It’s noon and Adam Mockler is sitting cross-legged on an office chair inside the home studio on the second floor of his Avondale apartment. Stocking-footed, with a day’s growth of stubble on his cherubic cheeks, his bangs purposely messy, flashing a heart-shaped tattoo on his left triceps, he faces the camera on his computer and prepares to address his YouTube audience on his favorite topic: his nemesis, Donald Trump.
A panel light illuminates his face. At the top of the long staircase leading to the studio, next to a neon Mockler Media sign, is a photo of Mockler with one of his heroes, Barack Obama. On his desk are a mixing board, a printer, and a computer monitor.
“I’m thinking I’ll make a video on the Iran war, the USS Abraham Lincoln,” Mockler muses. He’s referring to the navy ship that was deployed in the Middle East for more than 260 days, leading to supply shortages and crew exhaustion, with some sailors even attempting to jump off the deck — an embarrassing episode for the administration and the sort of story that is Mockler’s bread and butter. “Trump also made this weird statement about how he wants to drop South Korea and move toward North Korea because of Kim Jong Un,” Mockler says, wheeling his office chair closer to the camera to prepare for his diatribe.
There’s no script. “I wing most of it,” Mockler explains. He maneuvers into camera range and presses record.
“All right, everybody,” he begins in his rat-a-tat voice. “We are now on day 170 of Donald Trump’s war with Iran that is failing day after day after day. And at this point, he is like a cornered animal, lashing out at all of the countries around us, mainly our allies.”
He goes on like this for 12 full minutes, interspersing a flame-throwing straight-to-camera monologue about Trump with clips from newscasts and screenshots of the president’s social media posts. Once he is finished, he sends the footage to one of his editors, who posts it within a half hour to YouTube, where it will receive more than 190,000 views.
The 24-year-old Mockler, who started pontificating about politics just three years ago, has rapidly emerged as a star of liberal punditry, with 2.2 million YouTube subscribers. Feeding his viewers a mix of Trump-fueled outrage and caustic political analysis, he has thrived in the modern media landscape, where people increasingly seek out — and are fed — content that reinforces their beliefs. He even offers hope, however misplaced, that Trump and his lackeys might come crashing down in spectacular fashion, as evidenced by the provocative titles on his channel, such as “Trump BLINDSIDED as EVERYONE RESIGNS!” (everyone had not, in fact, resigned) and “Kash Patel CAREER OVER after DRUNK LEAK” (Kash Patel remains the FBI director).
If it all sounds like a lot of social media hot air — and yes, there is plenty of that — consider the real-world traction Mockler is getting. He has interviewed major politicians, including Governor JB Pritzker and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. He flies around the country to debate conservatives in front of audiences. And he has parlayed his new media popularity into an old media presence, becoming a frequent guest on CNN. Ahead of a high-stakes midterm election and 2028 presidential race, he has cemented himself as an influential enough voice to shape political discourse and even mold the future of the Democratic Party. In April, according to data compiled by writer Kyle Tharp, who covers media and politics for his newsletter, Chaotic Era, Mockler’s YouTube page was the fifth-most-viewed partisan channel on the platform, trailing just Fox News, MS NOW, MeidasTouch, and The Daily Show — and besting the likes of Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan.
It’s late August, a slow news month, so Mockler scans for material online. He discovers that Trump called Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia — a Democrat that Mockler greatly admires — a “Pee-wee Herman look-alike.”
“Oh my God, I’ve got the next clip,” Mockler exults.
So he records a video about that. “All right, everybody, check this out,” he begins that one, his third of the day. “Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff seems to have sparked chaos within the White House.” Mockler goes on to detail the saga of ultraloyal Trump aide Natalie Harp, splicing his commentary with clips of the president berating the press. “If you appreciate these videos, make sure you drop a like, subscribe to the Adam Mockler feed,” he says, wrapping up. “I love each and every single one of you.” As always, he ends with his signature tagline: “Peace out.”
