Left Wing Youtuber David Pakman **EXTENDED VERSION**
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Hey, you're listening to the On The Media Midweek Podcast. I'm Michael Loewinger. On last week's show, we aired an interview that I did with David Pakman, the liberal YouTuber who has over 3 million subscribers. I had wanted to talk to him to get a sense of what he thinks Democratic lawmakers and content creators could be doing differently online to reach more people in a media universe dominated by right-wing voices.

This is the extended version of that conversation with a bunch of stuff that we couldn't fit in the radio show added back in. To kick it off, I asked him how he got his start in this business. Well, I started, interestingly, in community radio and then started self-syndicating my show to a bunch of other radio stations.

Later came the online platforms. So the audio podcast, the YouTube channel, Instagram, TikTok, etc. And then in August of last year, I made the decision that we were no longer going to provide the show to broadcast affiliates, television and radio, simply because that's not where our audience was.

It became a lot of work at our expense for a diminishing audience. And so we made the call right now, our audiences on these online platforms, you know, we combine about 250 million views a month on those platforms. That's really where we need to focus. And we became sort of online first in August of 24.

In terms of what has helped you build an audience on YouTube, when did you figure out that you had something that had legs? Was there a kind of light bulb over the head moment? There's no day where it was like, "Now we've got an audience." And I'm sort of joking, but I just do this every day. And so if the audience grows a little bit every month, it feels like you're sort of doing the same thing every day.

I think when the show made its first dollar was a big step. And I mean, first employee, first real bona fide W2 employee was probably around 2012 or 2013. Those are more the milestones that felt more significant. How many people work for you now? It's myself plus three full time people.

And then we have a number of part timers and contractors that are working on kind of more specific limited projects. If you were trying to, in short, describe where in YouTube you fit in, do you feel like you're a part of a community or a cohort?

How do you visualize it in your mind? Especially since the 2024 election, it feels more than ever like there is this cohort community now. Those folks, so Brian Tyler Cohen,

Midas Touch myself, I think that's like the immediate cohort. And then we've got also a lot of up and coming creators now, everybody from Luke Beasley and Adam Mockler, Jesse Dollimore and Brittany Page and a lot of other folks. And I know I'm missing a ton of people, but we're pretty frequently texting ideas back and forth or how are you covering this? How are you covering that? I think it's that's definitely happening

Certainly more than was happening around the 2016 or 2020 elections. And there have been a few studies over the last few weeks regarding Q1 in kind of the left media space and how we're now growing more quickly than the equivalents on the right.

Do you guys have a name? I remember when there was BreadTube or LeftTube, you know, to describe video essayists like ContraPoints and PhilosophyTube and HBomberGuy, but there's no sort of title. No. For YouTubers, you guys are really not taking advantage of this branding opportunity. It's a little surprising. You're probably right. I mean, listen, if it were the right, they would have figured out a great name already and had three funders for it.

And probably two conferences. You mentioned that the study demonstrates that these left-wing channels are growing at a faster rate, maybe for the first time, than your right-wing YouTuber counterparts. What accounts for the growth, do you think? Well, there's been this trajectory where after the November election, we, meaning our cohort, had about a three-day period during which we saw viewership decline.

This very rarely happens. I mean, we've essentially been growing for 20 years and that decline coincided with pretty significant ratings declines on MSNBC and on CNN. And to some degree, it seemed like there was a contingent of our audience and of the American people who were just feeling extremely demoralized by the election results. Despondent is the term that I used.

And I suspected that when some of those folks who tuned out of corporate media were going to be ready to tune back in, they were going to come back to something different.

And what's fascinating is that while our cohort has continued to grow significantly in Q1 2025, CNN and MSNBC ratings have remained down. And so I don't think this is the only explanation, but I think one aspect of it is the despondency made people tune out of a lot of stuff.

They realized disengagement seeds power to the very worst people as we see it. I'm going to get reengaged, but I want something a little different. And I think to a degree, that's something we're benefiting from right now. Despite this recent growth, you know better than anyone that you are very outgunned by the right wing Internet, by right wing YouTubers, podcasters, content creators, influencers, whatever you want to call them.

