U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the press prior to boarding Air Force One at Lehigh Valley International Airport in Allentown, Pennsylvania, U.S., August 3, 2025. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno
During his 2024 campaign, Donald Trump not only rallied his hardcore MAGA base — he also reached out to independents, swing voters, the Manosphere, Latinos and Generation Z, making inroads with all of them. That approach didn't give Trump the "landslide" victory he claims it did, but it was enough to get him past the finish line in a close election and defeat Democratic nominee Kamala Harris by roughly 1.5 percent in the national popular vote.
But according to 18-year-old journalist Eli Thompson, Trump's inroads with Gen-Z are in danger thanks to his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case.
Thompson, in an op-ed published by USA Today on August 6, explains, "Going to an all-boys high school, where I graduated this spring, I understand why many young men voted for President Donald Trump. But now, convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein might have changed that, ushering in a major shift in how older members of Generation Z, those born between 1997 and 2012, vote in the next election."
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Thompson stresses that the Gen-Z voters who supported Trump in 2024 weren't necessarily staunch Republicans but rather, viewed Trump as an outsider and found that appealing.
"My peers are not your rich country club conservatives," the Gen-Z journalist argues. "They are scrappy guys who liked Trump because he wasn't polished or predictable. To them, he was a rebel outsider who would fight 'the swamp' with all he had. I remember heated lunchroom debates where they'd argue about whether or not he could truly upend our system and its backers."
Thompson continues, "Even if he couldn’t remake Washington, they said, Trump would at least cause the unseen power brokers to sweat by releasing the Epstein files and making public the names of the disgraced financier’s clients. Fast-forward to now, and that looks like a fever dream."
Trump's handling of the Epstein case, according to Thompson, "has left" his Gen-Z friends "wondering" if Trump is "just the swamp" or a "swamp creature."
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"This isn't a small hiccup in Trump's presidency," Thompson stresses. "It’s a signal of something bigger: Young male conservatives, like my friends, are starting to wonder if their anti-establishment hero has joined the swamp he swore to fight. They’re wondering if he is giving harbor to the people he promised to expose…. They wonder: Is Trump just a showman who lied to us and deceived us this whole time? I hear many of them saying that their president has now cozied up to the establishment and abandoned people like them in the process."
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Eli Thompson's full op-ed for USA Today is available at this link.