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Radio hosts slammed for crude joke about women using tampons: 'How is this allowed to go to air?'
Radio hosts slammed for crude joke about women using tampons: 'How is this allowed to go to air?'

Daily Mail​

time2 days ago

  • Entertainment
  • Daily Mail​

Radio hosts slammed for crude joke about women using tampons: 'How is this allowed to go to air?'

Australian radio duo Jimmy Smith and Nathan Roye have been slammed after making an immature joke about women using tampons live on air. The 2Day FM stars were presenting their breakfast radio show when Jimmy read out a joke from a book. 'Two tampons were walking down the street. Which one said hello first?' he asked. His co-host Nath questioned: 'I don't know, which one?' 'Neither - they were both stuck up c**ts,' Jimmy responded, leaving one of the show's producers shocked. From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. 'Producer Lolo, do you think you should buy the book after hearing something like that?' Nath asked. 'My soul just left my body,' the stunned producer said, to which Jimmy responded: 'Did your tampon?' Listeners flocked to the radio station's Instagram page to express their outrage at the joke. 'Sorry love you guys.. not a cool joke,' one person wrote. 'Cringiest sh*t on radio, stop calling me,' another said while a third added: 'How is this allowed to go to air?!' Jimmy and Nath were confirmed as 2Day FM's breakfast hosts back in January alongside Emma Chow. The trio gained 0.5 per cent of the breakfast market share in the latest radio ratings. The station finished at 4.5 overall - up by 0.2 - as it gains ground on Triple M's overall 4.9 market share. Triple M recently suffered a brutal blow in the third radio ratings survey of 2025. The survey showed that Beau Ryan, Aaron 'Woodsy' Woods and Cat Lynch's Sydney breakfast show continues to lose listeners. The trio, who lost 1.5 per cent of the market share in survey two, dropped another 1.5 in the latest survey, bringing them down to a 4.4 market share from a previous 5.9.

‘I was the Trump team': how the Podcast Election was won
‘I was the Trump team': how the Podcast Election was won

