Conservatives have learned how to gamify the Billboard charts. What does that mean for music?
If you’ve paid any attention lately to mainstream radio, Billboard rankings, or viral internet hits, you may have noticed that country music has been getting all the attention. In particular, a string of country crossovers has been burning up the charts — each one building on the last in the same culture war controversy.
Perennial country favorite Morgan Wallen has been enjoying a marathon chart-topping streak for his latest album, One Thing at a Time — his first since a leaked 2021 video of the star casually dropping the n-word nearly cost him his career. One of four singles from the album to zoom up the charts, an ode to a messy breakup called “Last Night,” has enjoyed a whopping 28 weeks and counting on the Hot 100, 16 of them in the top spot.
Wallen’s Hot 100 streak was briefly interrupted by Jason Aldean’s viral success for “Try That in a Small Town,” a song replete with thinly veiled references to lynching outsiders. Released in May, the song didn’t make a huge splash until the controversial music video — shot at the site of a historical lynching — dropped in mid-July. The backlash over the video prompted a conservative counter-backlash, which propelled Aldean’s song up the charts — although no sooner had the song hit No. 1 than it tumbled a full 20 spots back down. It’s currently hovering just outside the top 20 on the Hot 100.
Hard on the heels of Aldean and Wallen, complete unknown Oliver Anthony went viral in August for his oppressed common-man anthem “Rich Men North of Richmond,” after a YouTube user released a video of Anthony performing the song live. Despite lyrics that reference QAnon themes and mock people on welfare with what many have read as racist stereotypes, the song is so popular that Anthony now has 18 songs currently ranking in the Apple Music Top 100. He also just became the first artist in Billboard history to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 without any prior chart history.
At a distance, Anthony is a truly mythical success story — until you consider the context of that success. Indeed, the throughline of these recent country hits is not their musical style. Wallen is arguably closer, aesthetically, to a twangy Post Malone than to Anthony, who performs traditional folk, with Aldean somewhere in the middle.
Rather, these artists all arguably charted at least in part because they — purposely or not — tapped the vein of conservative resentment that has fueled numerous other consumerist movements this year. From the backlash against Target and Budweiser over their queer and trans-friendly marketing, to the viral push to promote the anti-human trafficking film Sound of Freedom and its QAnon-adjacent rhetoric, each of these campaigns has arisen out of conservative disgruntlement with the mainstream, a feeling of being ostracized and marginalized. The motivation to “fight back” against the evils of liberal morality increasingly involves wielding individual purchasing power as a way to make a collective statement. Boycotting and promotion have worked in equal measure throughout 2023 for conservatives; both have yielded results.
Now, that consumerist mentality has found new subjects: Wallen, Aldean, and Anthony — with other, more unapologetically far-right artists, waiting in the wings.
Morgan Wallen isn’t quite like the others — but context matters
Without the larger context of the era we’re in, Morgan Wallen might not fit into this pattern. After all, one of the traits of his music, especially in the newest album, is a kind of strategic ambivalence about his own dirtbaggery. His songs are replete with the catchy themes country lyrics are well-known for: wordplay, whiskey, and pickup trucks, with wry flourishes of bitterness and self-defeat.
Through songs like “Last Night” and “Money On Me” — key lyric: “I wouldn’t put my money on me” — his lyrical stand-in comes across as a slightly guilt-ridden white guy, a man who vaguely understands that he’s gained an uncomfortable level of status and privilege but not someone who has the insight to do more than sardonically reference his past missteps. It’s the kind of post-ironic take on modern masculinity we’re more used to seeing in pop stars like Post Malone or even The Wknd. His music goes well with a diet of pop or country, and his reputation as a nice guy made it go down easy.
At least it did until Wallen’s reputation as a partier backfired on him. Wallen had weathered minor storms before, including getting caught going maskless during a party weekend in Alabama in 2021 — a stunt that resulted in Saturday Night Live canceling a scheduled appearance of Wallen as musical guest. (They rescheduled.) Then, in February 2021, TMZ published footage of what appears to be an intoxicated Wallen returning to his Nashville home late following a night on the town. After making a ruckus on the street with his party, he calls to a friend to “take care of this pussy-ass n*****.” As many people, including BuzzFeed News’ Elamin Abdelmahmoud, pointed out, Wallen dropped that racial slur with zero hesitation. He comes across in the video as someone who uses it all the time.
“I have no trouble imagining he said it like he’s familiar with it, like his mouth has been there before,” Abdelmahmoud wrote. “This is an artist who has traded on his authenticity since he first came on the scene … Wallen has positioned himself as a mullet-and-blue-jeans, what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of guy. And it’s impossible to watch the video without this in mind.”
That nod to authenticity is crucial because one of the hallmarks of country music marketability is that the star is who they say they are; artists who fail the authenticity test don’t often fare well. The 30-year-old Wallen, who grew up in a bona fide small town in East Tennessee before moving to the Knoxville suburbs as a teen, may have gotten his start through the most Hollywood of methods — a season-six stint on The Voice — but he’s a good ol’ country boy who subsequently worked his way up through the Nashville ranks. He’s got a famous mullet; he goes hunting; he even speculates he got booted off The Voice because he chose to sing country instead of pop. Hard to get more authentic than that. But did that also mean Wallen was authentically racist? When he subsequently apologized, was that an authentic apology?
