Chapo Trap House

The Chapo hosts and producers identify with radical left-wing politics and frequently deride conservative, neoliberal, moderate, and liberal pundits. The Pacific Standard wrote: Biederman said the show's audience is seeking alternatives to liberal media, which he calls "the dominion of either upper-middle-class smugness when it's even the least bit funny and insufferable self-righteousness when it's even the least bit conscious." The hosts are associated with Twitter communities called "Left Twitter" and "Weird Twitter," a name used to describe a loose group of Twitter users known for absurdist humor. The show frequently features a reading series which usually features texts by conservative and neoliberal writers, such as Ross Douthat, Ben Shapiro, Dennis Prager, Megan McArdle and Rod Dreher. The hosts jokingly offered him a position as co-host, after Dreher lost his position at The American Conservative. A number of these pundits are also featured and critiqued in The Chapo Guide to Revolution. Weekly free episodes of the show are available via SoundCloud, Spotify, and iTunes, among other services. Subscribers who contribute at least $5 per month via Patreon gain access to additional weekly premium bonus episodes. By May 2017, the show generated more than $60,000 a month from subscribers, and is as of September 2023 the third highest-grossing user on Patreon, earning over $180,000 per month, having once been the highest-grossing user on Patreon. Geek.com cited the show's premium content as an example of a viable revenue model for new podcasters. Special series In addition to the regular podcast episodes, Chapo has released three scripted miniseries focused on history & politics. Hell of Presidents, hosted by Christman and Wade, which details the administration and personality of every president of the United States; ''Hell on Earth: The Thirty Years' War and the Violent Birth of Capitalism'', focusing on the Thirty Years' War and the birth of capitalism, again hosted by Christman and Wade; and Seeking a Fren for the End of the World, hosted by Biederman with writing by Joshua A. Cohen (@ettingermentum) and Spencer Rider, focusing on 'Conservative Inc.', the history of right-wing think tanks and media in the United States. An additional series about the Spanish Civil War by Christman and Wade was planned but cancelled after Christman's stroke. It was released in book form in September 2024 as ''¡No Pasarán! Matt Christman's Spanish Civil War. In 2021, Biederman and Christman hosted the series Time For My Stories on the now-defunct podcast platform Stitcher, discussing different TV drama series. In 2025, Biederman began hosting THE PLAYERS CLUB!, a series about video games, with the first season focusing on the Metal Gear'' franchise. Hell of Presidents was named as one of the 10 best podcasts of 2021 by Entertainment Weekly. In 2024, Hell on Earth was honored at the Webby Awards in the category Best Limited Series Podcasts. Additionally, Movie Mindset, hosted by Menaker and Hesse Deni from the Seeking Derangements podcast is an irregular series focused on film reviews including an annual horror film review subseries known as "Ghoulvie Screamset"; and Hinge Points, hosted Christman and Danny Bessner of the American Prestige podcast, focuses on alternate history. ==History==

Background and formation The three founding hosts met online through discussions on Twitter years prior to starting the podcast. Under the usernames @willmenaker (Menaker); @cushbomb (Christman); and @ByYourLogic (Biederman, also formerly @swarthyvillain and @spookymuscleman), they developed followings for their political commentary and have been called "minor Twitter celebrities." The three first recorded together as guests on an episode of the podcast Street Fight Radio to mock the film 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. They had already discussed hosting a show together for some time, and, encouraged by positive reception to their Street Fight appearances, they created Chapo Trap House. James became co-host of the Blowback podcast in 2019. The Chapo Guide to Revolution Biederman, Christman, James, Menaker, and Texas authored a satirical book about American politics, The Chapo Guide to Revolution: A Manifesto Against Logic, Facts, and Reason, published in August 2018 under the name Chapo Trap House. It debuted on The New York Times Best Seller list at number 6 under the Hardcover Non-Fiction category and number 7 under the Combined Print & E-Book category. 2020 election During the 2020 United States presidential election cycle, Chapo Trap House interviewed Democratic presidential candidates Marianne Williamson, Andrew Yang, John Delaney, Joe Sestak, Tom Steyer, and Bernie Sanders. In February 2020, The New York Times profiled the group's large live shows in early Democratic Party primary states, noting that they had "morphed into a touring political rally" for the election of Bernie Sanders. Post-2020 changes On June 29, 2020, Reddit banned the unofficial Chapo Trap House subreddit, citing violations of Reddit's new community guidelines and the subreddit's persistent failure to moderate rule-breaking content. The r/The_Donald and r/Cumtown subreddits were banned as well. The hosts of Chapo Trap House had previously repudiated the subreddit. Texas started co-hosting the Bad Faith podcast with Briahna Joy Gray in September 2020. In May 2021, it was announced that Texas was leaving Chapo Trap House. The podcast's Patreon page described the parting as amicable. Christman suffered an unspecified medical incident in September 2023, later revealed as a stroke. The hosts announced that Christman would "require a significant period of recovery" and his return to the show was indeterminate. In July 2024, Wade announced that Christman's Spanish Civil War episode series, which had been interrupted by his stroke, would be written and released as a self-published book. ==Hosts==

