A notable feature of the fiasco surrounding Ivan Yates’s abrupt exit from the Path to Power podcast was the casual dismissiveness of cause by some of his fans. It wasn’t such a big deal, in summary. “Lighten up, Matt,” said one, addressing Yates’s ex-podcast partner, Matt Cooper. Columnist and academic Eoin O’Malley commented that it “has to be the least scandalous of scandals in the history of Irish political scandals”.
O’Malley may be right at one level – if by scandal we mean the seismic corruption revealed by Ben Dunne’s massive payments to Charlie Haughey or Moriarty’s conclusions about Michael Lowry. But only someone who has missed the phenomenal rise and influence of podcasts could dismiss the Yates revelations as trivial. Recall how Donald Trump’s sit-down with Joe Rogan (the number one podcast in the US, third in this week’s Irish Spotify podcast charts) was heralded as one of the biggest interviews of his campaign, part of a strategy to target young men. Typical of this strategy was an interview with the podcaster and wrestler known as The Undertaker, Mark Calaway, who daringly told Trump he’d “made politics fun again”.
Think of the time invested in podcasts by Catherine Connolly at a crucial stage of her campaign.
What’s not to like? Soft, rambling, personal conversations allow political candidates to reach huge followings without the carping hard-news questions or possible ambushes. For some reason, followers generally do not expect the same rigour from their podcasters as they feel entitled to from the derided “MSM”.
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This dissonance was distilled by an X poster’s comment on Yates: “I wouldn’t have thought that podcasters need follow the same broadcasting rules as live radio,” he said, adding that while he doesn’t expect impartiality from podcast commentators, he does expect it from print journalists.
Men such as Yates are indulged because they get to play the bombastic, slightly shocking anti-woke dude to the snowflake partner. To his fans, Yates is that relatable, battle-scarred, straight-talking guy who has taken the punches and likes a good punt and a rant sweetened by a spoonful of gossip. So does it matter in the grand scheme if he’s also doing a bit of a Tadhg an dá thaobh (someone two-faced)?
The approach was well illustrated on an Indo Sport podcast on September 9th – the day Jim Gavin won the Fianna Fáil nomination – when host Joe Molloy cautioned Yates, his guest, that he’d heard a RTÉ panellist saying she’d never heard of Gavin. Yates was highly indignant. It was more a reflection on the person who said that, he blustered: “Like, what sort of rock have you lived under [not to have heard of Jim Gavin]? ... And it’s kinda reflective of RTÉ’s snowflake, wet-wipe type of social liberal left-wing person that’s on their panels, who’s actually pretty much out of touch with middle Ireland.”
Yates was introduced by Molloy as “now working in the media, not least with Matt Cooper on Path to Power”, not as a media coach working with politicians – and potentially presidential candidates, as he would go on to do. Fianna Fáil later confirmed that Yates provided two sessions for Gavin, between September 23rd and September 29th.
Having listed Gavin’s downsides – he was untested, he wasn’t a woman and might have a problem with “really nasty questioning” – Yates thought he was a potentially sensational catch for Fianna Fáil, and that the election was his to lose. He was already well informed on “the non-sports story of Jim Gavin”, with a glowing riff about the “intense” rivalry he came up against for the Irish Aviation Authority job and touching anecdotes about Gavin “walking around Mountjoy Square speaking to druggies, speaking to migrants who are clearly homeless, and actually developed an altruistic passion for that”.
He talked presciently about possible landmines: “The questions that become fatal are personal, are family ... or past finances. I have nothing to allege but don’t be surprised. I had to laugh when I saw Heather calling for a clean campaign – there’s two chances of that, no hope and Bob Hope.”
A month later, Yates confirmed those chances with his unwanted advice to Fine Gael to “smear the bejaysus out of” Connolly. Neither Connolly nor her team – which had been alleging a smear campaign from the end of August – looked a gift horse in the mouth. She took Yates’s words as gospel on Fine Gael strategy and was really “shocked”: “… On the other hand, [Ivan Yates] has done me a favour, and he did the people of Ireland a favour, and he’s certainly done my team a favour in that he’s absolutely articulated without hesitation what Fine Gael are up to.”
“Smearthebejaysus” went viral – a hashtag and a catchphrase. Who was going to believe an unpopular governing party over the apparently unaligned (but ex-FG) pundit?
Back on September 9th, observing a patently nervous Gavin about to drown in a cauldron of interviews, debates and genuine smears, Molloy asked Yates what he would say to Gavin if asked for advice.
“First of all, I charge a fortune for that type of advice and I don’t talk about my clients,” he replied, before proceeding to talk “in a kind of fanciful way” about the need for “the ugliest, nastiest, meanest preparation where someone will be absolutely horrible to you”. Which is a brilliantly productive circle, of course, if the starting strategy is to smear the bejaysus out of candidates – and you’re the guy who lands the job of toughening them up.
