Personally, I think you guys should trust me 100%. No need to overthink it: Whatever I say and write, just accept it as fact.
Of course, it’s in my financial interests for you to do so. (And how!) The more you guys trust me, the greater my influence. And the greater my influence, the more I get paid.
In a media marketplace that turns influencers into superstars, that’s my passport to fame and glory!
Which incentivizes me to prioritize clicks, views, and engagement over truth and accuracy. Hey, I’m not gonna get filthy, stinkin’ rich by writing the world’s most accurate column — I make bank by growing an audience.
And like it or not, fertilizer makes the flowers grow.
I mean, if I was really, really smart, I could probably build an audience organically. But that’s hard work and takes years: There are thousands of wannabe pundits, YouTubers, and influencers jostling for supremacy, and only a few spots at the top. Competition is cutthroat. Getting clicks by being clever, creative, and credible is asking an awful lot!
Especially when there are psychological cheat codes.
We use ‘em all the time in marketing: To spike sales, we don’t double-down on truth and accuracy, do we? I’ve never been to a marketing meeting where the CEO barked, “C’mon, team! Let’s come up with our most truthful campaign yet!” Instead, we rely on emotional triggers — our fears, aspirations, dreams, and goals.
Sames goes for political punditry: Outrage — good or bad, true or false — is the mother’s milk of audience engagement.
Which is why we see so much of it.
Some pundits stoke outrage by insisting there’s a grand conspiracy (often involving Jews/Israel) that’s victimizing their audience. They see doom and gloom behind every corner — a great calamity is just about to strike.
And because their commentary is such a threat to the establishment and/or elites, they need your support to survive. (Donations gladly accepted; merch sales to your left.)
Others go in the opposite direction and insist everything is AMAZING. No matter the scoreboard, their side is always winning! They don’t analyze the news; they’re cheerleaders for their favorite political team. It’s fantasy/escapism in a news/punditry wrapper.
But if you watch ‘em carefully, you’ll notice commonalities among the grifters:
- Contrarianism is a huge part of their identity.
- They’re far more famous for their allegations and insults than their predictive accuracy.
- They’re always feuding with someone — most often a “traitor” from their own side of the aisle who’s not just misguided or wrong, but evil and un-American.
- Life as we know it is one big conspiracy, but because they’re so brave, smart, and insightful, they see through all the lies. Like Moses descending Sinai, they’ll dispense the TRUTH to the rest of us unwashed masses!
- Their “political evolution” has led them to abandon numerous old positions, stances, alliances, and identities. Yesterday they were blind; today they can see! If anything, they’re consistently inconsistent.
In my opinion, pundits owe you their honesty. That’s the absolute minimum. I mean, fine, being a politician might be a job for dishonest people, but being a pundit demands integrity — because part of a pundit’s job is to help audiences decide what to think.
But if you can’t trust what a pundit says, why would you listen to him?
It’s also helpful when a pundit has at least one area of specialized expertise — a tool or background that gives him extra insight. For example, if a pundit is also a historian, that might help him contextualize political trends.
Bonus points if the pundit has stuck to his worldview through good times and bad. Look at Rush Limbaugh: From the late 1980s through his final broadcast on Feb. 2, 2021, he remained remarkably consistent. You can’t think of too makes times El Rushbo switched positions on major issues (or minor issues, for that matter).
Can’t say the same for certain pundits who’ve zigzagged between supporting wars, opposing wars, loving Trump, hating Trump — so on and so forth.
A good pundit doesn’t always have to be right. That’s too much to ask. We’re not looking for perfection.
But he must be honest and have a clear, consistent worldview.
One of my favorite current pundits is Peter Zeihan — and he’s wrong a lot. But his schtick is, he’s a demographics expert, and he analyzes geopolitics via demographic datapoints. Because I understand where he’s coming from, I can follow his thought process. Sometimes I agree with him; sometimes I don’t. But I’m almost always glad that I listened.
And that’s the other thing good pundits must deliver: some sort of value proposition. At the high end is providing value by helping us understand the world better than we already do. On the low end is providing entertainment.
What made Limbaugh so special is that he excelled at both.
Most grifters are far better at entertaining than expanding our understanding of anything real or important. That’s because they’re not experts; they’re “personalities.”
Shock, outrage, and emotional manipulation are their bread and butter.
I’ve always been a bit of an anomaly in conservative media, ‘cause I don’t really focus on ideology, cheerleading, or the daily outrage. My lane is PR tactics, media relations, marketing, branding, and cause and effect. That’s what I know best — and just as importantly, it’s what I find interesting.
It’s probably hurt my punditry career: I’m not fishing in the lake with the most fish.
