Behind The Story: Greyhounds and Trump loses manosphere

Behind The Story: Should we still fund greyhound racing and has the manosphere deserted Trump?

Updated / Friday, 13 Nov 2026 18:40

A report by the Oireachtas Parliamentary Budget Office says the greyhound racing sector remains heavily reliant on the €20m it gets from the exchequer, while attendance has fallen sharply.

On this episode we talk to Irish Times sports journalist Gavin Cooney about the report entitled 'Ireland's Costly Love Affair with Greyhounds'.

Gavin explains that attendance at meetings has fallen over the past decade.

"Remarkably, the report finds that between 2021 and 2024, an average of just 53% of attendees at races actually paid to get in," he says.

"There's still lots of races being held, but primarily for people gambling on these races from overseas."

There have also been welfare concerns raised about what happens the dogs that are no longer racing.

"Between 2021 and 2022, they found there were 10,010 greyhounds registered and were no longer racing in Ireland and hadn't been exported. So any dog that's exported is no longer traced through the Irish system. Of those 10,000 greyhounds, between '21 and 2022, 63% of them are dead."

Has the manosphere soured on Trump?

What was behind US President Donald Trump's social media post this week that he was "pleased to announce that the Great Dana White, a violent Fighter and Warrior, has been offered the job of Press Secretary of the United States"?

Was he trying to woo back young, male, and conservative-leaning voters that seem to have deserted the Republicans in the midterm elections? He later said he was "only kidding", but perhaps it was wishful thinking.

On this episode, we also talk to Guardian US writer Sam Wolfson, who has been researching why this cohort, which was so important to Trump in the presidential election, seemed to have turned their back on him.

"In the 2024 presidential election, Trump won 56% of young men, an even greater percentage of young white men," Sam says. "And no Republican president had ever kind of come close to that number."

He says a lot of questions are being asked about how a group that was so essential in propelling Trump to power turned away from him? Or whether have they become just less influential?

"A lot of credit was given to that victory with that group to this kind of group that is loosely termed the manosphere, this group of kind of male podcasters, some of them quite apolitical, but had kind of embraced Trump at that time."

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