Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump has seen a slight decline in polling as the news about his assassination attempt drowned in an ocean of articles discussing Joe Biden’s ousting from power and the nomination of Kamala Harris as Trump’s biggest rival. However, Trump has largely returned back in the media limelight, with the recent market crash, which he has already marketed as “Kamala krash”, signaling that it is the Democratic administration’s fault that the American economy is in turmoil.
A few days ago, he scored another media victory organizing an interview with popular Kick live streamer Adin Ross. At its peak, the livestream of these two chatting about political topics garnered over 580,000 viewers, which is an enormous achievement. During the interview, Ross gifted Trump a Rolex watch and a custom Tesla Cybertruck featuring the now famous picture of Trump raising his fist in the air after he was shot at his rally in Pennsylvania. The gifts have been described as “excessive campaign contributions” by various political commentators and Trump will likely turn them down. However, the impact is already there, Trump got to reach out to millions of young hard-right republicans and call on them to go to the polls in November.
Adin Ross is infamous for his scandalous streams featuring homophobic and patriarchal ideas and content. He hosted a number of right-wing celebrities, including Andrew Tate, former kickboxer who was accused of rape and human trafficking in Romania last year, as well as Nick Fuentes, who is frequently described as a “white supremacist”. With a large following online, Adin Ross is a prized asset for Trump. Over the duration of the 90-minute stream, he used the time to call on his supporters to vote for Trump, which was appreciated by former President, who said: “I’ve been interviewed many times by people who really do like me, but they wouldn’t do what you just did. They wouldn’t say ‘vote for him. I think it’s great that you can say something like that’”.
Over the course of the stream, Trump spent a lot of time criticizing the current administration, including Kamala Harris and Joe Biden directly. Specifically, he brought up the issue of Kamala Harris’ identity, as she first identified as an Indian and then turned to identify as a Black person. He also fired shots at ABC News correspondent Rachel Scott, saying that she was incredibly disrespectful to him during the panel discussion at the National Association of Black Journalists. “This woman starts talking about racism, and I said, ‘You didn’t even say hello to me,’ and I’m doing them a favor by doing this,” Trump said. “I’m doing this out of respect to the Black community”.
The interview can be seen as a series of attempts of both nominees to the presidency to appeal to younger voters. In June, Trump sat for an interview with media personality turned professional wrestler, energy drink entrepreneur and influencer Logan Paul with more than 50 million followers. He has also pivoted a few times to Jake Paul, Logan’s younger brother, as well as Nelk Boys, a group of Canadian pranksters. Kamala Harris responded to this activity of Trump by inviting rapper Megan Thee Stallion to sing and dance at her recent campaign rally in Georgia.
Both candidates go all in for those Gen Z votes and the main issue is to get them to the polling stations, which is why we will likely see more activity from both of them in this sense over the next couple of months.
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