It would be an understatement to call Adam Mockler a digital native. He started his YouTube channel when he was just 9 years old, making videos of himself playing Minecraft and Call of Duty. (Even before that, Mockler would film short scripted movies with his cousins, though those were never uploaded to YouTube.) He had only 200 subscribers — “my friends and family, random people.” It was “bad content,” he admits, but it gave him experience editing and appearing on camera.
From a young age, Mockler wasn’t shy about speaking his mind. “He has always been opinionated,” says his mother, Stefanie Mockler. “When he was 4 or 5, he was around a lot of adults. He was always part of different conversations, and he was very curious. He had a lot of opinions and shared them.”
Mockler grew up in Valparaiso, Indiana, about 50 miles southeast of Chicago. It’s a largely conservative area, but his mother imbued him with liberal values. She was 15 when he was born; his father was 16. His mother isn’t religious, though she grew up in a Christian household, and his father, who is of Syrian descent, is Muslim, which got Mockler interested in exploring both faiths. (He is now agnostic.) Growing up, he also went through periods of being deep into books, jewelry, and magic, Stefanie recalls.
Mockler took an interest in civic issues as a boy, even before Trump burst onto the political scene. In the fifth grade, he got kicked out of class after debating his teacher on same-sex marriage. Mockler was in favor of legalizing it. His teacher wasn’t. “He said I was being disruptive,” Mockler recalls. “Looking back, I think I was being disruptive.” In high school, he was ejected from his homecoming dance for performing what he calls a “dirty” song after he’d promised the principal a clean version.
“I’ve always had this little bit of anti-authority strain,” Mockler tells me. “I’m not rude or anything. And then I went to college and I still just had this urge to create something different outside of the normal lane.”
Mockler attended Indiana University Northwest, about 30 minutes from home, for two semesters before transferring to DePaul to major in communications. But before he switched schools came a watershed moment. In 2023, he decided to visit a Trump rally in Des Moines, Iowa, and interview Trump supporters. “There were people on The Daily Show who would go to Trump rallies and other folks that would go to Trump rallies, trying to be as condescending as possible,” he says. “So I remember thinking, I feel like I can have conversations in a way that doesn’t alienate people. People talking to Trump supporters in a more genuine way. It just wasn’t happening.”
The event was canceled because of a tornado watch, but around the grounds, Mockler got his first experience confronting conservatives. He posted the video to YouTube, where it has received 135,000 views and was picked up by other Trump-hating channels, whose audiences loved seeing a liberal in enemy territory. One progressive YouTuber’s video reacting to Mockler’s footage has more than 1.4 million views.
Making the Des Moines video — paying for gasoline, a hotel room, and a cameraman — cost Mockler around $900. It was all the money he had in his bank account. A few weeks later, though, he’d earned enough at his job to take another trip to a Trump rally, this time in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Mockler is such a big fan of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson that he keeps a copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on his desk. So on the Cedar Rapids video, before going out to meet the Trump-loving public, he touts having a trunk full of drugs à la Thompson, parodying the aesthetic of the film adaptation. Mockler titled this video “Fear and Loathing at a Trump Rally.”
“Adam is what we’ve been searching for for a long time,” says a Democratic strategist. “He’s somebody who has stood up to the other side and not turned it into a shouting match.”
He’d found his calling but was frustrated by the lack of support he was getting at his new school. “DePaul gave me very little infrastructure,” he says. “It felt surprising to me. I’m not going to talk bad about that, but I remember emailing some teachers and being like, ‘Hey, I’m building this channel that has 100,000 followers now and I want to get some advice.’ No one would respond to me. So I was like, Fuck this, I’m going to drop out and pursue this full-time.”
Shortly before leaving school in early 2024, Mockler had been recruited to make more videos by Occupy Democrats, a left-wing social media group, but he didn’t start to build a massive following until that March, when he signed up with MeidasTouch, a digital media network that opposes Trump and is popular among liberals. Quickly, he became one of the site’s most popular contributors, posting videos of debates with conservatives as well as commentary on the news. He’s become a favorite of Democrats of all stripes, young and old.