Obviously, there’s a reason why nobody else is doing my schtick!
But the upside is, if I (eventually) make it as a top-tier pundit, I’ll have done so without compromising my values or integrity. Instead of being the next G. Gordon Liddy, Tucker Carlson, Peter Zeihan, or Ben Shapiro, I’ll be the first Scott Pinsker. And hopefully, over the long term, that’ll enhance my value to an audience.
Question for PJ Media readers: Which pundits have provided you with the most value?
Share your answer(s) in the comments. We all have our favorites; I’m curious which names will come up the most.
PRediction: We’re about to enter the age of punditry lawsuits. Y’know how all doctors buy medical insurance now, because medical lawsuits are so rampant? That’s coming to political punditry.
We’re already seeing the first glimpses of it with Candace Owens, who’s being sued by the First Lady of France and the head of Turning Point USA’s security (among others). In my opinion, there’s a high probability that she’ll be found liable by at least one of ‘em — and it’ll be financially devastating.
A similar fate befell Alex Jones.
Because Candace Owens is such a duplicitous dirtbag, guilty verdicts won’t evoke much sympathy: “Good riddance to bad rubbish,” we’ll say. But if litigation knocks her off the (digital) air, there will be consequences.
Billionaire partisans will start funding lawsuits against podcasters and influencers for partisan reasons.
Maybe it won’t happen right away. Maybe at first, only egregious outliers like Owens and Jones will be targeted.
But eventually, it’ll expand. It always does.
I’m guessing it’ll take a Democratic D.C. takeover, plus a push to weaken liable/slander laws under the auspices of “preventing misinformation,” to kick everything in high gear. But once a rich liberal can cut a check and kill the career of a top MAGA influencer, it’ll almost certainly happen.
Liberals control the mainstream media, but the blogosphere is dominated by right-leaning personalities. For pragmatic, political reasons, targeting influencers is an obvious Democratic move.
Does this mean Candace Owens shouldn’t be sued?
I’m not saying that. I have a law degree, but I’m not an expert in this category of law. If Owens knowingly, recklessly, and maliciously said untrue things that damaged other people, then they have every right to hold her accountable.
I’m just saying it’s a slippery slope. Tread carefully.
PRojection: Speaking of which, we’re at the ten-year anniversary of the Gawker-Hulk Hogan lawsuit, where billionaire Peter Thiel helped fund litigation that sent Gawker — an online gossip site that trafficked in gotcha stories — into bankruptcy.
The background is, Gawker outed Thiel, who had kept his homosexuality a secret. So when Gawker published clips of Hulk Hogan’s sex tape, Thiel donated big bucks to the Hulkster’s legal fund.
End result: No more Gawker. The site went belly-up.
Gawker was closer to a Candace Owens than, say, a Thomas Sowell or a Victor Davis Hanson. It was a schlocky, bottom-feeding website. But it still got plenty of web traffic. Financially, it was a success.
And all it took was one well-funded lawsuit to kill it.
Not just pundits, but in the very near future, conservative media companies will be tempting targets for left-wing litigation, too. NewsCorp, The Daily Wire, Salem Communications (parent company of PJ Media), and more will be in their crosshairs.
‘Cause lawyers are expensive. You don’t need to “win” a lawsuit to hurt the other party. Just filing ‘em can provide dividends.
This is, I fear, the calm before the storm.
PRaise: To all the pundits who are in the game for the right reasons. Whereas the bad actors suck so much of the oxygen out of the room, in many ways we’re living in the Golden Era of conservative punditry.
We lack the superstars — those larger-than-life personalities like William F. Buckley and Rush Limbaugh — but are blessed with countless capable, thoughtful, insightful conservatives who do a wonderful job at political analysis. It’s an embarrassment of riches.
Sure, everything’s splintered across different platforms, but there’s some great talent out there. You just gotta look for ‘em.
PRedators: To The Washington Post for its mean-spirited, highly biased hit piece against pundit Ben Shapiro and his company, The Daily Wire. From cherry-picked stats to quoting Candace Owens’s publicist(!), it read like the author began with a theory — The Daily Wire is dying and nobody listens to Shapiro anymore — and built a story around it.
But it’s not true. Yes, The Daily Wire needs to refocus on creating viral conservative content, but reports of its demise are absurdly overstated. Shapiro still had 25 million YouTube views in April 2026 — plus millions more (I assume) on X, Facebook, The Daily Wire app, Rumble, and more. By every meaningful metric, he’s still in rarified air.
But you wouldn’t know that by reading the article. Not only did the WaPo extensively quote Candace Owens (plus her publicist!); it also borrowed Owens’ tactics.
Shame on ‘em.
