Conservative commentator Dan Bongino, who streams exclusively on free speech video platform Rumble, was the fifth most popular podcast in the United States in July, and the top conservative show.
The Dan Bongino Show rose four places last month to finish ahead of The Daily Wire’s The Ben Shapiro Show, in the Podtrac rankings for US unique monthly audience, its highest placement of the year so far.
The New York Times’ podcast The Daily took top spot overall, with NPR News Now in second, NPR’s Up First in third, and Dateline NBC in fourth – all unchanged from the previous month.
Aside from The Bongino Show and The Ben Shapiro Show, the only other conservative podcast in the top 20 was the Fox News Hourly Update, down two spots from June.
“Dan Bongino is #1 in the conservative world for podcasts and the only place he streams live is on Rumble (he’s also our biggest streamer),” Rumble said on X.
Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski also celebrated the show’s success on social media, after announcing his platform would be joining X in an antitrust lawsuit against a cartel of advertisers and ad agencies, alleging a conspiracy to block ad revenue from going to certain platforms and content creators.
Mr Pavlovski then revealed that alcoholic beverage company Diageo North America and Dunkin Donuts has both discriminated against Rumble due to political disagreements with some content found on the site.
“Both Diageo and Dunkin Donuts want us to drop Steven Crowder and get away from ‘right wing culture’ in order to get ad dollars from them,” Mr Pavlovski wrote.
“My response: No, we don’t discriminate. All cultures are welcome on Rumble.”
Both @Diageo_NA and @dunkindonuts want us to drop @scrowder and get away from “right wing culture” in order to get ad dollars from them.
My response: No, we don’t discriminate. All cultures are welcome on Rumble.
— Chris Pavlovski (@chrispavlovski) August 7, 2024
The Bongino Show’s rise in the podcast rankings comes after Rumble knocked heavily censored Big Tech rival YouTube out of the top five livestreams in June.
Rumble was founded by Mr Pavlovski in 2013, and is growing in popularity due to Big Tech censorship that has forced conservative and right-wing content creators off major platforms such as YouTube.
Australian-based American media personality Elijah Schaffer revealed in a livestream with White advocate Joel Davis on his Slightly Offensive show that month that YouTube regularly removed his videos, and urged his followers to watch and subscribe on Rumble instead.
“I guarantee you this show is going to get pulled from YouTube,” Schaffer said early in the stream.
Later in the show, as the pair analysed a video of a Muslim knifeman stabbing an anti-Islam campaigner in Mannheim, Germany, Schaffer said simply playing the clip was likely to get his channel penalised by YouTube.
“When this stream is done we’re going to have to delete this immediately off YouTube or we’re going to get a massive strike for the violence,” he told his producer, “strike” referring to penalties given by Big Tech platforms that can result in demonetisation, restricted reach and account deletion.
“Thank God for Rumble and Censored[.tv] for allowing us to show Muslims acting like Muslims.”
