Chapo Trap House

An episode of Chapo Trap House usually lasts between 60 and 80 minutes. Episodes are typically structured with a prepared "cold open", an interview with a guest, and commentary on current events. In post-production, relevant audio samples are interspersed into the episode's discussion.[8] The theme song—and inspiration for the show's title—is "SALUTE 2 EL CHAPO PART 1" by DJ Smokey.[10] The show has a reading series which usually features texts by conservative and neoliberal writers, such as Ross Douthat, Ben Shapiro, Dennis Prager, and Rod Dreher.[8]

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,[11] and is as of September 2023 the third highest-grossing user on Patreon, earning over $180,000 per month,[12] having once been the highest-grossing user on Patreon.[13] Geek.com cited the show's premium content as an example of a viable revenue model for new podcasters.[14]

The three founding hosts met online through discussions on Twitter years prior to starting the podcast.[6][8] 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".[8][15][5] All had been politically motivated for several years.[6]

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.[16] 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.[8][6] They chose the name Chapo Trap House in the first episode as a joking reference to the Mexican drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán and a slang term for a drug house, intending the title to sound like the title of a rap mixtape.[8][17]

The show came to prominence during the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primary contest between former United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and United States Senator Bernie Sanders. The show's left-wing content became popular with supporters of the democratic socialist Sanders.[18]

The team behind the podcast has since expanded from the original three hosts. Brendan James joined as producer after appearing as a guest, and Virgil Texas and Amber A'Lee Frost joined the show as alternating co-hosts after the 2016 American presidential election.[17] James left the show in November 2017, later being replaced by producer and writer Chris Wade.[19]

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.[20][21]

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,[22] and Bernie Sanders.[23] 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.[24]

Virgil Texas started co-hosting the Bad Faith podcast with Briahna Joy Gray in September 2020.[25][26] In May 2021, it was announced that Texas was leaving Chapo Trap House. The podcast's Patreon page described the parting as amicable.[27]

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.[28] 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. After graduating from Skidmore College, Menaker worked at Liverwright, a W.W. Norton imprint, but left in 2016 when Chapo encountered commercial success.[29][30][31] Menaker has stated that the Iraq War and endorsements of the war by Congressional Democrats were the catalyst for his turning away from being a liberal Democrat to left-wing and socialist politics.[29]

Matt Christman, Chapo co-founder and co-host, grew up in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. He described his household as essentially apolitical; his father listened to conservative talk radio and identified as a Republican, while his mother never outwardly expressed any political views; both avoided the topic of politics in discussions. His father died during his junior year of high school. Before his high school graduation, Christman experienced a sudden onset of severe back pain with no readily apparent external cause. He underwent an intensive diagnostic process (including a spinal tap and MRI scans), surgery, and months of physical therapy. He made a partial recovery but his condition progressed into Brown-Séquard syndrome. As a result, he continues to walk with a limp. In an interview with CounterPunch, Christman spoke about his experience and how it had impacted the course of his life and development of his worldview:

I left the hospital in a wheelchair and then I spent the next four/five months rehabbing to be able to stand and walk. And I went from having braces on both of my legs to just one, and I went from a wheelchair to the braces, to crutches, to a cane, within six months. Had to do a bunch of horrible, really grody stuff to my body. And at the end of it, I kind of hit a plateau where I now have a limp, still, because I have something called Browns-Sequard syndrome [sic], which is where the damage to your spine affects two halves differently. So my right leg is normal in terms of strength but it's completely numb all the time, like it's asleep. And then my left leg is very weak, and I drag it. It's been that way since this happened. Amber's theory is you see white males who are committed Leftists, and if they're serious about it, there’s something that happened that gave them a sense of real vulnerability. They don't take for granted their position anymore. I never thought about it that way. It was never a conscious thing. But when I look at my interests and my milieu, I think that theory is kind of persuasive. I just kind of laid low and felt vulnerable.[32]

Christman attended Carroll University in Wisconsin.[29] A former active member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), he participated in founding a local chapter when he lived in Cincinnati, Ohio.[32]

Felix 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.[6] After attending the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, he moved to New York to work as a freelance writer, often covering mixed-martial-arts for Deadspin and the New York Observer.[33][34]

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.[44][45][46] 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.[45][46][47] The Mike Gravel campaign performed an AMA on the r/Chapotraphouse subreddit on April 8, the day the campaign officially launched.[48][49]

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 "[a] real and physical program, which is bringing thousands of young Americans to subscribing themselves to the DSA: the young Democratic Socialists of America".[50]

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".[51] 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".[52][53]

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.[54][55] The hosts of Chapo Trap House have frequently repudiated this subreddit as well.[56]