(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Comedian and podcaster Tim Dillon pushed back against CNN’s claims that new media sources—including his own show and The Joe Rogan Experience—form a “new establishment” that influenced the 2024 election in favor of President Donald Trump.
Leading up to last November’s election, Dillon, Rogan and other prominent podcasters had Trump and JD Vance on their shows. Speaking with CNN’s Elle Reeve on Tuesday, Dillon rejected the premise that those shows swung the election, calling it “crazy” to blame a handful of podcasters for former Vice President Kamala Harris’s defeat.
CNN asks Tim Dillon if comedians with podcasts are “part of a new establishment” and gets immediately destroyed 🤣 pic.twitter.com/oh3W1nI5Oc
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) May 19, 2025
Instead, Dillon said Harris’s loss can be attributed to both her unpopularity and her late entry to the election after Joe Biden decided to exit the race.
“To hang this defeat on a few podcasts and to say that they were the problem—I don’t buy, I just don’t buy the narrative,” Dillon added.
He reiterated that neither he nor fellow podcasters wield institutional power to be called “establishment,” later stating:
“If you weigh … a few comedians with podcasts versus all of the people that supported Kamala Harris, Democrat donors, billionaires, big people, it’s the idea—is it?—me and a few comedians have more power than multi-billionaires, huge media institutions or a whole political party apparatus. I just don’t think most people are going to buy that.”
Dillon added that blaming the election on podcasts “seems like a great way to excuse running an unpopular candidate on a platform that American people weren’t sold on.”
Reeve doubled down on her claims, saying that there is “power” in a “massive audience.”
Her claims echo leftist rhetoric affirming, without evidence, that Trump’s 2024 victory was fueled by his appearances on popular podcasts like The Joe Rogan Experience, Theo Von’s This Past Weekend and Adin Ross’s Adin Live.
Dillon swiftly pushed back again:
“The idea that, like, the power that Theo Von has would be equal to like the intelligence agencies or these massive legacy media institutions seems crazy.”
When Reeve insisted podcasts still held influence, Dillon clarified:
“You used the word ‘establishment,’ I didn’t say we didn’t have the power or that audiences weren’t powerful. But the term ‘establishment,’ that, that’s more than just having an audience, that’s having an institutional component that I don’t think we have. But I think legacy media does. I think the government and the intelligence communities do. I think Hollywood certainly does.”
The full interview can be found here:
