Weeks before the 2016 election, I sat across from Ben Shapiro at a restaurant in Clemson, South Carolina, to discuss the future of conservative media post-Donald Trump. After a dynamic election cycle, he and most other right-wing figures were bracing for a Trump defeat. “Breitbart and these other outlets that have totally hitched themselves to Trump won’t have a future when he loses,” Shapiro said.
While his prediction didn’t come true until more than four years later, it has proven partially correct. Many of the pro-Trump powerhouses who set the conservative agenda no longer wield the same power. Breitbart News’ readership has collapsed, Fox News is still recovering from its post-Trump slump, and Rush Limbaugh died last month. Trump himself has stopped sucking the air out of the room in light of his drawn-out loss, his removal from Twitter, and his failure to follow through with the postpresidency media career many thought he would pursue. Figures like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Mark Levin are still cranking along. But others are scrambling to fill the vacuum left at the top, hoping to piece together their own conservative media empires.
Earlier this month, Dan Bongino—a former Secret Service agent and thrice-failed GOP congressional candidate who became a star Fox News contributor and top podcast host during the Trump era—joined the scramble of radio hosts looking to pick up the Limbaugh mantle. Beginning on May 24, Bongino will host a Westwood One radio program from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. ET, the same time slot Limbaugh occupied before his death from lung cancer in February. Bongino’s show will air across the country, including on some of the same local networks that syndicated Limbaugh’s.
“We lost the godfather, an icon. I mean—literally irreplaceable,” Bongino said of Limbaugh in an interview with the Washington Examiner. “There will never be another Rush Limbaugh again—forget it.” He emphasized what an honor it is “to be offered some of the [Limbaugh] stations,” before arguing that conservatives like himself are poised to take over the new-media world of podcasting and social networking. “My investments and my businesses in tech worked out great,” he said, referencing his partial ownership of Parler, a Twitter competitor marketed toward conservatives, and Rumble, a YouTube clone. “You have Ben Shapiro at the Daily Wire with the Gina Carano partnership, which was just genius. I mean, candidly, I wish I would have thought about it first, I would’ve invested in a movie studio.”
Besides their similarly ambitious investments, Bongino and Shapiro have another thing in common: a massive increase in traffic to their respective news and commentary sites at a time when many of their direct competitors are struggling. According to TheRighting’s analysis of Comscore data, Bongino.com enjoyed a 155% increase in unique visitors in February compared to this time last year, while Shapiro’s Daily Wire saw a 139% increase over the same time frame, even as 60% of the most popular right-wing sites saw a decline in traffic last month.
This meteoric post-Trump growth is all a part of Shapiro’s long-term vision for his media operation, a former Daily Wire employee told me. “Part of what makes Ben unique and why he is thriving with Trump out of the picture is, going back to 2016, he was always prepping for this post-Trump environment. He knew that was just a temporary phase, and that’s why he set himself apart from the more Trumpian sites back then, even when he agreed with what Trump was doing at times, and why he’s best prepared for this next phase now.” The Daily Wire is also home to a podcast network that airs five popular shows—The Ben Shapiro Show, The Andrew Klavan Show, The Matt Walsh Show, The Michael Knowles Show, and The Candace Owens Show.
With its bevy of new-media offerings, the Daily Wire is set to become the go-to opposition outlet of the Biden era, especially for Gen X and millennial conservatives who are no longer tuning into talk radio and cable news. “I could see Ben and [Daily Wire co-CEO Jeremy Boreing] turning the Daily Wire into what Pod Save America became during the Trump years,” another former Daily Wire employee told me. “It’s not just about having one popular show. It’s so much more than that—what they’re making is a massive operation with multiple big shows and a dedicated audience that listens to them all every day, pays [for Daily Wire subscriptions], watches the movies. I think building a media empire is exactly what they’re already doing.”
— Wyoming Tells Donald Trump Jr. to Sit Down and STFU
— A Wave of Displaced New Yorkers Is Upending the Hamptons Social Order
— How a Group of Rich Memphians Acted on Trump’s Big Lie During Capitol Attack
— Prosecutors Are Lining Up Witnesses in Trump Investigations
— Republicans Brave Plan to Stop Mass Shootings: Do Nothing
— Next-Level Harassment of Female Journalists Puts News Outlets to the Test
— Six Photographers Share Images From Their COVID Year
— From the Archive: American Nightmare, the Ballad of Richard Jewell
— Serena Williams, Michael B. Jordan, Gal Gadot, and more are coming to your favorite screen April 13–15. Get your tickets to Vanity Fair’s Cocktail Hour, Live! here.