“Adam is what we’ve been searching for for a long time,” says political strategist Kevin Lampe, who counts the three most recent Democratic presidents among his clients. Lampe met Mockler for the first time at a breakfast this year before the Obama Center opening. What he sees in Mockler is a liberal who is just as opinionated, just as ready to attack, as a conservative. “He’s somebody who has stood up to the other side and not turned it into a shouting match. He is not doing talking points, and that makes the difference.” Lampe points to an old political stereotype: “A conservative goes into an argument thinking they can win. A liberal goes into it thinking they can learn something. Adam goes in thinking he can win. He is confident without being cocky.”
It’s key that he’s doing this on social media. Arguably, social media bears the most responsibility for the rise of Trump. During the 2024 election, Trump dominated Kamala Harris online, driving the conversation, winning over influencers, and capturing attention by appearing on popular manosphere podcasts. After, Democrats pledged to start winning over people who get their news from platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and X. Mockler is hardly the “liberal Joe Rogan” Democrats have sought, but he is someone with a huge and growing digital audience.
More Top Picks Oud Mood Lattafa Perfumes For Women And Men
The algorithms reward sensationalism and conflict, and Mockler is willing to lean in for his cause. “In the attention-based economy,” he says, “I’m using the vehicle of short clips to get through to people with short attention spans for a better, more liberal world.”
For Mockler, there are no slow news days. Videos must be posted, five or six a day. After all, that’s how he makes his money. On this day, there’s no time to go out for lunch, so Mockler’s majordomo, 27-year-old Noah Akins, orders from Cava on DoorDash. Akins sits at a table in the studio, behind a computer, answering emails and scheduling appearances for his boss. A longtime fan, Akins, a fellow Hoosier, came to Chicago to attend Loyola and later got his master’s degree at DePaul. He has worked as a field coordinator for Alderperson Daniel La Spata. He met Mockler at a local Democrats event, where he half-seriously asked for a job. Mockler took down his Instagram handle and contacted him a week later. They’ve been working together since July. A whiteboard in the studio lays out the daily schedule of postings.
Mockler’s girlfriend, Eumie Shin, is also a liberal internet influencer, known online as Eumieverse. She lives in Cincinnati, but today, she’s debating an antifeminist in Nevada, and Mockler calls her frequently to check in.
Between videos, Mockler turns his attention to an upcoming engagement in Nashville with CJ Pearson, a 24-year-old conservative activist. They will argue opposing viewpoints on the SAVE America Act as the main event of a WWE-style lineup of head-to-head matchups dubbed Word War Debate II. “He’s actually part of trying to overturn the 2020 election,” Mockler says of Pearson, “and I’m gonna call him out on it.” Mockler considers opening with that but decides to save it for later in the debate.
The algorithms reward sensationalism and conflict, and Mockler is willing to lean in for his cause. “In the attention-based economy,” he says, “I’m using the vehicle of short clips to get through to people with short attention spans for a better, more liberal world.”
Mockler would end up besting Pearson (viewers in person and online voted), and he posted footage from the debate on YouTube, including one video he called “Adam Mockler Ends MAGA Star’s Career on Stage.” Pearson, who is Black, posted on X that Mockler “apparently believes that black people are too dumb to figure out how to obtain a passport.”
As he eats lunch in the studio, Mockler takes a call from Los Angeles–based consultant Victor Shi, who helps book Mockler on podcasts and other shows, to discuss the packed itinerary for his upcoming trip to L.A. Mockler has an interview scheduled with Pod Save America’s Jon Favreau and a guest appearance on MS NOW.
“I think The Daily Show would be good for you to get on,” says Shi, who is also 24.
“That’d be really big,” Mockler agrees.
In a way, Mockler has already made an appearance on The Daily Show. In June, after playing a clip of Mockler knocking Vice President JD Vance’s lack of charisma on CNN, anchor Jordan Klepper froze on a frame of the fresh-faced pundit and quipped, “If this student council president says JD has no rizz, I believe it.” (“They all think I’m this goody two-shoes,” he told Chicago’s photo director, then countered, “I smoke weed.”)
