From Joe Rogan to Greg Gutfeld, conservative comedy’s influence grows

Greg Gutfeld smirked as he began reading off the teleprompter.

“Delta’s DEI officer has banned the term ‘ladies and gentlemen’ from airport announcements …” he said in a satiric tone. Then he hit the punchline: “And replaced it with ‘Dear customers of all gender identities, your flight is canceled, and your stewardess has a d---,” he said, using a crude word for the male anatomy.

The live studio audience that had gathered to watch the Fox News commentator-turned-late-night-host erupted in laughter and applause.

It’s the type of joke that might have appeared in the 1980s and 90s on sketch shows like "Saturday Night Live," and stand-up specials like Eddie Murphy’s "Delirious."

But as the culture has changed, and the country has become more polarized, not everyone is laughing anymore. Like many cultural touchstones, comedy viewership has begun to split along partisan lines.

Now, a group of antiestablishment comedians has found a pot of gold serving a conservative audience. While these comics often say their jokes aren’t intended to be partisan, they largely cater to right-wing crowds looking for a reprieve from political correctness.

And in the last few years, their viewership has skyrocketed.

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The burgeoning group includes personalities like Joe Rogan, Theo Von, and Gutfeld – who since 2021 has consistently ranked as the top-watched late-night comedian in America – beating out major network stars including Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Jimmy Fallon.

Their popularity suggests the rise of a new conservative culture movement – one that GOP politicians and commentators are paying attention to.

Former President Donald Trump made waves in late August when he sat down for an episode of Von’s podcast, “This Past Week,” and his appearance on "Gutfeld!" in mid-September marked the ex-president’s first time on late-night television since 2016. Trump has also expressed a desire to appear on Rogan’s show, which ranks No. 1 on Spotify.

As Trump and the GOP attempt to grow their base, particularly among young men, these nontraditional, highly popular, comedic voices could provide the perfect avenue through which to reach them.

The void

The growth of conservative-leaning comedy over the last few years in many ways has mirrored the emergence of left-leaning satirists like Jon Stewart in the early 2000s.

Stewart, the host of Comedy Central’s "The Daily Show", gained popularity for mocking the idiosyncrasies of former President George W. Bush and his administration. While he took aim at both political parties, as well as the news media, Republicans were often the butt of his jokes.

Much of Stewart’s young audience at the time leaned liberal, and many thought of him as a news source. A 2004 Pew Research poll found that 21% of people ages 18 to 29 regularly got their election coverage from "The Daily Show" and other comedy programs like "Saturday Night Live."

Like the conservative comedians emerging today, however, Stewart didn’t view his show as expressly ideological. He acknowledged his own liberal biases but said in a 2005 interview with the Guardian that his foremost goal was to make people laugh.

By the time Stewart left his post as the full-time host of "The Daily Show" 10 years later, his influence was evident. Alumni of his show like Jon Oliver, Stephen Colbert and Samantha Bee, dominated the late-night comedy world.

Those, and many other late-night programs, had begun to lean into liberal points of view in their monologues. Few mainstream comedians were speaking to the perspectives of the millions of Republican viewers across the U.S.

More Democrats than Republicans watch late-night comedy, according to a YouGov poll published earlier this year. Half of Republicans said that these shows focus too much on politics and 57% said they're too liberal. Only 10% of Democrats saw the same political bias.

Nick Marx and Matt Sienkiewicz, authors of the book “That's Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them,” argue that the void gave way to the rise of comedians like Gutfeld and Rogan.

“Many of them correctly assessed that there was a market for right-leaning comedy,” Marx, a professor of film and media studies at Colorado State University, said. “Whether they believed it or not, they leaned into it hard, and they’ve become … quite profitable.”

A political undercurrent

These comedians don’t think of themselves as overtly partisan.

Tom O'Connor, the executive producer of "Gutfeld!," said that while the late-night show airs on Fox News, a network associated with conservative viewpoints, it isn’t explicitly designed to appeal to people of a particular party.

“It’s just what’s funny to us,” said O'Connor. "Whether someone else wants to say, ‘Oh, this is conservative comedy,’ we don’t necessarily think of it that way.”

"Gutfeld!" has more Democratic viewers than some other late-night shows, including ones hosted by Fallon and Kimmel, according to Nielsen MRI Fusion data from July. But his audience overwhelmingly identifies as Republican. There were under 600,000 Democrats who watched his show in July, compared to 1.3 million Republicans.

And just as Jon Stewart holds more liberal stances, Gutfeld has a conservative point of view. Those personal beliefs at times seep into the show. When Trump was a guest, for instance, Gutfeld repeatedly described him as both the 45th and 47th president, though Trump is currently in a tight race to win the title for a second time.

The same goes for Rogan who, throughout his decades-long career, has made jokes about and expressed support for politicians on both sides of the political aisle. He has attempted to walk a careful line by defining his humor as more politically incorrect than overtly partisan.

