Politics
Barron Trump is helping his dad connect with toxic right-wing streamers
Barron Trump is the latest family member pitching in on his dad’s presidential bid, and that role is helping Donald Trump inject some youthful toxicity into his campaign as it struggles to combat Kamala Harris’ momentum with young voters.
Last month, the elder Trump participated in an awkward video stream with controversial Kick streamer Adin Ross in his quest to woo young voters. At the time, the former president suggested that Barron was the one who first told him about Ross, telling the streamer that his 18-year-old son is “a big fan of yours.”
Ross has used his popular platform to promote people like white supremacist Nick Fuentesand he was banned from Twitch for “hateful conduct” after his stream featured an unmoderated chat filled with racial slurs posted by Twitch users.
The video below, in which Ross smells the chair of deeply controversial and overtly misogynistic right-wing podcaster Andrew Tateperfectly embodies the juvenile, far-right-friendly character Ross assumes online.
Ross is just one of several MAGA-aligned podcasters Trump has appeared with in recent months, along with MAGA-friendly podcaster and former MTV “Road Rules” participant Theo Vonand Trump-supporting social media influencer Logan Paul.
Trump discussed Barron’s role in the campaign during an interview with The Daily Mail published earlier this week. When asked if his son is helping win over Gen Z voters, Trump said:
He is — he knows so much about it. Adin Ross — you know, I mean I do — some people that I wasn’t so familiar with. Different generation. He knows every one of them. And we’ve had tremendous success, as you know.
“We did three unusual — and I don’t know what you’d call them but it’s a platform — with three people that I don’t know, but three people that Barron knows very well,” Trump said. “[He] actually calls all of them like friends of his because it’s a different generation.”
“They don’t grow up watching television the same way as we did. They grow up looking at the internet or watching a computer. But Barron knew them.”
Below is a picture of Barron at Mar-a-Lago alongside two more far-right-friendly podcasters, Patrick Bet-David and Justin Waller.
As liberal media watchdog Media Matters for America noted, Patrick Bet-David is known for platforming extremists and conspiracy theoristsand Waller is perhaps best known for his links to Andrew Tate and his association with the “manosphere,” a toxic world of misogynistic influencers. Both men told press outlets that Barron invited them to Mar-a-Lago.
I anticipate more of these types of content creators will make their way into Donald Trump’s orbit soon. Last month, Trump allies launched a $20 million voter outreach effort designed to reach young, male voters using the pro-Trump podcast “Full Send,” the Ultimate Fighting Championship, and other Trump-friendly platforms. The Atlantic aptly labeled this “Trump’s Red-Pill Podcast Tour.” The prominence of these figures now aligns with some of my past reporting on the outsize role that right-wing podcasters and influencers have played in the push to elect Trump by softening his image.
And now we know who’s helping steer Trump toward these toxic talkers: his teen son.
Ja’han Jones is The ReidOut Blog writer. He’s a futurist and multimedia producer focused on culture and politics. His previous projects include “Black Hair Defined” and the “Black Obituary Project.”
The U.S. delegation in Seattle includes HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, according to a FIFA official, along with White House FIFA World Cup Task Force czar Andrew Giuliani. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy were among those who attended the U.S.’ first match, against Paraguay.
Britain wouldn’t have its latest likely next prime minister if not for soccer.
Andy Burnham, the former Greater Manchester mayor elected to the U.K. Parliament in a closely-watched by-election on Thursday, is expected to oust Prime Minister Keir Starmer as Labour Party leader in a matter of weeks. The sport propelled his political rise.
The pivotal moment of Burnham’s long political career came in 2009, when he was the Cabinet minister for culture, media and sport under then-PM Gordon Brown. Burnham was asked to return to his native Liverpool for a memorial commemorating the Hillsborough Disaster.
The 1989 event remains Britain’s worst-ever sporting catastrophe. Almost 100 Liverpool fans were crushed to death at a cup game in South Yorkshire, following a series of disastrous crowd control errors by police chiefs and stadium staff.
The horror of the day was compounded in the immediate aftermath, when police sought to cover up their mistakes by falsely blaming drunken Liverpool fans for the crush. The lies were amplified by a willing national media and allowed to linger for years; the city grieved and demanded justice. Bereaved families campaigned for years. But no one listened, and no one was held accountable.
Born in Liverpool and steeped in soccer culture, Burnham knew all this as he headed to the memorial at Liverpool’s Anfield stadium 20 years later. He was well aware how a young government envoy would be greeted by the crowd, still raging at the injustice two decades on. But to his credit, he went anyway — and was met with a wall of heckles, chants and protest songs from the part of Anfield, known as the Kop, where the team’s loudest supporters congregate. (The video of his halting, shattered-looking appearance is well worth watching.)
Burnham — until then a typical career politician in Westminster — has described the day as a seminal moment. He returned to Cabinet and demanded a new inquiry into Hillsborough. Three years later its report revealed every claim made by the justice campaigners — of police failures and a scandalous cover-up — had been true. The government was forced to apologize.
Burnham was widely praised for his role in exposing the truth about Hillsborough. But more significant in his ultimate rise to power would be the shift in his own psyche. “I always say that I took my first steps out of Westminster on 15 April 2009 when I walked out to face the Kop,” he wrote in his memoir, “Head North,” penned with close friend (and Hillsborough survivor) Steve Rotheram. “Things were never the same after that day.”
Burnham says his experiences dealing with the Hillsborough justice campaign shaped his view of the Westminster political machine, as an arrogant and failing institution which ignores English regions outside of London. Eight years later he would quit Westminster altogether to become a mayor in his native northwest.
Fast-forward to 2026, and Burnham finds himself in an enviable position — an experienced politician able to cast himself as a political outsider ready to take on the Westminster elites. (While Starmer supports the North London-based champions Arsenal, Burnham is a season ticket holder at his beloved Everton F.C., and is regularly photographed jogging in a vintage Everton jersey.) It’s a familiar narrative which chimes with disgruntled voters everywhere.
Read Jack’s Blue Light News Magazine profile of Andy Burnham here and Blue Light News’s full coverage of the Makerfield by-election and its unfolding fallout here.
Who’s not here at Seattle’s Lumen Field for the Pacific Rim face-off between the United States and Australia?
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