In the Greek myth, anything King Midas touched turned to gold. This was a catastrophe for everyone around him. When Midas wished for his power, he expected to reap immense benefits from it. In practice, it meant that everything was cursed: he could no longer eat or drink, and even his daughter became a statue. The Midas touch was not a windfall. It was deadly. Midas thought that easy success would help him achieve great things. Instead it turned his world to shit. 

The “MeidasTouch” political podcast has rapidly become the most successful in the United States. As the Wall Street Journal writes, “downloads and views of MeidasTouch on platforms including YouTube, Spotify, and Apple, more than doubled over the past month to top 115 million.” This is more than twice what Joe Rogan had during the same period. MeidasTouch is run by three brothers: Ben, Brett, and Jordy Meiselas. Ben, a lawyer, got his start interning for Sean “Diddy” Combs at Bad Boy Records before working in the offices of Hillary Clinton and Rep. Steve Israel. He later became a business partner and attorney for Colin Kaepernick, playing a key role in the quarterback's lawsuit against the NFL. Brett is a producer and editor who previously worked at The Ellen DeGeneres Show, while Jordy was an advertising executive before joining his brothers to launch MeidasTouch.

The show offers itself as an alternative to the right-leaning “manosphere” epitomized by Rogan. According to the New York Times, its Substack has more than 500,000 subscribers, some 40,000 of whom pay at least $8 a month to get ad-free and exclusive content, meaning the project makes over $320,000 per month from Substack alone. The analytics website Social Blade concludes that their YouTube channel earns millions of dollars per year from ads. As a result of dethroning Rogan, MeidasTouch has been receiving a lot of favorable press recently. The Times reports that “they are fast becoming power brokers in Democratic politics and—party faithful hope—finally replicating the influential media ecosystem that Republicans have built over the past decade.” They are described as the “independent” “progressive media network” that is “reshaping the progressive media landscape.” They have 12 full-time employees and 30 regular contributors, including former Trump fixer Michael Cohen and former Trump associate Lev Parnas.

MeidasTouch are liberal, Democratic, and critical of Donald Trump. In fact, that’s something of an understatement. MeidasTouch content is almost solely devoted to criticizing Donald Trump (and sometimes Elon Musk). As of this writing, in the last 7 days, out of 108 videos on the MeidasTouch Youtube channel, exactly 5 are not about Trump. (One is about Elon Musk, two are about congressional Republicans, and two are about Bernie Sanders’ Midwest speaking tour). The titles scream in ALL CAPS with plentiful exclamation points, and the thumbnails feature additional exclamatory phrases in tabloid-like bright yellow lettering, often with an arrow pointing to Trump or a picture of something he’s done. Representative video titles include: 

 

• Trump in FULL COLLAPSE as He Quickly RUINS EVERYTHING (thumbnail: FALLING APART, DONALD?!!) - 1.1 million views
• Trump RETREATS in HUMILIATION as Attacks BACKFIRE (thumbnail: TOTAL RETREAT! MORE HUMILIATION!) - 867,000 views
• Trump says SHUT UP ABOUT EGGS as HE GOLFS on Saturday (thumbnail: HE’S ABSOLUTELY NUTS!!!) - 1.3 million views
• Trump SOILING HIMSELF Saga Gets Worse…NEW DETAILS (thumbnail: SECRET DOCTOR VISIT?!!) - 2.6 million views
• Trump in PANIC after CAVING LIKE A COWARD (thumbnail: HE ALWAYS CAVES!!!) 914,000 views 
• Trump WAKES UP in TERROR and SCREWS UP MORE (thumbnail: PSYCHOTIC MORNING MELTDOWN) - 1 million views
• Trump QUICKLY FOLDS to Canada as REALITY SETS IN (thumbnail: BEG FOR MERCY, DONALD!!!) - 1.6 million views
• VERY FATIGUED Trump Holds DISASTER Mid-Day Presser (thumbnail: STAY AWAKE, DONALD?!!) - 942,000 views 
• Trump GLITCHES OUT in PUBLIC as His LIFE FALLS APART (thumbail: IT’S WAY TOO UGLY) - 712,000 views

 

A look at recent offerings will give the general impression: 

 

Democrats have long been looking for their own answer to Joe Rogan. After realizing how influential podcasters like Rogan, Theo Von, and Lex Fridman are, some Democrats are making contrived efforts to get in touch with the everyman, such as by talking about sports more. Michelle Obama has recently started an extremely boring and so far tepidly received podcast. 