But since 2020, Rogan has showcased far more right-leaning politicians and commentators on his podcast than left-leaning ones. They’ve included politicians like Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, Tulsi Gabbard, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who have both endorsed Trump, and conservative commentators such as Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson, and Matt Walsh.

During an episode with Carlson, Rogan gave a rationale for why far-right radio show host Alex Jones spread conspiracy theories about the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Rogan described Jones as a “friend for more than 20 years.”

He said Jones' false claims about the shooting, which led Jones to pay a multimillion-dollar settlement to the families of the victims, stemmed from mental health issues – something he said some people receive “praise” for being honest about.

“Alex has gone through some real issues. And one of the reasons he has gone through some issues is because that guy is uncovering real s---- that’s terrifying every f------ day,” Rogan said of the conspiracy theories Jones promotes. "When you see so many lies, and so much propaganda and so many psyops that are being done on people, you start seeing them where they don’t exist. And that’s what he did."

Rogan also has often repeated pro-Trump talking points and false claims about Vice President Kamala Harris on his show. In an episode with conservative columnist Matt Walsh, he pushed the debunked conspiracy that Harris' pearl earrings during their recent presidential debate were secret Bluetooth earpieces. He later expressed doubt about the validity of Trump’s 34 felony convictions in his New York hush-money case.

“It is true that he's a convicted felon now, but is it true that it makes any sense? No,” Rogan said.

Marx and Sienkiewicz argue that, regardless of Rogan’s own political beliefs, the guests he has on, and the rhetoric he uses, are meant to embrace the more conservative-leaning viewers who watch his show. His personal political beliefs might be murky, but Sienkiewicz said “it’s very clear what his demographics are.”

His show, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” has been the most popular podcast in the U.S. for the past five years. He has more than 17 million subscribers on YouTube.

A majority of those listeners are young men, and nearly half identify as Republican, according to a 2022 study published by Morning Consult. Many of them hold similar beliefs to those that Rogan discusses in his show.

Only 12% of Rogan listeners surveyed in a 2022 YouGov Poll trusted newspapers to print the truth, compared to 27% of the general population.

Rogan is just the tip of the iceberg of conservative and libertarian-leaning comedy podcasts. His club in Austin, the Comedy Mothership, has cultivated a group of alternative comics who cater to a similar audience.

Von, who has appeared at the club and on Rogan’s podcast multiple times, hosts the ninth most listened to podcast on Spotify. Similar to Rogan, he hosted an early 2000s reality show – "Road Rules" – and frequently toes the line between politically incorrect jokes and mildly political conversations on his podcast.

One of the Comedy Mothership’s biggest stars, Tony Hinchcliffe, now ranks at No. 7 on Spotify’s comedy podcast charts. During a special episode of his show, "Kill Tony," in which Carlson and Rogan appeared, Hinchcliffe called the pair two of his “favorite humans on planet Earth.”

“He's trying, with some amount of success, to build a, you know, an alternative right-wing comedy space at his mothership in Austin,” Marx said of Rogan.

The 2024 impact

In a tight presidential race – where tens of thousands of votes could decide the election – both major political parties are looking for ways to appeal to key voters. And these highly watched and listened to personalities could influence enough voters to make a crucial difference.

While Harris and Democrats have leaned into memes to energize a younger voter base, Trump and Republicans have been trying to widen their base of support among men, particularly young men, who are target viewers for right-leaning comedy.

Republicans have long held leads among men in presidential elections, and this election is no different. A recent ABC News/Ipsos poll shows Trump leading Harris among men by 5 percentage points, 51% to 46%. In the latest USA TODAY/Suffolk poll, the breakdown of support of the 43% of respondents who said they’d vote for Trump shows that more than half (51%) are men, while 36% are women.

Trump’s campaign has attempted to further cultivate support among male voters by appearing with masculine cultural figures. Earlier this summer, the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee showcased speakers like Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White, a longtime friend of Trump's, and Hulk Hogan, a controversial professional wrestler who helped bring the sport into the mainstream.

Von, who interviewed Trump last month, and Rogan also both have ties to Ultimate Fighting Championship and White. The comedian Tyrus, who is a mainstay guest on "Gutfeld!," also dabbled in the fighting world as a professional wrestler. He gifted Trump a custom wrestling belt when the ex-president appeared on the show earlier this month.

Marx sees the convergence of comedy, the fighting world and politics as a potential boon for the Republican Party.

“It's all a very intentional push to get young men to vote,” he said of Trump's appearances with the comedians and fighters. “There's a real, sort of robust and growing market for conservative entertainment content and ... comedy is a precursor."

Contributing: Rebecca Morin.

This story has been updated to add new information, a title and the first name for Vice President Kamala Harris and to correct the misspellings of Tom O'Connor and Matt Sienkiewicz's names.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Joe Rogan, Greg Gutfeld, and the conservative comedy boom