As Trump, Harris work to win over young male voters, Jake Paul's endorsement video is significant
When YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul uploaded an 18-minute video to X endorsing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, it didn’t come as a surprise. He’s a longtime supporter.
What was unusual was that Paul, who is set to box Mike Tyson on Nov. 15 in a bout streaming on Netflix, posted a video on social media at all. He shares very little social content that isn’t related to boxing these days, though he first made a name for himself on Vine and YouTube with chaotic stunts and comedic sketches.
Given Paul’s reputation as a lightning rod for controversy, some X users dismissed the video. But on TikTok, where the video has been reshared by several accounts, users are expressing their support.
“I don’t like Jake Paul but I agree with him on this,” one commenter said on a post shared by the official Trump campaign TikTok account. “Extremely rare jake paul W,” another wrote on a repost from Daily Mail Sport.
Regardless of public opinion about Paul, his Trump endorsement has racked up more than 19 million views on X as of Election Day. It’s likely that many of those views came from young men — an audience that both Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris have been vying for in the final months of their campaign.
On Harris’s side, former President Barack Obama urged Black men to vote for the Democratic nominee at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, relates to voters with his football coach persona. Basketball phenom LeBron James endorsed Harris on Oct. 31 in an X post that received immense backlash.
Trump has embraced conservative male influencers with bravado-filled, contrarian online personas. In August, he appeared on a livestream with Adin Ross in which the creator gifted him a custom-wrapped Telsa Cybertruck. Ross posted on Nov. 5 in Trump’s favor. Though Elon Musk isn’t a traditional influencer, the billionaire also holds significant online influence as the owner of X, and has repeatedly endorsed Trump.
Over the last few months, Trump also appeared on three of the biggest podcasts in the U.S. — The Joe Rogan Experience, the Shawn Ryan Show and This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von Podcast. Rogan endorsed Trump the day before the election. He’s been appearing on alternative media channels to pursue voters who might not be keyed into mainstream news sources.
According to polling data shared by the New York Times in August, Gen Z men are more likely to support Trump than women their age. It’s a bigger gap between men and women compared to other generations. Their concerns were mostly about the economy — a sentiment that has been echoed in many interviews with young voters.
That’s exactly what Paul took on in his endorsement video. He has a reputation as a businessman as well — he founded a venture capital firm, a sports promotions agency and a sports betting company with its own media wing.
Paul presented charts about inflation, condemning how the Biden administration’s policies impacted the economy, saying he supports Trump in spite of his persona because of his ability to get results.
Paul also echoed another popular conservative talking point — concern over “biological men” competing in women’s sports. He said that Trump has said he won’t ban abortion nationwide, but opportunities are being “stripped away” from women in sports.
This topic has been addressed by Trump, Musk, and Rogan. It comes up often in the context of Algerian fighter Imane Khelif’s Olympic gold medal win. She is not transgender, but reportedly has a developmental sex difference.
“As a future father, you will find me dead before I send my daughter to a school where men can go into her bathroom and where men can compete against her in sports,” Paul said in the video.
Paul mentioned that he was concerned about sowing division with his endorsement video — something many people called out as ironic, as Paul has built a career off his propensity to stir controversy. There’s no denying his audience, though.
He can’t vote in this election because he moved to Puerto Rico in 2023 — in the video, he also condemned the racist statements comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made about the country at an Oct. 27 Trump rally in New York City — but said he wanted to mobilize his “80 million large audience” to look at “facts” instead of “reckless propaganda or your favorite pop star telling you to vote a certain way and you believing them because you love their song.”
“God has sent me here to tell you this message, and it pushed this in front of me and put this on my plate to do this, do the right thing, vote for Donald Trump, not because I said so ... but because it's what's right,” Paul said in the video, and roughly 19 million people at least heard him.
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