In MeidasTouch, Democrats appear to have found their best hope for a popular anti-Trump media outlet, although the content actually makes Rogan look somewhat cerebral and curious by comparison. Rogan will interview philosophers, physicists, psychologists, and even archaeologists for three-hour conversations. Now, granted, he also interviews cranks ranging from people who believe in Atlantis to antisemitic conspiracy theorists to Alex Jones. Viewers may find it hard to tell the cranks from the experts, because Rogan does little research, wades into subjects he knows nothing about, and says things that are dangerously wrong. Nevertheless, Rogan at least shows some basic level of curiosity about the world.

 

The world of MeidasTouch, by contrast, starts and ends with Donald Trump’s presidency. What stupid thing did Donald Trump say today? How did he embarrass himself? Who gave him a brutal rhetorical smackdown? Even though it is targeted at viewers who think Trump is dumb, the content is remarkably shallow, by which we mean that it doesn’t dive seriously into topics like health care, criminal punishment, foreign policy, and inequality. It’s the National Enquirer for Trump-haters.

MeidasTouch is also constantly offering Democratic viewers reassurance that Donald Trump is imploding. (“IT’S ALL UNRAVELING!!” “SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL!!” “FOX IS PANICKING!!!”) Indeed, Ben Meiselas himself says the channel is “providing a comforting place.” In doing so, they might be offering a false sense of security. Note that many of the podcast’s videos on Trump “implosions” and “humiliations” were published before he defeated Kamala Harris in November, such as “WOW! Trump CRUMBLES During DISASTROUS Arizona Speech” (Aug. 22, 2024, 2.1 million views) “Trump HUMILIATED in Michigan as REAL CROWD Is EXPOSED” (Aug. 31, 2024, 2.1 million views) “Trump Makes CATASTROPHIC MOVE in SUNDAY PANIC ATTACK” (Oct. 12, 2024, 2.1 million views). Today, after all this catastrophe for Trump, the right controls all three branches of government. Public opinion of the Democratic Party is still very low. Donald Trump’s presidency may yet implode, but his approval rating has not cratered so far, and the country is still basically evenly divided on him. Furthermore, Democrats cannot rely on the “Carville strategy” of simply waiting for Trump to destroy himself while doing nothing to build a popular movement. 

Ironically, the Trump obsession creates a kind of dependence on Trump. “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” television executive Les Moonves infamously said in 2016, and the same logic applies here. Even as MeidasTouch covers how horrible Trump’s presidency is, there is a perverse incentive at work, which is that the podcast depends on the right continuing to do a series of horrific things in order to keep the outraged headlines flowing. Of course, all progressive media outlets (including this one) end up benefiting in a time when people crave an alternative to right-wing narratives. But an outlet that cares about the future of the world should not just be reaping the benefits of outrage. It should also see itself as part of a broader organizing project that aims to make Trump and the right irrelevant. It should help its viewers go from merely outraged to active, by showcasing constructive efforts by others to change the world and helping to provide a vision for an alternative future in which the right no longer rules. 

It may be cathartic for those who loathe Trump to watch something that affirms their emotions and reminds them that they’re not crazy to think there’s something deeply wrong about the political moment we’re living through. And holding Trump accountable for his administration’s many heinous acts is a crucial function of the media. MeidasTouch frequently highlights serious wrongdoing by Trump. But just as often, it makes drama out of small day-to-day incidents (e.g., Trump looking fatigued at a press conference) that ultimately do not matter much. It’s critical, when Trump does 50 things a day, to have a clear sense of what to prioritize and focus on, and to understand that whether Jimmy Kimmel has RIPPED TRUMP APART in a new monologue is much less worthy of discussion than Trump and Lee Zeldin’s gutting of the Environmental Protection Agency (which MeidasTouch so far does not have a YouTube video on). 

