getting all this stuff about like serious illness and people in hospice and it's not good for me. Yeah. And I said, have you looked here? And he went and looked and it was in there. Serious illness had been identified as an interest. You can just remove it, at least on Instagram. Each platform is a little bit different. So understand that there may be a setting there that

believes you're interested in certain things that you don't actually want to be seeing. You can tell a lot of these platforms. Don't show me this stuff. David, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me. That was my conversation with David Pacman, host of the David Packman Show. His new book, Pay Attention, How the Algorithms and Media Wars Are Suppressing Truth in rewiring Your Brain, is out in September. We'll link to it in the show notes. Before we go, the midterm election is less than 100 days away, and Democrats need to win back the House to stop Donald Trump's agenda.

Votes of America has identified 12 of the most beatable Republicans up for re-election this year, and they're calling them the crooked dozen. Kicking out the crooked dozen is doable, but it's going to take all of us stepping up between now and election day. Vote Save America is here with practical actions you can take right now to help Democrats win. Sign up at Votesaveamerica.com to get all the tools you need to get ready to vote, volunteer, amplify good information, and most importantly, talk to the people in your life and get them to join you. It literally takes two seconds. Sign up at Votesaveamerica.com. This message has been paid for by Votesave America, Votesave America.com. It is not authorized by any candidate or candidates committee.

That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, contemplate that maybe, just maybe. Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy is not our best and brightest senator and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading, and not just about this exchange with host Leslie Picker on CNBC today. Then to Mike's point, you ultimately voted to confirm RFK Jr. as secretary. And then you also recently cleared the way for Erica Schwartz's confirmation as CDC director. Do you regret those decisions? Well, so first, this is a presidential executive order.

RFK told me he was not going to change the ACIP. So if you want to tell me I was, somebody didn't tell me the truth and I should have like, you know, seen in the future that they were not going to tell the truth. You can say, oh, Bill, you should have seen them into the future. In which case, I'd be on your show talking about the future. Like me, what a day is also a nightly newslet. Check it out and subscribe at cricket.com slash subscribe. I'm Jane Koston. And yeah, Bill, maybe the vaccine denialist was going to be a vaccine denialist.

That's not seeing into the future. That's reading the fucking news. What a day is a production of Crooked Media. Our show is produced by Caitlin Plummer, Emily 4, Erica Morrison, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Haley Jones, Greg Walters, Matt Berg, Joseph Dutra, Johanna Kay's, and Desmond Taylor. Our music is by Kyle Murdoch and Jordan Cantor. We had helped today from the Associated Press. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America.

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