Times

time2 days ago

  • Politics
  • Times

‘I was the Trump team': how the Podcast Election was won

The president's social media strategist has had a busy morning stirring up online outrage. In the past few hours Alex Bruesewitz has condemned Democrats as a 'pathetic group of people', denounced critics of Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil, as 'far-left maniacs' and shared a post of the 'horrible' liberal podcast host Alex Cooper being booed at a baseball game. Bruesewitz, 28, has been starting arguments like this professionally for a decade but now, sipping a glass of water at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington, in a well-fitted navy blue suit, he is relaxed and even polite. He co-founded X Strategies, a company that counsels conservatives on how to win social media wars, when he was 19. Last year he was the architect of the podcast game plan credited with helping Donald Trump to win back the White House. Today he is at the heart of the administration's ultra-combative communications operation, working as a hired gun because he is planning to get married and thinks that it is 'a little bit difficult' to afford a wedding on a government salary. Often the best ideas are not his, he says. Take some of the viral memes — of Trump dressed as the Pope, or Gaza rendered as a holiday resort (Gaza-Lago), or the AI-generated cartoon of a crying migrant — that have driven huge clicks and controversy, amplified by the president's social platforms. Bruesewitz says they are generated by Trump 's fans, whom he calls 'really talented people'. 'These guys make some of the best memes, and they're bus drivers in small towns across the country,' he says. 'And they get off of work and they go home and they open their computer, they tell their wife they love them and they log on to X for the next five hours of their life. And they're making hilarious memes of the president or videos of the president.' But it was podcasts, not memes, that really sealed his reputation. During the 2024 campaign, which became known as the 'podcast election' because of the extent to which the format often seemed to usurp traditional media, Trump appeared on 20 episodes. Most were hosted by young men and popular with young men. These appearances reached 23.5 million Americans in an average week, compared with 6.4 million for his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris. Subsequently 56 per cent of men aged 18 to 29 backed Trump in 2024, up from 41 per cent in 2020. Trump's podcast circuit has been depicted as a long pitch to the 'right-wing manosphere'. Bruesewitz thinks this is unfair. 'None of the podcasters we sat down with during that period were Trump lovers,' he says. Instead, he calls them 'equal-opportunity critics' — hosts who have been critical of Trump on certain issues, and critical of Democrats on others. He also notes that Trump saw a bounce among young women, up from 33 per cent in 2020 to 40 per cent in 2024. Podcasts worked for the candidate because they suited his unique political skills, he says. 'The greatness about President Trump is that he knows all the issues, and he also has charisma that is unrivalled in the political space,' Bruesewitz says. In general, little to no preparation was needed. 'I think over-prepping your candidates is what kind of trips you up.' Underpreparing has its pitfalls too. Rapid rise In the last few days of the election The Atlantic described Bruesewitz as a 'terminally online troll and perpetual devil on the campaign's shoulder' who had urged JD Vance to amplify the lie that illegal Haitian immigrants were stealing and eating pets. The magazine also reported that it was Bruesewitz who had personally advocated for the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe to appear at a Trump rally days before the election, at which he then called Puerto Rico a 'floating island of garbage' (Bruesewitz says both claims are untrue.) But Trump's subsequent victory cast him in a much more favourable light and Axios hailed him as 'one of the most influential political strategists in the US'. In February the Trump family appointed him senior adviser to the political action committee Never Surrender, entrusting him with running two of the president's social media accounts. His team of five, based in Florida, manage the @TrumpWarRoom and @TeamTrump handles, which are followed by millions (although the president still posts his own messages on Truth Social). Bruesewitz has also found time to meet some British conservatives. He met Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative Party, in London. 