WASHINGTON — It may have seemed an odd pairing: former President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home, next to a 23-year-old internet celebrity known for live-streaming video games.
“We’re going to have good ratings today,” Trump, 78, told host Adyn Roth at the start of a cordial 77-minute livestreamed interview that was viewed 2.6 million times on YouTube last month.
But this is hardly a detour for the Republican candidate from the campaign trail in 2024. Ross’s young, mostly male audience, especially those who don’t normally pay attention to politics, made his livestreams an ideal forum for Trump.
Trump has aggressively courted young male voters by emphasizing his masculinity in an effort to overcome Democratic candidate Kamala Harris’s lead among women. Having long presented himself as a leader who exuded strength, Trump is stepping up that image in this election to attract a long-overlooked constituency.
Some call this “peer voting.”
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To win the November election, the Trump campaign has targeted undecided male voters under 50, who make up about 11% of the electorate in key battleground states, according to a race analysis first reported by The Washington Post. This demographic is primarily white, but Trump is also trying to reach young Black, Latino and Asian American voters.
More: Gun owner Kamala Harris says she’ll “get shot” if an intruder breaks into her home
Meanwhile, Harris’ campaign is embracing a different form of masculinity in an effort to appeal to young, male Republican voters.
While her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, talks about his time as a high school football coach and serving in the National Guard and describes himself as a doting father, Harris’ husband and second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, is trying to present a different notion of masculinity, one in which he takes a break from his career to support his wife.
“Gender is everywhere in this election, but masculinity has been brought to the forefront in a way that’s probably unprecedented,” said Jackson Katz, a gender and masculinity scholar whose new film “The Man Card: Gender, Power, and 50 Years of the American Presidency” came out this month.
“Gender has always been a central element in American presidential elections, but it’s hidden in plain sight until a woman runs for office. When a woman runs for office, her gender makes visible what has always been there.”
Plus: “And so will Pennsylvania”: Inside the Harris vs. Trump fight for 2024’s biggest battleground state
The big gender gap in 2024
In an election where gender inequality was particularly large, competing notions of masculinity collided.
A USA Today/Suffolk University poll of Pennsylvania voters last week found Harris leading among women 56% to 39% and Trump leading among men 53% to 41% in one of the swing states that could decide the election. Harris’ 17-point lead among women and Trump’s 12-point lead among men helps explain why polls show Harris leading 49% to 46% in the state.
Among younger voters, the gap is even wider: A USA Today/Suffolk University national poll conducted this month found that Ms Harris led 63% to 27% among women aged 18 to 34, while Mr Trump led 45% to 37% among men in the same age group.
Plus: Harris leads Trump in Pennsylvania and two benchmark counties in Pennsylvania, exclusive poll finds
If elected, Harris would be the first female president in U.S. history. She has been an active campaigner on abortion rights and constitutional rights since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. The issue has resonated with many female voters, including independents and Republicans, over the past two years.
“It’s clear that they don’t trust women. No, we trust women,” Gov. Harris said Friday in Atlanta during a speech on abortion rights.
Trump campaign officials have denied any suggestion he is losing female voters, pointing to public concerns about the economy and the southern border as ways to win them over.
But Trump’s efforts to expand his reach to young male voters have spilled over into Ross’ livestreaming show, podcasts by comedian Theo Vuong and controversial influencer Logan Paul, UFC fights and Formula 1 races. Trump is a fan of Bitcoin, which is most popular among young white men, and he plans to attend the Alabama vs. Georgia football game later this month.
“We’re going to make this country very strong and very great,” Trump said in a livestream with Ross last month. “You’re going to love your life and you’re going to be successful,” Trump told his young audience.
At the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July, before President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, Trump’s idea of โโmasculinity was hard to miss.
Read more: Trump gifts Adyn Roth with Cybertruck and Rolex during livestream appearance
Trump arrived on the third night of the convention as James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” blared through the arena. He spoke at the convention in front of a backdrop displaying his last name, “Trump,” in giant letters. He had a bandaged left ear, days after an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Supporters held signs that read “Make America Strong Again” and “Trump = Success, Biden = Failure.”
Wrestling star Hulk Hogan ripped off his shirt to thrill the crowd, and Kid Rock performed a rock-rap anthem inspired by the horror of President Trump’s assassination. “Fight! Fight!” the singer yelled, clenching his right fist to mimic President Trump’s reaction before being led away by Secret Service agents seconds after the shooting.
“It was a four-day spectacle of sorts of hyper-masculine bravado,” Katz said. “It was so over the top. There was nowhere to hide.”
“Nobody likes weakness”
Gender and masculinity are recurring themes among Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance.
