Dave Portnoy on Trump, the manosphere, and his advice for Democrats

0:01Dave Portnoy has opinions about Donald Trump and bros. Somebody who maybe likes sports and wants to get laid, which I don't think is a bad thing. How does the founder of Barstool Sports think about voters like him? I'm Steve Inskeep on a special edition of Up First from NPR News.

0:21Dave Portnoy doesn't always get along with the media. They asked me for a quote about something the other day. I said I'd rather put a pencil in my eye than speak to you guys. But he talked with us about voters known as Barstool Conservatives. conservatives. What keeps Portnoy on the president's side even after Trump tanked the stock market? I was mad, but I told myself, I was like, he said he was going to do tariffs. Also, what if anything could get more men to vote for Democrats? Stay with us for an extended conversation with Dave Portnoy.

0:57Barstool Sports has been around just over 20 years. It features podcasts, Web stories, lots of ads for gambling, lots. And also Dave Portnoy talking about things like watching basketball star Caitlin Clark. Because I was there for it. I was decked out, fever hat, fever sweatshirt. Oh, yeah, yeah, I saw that. His business model is to cover whatever guys might talk about while at a bar watching sports. This now includes politics, which he riffs about on social media. The thing about me is when I see something and I get an opinion and it bubbles up, if I don't get it out, I just combust. I just like I may just explode.

1:31When progressives denounce his language about race or women, as they often do, he says that's why men voted for President Trump. Maybe they don't trust the extreme left like you who seemingly hate all normal white guys. He also criticized Trump when Trump's tariffs tanked the stock market. I went super viral when I said I lost seven million dollars. I'd kill to be back to losing seven million dollars. To be clear, he's still with Trump, but when we met face-to-face, we also heard some surprising nuances. One of Portnoy's homes is in Miami, and we met near there in a podcast studio. Let's just hear him in his own words.

2:11Welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having me. If people don't know, I want to know a little bit about your background. You're from Boston. Correct. Your parents were a lawyer and a teacher. School teacher, yep. Which I like because my mom was also a teacher and my dad, too. and I read that you went to the University of Michigan and got a degree in education. Correct. Were you planning to be a teacher? No, I don't think I was. So at Michigan, to graduate, you need to pass your language requirement, which I just could not do. So I was through Spanish 3 in high school, got dropped back down to remedial Spanish when I took the test, couldn't pass it, just couldn't pass it.

2:49I realized if I transferred to the educational school, there was no language requirement. So that was my fast pass to get my graduation degree. So you were just trying to escape. I was just trying to graduate with a degree, yeah. But you had a vision of something else you were going to do in life. Yeah. I mean, there was a time when I thought maybe gym teacher was like something. I knew I wanted to enjoy my life. So I was a sports guy. But I was really, at that point, let me get the degree and get out of college. And you ended up developing your own business, which is a long and amazing story.

3:20But you started in, I mean, before the internet was as big as it is now. It was a physical newspaper at one time. Is this right? Parcel sports was basically a four-page gambling rag, like fantasy sports, that type of thing. And I would hand it out outside of subway stations in Boston, literally up 4 a.m., screaming at people to take the newspaper. I'd do all the jobs in the paper. I'd write, sales, whatever. And then I'd go back to the subway station around 4 p.m., hit people on their evening commute. And that's how it started. And that's how it was for the beginning years. Did you have a vision for what it was going to be?

3:54No vision. I just really want to wake up and enjoy what I did I was interested in the gambling industry That was something that interested me So fantasy, sports, that type of thing I never dreamed it would be what it was today If I could have squeezed out 60 grand a year Waking up happy working for myself That would have been a win It seems to me you then caught a couple of big waves And one is the internet getting bigger and bigger And the other is gambling and sports Getting closer and closer, more intertwined yeah is that how you see it i caught a lot of waves i want to say too a right time right place right guy throughout the years but the internet without the internet i'm not here with barstool and barstool isn't here um found the right writers right people to work the gambling part of it we actually sort of went away for for a while but i would say what elevated my bank account for sure was the changing of the law in the United States where you could now legally bet on sports.

4:55We had started as a gambling newspaper. And then, I don't know, 10 years, I'm guessing when that law changed, we were uniquely positioned with our audience for all these companies. It was a land rush. I mean, it was a goldmine of people throwing money at advertisers, different types of things. So we were just right time, right place again for that. So I think about where your business is now, and you're at some intersection of sports, of gambling, of culture, a little bit of politics, a little bit of news. But what's the one-sentence description? What essentially is it that you're doing yourself?

