Trump Partnering With Young Male Influencers

On the same day Kamala Harris was endorsed as the Democratic presidential nominee, memes and clips of her were already being posted on TikTok, Instagram, and other social media channels popular with young people. Her online campaign presence has since embraced this youthful culture, modeling the "Kamala HQ" banner after singer Charli XCX's "brat" aesthetic. Harris isn't the only candidate vying for youth support, however, as Trump has consistently partnered with social media influencers whose main audiences are young men.

On Tuesday, streamer Adin Ross announced that he would be streaming with Donald Trump on Aug. 5. Ross is a video game streamer who live streams himself talking to people and playing video games on the streaming site Kick. Ross' primary audience is men aged 14-25.

In the past, Ross has had streams with an average of 150,000 live viewers, featuring figures such as Andrew Tate, a former kickboxer, entrepreneur, and self-proclaimed misogynist provocateur who went viral in 2022. On YouTube, those livestreams garnered 5-10 million views and hundreds of millions more when cut into smaller clips. Ross has wagered $100,000 that the stream with Trump will, at one point, have more than 600,000 concurrent viewers.

This isn't a last-minute response from Trump seeing the virality of Harris' memes over the past two weeks, as he has long employed this strategy. Earlier this summer, he appeared on a podcast with Logan Paul, a social media influencer, entrepreneur, and professional wrestler, which amassed 6.3 million views on YouTube.

In 2022 and 2023, Trump also went on the "Full Send" podcast, hosted by the Nelk Boys, a group of young men who embrace a "frat boy," energetic, young, and politically incorrect mentality. The first episode garnered 7 million views in 24 hours before being banned on YouTube for violating its "election integrity policy"; the second episode has 8.8 million views. The main host of the podcast, Kyle Forgeard, fully endorsed Trump on the 2023 episode: "I don’t care what anyone says, I don’t care about the backlash, I feel like we need you back right now, we need you back in office."

A "Full Send" podcast interview with J.D. Vance is expected to be released in the coming days. The podcast is expected to debut a voter registration and turnout program aimed at young men called Send the Vote, The Wall Street Journal reported. The initiative aims to raise $20 million to partner with entertainers, sports figures, and fighters in the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

Dana White, CEO of the UFC, is a longtime friend of Trump who advocated for him at the RNC in 2016 and recently introduced the former president at the RNC in July. Trump frequently attends UFC events, where he is met with roaring crowds. Many American fighters speak to Trump after winning their fights.

Trump has capitalized on these demographics, with four of the seven videos on his TikTok featuring Logan Paul, his brother Jake Paul, or Dana White, accumulating a total of 336.5 million views. The masculine fighting and workout culture of young male influencers and the UFC favors Trump, and his allies are trying to leverage this to win in November.

In the latest Economist/YouGov poll, Trump leads Harris by nine points among men, while Harris leads Trump by 11 points among women. Among voters aged 18-29, Harris leads Trump 56% to 29%, and 51% to 34% among those aged 30-44.

Additionally, according to Wall Street Journal polls, the young male subsection of voters is leaning toward Trump. In the presidential ballot, among men aged 18-29, Trump led Biden by 14 points, 50% to 36%, in the polls taken from February to July of this year. Among women aged 18-29, Biden led by 30 points, 58% to 28%.