Will Menaker Will Menaker is one of three co-founders and regular co-hosts of Chapo Trap House. He has been described as the podcast's "planner" and "showrunner," often choosing the topics of discussion for each episode. He was raised in a self-described liberal family on the Upper West Side of New York, composed of himself and his adoptive parents: Katherine Bouton, an editor at The New York Times, and Daniel Menaker, an editor at The New Yorker and Random House. In 2019 Krueger and Menaker were sued by former Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign spokesman Jason Miller over a Splinter News article written by Krueger regarding allegations against Miller, and Menaker calling Miller a "rat-faced baby killer" on Twitter. Judges in New York and Florida dismissed Miller's suits and ordered him to pay the legal fees of Gizmodo (which owns Splinter News). Matt Christman Matt Christman, Chapo co-founder and co-host, grew up in the Rust Belt town of Manitowoc, Wisconsin. In 2020, he met his current wife Amber Rollo. They have one child together. Biederman, Chapo co-founder and co-host, was raised in the affluent, historically liberal neighborhood of Hyde Park in Chicago, and cites his upbringing in the city as motivating his criticism of the "establishment" Democratic party. Together with Texas and Blake Zeff, he co-created the fictional centrist political pundit Carl Diggler for CAFE, also voicing him on his in-character podcast The DigCast. a five-part documentary about MMA directed by Jon Bois of SB Nation. Amber A'Lee Frost Amber A'Lee Frost is a writer and musician who was a regular guest in the first year of Chapo, and officially joined as a co-host in November 2016. In 2011 she moved to New York, where she worked for the Working Families Party, the Democratic Socialists of America, and then Bernie Sanders's 2016 presidential campaign. She has written for Columbia Journalism Review, Jacobin, The Baffler and Current Affairs. Frost also taught a freshman writing course at New York University. Her first book of essays, Dirtbag, was published by St. Martin's Press in 2023. She also contributed to Rosa Luxemburg: Her Life and Legacy (2013) and False Choices: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Rodham Clinton (Verso, 2016). ==Reception==

Avid fans of Chapo Trap House are called Grey Wolves, a joke referencing the neo-fascist, nationalist Turkish movement of the same name. A subsequent A.V. Club review of the seventh episode noted the show's marked improvements in audio quality and the hosts' newfound confidence and flow in discussion, while retaining the "raw energy and urgency that has fueled the show from the get-go." The publication eventually named the episode of the show following the election of Donald Trump one of the best individual podcast episodes of the year 2016. Mediaite called the show "consistently, absurdly funny and impressively literate on the diverse subjects it tackles," citing the hosts' "breadth of awareness about (seemingly) everything that's been published in every media outlet for the past few decades, and a depth of knowledge on various, arcane subjects." The Advocate praised the show for its "scathing, hilarious, erudite analysis on politics and media from a far-left perspective," and favorably analogized the thrill of listening to how Alex Jones and Rush Limbaugh make their right-wing fans feel. Comedy website Splitsider recommended the episode featuring video editor Vic Berger, who did an in-depth interview about his surreal Vine and YouTube shorts covering the 2016 presidential election season. In a 2016 column, Robby Soave of libertarian magazine Reason criticized the show as "apparently a group therapy session for Bernie bros." Soave wrote in reaction to host Will Menaker commenting on one of his tweets, saying that he believed Menaker had a hypocritical view of free speech rights, and said the hosts "would gleefully applaud the silencing of everyone to their right." The original version of the 2019 role-playing video game Disco Elysium features voice-acting cameos from Biederman, Christman, Menaker, and Texas. The creators of the game, Studio ZA/UM, lauded the podcast on Twitter, saying they had been "huge [Chapo] fans since the beginning." These voices were later replaced when the game was patched to Disco Elysium: Final Cut on PC and were never present for the console versions. In 2025, Biederman and Menaker had cameo appearances in the film Castration Movie Anthology ii. The Best of Both Worlds, directed by Louise Weard. The podcast is credited for bringing the slang words "failson" and "chud" into prominence. Political influence In March 2019, it was revealed former U.S. Senator from Alaska Mike Gravel filed for an exploratory committee regarding a possible 2020 presidential campaign after being convinced to run by students David Oks, Henry Williams, and Elijah Emery, who learned about Gravel from Chapo Trap House. Gravel's formerly dormant Twitter account soon went viral after being used by the students to attack various politicians, including Democrats Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris, in an effort to move discussion of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates leftward. The Mike Gravel campaign performed an AMA on the r/Chapotraphouse subreddit on April 8, the day the campaign officially launched. Italian weekly news magazine ''L'espresso attributed Chapo Trap House'' listenership with rising membership in the Democratic Socialists of America throughout early 2019, saying the podcast is real and physical program, which is bringing thousands of young Americans to subscribing themselves to the DSA: the young Democratic Socialists of America." Critique of the Democratic Party During the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, The New York Times profiled the Chapo Trap House hosts' characterizations of candidates challenging Vermont Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, the hosts' preferred candidate. The hosts called supporters of former Vice President Joe Biden "gelatinous 100-year-olds", referred to former Mayor Pete Buttigieg as "a bloodless asexual", and said former Mayor Michael Bloomberg should lose "so badly that this midget gremlin won't even have a shot even with a trillion dollars." When the hosts mentioned the name of Massachusetts Senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren during a live event, the crowd hissed. According to the article, "the Sanders campaign maintains a close relationship with the podcast. His senior adviser, David Sirota, and his national press secretary, Briahna Joy Gray, have also been on the podcast." Describing the podcast's simultaneous intense criticism of the Warren 2020 presidential campaign and its associations with the Sanders campaign, Zach Beauchamp of Vox wrote, "If Sanders's fans are really serious about helping their guy, they need to think carefully about whether what they're doing is actually working." ==See also==