The industry repercussions Wallen faced were immediate: Wallen’s record label, Big Loud Records, suspended his contract “indefinitely.” The Academy of Country Music also rescinded his eligibility for the upcoming Country Music Awards cycle. Radio and television networks from IHeart to CMT dropped his music from their playlists and censured the artist.
Yet Wallen’s efforts to apologize might not have ultimately mattered at all. His use of the racist slur had an immediate and profoundly positive impact on his sales. According to a Billboard report, in the days following the leaked TMZ video, Wallen’s sales increased by 339 percent in the US, jumping from 5,000 copies sold the day before the leak to 22,500 copies sold the day after. (Lest you think the bump in popularity might have been due to his gracious apology, note that the sales increase happened immediately; Wallen didn’t release his full apology video via Instagram until a week later.) By the end of the year, his most recent album, Dangerous, was the bestselling album of 2021, and it wasn’t close.
One could argue that Wallen, of all three singers, is the Chick-fil-A to a crop of Cracker Barrels: That is, he’s the offering that’s just mainstream and appealing enough to override any moral objections the average listener might have to his music. After all, he was drunk and he did apologize. There’s still room for growth and change. If Wallen can turn his mea culpas — sincere or not — into one of the most lucrative comebacks of the decade, perhaps that’s a sign of nothing deeper than slick songwriting and the public’s willingness to forgive and forget.
It’s also likely Wallen’s music resonates with the type of fan who, like Wallen himself, doesn’t want to introspect too deeply. And as with so many other aspects of the culture war, there are plenty of apologists around to do the work of redeeming Wallen — a guy who, after all, is just trying to have a good time. Ultimately, his ambivalence works in his favor.
Yet it’s much harder to make a similar argument about the other two country artists who each, in succession, interrupted “Last Night”’s Hot 100 streak. Their success, coming alongside Wallen’s, makes Wallen’s feel a little grimier; “Try That In a Small Town” and “Rich Men North of Richmond” are anything but ambivalent.
Jason Aldean makes the subtext text with a controversial music video
Jason Aldean’s music frequently gets classed within the nebulous subgenre sometimes known as “bro-country” — a group of unapologetically dude-ish male country artists, including artists like Wallen and the Florida Georgia Line. Exactly what’s wrapped up in the “bro” ethos varies from artist to artist, but a refusal to be cowed by woke politics certainly seems to lurk at the edges. In 2015, Aldean wore blackface at a party, an act his publicist confirmed but for which Aldean has never apologized. Instead, the country music veteran who won the CMA Album of the Year award in 2011, has doubled down on his controversial and, to many, blatantly racist provocations as an artist.
Aldean has lambasted the label of “bro country,” calling it condescending. “It’s meant to describe guys whose songs are all about pickup trucks, drinking beer, and girls. It’s meant to talk down to us,” he told Billboard in 2016. “They haven’t bothered to listen to the body of work I’ve recorded over the years.”
Many might argue, though, that the problem with Aldean’s body of work is not that no one is listening to it but that they are listening and they approve. For instance, the lyrics to Aldean’s “Small Town” heavily insinuate that Southern lynch mobs are alive and well and ready to come for anyone who transgresses on (white) small-town values. He also advocates stockpiling weapons in case the government tries to physically take them away from gun owners — popular rhetoric among gun rights extremists. When a song like that enjoys a viral popularity boost, it’s unsettling.
It’s also difficult to disentangle the fandom for the song from the backlash to the song and then the subsequent counter-backlash. “Small Town” became one of the few songs in history to simultaneously top both the Hot Country and Hot 100 Billboard charts — but only after all of the media attention given to its racist subtext. That implies that rather than media alarmism decreasing interest in the song, its target audience flocked to it because of its coded racism and references to violence.
In the end, Aldean’s song only lasted a moment atop the Hot 100. Still, it’s a significant achievement for a certain type of disgruntled conservative; after all, it’s likely many more people watched Aldean’s music video, with its codes and dog whistles, than would have paid attention to the song without the accompanying controversy. In addition to the video’s use of a location with a fraught racial history, Aldean uses stock footage taken from protests in Canada, filmed well before the Black Lives Matter movement. Apparently, this footage appeared alongside unlicensed footage of actual Black Lives Matter protests (which has since reportedly been removed) to create a conflation between violent protests and the primarily peaceful Black Lives Matter protests. This conflation implies that rioting, looting, and disorder is what “small towns” in the modern US are up against. The “authenticity” argument might normally work against Aldean here — he’s singing about a small town despite never having lived anywhere smaller than mid-sized Macon, Georgia — but the song’s popularity among its target audience seems to have forestalled criticism.
And while the song didn’t last at the top of the charts, it has yet to drop off of them. In fact, on the iTunes charts, where Anthony’s songs have flooded the rankings, “Small Town” has shot back up to No. 3 on the Top 100 list, right behind Anthony. That’s probably not a coincidence.