5:30It started, and I think it rings true for the most part. Barstool sports was supposed to mean anything guys would talk about sitting down at a bar watching sports. So that's pretty wide open on what it could be. The only caveat I'd say, which I didn't anticipate, we have a big female audience too and launched some of the biggest female podcasts and podcast stars. So it's really what a guy or girl may talk about in their living room or for guys in a locker room or girls in a locker room. That's really, it's supposed to be plain speak basically, busting each other's balls and having fun. Does the, with those podcasts, does the audience segregate or self-segregate men and women listening to different things?

6:13It generally does, but it depends on the podcast. It depends what they're doing. I worked on a podcast until recently called BFF. And this was basically, I thought at the time, Barstool was starting to get old. And TikTok was developed. And if you went to people on TikTok and said, what's Barstool Sports? They've been like, we have no idea. So I knew I had to penetrate that audience. So we teamed up with a TikTok star, Josh Richards. Basically, think of a boy band except for TikTok. That's really what it is. And Barstool got big in TikTok. Now that audience, male, female, everybody are talking about things for multiple people.

6:52Then we have, you know, Spitting Chicklets is a hockey podcast. That'll be very male-centered. Call Her Daddy, which is, I still think to date, the biggest female podcast of all time. That was really female-focused. So it's just what are they talking about? I follow on Instagram your pizza ratings, your political commentaries. The same things are on TikTok and every other platform. A lot of people know you from those. Are you in real life the same person that I see on Instagram? Yeah, it varies on what you're doing. It may be an amped up, a WWE version of it at times. And I have a vehicle, obviously, to get my thoughts out with it.

7:32But it's me for the most part. I mean, again, it depends the situation. I got arrested protesting Tom Brady and Deflategate. Like we went, myself, three other Patriot fans who worked, handcuffed ourselves to each other outside the commissioner's office and said, we want to talk to Goodell. I thought what they did to Brady was wrong, unfair, all of that. If I had a nine to five, am I going and handcuffing myself in front of the headquarters? No, I'm not. Like I'm not a crazy person, but we are in an entertainment business. So that worked for us. You wanted to make that point. You also wanted to get attention for making that point.

8:08Yeah, and even in that, one thing I will say about us, and I've said about that incident, we do it for our readers, our fans. Sometimes I don't think about the effect beyond who I'm speaking with, and I think that sometimes surprises me, sometimes doesn't. But our crowd knows me, so we've been around 20-plus years, so they can almost predict what I'm going to say before I say it. But a lot of times I'll see people who, maybe less and less, who don't know who I am, and like, holy cow, what's this guy saying? And they don't have the context or anything of who we are and where we came from. Who in your mind is your audience?

8:40The person you're talking to when you're talking? I'd say a very, I'd say like 90 % of like normal Americans. Like I think the extreme left and the extreme right are like a little bit nuts. But this for the most part is people trying to grind through their day. They have a normal job. They're in college, whatever. They're trying not to take things too seriously and enjoy their lives and maybe have an escape for a couple minutes, hours, however they consume us. But really, that's who I think our audience is. There's this phrase that people use. I don't know if you like it or not. The manosphere.

9:16Talking about male podcasters and internet stars talking to bros about bro things. Do you accept that there is such a thing? And are you part of it? I think there maybe is. But I've seen myself lumped in in all sorts of different manospheres. I've seen barstool Republicans. I've seen stuff that I would say are inaccurate how they describe us um there's always bros I mean I think when you say the word bro it's somebody who uh you know maybe likes sports and wants to get laid like which I don't think is a bad thing at all um I think that can sometimes be like shamed recently since I've been doing barstool for sure and there I think the bros don't like being shamed for that but i think it's a far more complicated word than just to be like you know the revenge of the nerd type guy in the football locker room who's like nerds like no i there's certainly male focused publications and again i guess you could say we're one that's what people say probably because they think of me but then if you actually look at who we employ we have just as much of the equal female stuff going on so you know bro what are they thinking rogan they're thinking and Theo Vaughn.

10:35I get thrown in that a lot. Do you accept it? Are you in that group? We have a male audience. We may feel very differently on certain issues. So I think if somebody says, bro, what are they saying? You love Trump. I voted for Trump. It's more an indictment of, I would say, the Democrats, an endorsement of Trump's politics. I'm pro-choice. I think people would say that is not a typical bro standpoint. So I think there's certain things. I think they think you're magna. I would say I'm not. You know, and I don't know that like Rogan is. I think there's intricacies within each person. It's hard to just say, well, that fan base or that person is all these rules.