In fact, while MeidasTouch is devoted to nonstop criticism of Trump, the categories of criticism it offers are quite narrow. MeidasTouch actively avoids major left-wing concerns. In addition to the absence of discussion on environmental issues (perhaps the most crucial way in which Trump endangers the future of the human species), they rarely cover Gaza. On the podcast, there is little on Trump’s horrific plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza and turn it into the next piece of his real estate empire, his crackdown on pro-Palestinian speech, and his threatening of universities that fail to quell Palestine protests. 

The decision to avoid Palestine by Democratic-aligned media seems to be deliberate, and it goes beyond MeidasTouch. MeidasTouch is part of a broader universe of content creators that are aligned with the Democratic Party, which include Brian Tyler Cohen (4 million YouTube subscribers) and David Pakman (3 million YouTube subscribers) among others. Notably, last March, according to a source with the events, Pakman attended a private, off-the-record meeting with Kamala Harris on the day of Joe Biden's State of the Union address. During the trip, he met with Cohen, the Meiselas brothers, and dozens of other so-called “independent progressive” media figures. In an internal email, Pakman later told his staff that the content creators at the White House had talked among themselves and everyone had admitted that they deliberately avoid producing Gaza coverage in order to prevent controversy. One could argue that this is probably a big reason why these particular influencers were invited to the White House in the first place. Pakman, for his part, has previously asserted that Israel would never “waste ordnance” on Palestinian civilians and that he views Congressman Ritchie Torres, who is perhaps best known for being one of AIPAC’s top recipients of funding, as the kind of person who he would like to see lead the “progressive movement.”

These influencers consciously avoid Gaza not because they don’t have an opinion, but because they know that some of their audience won’t like what they have to say. In a way, their silence is preferable to outright pro-Israel propaganda—but the fact that their entire media strategy revolves around ignoring difficult topics speaks volumes. One might imagine that, had these media outlets been around in the 1960s, they wouldn’t have talked about the Vietnam War or the Civil Rights Movement. Even when they obsessively cover Trump, their selective focus is telling. As of this writing, neither MeidasTouch, Cohen, nor Pakman has produced a YouTube video on Trump’s attempt to deport pro-Palestine protester Mahmoud Khalil—a major escalation in the crackdown on dissent. If Trump had tried to illegally deport a pro-Ukraine protester, there’s no question that these influencers would be covering it. Their silence exposes an unwillingness to challenge the Democratic Party’s bipartisan complicity in suppressing pro-Palestinian voices.

Likewise, the existence of the left is virtually shut out on these channels. Brian Tyler Cohen, who calls himself an “independent progressive political host” (he previously worked part-time for MSNBC), has been regularly covering news and politics on YouTube since 2018. But a review of his channel shows that during the 2020 election cycle, he never once featured Bernie Sanders in a video title or thumbnail—despite posting daily content and racking up millions of views. While Cohen has eagerly platformed establishment Democrats like Nancy Pelosi, Jaime Harrison, Pete Buttigieg, Adam Schiff, Kamala Harris, and Joe Biden, he ignored the only independent progressive candidate in the 2020 Democratic primary. The New York Times and CNN also participated in the “Bernie blackout,” but even they couldn’t erase Sanders entirely. Yet Cohen did—until it became politically convenient for him to feature Sanders on his show in November 2022, the first time Sanders was ever even mentioned in one of his YouTube titles. For some reason, Sanders now appears on his show semi-regularly. Why would he reward this behavior rather than use his influence to elevate any of the independent outlets that have tirelessly promoted him? For a channel that claims to represent the progressive movement, it’s astonishing that Bernie Sanders was treated as a nonentity while centrists were endlessly elevated. This wasn’t an oversight. It was a deliberate editorial choice, one that reveals Cohen’s real political priorities.