Oliver Anthony brings QAnon bugbears and overt welfare fat-shaming to bluegrass YouTube
As difficult as it is to claim that Aldean’s song is not racist, many have tried — including Aldean himself, who claimed that it was about “the feeling of community” and the desire for a return to “a sense of normalcy.” Even though in practice that logic falls apart, it clearly has its appeal to a particular audience. Across his burgeoning repertoire, Oliver Anthony’s lyrics voice a similar rhetoric — the idea that he is “an old soul” trapped in “a new world.” The new world, Anthony heavily implies, is indolent, hypocritical, and oppressive. Although Anthony has achieved massive popularity in a short time for the blunt, angry edge of these lyrics, they mask a much deeper, uglier type of ideology.
“Rich Men” has drawn over 30 million views in the week since YouTube user radiowv, Anthony’s co-manager, uploaded an acoustic performance of it. In it, Anthony strums a guitar and wails impassioned lyrics with familiar country themes about the plight of the working-class man who suffers at the expense of the “rich men north of Richmond.”
Anthony’s articulation of these themes — the working man is overworked, overtaxed, and exploited — has won him a huge outpouring of praise from the audiences that have flocked to stream the song since its release. In between these more universalized themes, however, is a jarring and discordant resentment directed at people on welfare, with all of the embedded racism that implies. “Lord, we got folks in the street, ain’t got nothin’ to eat / And the obese milkin’ welfare,” Anthony sings. “Well, God, if you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds / Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of Fudge Rounds.”
Conservatives have long rallied around demonizing the welfare state. One reason for that is that even though white people receive more public assistance than Black people, many conservatives view welfare as a system set up to help urban Black families. And although research has repeatedly shown that welfare recipients work no less and often work more while on welfare, conservatives often view those families as undeserving grifters living off federal funds instead of helping themselves. The term “welfare queen,” for example, frequently gets used as a racist dog whistle. In 1970, the one-hit country wonder “Welfare Cadilac” [sic] drew criticism as “disgustingly racist” when it hit the charts.
Anthony’s abrupt shift from rich men to fat-shaming welfare recipients makes it very difficult to read the song in its entirety as merely a populist working-class anthem. There’s also a muddy reference to Jeffrey Epstein’s island estate, a line that seems to position Anthony as QAnon-adjacent; he also appears to be a proponent of antisemitic conspiracies about 9/11.
As an unknown folk singer from West Virginia, Anthony — who’s purported to be a high-school drop-out living in a $750 camper, writing music while struggling with his mental health — had no real music industry experience. His manager runs the tiny West Virginia YouTube channel where his songs were first uploaded. In a YouTube video uploaded alongside the release of his songs, Anthony describes himself as a political centrist.
His songs, nonetheless, have been championed by many prominent conservatives, including several writers for Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire, and multiple established musical artists such as former Mumford and Sons member Winston Marshall. Despite myriad accusations that Anthony’s virality has been manufactured by music industry conservatives and right-wing extremists, it appears, per reporting by the New York Times, that Anthony’s song went viral organically — or at least, not because of paid industry manipulation. Instead, fans of the song utilized longstanding chart-gaming tactics codified by K-pop fans and other pop music stans, like buying the song and all of Anthony’s other offerings via iTunes in order to increase their Billboard ranks. The song was also streamed over 17 million times in its first week alone.
But the audiences for Anthony’s music and the average K-pop band share very little overlap. Instead, we seem to be witnessing a new arena for gamified conservative rancor.
Is this the future of country music? Not entirely.
It’s not that the country music industry itself is at fault for the virality of these three artists. While the industry continues to struggle with marginalizing and even erasing Black artists, it has diversified and made room for genre-stretching interpretations of what “country music” is, from Lil Nas X to Brandi Carlile and Sturgill Simpson — though not without controversy along the way. Even anodyne singers like Keith Urban have tentatively addressed issues like Me Too.
What’s more, it’s not as though the entire Hot 100 chart is just this now. There are still, thankfully, so-far-untainted country artists making the rounds. There’s Luke Combs’ popular cover of “Fast Car” alongside Chris Stapleton’s “White Horse” and several other artists whose music routinely enjoys crossover appeal.
But it’s also worth noting that further down the iTunes chart is an even more toxic musical group. Tom MacDonald and Adam Calhoun, who Rolling Stone previously called “troll rappers,” may not have the sound of country music, but they seem to have tapped the same well of reactionary extremist conservative ire; their songs, like “Your America” and “American Flag,” are rife with virulent racist, anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, and particularly hateful anti-trans lyrics. Last week, while Anthony went viral, MacDonald and Calhoun floated higher and higher on the list before finally falling — but not completely off.
Their presence in the rankings is a pernicious indicator that more of this might be on the way. It’s also, perhaps, a clue that none of this is about country artists, authentic or not; that ultimately, none of it is about the music at all.
The GOP field is as crowded as ever ahead of the first Republican debate.
