“I have less money than many imagine and more than some suppose,” was the ambiguous definition that the pastor Dante Gebel used in response to the question about his money. In a digital interview with Infobae, the evangelical religious and showman avoided giving details about his personal assets when asked by the media’s journalists.
In the report, when asked about his tours around the country, Gebel stated that he used private planes because “if I have to do it with airline frequencies, I will be doing the tour for nine years” and acknowledged that he pays for the flights. “Wealth is a relative motive,” he highlighted and added: “I didn’t need much to live.”
The interest in Gebel’s media emergence in the country was consolidated in recent years based on a unique combination between spectacle, religion and a growing political projection that was made explicit in television interviews and journalistic coverage. With a career developed largely in the United States, where he has lived since 2008 and leads a church in California, Gebel first built a figure as a lecturer and host with international reach, and then became an actor of interest in the local public conversation, especially since last year, when he began to be openly consulted about his eventual participation in politics.
One of the most representative moments of this positioning occurred in his interview with Mario Pergolini in the program “Another lost day”, where the driver questioned him directly about a possible presidential candidacy. Far from dodging the question, Gebel responded with a phrase that quickly circulated in the media and networks: “You have to get up and do something, not stand by and criticize… I don’t rule it out,” leaving open the possibility of a leap into politics. In that same exchange, he also acknowledged that his outlook had changed over time and that, although he feels comfortable living in the United States, he no longer ruled out getting involved in the country’s public life, which marked a turnaround from previous, more distant positions.
These types of statements were repeated in different media and interviews in recent weeks, where Gebel avoided explicitly aligning himself with a specific political force, but he did leave general definitions about the situation in the country. In this framework, his speech was characterized by an appeal to participation and the need to “do something” in the face of the crisis, without yet developing a detailed ideological program, which allowed it to be interpreted by diverse sectors. In fact, different political actors—from union sectors to libertarian and Peronist spaces—expressed interest in adding him to a possible armed group, which reflects his condition as a transversal figure rather than a partisan one.
The main vehicle of this symbolic construction was his show “PresiDante”, a show that combines humor, motivation and explicit references to politics, in which he plays with the idea of a presidential candidacy and reflects on the Argentine reality. The proposal, presented in theaters and national tours, functions as a media installation platform: while entertaining, he introduces his figure into the political field without completely abandoning his identity as a showman. In parallel, this format allowed him to expand his knowledge outside the evangelical sphere, an explicit objective in his public strategy.
The link with Pergolini was also read in a political and media key. Various journalistic readings pointed out the closeness between the two as a factor of visibility within the media ecosystem, in a context where interviews function as spaces for legitimation and agenda construction. That relationship, added to his constant presence on television and digital platforms, contributed to establishing him as a hybrid figure between political outsider and media celebrity.
According to different profiles, he even presents himself as an “entertainment businessman” with million-dollar income generated in that market, which reinforces his image as an international figure and, at the same time, fuels the contrast with the Argentine reality that he addresses in his speeches. His figure, still in transition, is supported by a strategy that combines political ambiguity, high media exposure and a consolidated identity in the international arena, while keeping the final decision on a candidacy in suspense that, according to himself, he has not yet ruled out.
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