11:22Do you think that... I think it's blunt talk is mostly... Just saying... I think it's being fairly blunt. and more not politically correct, like not caring necessarily what that is. If you want to say that's bro, I'm definitely that. I don't care what people think about me. But I guess I just don't think it's as straightforward as what I perceive when people mention me. Has something happened in society that has made men like that more political than maybe they would have been 10 years ago? I would say I had no plans. If you told me I'd be on NPR in a political-leaning podcast like five years ago, I'd be like, you're crazy.

12:02It's something I have no interest in. I've actually – I always, with Barstool, prescribed to the Michael Jordan like red states buy sneakers and so do blue states. So we're not – in politics – You're in business. Yeah. In politics, you're going to piss half the people off no matter what you say. So that's a potential customer. Why don't you want them? So I didn't think I'd be here. But during Barstool, it became increasingly obvious that you couldn't tell jokes and you couldn't do things that I don't think you should be ashamed for or ashamed for. And I felt like that was becoming prevalent. Maybe it's because of Barstool, where we consider ourselves a comedy brand and would come under fire for things.

12:44So not, and it was on schools, it was in the media. And really, I felt that that was something that drove me to probably be a little bit more political. One of your posts in recent weeks, you talk about your feeling that the political left makes, I believe the phrase was, normal white guys feel like you're evil or bad or something like that. Yeah. I'd stand by that. At this point in our conversation, Dave Portnoy took a breath. Some listeners get a break now, and then we will hear why Portnoy says he stands by that.

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14:22He must be on to something big. FX's The Lowdown. All new Tuesdays on FX. Stream on Hulu. This message comes from LPL Financial. What if you could have more control over your future. LPL Financial removes the things holding you back and provides the services to push you forward. Because when it comes to your finances, your business, your future, LPL Financial believes the only question should be, what if you could? LPL Financial, member FINRA SIPC. No strategy assures success or protects against loss. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. So he asked Dave Portnoy about a social media post in which he said he felt the left was out to get normal white guys like him.

15:05Here's what he said. I'd stand by that. And there's an element to me that I felt if you're in, now this is somebody, I started a business from scratch and really didn't get any help, moved home, worked, didn't take a vacation day for 10 years and grinded my ass off to get where it is. And I felt that there was, I should somehow have shame as being a white person who wants to make a lot of money and live a great life and that bothered me and there's different things that happened along the way um that really reinforced it like i know you had aoc on she jumped into uh into my world i didn't really even know who she was but we had a rival website way back in the day uh deadspin hate them yeah they are they went from being like the most off the cuff non-pc website to doing 180.

16:02They deleted all their history, and suddenly, you couldn't say a joke. They apologized for all of it. Anyways, they were going out of business, and they had a union, and we do not have a union, and I just hate Deadspin. So I did something like, hey, the union couldn't stop these guys from losing all their jobs, and we pay well and do great. AOC jumped into the fray and tweeted at us it's like illegal for us not to have unions and threaten unions our reaction to that was we created a fake union within barstool and we were actually playing it like they were fake calling to leak like you'll never believe what dave is doing and all this stuff we this turned to a big thing i had to apologize to the national labor relations board huh um things like that drive me nuts like anybody who objectively looked at what we're doing new bar so it's like these guys are joking around you had to apologize why because uh because we threatened our we threatened your employees i i tweeted out as part of the ongoing satire of what we do uh anybody who creates a union i will bust that union to shreds and you'll be gone and it continued like she'd say she'd throw bar back and weed up the ante and it was our own people with a union we had created as kind of like a saturday night live skit creating all the issues so um Do you think you ought to have a real union?

17:22No. No, we definitely shouldn't have a union. You know what? Our union is talent. Like, if we've made, so if I look at the people who have come and gone just briefly, like Alex Cooper left Barstool, made$70 million from Spotify. I think McAfee got about$100 million at ESPN. Boston with the Boys, the podcast, just got$60 million from FanDuel. Also, I don't fire people. We pay great. And if you're great, we use a model like, I look at us like an athletic team, right? If you are a great player and we sign you a two-year contract, at the end, you'll have the option. You can go get more money because we can't pay you.

18:05You stay with us and we pay you. But talent for us, we're in a talent business. So talent pays. There's no, we pay well, we do well. If you look at the history of our company, almost nobody leaves. We don't fire anybody. So we absolutely do not have a union. But I find it interesting all the companies who kill us for that debacle. They all have unions and their people all have been laid off and gone out of business. We haven't. We're thriving and have been for 20 years and people love working for Barstool. So there's this phrase, Barstool conservatism. Yes. Which you've heard. I looked up the definition of it on Wikipedia.

