Donald Trump‘s youngest son spearheaded the so-called ‘Bro Vote’ movement that secured his unprecedented election victory by acting as his unofficial podcast adviser.
Barron, 18, was ‘very involved’ in selecting which podcasts his father would appear on and urged him to sit down with videogame streamer Adin Ross and Joe Rogan, who hosts the most popular podcast in the world.
Trump’s campaign courted typical non-voters to the polls through the use of ‘bro politics’, a hypermasculine campaign approach that targets young men.
Trump attended football games, UFC fights, and tapped into young men’s interests in alternative banking by launching his own cryptocurrency business, which Barron was reportedly a driving force behind.
The Republican, 78, also infiltrated the Gen Z market with endorsements from high-profile ‘bros’ including tech billionaire Elon Musk, UFC president Dana White and former WWE wrestler Hulk Hogan who celebrated Trump’s hypermasculine promises.
This election cycle was the first time a Republican presidential candidate honed in on the ‘bro vote’. Trump won the presidency with 54 per cent of men voting for him, up slightly from the 51 percent that supported him in 2020, according to exit polling.
Trump’s campaign decided early that it would focus much of its efforts on low-propensity voters – people who rarely turn out to the polls and are more likely to get their news from non-traditional sources.
To reach them, Trump began a podcast blitz, appearing with hosts who are popular with young men, including Ross, Rogan, Theo Von, Logan Paul and Bussin’ with the Boys, the Nelk Boys and others.
Republican consultant Alex Bruesewitz, 27, was officially tasked with presenting the president-elect with lists of podcasts he could appear on, but the president-elect was more interested in his son’s advice.
When Bruesewitz provided Trump with options, the 78-year-old, according to Time Magazine, said: ‘Have you talked this over with Barron? Call Barron and see what he thinks and let me know.’
Barron was ‘very involved in selecting or recommending’ which podcasts his father would appear on, a senior campaign adviser told Politico’s Playbook Deep Dive podcast last month.
‘Every single recommendation he’s had has turned out to be absolute ratings gold that’s broken the internet. He’s done a great job,’ the adviser added.
Trump also revealed earlier this year that Barron will ‘tell me sometimes, ‘Dad, this is what you have to do.’
Trump also launched his family’s cryptocurrency venture World Liberty Financial, an idea his son Barron was reportedly behind, in September.
The cryptocurrency project is run by ‘fraudsters’ and executives from ‘failed and hacked’ Dough Finance, including macho influencer Zachary Folkman and online salesman Chase ‘Hero’ Herro who proudly calls himself a ‘dirtbag of the internet’.
Folkman, under the pseudonym Zack Bauer, previously ran a company he founded called Date Hotter Girls, which hosted seminars offering dating advice to desperate men, The New York Times reported.
‘You’re going to be ripping their clothes off and throwing them up against the wall,’ he promised attendees at a 2011 seminar.
World Liberty Financial will enable users to lend or borrow cryptocurrencies to or from one another, a service already offered by many platforms, one of the best-known of which is Aave.
During his presidency Trump referred to cryptocurrencies as a scam, but has since radically changed his position, presenting himself as a ‘pro-bitcoin president’ if elected in November.
Analysts suspect that his new crypto stance, much like his appearances on podcasts and at football games and UFC fights – where audiences erupted into cheers at arrivals broadcast live on sports channels – was an attempt to ‘motivate young men to turn out’ at the polls by tapping into their interests.
The MAGA 2024 campaign capitalized on American men pushing a narrative amongst their peers that ‘if you are a man in this country and you don’t vote for Donald Trump, you’re not a man.’
Kamala Harris, however, put abortion rights front and center in her campaign, thinking she found a winning formula in courting women voters.
About half of women backed Harris, while about half of men voted for Trump, initial polling data has revealed, appearing largely consistent with the shares for Biden and Trump in 2020. But Trump ultimately found victory by running up the margins on young American men.
Polls show that among voters aged 18-29, 49 per cent of men voted for the Republican – shattering previous images of young people generally leaning left.
The macho energy of the Trump’s presidential run, eschewing political correctness, ‘wokeness’ or other forms of liberal handwringing, also won over plenty of Black men, despite the moments of racism that were displayed by speakers along the campaign trail.
Among Black men under 45, about three out of 10 voted for Trump – double the rate of the 2020 vote and blowing yet another hole in the Democrats’ traditional base.
Some 54 per cent of Latino men also voted for Trump on Tuesday, a whopping 18 percentage point gain for Republicans compared to 2020.
Analysts suggest that Black and Latino men could ‘possibly overlook the racism of the Trump campaign’ because the president-elect ‘appealed to their sense of machismo’.
‘Trump’s campaign gave people permission to indulge their worst impulses and embrace divisiveness of many sorts,’ explained Tammy Vigil, an associate professor of media science at the University of Boston.
Trump was further propelled to success because he had the backing of America’s most influential bros.
As he delivered his victory speech early Wednesday, president-elect was flanked by — and showered praise on – famous names from the world of sport.
UFC boss Dana White was lovingly hailed as ‘tough’ and ‘a piece of work,’ while golfer Bryson DeChambeau was celebrated as ‘fantastic’ and even having a ‘slightly longer’ drive than the golf-loving Trump.
Loud cheers – and a significant portion of Trump’s address – were devoted to his best-known supporter of all, tech billionaire Elon Musk.
Musk became Trump’s most vocal fan and one of his biggest financial backers during the 2024 election, which saw his social media platform X become an unofficial Republican Party campaign tool.
The Tesla CEO spent at least $119million mobilizing Trump’s supporters to back the Republican nominee.
His influence has been so stark that, in his speech to supporters on election night in the US after he declared victory, Trump paid a lengthy tribute to Musk, calling him a ‘star’ of the Republican Party and a ‘wonderful’ guy.
Musk posted relentlessly about his support for Trump to his hundreds of millions of followers in the run-up to the election, claiming the future of civilization was at stake at the polls.
The billionaire and his political action committee have also ran a $1million-a-day voter sweepstakes in swing states, encouraging citizens to go out and vote.
Musk, on Election Day, hailed the turn out of male voters as a ‘cavalry’.
‘The cavalry has arrived. Men are voting in record numbers,’ he tweeted on his platform X. ‘They now realize everything is at stake.’
Trump also received a last-minute endorsement from Rogan, whose three-hour interview with the president-elect generated 45 million views on YouTube.
Rogan made his endorsement while promoting an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience featuring Musk.
Musk ‘makes what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you’ll hear, and I agree with him every step of the way,’ wrote Rogan, on social media. ‘For the record, yes, that’s an endorsement of Trump.’
Dana White, a long-time friend and ally of Trump, thanked the podcasters and their influence to the campaign after Trump’s victory was declared.
‘This is what happens when the machine comes after you. What you’ve seen over the last several years, this is what it looks like,’ White told the crowd at Trump’s election night watch party.
‘Couldn’t stop him, he keeps going forward, he doesn’t quit, he’s the most resilient, hard-working man I’ve ever met in my life, his family are incredible people.
‘This is karma, ladies and gentlemen. He deserves this. They deserve it as a family.’
White then went out to thank the Nelk Boys, Adin Ross, Theo Vonn, Bussin’ with the Boys and ‘last but not least, the mighty and powerful Joe Rogan’.
