Chapo Trap House
Chapo Trap House is an American socialist political comedy podcast launched in March 2016 and hosted by Will Menaker, Felix Biederman, Matt Christman, and Amber A'Lee Frost. It is produced by Chris Wade.
The show provides commentary from a democratic-socialist perspective, and its co-hosts are affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America. The hosts are critical of both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, particularly its centrist wing. Chapo supported Bernie Sanders in his first presidential campaign in the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries and his second campaign in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries. The show's contentious style of left-wing political discourse that eschews civility in favor of casual, blunt, often vulgar expression has given rise to a broader movement called the "dirtbag left", a term coined by later co-host Frost.
The series was originally founded by Menaker, Biederman, and Christman in March 2016, with Brendan James as producer. Frost and Virgil Texas joined in November of that year. James was replaced as producer with Wade in November 2017. In 2018, an imprint of Simon & Schuster published The Chapo Guide to Revolution, co-written by four of the original hosts along with James. The book debuted at number six on The New York Times Best Seller list. Texas left the show in May 2021. Frost took a hiatus for most of 2023 to publish her memoir and audiobook, Dirtbag: Essays. Christman took a hiatus in September 2023 due to complications from a stroke, but rejoined in December 2024.
Content
The Chapo hosts and producers identify with radical left-wing politics and frequently deride conservative, neoliberal, moderate, and liberal pundits. Writing for The New York Times, Nikil Saval called Chapo Trap House and its hosts "prime originators of the far left's liberal-bashing." The Pacific Standard wrote: Biederman said the show's audience is seeking alternatives to liberal media, which he calls "the dominion of either upper-middle-class smugness when it's even the least bit funny and insufferable self-righteousness when it's even the least bit conscious." Similarly, Christman said that leftist perspectives in media tend toward either the "smug above-it-all snark of The Daily Show or the quaver-voiced earnestness of, like, Chris Hedges or something. Neither of those models offer the visceral thrill of listening to people who actually give a shit." James said " is not just that people suck, and that the media and politics is gross, but that it doesn’t have to be this way. If it was just, 'Well, this is how it is, let’s just go down laughing,' then they would just be The Daily Show." Menaker has said that Chapo is meant to be in "marked contrast to the utterly humorless and bloodless path that leads many people with liberal or leftist proclivities into the trap of living in constant fear of offending some group that you're not a part of, up to and including the ruling class."File:Chapo Trap House, Live.jpg|thumb|right|Chapo Trap House hosts Felix Biederman, Matt Christman, Amber A'Lee Frost, Virgil Texas, and Will Menaker live at The Bell House in New York City in 2017
Chapo Trap House is dense with inside jokes and hyper-specific references to ongoing political discussion on Twitter. The hosts are associated with Twitter communities called "Left Twitter" and "Weird Twitter," a name used to describe a loose group of Twitter users known for absurdist humor.
Format and availability
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. The theme song—and inspiration for the show's title—is "SALUTE 2 EL CHAPO PART 1" by DJ Smokey. The show frequently features a reading series which usually features texts by conservative and neoliberal writers, such as Ross Douthat, Ben Shapiro, Dennis Prager, Megan McArdle and Rod Dreher. Dreher in particular has become a regular staple on the podcast, being featured nearly 30 times. The hosts jokingly offered him a position as co-host, after Dreher lost his position at The American Conservative. A number of these pundits are also featured and critiqued in The Chapo Guide to Revolution.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, and is as of September 2023 the third highest-grossing user on Patreon, earning over $180,000 per month, having once been the highest-grossing user on Patreon. Geek.com cited the show's premium content as an example of a viable revenue model for new podcasters.
Special series
In addition to the regular podcast episodes, Chapo has released three scripted miniseries focused on history & politics. Hell of Presidents, hosted by Christman and Wade, which details the administration and personality of every president of the United States; Hell on Earth: The Thirty Years' War and the Violent Birth of Capitalism, focusing on the Thirty Years' War and the birth of capitalism, again hosted by Christman and Wade; and Seeking a Fren for the End of the World, hosted by Biederman with writing by Joshua A. Cohen and Spencer Rider, focusing on 'Conservative Inc.', the history of right-wing think tanks and media in the United States. An additional series about the Spanish Civil War by Christman and Wade was planned but cancelled after Christman's stroke. It was released in book form in September 2024 as ¡No Pasarán! Matt Christman's Spanish Civil War. In 2021, Biederman and Christman hosted the series Time For My Stories on the now-defunct podcast platform Stitcher, discussing different TV drama series. In 2025, Biederman began hosting THE PLAYERS CLUB!, a series about video games, with the first season focusing on the Metal Gear franchise.Hell of Presidents was named as one of the 10 best podcasts of 2021 by Entertainment Weekly. In 2024, Hell on Earth was honored at the Webby Awards in the category Best Limited Series Podcasts.
Additionally, Movie Mindset, hosted by Menaker and Hesse Deni from the Seeking Derangements podcast is an irregular series focused on film reviews; and Hinge Points, hosted Christman and Danny Bessner of the American Prestige podcast, focuses on alternate history.
History
Background and formation
The three founding hosts met online through discussions on Twitter years prior to starting the podcast. Under the usernames @willmenaker ; @cushbomb ; and @ByYourLogic, they developed followings for their political commentary and have been called "minor Twitter celebrities."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. 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. 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.
Early years
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.The team behind the podcast has since expanded from the original three hosts. Vice investigative journalist Brendan James joined as producer after appearing as a guest, and former The Onion writer and twitter personality Virgil Texas and Amber A'Lee Frost joined the show as alternating co-hosts after the 2016 American presidential election. James left the show in November 2017, later being replaced by producer and writer Chris Wade. James became co-host of the Blowback podcast in 2019.
''The Chapo Guide to Revolution''
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.2020 election
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, and Bernie Sanders. 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.Post-2020 changes
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. The r/The_Donald and r/Cumtown subreddits were banned as well. The hosts of Chapo Trap House had previously repudiated the subreddit.Texas started co-hosting the Bad Faith podcast with Briahna Joy Gray in September 2020. In May 2021, it was announced that Texas was leaving Chapo Trap House. The podcast's Patreon page described the parting as amicable.
Christman suffered an unspecified medical incident in September 2023, later revealed as a stroke. The hosts announced that Christman would "require a significant period of recovery" and his return to the show was indeterminate. Later that year, Frost returned from a hosting hiatus with the release of her memoir and audiobook, Dirtbag: Essays. In July 2024, Wade announced that Christman's Spanish Civil War episode series, which had been interrupted by his stroke, would be written and released as a self-published book.