Donald Trump remains the favorite of GOP primary voters. But that hasn’t stopped another 14 candidates from jumping into the race for the Republican nomination in the hopes that they can dethrone him — or at least interview for a position in the next administration.
The former president, who announced his candidacy in November, has been increasingly dominant in polling. His closest competitor, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, is trailing him by more than 40 percentage points on average as of late August.
Seven others have qualified for the first GOP debate Wednesday night, which Trump has opted to skip altogether:
- North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum
- Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie
- Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley
- Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson
- Former Vice President Mike Pence
- Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy
- South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott
All are currently polling in single digits but likely hoping the debate creates an opportunity to replace a weakened DeSantis, weighed down by campaign missteps, as the definitive alternative to Trump.
It’s unclear, however, whether anyone can launch a viable challenge to Trump, despite some Republicans seeing him as a liability in a general election. Not only is Trump the subject of several ongoing civil and criminal investigations, but he’s broadly unpopular among Americans. He lost his reelection bid in 2020, and his chosen candidates underperformed in the 2022 midterms. But, far from turning off the base, all of that has only further entrenched Trump’s support among Republican voters.
Here’s everything you need to know about the GOP contenders.
The GOP leaderboard
So far, the primary has shaped up to be a lopsided two-way contest between Trump and DeSantis. It’s not clear that DeSantis has what it takes to best Trump, his former mentor who remains beloved by the base despite the criminal charges against him. That could leave room for another candidate, potentially Ramaswamy, who’s polling a distant third, to emerge as a credible challenger to Trump during the debates.
Former President Trump
The GOP primary has been overshadowed by the criminal charges against Trump in the four cases over his involvement in the January 6, 2021, insurrection, his retention of classified documents after he left office, and hush money payments made during his 2016 campaign. He now faces a total of 91 counts and potential prison time.
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Fighting the charges has in some respects weighed down Trump’s campaign: He has used at least $59.2 million of his campaign funds to pay his legal bills, and his court dates will continue to interfere with his busy campaign schedule. But the court cases have also seemed to boost Trump’s popularity among the Republican base, as he has only expanded his polling lead following each indictment. That would suggest that his supporters believe the cases are indeed the product of a “political witch hunt,” as Trump has often spuriously claimed.
That may help Trump win the primary. However, it remains to be seen whether these indictments will cause moderates and independents to turn away from the former president. If Trump were to lose those voters, that could cause serious problems for him. In head-to-head matchups versus President Joe Biden over the last month, some polls have Trump winning by as much as 8 percentage points, while others have him losing by as much as 13 percentage points. Much could change before November 2024, but should Trump be his party’s nominee, those numbers suggest a tight race in which losing moderates and independents could be the difference between victory and defeat.
Despite this, Trump isn’t facing much criticism from his right flank, with his Republican opponents treading lightly in using the investigations against him to attack him as unfit for another term. Recognizing his continued grip on the Republican primary voters and the risk of alienating them, the candidates have largely refrained from criticizing Trump directly. But in so doing, they have also struggled to carve out distinct lanes and present a clear argument for why the party should dump Trump.
A second Trump term would likely be more radical than the first. He came into office in 2016 surrounding himself with members of the conservative establishment who tempered his worst impulses. The next time around, he would likely replace those people with loyalists who would advance his own interests, including making his legal problems go away.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis
DeSantis was seen as the most viable challenger to Trump. He won reelection by nearly 20 points in 2022, helping usher a red wave into the once-swing state of Florida even though Republican candidates underperformed practically everywhere else in the midterms. But he’s running far behind Trump in the polls, and there are questions as to whether he can run a campaign that feels distinct from MAGA but still has enough general appeal to be successful.
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DeSantis has been carefully cultivating a national profile for years by making Florida a locus of conservative policymaking that has inspired copycat legislation across the US. He’s promoted popular conservative stances on nearly every culture war issue, including attacking LGBTQ rights, minimizing the risks of Covid-19, curtailing abortion access, and eliminating parts of school curriculums deemed too liberal. He worked with the state legislature this session to enact that agenda in Florida, which he is touting as his “blueprint” for America.
Beyond just legislating to the right, DeSantis has ensured that Florida will likely stay red for the foreseeable future. In the 2022 redistricting cycle, he pushed for a new, gerrymandered congressional map that ultimately heavily benefited Republicans; the party flipped three House seats in the midterms. He expanded the base, winning counties like Miami-Dade that Republicans haven’t carried in decades, while appearing to make more headway with Latino voters. He raised more than $200 million last cycle, breaking the record for gubernatorial races.
[Related: Make America Florida: Ron DeSantis’s pitch to beat Trump in 2024]
Still, he has had a tough few months. He signed an ultra-restrictive six-week abortion ban in Florida that some GOP donors worry will be unpalatable to general election voters. He’s locked in a high-stakes fight with Disney in which he’s suffered loss after loss after loss, neutralizing his ability to claim victory over “woke” corporations. He has left Trump’s attacks largely unanswered for fear of alienating the base. His campaign began with gaffes on subjects from Ukraine to chocolate pudding (allegedly), and has recently gone through a few rounds of restructuring. And there are questions about his likability.
