Recently, I learned about a concept called atomic change. The term’s meaning depends on who’s employing it. One professional coach’s website describes it, in so many words, as making discrete adjustments to a business that, over time, lead to its significant transformation.

An engineering professor defines it as “a change applied to a class definition (i.e., its source code) such that a) it is minimal (cannot be decomposed into other atomic changes) and b) the program compiles and builds after the change.”

Then we tumble into the realm of inspirational gurus and thought leaders, where breathwork and manifesting meet motivational speak, popping with familiar verbal kernels like “sparking joy” and “habit formation.” It all reduces to the promise of small daily actions that, over time, build into the conquest of your wildest dreams.

Notice how similar the programming instructions are for computers, systems and people. Atomic change suggests that the soul, like the mind, can be reconfigured as gradually as we might update a laptop one key and chip at a time. That premise — that people can be gradually reconfigured — is one Oprah Winfrey discovered four decades ago when she launched the syndicated talk show that would change daytime TV, “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” on Sept. 8, 1986.

Who and what we read is shaped in no small part by Winfrey. Somewhere in your house probably lurks a book, an accessory or an appliance you may not have bought if Winfrey hadn’t given it her seal of approval.

(George Burns / ©Harpo Productions / Courtesy Everett Collection) Talk show host Oprah Winfrey points to an audience member during a taping of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in 1996.

Even if that isn’t the case, the ramifications of two Oprah Winfrey endorsements touch every American: It’s unlikely the names of Dr. Mehmet Oz and Dr. Phil McGraw would have floated into Donald Trump’s orbit otherwise. Since Winfrey anointed them as her go-to experts on wellness and behavioral health, Trump added them to his ineffectual celebrity governing cabinet. Dr. Oz leads the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Dr. Phil, America’s pro bono therapist, is now the celebrity face of Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission. In 2025, after previously embedding with Immigration and Customs Enforcement during raids in Chicago, his MeritTV crews were on the ground during ICE operations in Los Angeles. Merit Street Media, the television network he launched around MeritTV, later filed for bankruptcy protection.

This is what it means to spend 40 years being America’s original influencer.

Some may take issue with likening Oprah Winfrey to J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb. If this is the only way you view him, I suppose that’s fair. But remember that before Oppenheimer tossed us into the nuclear age, he pioneered modern theoretical physics in the United States. Some of his initial investigations contributed to our understanding of neutron stars and black holes.

We often associate him with the scriptural quote from the Bhagavad Gita that reads, “Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.” Not many recall his reported invocation of another work of Sanskrit poetry that reads, “In sleep, in confusion, in the depths of shame/The good deeds a man has done before defend him.”

A similar tension shadows how we reconcile what Winfrey means to American culture. 

Over the years, Winfrey gave us many nice things. She was the first daytime host to bring New Age, self-help philosophies to a massive audience under the rubric of “Change Your Life TV” while also making literacy fashionable via “Oprah’s Book Club” and promoting feel-good consumerism.

Through her encouragement, reading became a social, communal activity and positively relating to one another part of a purpose-driven existence. Along those lines, “Oprah” raised the profiles of many figures, including life-fixer Iyanla Vanzant and interior designer Nate Berkus, who reframed homekeeping as house pride. Even Winfrey’s movie career is largely comprised of roles that originated in books and ideas that spoke to her on a deep level, including her turns in Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” and Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple.”

Phil McGraw and Oprah Winfrey at the 54th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards in Los Angeles on Sept. 22, 2002.

But if it feels like “The Oprah Winfrey Show” remains a present force despite Winfrey ending her show 15 years ago, that is because it lives on through hundreds of self-made influencers.  Instagram and TikTok are awash in smiling people reminding their followers that they are worthy and loved; that they do not have to put up with abuse or maltreatment; and that they deserve to treat themselves to subscriptions of life-changing supplements, beauty products and meal kits of their choice. Link in bio!

A few, such as Jay Shetty and Alex Cooper, have amassed enough of an audience to build media companies around themselves and their brands – which are essentially one and the same. Of course, they are not billionaires like Oprah or celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow or Reese Witherspoon, who leveraged their pre-existing stardom into profitable imprimaturs in wellness and publishing.

But as Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil continue to embarrass themselves publicly, some wonder what responsibility Winfrey feels for making them famous. A recent interview with veteran critic Eric Deggans in Emmy magazine answered that question definitively.

