UFC head Dana White, the wife beater, is “a fighter.” North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is “very tough,” while China’s Xi Jinping is “strong.” Elon Musk, the transphobe who has turned X into a megaphone for bigotry, is a “genius.” So said Donald Trump during his 75-minute livestreamed interview with Adin Ross, the 23-year-old gamer and influencer.
The adjectives and verbs for all of the women they discussed were very different. Kamala Harris was said to be “weak” and “stupid,” Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were “crazy,” and AOC was described as “ranting” and “screaming.” And, of course, there was that appellation Trump applies to every woman—most famously to Hillary Clinton in their final debate in 2016—who doesn’t supplicate herself before him: “nasty.”
In other words, the interview was vintage Trump—the latest of a million-plus examples proving that, no matter how many smarmy advisers and gullible political reporters insist otherwise, he is incapable of changing who he is for political expediency. He’s an out-and-proud misogynist who intends to appeal to closeted misogynists—and no one should be happier about that fact than Kamala Harris.
Despite their 55-year age difference, Ross and Trump have a lot in common. For starters, both are obsessed with fame and money. Trump praised Ross for his contract deals and net worth, to which Ross, clad in an identical Trump suit complete with matching red tie, responded, “I’m tryin’ t’get like you, boss.” They kept checking the number of online viewers of their interview, hoping to break the internet. And Ross presented Trump with a Rolex watch and Tesla Cybertruck decked out in MAGA imagery.
Like Trump, Ross is also no stranger to controversy. He’s hosted Nick Fuentes, the antisemite and white supremacist, and Andrew Tate, a former kickboxer facing charges of rape and sex trafficking in Romania. Trump too has hosted Fuentes, at a dinner at Mar-a-Lago in 2022 (Fuentes was a guest of fellow antisemite Kanye West, who is now being sued for mistreating workers and for sexual harassment, yet whom Trump described to Ross as having “a good heart”).
But the biggest overlap is their respective fan bases: predominantly white, aggrieved, disaffected young men with Gulf of Mexico–size reserves of anger toward women. As Jonathan Haidt discusses in his recent book, The Anxious Generation, many of these young men grew up attached to screens and never developed the social skills to communicate with employers or women. Many are incels, addicted to porn and video games. (Ross himself was banned from Twitch after visiting the site PornHub while livestreaming the Super Bowl.) Threatened by diversity and the elevation of women in the workplace and society, they yearn for a return to a world of male domination.
Many are also racist and antisemitic and hold extreme right-wing political views. So it is no surprise that they gravitate toward the only presidential ticket that represents their views. We might take inspiration from Tim Walz and call them “weirdcels.”
The Trump campaign and supporting PACs have been trying to tap into this group for a while, back before a middle-aged, biracial woman replaced an old white guy atop the Democratic ticket. But now—rather than attempting a course correction, to appeal to the women voters shifting toward Harris—the Trump campaign and its allies seem to be doubling down on their outreach. Last week, a pro-Trump PAC called Send the Vote launched with a goal of raising $20 million for outreach to men under 30. The effort is headlined by the Nelk Boys, right-wing Canadian American vloggers and podcasters who recently sat down with J.D. Vance, in a rather awkward fashion, looking like bar bros meeting with a Goldman Sachs exec.
But it is Vance himself, the too-online weirdo of “childless cat ladies” fame, who is perhaps the ideal figure for the type of demographic the campaign is trying to reach. He’s a Marine veteran and former venture capitalist who claims (somewhat disingenuously) to hail from Appalachia and who, much like Trump, doesn’t hesitate to equate femininity with weakness. The idea of a strong woman is frightening to him just as it is to the young men they’re trying to reach.
Any man who serves under a woman cannot be a real man, as they see it. That’s why they’ve taken to calling Harris’s running mate “Tampon Tim.” The nickname seems to have originated with former Trump adviser and close ally Stephen Miller, and quickly became a meme. Trump posted a clip Wednesday of Jesse Watters using it as a slur. The Trump team claims the term is a critique of Walz’s support of a Minnesota law he signed that mandated tampons in both girls’ and boys’ bathrooms (since transgender boys can still experience periods), but it seems rather convenient that the nickname fits into their overall message of emasculation.
The sad thing, of course, is that there are legitimate issues facing both young men and young women. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has warned about a “loneliness epidemic” facing youth, noting recently to The Guardian how feelings of shame and invisibility are causing severe mental stress for those under 30. Young people have indeed had to deal with a lot: global recessions, terrorism, multiple U.S. wars, hyperpolarization, the climate emergency, suffocating debt, racial strife, the housing crisis, and more. Even Trump and Ross noted how the opioid epidemic has killed tens of thousands and left many more thousands dependent.
Yet the Trump campaign is doing nothing to actually address these issues or concerns. Instead, Trump’s team has decided that the weirdcels will be their antidote to a Democratic Party led by a woman and riding a wave of electoral victories after Trump himself engineered the end of abortion rights nationwide. If you’re young, white, play video games all day, and are mad at women who won’t give you sex, you can express your anger and frustration by voting for Trump-Vance. But you might instead just stay in the basement, while nasty, hysterical, childless cat ladies head to the polls in droves.