Mockler will be flying to New York in a few days to appear on CNN, then to Los Angeles two days later. “Doing stuff just helps the PR train,” he says. “This L.A. trip is great. It’s a mix of debates and podcasts and space for me to do my content.”
When Mockler is on the road, he records his videos in hotel rooms but can’t manage five a day, which hurts his revenue stream. Still, the trips are worth it, he says, for “networking” — meeting people who can expand his platform and get his name out there. Gearing up for the midterms, he is renting an apartment in Midtown Manhattan from September through early November, in part so that he can make more CNN appearances.
Mockler is constantly trying to build his profile — more exposure means more views, and that means more income. He wants to go beyond politics into entertainment. On the L.A. trip, he makes an appearance on Kathy Griffin’s YouTube talk show, where she pokes fun at his stylishly shaggy hair. (“This is called the stoner haircut — it’s purposefully supposed to make me seem like a bit of a disheveled stoner,” Mockler replied.)
Stefanie Mockler is a bit stunned by how quickly all the attention has come for her son. When he made his CNN debut in July 2025, she hosted a watch party with family at her Valparaiso home. “It was surreal, to be honest,” she says. “I just see him as the little boy I raised.”
Mockler’s most viewed moment occurred on that network. On a CNN NewsNight panel in April, Mockler scolded conservative pundit Scott Jennings to his face for supporting Trump’s war in Iran. “We all know that Scott Jennings is more than happy to defend a war with a country that starts with the letters I-R-A that we are currently failing, that is going to put us trillions and trillions of dollars more in debt. I was only a few years old while you were in the [George W. Bush] administration defending prior endless wars. Now this war is failing.”
“You have the attention span of a gnat,” Jennings snarled.
“I debated you on TV four to six weeks ago and you said we were weeks away from [ending the war]. Now you’re making condescending remarks because you can’t defend the fact that this war is not going your way.”
“Get your fucking hand out of my face,” Jennings shouted, live on the air. “Honestly, I’m not going to have this guy’s hand in my face.”
The clip went viral, and Mockler saw it as a star-making exchange. It boosted his X following, which was already around 200,000, and drew more attention to his YouTube channel, where he posted the video with the title “I MADE SCOTT JENNINGS CRY ON CNN!!!”
“After the Scott Jennings moment, that changed a lot,” Mockler says. “That was a really big shift. Everything I posted on Twitter just went a lot more viral. OK, I’m actually a figure in the space that has a voice now and not just someone blending into the background.”
The path from Walter Cronkite’s “And that’s the way it is” to Adam Mockler’s “Peace out” was paved by Rush Limbaugh, cable news, and Mark Zuckerberg. From the 1950s through the 1980s, the three network news channels, constrained by the Federal Communications Commission’s fairness doctrine, sought to broadcast middle-of-the-road programming. Then the rise of talk radio, fueled by right-wing firebrand Limbaugh, and the advent of cable TV, especially Fox News and MSNBC (now MS NOW), started to balkanize the media landscape. But it was the internet, particularly social media, that created outlets for every niche opinion.
Mockler’s youth helps him connect with Gen Z and millennial viewers, who have lived through world-shaking crises like the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic. “People are trusting institutions less,” says Mike Nellis, a Democratic strategist who records a twice-weekly livestream with Mockler. “I think Adam’s been good at getting people to trust him by being open and vulnerable about what he thinks of the news.” (Not all Mockler’s fans are young. As he was leaving Boulevard Bistro in his neighborhood one day recently, he was stopped by an elderly woman who recognized him. “I’m on your side,” she said.)