'I think she's a good person,' he says, adding that she's got the issues right but is in a tough position. 'The party that she leads now was led by imbeciles before.' On the Reform leader Nigel Farage, he says: 'He's probably the best in the UK and my advice to him has been to make sure you use your momentum and your platform to build up the voices of the next generation because he's not going to be hot for ever.' It all started with a tweet Bruesewitz's career started in April 2015 when he was 18 years old. He was sitting at his high school desk in the Wisconsin town of Ripon (population 7,900), 'and I posted a picture of the Trump Hotel in Chicago,' he says. 'And I said, 'the sign on Trump Chicago would look just as good on the White House'. And the president, then businessman Donald Trump, retweeted me.' Two months later, Trump announced his candidacy. 'And when he announced that he was running, I was sold already. I wanted to be like Donald Trump.' After high school, Bruesewitz skipped college and tried his hand at real estate, having admired the empire Trump had built. 'I didn't do so well in that,' he concedes. Trump's election in 2016 inspired Bruesewitz and his business partner Derek Utley to form X Strategies a year later. Their early clients included FreedomProject Academy, a Christian conservative homeschooling academy in central Wisconsin, and a father who lost his daughter in the Parkland school shooting in 2018. Utley and Bruesewitz represented the latter pro bono as he argued for more school security rather than fewer guns. Then came the 2020 election and Trump's claims of election fraud. Bruesewitz leapt to his defence on social media and made a speech in Washington's Freedom Plaza. When the BBC invited Bruesewitz on air, he argued with the presenter. 'Thank you for having me on,' he said, 'and I just want to make one thing very clear … your country's opinion stopped mattering in our country in 1776.' His sparring eventually got Donald Trump Jr's attention. 'He liked my tenacity online,' Bruesewitz says. 'He found me to be quite entertaining.' The two became friends and Don Jr introduced Bruesewitz to his father. 'I got to spend quality time with the president for the first time at a live golf tournament at his club in New Jersey,' he tells me. 'I ended up spending four and a half hours with the president that day.' They spoke about 'all things' — not just politics. 'And we've had a great relationship ever since.' After that, Bruesewitz poured his energy into attacking Republicans who had backed Trump's impeachment — not as an official Trump appointee but out of 'sheer patriotism and love of nation'. Eight out of ten of those Republicans either declined to stand in 2022 or lost their primary. 'We travelled [around] their campaign districts,' Bruesewitz says. 'I personally picked fights with Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger,' he says of the two anti-Trump Republican members of Congress, 'which was also great entertainment. I found great joy in that'. In November 2022, the Trump family finally hired Bruesewitz. His mission? To help beat Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, to the Republican presidential nomination. That worked — and then came the general election. The podcast plan It was Trump's youngest son Barron, not Bruesewitz, who set up the first big podcast interview — with the 24-year-old online streamer and influencer Adin Ross — which proved the power of the format before the election. Bruesewitz calculated that clips from Trump's appearance were seen by 113 million people in the first 24 hours. When Bruesewitz presented the numbers to Trump, 'he flipped through it, and he was like, 'these numbers are massive''. Trump also thanked his 19-year-old son in a Truth Social post. 