He’s trying to carve out his own lane in the primary by running to the right of Trump on issues like Covid-19 and abortion and attempting to draw a contrast with Trump’s bombastic leadership style. But in many ways, his candidacy doesn’t mark a departure from Trumpism. And that means if DeSantis were to be the GOP candidate for president, he’d really have to contort himself to look like a moderate in a general election against Biden.
Right-wing activist Vivek Ramaswamy
Ramaswamy may not be seen as a serious contender by some of his Republican rivals, but he is undeniably the breakout candidate of 2024 who is using his frequent media appearances to boost his profile. Though he’s not yet cracked the double digits in polling averages, he’s now running in third place, behind DeSantis.
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The son of Indian immigrants, a former biotech founder, and author of the New York Times bestseller Woke, Inc., Ramaswamy made his name railing against socially responsible investing on cable news shows. Over the past few years, he’s been dubbed “the CEO of Anti-Woke, Inc.” by the New Yorker and has come out with a second book, Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit and the Path Back to Excellence. Recently, he’s promoted a pledge to pardon Trump if he’s elected president.
In his announcement video, he staked his candidacy on combating the “woke left” and what he referred to as “new secular religions like Covidism, climatism, and gender ideology.”
“This is psychological slavery, and that has created a new culture of fear in our country that has completely replaced our culture of free speech in America,” he said in the video.
His campaign has so far centered on culture wars: He told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson after jumping into the race that his top priorities include ending affirmative action, achieving “complete decoupling” from China, reenvisioning US immigration policy based on “merit,” and using the American military to combat drug cartels in Central America.
While well-known in conservative circles, Ramaswamy would need to find a way to pivot his message to make it more appealing to independents and moderates in a general election.
First, though, he faces rivals with far greater platforms, name recognition, donor networks, and war chests — many of whom arguably pioneered his brand of politics. Even if Trump were to somehow implode, Ramaswamy would still likely face an uphill climb to the nomination.
The prominent Trump critics
There’s little to be won in campaigning against Trump when most Republican voters still approve of the former president. But that hasn’t stopped several GOP contenders from going on offense. For Pence, attacking Trump is a matter of necessity given his pivotal decision to certify the results of the 2020 election against Trump’s wishes. But others are trying to take an ideological stand and offer Republican voters an off-ramp from MAGA policies — one that most voters don’t particularly appear to want.
Former Vice President Mike Pence
Pence’s biggest challenge is stepping out from the shadow of Trump, his onetime running mate from whom he has severed ties.
He previously told CNBC that the GOP is “going to have better choices” than the former president. And in an interview with NPR last November, he said he thought Trump was “wrong” in insisting that he won the 2020 election and that he was “reckless” with his words and actions on the day of the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.
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That might not win him any favor among Trump loyalists. But as a prominent evangelical, Pence is hoping to appeal to religious conservatives’ views on abortion, religious liberty, and education.
Though the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade dampened GOP gains in the midterms, Pence hasn’t tempered his anti-abortion rhetoric. He has called for a national abortion ban and has thrown his weight behind a proposal by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) that would ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, and a ban on abortion pills.
Beyond abortion, Pence’s policy group, Advancing American Freedom, has laid out a platform that includes an expansion of 529 college savings plans so they can be used for K-12 schools, promoting the rights of health care providers to decline to perform certain services on the basis of moral or religious objections, and rolling back climate change-related regulations.
So far, none of that has proved enough to distinguish him from Trump.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie
Christie, once a Trump defender, has become one of the former president’s most outspoken critics. Christie has decried Trump’s reluctance to debate and his unwillingness to accept the results of the 2020 election, as well as called the former president a “coward” and “puppet of Putin.” He’s committed not to support Trump even if the former president wins the Republican nomination.
“Beware of the leader in this country, who you have handed leadership to, who has never made a mistake, who has never done anything wrong, who when something goes wrong it’s always someone else’s fault. And who has never lost,” Christie said of Trump shortly after announcing his campaign in June.
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It’s a remarkable 180-degree turn for someone who was previously a close ally of Trump, briefly headed his White House transition team, and helped him prepare for debates in 2020. But it’s not clear how that turn will win him support among the many Republican voters who have rallied behind him since his four indictments.
If anything, Christie’s attacks on Trump might spare other GOP candidates from having to go on offense against the former president, who has been known to eviscerate his opponents with mud-slinging and name-calling. Christie has been on the receiving end of Trump’s attacks before, when they weakened his bid in the 2016 presidential primary. The former governor finished sixth before ultimately endorsing Trump for the nomination.
Christie has highlighted his record as a moderate governor, though his tenure as New Jersey’s executive was marred by the “Bridgegate” scandal. His aides allegedly orchestrated a plot to close lanes at a bridge that serves as a main artery to New York City in retaliation against a local mayor who did not back his reelection campaign. He continues to deny any knowledge of the plot, despite witnesses in the criminal trial of his aides testifying to the contrary. By the end of his second term, his approval rating had fallen to 15 percent. As of late August, his polling average in the 2024 race hovered around 3 percent.
