Trump’s Making an Aggressive Play for Aggrieved Young Men. Dems Should Take Notice.
The ex-president’s livestream with Adin Ross was unconventional. But it was also likely effective. Worse for Dems, they may not realize it.
WHEN 23-YEAR-OLD GAMER ADIN ROSS presented Donald Trump with a Rolex watch in a first-of-its-kind livestreamed interview on the platform Kick Monday, a tiny subset of the internet descended into blows over whether it was a campaign finance violation or not.
The rest of the approximately 600,000 people watching thought it was hilarious and cool.
And that, unfortunately, is a major problem for Democrats—the majority of whom were likely oblivious to the whole episode.
Ross, who boasts 1.3 million followers, is part of a cohort of young hyperonline men who promote an unapologetically MAGA aesthetic and culture. He is a sycophant of the legendary king of the manosphere, Andrew Tate, known equally for his overt misogyny and the charges he faces for rape and human trafficking.
Ross himself was banned from the more mainstream gaming platform Twitch for multiple hate speech and racial slur offenses. That was never going to be a hurdle for Donald Trump. But the fact that the former president came on Ross’s show still underscores how the GOP is operating in an unconventional but potentially advantageous manner—one that stands in stark contrast to the Democrats, who continue to plod along using a playbook that counts “youth” as an unshakable monolith.
Trump’s appearance on Ross’s show is part of a concerted effort by Republicans to turn up the noise and turn out the vote for Trump among disaffected young men. Harvard IOP pollster John Della Volpe dubbed this cohort the “Barstool Sports generation” for their love of subversive humor and all things anti-woke, as personified by the stream of content produced by Dave Portnoy’s Barstool Sports empire. They’re the next-generation heirs of the Gamergate crowd that moved from online outrage about female game designers to mobilizing politically for the first time when they saw a kindred spirit in Trump during his 2016 run.
AS THE PROVERBIAL CREDITS ROLLED on the inaugural Kick town hall, Ross—unironically dressed in a suit and red tie, the uniform of the ex-president—urged his followers to vote for Donald Trump. The two stood against a backdrop of a Tesla Cybertruck wrapped in a portrait of the candidate, fist raised post–assassination attempt—unstoppable, an apotheosis of manliness.
But the effort by Trump and co. to mobilize this cohort is not limited to just the occasional livestream. Allies of the former president have also launched a “Send the Vote” initiative that promises to spend $20 million to reach young men between now and November. That initiative was announced on a popular podcast with the synonymous title Full Send that is hosted by the Nelk Brothers, Canadian-American entertainers with a massive reach, unabashedly masculine humor, and huge influence among young men. JD Vance recently made an appearance on their show, where they gave him some hard seltzer.
In a post-MeToo era of progressive politics where young men often felt excluded, silenced, and shunned, this emerging culture hits all the marks of making men great again. Indeed, the “Send the Vote” campaign launch followed a widely watched appearance by Trump on the podcast of professional wrestler and social media star Logan Paul and a parade of men’s men getting speaking slots at the Republican National Convention—all peaking with Hulk Hogan ripping his shirt off for a roaring crowd.
This coordinated effort is geared to do one thing: rewire social permissions so young men can feel good about voting for a convicted felon and a man found liable for sexual abuse. And so far, it seems to be working. Trump is winning this demographic according to most polls.
This rightward drift of young men is part of a global trend that has powered elections in recent years from Argentina to France. Uninterrupted, this dynamic will not only influence the outcome of the presidential race in November—especially in key states that skew young like Arizona—but will also realign politics as we know it for a generation to come. And yet, despite liberal voices raising the alarm, Democrats have failed even to really acknowledge the problem, much less put real resources into combating it.
The Democratic ticket changeup seems to have sparked some flow of young men back to Harris—particularly black and Latino men—but it’s not enough for comfort. Rather than hold their breath and hope it sticks, the campaign would do well to spend some time contesting for space among this crowd. Some raw material exists. The massive success of the White Dudes for Harris zoom eschewed the normal sit-down-and-shut-up approach that campaigns adopt when it comes to men in the progressive coalition. It did something more Democrats should do: It celebrated dad-joke laden fun. More importantly, it furthered the effort to label the GOP ticket as “weird,” which has tapped an unmined vein of bullying-the-bully humor.
But ancillary efforts are not enough, especially not when an overwhelming number of Republicans and independents think that the Democratic party is hostile to masculine values. And the lack of humor among Democrats is itself the butt of many jokes.
The Harris campaign has to seek out and embrace traditional male influencers on social media. They have to show that there’s room for young men—even unruly and irreverent ones—in the party. And they need to define masculinity for themselves. They’ve got a good start in Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff. He told MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart last year,
We’ve kind of confused what it means to be a man, what it means to be masculine. You’ve got this trope out there where you have to be tough, and angry, and lash out to be strong. I think it is just the opposite. Strength is how you show your love for people. Strength is how you are for people and how you have their back and how you stick up for other people and pushing up and out against bullies.
However they do it, it’s time to explicitly talk to young men. That may mean ruffling some feathers on the left where there’s a fear of and aversion to embracing strong men. But Democrats need to escape the identity-first stranglehold of the post-Trump era and model a new kind of democracy that welcomes (nearly) all comers in order to win. With democracy on the line, winning is worth tipping some sacred cows.
Ilyse Hogue is a senior fellow at New America, director of its Gender, Extremism, and Engagement project, former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, and author of The Lie that Binds, a history of the anti-abortion movement.
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