Believe it or not, your typical establishment media shills have been promoting the heck out of former first lady Michelle Obama’s new career venture into video podcasting.
And, believe it or not, all that shilling doesn’t appear to have changed very many hearts or minds.
Michelle — sans her husband, former President Barack Obama — recently launched a new YouTube podcast series with her brother, Craig Robinson (no, not the actor from “The Office”).
Calling her show “IMO,” (an internet acronym for “In My Opinion”), Obama presented her new venture as a sort of behind-the-scenes look at her life, interspersed with her thoughts on various world events, while calling in her famous friends for some name recognition.
As a random example of what to expect of this show, Michelle recently revealed her “pet peeve” about Barack — which is the fact that he’s not particularly committed to punctuality.
This breathtaking revelation was enough to get an entire puff-piece video from Today.
But it wasn’t just Today. The Associated Press, the U.K. Independent, The Hill, Axios, The New York Times, and so on, and so forth, all spilled digital ink effectively giving “IMO” as much free advertising as the FCC would allow.
And if the early returns are any indication, all that free advertising appears to have been in vain.
Do you think Michelle Obama is planning a run for office?
Yes: 36% (118 Votes)
No: 64% (206 Votes)
“IMO” — at least according to left-leaning YouTube’s publicly available metrics — hasn’t exactly garnered a ton of views, and that’s being generous.
The debut episode of “IMO,” humbly titled “Michelle Obama & Craig Robinson Start a Podcast,” garnered a paltry 70,000 views.
Now, to be totally fair, it’s hard to gauge the success of anything based on a “first episode,” and to be charitable, this writer knows he certainly wouldn’t garner anything close to 70,000 views if he ever started a podcast with his brother.
But this writer isn’t the better half of a media darling couple.
And this writer also doesn’t have famous friends like actress Issa Rae, who headlined the second “IMO” episode — and this is where the numbers get inarguably brutal.
[embedded content]
That second episode, despite having a much catchier angle than “I’ve started a podcast with my brother” (“Some Friendships Need to Go with Issa Rae”), has plummeted to just under 26,000 views as of publishing.
Even if 26,000 views were gangbusters (they’re not), at the end of the day, it still marks an audience downsize of nearly two-thirds! There’s no way to spin that steep drop-off as anything other than “brutal.”
And, to perhaps add insult to injury, it’s not like the podcasting space is lacking for listeners.
Compare Obama’s “IMO” to far-left California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s “This Is Gavin Newsom” (he really stretched his brain cells on that one). Newsom’s episode with conservative Charlie Kirk has over 740,000 views.
And that’s to say nothing of the true heavyweights in the space, like the “whatever” podcast, which routinely brings in hundreds of thousands of views, or Joe Rogan‘s podcast, which can bring in millions of views.
Look, it’s still a bit early to call “IMO” a flop.
But given the leftist media machine behind it, not even Barack could deny that his wife’s latest venture is off to a rough start.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