“Everybody has their own path in life, and it has not one thing to do with me, and I don’t have one thing to do with them,” she said. On its own, that may read like spiritual bypassing. In the context of what she stated before that, however, it makes sense: Winfrey said McGraw helped her through a challenging time when, in 1998, she was accused of defaming the beef industry and sued by Texas ranchers. She found that Oz had a gift for explaining preventive medicine to ordinary people. 

“At the time, the reason and intention behind me giving them their breaks was I thought they had valuable information to share that had been meaningful to me,” she explained.

Thus, the conundrum of Winfrey’s terribly consequential influence. 

Long before Oz entered politics, for example, he’d been discredited for dispensing a vast array of scientifically unsound medical advice on “The Dr. Oz Show,” which Winfrey’s Harpo Productions co-produced. Nobody forced viewers to follow his unsound prescriptions.

The fact that many did makes one wonder how much sway Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil would have if our healthcare system didn’t relegate women to second-class status — and women of color even lower still — and placed behavioral and psychological wellness on par with other preventative care.

Let’s not discount America’s addiction to purchasing shortcuts for happiness either, which Winfrey also knows very well. Nine years ago, she included a Gratitude Jar on her annual Oprah’s Favorite Things list, which included nothing but 365 blank cards and vibes. It quickly sold out. That’s right: Oprah Winfrey persuaded her followers to buy a cylindrical glass container holding paper and air, for $45.

But I get it now. Winfrey was the first TV personality to invite a loyal audience primarily made up of harried women to put themselves and their care first. Over 25 years and 4,561 episodes, each of her small suggestions compounded into massive cultural shifts — significant transformation, from which there’s no going back.

The post How Oprah Winfrey became America’s cultural Oppenheimer appeared first on Salon.com.

The big story coming out of the 2024 election was how Donald Trump orchestrated a realignment of American politics, bringing demographic groups that had long eschewed the Republican Party into the tent. Latinos, Black voters and young people, mostly males, had voted for him and the GOP in larger numbers than anyone could remember, and it was seen in some quarters as a sign that the party was embarking on a thousand-year reign. Conventional wisdom held that Trump was something of a magical figure who had defied the odds, defeated the majority of the legal and political efforts to hold him accountable, and triumphantly returned to power. 

Many attributed the president’s success to a new political power on the block — the so-called manosphere, consisting of male podcasters with millions of followers who had enthusiastically endorsed Trump. Many pundits said that Kamala Harris lost the race because she didn’t try hard enough to appeal to these influencers, even though many are heavily misogynistic and wouldn’t have been open to her candidacy in any case. Their juvenile humor and oppositional defiance also happened, incidentally, to be perfectly matched to Trump’s sophomoric style. 

However, like transgressive boys everywhere, they have a short attention span; Trump has not turned out to be as fun as they thought he would be. Although anecdotal evidence suggests they have been less fervent followers of the president for several months now, The Wall Street Journal analyzed nearly 70,000 hours of podcasts to see if it was true. What they found was revealing: “Mentions of Trump’s name per hour on conservative podcasts have fallen nearly 70% from their peak in the run-up to the 2024 election.” Many are publicly unhappy with the economy and the war, both of which are seen as broken promises and could account for the decline in mentions, but the hosts are mostly spending their time trashing Democrats like James Talarico, the Texas state representative who is running for the Senate and may just win. (Significantly, the king of the manosphere, podcaster Joe Rogan, is actually a fan of Talarico.) 

There are some other big names in the podcasting world, like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, who are now openly antagonistic toward Trump, mostly for opportunistic reasons. The pair are among the early crowd jostling for power within the post-Trump right-wing ecosystem. Kelly has railed against the Trump family’s alleged corruption, while Carlson appears to be positioning himself as a presidential candidate, with his iconoclastic takes on a number of issues and increasing talk of a third-party bid. He recently told NPR that Trump should be removed from office. 

But mainstream conservative media is still largely on board the Trump train, although Fox News’ firing of Maria Bartiromo for coordinating with the White House — hilarious as the network’s outrage is, considering the cozy relationships between the president and Fox hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham — and its decision to stand against Trump in support of CNN, MS NOW and POLITICO has revealed a schism. The Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal has also been pulling no punches throughout the second term. 

But what of the Republican establishment? Since Trump’s exultant victory in 2024, they have behaved as if he were ordained by God to be America’s reigning monarch, omnipotent and infallible. Republican governors have largely abdicated their own roles as one of the Constitution’s checks and balances, agreeing to give up their own sovereignty to serve his agenda, while the GOP majorities in Congress have proven to be nothing more than trained seals happily signing on to the president’s usurpation of their own power. 

