April 22, 2025 • 8 mins
ICYMI: Bloomberg big tech team leader Sarah Frier joins to talk about her Businessweek column on YouTube Manager John Shahidi - and how he played a role in sending Trump back to the White House.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. This is Bloomberg Business
Week with Carol Masser and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
We've heard the twenty twenty four presidential election referred to
as the podcast election. And indeed, if you go back
to March of twenty twenty two, the NLK Boys, which
I hadn't heard about until, I.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Mean, I learned so much in this story.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
They hosted President Trump on his first podcast. He then
appeared on several conservative friendly shows, including the ones hosted
by Joe Rogan, Nden Ross, Andrew Schultz and THEO Vaughn.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
I don't even know there's an ELK boy. Keep going,
keep going, all right.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Out Let's including The Wall Street Journal credited Baron Trump
for his father's entree into this world, and Barren indeed
advises on his demographics interests. But it's John Shahiti who
actually is making the calls to arrange the appearances or
finding out who can.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
And if you're saying who, well, then maybe you should be.
Speaker 4 (00:59):
And this is why you want to listen, stop what
you're doing and check out what our.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Sarah Fryar has to say.
Speaker 4 (01:04):
She writes in Bloomberg BusinessWeek about Shahiti, who's now looking
pretty critical to President Trump's twenty twenty four wins. Sarah
is Big Tech team leader for Bloomberg News. She's also
the author of No Filter, The Inside Story of Instagram,
and she's out there in our San Francisco.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
But you're all right, Sarah lay it out. Who is
John Shihiti.
Speaker 5 (01:23):
Well, he was a manager in the music industry of
folks who had pop contracts, a big songs in like
Anita Lei le Pond's. He works with several DJs, and
then he realized, all.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
Right, Tim and I are trying to say, it feels
like you are speaking a foreign language.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
I'm just gonna say, but go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 5 (01:44):
This is why these.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
People no, no, keep going.
Speaker 5 (01:49):
So this is this is a guy who's who's running
with the music business, doing great, but starting to really
warm up to Trump. This is during the first Trump term,
and he's he's not getting good response when he's talking
about it. People are kind of shutting him out. He
doesn't get invited to the parties he used he's used
(02:10):
to getting invited to. People decided not to include him
in meetings, and he realizes instead of shutting up about
how much I like Trump. I'm just going to leave
this industry and go for a new opportunity. And he
saw podcasting become it is really emerging as a way
(02:30):
that people were wanting to spend time online. The pandemic occurred,
it was becoming even more and more like a regular
consumer behavior. And he's a YouTube guy. He's worked a
lot with digital creators on he was you know, the
reason I knew him back in the day was because
of his work on Vine with a lot of influencers,
Instagram influencers, and so he thinks podcasts are going to
(02:54):
go big on YouTube, and he starts partnering with a
lot of those businesses. Now, meanwhile, he gets back in
touch with his old friend Dana White, who's also a
very close friend to Trump, who's running the Ultimate Fighting Championship,
and Key decides, White decides that Shahida needs to know
Trump because Trump should be on these podcasts reaching young people.
(03:17):
And so that's what happens. He really works with through
White to get to Trump and convinces Trump to go
on with the k Neelk Boys, with theovonn with a
bunch of these other names. You listed in a way
that he can appeal to a voter where they're where
they're listening casually. I mean, this is maybe somebody who
(03:39):
might not be showing up at his rallies or might
not be watching Fox News. Fox News demographic is very
much aging at this point, and it's somewhere where Trump
can cannot be edited. He can talk about whatever he wants,
and there's not going to be a time limit. These podcasts,
Rogan's shows sometimes three plus hours long, so it becomes
(03:59):
a perfect venue for Trump. He he kind of has
no idea what a podcast is. Once he starts doing it,
he starts loving the response he gets, and he sees
he sees the numbers, and he's really been embracing this
group of podcasters and Shahiti and the whole UFC world
as part of this new era in his presidency.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
We'll talk a little bit about how Shahiti sort of
went from somebody who wasn't necessarily invited to dinner or
parties to somebody who's now at UFC fights with members
of the administration, including the President. What sort of happened there,
and also he's been kind of accepted into the tech
side of things. Sarah, which you cover. You know he's
got a direct line too. It sounds like the folks
(04:43):
at YouTube, at Google's YouTube.
Speaker 5 (04:46):
Well, he became a kind of honored guest by the
standards of Spotify, YouTube and Meta at the inauguration. They
realized what he'd done here, had this investment in podcasts.