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson
Hutchinson is a longtime Trump critic and has previously told ABC that he thought Trump should withdraw from the race in light of the criminal charges he’s facing. But as a former federal prosecutor who worked on President Bill Clinton’s impeachment, Hutchinson has also acknowledged that Trump probably won’t do that and there’s nothing stopping him from carrying on.
“I mean, first of all, the office is more important than any individual person. And so for the sake of the office of the presidency, I do think that’s too much of a sideshow and distraction, and he needs to be able to concentrate on his due process,” Hutchinson said.
Hutchinson served eight years as Arkansas governor before stepping down in January because he was term-limited. While in office, he pushed a conservative agenda centered on a near-total ban on abortion without exceptions for cases involving rape and incest, a law banning trans women from participating in school sports teams, and bans on Covid-19 vaccine mandates and state and local mask mandates.
He later expressed regret at the lack of exceptions to the abortion ban and that he wanted to reverse the ban on mask mandates amid an August 2021 surge in coronavirus cases. That hasn’t been enough for Hutchinson to make much of a mark on the 2024 race; throughout the contest he’s struggled to crack even the single digits.
The South Carolinian donor darlings
Haley and Scott both have establishment credentials, are seen as rising stars in the party and have scored the support of some major Republican donors. All eyes will be on them during the debates to see if they are able to pick up some momentum and keep the money flowing. But they also face the problem of competing for similar constituencies, including in their home state of South Carolina.
Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley
Trump’s US ambassador to the United Nations and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley has framed herself as a younger, more moderate candidate relative to Trump who can win in a general election. “Republicans have lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections. That has to change,” Haley said in her announcement video. “It’s time for a new generation of leadership.”
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The daughter of Indian immigrants, Haley is centering her pitch for the presidency on foreign policy. In particular, she’s suggested that she would take a hardline stance against America’s foes abroad. She had one of the highest approval ratings of anyone in the Trump administration and was well-respected by her peers on the UN Security Council even when espousing controversial policy decisions, such as Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris climate accords, and the UN Human Rights Council.
In an environment where most Americans cite government and inflation as the top issues facing the US, it’s not clear whether that foreign policy experience will resonate with voters. But Haley has conservative credentials, too.
She won the South Carolina governorship in 2011 with the support of the conservative Tea Party wing of the Republican Party and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. She went on to tighten voter ID laws, oppose Syrian refugee resettlement in the state, and earn bipartisan praise for signing a bill to take down the Confederate flag from the state capitol after a gunman killed nine Black churchgoers in Charleston in 2015. In her announcement video, she hit typical conservative priorities, railing against the “socialist left” while calling for securing the border and fiscal responsibility.
But she’s also waded into culture war battles. At a campaign event in May, she went on a rant against a trans influencer who partnered with Bud Light, a collaboration that resulted in a widespread conservative boycott of the brand. She also declared herself to be “unapologetically pro-life” while avoiding questions about whether she would enact a national abortion ban.
If Haley prevails, she would be the first woman and first Asian American to win the GOP nomination for president, adding to the list of firsts she has already achieved: South Carolina’s first woman governor and the first Indian American to serve in a statewide office there. She’s currently far from the top of the field, however, tending to poll in the middle of the pack.
South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott
Scott, the three-term South Carolina senator and only Black Republican in the chamber, has framed much of his candidacy around pushing back against Democrats’ views on systemic racism and other disparities in the US. Over the past few years, he’s repeatedly cited his own success as negating the idea that Black Americans are disadvantaged by systematic racism and as proof that anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
“They know the truth of my life disproves their lies,” Scott said of Democrats in his April launch video. “I know America is a land of opportunity, not a land of oppression. I know it because I’ve lived it.”
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As a senator, Scott has struck a similar tone on race, acknowledging its role in American life while arguing that racism is largely something that infects individuals rather than being something for society to grapple with. He has previously called out discrimination he’s faced by police, including being pulled over at traffic stops, for example, while calling law enforcement a “noble” profession. Scott touched on these themes during a listening tour in Iowa and South Carolina earlier this year, urging audiences to acknowledge the progress that the US has made.
As an evangelical, Scott is also making abortion restrictions a pillar of his campaign. He has voiced support for a six-week abortion ban in his home state. He has also said that he would enact a 15-week national ban on abortion or “the most conservative pro-life legislation Congress can pass” if elected president.
He’s also echoed standard Republican talking points criticizing “Biden liberals” and touting conservative positions on issues like immigration and crime. Legislatively, Scott is known for serving as the GOP’s lead negotiator on police reform and as the sponsor of bipartisan legislation to establish “opportunity zones” that intend to drive investment to low-income areas via tax incentives.
The random Republicans without much of a fighting chance
There’s no telling how much longer these candidates — with their lack of national name recognition and seeming inability to carve out a distinct lane relative to their rivals— will remain in the race for the nomination. All routinely poll at the bottom of the pack, and show few signs of reversing that trend.
[Related: Why are all these random Republicans running for president?]