In March, Media Matters released a report comparing the digital reach of right-wing and left-wing content creators. Unsurprisingly, the right was quite dominant in their quantification. But there was a visualization that accompanied the report that I think kind of shocked people a little bit because it showed just how stark the difference is. How would you explain how we got to this moment where it feels like conservative voices won the internet?

This is a very long historical trajectory.

For all of the, you know, wild claims about George Soros, this and that. The truth is, we don't really have the funders on our side. I think on the political left, there is money. It disproportionately floats directly to candidates, sometimes to third party groups of different kinds. But there's not really been a movement to fund what we do the way that the right has done it. So I think that that's one layer to it.

Another layer also is that the right is way better at taking over the non-overtly political spaces. And so if you flip around a lot of the social media apps and you find content about being a better car salesperson or you find content about doing real estate wholesaling or workout content, a lot of it is

coded C.O.D.E.D. It's red coded is what I call it or kind of with right wing ideology. And this includes a lot of the shows that Trump and Vance really successfully used last year, like the Nelk Boys and others where he's appearing in an unstructured format. He's hanging out. He's weighing in on not all political topics.

The left is getting crushed as far as that goes. And I think that that's another layer to it. And you believe that there's a kind of algorithmic bias towards some of the red coded content, or at least there's some kind of affinity between the types of messages that the right puts out and what social media likes.

I'll just give you one example. If we just think about the issue of abortion, right? The idea that killing is bad, abortion is killing, it should be illegal. It took me three seconds to tell you that. There's no equivalent opposite on the political left. It's not we love abortions, the more the better, right? We're trying to find a conversation here about bodily autonomy, about medicine and science, about the law.

And we're already lost. It's taken me 20 seconds just to give you the framework under which we would have that conversation. So I think that algorithmically, a lot of these ideas do lend themselves to the way the right frames the issue. That's a good example. Can you give me some others? Tax relief is another one. Like it's your money. You should get to keep it.

On the left, we don't say you should have as little of your money as possible, right? We're saying, listen, if we understand sociology and anthropology and political science, we know that when we get beyond Dunbar's number of groups of 150 people...

Certain aspects of what we do have to be centralized and you can use the word coercive for taxes, but it's a form of necessary coercion. We've lost. Right. I mean, we're it's a different format. And I don't say we've lost in terms of we have the wrong idea. What I'm saying is it doesn't lend itself to tick tock. OK. I mean, if we wanted to get spicy, I mean, it's not so hard to translate that.

some of these left-wing positions into quick-hit emotional messages. On the abortion one, you could say Republicans don't respect women and they want to dominate them.

On tax relief, if you were a certain kind of Democrat, you could say government helps people and protects us from, you know, craven criminals and billionaires. I don't know. Right. No, you're not wrong. You're not wrong. And listen, I also am trying to work within the system. And so on taxes, one of the things I've been saying is we want taxes as low as possible.

while funding the areas of absolute importance to have a functioning liberal democracy. And I'm even kind of hesitating as I tell you because I'm trying to figure it. But you're not wrong that the left can do better on this stuff, but it takes a little more thinking to do it. Yeah, but what you're getting at is that even understanding what has helped the right create or capture these platforms and algorithms is

you're not willing to play by the exact same rules because you approach your content differently. Like, is that fair to say? Yes, and also, there's a big discussion that takes place among our cohort in terms of the feedback we get.

You guys are resorting to the same types of YouTube titles. It's the clickbait titles and so on and so forth. And I've been super upfront with my audience. Listen, we are trying to get an audience for the content we're doing because we believe the message we're putting out is better for the country. Given that, of course, I'm going to choose titles that I think will get a bigger audience rather than a smaller one. I'll give you an example. If I spend seven minutes talking about Caroline Levitt's latest press conference,

I could title it White House official answers questions from the press. I could give it that title. That's going to get very few views.

And so instead I go, Caroline Leavitt tells a lie a minute in unhinged rant. I don't believe it's inaccurate, right? If I were to title it, Caroline Leavitt rushed off stage in a stretcher, it's obviously not in the video. That's a problem if that's the title I'm picking. But editorializing and sort of playing the formats for the different platforms, I think that it's inevitable that you just have to do that.