'And then about four or five days passed, and he kept texting me or calling me about how great that interview was.' Not long afterwards, Bruesewitz was called into the office of Susie Wiles, who helped manage Trump's election campaign and is now White House chief of staff. 'She's like, 'Alex, we've got to get him to do more of these.'' After that, they went all in. 'We lined them up, one major podcast a week, up until we did Rogan, which was like a week before the election,' Bruesewitz says. The appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, the most popular podcast in the US, garnered more than 44 million views on YouTube by election day, allowing Trump to reach young, predominantly male voters, opining on topics such as martial arts, the possibility of life on Mars, and his admiration for William McKinley, the president who was assassinated in 1901. When I ask how Bruesewitz decided which podcasts Trump should do, he shrugs. 'I mean, I just went through something called Spotify and Spotify rankings. And I think we did eight of the ten podcasts on Spotify that were popular.' There was one conspicuous exception, however. Trump avoided Alex Cooper's Call Her Daddy, one of the most popular podcasts among young American women. Cooper, the 30-year-old host of the show, is beloved by her 'Daddy Gang' — some 70 per cent of whom are female, with 76 per cent under 35. In October Kamala Harris appeared on the podcast, discussing women's rights and abortion. Cooper later said her team had a Zoom call with Trump's team about the possibility of him appearing. Bruesewitz says that's not true. 'I was President Trump's team,' Bruesewitz says. 'I never had a conversation with Alex Cooper about going on the podcast. Her team reached out to me. We never responded. I would never put the president on Call Her Daddy.' Why not? 'Because one, she's terrible, she's terrible at what she does. I think personally. I think she's been a detriment to society with the content that she talks about.' And she's 'regressive', he says, 'when it comes to starting families and having happy, healthy relationships'. A source close to the Call Her Daddy team confirmed that a call about the president coming on the show occurred before the election in November 2024 with members of his campaign team, including discussing a suggestion by his staff that they film the episode at Mar-a-Lago. Unexpected love story Instead, looking for a female-friendly podcast to counter Harris's appearance on Call Her Daddy, he landed on a show called Girls Gone Bible. 'It's the No 2 religious podcast on Spotify,' he says. 'Massive following. They do these in-person shows where they get 1,000 young girls at each tour stop. They talk about Jesus and they pray over them. And it's actually really beautiful.' Bruesewitz organised a meeting between Trump and the hosts of Girls Gone Bible in Las Vegas. The night before, one of the hosts brought a glamorous friend to dinner. It was Carolina Urrea, the former Miss Nevada. 'Carolina walked in. I'm like, wow, who's that girl?' The following day, Carolina took a picture with Trump, who gave Bruesewitz a 'thumbs up'. The pair got engaged eight months later. Bruesewitz says his fiancée has 'strengthened my relationship with the Lord'. ALEX BRUESEWITZ/INSTAGRAM He sees his experience as part of a larger shift toward Christianity in America in recent years. 'Another trend is moving away from the girl boss attitude to the trad wife,' he says. 'I don't know if it was Covid that kind of made that switch where people were spending more time at home and they were, you know, learning to cook more and doing more things. But that trad culture started taking off big time.' • My day with the trad wife queen and what it taught me While podcasts helped Trump to reclaim the White House, the president has rarely appeared on them in his second term. Though he showed up last month on the New York Post's Pod Force One, Trump is spending most of his time these days on Truth Social and his old favourite: TV news. Bruesewitz, who describes Trump as 'a good friend of mine' thinks this could change. 'I think he'll eventually do some. You know, he's been very busy running the free world.' As for his own future, he says that Trump would have endorsed him to run for office if he had wanted to, but he didn't. 'I think Congress would be a little too boring for me.'

