On Deadline: White House, Angelo Carusone discusses MAGA media becoming “attackers” of Trump's war in Iran
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From the April 17, 2026, edition of MS NOW's Deeadline: White House
NICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): Let me, Angelo, in sort of our ongoing investigation and scrutiny of the people who I think made the difference in Trump's ability to return to the White House, I played Andrew Schultz. Let me show you where Joe Rogan is putting himself, positioning himself in front of his millions and millions of listeners.
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Again, I always want the disclaimer that I'm not showing anyone Joe Rogan because he's to be emulated, celebrated, lifted up, or given a paper plate award for anything. I think it's important that the top rated podcast in America is describing the person he endorsed in the 2024 election this way, and I think it's super important that his three million listeners hear this, quote, "Russia is giving Iran information about where our troops are, about where your kids are, about where your husbands and wives and sons and daughters are." Super important that Joe Rogan's audience heard that.
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): Yeah, it's significant because, you know, he is like -- he and, you know, the others sort of in that same category, they're a weathervane for the political zeitgeist. Or in another way to say it is, you know, in previous coverage, if this was ten years ago, they would be like the undecided voters that always get captured in polling. It's sort of the people that don't think about politics first, that are not partisan creatures. They don't just go vote for one party all the time. The very people, as you noted in your intro, that when Rogan sort of didn't just endorse but made the case, he didn't just bring along his people, he brought along sort of another part of the information ecosystem that shaped the worldview of a lot of new Trump voters. And that's the significant part of all of this, because it's an indication of where his audience is, where a lot of the audiences are, and where things are going politically. And that's the first step.
And then the second thing is that it sort of reflects on how much power Trump actually has in the moment, because the MAGA media really only works, Trump's narrative dominance only exists if the storytelling engine behind it is unified. If they're all helping reinforce the same story that Trump is telling. But when they are now not, you know, sort of doing the counter spin for Trump, but the main attackers of the story that Trump is telling, it isn't just that they're weakening him by not carrying water for him, they're actually undermining and actively cutting against -- they're truth telling in a way the story that Trump is telling. And that's sort of the "so what" of the immediacy. It then creates some potential where the laws of political reality can start to get shaken up again.
And that was the other part of your intro, too, where Republicans are not there yet, but they're saying, I don't know, soon enough, we may start to do something different than what the president wants. And that's because they're slower, because they're not weathervanes, you know, they're stuck in a much more partisan sort of strict mold. But ultimately, they're creatures of this political reality, too. And so that to me is the significance. They're indicators of where things are at and more importantly where it's going.