In past comments made public during the campaign, Vance has disparaged childless women and teachers, and in his book “Hillbilly Elegy” he has tried to portray himself as a self-made man who overcame poverty and family troubles in Appalachia.
Timothy Denhollander, 22, attended a Trump rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, last month wearing a Trump cowboy hat and a shirt featuring a bloody image of Trump with his fist raised after having been shot.
Part of Trump’s appeal is his embrace of traditional gender roles, according to Denhollander, a devout Christian who lives with his parents and 13 siblings in Pittstown, New Jersey.
“As a Christian, the man should be the head of the family,” said Denhollander, who works cutting grass at a solar farm.
Read more: Macho convention: Republicans appeal to men with Dana White’s main speaking slot at UFC
Billy Carbone, 63, a former teaching assistant and Trump supporter from Lake Ariel, Pennsylvania, said he thinks Trump is winning over male voters because “he talks like a real man.”
“He says what he thinks,” Carbone said, waiting for the Wilkes-Barre rally to begin. “You have to be strong to survive,” he said, adding that “making yourself look weak” is like “blood in the water.”
“The reality is, no one likes weakness,” she said.
Emhoff: ‘Women in this country are tired of weak men’
The Harris campaign has promoted a different idea of โโmasculinity through two male messengers: Waltz, a straight-talking Midwestern governor with working-class roots, and Emhoff, a former high-powered entertainment lawyer who has served as second gentleman and Ms. Harris’ most public defender.
At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, some of Walz’s high school students and football players helped introduce the vice presidential candidate to a national audience. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar called Walz her “plaid dad,” and Walz’s son Gus was seen crying with joy in the crowd, shouting, “That’s my dad!”
The Harris campaign focused its outreach on Walz in the potentially decisive Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, targeting white, blue-collar voters who are increasingly disaffected with the Democratic Party.
Read more: Doug Emhoff is embodying (and redefining) masculinity as he campaigns for his wife, Kamala Harris
During his announcement at the Democratic convention, Mr. Emhoff presented himself as a goofy dad — the guy who left Ms. Harris’s cellphone that first awkward voicemail early in their romance — and Mr. Emhoff vouched for his wife’s strength, which Ms. Harris underscored by noting that she was a former prosecutor and attorney general of California who took on the establishment and sent criminals to prison.
“We all know cowards are weak, and Kamala Harris sniffs out weakness,” Emhoff said in his speech. Weeks after the convention, Emhoff has maintained that tone, calling Harris a “brave fighter” and arguing that standing up for women and their reproductive rights is the manly thing to do.
“Women in this country are tired of weak men trying to take away our basic rights and then gaslight us about it. We’re tired of it. And women in this country will never be humble in the presence of Donald Trump,” Emhoff told supporters at a fundraiser in Brooklyn this month.
A dangerous strategy for the Trump campaign?
Michael Kimmel, a former sociology professor at Stony Brook University and author of “Angry White Male,” said this year’s election “will showcase all kinds of different models of masculinity. In the cases of Waltz and Emhoff, you’re seeing “models of men who are publicly doting fathers and publicly supportive of women,” Kimmel said.
“There’s clearly a battle going on right now for young men, particularly Gen Z men,” Kimmel said, adding that Republicans “rightly recognize” the widening gender gap with young women leaning more left politically than young men.
A Gallup poll released this month found that 40 percent of women ages 18 to 29 consider themselves “liberal” or “very liberal,” up from 28 percent between 2001 and 2007. Conversely, 25 percent of men ages 18 to 29 consider themselves “liberal” or “very liberal,” a percentage that has remained roughly steady in recent years.
“Republicans see this as a real opportunity for them, so they’re emphasizing ‘masculinity’ as a college fraternity video gamer to attract young people,” Kimmel said.
But a clear risk in relying on the male vote is that historically more women than men have voted: In the 2020 presidential election, 82.2 million women and 72.5 million men voted, according to the Center for American Women and Politics.
Polls also show that Trump is not winning young male voters by the same margin as Harris is leading female voters.
Donye White, a 35-year-old barber at Cut & Shaves in Allentown, Pennsylvania, said he voted for Trump in 2016 and sat out the 2020 election, but plans to vote for Harris in 2024. He pointed to the historic opportunity of electing the first woman president.
“I’m voting for her simply because I’ve never seen anyone like this before,” White said. “Not only is she black, she’s a woman. Like I told everybody, we’ve had close to 50 white men challenge her. What’s the problem with maybe having someone else challenge her?”
“It’s crazy that in 2024, America is still saying, ‘Whatever first,'”
Of course, Trump has defeated female presidential candidates before, so he may need to enlist the help of a man to win again.
Written by Zach Anderson
Joey Garrison can be reached at X or on Twitter: @joeygarrison.