Santander customers FUME over ‘disgusting' £120 fee for key bank account after being promised it would be ‘free forever'
Santander customers FUME over ‘disgusting' £120 fee for key bank account after being promised it would be ‘free forever'

The Sun

time4 days ago

  • Business
  • The Sun

Santander customers FUME over ‘disgusting' £120 fee for key bank account after being promised it would be ‘free forever'

SANTANDER customers are outraged after the bank revealed it will start charging £120 a year for an account it promised would be "free forever". Thousands of small business and self-employed account holders are facing £9.99 monthly charges from October. 1 This comes despite written assurances that their accounts would always remain free of fees. Santander's move has left customers feeling betrayed. Customers have taken to social media to vent their anger. One user said on "Promised me free business banking forever in writing, and now they want to charge £9.99 a month. Is this even legal?" Another branded the move "absolutely disgusting". The changes will impact three types of business accounts: 1|2|3 Business Current Accounts, Business Everyday Current Accounts, and Business Current Accounts. Santander said that the "free forever" promise only applied to accounts offered by Abbey and Alliance & Leicester before their 2008 merger. The bank first attempted to introduce fees for these accounts in 2012 but backed down after customers threatened legal action. However, these accounts were shifted to the Business Everyday account in 2015, which did not include the "free forever" promise. From October 1, these accounts will be closed, and customers will be automatically switched to Santander's new Business Current Account – Classic. Switch bank accounts for free perks This migration comes with new fees and charges that could significantly impact businesses, especially those handling large cash deposits or relying on cheque transactions. Under the new structure, every Business Current Account – Classic will incur a £9.99 monthly fee, regardless of the type of account customers previously held. While some accounts were free, others offered additional benefits with charges as high as £40 per month. Several other companies, such as Virgin Money, Monzo, and Co-operative Bank, offer free business banking. A spokesperson for Santander said: "The business banking landscape has changed significantly over the last decade. "As such, we are simplifying our business banking offering as the first step to ensure that we can sustainably and efficiently evolve to better meet the needs of our business customers in the future." Santander Business Current Account – Classic charges SANTANDER has also revised other charges that could hit businesses hard. For example: Cash deposits: Free up to £1,000 per month via Santander cash machines, but £1.25 per £100 for anything over that. Deposits made at Santander branches or Post Office counters will also cost £1.25 per £100. Cash withdrawals: Free at Santander cash machines, but £1.25 per £100 withdrawn at branch counters or Post Office counters. Cheque deposits: £0.70 per cheque. Overdraft fees are also set to change, adding further financial strain for some customers. What else is happening at Santander? The bank is closing its 123 Lite current account, which offers up to 3% cashback on household bills for a £2 monthly fee, on August 21. Customers affected by the closure will be automatically switched to Santander's Everyday Current Account. This account has no monthly fee but does not include cashback benefits. The 123 Lite account has not been available to new customers since 2022, however, hundreds of thousands still rely on the current account. The 123 Lite account allowed bill payers to earn up to 3% cashback, capped at £15 per month, on expenses like council tax, mobile phone bills, energy, and water. However, if you still have a 123 Lite account, cashback will stop automatically, and you will no longer need to pay the £2 monthly fee from August 21. If you're looking to keep cashback perks, the Everyday Current Account you'll be switched to won't be suitable, as it doesn't offer any cashback features. Instead, customers who want to stay with Santander may want to explore the Edge or Edge Up accounts. The Santander Edge account offers 1% cashback on certain household bills and debit card spending at supermarkets, petrol stations, and on travel. This account has a £3 monthly fee, with cashback capped at £10 per month. For a higher cashback limit, the Santander Edge Up account costs £5 per month and allows you to earn up to £15 per month on both bills and debit card spending. To keep these accounts active, Edge customers must deposit at least £500 per month, while Edge Up customers need to deposit £1,000. However, from September 9, cashback on supermarket, fuel, and travel spending will be removed for both accounts. Customers will only continue to earn 1% cashback on household bills like council tax and utilities. If you're looking to maximise your cashback, there are other options available. For example, American Express ' Cashback Everyday Credit Card offers an impressive 5% cashback on purchases for the first five months (up to £125). What is cashback? CASHBACK is a type of reward offered by banks, credit card providers, and retailers where customers receive a percentage of their spending back as cash. Essentially, it's a way to earn money while making purchases. For example, if your card offers 1% cashback and you spend £100, you'll earn £1 back. Cashback can be credited to your account, deducted from your balance, or saved up for future use, depending on the provider's terms. It's often offered on everyday purchases, such as groceries, fuel, or online shopping, and may be part of a promotional deal or an ongoing benefit of your account. However, remember to check the terms and conditions, as some transactions may not qualify for cashback rewards. By using cashback offers wisely, you can usually make your money go further on purchases you'd already be making.