Google actually spo to the power of podcasts on its
last earnings call and they said that people really tuned
in to get their news from podcasts ahead of the
(05:07):
twenty twenty four election, and they credit that is a
really strong growth area of their YouTube business. So Shahidi
was pretty early to that market, and he's also realizing
that this is where all of the platforms are going
to go. He knows Elon Musk. He's known Elon Musk
(05:28):
for years. He brought Elon Musk to fights back in
the day when he was representing Floyd Mayweather, worked with
Justin Bieber Elon Musk. I have a picture of them
going to fight together in twenty thirteen. So he's known
Musk for a long time. He invested in x in
the new rendition of Twitter. So this is the crowd
(05:50):
that he hangs with, and he's really not so much
a manager of these podcasters, but a business partner, and
that to him is more more more fool proof and
more unlikely that he will be fired with a change
in the winds politically. If he's a business partner with
these guys, they're selling a product together, he's merchandising for them,
(06:13):
and they have some sort of goal that's not related
to what advertisers think about content policies, which is another
big factor in this. In another area where he's very
aligned with Musk.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
Great strategy until you have a tariff war, trade war
and those goods and merchandise maybe are produced in China,
and then there's no there's no podcasts rough.
Speaker 5 (06:35):
That it's rough, but it's rough on everyone at one Yeah,
you know, I think that's that's a good point too,
is that podcasts are are a good that just requires
some guys in a room talking. In this case, it
is mostly guys. I mean, this is this is the manisphere.
This is like ninety eight percent male viewership podcasts where
they they are very much you know, the fraternity demographic.
(06:59):
And these are the people who are who were really
encouraged by a lot of Shahidi's partners and podcast friends
to go out and vote for Trump.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
I mean, that's what's kind of cool just thirty seconds.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
I mean, it sounds like the Trump administration realized the
access that Shahiti has right to.
Speaker 5 (07:17):
And we've written in prior pieces about how the Harris
campaign realized towards the end that they were they were
going to need to make a last stitch appeal to men,
and they tried to make it work out with Rogan,
They tried to make it work out with THEOVONN. They
had a lot of rules that Trump didn't have around
what they wanted to say. They couldn't get the scheduling right,
and it was hard to convince people to act right,
(07:40):
to say we got to do this, We've got to
prioritize this, because it didn't seem like that was going
to be a big deal. But you know, in the
twenty twenty four election, it really was like our women
going to show up? Or are men going to show up?
And the men did show.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
Up, Yeah, and you got to find them where they
are at. Sarah Fryer, thank you so much, Big Tech
Team leader Bloomberg News.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Check out her book No Filth.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
And check out her story from Bloomberg BusinessWeek. You can
find it on the Bloomberg and of course at bloomberg
dot com. Also in the upcoming new issue of Bloomberg
Business Week magazine Cool Stuff
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. This is Bloomberg Business
Week with Carol Masser and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
We've heard the twenty twenty four presidential election referred to
as the podcast election. And indeed, if you go back
to March of twenty twenty two, the NLK Boys, which
I hadn't heard about until, I.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Mean, I learned so much in this story.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
They hosted President Trump on his first podcast. He then
appeared on several conservative friendly shows, including the ones hosted
by Joe Rogan, Nden Ross, Andrew Schultz and THEO Vaughn.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
I don't even know there's an ELK boy. Keep going,
keep going, all right.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Out Let's including The Wall Street Journal credited Baron Trump
for his father's entree into this world, and Barren indeed
advises on his demographics interests. But it's John Shahiti who
actually is making the calls to arrange the appearances or
finding out who can.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
And if you're saying who, well, then maybe you should be.
Speaker 4 (00:59):
And this is why you want to listen, stop what
you're doing and check out what our.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Sarah Fryar has to say.
Speaker 4 (01:04):
She writes in Bloomberg BusinessWeek about Shahiti, who's now looking
pretty critical to President Trump's twenty twenty four wins. Sarah
is Big Tech team leader for Bloomberg News. She's also
the author of No Filter, The Inside Story of Instagram,
and she's out there in our San Francisco.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
But you're all right, Sarah lay it out. Who is
John Shihiti.
Speaker 5 (01:23):
Well, he was a manager in the music industry of
folks who had pop contracts, a big songs in like
Anita Lei le Pond's. He works with several DJs, and
then he realized, all.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
Right, Tim and I are trying to say, it feels
like you are speaking a foreign language.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
I'm just gonna say, but go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 5 (01:44):
This is why these.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
People no, no, keep going.
Speaker 5 (01:49):
So this is this is a guy who's who's running
with the music business, doing great, but starting to really
warm up to Trump. This is during the first Trump term,
and he's he's not getting good response when he's talking
about it. People are kind of shutting him out. He
doesn't get invited to the parties he used he's used
(02:10):
to getting invited to. People decided not to include him
in meetings, and he realizes instead of shutting up about
how much I like Trump. I'm just going to leave
this industry and go for a new opportunity. And he
saw podcasting become it is really emerging as a way
(02:30):
that people were wanting to spend time online. The pandemic occurred,
it was becoming even more and more like a regular
consumer behavior. And he's a YouTube guy. He's worked a
lot with digital creators on he was you know, the
reason I knew him back in the day was because
of his work on Vine with a lot of influencers,
Instagram influencers, and so he thinks podcasts are going to
(02:54):
go big on YouTube, and he starts partnering with a
lot of those businesses. Now, meanwhile, he gets back in
touch with his old friend Dana White, who's also a
very close friend to Trump, who's running the Ultimate Fighting Championship,
and Key decides, White decides that Shahida needs to know
Trump because Trump should be on these podcasts reaching young people.
