Donald Trump’s support from the manosphere is clear, even if it’s confounding

What do a mixed martial arts promoter, social-media stars, an attempted assassin, and a golfing legend’s genitalia have in common?
They all played some role in securing Donald Trump’s re-election.
Trump’s ability to win over men — particularly younger white and Latino men — was key to his successful campaign.
With the votes now counted, the influence of the manosphere — and Trump’s ability to appeal to traditional concepts of masculinity — in sending Trump back to Washington is coming clear, even if it is confounding.
To think: a 78-year-old tycoon and golf fanatic with unnaturally tanned skin and oddly styled yellow hair stands today as a beacon for young men whose idols and social-media algorithms fill them with ideas about warrior toughness and what it means to be a real man.
Nikki Haley, a former Republican governor and United Nations ambassador during Trump’s first term, warned the Trump campaign in its final days that the abundance of “bromance and … masculinity stuff” was “going to make women uncomfortable.”
It turns out that it didn’t matter.
Faced with the prospect of Kamala Harris becoming America’s first female president (and of her husband becoming the first-ever First Gentleman) men turned out in droves for Trump.
He’s once again a Commander-in-Chief who avoided military service through a deferment for bone spurs in his heels. He’s a leader who shares little of the average man’s life experience, but who successfully cast himself as the embodiment of some men’s stereotypical beliefs about gender roles.
The explanation of how that happened follows the arc of a wannabe assassin’s bullet that zipped through a Pennsylvania field last July, grazing Trump’s ear and killing a man in the background of a political rally.
Bloodied, but unbowed, Trump’s face and fist emerged above the scrum of Secret Service agents ushering him off the stage. He urged his supporters to “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
“It’s one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life,” Meta founder (and mixed martial arts aficionado) Mark Zuckerberg told Bloomberg Television shortly after the shooting.  
The social media mogul declined to give a public endorsement of any of the candidates, and said that his company had sought to distance itself from politics after previous scandals about the use of Facebook by foreign powers to influence the 2016 presidential election.
But he acknowledged Trump’s Übermensch appeal to voters.
“At one level, as an American, it’s hard not to get emotional about that spirit and that fight, and I think that’s why a lot of people like the guy.”
Trump won the Electoral College vote in Tuesday’s election but also — for the first time in three presidential campaigns — the popular vote among Americans.
Exit polls showed that 60 per cent of white men, 55 per cent of Latino men, and 69 per cent of white men without a college diploma had voted for Trump.
The results suggest that the Republican strategy — crude as it was at times — was effective. Trump’s win was met with an eruption of celebration from young men on university campuses and from students at a military college.
Thanks for connecting an old man to young men go in part to Barron Trump, the president-elect’s 18-year-old son.
The New York University freshman was “very involved” in a key communications strategy that helped his father communicate with younger male voters: podcasts.
Trump strategist Jason Miller told Politico’s Playbook Deep Dive podcast that Trump was pushed by his son — himself a first-time voter — to speak to a number of shows.
“I’ve got to tell you: hats off to the young man,” Miller said. “Every single recommendation he’s had has turned out to be ratings gold that’s broken the internet.”
UFC promoter Dana White has also been a key behind-the-scenes broker, connecting Trump with some of the leading constellations in his sporting and business universe.
Trump’s 2016 election and first term in office were marked by cosy relationships and softball interviews with Fox News media personalities. But he appears to have cut the cable in the run-up to his second term, dialing in with social media stars and millennials.
In the last stretch of the campaign, Trump spoke to Aiden Ross, a 24-year-old live streamer with a history of questionable friends, guests and commentary; comedian Theo Von; YouTuber, boxer and wrestler Logan Paul; Mississauga-born internet prankster Kyle Forgeard, of Nelk Boys fame, interviewed Trump aboard his campaign plane; and  Joe Rogan, a podcaster and UFC commentator whose followers are counted in the millions, spoke to Trump for three hours before publicly endorsing him for president.
One clear theme in the choice of campaign associations and endorsements is combat sports — the love of them or direct participation in them.
The admiration is mutual: Trump told Logan Paul’s podcast, “Implausible,” of his respect for the toughness of fighters who “can take 200 shots to the face and then look forward to the second round …”
Paul’s brother, Jake Paul, a social media star and boxer slated to fight Mike Tyson live on Netflix next Friday, told his 4.6-million followers that the election was about “good v. evil” and warned that America would “self implode” if Harris beat Trump.
In the past, two American MMA fighters, Scott Fairlamb and Pat Miletich, were among those who stormed the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss.
This time around, Trump had the public backing of more controversial-but-popular figures like MMA middleweight Sean Strickland, who promotes guns and violence and espouses traditional (some would say “toxic”) notions of what it means to be a man.
Trump has played up such notions of masculinity throughout his career.
He rebutted suggestions he might have a small penis during a 2016 Republican primary debate, telling the audience: “I guarantee you there’s no problem.”
He mostly spurned the use of protective medical masks during the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting during the 2020 campaign that Biden, who wore masks regularly, did so out of fear.
And during the 2024 campaign Trump all-but called former Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi a “bitch,” and told a Pennsylvania rally that golf legend Arnold Palmer was famously well-endowed.
“Arnold Palmer was all man, and I say that in all due respect to women — and I love women,” he said. “This man was strong and tough, and I refuse to say it but when he took showers with the other pros they came out of there and said, ‘Oh my God! That’s unbelievable.”
Given his record in office and on the campaign trail, and the various allegations of sexual misconduct he has faced, Trump’s doubling down on men not at all surprising.
But it’s still a troubling thought for American women battling for abortion rights, gender equity or other issues.
They’ll be led for the next four years by a president who owes his victory to men, even if he expressed his desire “to protect the women of our country” from what he said were threats from migrants entering the United States or missile attacks from foreign countries.
“Whether the women like it or not, I’m going to protect them.”