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum announced his bid in a June Wall Street Journal op-ed, promising to make the economy his top priority without mentioning thornier culture war issues: “We need to get inflation under control, cut taxes, lower gas prices and reduce the cost of living,” he wrote.
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The two-term governor and tech entrepreneur touted his experience leading Great Plains Software, which went public in 1997 and was sold to Microsoft in 2001 for $1.1 billion in stock. His proceeds from that deal mean he’ll likely be able to self-fund his campaign. He’s highlighted how he “achieved pension reform, helped pass term limits, and enacted the biggest tax cut in state history” this year. He has also set a goal of making North Dakota carbon-neutral by 2030, implementing carbon capture and storage technology while still maintaining fossil fuel production, which is a major industry in the state.
Burgum is well-liked in North Dakota but doesn’t have the national name recognition of some of his GOP rivals, nor is he cast from the Trumpian mold, which has made it difficult for him to break through to primary voters who still love the former president. While he qualified for the first debate, he’s consistently struggled to poll above 1 percentage point.
Former Texas Rep. Will Hurd
As a representative of a border district and a moderate, Hurd was an outspoken critic of Trump’s immigration policies while serving in Congress. Hurd opted not to seek reelection in 2020 because he felt out of step with the hard right turn his party had taken under Trump. However, he joined his Republican colleagues in voting against Trump’s impeachment in 2019.
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In his announcement video, Hurd denounced Trump as a “lawless, selfish, failed politician” whom he blamed for Republicans losing control of the House in 2018, as well as the Senate and the White House in 2020. But he also had sharp words for President Joe Biden’s policies on immigration, crime, and inflation: “President Biden can’t solve these problems or won’t.”
Hurd was known as a bipartisan dealmaker during his time in Congress, breaking with his party on issues such as LGBTQ rights, gun control, and its push to repeal the Affordable Care Act. But given that the Republican Party has only further dug in its heels on MAGA politics since his departure from office, Republican voters haven’t been all that interested in a candidate who reaches across the aisle. Hurd has also struggled to stand out in a field already filled with big names — not to mention all the other lesser-known candidates fighting to increase single-digit poll numbers.
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez
Suarez is the only Latino candidate in the race and has previously called on candidates who don’t make the debate stage to drop out. He failed to receive the support required to make the first debate himself, though it’s not clear whether he’ll take his own advice.
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Suarez has staked his long-shot candidacy on his “tough on crime” platform. A video released by a pro-Suarez super PAC touts his support for law enforcement and points to his own policies as the source of decreasing violent crime rates in Miami in 2023. He’s also taken shots at DeSantis on issues from his lack of Covid-19 mitigation measures to how he’s handling his ongoing feud with Disney.
Suarez faces questions about possible corruption as he tries for the nomination. He is under investigation by the Miami-Dade ethics commission for his work for Miami real estate developer Rishi Kapoor, who is being investigated by the FBI and Securities and Exchange Commission. Kapoor allegedly paid Suarez $10,000 per month to aid him in securing government permits for an urban real estate project.
Radio host Larry Elder
Elder, a conservative radio host and frequent talking head on Fox News, has never held political office but led the race to replace California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, in an unsuccessful recall campaign in 2021. He is now suing the Republican National Committee after failing to make the debate stage alongside Michigan business leader Perry Johnson, who is also running.
“America is in decline, but this decline is not inevitable. We can enter a new American Golden Age, but we must choose a leader who can bring us there,” he tweeted of his decision to run for president.
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Elder, a vocal Trump supporter, has espoused conservative stances on issues from abortion rights to pandemic restrictions, including mask mandates. And as a Black man, he has critiqued the Black Lives Matter movement and called the idea of systemic racism a “lie,” though he framed his policies in the recall election as benefiting Black people.
He also attributed rising crime in 2021 to a policing pullback spurred by Democratic policies. “When you reduce the possibility of a bad guy getting caught, getting convicted and getting incarcerated, guess what? Crime goes up,” he told the Los Angeles Times.
Michigan business leader Perry Johnson
Johnson has funded his campaign with nearly $8 million of his own money. In an attempt to meet the 40,000-donor threshold required to make it on the debate stage, he offered people a $10 gift card for gas in exchange for a $1 donation. The RNC determined, however, that he still didn’t qualify, and for that, he’s joined Elder’s lawsuit against the organization.
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He made his fortune as the founder of Perry Johnson Registrars, which audits and certifies firms that meet international standards for quality management systems.
Johnson’s platform is centered on his “two-cents plan,” which he argues would reduce the federal deficit and inflation by curbing two cents of federal discretionary spending for every dollar.
Johnson previously sought the 2022 Republican gubernatorial nomination in Michigan but was disqualified from the primary after submitting too many fake signatures endorsing his candidacy.
Texas pastor and entrepreneur Ryan Binkley
Binkley has never before sought political office and is probably the least-known candidate. He founded Generational Group, which advises mergers and acquisitions, as well as Create Church in Richardson, Texas, alongside his wife. The proceeds from his business have allowed him to self-fund his campaign.