But you can’t really blame them. Until quite recently, there was no shaking the hold Trump had on the GOP base. They were willing to believe that everything wrong in the country was the fault of former president Joe Biden, and that Trump was left with a massive disaster he had to clean up. The truth, of course, was the opposite. He actually inherited a recovering economy — dubbed “the envy of the world” in 2024 by The Economist — and newfound global respect. If Trump had done nothing and simply continued the policies that were already in place — and then taken credit for them, as he is wont to do — he would be in a different position today. But he surrounded himself with radicals and sycophants, and he believed his own hype. The results have been a disaster.

As Republicans prepare to face the voters in the November midterms, they are finding out that the “magical” Trump mystique was actually luck and hot air. Reality still exists, and it bites. Hard. 

As we head into the final month before the election, the polls appear very bad for Republicans. The House majority is almost certainly gone, and the Senate is increasingly in play, something that wasn’t seriously contemplated six months ago. The president’s approval ratings are in the low to mid-30s, and his ratings on the most important issues of the economy and the Iran war are even worse. Gasoline and diesel prices have turned the two big promises Trump made — to lower prices and keep the nation out of wars — into epic failures, and voters are livid. 

Suddenly, GOP candidates are running for the hills. Candidates in tight races in battleground and red states — including Mike Rogers, who is running for the Senate in Michigan against Democratic nominee Dr. Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, and Rep. Ashley Hinson, who faces Josh Turek, a Democrat, in Iowa — are saying the Iran war must end. (As the New York Times pointed out, Hinson was among seven House Republicans who recently supported a resolution calling on the president to stop or seek congressional approval for military action in Iran.) Others are scrubbing or downplaying endorsements by or mentions of the presidents on their campaign websites. According to The Washington Post, Mike Beltran, the Republican nominee running against Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., touted on his website earlier this year how he had “stood with President Trump every step of the way.” That language has now vanished, along with photos of Trump and references to “America First.” At least seven other GOP congressional candidates, reported the Post, are doing the same. One Florida Republican. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, has even publicly condemned the president for elements of his radical deportation policy.

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Historically, this is common. Midterms are notoriously hard on the party in power, and presidents usually take the blame. Often, the approved strategy is for candidates to go ahead and distance themselves from the president, and try to win their races by portraying themselves as independent thinkers who will not rubber-stamp the unpopular majority’s agenda. Whether it’s Bush in 2006 or Obama in 2014, close midterm races almost always feature some version of that same sales pitch. The only exception in recent years I can think of is 1998, when the GOP’s threats to impeach President Bill Clinton over the findings of the Starr Report with regard to his relationship with Monica Lewinsky blew back on them, costing them seats and resulting in the resignation of the House Speaker Newt Gingrich in disgrace. 

But this time it is especially jarring considering the fealty Republicans have been required to show their leader — and have willingly given him — until now. That loyalty ended up not helping Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who lost his primary just a few months ago when Trump endorsed his opponent in retribution after Cornyn waited too long to endorse him in 2024. As the midterm campaign has unfolded, it’s belatedly become clear to many Republicans that standing with Trump may be riskier, even among the party’s base, than standing against him.

But they have a problem. The president won’t shut up. To the chagrin of most of his own party, he is insisting on making the midterms all about him. A narcissist to the core, Trump believes that the only way Republicans win in November is if he is out there bragging and blaming and lying as he always does, because that has been the secret sauce that brings out MAGA voters. He has even released a taxpayer-funded propaganda ad — which is illegal — touting his alleged accomplishments. 

No one should mistake the Republican retreat from Trump as a full-scale rebellion. Instead, it’s a tepid, last-minute attempt on the part of some desperate candidates to show independence, knowing they may lose anyway — and that the president will say it’s because they didn’t support him enough anyway. The Republican Senate had a chance to take a stand on one of the biggest issues in the campaign, and the one that’s causing the most pain for average voters: Iran. On Thursday they voted down a resolution to end the war. The tally was 50-49. When it comes to putting their votes where their mouths are, it’s clear they will default to Trump as always. Voters, though, are finally seeing through them.

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Despite everything, I sometimes find it hard not to sympathize with Donald Trump. 

Like Trump, I also chose to make the site of a future climate catastrophe my permanent home. Like Trump, I live in a home more than a century old and spend each day disgusted with the handiwork of the previous inhabitants. Like Trump, I’m fighting a losing battle against decay.

