The “left-wing Trump supporter” is a rare breed. “A left-wing Trump supporting journalist” is rarer still.
Batya Ungar-Sargon is one such curious case.
In the last decade, as well as being opinion editor at The Forward, she has contributed pieces to the likes of the Daily Beast, The Free Press, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and the Washington Post. In 2024, she published her latest book - Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America’s Working Men And Women, and today, she hosts her eponymous NewsNation talk show - Batya.
Why did we invite her on?
Batya’s unique combination of political attributes makes her an ideal guest for Triggernometry, and especially now. We’ve spoken to both left and right about the MAGA divide and how Iran is deepening that fissure, but Batya represents a view detached from either camp.
Weighing up the various arguments, we didn’t think we’d have a complete picture of the Trump coalition and its likelihood of survival unless we spoke to someone who represents Batya’s small-but-not-insignificant crossover. At that point, why not speak to the woman herself?
What did we talk about?
If your only source was X, you’d come away with the impression that nobody but Ben Shapiro supports this war. Its most ardent advocates enjoy “getting ratio’d” day in and day out, while its critics garner hundreds of millions of impressions by condemning it.
This administration, more so than arguably any in history, is sensitively tuned to the rumblings of social media. They can’t be ignoring it, so why aren’t they responsive to it?
”The podcast sphere is so totally divorced from where average people are at. You see this on Israel, on Epstein, on Iran, again and again and again - the people who claim to be the ‘influencers’ on the right have no real influence on either the President or his voters. The polling bears this out.”
It’s a difficult thing to reconcile. When Trump was elected in 2024, much was made about how his appearances on Joe Rogan, Theo Von, Flagrant, and Lex Fridman helped swing his reputation among the youth, and therefore his chances of securing the Presidency.
If those figures had such influence then, why is Batya dismissing them now?
”The majority of the podcast world is against it, claiming it’s “Israel’s war”. You can’t think of a single podcaster/content creator outside of Ben Shapiro who supports the war. But polling shows 80-90% of Republicans support it! The mainstream media is too easy to take their word for it that there’s a “MAGA divide”, but the numbers are even higher among ‘MAGA Republicans’, up into the 90s…”
Still, it must be getting to Trump somewhat. After all, why else would he be commenting on it? In the last month, he has been telling his followers to ignore Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, two of the conservative movement’s most widely known figures, and “tune in” to Mark Levin’s show instead. Doesn’t the fact Trump’s talking about it, in and of itself, disprove Batya’s thesis?
”He talks about a lot of things… I’m sorry, but Trump talks a lot of sh*t. He’ll talk about whatever he’s thinking about… When Tucker Carlson had Nick Fuentes on his show, there was a huge backlash. There was a closing of ranks against Tucker, and against the Heritage Foundation - a legacy institution - for supporting him. The only person who refused to do that is J.D. Vance, and the President is trying to address that. I hear from Senators all the time: they don’t understand what’s happened to Tucker.”
It sounds like there is a divide, and at the highest levels of government. If the President is of one thinking and his Veep (and supposed heir apparent) of another, what does that mean for MAGA?
”Vance spends too much time on Twitter. What J.D. thinks matters, but the fact that he’s hedging his bets right now does not mean he’s aligned with the base. And he will not be the nominee if he does not distance himself from Tucker Carlson. I know a lot of Republicans for whom it is a dealbreaker, and I know a lot of Democrats who would vote for Marco Rubio.”
It’s quite the thing to “hedge your bets” over. It sounds like there’s a fear that Nick Fuentes is too popular and influential to outright condemn, that if J.D. loses the support of the “groypers”, his electoral victory hangs in the balance. Are there really that many antisemites out there? Batya herself is Jewish - what does she think?
”This has always been relegated to the elites. There has always been something in the soil here against hating Jews. There have been Jews here since 1654; American Jews see themselves as an immigrant community, and it’s a massive betrayal. We are inextricably linked to the founding of this country.”
Still, does it bother her that Jews in America are acting as a sacrificial lamb? That major figures are overlooking bigotry to secure the support of a toxic contingent?
”It doesn’t bother me. The polling on the right hasn’t changed… Young people tend to be leftists; anti-establishment, blaming their problems on the systems. I just don’t see that as the future of the right. The average conservative doesn’t go to college, and therefore doesn’t hate Israel and doesn’t hate the Jews. People on the right who are anti-Israel don’t think Israel has a right to our tax dollars, while the anti-Israel left don’t think it has a right to exist. That is a completely different conversation.”
That may well be so, but whether the antisemitism comes from the left or right, it takes us all to the same place - a dangerous environment for Jews.
Antisemitic memes on X are one thing, but acts of terror are something else entirely. And they’re rising. Just last month, a man drove a van through the doors of a Michigan synagogue, presumably hoping to kill and maim its occupants. He failed and died, but it easily could have gone differently. Batya took a different lesson from it.