According to Semafor, Brian Tyler Cohen was involved in launching Good Influence (originally known as AtAdvocacy), a digital consulting firm which says it creates “meaningful impact for causes and campaigns through our network of powerful online messengers.” Former Vice President Kamala Harris has been one of the firm’s top clients, as a search of Federal Elections Commission data shows that the Harris campaign spent more than $600,000 on “digital consulting” and “licensing fees” from Good Influence between July and November 2024. Good Influence has also received money from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and from Vote Save America, among other contributions. Good Influence's founder, Stuart Perelmuter, has publicly documented visits to the White House alongside prominent liberal influencers such as Cohen, Pakman, Luke Beasley, and Lindy Li (who has since left the Democratic Party and is now fundraising for Donald Trump). One of Good Influence’s featured influencers, Kenny Walden (who goes by the name 2RawTooReal online), has taken his loyalty to the Democratic establishment to even more grotesque extremes, hurling vile, misogynistic attacks at progressive lawmakers like Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He has also creepily taunted Bernie Sanders with images of caskets and a dead body—behavior that, far from being disavowed, has been rewarded with a visit to the Oval Office and insider status within the Democratic Party’s influencer network.

These figures also tend to limit any critical coverage of Democratic politicians. Some have been rewarded with such gifts as exclusive interviews with Joe Biden, visits to the White House, and cushy comforts at the Democratic National Convention last summer, where pro-party influencers were feted. “I couldn’t get anyone to do my show before,” Cohen has said. “Now I have to juggle all the requests from A-listers who want to come on.” The price of access is silence. While it may be seen as progressive for prominent politicians like Joe Biden to give interviews to independent media outlets like Brian Tyler Cohen or MeidasTouch rather than traditional corporate outlets like the New York Times and CNN, the dynamic ultimately benefits the politicians, not the public. These influencers are extremely sycophantic and operate with no journalistic oversight, meaning they have every incentive to become marketing machines for the Democratic Party rather than adversarial critics. Democratic politicians, in turn, prefer appearing on their platforms because they know they won’t face any real scrutiny. 

Ironically, this lack of scrutiny makes these influencers even more compromised than corporate outlets. While mainstream media has its own problems, at least it is bound by professional journalistic standards that demand some level of accountability. Meanwhile, MeidasTouch and similar channels use their "independent" branding to cultivate trust among audiences disillusioned with corporate media—even while they function as loyal party operatives. As Breaking Points host Krystal Ball recently told Current Affairs:

“The same dangers of wanting access and wanting to be part of the powerful circles exist in alternative media spaces as well [as corporate ones]. How embarrassing were every one of the Trump interviews that were conducted on independent media? They were all uniformly embarrassing, and I would rather have had George Stephanopoulos or Anderson Cooper, or whatever your most cringe mainstream figure is, conducting those interviews. They would have done a better job, and we would have gotten more out of it. Kamala Harris did less of those types of interviews, but the ones on that side were equally embarrassing.”

In 2000, Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman famously interviewed Bill Clinton, questioning his administration’s record on the death penalty, the Middle East, and NAFTA among other issues. While her questions were critical, they were also highly relevant, and Goodman was simply doing her job as an independent journalist. But the interview was so difficult for Clinton that his aides threatened to ban her from the White House. In response, Goodman said “the only ground rule for good reporting I know is that you don’t trade your principles for access.” In contrast, when MeidasTouch’s Ben Meiselas was given the opportunity to conduct one of Joe Biden’s final interviews as President last December, he was ingratiating.

Rather than addressing critical issues like Biden’s refusal to exit the race until less than four months before the election, the ongoing genocide in Gaza, or continued stagnation on domestic issues like healthcare, economic inequality, and climate change, the interview was almost like a tribute to Biden. At one point, Meiselas asks Biden why he thinks the media didn’t tout his record stock market performance strongly enough, asking Biden if he thought there was “anything he could have done differently in interacting with them.” This is the kind of servile questioning that one expects from a party mouthpiece like Sean Hannity, not an independent media outlet. The role of MeidasTouch is clear: it works to make uninspiring centrist Democrats seem exciting, never challenging the status quo while keeping progressives at arm’s length. This approach undermines the purpose of having an independent media ecosystem in the first place, and it also has real-world consequences by contributing to Democratic complacency and avoiding necessary internal reflection and reform.

