Conservative podcasters appear to be losing interest in President Trump. Instead, they are criticizing a Bible-quoting Democrat threatening to flip red Texas, and they can't stop talking about a murder trial that divided a jury-and the country.

The Wall Street Journal analyzed nearly 70,000 hours of podcasts to understand the topics that conservative podcasters-some of whom helped propel Donald Trump to victory in 2024-are talking about, and what has fallen out of the conversation. The analysis captures the political mood in key corners before crucial midterm elections in November.

To do it, we used an in-house AI tool developed to help monitor trends on social media ahead of the midterms. In addition to podcasts, we have pulled in more than 10 million TikToks and Instagram posts from a range of creators.

We crossed those with thousands of hours of broadcast news and the Journal's own articles to understand the political topics circulating in the mainstream.

Here's what we found:

MAGA commentators are tuning out Trump

Trump has urged voters to keep him front of mind when they head to the polls in November, telling supporters at the GOP midterm convention to "pretend I'm on the ballot." Congressional Republican leaders are also putting the president front and center in their effort to keep control of the House and Senate, despite Trump's low approval ratings, though some Republicans in tight races are starting to tiptoe away from the president.

But MAGA podcasters aren't playing along. Mentions of Trump's name per hour on conservative podcasts have fallen nearly 70% from their peak in the run-up to the 2024 election.

Advisers have told the president that the Iran war is sapping his supporters' enthusiasm. Gas is nearly $4.50 a gallon nationally. The share of Republicans who say the economy is better than a year ago has collapsed from over 70% in January to 29% in September, according to a New York Times/Siena poll. The podcasts show that same souring. Monthly mentions of his name have fallen 30% since the U.S. launched the war in late February, with some hosts airing disapproval of it, and a few, like former Fox News host and conservative media personality Tucker Carlson, breaking publicly with the administration.

Left-leaning podcasts, by contrast, have held steady in their mentions of Trump, as Democrats seek to make the midterms a referendum on him. A White House spokeswoman said left-leaning podcasters have targeted the president to distract from Democrats' record.

Talarico tops MAGA's list of Democrats

On conservative podcasts, James Talarico has become the most-discussed Democrat in the country who isn't a former president.

This month, hosts on the 147 shows the Journal tracks have named him more often than Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, California Gov. Gavin Newsom or Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont-and nearly three times as often as Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic socialist mayor of New York.

Democrats haven't won a statewide office in Texas since 1994. Polls show Talarico, a state legislator who has campaigned on his Christian faith, in a tight race against Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton, a MAGA warrior beloved by Trump's base and backed by national Republicans pouring money into the state to shore him up.

Trump has called him "Talafreako," and railed against him at the GOP midterm convention.

MAGA podcasters portray Talarico as a radical leftist out of touch with Texans. They frequently attack him for past comments he has made about religion, transgender rights and immigration, including one where he said "God is nonbinary." Talarico has said he "missed the mark" on some of his past statements.

A murder trial goes political

As mentions of Trump continued their free fall this summer, MAGA podcasters increasingly turned to a topic that-on its face-wasn't political: true crime, and the trial of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts woman accused of murdering her three children. Clancy said she was suffering from postpartum psychosis when she killed her children. The case ended in a mistrial earlier this month when jurors repeatedly failed to reach a verdict.

By the time it ended, the trial had become part of a broader debate over mental illness, motherhood and traditional gender roles. Hundreds of women rallied outside the courthouse. The jury that deadlocked was nine women and three men, with 11 jurors favoring finding Clancy not criminally responsible. The lone holdout juror was a male. Some conservative podcasters saw a double standard. Hosts and guests said Clancy's gender was the point, and that no man would be excused the way she was.

A YouGov poll earlier this month found that 61% of Republicans thought Clancy should have been found guilty of murder, compared with 34% of Democrats and 43% of Independents. Democrats were more than twice as likely as Republicans to say Clancy wasn't guilty by reason of insanity.

Our tool flagged the trial as among the mainstream news stories that traveled furthest last month into parts of social media that aren't normally political. Of those, only complaints about the cost of living reached more corners of TikTok, and none drew more creators who otherwise post about sports, parenting or anime. The takes on TikTok ran the gamut, from condemning Clancy to offering empathy on postpartum mental health-and even pushing conspiracy theories that her former husband did it.

Trump himself acknowledged he was following the trial. After the mistrial, he said, "It's on television so much, it's hard not to follow it."