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10:00

these breakout sessions to talk shop

10:02

kind of. And there was a college Republicans

10:04

one, and it was very heavily

10:06

male. And these are young men. I

10:08

mean, and the conference put an emphasis

10:11

on the politics of men and not

10:13

forgetting about men, which we've kind of

10:15

seen Trump tap into. And that was

10:17

a thing that the speakers mentioned and

10:19

that young male attendees brought up that

10:21

he kind of hears them more. Is

10:24

the tone to their politics angry?

10:27

Did they share Trump's grievances, his anger at

10:29

the world? Like, is there hope and optimism

10:32

from these younger voters or is the

10:34

conversation you have with them like they

10:36

are coming from a really angry place

10:38

into politics? I think it's anger, but

10:40

with optimism at the end

10:43

of the road. That

10:45

student, Alexander Warren, who I talked to told

10:47

me that 2020 was a

10:50

really formative year for him and his

10:52

politics. The Black Lives Matter movement,

10:54

you know, January 6th, all of

10:56

that made me realize that there

10:59

is a weaponized force against especially,

11:01

you know, your American men in

11:03

this country. You know, the emasculation

11:06

of the American men has gone

11:08

too far and us as American,

11:10

we're not going to accept it anymore. I think,

11:12

again, that like speaks to this smaller group

11:14

of young people who feel kind of forgotten

11:17

or left out of the larger Gen Z

11:19

movement, which we know is very

11:21

racially diverse and just more

11:23

leaning left. That interview

11:25

with the student was really, really

11:28

interesting. And he clearly

11:30

has been listening to a lot

11:32

of hyper-right media, including Tucker Carlson,

11:34

who often talks about

11:37

the emasculation of men. The

11:39

alt-right, now the

11:42

Trump right, it's a very

11:44

young male-oriented

11:48

movement, as Sue has pointed

11:50

out. Marc, earlier this year, I did

11:52

reporting on sort of what drives

11:54

the political decisions in generations. And a woman I

11:56

interviewed, Dr. Jean Twangi, who's a scholar on this,

11:59

and I, this has stuck with me from

12:01

that, says political attitudes are actually shaped

12:03

really young, like in childhood, in youth,

12:05

even before people can vote. And there's

12:07

an element to this generation and in

12:09

Trumpian politics, which has like broken all

12:11

the roles of modern politics, like how

12:14

this shapes future generations, how this is

12:16

going to shape Gen Z today, what

12:18

they are as adults of the future

12:20

is one of these like really fascinating questions in

12:22

political science that I'm

12:24

curious to see how it plays out. Yeah,

12:26

look, historical rules only work till

12:29

they stop working. But one historical

12:31

rule we thought we believed in

12:33

was that the political inclinations you

12:35

form during your young years stay

12:37

with you throughout your entire life.

12:40

What's interesting to me is these young

12:42

people grew up during a period of

12:45

tremendous gridlock, paralysis,

12:48

problems not getting solved in Washington, then

12:50

there was the financial crisis, then there

12:52

was the pandemic, and then there is

12:54

kind of what I call the evaporation

12:58

of the American dream. No, even if

13:00

you work hard and get an education,

13:02

you're not going to do as well

13:05

or better than your parents. And that

13:07

makes the appeal of a strong man,

13:09

a demagogue, a right wing populist like

13:11

Trump, very appealing. We've

13:14

seen this throughout history. Elena, do

13:16

you know if these young people

13:18

there agree with Trump,

13:20

and now most of the Republican Party,

13:22

that they will not accept the results

13:24

of an election that he doesn't win?

13:27

Anecdotally, I think talking with people, they

13:29

cast doubt on 2020. I

13:32

think it's a very accepted belief now

13:34

that Trump has been wronged many times,

13:36

and the 2020 election in their view

13:39

is like one of those wrongs. It

13:41

came up a lot in the conference, and the

13:44

crowd would react very strongly when people would say,

13:46

we're not going to let this happen again. You

13:48

know, Trump has this new phrase, too big to

13:50

rig, to like get so many people to turn

13:52

out there's no way people can rig the election,

13:54

which we know is not true.

13:57

That did not happen in 2020. So I

13:59

think that like Yeah, it's like

14:01

one of many now normalized

14:03

parts of the hyper-right support

14:05

he has. All right,

14:07

let's leave it there for today. But

14:09

before we go, I want to thank

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14:38

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Mara Liasen, senior national political correspondent. And

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