Plagued by infighting and fractured support for Donald Trump’s agenda, right-wing influencers who once commanded tens of millions of views on any given month are reportedly hemorrhaging viewers and listeners as years of loyalty to an unpopular president becomes a liability.
A new analysis from The New York Times has uncovered plummeting views among several prominent influencers across their podcasts, YouTube, X and Rumble accounts, driven by collapse in support for Trump’s war in Iran and a splintering on the right over the death of Charlie Kirk, whose killing sparked debates over his legacy and whether he would stick with the president.
The shifts add to a growing body of evidence that the audience for outwardly pro-Trump content — during an administration accused of covering up investigations into Jeffrey Epstein and leading the nation into war amid a growing affordability crisis — is fizzling out.
Benny Johnson, who saw a high of 31.2 million views on YouTube during Trump’s 2024 campaign, has seen those numbers halved, according to The Times. Views for Dan Bongino, who returned to podcasting after his brief stint as deputy director of the FBI, are roughly half of what they were in 2024, and his YouTube views were among the lowest of those analyzed by The Times.
Ben Shapiro lost roughly 60,000 subscribers on YouTube from April to June this year, according to Chaotic Era, and his YouTube views are the lowest they’ve been in years. His publication The Daily Wire has also seen plummeting traffic and layoffs as its influence “irrevocably collapsed,” The Washington Post reported earlier this year.
The decline also could be driven by other factors, including unpredictability of social media algorithms, the splintering of audiences across platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, and a fresh wave of influencers competing in the attention economy, all of which are obstacles for more mainstream outlets and other news figures.
But the drops are taking place alongside the diminishing influence of Kirk’s group Turning Point and platforms such as The Daily Wire, The Blaze and The Federalist, while personalities on the right who are now criticizing Trump have seen some gains.
That splintering of the MAGA coalition over Trump’s second term is now a feature across the right’s extended universe of podcasts and influencers; Joe Rogan and Alex Schultz regularly denigrate the president, Tucker Carlson called him “disloyal,” Theo Von called the administration “f** terrorists,” Candace Owens has called him a “genocidal maniac,” and Alex Jones has called for his impeachment and removal.
Infighting over Kirk and his legacy also has broken a key bloc among right-wing influencers and their audience.
“Would Kirk, the poster boy of Christian nationalism, have stuck with Trump as he backed Israel right up to the current war with Iran? This has been hotly debated among right-wing influencers all year,” writes Virginia Heffernan in The New Republic.
Criticism over Trump’s vehement support for Israel and his billions of dollars in military spending also is colliding with far-right antisemitism. White nationalist Nick Fuentes, a rival of Kirk’s who has been vocally critical of the president, is seeing his average weekly views climb as high as eight million views per week, from around one million in 2024, according to The Times analysis.
Those views are now trending down, according to The Times. “It seems that everyone in the space is experiencing a drop-off in views from 2025,” he told the newspaper. “Seems as though 2025 was the anomaly either due to organic interest or potentially artificial boosting.”
Owens, who has posted videos such as “Who Ordered the Hit on Charlie Kirk?” and a series that investigated his widow Erika Kirk, has also seen some uneven growth by expanding into other conspiratorial content, including a series about Brigitte Macron, the wife of the French president, who sued her for defamation last year.
Shapiro’s podcast has seen some resilience, but it appears largely due to publishing more episodes. He’s putting 50 percent more podcasts this year compared with last year, according to The Times, citing data from analytics company Podcasher.
But their overall influence appears to be dissolving outside of the right-wing ecosystem.
Erika Kirk, who now helms Turning Point, as well as Shapiro and Owens are viewed overwhelmingly unfavorably by voters, according to recent polling from Overton Insights.
All three are drastically underwater with voters, though Owens is the most “popular” among them, with a net favorability rating of -23 points. Kirk saw a net favorability rating of -26 percent, with Shapiro at -27 percent.