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He’s running on a Christian message but has also advocated for lowering the national debt, immigration reform, education investment in urban areas, and reining in big drug companies.
Update, August 23, 7:45 am ET: This story was originally published on February 23 and has been updated multiple times, most recently to include Johnson’s and Binkley’s bids and updated polling numbers.
Netflix is finally completing its pivot away from shipping DVDs — and it’s not asking for its discs back either.
Netflix is treating the end of the DVD era like a birthday party — or a funeral, depending on your point of view. The company announced in April that it would send its last DVD by mail on September 29, a little over 25 years after it sent the very first one. (Fun fact: The very first red Netflix envelope contained Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice.) If you’ve never heard of DVD.com or you thought Netflix got out of the disc-shipping business years ago, that’s understandable. But now is your chance to own a piece of it.
This week, Netflix said that DVD.com subscribers can keep all the discs they had rented just before the company went out of business. “We are not charging for any unreturned discs after 9/29,” the company explained in a tweet. “Please enjoy your final shipments for as long as you like!” And on top of that, DVD.com subscribers can sign up for a surprise shipment of up to 10 extra discs to show up in their mailbox after the site shuts down. Think of them as party favors on your way out the door.
You might not think this is so exciting if you’re one of the more than 1 million subscribers to DVD.com, many of whom are surely sore about the demise of the mail-order service. While the streaming wars have made it seem as though there’s more content online than anyone could ever watch or want, it’s easy to overlook the fact that Netflix’s DVD business still had huge appeal to people who lived in rural areas or who liked movies that were unlikely to show up on a streaming service. That Netflix is now going to let some of those folks keep a dozen or so discs for good makes the company look generous. But it also highlights how many of its most loyal customers it’s leaving behind.
The fact of the matter is that Netflix has been planning to abandon DVDs since the 20th century. Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos has recalled how Netflix founder Reed Hastings told him back in 1999 that he planned to take the business completely online as soon as the economics worked out. “Back then, [Hastings] said that postage rates were going to keep going up and the internet was going to get twice as fast at half the price every 18 months,” Sarandos told Variety in 2018. “At some point those lines would cross, and it would become more cost-efficient to stream a movie rather than to mail a video. And that’s when we get in.”
That happened in 2007, when Netflix launched its streaming business, which was not quite as slick as it is today. There were just 1,000 movies to choose from, and the system worked a lot like the DVD-by-mail service. If you had the $18-a-month plan, you could only download three movies at a time, and based on your plan, you would only be able to watch 18 hours of streaming content a month. A New York Times reporter also noted at the time that he had trouble getting started “because of a mismatch between the version of Microsoft’s antipiracy software expected by the Netflix viewer and the one loaded in the PC, and it took about 15 minutes to fix the problem with the help of a customer-support specialist.” That kind of thing never happened with a DVD.
By 2011, it was clear that streaming was the future not only for Netflix but for movies and TV shows in general. That was the year Hastings orchestrated what might be the most notorious move in Netflix history: the Qwikster pivot. Sensing that the DVD business could drag down Netflix’s burgeoning streaming ambitions, Hastings decided to split the company in two: Netflix for streaming and a new company called Qwikster for DVDs by mail. The problem was that existing Netflix subscribers would end up paying significantly more for two separate services if they wanted to keep getting streaming and DVDs. Many felt as though Netflix was taking the DVD service they loved away from them. Hundreds of thousands of people unsubscribed, Netflix stock plummeted, and three weeks later, Hastings reversed course and abandoned the Qwikster split.
And that’s why you’ve probably never heard of DVD.com. Although the company made a big deal of distancing itself from the Qwikster pivot, it still went ahead and quietly spun off its DVD business. It just called it DVD.com instead of Qwikster, and it left Netflix pricing alone. And millions of people kept getting DVDs by mail. In 2011, when the split happened, that number was about 16 million, and now it’s between 1.1 and 1.3 million. Netflix’s streaming service, by comparison, added 5.9 million subscribers last quarter alone, bringing its global total to 238.4 million.
When you step back and think about it, Netflix would have a hard time shipping that many DVDs regardless of the cost. At the end of the day, movies and TV shows are just a bunch of data, whether you put that data on a disc or through an ethernet cable. Netflix’s DVD-by-mail business was making a profit as recently as the fourth quarter of 2019, the last time the company included details of DVD.com in its earnings, but it was never what the future held. Plus, whatever resources Netflix has been devoting to its DVD-by-mail business, it needs everything it can get to fight the next battle of the streaming wars.
So for all you nostalgic movie fans out there, you’ve only got a few days left to experience the end of the Netflix DVD era and claim your prize. Until the end of the day on September 29, you can sign up for a DVD.com account and get in on that last shipment of red envelopes. You can request up to eight discs at a time, plus there’s that offer to receive 10 surprise discs. And again, you will not have to send those discs back. Hold on to them. Cherish them. In a few years, when they’re considered collectibles and extremely cool by the youngest generation’s standards, sell them so you can afford to subscribe to five different streaming services.
A version of this story was also published in the Vox technology newsletter. Sign up here so you don’t miss the next one!