Draft the Podcast Bros

They helped start this war. They can fight it.

Six American troops are dead. Hundreds of Iranians are dead, including children. The Strait of Hormuz is being blockaded. Oil prices are spiking. And somewhere, Joe Rogan is probably doing a three-hour podcast about something completely unrelated.

This one’s for him. And for Andrew Schulz. And for Theo Von. The guys who handed Donald Trump their microphones, their audiences, and their credibility and got absolutely nothing in return except the privilege of watching their guy light the Middle East on fire. I hope your selfie with a convicted felon was worth it.

If you haven’t read the news, we had a chill weekend where the United States and Israel launched a coordinated assault on Iran strikes on military targets, nuclear facilities and the Supreme Leader’s compound. He’s now dead. Hundreds of civilians are dead. Iran is firing back at US military bases across the region, striking Dubai, threatening to shut down one of the world’s most critical oil chokepoints. Trump says the operation will take “four weeks or less.” LOL. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says Trump has “all the latitude in the world” to determine how long it goes.

No Congressional authorization. No convo. Just bombs, oh and a truth social post.

Nobody voted for this because nobody was asked. The guys who promised to lower your grocery bill decided instead to start a war that is already raising gas prices, spiking oil markets, and could drag on for months, or longer, in a region where these things have a habit of becoming generational.

I’m not an expert in foreign policy, but I am an expert in the men who helped make this happen, so let’s talk about them.

Joe Rogan had Trump on his show for three hours in October 2024. Three hours!! You know what they talked about? Joe’s fear of being canceled. Hunter Biden’s laptop. Testosterone. What they did not talk about: the 34 felony convictions. The E. Jean Carroll case, in which a civil court found Trump liable for sexual abuse. The Epstein files and Trump’s relationship with the notorious convicted pedophile. The classified documents. His little domestic terror incident on January 6th and how he was promising to release all the criminals who did it. Not a word. Rogan sat there like a golden retriever waiting for a treat, laughing at Trump’s dumb jokes and nodding along like a guy who thinks the stripper actually likes him. Rogan spent years telling men not to seek approval. Then he spent three hours seeking Trump’s.

Podcast bros laughing at Trump’s jokes are the political version of the guy who thinks the stripper likes him.

Andrew Schulz framed the election as some sort of masculine awakening and gave Trump an ever warmer welcome on his podcast. He helped peddle the idea that voting for Trump was an act of self-respect for young men who felt left behind. Buy in, boys. This is your guy. He gets it.

Men who lecture men about spines on a weekly basis discovered they didn't in fact have one.

These men have enormous audiences. Millions of young men who were told explicitly and implicitly that Donald Trump was the antidote to a culture that disrespected them. That he was a straight-talker. That he would make their lives cheaper, their country stronger, their futures more secure.

He promised to lower grocery prices on day one so here’s my question. How are your groceries guys?

Here’s the thing about what these podcast bros sold their audiences: it was never really about policy. It was about feeling. About the primal satisfaction of watching someone who doesn’t apologize, doesn’t back down, doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks. Podcast bros sold their listeners a fantasy of masculine validation through a proxy, a 78-year-old man in ill-fitting suits who needs two handlers just to walk down a ramp.

And what did Trump give them back to these bros?

Nothing. Not a thought. Not a thank you. Not a policy. He doesn’t know their names. He doesn’t care about their rent or their student loans or their futures. He got what he needed from them, which is their votes, their reach, their endorsement, and then moved on to doing exactly what he was always going to do: so what’s best for him, which is to find any way to distract us from the fact that his justice department removed accusations that he raped a 13-year-old child. And like a million other ways he’s named in the files. And when I say one million, I actually mean ONE MILLION.

The young men who voted for Trump because they wanted to feel powerful are now living in a country that just started a war without asking them. A war that is making everything more expensive. A war that could, if it drags on, come looking for bodies to fill it.

That is the irony that should be eating these podcast bros alive right now. They spent years talking about masculinity, self-improvement, taking responsibility, being a man. And then he used all of that credibility to hand the nuclear codes to a guy who used them to start a war that six American kids have already died in, kids whose names we’ll never know because they aren’t the children of tech billionaires or podcast hosts. The masculinity these podcast bros flaunt was always just an aesthetic. The moment it had a price, they took it off. They built careers defining real men. Then showed us what one isn’t. The most submissive men on the internet are telling young men to man up.

Here’s what I want to say directly to every man who voted for Trump because they thought it would make them feel stronger:

You got played. Not by the media. Not by the “deep state.” By him. By the guy who told you an illuminati of pedophiles elites were running the world, but who is now using your tax payer money to hide evidence that he might be one of them. He didn’t lower prices. In fact, the gas that was already expensive is now going to cost more.

The rest of us, the people who saw the felonies, read the court rulings, heard the lies, and voted accordingly, we’re on this ride too. We didn’t choose it. We don’t get an exit.

Joe Rogan built an empire telling men to face hard truths and take accountability, then couldn’t ask one hard question to an adjudicated rapist. Andrew Schulz, who made his whole brand out of saying the thing no one else is brave enough to say, said nothing that mattered when it actually counted. That’s not masculinity. That’s not strength. That’s grown men desperate for the male approval of a celebrity.

Rogan built a brand telling men to face reality, then spent three hours helping Trump avoid it.

Trump doesn’t think about them. He never did. He used them like he uses everyone, he extracted what he needed, moved on, and is now running a war from a golf resort while their audiences figure out how to afford groceries and gas in the middle of a war nobody asked for.

You wanted a strong man and you got a coward who needed podcast bros to laugh at his dumb jokes.

You wanted a war, whether you knew it or not. Now you’ve got one. Hope it was worth the episode.

One more thing before you close this tab!! Our podcast Boy Problems exists because we believe men deserve better than what the podcast bros have been selling them. Better than fake strength. Better than three hours of nodding at a man a court found liable for rape. We’re building something honest in the middle of all that noise. Subscribe, share it with someone who needs it, and send me your boy problems and I might answer it on the show! This is how we fight back. I’m so glad you’re here.