18:39I'll read you some of the words they have. Barstool conservatism. Pro-Trump, libertarian, no lockdowns, a COVID reference, no abortion bans, unwilling to accept liberal social norms, embraces sexual libertinism, anti-authoritarian, and lots of F-bombs. That's their definition. Yeah, I think most of those I agree with. So I guess a question for that would be, are they talking about me or are they talking about Barstool? Because if you look at any media organization, unless you're talking about something that's political, we have people all over the place. We have people on the far left. We have people on the far right.

19:18I mean, we have a gay podcast. We have straight podcasts. We have sports podcasts. Girl. So we're all over the place. So I don't know that it's fair to judge the whole company based on what you think the views of me are. Is that a good summary of your views? I think for the most part it is. I think for the most part it is. You haven't done any F-bombs in this interview, by the way. No, because NPR, can I do enough? You can do it. We can bleep. You should express yourself the way you need to express yourself. I feel like I'm speaking freely, but if it comes to the top of my mind, I'll let it rip.

19:48It's available. It's available. Let me ask another question now. Having voted for him, has Trump met your expectations so far? I think he has. I think Trump, for the most part, has done exactly what he said he was going to do. Now, people are getting upset at him trying to do what he said he was going to do. but I he is in my mind done what he said he was gonna do like I had a rant about tariffs yeah right um because I'm in the stock market I do a show you lost a lot of money yeah I lost a lot of money um and so I'm gonna rant about that and he had a quote later that it wasn't his stock market I think it was Biden's well that's garbage it's yours your your your direct statements are causing it to go up and down it's bounced back um but I was mad but I told myself I was like he said he was going to do tariffs that wasn't like he was hiding that and pulled it out so for the most part i feel like he's trying to do exactly what he ran on and what he got voted what do you think about the way he's doing tariffs i mean up down constantly up and down yeah so that that mess the stock market for sure as he said i think someone asked him the other day i he'd say it's a negotiation um and i think it's too early to tell where it lands and how it goes and I think I said that one of my rants it was cut off because people clip everything but it's like we'll see how it plays out the stock market goes up and down I you can't kill the stock market you can't kill the economy with this tariff scheme but I think Trump would say I'm the greatest negotiator the world has ever seen do you suspect or assume as I think a lot of people do that somebody on the inside may be making money as he keeps saying things that make the market go up go down i always think people are making money on the inside so yeah i'm sure people are making money does that bother you it does bother me but back to aoc i agree with her that politicians shouldn't be able to trade stocks period that that's crazy to me but i don't think it's unique in a weird way like the trump meme coin like that's so blatant in your face i'd almost rather have that than And like Hunter Biden doing some back deal that I don't know about.

21:58So none of it to me is good. But it's more straightforward to just have a dinner and everybody who's paying me should come to dinner. Yeah. Yeah. Which is what Trump did with the coin. With the coin. Yeah. So, again, I don't like it. And they are, I'm sure, making money. But this isn't – I wouldn't sit here and say, well, damn. Like Donald Trump's the first president ever to be making money. Like I think they all do. I don't trust any of them. there's probably a lot of your readers that invested in that meme coin and have lost as it gone as it's gone up and down well yeah meme coins is a crazy world i actually made money on that one but uh meme coins to me in in it's a whole different discussion that is you can't cry if you lose money in a meme coin that's if you went to las vegas and put a dollar in a slot machine pulled the slot and lost and cried hey i didn't know i was going to lose like now you may say the public should be protected against that but meme coins are a dangerous you said you made money on the trump on the trump one i did i made about a million bucks how'd you do that other than buy low sell high was there that's it that's just totally it like i think i bought it 24 i went to bed it was at 75 i said get me out of this and then i put a million i made a million and i put on the buffalo bills to win the super bowl so i'm back down even yeah well but you had a lot of fun Yeah, it was a good ride.

