My guest today is Nicole Hemmer, an associate research scholar with the Obama Presidency Oral History project at Columbia University. She specializes in the history of conservative media in the United States from the 1940s to the present, and the role of right-wing media in American electoral politics. In 2016 she published Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of US Politics, one of the key texts on the topic, with the University of Pennsylvania Press. Nicole is also an incredible public communicator. She is a columnist at CNN Opinion, the founder of the Made in History section of the Washington Post, and co-host of the podcast Past Present. Finally, Nicole did a 6-part podcast on the Unite the Right rally and its historical context, called A12.
Nicole and I talk about the roots of conservative media in the US, the international connections, the current main players, and the Trump effect and legacy. Everything and everyone are discussed from Breitbart to Fox News to Sinclair and from Glenn Beck to Sean Hannity and Donald Trump Jr.