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The popular, pro-Trump influencers known as the “Nelk Boys” got an earful from comedian Bassem Youssef during a recent discussion about the influencers’ softball interview with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In recent months, the prime minister has sought to make inroads with right-wing podcasters to combat a growing bipartisan outrage in the U.S. toward his government’s stranglehold on Gaza, which has left 60,000 dead, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. One such effort, a recent softball interview with the Nelk influencers, drew criticism from across the political spectrum for having the appearance of blatant propaganda.
To give you a sense of how soft an interview it was, the chat at one point shifted to a discussion of Netanyahu’s preference for Burger King over McDonald’s, which interviewer Aaron Steinberg called the Israeli leader’s “worst take.” The podcasters also platformed Netanyahu’s claim that Hamas is stealing food aid, a claim that senior Israeli military officials have said is unsupported by evidence.
After that interview, one member of the Nelk crew, Kyle Forgeard, said Netanyahu’s team “gave us a script to ask [questions] but we didn’t really follow it.” Then, during a subsequent podcast featuring Egyptian American comedian Bassem Youssef, who is a staunch critic of Israel, Forgeard expressed regret about the interview, saying that “we should have grilled [Netanyahu] 50,000, 100,000 times harder” and “it’s something we can’t get back.”
Youssef responded that the men (who are in their 30s despite the juvenile name) don’t deserve a pass for their ignorance and that they need to stop infantilizing themselves.
Youssef said:
I’m not absolving you from your trip. You guys are not little kids. You are f---ing 30 years old, right? People in your age have families and they have a career, and … you need to stop. I’m just saying this because you’re my little brothers, but you’re not little, right? You need to stop infantilizing yourselves, like, ‘We’re just stupid people doing stupid stuff.’ You’re 30 years old, and you need to be aware of what’s happening in the world, and that your reach and your platforms mean something and it affects people.
Youssef denounced what he called “a total lack of critical thinking” during the content creators’ exchanges with Netanyahu.
Watch the clip here:
The lesson here about not becoming a dupe for authoritarian regimes is one that others in the pro-MAGA podcast ecosystem would do well to heed — assuming they want to influence public dialogue in a positive way (which is obviously a pretty big assumption). Between these MAGA podcasters regretting their pro-Netanyahu propaganda and other Trump-supporting podcasters — like Joe Rogan and Andrew Schulz expressing feelings of betrayal as Trump deals with the Epstein Files scandal — evidence abounds that the podcast community is little more than a credulous vector for manipulative rhetoric.