{"id":2543,"date":"2026-03-08T23:18:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T23:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/2543\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T23:18:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T23:18:10","slug":"will-iran-be-the-last-straw-for-young-maga-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/2543\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Iran Be the Last Straw for Young MAGA Men?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn the wake of Trump\u2019s surprise attack on Iran<\/a>, I spoke with a young man who cast his ballot for the president in 2024. He was generally pleased with Trump\u2019s 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\u2019s Turning Point USA chapter, was struggling to make sense of the current moment. Trump campaigned as an outsider who\u2019d rattle the system, a dealmaker who would keep America out of futile wars. Like many of the young men who bought this pitch, he\u2019s starting to have doubts.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor one, Trump\u2019s opacity on the Epstein files has been, in his words, \u201cworrying\u201d \u2014 though, he believes \u201cboth sides\u201d are guilty of withholding information. Now, the prospect of another endless war in the Middle East is perhaps his greatest concern. \u201cI don\u2019t think anybody wants another Afghanistan or Iraq,\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019m 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\u2019m squarely in this demographic myself. Let me tell you: he\u2019s hardly an outlier. For many young men \u2014\u00a0as well as their most popular influencers, many of whom endorsed the president \u2014 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?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tYoung men swung decisively toward Trump in the 2024 election. According to Catalist, a progressive data firm, Democratic support among men aged 18 to 29 sank<\/a> to 46 percent in the last election, down from 55 percent in 2020. Some opted for the Republican candidate because of lingering inflation or soaring housing costs; others, frankly, for the \u201cvibes.\u201d But the through-line was a fiction Trump manufactured and skillfully sold: that he was the antidote to the much-maligned establishment, the very establishment he now embodies.<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tGen Z<\/a> men are perhaps the least ideological, most politically untethered segment of the American electorate, and at the root of this is a deep mistrust of the ruling class. In a nationally representative survey<\/a> of men aged 18 to 29 conducted this past summer by YMRP\/YouGov, when asked which party is more \u201ccorrupt,\u201d the most common answer was both. When asked which party is more honest, a plurality (35 percent) said neither. This generation\u2019s jeremiads about the political establishment are hardly unique: interest groups lining the pockets of those in power, the sluggish pace of change (primarily on economic issues, though not exclusively), and foreign adventurism viewed less as shoring up national security, more like pointless conflict exclusively serving the military-industrial complex.<\/p>\n

\n\tMany are starting to believe they\u2019ve been sold a false bill of goods \u2014 a president not only enmeshed in the proverbial swamp, but one who is launching interventionist wars without a clear end in sight. Nowhere is the backlash more visible than in the corners of the internet that helped mobilize Trump\u2019s young male coalition.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn foreign policy, the cracks were already showing. After the attack on Iranian nuclear facilities last summer, Charlie Kirk reassured<\/a> his base that Trump and MAGA<\/a> \u201chas never and will never stand for regime change.\u201d Appearing on This Past Weekend w\/Theo Von after the capture of Nicolas Maduro, the libertarian comedian and podcaster Dave Smith \u2014 a past Trump endorser who\u2019s popular with young men \u2014 blasted<\/a> the operation as an \u201cintolerable humiliation\u201d of the president\u2019s core supporters, a sentiment Von sympathized with. Now, with Iran, the anger has boiled over. Adin Ross, the 25-year-old far-right streamer who also backed Trump, bashed<\/a> the strikes as \u201creally fucking stupid,\u201d while Fresh & Fit host and manosphere mainstay Myron Gaines joined the chorus lamenting<\/a> Trump\u2019s actions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\n\tFor many, Iran and Epstein are inextricably linked. Ryan Garcia \u2014 the 27-year-old boxer who\u2019d proudly backed Trump \u2014 publicly renounced<\/a> his past support due to Trump\u2019s appearance in the files, and Joe Rogan has called<\/a> the administration\u2019s ICE raids in Minnesota a \u201cdistraction\u201d from the Epstein drama. Among popular far-right male influencers like Dan Bilzerian, this same charge \u2014 that the president is manufacturing chaos to divert attention away from the files \u2014 is now being leveled<\/a> at Iran, indicative of a larger suspicion among his base and the general public.<\/p>\n

\n\tThese influencers wield enormous platforms. But they\u2019re also useful proxies for the ideologically malleable, politically independent young men who helped win Trump the White House. They distrust traditional politicians and are suckers for outsider candidates (Joe Rogan delivered Bernie Sanders a 2020 endorsement, and Ro Khanna is a near-fixture on these shows); they despise cancel culture (two in three young men agree that guys can \u201chave their reputations destroyed just for speaking their minds these days,\u201d per YMRP polling<\/a>); they\u2019re more conspiracy-curious than your average voter; and, like the young men they speak to, they are largely anti-interventionist.<\/p>\n

\n\tYMRP\u2019s fall poll<\/a> found that young men favor a less active American role in the world by 17 points; 53 percent agree that the U.S. \u201cneeds to be less actively involved in world affairs because we need to focus more on issues and problems here at home,\u201d compared to 36 percent who say the U.S. needs to stay actively involved. Among independents, net support for a reduced global role widens to 24 points, while a majority of Trump voters also favor a less active posture.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis opposition is manifesting in real time. A Fox News national survey<\/a> released March 3 found Americans under 30 are the most opposed to Trump\u2019s actions of any age group: just 15 percent say the president\u2019s handling of Iran has made the country safer, versus 65 percent who say less safe. From \u201cAmerica First\u201d hardliners like Nick Fuentes \u2014 who says<\/a> he\u2019ll vote Democrat in 2026 not out of apostasy, but to punish a GOP he consistently derides as insufficiently radical \u2014 to those who swung for less ideological reasons, the president is winning over no one, and actively alienating many who checked his box 14 months ago.<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tThe young man I spoke with has no interest in voting Democrat anytime soon. But a prolonged conflict, he told me, might be enough to sit out 2026 and 2028. Eight months out from the midterm elections, young men like him could once again prove decisive. Some who broke for Trump may cross the aisle; most will not. For many, they\u2019re finding fewer and fewer reasons to show up.<\/p>\n

\n\tCharlie Sabgir is the director of the Young Men Research Project. You can find more of his writing on his Substack<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the wake of Trump\u2019s surprise attack on Iran, I spoke with a young man who cast his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[470,2358,8,96,204,9,7,245],"class_list":{"0":"post-2543","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-commentary","9":"tag-gen-z","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-iran-war","12":"tag-maga","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-top-stories","15":"tag-trump-administration"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116196114565409809","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}