The drubbing Democrats endured in 2024 left many of them wondering who would emerge as the liberal Joe Rogan—a media personality who could help the party shake off its stuffy image and win back the young men addicted to Zyn.
Now one successful, heavily tattooed podcaster tells me he’s willing to step up—but so far, establishment Democrats don’t want anything to do with him.
Meet Adam22, whose “No Jumper” podcast covering the intersection of hip-hop culture and the bro-internet boasts 4.8 million subscribers on YouTube. The podcaster, whose real name is Adam Grandmaison, says he’s watched in dismay as being a Trump supporter became cool among young men, including a substantial portion of his audience.
“There’s so little for the average fan of podcasts to relate to on the left that it’s almost like the Democratic brand is just completely toxic,” Grandmaison said.
So far, though, Grandmaison has come up empty in his attempts to host a Democratic politician on his much-watched show. His bookers have approached five Democratic senators, including Sen. John Fetterman—perhaps the Democrat most willing to engage alt media—but so far have had no luck getting any of them to come on.
How could that be? Well, we should start by acknowledging that Grandmaison is a little less savory than the average cable news host. His wife is an adult film actress, and they have a separate podcast where they interview other adult film actresses, then all have sex together. And no, Fetterman was not asked to appear on that show.
Grandmaison briefly became perhaps the most famous cuckold in America after his wife, who usually collaborates with women, slept with another adult actor on camera, launching a soap-opera feud between the actor and Grandmaison. It provided months of tabloid fodder. His businesses have been robbed at gunpoint multiple times, and several of his regular podcast guests were indicted in a RICO case last month. On Wednesday, Grandmaison announced his podcast was “going broke” and asked viewers to sign up for paid memberships.
Perhaps most jarring, Grandmaison has a huge tattoo of Lisa Simpson on his face.
But despite Grandmaison’s outré appearance and activities, he’s politically a lifelong normie Democrat whose ideas wouldn’t be out of place on the opinion pages of the New York Times and who thinks Trump’s a fraud. He says fellow podcasters are baffled when they find out he’s vaccinated. He just wants the Democrats to be more interesting to young men.
Grandmaison was a bike-stunts blogger and occasional marijuana dealer when, in 2015, he launched the No Jumper YouTube channel, which relentlessly chronicled emerging rappers and their beefs. Until now, he hasn’t been directly involved in supporting Democrats, telling me his audience sees Kamala Harris as “one of the detestable politicians in recent memory.”
On the other hand, he complained after the election that he was upset to discover that his “pregnant side chick” had voted for Trump.
In February, Grandmaison watched Jon Stewart interview House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and felt despair for his party’s future.
“He just very much came across as just like an AI designed to reiterate all the most basic, boring, boilerplate, Democratic talking points,” Grandmaison said.
Grandmaison’s inability to book a Democrat underscores a phenomenon that operatives say is harming the party: The lawmakers are too risk averse. Back in 2020, then-presidential candidate Bernie Sanders appeared on Rogan’s podcast. But he was admonished in some corners of the party for legitimizing a program that has pushed conspiracy theories and opposition to trans rights.
As Democrats have sought to find alternatives to Rogan, however, they’ve encountered another problem: Many of the left’s digital-media stars don’t really like the Democrats all that much. Streamer Hasan Piker, often cited as the party’s salvation when it comes to young men, has built his image more in opposition to the mainstream Democratic party than in support of it.
By comparison, Grandmaison is eager to promote politics that align with the party’s center, describing himself as a “center-left kind of guy.”
Grandmaison’s family has roots in the Democratic party. His uncle, longtime New Hampshire political operative Joe Grandmaison, helped Bill Clinton win that state’s crucial primary in 1992. In 2000, Clinton pardoned Adam Grandmaison’s father, Philip, who had been convicted of mail fraud.
Still, Grandmaison says there are obvious career incentives for him to join other popular YouTube figures like the Nelk Brothers and Jake and Logan Paul and support Trump. Among the rappers he hangs out with, Grandmaison said, it’s treated as bizarre that he’s openly a Democrat. It’s a major shift from just a decade ago, when people were shocked that Kanye West supported Trump.
Right-wing internet talk-show host Stew Peters had a new flash of infamy this week, after he called for a “final solution” to Jews living in the United States and advocated for their deportation.
This brings up a good question: Why did so many Trump administration officials pal around with this guy for so long?
Peters—a former bounty hunter who tried to become a sort of contemporary Dog the Bounty Hunter figure on YouTube, even after a fugitive apprehension he was involved with left three people dead—reinvented himself a few years ago as an extreme right-wing host who makes Alex Jones look bland.
He’s promoted a host of conspiracy theories, and even made a whole “documentary” about how the COVID-19 vaccine was made of serpent’s blood, as part of an effort to turn us all into snakes.
Yet people in Trump’s orbit kept going on his show.
Darren Beattie, now the State Department’s under secretary for public diplomacy, went on Peters’s show in September 2024. In a segment before Beattie appeared on the episode, Peters devoted his monologue to denouncing the “Holocaust grift.” Later in the episode, another guest said Jews controlled the media and the Biden administration.
The State Department didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Beattie, a five-time guest of Peters’s, isn’t the only person in the Trump administration who went on the show. FBI Director Kash Patel’s eight appearances on Peters’s show came up during his confirmation hearing. Patel said he couldn’t remember who Peters was “off the top of my head.”
For his part, Peters responded that Patel was clearly lying.
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