Right-wing media empire hemorrhaging subscribers as Trump's coalition crumbles

President Donald Trump’s media ecosystem for a long time depended on major online brands like The Daily Wire and Blaze Media, but as one of their fellow conservative publications pointed out, Trump’s coalition is dissolving — and with it, the base of support upon which many of these media outlets once stood firm.

“Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire is in trouble on YouTube, losing significant numbers of subscribers—with Shapiro himself down a whopping 80,000 in the first quarter of the year, according to a new survey of political channels by researcher Kyle Tharp,” wrote The Bulwark’s Will Sommer on Monday. “It’s more proof that dissident and increasingly anti-Trump voices like Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson have the energy in right-wing media. Shapiro, by contrast, is stuck defending an unpopular war with Iran.”

Sommer noted that even Shapiro’s attempts to offset losses to his political brand by crafting mainstream motion pictures has failed.

“Deadline reports that the set of the Daily Wire’s upcoming film Run Hide Fight Infidels is in chaos, with black mold on the site, a tree branch hitting a crew member, and actor Jonathan Majors falling out of a window during a recent shoot,” Sommer wrote. “Undeterred by crew complaints, producers say they won’t negotiate on safety ‘with communists.’ By communist, they mean unionized crew members.”

Sommer also took shots at Blaze Media, an outlet owned by Glenn Beck, which is facing problems because of a journalist associated with them who spread an incorrect story about the January 6th coup attempt.

“Back in November, the conservative media outlet the Blaze claimed that reporter Steve Baker had the scoop of the century: compelling evidence that the pipe bombs planted outside Republican and Democratic headquarters on January 6th were laid by a Capitol Police officer,” Sommer wrote. “Blaze founder Glenn Beck declared it would be ‘the biggest scandal of my lifetime, maybe in the last hundred years.’ Republican members of Congress like Anna Paulina Luna and Thomas Massie championed the story, saying it was proof the deep state was behind January 6th.”

Yet the story proved not to be true, with Blaze Media retracting it in December, and Sommer wrote that Baker “was fired on Wednesday morning, as the publication faces the possibility of a massive libel judgment over the story.”

Beck has a long history of extravagant behavior, perhaps becoming most famous for dramatically crying during many of his speeches. Beck remains a stalwart in the conservative movement, although Shapiro has wavered somewhat at times. In a recent interview with the New Yorker, Shapiro admitted to David Remnick that he does not believe Trump is entirely honest and that he has concerns about the Trump family’s involvement in cryptocurrency schemes.

"I raised red flags on my show, consistently, about how I thought this was wrong. If the name were Biden instead of Trump, people would be screaming bloody murder," Shapiro told Remnick. "And this was not beneficial to President Trump’s agenda, either. So, sure, that concerns me."

Speaking with this journalist for Salon Magazine in 2019, Shapiro also admitted that he has been singled out for hate by some of his own far right supporters because of his Jewish background.

“I’ve gotten enormous amounts of hatred from the alt-right, and while folks on the far left try to lump me in with the alt-right, that is the height of absurdity on every possible level,” Shapiro said. “I mean, it’s honestly one of the most reprehensible things that I’ve experienced personally, people trying to lump me in with people who have legitimately threatened to kill my children … so that’s always a party.”

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