Brock Colyar writes:

[T]he youngest, most online members of Trump’s party have acquired his knack for turning the culture wars into something as entertaining as reality TV. Attention is power. One honoree of the night [at the Power 30 Awards, held at Sax nightclub in Washington DC, the night before the inauguration] was DuRousseau, whose TikTok is full of sometimes transphobic rants for a target audience he describes as “Beverly Hills conservatives.” “When you look back, this was the first influencer election,” he said. “There’s a whole new industry of media personalities coming together to fight for our side of the aisle.” At least one TikTok employee who works in the “policy” department was there; asked about changes to the app’s guidelines in recent months, he told me cheerfully, “We’re letting a lot more stuff through. A lot.”

This was the media ecosystem that flourished under the noses of the Democrats while they busied themselves trying to court Taylor Swift and Beyoncé. “MAGA is MTV for Gen Z. This isn’t the fringe. This is youth pop culture. I’ve been saying this for years,” said Mitchell Jackson, a publicist and crisis consultant who works with conservative podcasters. “Meanwhile, Democrats sound like ’80s Republicans protesting rap songs.” Sure, Kamala Harris had become a meme, too. But she was “brat,” and could anyone above the age of 30 actually define what exactly it had to do with her candidacy? The most prominent political TikToker Democrats had in their camp was a 22-year-old boyish NYU student named Harry Sisson, who insisted, even after the first debate, that Joe Biden was a completely viable candidate. Sisson had been name-checked by one of the Power 30 organizers in a post about the party: “Bryce Hall and Riley Gaines. Two people who can beat up Harry Sisson.” (It’s worth mentioning Trump, among his accounts, had 4 million more followers than Harris.)

The room also made all too clear just how big the party’s tent had become. Posters around the room read CONSERVATION IS CONSERVATIVE, over an image of Trump riding a buffalo. “It’s finally popping off,” a beefcake lawyer who represents Jewish students suing their university over pro-Palestine protests screamed at me when a song he liked came on. A frat boy from Georgetown, lording over a table, told me he’s here because he’s Catholic. “I really don’t like abortion. I hate abortion,” he said. At the bar was the DJ 3LAU, in town to spin at Trump’s ball. “I voted for Big D because of crypto, free speech, and the Constitution,” he said.

Some members of this crowd would admit to what they see as this coalition’s unsavory parts (say, how creepy the men can be) but refuse to do so on the record. Best not to cannibalize, they agreed, when the going is good. “The silent majority is coming out. Because Trump won!” another influencer, a Pennsylvanian in a sleek black dress named Joy Backlas-Cruz, told me. She voted for Biden in 2020 and is a recent convert to the cause. As she told it, she got so depressed during the pandemic she turned to YouTube, where she found Jordan Peterson’s daughter, Mikhaila Fuller. Fuller’s dietary advice, she claimed, got rid of her brain fog; eventually, Backlas-Cruz dropped out of medical school. She’s not comfortable with Trump’s H-1B-visa policies — her mother and many of her friends are from India, she said — or some Republican LGBTQ+ policies (she once dated a woman), but she agreed with a lot of Elon’s positions and, well, she’s fine with it all holistically. [Continue reading…]