‘This is karma, ladies and gentlemen’

On By Littum

Former President Donald Trump’s best friend Dana White was invited up to shout out a cadre of MAGA-adjacent streamers and podcasters in a bizarre addendum to Republicans nominees’ victory remarks on Tuesday evening.

“I’d like to thank the Nelk Boys, Adin Ross, Theo Von, Bussin’ With the Boys, and last but not least the mighty and powerful Joe Rogan” said White, the UFC CEO, in what was possibly the strangest extension of gratitude since George Washington was elected in 1789.

During the campaign, Trump made a whirlwind press tour of right-wing podcasts and live streams while declining a sit-down with CBS’ flagship news magazine 60 minutes.

Ross, who hosted Trump on a Kick live stream in August, has been prohibited no less than eight times – permanently from February 2023 – from the streaming site Twitch to broadcast homophobic and hateful slurs and anti-Semitic messages.

So is he host white nationalist Nick Fuentes, whom Trump himself dined with MAGA rapper and anti-Semite Kanye West.

Now — along with the seltzer-hawking Nelk Boys and the Trump-friendly Barstool Sports football podcast “Bussin’ With the Boys” — he’s part of the MAGA set’s own stand-ins for Barbara Walters and Terry Gross.

“We’re so over it as a nation,” tweeted progressive streamer Hasan Piker, after seeing White’s nod to Ross.

Rogan, the podfather of freewheeling libertarian conspiracies, was the most prominent figure in the online bro-sphere to endorse Trump, doing so at the eleventh hour of the campaign and after he failed to seal an interview with the vice president Kamala Harris.

Trump’s appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience” was the pinnacle of his campaign’s strategy to put their candidate in front of Gen Z and Millennial men who use less traditional media.

MAGA billionaire Elon MuskRogan saidwas the one who convinced him to support the Republican nominee after he appeared on the podcast Monday to make the case for his candidate.

White, who has been friends with Trump for a quarter century and introduced Trump at this year’s Republican National Convention, huddled with the president and Musk as the election results rolled in.

“This is karma, ladies and gentlemen,” White told an ecstatic crowd of die-hard Trump supporters in West Palm Beach before thanking Trump’s pod-brother supporters.

“It’s a piece of work,” Trump joked of White after he finished speaking. “No, he really is a great guy.”