Take, for instance, Joe Biden’s catastrophic debate performance against Trump last June. Days following the debate, MeidasTouch posted a video featuring psychologists John Gartner and Harry Segal, who attempted to manufacture consent for keeping Joe Biden in the race. “Donald Trump has a brain that is dementing,” Segal said, “but Joe Biden has a brain that is aging normally.” There’s no doubt that Trump’s behavior is demented, but by insisting that Joe Biden was capable of serving a second term, MeidasTouch insulated their audience from growing concerns about Biden’s ability to lead, thereby preventing pressure from within the party for him to step aside. Had they heeded the left’s warnings and urged Biden to announce that he wouldn’t seek reelection while there was still enough time to hold a primary, Democrats might have been able to avoid the current crisis. Instead, MeidasTouch contributed to a climate of denial surrounding Joe Biden’s cognitive health that ultimately benefited Trump, while also discrediting the ability of independent media to hold the powerful to account.

Because the Democratic Party believes it has a “tactics and messaging” problem rather than a policy problem, they will likely look to successful outlets like MeidasTouch for messaging guidance in future elections. They have already done this with Cohen, who has one of the largest political podcasts behind MeidasTouch and is being invited to “closed-door sessions” with prominent Democrats to coach them on digital strategy. Democrats are outsourcing their “messaging problem” to these influencers, so studying their content can help us predict what the future of the party’s messaging might look like. We can predict that, having seen MeidasTouch overtake Rogan, they will conclude that they don’t need to offer an inspiring alternative to Trump that people actually want to vote for. Instead of transformational politics, we will get nonstop, unfocused attacks on Trump. 

Should we celebrate that MeidasTouch is now the #1 podcast in America? They are certainly less toxic than right-wing manosphere figures like Andrew Tate or content produced by Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire. However, their role in future Democratic primary contests will likely make them adversaries of the progressive left. They will continue playing their role as party enforcers for the same soulless elite politics that led to Donald Trump’s rise in the first place, and they will work to sideline progressive challengers and insulate their audiences from hearing criticism of the Democratic Party. Their influence will make it even harder for progressives to break through. These people are not allies of the left. They are obstacles to meaningful change.

If this is the future of the Democratic Party’s media ecosystem, it’s a bleak and cynical one. A party that relies on controlled messaging instead of real accountability will only accelerate its own decline. MeidasTouch and its ilk may be raking in views now—but in the end, they are helping to build a Democratic Party that is increasingly disconnected from the very voters it claims to represent. Thankfully, there are real alternatives. Outlets like Status Coup, The Real News Network, The Lever, BreakThrough News, and Drop Site News produce excellent original reporting that holds power to account. Likewise, here at Current Affairs we challenge both Donald Trump and the liberal establishment that enables him.

The MeidasTouch creators certainly resemble their namesake, in that they seem to have found an endless source of gold in the form of YouTube and Substack revenue. Yet as with the original King Midas, everything MeidasTouch produces is cursed. Instead of turning the world to gold, they can take any political or social issue and turn it into a trashy piece of anti-Trump content. This is ultimately bad for our mental health and our political discourse. We do need an alternative to the “manosphere” and the right-wing propaganda machine. We do need the nonsense spewed everywhere from Joe Rogan to PragerU to be refuted. But in putting alternative media together, we need deep research and deep thought that focuses on the most critical issues facing our species, not just the latest daily outrage by Donald Trump. We need full independence from the major political parties, so that outlets won’t hesitate to be critical of Democrats as well as Republicans. We have to talk about what matters, even when it gets fewer clicks.

Additional reporting by Stephen Prager.