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Trump, who was convicted of 34 felonies in May and welcomed climate change because it would create more oceanfront properties, ran a nativist campaign built around a promise to deport millions of unauthorized immigrants and impose tariffs on imports from foreign countries, which many economists have said would create a depression. The 78-year-old billionaire has also vowed to roll back environmental policies and protections, severely curtail the rights of transgender people, and seek revenge against his political enemies.
In the final days of the campaign, Trump-aligned surrogates and influencers, like Musk, pushed for more men to cast their ballots for Trump. For months, Trump and his vice presidential pick JD Vance appeared on dozens of podcasts targeted at young men. Trump sat with the popular Kick streamer Adin Ross in a live video at Mar-a-Lago over the summer, joined wrestler and former vlogger Logan Paul’s Impaulsive podcast, and brought many influencers, like the Nelk Boys, along on the campaign trail.
After the July assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, Musk formally endorsed Trump. “I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery,” Musk posted to X at the time.
Musk subsequently donated well over $100 million dollars to support Trump’s reelection and turned his platform X into a megaphone for the former president. Musk’s America PAC, along with Turning Point Action, led Trump’s canvassing operations in states like Michigan, Arizona, and Wisconsin. Some of these canvassers were refused pay and forced into unsafe working conditions, like being transported in the back of a U-Haul without seat belts, WIRED reported.
Other influencers lent Trump support as well. On Thursday, influencer and boxer Jake Paul formally endorsed Trump in a video posted to X. On Monday, Joe Rogan followed suit in a post sharing his most recent podcast episode with Musk. Paul has more than 20 million YouTube subscribers and Rogan hosts the most popular podcast in the US with over 14 million followers on Spotify.
“They have degraded and disparaged our amazing men for far too long,” Ashley St. Clair said in an X post on Monday. “Men must VOTE!”
In the leadup to the election, polls suggested a deep shift toward Harris among senior and independent women, seemingly driven by the Supreme Court overturning federal abortion rights and a subsequent wave of unpopular restrictions backed by Republicans at the state level. In the end, though, the Trump strategy of turning out voters in economically struggling, deindustrialized regions while chipping away at the margins among traditionally overwhelmingly Democratic minority constituencies carried the day.
Republicans will take back the Senate, making it much easier for an incoming Trump administration to confirm judges and cabinet officials. The balance of power in the House of Representatives has yet to be decided.