How I helped Trump win — and found love along the way
How I helped Trump win — and found love along the way

Times

time4 days ago

  • Politics
  • Times

How I helped Trump win — and found love along the way

The president's social media strategist has had a busy morning stirring up online outrage. In the past few hours Alex Bruesewitz has condemned Democrats as a 'pathetic group of people', denounced critics of Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil, as 'far-left maniacs' and shared a post of the 'horrible' liberal podcast host Alex Cooper being booed at a baseball game. Bruesewitz, 28, has been starting arguments like this professionally for a decade but now, sipping a glass of water at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington, in a well-fitted navy blue suit, he is relaxed and even polite. He co-founded X Strategies, a company that counsels conservatives on how to win social media wars, when he was 19. Last year he was the architect of the podcast game plan credited with helping Donald Trump to win back the White House. Today he is at the heart of the administration's ultra-combative communications operation, working as a hired gun because he is planning to get married and thinks that it is 'a little bit difficult' to afford a wedding on a government salary. Often the best ideas are not his, he says. Take some of the viral memes — of Trump dressed as the Pope, or Gaza rendered as a holiday resort (Gaza-Lago), or the AI-generated cartoon of a crying migrant — that have driven huge clicks and controversy, amplified by the president's social platforms. Bruesewitz says they are generated by Trump's fans, whom he calls 'really talented people'. 'These guys make some of the best memes, and they're bus drivers in small towns across the country,' he says. 'And they get off of work and they go home and they open their computer, they tell their wife they love them and they log on to X for the next five hours of their life. And they're making hilarious memes of the president or videos of the president.' But it was podcasts, not memes, that really sealed his reputation. During the 2024 campaign, which became known as the 'podcast election' because of the extent to which the format often seemed to usurp traditional media, Trump appeared on 20 episodes. Most were hosted by young men and popular with young men. These appearances reached 23.5 million Americans in an average week, compared with 6.4 million for his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris. Subsequently 56 per cent of men aged 18 to 29 backed Trump in 2024, up from 41 per cent in 2020. Trump's podcast circuit has been depicted as a long pitch to the 'right-wing manosphere'. Bruesewitz thinks this is unfair. 'None of the podcasters we sat down with during that period were Trump lovers,' he says. Instead, he calls them 'equal-opportunity critics' — hosts who have been critical of Trump on certain issues, and critical of Democrats on others. He also notes that Trump saw a bounce among young women, up from 33 per cent in 2020 to 40 per cent in 2024. Podcasts worked for the candidate because they suited his unique political skills, he says. 'The greatness about President Trump is that he knows all the issues, and he also has charisma that is unrivalled in the political space,' Bruesewitz says. In general, little to no preparation was needed. 'I think over-prepping your candidates is what kind of trips you up.' Underpreparing has its pitfalls too. In the last few days of the election The Atlantic described Bruesewitz as a 'terminally online troll and perpetual devil on the campaign's shoulder' who had urged JD Vance to amplify the lie that illegal Haitian immigrants were stealing and eating pets. The magazine also reported that it was Bruesewitz who had personally advocated for the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe to appear at a Trump rally days before the election, at which he then called Puerto Rico a 'floating island of garbage' (Bruesewitz says both claims are untrue.) But Trump's subsequent victory cast him in a much more favourable light and Axios hailed him as 'one of the most influential political strategists in the US'. In February the Trump family appointed him senior adviser to the political action committee Never Surrender, entrusting him with running two of the president's social media accounts. His team of five, based in Florida, manage the @TrumpWarRoom and @TeamTrump handles, which are followed by millions (although the president still posts his own messages on Truth Social). Bruesewitz has also found time to meet some British conservatives. He met Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative Party, in London. 'I think she's a good person,' he says, adding that she's got the issues right but is in a tough position. 'The party that she leads now was led by imbeciles before.' On the Reform leader Nigel Farage, he says: 'He's probably the best in the UK and my advice to him has been to make sure you use your momentum and your platform to build up the voices of the next generation because he's not going to be hot for ever.' Bruesewitz's career started in April 2015 when he was 18 years old. He was sitting at his high school desk in the Wisconsin town of Ripon (population 7,900), 'and I posted a picture of the Trump Hotel in Chicago,' he says. 'And I said, 'the sign on Trump Chicago would look just as good on the White House'. And the president, then businessman Donald Trump, retweeted me.' Two months later, Trump announced his candidacy. 'And when he announced that he was running, I was sold already. I wanted to be like Donald Trump.' After high school, Bruesewitz skipped college and tried his hand at real estate, having admired the empire Trump had built. 'I didn't do so well in that,' he concedes. Trump's election in 2016 inspired Bruesewitz and his business partner Derek Utley to form X Strategies a year later. Their early clients included FreedomProject Academy, a Christian conservative homeschooling academy in central Wisconsin, and a father who lost his daughter in the Parkland school shooting in 2018. Utley and Bruesewitz represented the latter pro bono as he argued for more school security rather than fewer guns. Then came the 2020 election and Trump's claims of election fraud. Bruesewitz leapt to his defence on social media and made a speech in Washington's Freedom Plaza. When the BBC invited Bruesewitz on air, he argued with the presenter. 