I can’t get too mad when Trump smoothes out the columns of the White House or paves over the Rose Garden when I look at my closet shelves shoved through  drywall or my mirrors held in place with blue-tack putty. When I see the sloppily applied makeup on his hands or the AI edits that transform his doughy octogenarian body into a superhero physique, I try not to think about the cobwebs of spliced knob-and-tube wiring in my attic that became outmoded around the time of Thomas Edison’s death.    

Trump’s poll numbers are in free fall, presaging a brutal midterm election that might make him a premature lame duck. The Big Lie of 2020 has gone stale. His promise to keep America out of new wars has fallen apart in the dumbest and most expensive way imaginable. His foundation is cracking, with at least some longtime MAGA boosters turning on him. His public rambling and late-night Truth Social screeds suggest there may be termites in the rafters. Overwhelmed with the sheer amount of work he’d have to do to actually set things right, Trump has opted for a fresh coat of paint.

The president launched Trump TV on YouTube earlier this week, and once again I can see the logic. The 24-hour propaganda stream allows him to crow about his accomplishments while avoiding the pesky questions that even sympathetic news networks have started tossing at him lately. At a moment when former supporters are visibly backing away from Trump’s moldy message and trying to seal themselves off from the toxic reputational effects of his second term, Trump is creating a safe space for his lead-poisoned die-hards. It’s almost an act of love, or about as close as someone as self-obsessed as the president can get. 

There’s no tension on Trump TV and precious little in the way of explanation. The streaming channel acts as a firehose of Trump news, meant to be met with unquestioning applause from the most devoted members of Trump’s shrinking and increasingly elderly  base. It’s an endless stream of nothing, meant to fill time more than entertain, like the brainrotted AI slop that pollutes TikTok streams, except many leagues less interesting. The lack of conflict that might have been created on a conventional news channel renders his impromptu network interminably boring. 

As the Bulwark puts it,  the channel has “no purpose.”

“It’s simply Trump’s staff trying to fix a problem Trump created — all in an ad hoc way but while trying to give the misimpression that there’s a plan.” the outlet’s Brendan Hartnett wrote. “It’s political ephemera — the sort of content that arguably isn’t even meant to be watched the first time, let alone replayed later.”

Salon’s Sophia Tesfaye agrees, calling  the self-evident desperation “excruciating”:

When a clown’s only trick is shouting into a live microphone, the absolute worst thing that can happen is for the cameras to simply turn off. It’s clear by this week’s spectacle that Trump cannot survive the possibility that America has finally changed the channel.

Away from his glorified YouTube playlist, a pro-Trump ad aired recently on Fox News, pushing back hard against the nonexistent danger of communism in America. Proudly displaying the probably-illegal fact that it was paid for the U.S. government, the commercial uses a visual language deeply familiar to denizens of the online right. A pulsing mix of photos of Trump looking maximally presidential flies past as slogans flash across the screen. UFC president Dana White crows about Trump’s toughness over phrases like “DEFEND LAW AND ORDER” and “AMERICA WILL NEVER BE A COMMUNIST COUNTRY.”

It’s the stuff of AI conserva-slop and gooner Discord channels. It’s unclear whether the TikTok-y style will land with the older, couch-bound Fox News audience, but the purpose is easy to discern. Like Trump TV, it’s meant to boost confidence in the president among an ever-diminishing group of supporters, to create belief in an alternate reality where the White House isn’t falling down around him. 

Let’s be clear that the rot didn’t start with Trump. He was ushered into office by a pre-existing coalition of racists, the tax-cut-seeking wealthy and millions of Americans who got left behind in the unequal recovery from the Great Financial Crisis.  If the whole experiment hadn’t been decaying in the first place, it never would have embraced a bigoted, silver-spoon game show host. Again, I can sympathize. If my own house weren’t in a state where examining anything too closely costs $200, if there weren’t cracks in the porcelain and popcorn shedding from the ceiling, I’d never have been able to buy it. 

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Like Trump, I’m no expert at the job I’ve been handed. I meet each new crisis with little more than a desire to muddle through, to patch it up well enough that I can forget about it. In that light, it’s easy to forgive Trump TV its shoddiness and his advertisements for their questionable legality. The right way to fix the holes in the floor is kind of abstract, while the screws and plates in my utility closet are right there. Trump can’t fix the core problems of an increasingly unequal America or stop the slide of the country’s global esteem. So, why not slather on another coat of bull and hope no one notices?  

Trump’s term will end soon. He will visibly grow older – pretty fast, I suspect — and then he’ll die. Trumpism just has to hold on until he can sell it off to some other sucker. 

The post Trump TV’s intentional brainrot appeared first on Salon.com.