In the wake of Trump’s surprise attack on Iran, I spoke with a young man who cast his ballot for the president in 2024. He was generally pleased with Trump’s second term agenda, and had been drawn to the president over social issues and his promise to cut wasteful spending. But he, like his fellow members of his university’s Turning Point USA chapter, was struggling to make sense of the current moment. Trump campaigned as an outsider who’d rattle the system, a dealmaker who would keep America out of futile wars. Like many of the young men who bought this pitch, he’s starting to have doubts.
For one, Trump’s opacity on the Epstein files has been, in his words, “worrying” — though, he believes “both sides” are guilty of withholding information. Now, the prospect of another endless war in the Middle East is perhaps his greatest concern. “I don’t think anybody wants another Afghanistan or Iraq,” he told me.
I’m the Director of Young Men Research Project (YMRP), a research organization that studies the political trends among young men through polling and analysis. At 24, I’m squarely in this demographic myself. Let me tell you: he’s hardly an outlier. For many young men — as well as their most popular influencers, many of whom endorsed the president — foreign intervention and the Epstein files matter in their own right. But they also function as a litmus test: Is Trump just another out-of-touch politician, protecting the powerful and distracting through chaos?
For normal people, we imagine what that line was for us. Cambridge Analytica, Ukraine, COVID, January 6, Ukraine again, Israel, DOGE, Venezuela, Iran. What was the Rubicon they crossed to make us never trust them again?
For Trump supporters, I don’t think there is a Rubicon. They didn’t cross some ethical boundary in the timeline of his political relevance. Trump’s sole contribution is the excuse to be the people they’ve always wanted to be: self absorbed, unaccountable, hateful, and vicious.
They were always the way they are now, they just had to hide it behind a mask to the rest of us. They had decades and decades of Fox News brainwashing baked into them, for some as early as childhood. They grew up with weak parents, poor education, and poor community. I don’t mean poor economically, there’s plenty of rich MAGA, but poor in constitution, poor in spirit. Think back to Charlie Chaplin: “You don’t hate, only the unloved hate; the unloved and unnatural. You are not machines, you are not cattle, you are men! You have the love of humanity in you.”
They have no love for humanity. No love for their friends or family or community or their own children. They only love themselves, and that’s all they’ve ever known.