For anyone else, it’s a disorienting, frankly unpleasant listening experience - and, fatally, one that seems almost comically timid in the face of reality compared to its conservative-media rivals.Ĭonservatives have a special connection to talk radio. It’s red meat for the faithful, and probably an effective Alka-Seltzer for cosseted, mainstream conservatives in liberal geographic bubbles (such as the show’s hosts). But the overall effect of Ruthless is to house Republicans in a sort of rhetorical Potemkin village, its view changing for each guest, ‘22 race and real-world contingency, with Democrats’ unwavering, weirdly omnipotent perfidy the only constant.
No partisans worth their salt, and certainly not those who are paid handsomely for their work, are going to turn their platform into some kind of never-ending Maoist struggle session. But the implicit question it raises is far more difficult to answer: Is it possible for the conservative establishment to reassert itself with little more than a slapped-on, anti-establishment coat of paint? Explicitly, the podcast asks the question of how Republicans can regain power amid a liberal-dominated politics and media. 6 riots and false election fraud claims are assiduously avoided in their interviews with Republican hopefuls in favor of providing a united front ahead of 2022 the banter that comprises the rest of the show is no more introspective. Holmes and Duncan being company men to the core, sore spots around the pandemic, the Jan.
But more than the awkwardness of what the hosts do say, it’s ultimately revealing what they don’t say about the GOP’s uneasy post-Trump status quo. Of course, making an unfunny podcast isn’t a sin, and those who eagerly listen to Ruthless each week will be satisfied as long as they deem the aforementioned libs owned. It’s often simply, as the kids would say, cringe, its geriatric-millennial hosts combining a too-online, weirdly hostile digital patois with a slew of outdated cultural references - the “Fame” soundtrack, more than one reference to Milli Vanilli - leaving them sounding like the self-proclaimed “cool” teachers trying to have a “rap session” with their students. More than 100 episodes into its run, the show has demonstrated some real strengths - two out of its three hosts being public relations professionals, they know the pressure points and hypocrisies of political media all too well, and pounce on them with righteousness - but its flaws make the overall product deeply unsatisfying.įor one thing, its very success in penetrating D.C.’s conservative halls of power reveals the immensely awkward contradiction at its core: For a podcast that stakes its brand on a bad-boy image and willingness to slander sacred cows, it’s tied inextricably to the establishment that former President Donald Trump railed against, and that its hosts almost literally embody.īut worse than that, it commits the cardinal sin of any cultural endeavor that prides itself on puffing out and beating its chest as the standard-bearer for a new, totally-in-your-face generation. Ruthless, available to stream on all major podcast services, has garnered a cult of self-proclaimed “minions” as the clear right-leaning alternative to Pod Save America and its brethren.
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