23:20Let me ask about another thing in that barstool conservatism definition. Anti-authoritarianism. Does anything the president has done to expand his power or to reach for more power concern you? No, not yet. I agree with a decent amount of what he's trying to do. I'd have to get a specific example. There could be specific examples where you're like, I'm like, no, I don't agree with this one. But the things, I should add. sending people overseas without court proceedings this to me is a complicated issue because for the guy and i forget his name the the one that the maryland the they they the one with the tattoos but the maryland man the brego garcia yeah yeah i think he's a bad guy like i don't think he should be the one that democrats are putting a flag in the stand and being like what are we doing here even though they're like well you know it's tattoo meant something else you i think the tattoo they didn't have the actual but i i think for that to be like your flagship guy where i have the issue you got to be right 100 of the time like he i don't have a problem with but god forbid you and i don't necessarily think you should go back in time like i don't think if somebody is a doesn't isn't here legally but they're a productive member of society with no issues i don't think then you go say get out of here i but if you're you've been committed of a crime or have something and you're here illegally i don't have a problem with them getting kicked out of the country i think that's okay to answer your question i don't have a solve because how do you do due process with all of them because you'll never get through it because of the time and energy it takes to do that and go through the courts.

25:09So I'm stuck. I don't have an answer for you. You have to be right 100 % of the time because the due process, how do you know? So I don't have the answer for you. Yeah, you're right. You're right. I mean, the court system is slow. It takes years. But you can also churn people and hundreds of thousands of people can get deported every year. It can be done in the system. I don't think if you have a criminal record or you've done something illegally, I think this guy had a restraining order, his wife, and you're not here legally, then you shouldn't be in this country. That I have no problem with.

25:43How to accomplish that higher goal is a little more complicated. Bill Maher, who I think maybe is sympathetic with you in some of his positions, has been very critical of Trump, but went to dinner with Trump and says he told Trump, you're scaring people. Do you think Trump is scaring people? And does it bother you if he is? he's definitely scaring people. He's definitely scaring people. But he was scaring people. He's been scaring people. How long has he been on the political scene now? 12 years? In this iteration, yeah. He was even doing things before. Yeah, so I think he's been scaring people throughout.

26:23I don't know. He scares my dad. I've said this many times. My dad is an anti-Trumper. Hates him. Trump derangement syndrome. I think the fear is overbuilt. I also think a lot of it, there's no way for the toothpaste to go back in the tube. Like, he scares people. There's no, but Bill Maher saying you're scaring people. I don't know what he would do differently at this point in the game to put people at ease. And I don't know that that's his responsibility necessarily to put, I mean, yeah, you want to unite the country. And that was my number one thing when I said, what, if you said, Dave, what is your critique of Trump?

26:59I'd say he's intentionally divisive. Like that, that is something you want to bring the country together, but man, the people who don't like him hate his guts. Like they just, I feel like he could cure cancer and they'd be like, why didn't you get AIDS while you were at it? You know, I just don't think there's anything he could do that they would give him credit for, accept him for at this point. That that's his story on that is sort of written and he obviously digs in and entrenches around it. Um, part of me, I can see in that because if like you come at me, I think unfairly, I'd Like, you're going to get, I'm not going to try to play nice with you.

27:33And he doesn't now. I'm not the president. So that's an obvious difference. When you call your dad, do you talk politics or avoid talking politics? We got to avoid it. We maybe will last a minute. And there's just no way he and I will ever see eye to eye on certain things ever. He considers himself the number one Trump expert in the world. He's like, Davey, I know Trump more than you. I've been following him my whole life. And I know things you don't know. And he's a bad guy. It's just. The people who he bothers follow him all the time. Yeah. Paying attention all the time. It's like the Howard Stern quote.

28:05Like, the people who love me listen for five, the people who hate me listen for ten. But yeah, my dad qualifies for that, so my mom will put a stop to it. But I'm not one of those guys who sits here. Like, my dad, I think, really, when he got elected, he's like, the world could not be here in four years. Like, he could do something with this much power where we're just not here. I don't feel that way. I think Trump is a rational, sane guy. I actually think he's brilliant. But a lot of people hate things he stands for. They think he stands for it. Now, if you've been listening closely to Dave Portnoy, you've heard that he's for Trump, but not all the time.

28:42We're on every issue. And that raises a question on the minds of many Democrats. Could they win back a few more men? Some people have a break here, and then we'll ask Portnoy what he thinks Democrats could do.

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29:33Washington Wise from Charles Schwab is an original podcast that unpacks the stories making news and how they may affect your finances and portfolio. Host Mike Townsend and his guests explore policy initiatives for retirement savings, taxes, trade, and more. Download the latest episode and follow at schwab.com slash Washington Wise or wherever you listen. Democrats as you probably know are asking Why are we doing so badly with men? We have this gender gap Used to work for us with so many women Now it works against us They're having focus groups They're commissioning studies What would you tell Democrats to do differently if anything?