Shawn Ryan
Veteran-interview podcast right · Trump-disillusioned· 6.7M followers · tracked by RisingPolitics
76.0Credibility Score (0–100) · ranked #14 of the creators we track
Shawn Ryan ranks #14 by credibility versus #17 by raw follower count — they reach a more credible audience than their follower total alone would suggest.
Audience authenticity is still warming up — we’re accumulating samples, so this score may shift.
Shawn Ryan is a former U.S. Navy SEAL and CIA contractor who is the founder of Vigilance Elite and host of The Shawn Ryan Show, one of the most-listened-to podcasts on Spotify. His long-form interview program features guests from the military, intelligence, and special operations communities as well as figures from politics, culture, and current events.
Where Shawn Ryan posts
YouTube6.3M subscribersVisit ↗XShawnRyanShow · 437K followersVisit ↗Common questions
Is Shawn Ryan left or right?
Shawn Ryan, a former Navy SEAL and CIA contractor, hosts one of the biggest interview podcasts in the country and sits on the veteran-and-military-adjacent right rather than in conventional punditry. He endorsed and interviewed Donald Trump before the 2024 election and hosted JD Vance, and early in Trump's second term said things were turning around faster than expected. Through 2025 he grew openly disillusioned — criticizing the administration's handling of the Epstein files, its failure to end the Ukraine war Trump had promised to wrap up, and its economic and immigration policies — telling his audience by November 2025 that "nothing I voted for happened." In a June 2026 exchange with Megyn Kelly he called the administration "very self-serving" and said he saw no positivity coming out of it, making him one of the most prominent 2024 Trump-endorsing podcasters to publicly break with the White House while remaining culturally on the right.
Positioning as of July 2026 · descriptive, not an endorsement. How we label lean
How credible is Shawn Ryan's audience?
Shawn Ryan scores 76.0 out of 100 on the RisingPolitics Credibility Score, ranking #14 among the political creators we track. The score starts with audience size, subtracts accounts that look fake, and weighs how strongly the audience actually engages.
How many followers does Shawn Ryan have?
Shawn Ryan has about 6.7M followers combined across YouTube and X.
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