The comedians and podcasters who formed Donald Trump’s cultural vanguard in 2024 are not arguing about tax policy or judicial philosophy. They’re arguing about whether they got played.

Joe Rogan, whose late endorsement helped cement Trump’s comeback, said this week that the Iran war “seems so insane based on what he ran on.” His audience on YouTube — almost 21 million subscribers — heard him say that Trump’s supporters feel “betrayed.” Andrew Schulz, who had Trump on his Flagrant podcast before the election, put it more bluntly: war hawks “found a guy stupid enough to do it.”

The fractures didn’t start with Iran. According to reporting from The Atlantic’s Elaine Godfrey, the cracks had been forming for months — over the blocked Epstein files, over federal agents killing an American citizen in Minnesota, over deportations that even sympathetic podcasters found hard to swallow. By December, Schulz and his co-hosts were debating how they’d hide migrants from ICE in their homes.

What’s breaking isn’t ideology. It’s trust. These are nonideological voters drawn to Trump’s anti-establishment energy, not a party platform. When the wars kept coming and the spending kept rising, the deal started to look one-sided. “I want him to stop the wars; he’s funding them!” Schulz said in a July rant. “I want him to shrink spending, reduce the budget; he’s increasing it!”

The numbers back up the vibe shift. A Reuters/Ipsos poll in February found that approval among men ages 18 to 29 had fallen from 43% to 33% in one year. A UMass Amherst poll conducted March 20–25 puts Trump’s overall approval at 33%, with support among men dropping nearly 20 points since April 2025.

Charlie Sabgir, director of the Young Men Research Project, told The Atlantic that for many of these voters, the most likely response in November isn’t switching to Democrats. It’s staying home. As right-wing commentator Mike Cernovich put it on X: “a generational coalition, squandered.”

Sources