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Loading the Elevenlabs Text to Speech AudioNative Player... Popular podcaster Joe Rogan this month condemned President Donald Trump’s deportation actions. “The way it looks is horrific,” said the former Trump supporter. He said the aggressive efforts to remove criminal aliens upsets “everybody who has a heart.” Instead of mass deportations, Rogan argues Trump should offer amnesty to illegal aliens. It’s confusing that Rogan is shocked by the man he endorsed acting on his chief campaign promise. It’s not like Trump hid his desire to remove millions of illegal aliens from the country. But Rogan isn’t alone in his criticism. Other “Brocasters,” such as Theo Von, also lambast Trump’s immigration moves. Zach Bryan, one of the most popular musicians for bros, even released a song condemning ICE. The Brocasters and their young male audience played a significant role in Trump’s 2024 win. It’s notable that these prominent figures are turning on the president over his primary issue. It begs the question if “FanDuel Americans”—the normie young men who cast their ballots for Trump—share Rogan’s view and whether the president may lose these bros merely for deporting illegal alien rapists and murderers. Last year I coined the term to describe a demographic that was open to backing Trump but much less right-wing than they are sometimes portrayed. They’re young and not woke. They aren’t reactionaries and don’t desire a counter-revolution. They’re even fine with many of the changes that characterize multicultural America. What they want is a country that allows them to earn a living and have plenty of amusements free of politics. Namely, they want to get woke out of the way of placing parlays on FanDuel. They’re not extremely political. Their primary interests are sports, making money, and having a good time. They get their news from Barstool and Joe Rogan. They don’t see Trump as the anti-Christ. They see him as the better alternative to the nagging liberals who imposed white privilege training and mandatory pronouns on them. They weren’t bothered by the calls for mass deportations during the election. Trump received a tremendous level of support from this demographic, unsurprisingly given the warm reception he received on the campaign trail from leading Brocasters. Exit polls show that Trump won a majority of men under 30 in 2024, a rare feat for a Republican. Following the impressive result, there have been a slew of media reports on how young men are turning to the right. But a different picture is starting to emerge. Trump’s youth support has sagged as of late. In February, a majority of young voters approved of him, with over 60 percent of men under 30 holding a favorable view of the new president. By late July, Trump’s approval among young men had plummeted to 27 percent, one point lower than for young women. It’s improved a bit since then, but the president’s approval is still far from the February high. The economy is the primary reason for the drop in approval, but young people aren’t showing much enthusiasm for Trump’s immigration agenda either. In a recent New York Times poll, over 60 percent of voters under 30 oppose mass deportations. That contrasts with the majority of the general population that supports the measures. Nearly 60 percent of this demographic agreed with the statement that the U.S. government “is mostly deporting people who should not be deported.” Meanwhile, 51 percent of Americans think Trump is deporting the people who should be deported. The poll did not break down the age demographic by gender, so young men could be closer to the general population in their views than their female peers. But young men who previously supported Trump may agree with Rogan on the issue. Rogan’s agenda for immigration is basically to the establishment consensus of the Obama era. We deport a few criminal aliens, we get some beefed-up border security, and then we give the majority of illegals a “pathway to citizenship.” This is supposedly a centrist view between the open borders of Joe Biden and the mass deportations of Donald Trump. The problem is that this view was rejected at the ballot box in both 2016 and 2024. It’s a view Rogan himself rejected when he endorsed Trump. The president still boasts strong support among the public for his immigration agenda. It’s just not as strong among the Brocaster audience. Even if enthusiasm for mass deportation is cooling among FanDuel Americans, it’s too hasty to conclude that this issue will doom Republican chances among this demographic. For one, their main issue is the economy, not immigration. If they have good jobs that allow them to place more bets and go out on the weekend, their approval for Trump will likely continue to go back up. They’ll not care so much about the ICE raids they see on TikTok and Reels. They’ll be too busy having a good time to concern themselves with this matter. This is not the demographic out protesting ICE. There are no typical bros trying to free criminal aliens and blocking ICE vehicles. It’s pretty much entirely elderly resistance liberals, Antifa types, and local Hispanics from the community getting raided. While they might disagree with the videos they see, FanDuel Americans are not bothered enough to go out and protest. That’s not their thing. They’re busy with other stuff. Like Rogan and Theo Von, their immigration views aren’t set in stone. Brocasters are upset about the deportations because of the videos they see and how quickly they forget the effects of open borders under Biden. It can easily shift in the other direction if their mind is fixated on other angles. Last year, Rogan was excoriating the Biden administration for flying illegals all over the country. Now he wants them given amnesty. Their stance is determined by fleeting emotions rather than firm principles. While young men could easily return to the MAGA fold, it’s worth remembering that they’re not as right-wing as some conservative commentators imagine them to be. Too often, the American right mistakes the opinions seen on X with those of Zoomer men as a whole. They forget that X is a niche platform and that many of these BASED posters are older than Zoomers. X isn’t real life. It’s true that fully engaged young conservative men—the ones who consume a lot of political content and join Turning Point USA—are significantly more right-wing than the millennial conservatives were a decade ago. The recent “racist messaging scandal” within the Young Republicans illustrates this. But they’re not the majority of their peers. They’re a fraction. The majority are FanDuel Americans, not BASED and Redpilled Zoomers. That’s better than young men being woke, of course. But it’s necessary to keep in mind. If they were “extreme” right-wingers, they would revolt against the Brocasters turning on Trump over deportations. Instead, many of them are still listening to Rogan as they place their bets on this week’s NFL games.