The way Mockler sees it, he’s able to connect with disaffected younger viewers who “don’t identify with these 82-year-old political experts who have been doing this.” (Sorry, James Carville.) “They identify with the younger people. Also, I think I can kind of synthesize a lot of what’s happening decently well. Not because I’m, like, unique in any way.” He’s seen his peers get sucked into other digital rabbit holes. “I have friends in Indiana who are reposting Andrew Tate content and Nick Fuentes content. I’ve grown up with these people. I can see how it happens.” Mockler is at the opposite end of the political spectrum from Tate (a manosphere influencer who was recently indicted in Romania on charges of trafficking minors and money laundering) and Fuentes (an openly racist, antisemitic streamer from La Grange Park who now lives in Berwyn), and he’s far more mainstream, but all three are, in their own ways, indelibly shaping the political views of their millions of followers with dogmatic takes.
Mockler, whose videos find fault with virtually every Trump policy and action, draws an audience of Americans who are convinced the president is a serial rapist, a pedophile, a fascist, and a warmonger — not to mention senile and flatulent. Mockler feeds viewers what they want to hear: headlines and videos proclaiming that the end of Trump’s term is nigh, that Trump’s health is declining, that Trump defecated in the Oval Office (“Trump Clears Oval Office in Gross Disaster”), even when the evidence is hardly overwhelming.
In April, Mockler’s YouTube page was the fifth-most-viewed partisan channel on the platform, trailing just Fox News, MS NOW, MeidasTouch, and The Daily Show — and besting the likes of Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan.
The problem with fighting fire with fire is that we all end up in flames. There’s little doubt this sort of algorithm-driven absolutist punditry has deepened the national divide, making it more difficult for viewers to acknowledge the goodwill and even the humanity of those they oppose. James N. Druckman, co-author of Partisan Hostility and American Democracy: Explaining Political Divisions and When They Matter and a political science professor at the University of Rochester, argues that immoderate rhetoric leads to “less understanding of and tolerance for the views of the other side and potentially more moralizing of your own views.”
That’s not to say Mockler is purely a sensationalist. His YouTube titles, which liberally use all caps for dramatic emphasis and are often punctuated by several exclamation points, are more tabloid-like than the videos themselves — they’re clickbait, in other words, designed to maximize views on YouTube. He delivers his monologues in a measured tone. As for his unrelenting focus on Trump, Mockler contends it’s inevitable given the president’s conduct: “Some people argue that I’m feeding into that loop by giving him attention and making the videos and covering him, but I would argue that somebody needs to cover this. He floods the zone with so much bullshit that it’s impossible not to cover him.”
On the Friday afternoon before Labor Day, Mockler is back in his studio doing a live stream with Scott MacFarlane, a former CBS News reporter who now works at MeidasTouch. Mockler complains of feeling “depressed and drained”: “I burnt myself out over the past week, going from New York to L.A. to Chicago, back to New York.” In just a few days, Mockler will be leaving for Nashville for the debate event, then New York again for the two-month stint. He steps out onto his deck to call his girlfriend on
her birthday, then holds a conversation with an associate in which he talks about his ambition to become another Jon Stewart or Bill Maher.
Mockler’s focus on Trump raises an obvious question: What will he do when Trump is gone?
“It’s something we think about a lot,” he says. “Lately, I’ve built an ability to talk about more cultural issues and a debate ability that supersedes whatever is going on right now.” Recently, he’s been posting videos about Andrew Tate, some of which have attracted more than one million views. “Andrew Tate has distorted and warped the minds of a lot of young men who are lonely. So I talk about this youth male loneliness issue. There are other issues I can talk and debate about, and I think it’s just breaking out into that world. So when Trump dies, I want to have a channel where I do debates.”
Earlier this year, he launched The Adam Mockler Debate Show, a series pitting him against young conservatives. He has also started his own production company, modeled in part after Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA. He wants to own his content, without relying on traditional outlets to broadcast it.
Whatever the case, Trump still has two years left in his term, giving Mockler no shortage of material to work with for now. And in this media landscape, whatever comes next could be even wilder. You’ll have to keep watching to find out.
More Top Picks What Are Colored Overlays And How Do They Help Reading
Edward Robert McClelland is a freelance writer for Chicago magazine.