Joe Rogan’s interview with Donald Trump has been viewed at least 42 million times on YouTube since November 1st, 2024. That number does not include people watching/listening on Spotify or X, where the interview is also available.
The most dangerous opponent of the Second Amendment, the Bill of Rights, and limited government in the United States has not been advocacy groups such as “The National Council to Control Handguns,” which, after several name changes, ended up as “The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence”; or the heavily funded “Everytown for Gun Safety.”
The most dangerous opponent has been the old, dominant, Progressive Media. It took this correspondent until 1994 to understand the problem was not political education. The problem was the dominant Media were ideologically opposed to an armed population. By 1970, Progressive ideology was firmly entrenched in nearly all American Media.
The political ideology of Progressivism became popular in the late 1800’s and took political power in the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Wilson was a dominant theorist and leader of the Progressive movement who became president. He used war powers to ingrain progressive ideas into the American government. One of the pillars of progressive thought is that the government should not be limited in its scope or power. For this reason, the Constitution is outdated and irrelevant. Ways must be found to “get around” the limitations of the Constitution. This is why gun control is in the Progressive DNA. How can the government do all the wonderful things progressives want it to do if they have to worry about yahoos with guns? In 1887, Woodrow Wilson wrote this:
The germinal conceptions of democracy are as free from all thought of a limitation of the public authority as are the corresponding conceptions of socialism; the individual rights which the democracy of our own century has actually observed, were suggested to it by a political Philosophy radically individualistic, but not necessarily democratic. Democracy is bound by no principle of its own nature to say itself nay as to the exercise of any power.
Newspapers with and without obvious political ideologies were the dominant media in the 1920s and 1930’s. Radios and radio networks were on the rise. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Federal Communications Commission into existence in 1933, he made certain the FCC was staffed with Progressives friendly to his administration. Four terms and WWII censorship later, Progressives were firmly entrenched. The radio networks became the television networks. The television networks became the dominant Media. Progressive ideology was supreme in the media.
By the time a sitting, popular president (Richard Nixon) was driven from office in a media coup (Watergate), the Progressive, dominant media had become the most powerful force in American politics. They decided who was suitable for office, what issues were important, and what was a scandal and what was not. They took their cues from the AP, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. Power corrupts. The dominant media was corrupted.
As AM radio was floundering, a new voice appeared. Many say Rush Limbaugh saved AM radio. He gave a voice to the voiceless majority of Americans who did not accept the Progressive Media narratives. As Limbaugh outraged leftists and heartened conservatives, the Internet erupted on the scene. By the middle 1990s, it was providing an outlet for pent-up alternatives to leftist political philosophy. Second Amendment organizations seized the opportunity. The Progressive Media were shocked when they lost control of the Congress, both House and Senate, in 1994. Leftist political scientists had said it was impossible. Limbaugh was celebrated as the “majority maker.”
The Progressive Media faced a choice. Stick to the principles of a “fair and unbiased press” or trade credibility for short-term political power. Short-term political power was the overwhelming decision.
Republican majorities had some successes but were opposed at every turn by the dominant Media. Alternative sources on the Internet gained ground. Social media was developed. While the old media was able to push Bill Clinton into power and a second term, they could not steal the election for George W Bush in 2000. They continued to trade credibility for short-term political clout. Alternate media exposed the dominant Media lies after the fact. Credibility lost is difficult to regain. Obama rode to electoral success on the dominant media and their “hero” and supposed Obama opponent, John McCain. During the campaign, he famously quipped the “Media” were his base. The Media pulled out all the stops to lie about and destroy his talented and charismatic vice presidential pick, Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska.
Palin was supposed to be a lesson to aspiring conservative politicians. If you don’t follow the Media narrative, we will destroy you. President Obama did enormous damage to the United States, aided and abetted by the dominant Media, as the Media traded more credibility to drag Obama to a second disastrous term.
When Donald Trump entered the presidential race in 2016, the distance between reality and the dominant Media propaganda was enormous. It could not be ignored.
In 2016, the Progressive Media had little credibility left. Donald Trump became the 45th president in an election that shocked the Media to its core. They spent the next four years in lies and false conspiracy theories. The Democratic party, the Media, and the members of the Deep State could never have swung the 2020 election to a corrupt Joe Biden except for their lies about and use of the COVID-19 “emergency.”
Very few conservatives think the Media is trustworthy. A small majority of Democrats are unwilling to admit the old Media is in the tank for the Left. Old Media’s stock of credibility has been exhausted. Their lies are exposed on a daily basis. They were a near monolithic ideological structure in 1990. Today, Progressive Media may no longer be dominant. President Trump’s media platform is worth more than the hyper-partisan New York Times. Joe Rogan’s interview with Candidate Trump has been viewed at least 40 million times, with some estimates of over a hundred million.
The LA Times, shrunk to a small fraction of its former self, refuses to endorse Kamala Harris. The Washington Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos, ordered the Post not to endorse Kamala Harris. The Post lost 77 million dollars last year. USA Today refuses to endorse Kamala Harris. On President Trump’s side, genius of the age and former Democrat Elon Musk endorses him. The Democratic party has become an existential threat to Musk and his near miraculous enterprises. Robert F. Kennedy endorses Donald Trump. Jordan Peterson endorses Donald Trump (video link).
Trump’s message has become unstoppable by the old, no longer dominant Progressive Media. Few find their shrill cries of Trump is literally Hitler persuasive.
If former President Trump wins another term in the White House, the demise of the old Dominant Progressive Media will have been completed. The media landscape will be a broken field of mostly partisan commentators, journalists, and citizen reporters, much as it was at the start of the Republic. Political power, concentrated in an ideologically uniform media, was not anticipated by the founders. It became a deadly threat to the Republic. If it dies, the death is well deserved. It hinges on the election. It is up to voters to “Make it so!”
About Dean Weingarten:
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.