(03:17):
And so that's what happens. He really works with through
White to get to Trump and convinces Trump to go
on with the k Neelk Boys, with theovonn with a
bunch of these other names. You listed in a way
that he can appeal to a voter where they're where
they're listening casually. I mean, this is maybe somebody who
(03:39):
might not be showing up at his rallies or might
not be watching Fox News. Fox News demographic is very
much aging at this point, and it's somewhere where Trump
can cannot be edited. He can talk about whatever he wants,
and there's not going to be a time limit. These podcasts,
Rogan's shows sometimes three plus hours long, so it becomes
(03:59):
a perfect venue for Trump. He he kind of has
no idea what a podcast is. Once he starts doing it,
he starts loving the response he gets, and he sees
he sees the numbers, and he's really been embracing this
group of podcasters and Shahiti and the whole UFC world
as part of this new era in his presidency.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
We'll talk a little bit about how Shahiti sort of
went from somebody who wasn't necessarily invited to dinner or
parties to somebody who's now at UFC fights with members
of the administration, including the President. What sort of happened there,
and also he's been kind of accepted into the tech
side of things. Sarah, which you cover. You know he's
got a direct line too. It sounds like the folks
(04:43):
at YouTube, at Google's YouTube.
Speaker 5 (04:46):
Well, he became a kind of honored guest by the
standards of Spotify, YouTube and Meta at the inauguration. They
realized what he'd done here, had this investment in podcasts.
Google actually spo to the power of podcasts on its
last earnings call and they said that people really tuned
in to get their news from podcasts ahead of the
(05:07):
twenty twenty four election, and they credit that is a
really strong growth area of their YouTube business. So Shahidi
was pretty early to that market, and he's also realizing
that this is where all of the platforms are going
to go. He knows Elon Musk. He's known Elon Musk
(05:28):
for years. He brought Elon Musk to fights back in
the day when he was representing Floyd Mayweather, worked with
Justin Bieber Elon Musk. I have a picture of them
going to fight together in twenty thirteen. So he's known
Musk for a long time. He invested in x in
the new rendition of Twitter. So this is the crowd
(05:50):
that he hangs with, and he's really not so much
a manager of these podcasters, but a business partner, and
that to him is more more more fool proof and
more unlikely that he will be fired with a change
in the winds politically. If he's a business partner with
these guys, they're selling a product together, he's merchandising for them,
(06:13):
and they have some sort of goal that's not related
to what advertisers think about content policies, which is another
big factor in this. In another area where he's very
aligned with Musk.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
Great strategy until you have a tariff war, trade war
and those goods and merchandise maybe are produced in China,
and then there's no there's no podcasts rough.
Speaker 5 (06:35):
That it's rough, but it's rough on everyone at one Yeah,
you know, I think that's that's a good point too,
is that podcasts are are a good that just requires
some guys in a room talking. In this case, it
is mostly guys. I mean, this is this is the manisphere.
This is like ninety eight percent male viewership podcasts where
they they are very much you know, the fraternity demographic.
(06:59):
And these are the people who are who were really
encouraged by a lot of Shahidi's partners and podcast friends
to go out and vote for Trump.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
I mean, that's what's kind of cool just thirty seconds.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
I mean, it sounds like the Trump administration realized the
access that Shahiti has right to.
Speaker 5 (07:17):
And we've written in prior pieces about how the Harris
campaign realized towards the end that they were they were
going to need to make a last stitch appeal to men,
and they tried to make it work out with Rogan,
They tried to make it work out with THEOVONN. They
had a lot of rules that Trump didn't have around
what they wanted to say. They couldn't get the scheduling right,
and it was hard to convince people to act right,
(07:40):
to say we got to do this, We've got to
prioritize this, because it didn't seem like that was going
to be a big deal. But you know, in the
twenty twenty four election, it really was like our women
going to show up? Or are men going to show up?
And the men did show.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
Up, Yeah, and you got to find them where they
are at. Sarah Fryer, thank you so much, Big Tech
Team leader Bloomberg News.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Check out her book No Filth.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
And check out her story from Bloomberg BusinessWeek. You can
find it on the Bloomberg and of course at bloomberg
dot com. Also in the upcoming new issue of Bloomberg
Business Week magazine Cool Stuff
Hosts And Creators
Tim Stenovec
Carol Massar
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