Right-wing video site Rumble has repeatedly featured Trump ally and far-right podcaster Brenden Dilley’s show on its front page and “editor picks” section in recent weeks, after Dilley claimed that Rumble’s early right-wing investor and pro-Trump media figure Dan Bongino “promised” to try to get the show on the platform’s “front page every day.” Additionally, Dilley has said Rumble staff have “been very nice to [him] lately” and offered to give him “an opportunity to be on the front page a few times” — which he has claimed “made a significant difference” on the show’s viewership.
Dilley is a far-right podcaster who streams on Rumble and regularly spreads conspiracy theories, misogyny, and threatening rhetoric. He also leads a pro-Trump “meme team” which The New York Times reported “traffics freely in misinformation,” “racist stereotypes,” and “demeaning tropes about L.G.B.T.Q. people,” and whose content former President Donald Trump and his team have shared and coordinated on. Dilley, who previously pushed the QAnon conspiracy theory, has admitted that his “meme team” includes people “from the Anons and the chans,” a reference to QAnon supporters and users of far-right message boards on 4chan and 8chan/8kun.
On the July 25 edition of his show, Dilley said he has been “promised by Dan Bongino” — an early right-wing investor in Rumble who still owned millions of shares as of December 2023 — that “he would try to make sure I’m on the front page every day.” Dilley also said he would be having “a Zoom meeting with somebody from Rumble … right after the show” and suggested that “maybe they could help me get on the front page every day.” The next day, Dilley said that Rumble staff in the meeting had been “really wonderful.”
Dilley seemingly elaborated on his discussion with Rumble in the weeks following the meeting. Dilley claimed he “asked nicely” if the platform would “put me on the front page,” and he said that Rumble has “been very nice to me lately” and wanted to help him grow the channel, offering to give him “an opportunity to be on the front page a few times.” Dilley also credited Bongino for being “a friend” and the platform for telling Dilley that it would “feature” him.
A Media Matters review found that since Dilley’s July 25 announcement, his show has repeatedly been featured on Rumble’s front page — a development for which Dilley has repeatedly thanked the platform. He even gave a “shout out to the Rumble execs who decided to give me a shot on the front page. I will not let you down.” And he has also implied that the front page promotion has resulted in “a bunch of new people watching me.”
Since that July 25 announcement, Dilley has also repeatedly been featured in Rumble’s “editor picks” section, an apparently curated list of videos that the site’s source code calls the “absolute real best” of the platform. Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski has said that he “personally” and “manually” featured content on the “editor picks” section, which has often featured extremist and conspiratorial content. Dilley has claimed that being in the “editor picks” section has resulted in the show getting “the biggest numbers of my whole life.”
After a few weeks of Rumble promoting the show, Dilley claimed it had apparently made an impact. During his August 21 show, he said that “the team over at Rumble” allowing his show “to be featured a few days a week” had “made a significant difference” on viewership, claiming the show “broke 100,000 views on yesterday’s show, which is a big deal.”
