In the run up to the 2024 United States Presidential Election, President Donald Trump, in continuing his disapproval, disavowal, and eschewing of ‘mainstream media’, increasingly turned to influencers and podcasters as mediums through which to speak to his followers and prospective voters. A core feature of this strategy were alternative media platforms not immediately related to the political sphere, but to sport related podcasts and ‘bro influencers’ that cater to a predominantly male audience - such as UFC Unfiltered and The Joe Rogan Experience. Trump’s efforts to fit within a media landscape where the capacities of sporting, fitness, and ‘body building’ subcultures (re)produce deviant masculinities also endorsed conservative and authoritarian political movements. This paper presents a discursive and contextual analysis of Trump’s podcast appearances in the 2024 election cycle. We explore the growing inter-relationship between gender, masculinities, sport, and ‘the manosphere’ - the loose constellation of reactionary, anti-feminist and misogynistic movements often propagated in digital spaces by online influencers, reactionary conservative politics and, more specifically, Trumpism. We argue that within Trumpism, alternative sport and fitness media become sites whereby discourses of deviant and ‘alpha’ masculinity and the male body are constructed and activated as resources for political capital. We conclude by considering the importance of sport and leisure – such as the fitness and sporting subcultures embodied in conservative politics and the digital ecosystems through which they proliferate - in (re)shaping political movements in a digital age.
Clift et al. (Wed,) studied this question.
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