What else do you think these right wing creators are doing that others on the left just haven't kind of caught up to or figured out yet? I think the cross pollination among the shows and with elected officials in the Republican Party has been executed really well.

J.D. Vance did the rounds on all of the shows. Trump did the rounds on all of the shows. There's a much more sort of working relationship where audiences see these folks as people they want to hear from rather than someone who shows up to give me kind of anodyne talking points. And I think that has to be part of the community as well. It can't just be the content creators. It also has to be the lawmakers. I think that's another aspect that they've really mastered on the right.

Yeah, it's interesting. About a year ago, a listener called in, a viewer called in and asked you, I see you talk with Congress people sometimes, but why don't you do it more often? When they kind of put you through the ringer like this, do you think it's that they didn't trust you? Is that they were like, who is this guy? To a degree. I think there's a couple of things going on. One was the Democratic Party more than the Republican Party.

was much more deferential to corporate media. That's number one. Number two, obviously it gets easier to book people the bigger you get. Now I have over six million followers across all my platforms. This is also a bigger show than it used to be. It's much easier to book people when you have those numbers. I just say, "Listen, my political record is an open book. I've got tens of thousands of videos.

Give me 20 minutes. Give me a half hour. If the interview is 10 days from now, I can't tell you what the topics will be because they're going to be topical based on what's going on. You can see what the interviews will be like. And if that sounds good, let's do it. And they've been significantly more receptive to that. So if there's anything right now that gives me cautious optimism, it's that. You went to the White House after the election while Joe Biden was still in office. What was that like? I mean, you spoke to the president. What did you tell him?

It was in a group setting, so I didn't tell ... You don't tell the president stuff per se. I think I would kind of challenge that language. Okay. There was about 10 of us. We spoke to a communication official, folks from the office that engaged directly with online creators, and basically the topic was, "Okay, we lost. It didn't go the way we wanted it to go.

Going forward for the next election cycles, what do you think about how we should be engaging with creators like you? And I said what I just told you, which is, listen, let some of the elected officials just appear, let their personalities come through, be less risk averse, be less hands on, just kind of make it easier to engage in these conversations rather than on October 15th.

figuring out whose show can we appear on with only two weeks left before an election that we know doesn't work. So that was kind of my main message. Was there anything that you heard from some of the other people in attendance that you thought seemed like appropriate, good advice?

You know, I'm not being cagey, but it's just it was a while ago now. And the specifics mean, listen, another sentiment was we all had audience members who felt as though certain issues were being dismissed rather than dealt with head on. So that was another thing where we would have liked to see Democrats who were up for a

election deal more directly with, for example, immigration and crime. We think we have the better ideas on these issues, but it didn't come through to voters. That would be like another general idea, I think, that was presented. And do you feel that Democrats have taken some of these suggestions to heart? Like, have you noticed a difference?

I'm seeing as a change. The frequency with which some folks are willing to appear, I think, is also a change. I mean, I think it's a little early to really say as we approach the 26 midterms, I think we're going to have a better sense of like, is there a different approach here to independent media? One of the narratives after the election, obviously, is all about Joe Rogan. She should have gone on it. He laid out the red carpet for Elon Musk and Trump and J.D. Vance.

You know, positively or negatively, a lot of people ascribe a lot of agency to Joe Rogan. Do you think he deserves so much importance in that conversation? I think the Rogan story represents a lot of the issues, but I don't know that Rogan is a main character in and of himself in the way that some people are saying the left needs a Joe Rogan. So I'll say a couple of things about this.

One is the right is much more interested in a soul and singular leader than the left. And you might remember when Donald Trump and others would say this was in 2020. This was also in 24 when Biden was still the nominee. There's no way people support Biden because you never see Biden hats. You never see Biden stickers. You don't see people putting a Biden flag on their boat.

This is sort of the phraseology and imagery that is very relevant to the right.

My experience with the left is that we are less concerned with having a leader and sort of deifying that individual. Now, I think Obama was generationally unique in the way that he inspired people. And there was a little more of a personal interest in Obama. But the way I viewed Biden was election day. What's my better option? Here it is. I have no bumper stickers. I have no boat, never mind a flag on my boat, et cetera. Now I go back to work.

