Podcasts on Trump abound
Many focus on ex-president’s courtroom dramas as cases unfold across jurisdictions
True crime is among the most popular genres in podcasting. One of the biggest stories in the coming months is the wave of criminal charges facing former President Donald Trump.
The result: a boomlet of podcasts dedicated to the criminal cases against him.
MSNBC, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, NPR, Vox Media and The First TV, an upstart conservative media company, have all introduced or are about to start new shows examining Trump’s courtroom travails as he campaigns to win back the White House.
On MSNBC’s “Prosecuting Donald Trump,” legal commentators Andrew Weissmann and Mary McCord offer analysis gleaned from their years serving as prosecutors.
A recent episode of “Breakdown,” from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, includes a newsy interview with Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney. Recently on “Trump’s Trials,” NPR host Scott Detrow discussed whether Trump could claim presidential immunity.
The criminal charges against Trump — brought by state prosecutors in New York and Georgia, as well as in two federal indictments — involve allegations of election interference, his role in the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol, his handling of sensitive documents and payments to cover up a sex scandal. Trump denies any wrongdoing.
Many of the hosts interviewed by The New York Times cited the newsworthiness of the story — a former president and a leading candidate for the office facing a legal onslaught while battling for the White House — as the impetus to go wall to wall with dedicated podcasts.
“He is the far and away front-runner to the nomination and has a real chance of being president again,” Detrow said. “That, to me, is an enormous legal story, an enormous political story.”
But there is a significant potential economic upside as well: capturing a slice of the $2.4 billion that advertisers are expected to spend on podcasts in 2024, according to the data firm eMarketer. For years, news organizations have benefited financially from the public’s interest in Trump — colloquially known as the “Trump bump.”
“The number of users is up, but the number of people vying for those users in terms of dollars is also way up,” said Chris Balfe, founder of The First TV.
Trump’s legal challenges present an unusual twist on the true-crime genre, which often focuses on grisly murders or dramatic heists. “Serial,” a podcast from the creators of “This American Life,” was a pioneer of the category, which has also included entrants like “Exit Scam” (about a vanished cryptocurrency mogul) and “Last Seen,” a suspenseful yarn about the theft of 13 irreplaceable artworks from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. (The New York Times Co. now owns Serial Productions, maker of “Serial.”)
The Trump cases, by contrast, involve complicated questions about the Constitution and democracy. Adding to the complexity: They span state and federal jurisdictions in Florida, Georgia, New York and Washington, D.C.
Podcasts are an ideal format to explain the nuances to the public, because they give journalists the time and space to examine complicated issues at length, Balfe said.