'Thank you for having me on,' he said, 'and I just want to make one thing very clear … your country's opinion stopped mattering in our country in 1776.' His sparring eventually got Donald Trump Jr's attention. 'He liked my tenacity online,' Bruesewitz says. 'He found me to be quite entertaining.' The two became friends and Don Jr introduced Bruesewitz to his father. 'I got to spend quality time with the president for the first time at a live golf tournament at his club in New Jersey,' he tells me. 'I ended up spending four and a half hours with the president that day.' They spoke about 'all things' — not just politics. 'And we've had a great relationship ever since.' After that, Bruesewitz poured his energy into attacking Republicans who had backed Trump's impeachment — not as an official Trump appointee but out of 'sheer patriotism and love of nation'. Eight out of ten of those Republicans either declined to stand in 2022 or lost their primary. 'We travelled [around] their campaign districts,' Bruesewitz says. 'I personally picked fights with Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger,' he says of the two anti-Trump Republican members of Congress, 'which was also great entertainment. I found great joy in that'. In November 2022, the Trump family finally hired Bruesewitz. His mission? To help beat Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, to the Republican presidential nomination. That worked — and then came the general election. It was Trump's youngest son Barron, not Bruesewitz, who set up the first big podcast interview — with the 24-year-old online streamer and influencer Adin Ross — which proved the power of the format before the election. Bruesewitz calculated that clips from Trump's appearance were seen by 113 million people in the first 24 hours. When Bruesewitz presented the numbers to Trump, 'he flipped through it, and he was like, 'these numbers are massive''. Trump also thanked his 19-year-old son in a Truth Social post. 'And then about four or five days passed, and he kept texting me or calling me about how great that interview was.' Not long afterwards, Bruesewitz was called into the office of Susie Wiles, who helped manage Trump's election campaign and is now White House chief of staff. 'She's like, 'Alex, we've got to get him to do more of these.'' After that, they went all in. 'We lined them up, one major podcast a week, up until we did Rogan, which was like a week before the election,' Bruesewitz says. The appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, the most popular podcast in the US, garnered more than 44 million views on YouTube by election day, allowing Trump to reach young, predominantly male voters, opining on topics such as martial arts, the possibility of life on Mars, and his admiration for William McKinley, the president who was assassinated in 1901. When I ask how Bruesewitz decided which podcasts Trump should do, he shrugs. 'I mean, I just went through something called Spotify and Spotify rankings. And I think we did eight of the ten podcasts on Spotify that were popular.' There was one conspicuous exception, however. Trump avoided Alex Cooper's Call Her Daddy, one of the most popular podcasts among young American women. Cooper, the 30-year-old host of the show, is beloved by her 'Daddy Gang' — some 70 per cent of whom are female, with 76 per cent under 35. In October Kamala Harris appeared on the podcast, discussing women's rights and abortion. Cooper later said her team had a Zoom call with Trump's team about the possibility of him appearing. Bruesewitz says that's not true. (A Call Her Daddy representative declined to comment.) 'I was President Trump's team,' Bruesewitz says. 'I never had a conversation with Alex Cooper about going on the podcast. Her team reached out to me. We never responded. I would never put the president on Call Her Daddy.' Why not? 'Because one, she's terrible, she's terrible at what she does. I think personally. I think she's been a detriment to society with the content that she talks about.' And she's 'regressive', he says, 'when it comes to starting families and having happy, healthy relationships'. A source close to the Call Her Daddy team confirmed that a call about the president coming on the show occurred before the election in November 2024 with members of his campaign team, including discussing a suggestion by his staff that they film the episode at Mar-a-Lago. Instead, looking for a female-friendly podcast to counter Harris's appearance on Call Her Daddy, he landed on a show called Girls Gone Bible. 'It's the No 2 religious podcast on Spotify,' he says. 'Massive following. They do these in-person shows where they get 1,000 young girls at each tour stop. They talk about Jesus and they pray over them. And it's actually really beautiful.' Bruesewitz organised a meeting between Trump and the hosts of Girls Gone Bible in Las Vegas. The night before, one of the hosts brought a glamorous friend to dinner. It was Carolina Urrea, the former Miss Nevada. 'Carolina walked in. I'm like, wow, who's that girl?' The following day, Carolina took a picture with Trump, who gave Bruesewitz a 'thumbs up'. The pair got engaged eight months later. Bruesewitz says his fiancé has 'strengthened my relationship with the Lord'. He sees his experience as part of a larger shift toward Christianity in America in recent years. 'Another trend is moving away from the girl boss attitude to the trad wife,' he says. 'I don't know if it was Covid that kind of made that switch where people were spending more time at home and they were, you know, learning to cook more and doing more things. But that trad culture started taking off big time.' • My day with the trad wife queen and what it taught me While podcasts helped Trump to reclaim the White House, the president has rarely appeared on them in his second term. Though he showed up last month on the New York Post's Pod Force One, Trump is spending most of his time these days on Truth Social and his old favourite: TV news. Bruesewitz, who describes Trump as 'a good friend of mine' thinks this could change. 'I think he'll eventually do some. You know, he's been very busy running the free world.' As for his own future, he says that Trump would have endorsed him to run for office if he had wanted to, but he didn't. 'I think Congress would be a little too boring for me.'

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