And I think that's the view a lot of folks on the left. So to the extent that the left needs a Rogan, I think that narrative is wrong. What I thought was useful about the Rogan critique, though, was doing more of those shows and appearing in more of those unstructured environments could only have helped her unless you believe she quite literally couldn't handle those situations, which is not my impression right now.

Democrats are quite critical of their own candidates. And there is some risk in putting Kamala Harris or whatever politician in front of somebody who could reflect poorly on them, who might have a big audience but has baggage.

I couldn't possibly tell you whether they should sit down with him specifically. There has to be an expansion of getting in front of blue coded nonpolitical audiences. And this is something that with our cohort, we do talk about a lot, which is we have a pretty significantly low ceiling

In the sense that a lot of the country does not watch overtly political content. They don't listen to overtly political podcasts. They don't watch overtly political YouTube channels. And so as much as we grow, we will be restricted by the fact that we are in an overtly political content space.

And so there has to be some expansion to blue coded spaces. Now, I think Scott Galloway is interesting because Scott Galloway has podcasts, including his own podcast, the one with Kara Swisher.

where they're not overtly political. They do talk about how politics affects business or economics, et cetera. But that's at least a baby step in the direction that I'm kind of thinking. The right has been far more inclusive than the left. And the left has done, in my view, too much purity testing and excluding. What's a sticking point issue that you're thinking of?

On Israel-Palestine, I've seen, I mean, I favor a two-state solution. Palestinians should have an autonomous state. I want the blockade lifted. Israel's settlements are going to have to go. Netanyahu is not going to be an arbiter to peace. But if you're calling for the elimination of Israel, I'm not with you, right? I've been told you're on the right. There's been so much focus on the manosphere.

in part because so many of these big content creators on the right have actively courted young men. I mean, you just can't avoid that. Is it even possible for Democrats to claw back some of these voters? Or do you think their attention and resources and efforts are better spent elsewhere? I

I think it is possible, and I think the efforts would be very well spent if you look at exit polling and you look at male-female sort of voting splits. I have a couple of videos where I talk about this, and I talk about how as horrible and arguably counterproductive the visions of masculinity that are laid out by people like the Tate brothers, etc., are.

Part of the reason that they've grown to the degree that they have, part of it is algorithmic, like we talked about. But part of it is there is sort of a vacuum on the left where when you look at what the left is putting out about gender, you often get either nothing directly taking it on.

Or you get material that does not pull in more men about toxic masculinity, et cetera. Doesn't mean that those aren't important critiques and prisms through which to see gender.

But it's not a shock when you look at what's being put out that young men have gravitated, especially because they get in through real estate wholesaling or what's your fitness technique or whatever the case may be. They've gravitated to the right. So I think that it's absolutely critical to take that directly and figure out how to reach those folks. What are some other risks you think Democrats could be making to kind of build relationships?

a more modern, more expansive online media strategy? I actually do think that there are Democratic elected officials now doing some of the things that a year ago I would have said they should be doing. There are senators now who are doing direct-to-camera videos on the social platforms. They're getting huge views because voters actually like just hearing from them in a less structured way.

sort of format. But Adam Schiff is doing it and he's doing it quite well. Cory Booker also has been doing it. Ro Khanna is doing more of it as well. There's a growing list. The rallies that AOC and Bernie are doing, the real crowd sizes. John Ossoff has done some interesting events in Georgia. There's a lot of folks. Greg Kassar, who I've interviewed a couple of times, is doing some interesting town halls in redder areas.

And the interest in that and the turnout is also together with the other things making me sort of cautiously optimistic. But to be honest, it's so early it would be very much beyond where we are for me to make any kind of prediction as to what effect this is going to have. David, thank you so much. My pleasure. David Pakman is the author of The Echo Machine and host of The David Pakman Show on YouTube.

Check your feeds on Friday to hear the upcoming episode of OTM. Brooke and I will be examining the Trumpian concept of improper ideology. In the meantime, you should follow us on Instagram. We've uploaded some video clips from this David Pakman interview. Just search On The Media or Michael Loewinger. I'm on there, too. Thanks for listening.

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