Trump's 'unholy union' is fraying as the bros head for the exits

U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he delivers remarks on the "Trump Accounts" tax-advantaged investment program at Wheeler High School in Marietta, Georgia, U.S., July 22, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

President Donald Trump has long benefited from support in the so-called “manosphere,” with even Democrats like former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg pandering to them while female conservatives try to create an analogous “womanosphere.” Yet according to a recent interview between Trump’s former Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor and political Ross Morales Rocketto, founder of the 2024 political group White Dudes for Harris, Trump is starting to lose support among white men.

“Donald Trump went from 50 percent approval in this country, that means he had some independents on his side; then he went down to 40 percent, which basically meant any independents he had, those people are gone,” Taylor told Rocketto during their interview. “They're bailing. He's losing some concerned conservatives. Then you go from 40 to 30 percent and you're literally losing millions of your followers. It means you are losing millions upon millions of your followers, and a lot of them are dudes. They're just guys that kind of got recruited into the movement. They felt like it was cool to back Donald Trump since it was provocative. They don't pay attention to politics. They're like, ‘I don't know. Everyone hates him. Could be kind of cool to see this come back into office.’” Yet he added that because of Trump’s various unpopular domestic and foreign policies, “now they're not happy with what they are seeing. Do you think this is a significant pickup moment? And what might we look for in the numbers at the midterms to see whether folks have really started to bail and gone to the other side?”

Rocketto offered a nuanced analysis, saying that Democrats stand to make some gains but not all at once.

“What I hope we see is more young men coming out to vote in this election cycle, because I think if we see more young men voting in this election cycle, they will probably be voting for Democrats, and I think that bodes quite well,” Rocketto told Taylor. “I think what we are likely to see is a lot of these guys will just stay home and not vote, which will also mean that we probably do quite well in the midterms. I'm still pretty bullish on us retaking the House. I'm a little more skeptical about the Senate.”

While he anticipated a lot of Trump’s manosphere supporters will sit out during the 2026 midterms, he suspects they will also be up for grabs in the 2028 contest.

“I think how we talk is going to matter,” Rocketto explained to Taylor. “I've been saying this a lot over the last six months. The 2028 election isn't going to be decided in a fight between moderates and progressives. It's going to be between people who are angry and people who aren't angry. And I think the candidates who are angry and can show that anger, and can show that they are willing to do something to completely shake up the system — I think that's who we're going to end up with as a nominee.”

Earlier in their conversation, Taylor described the recent arrest of manosphere influencer Andrew Tate as a metaphor “because the rest of the MAGA manosphere is looking around and saying, ‘I don't know if I want to be a part of this.’ Turns out these guys are losers, and they might be corrupt losers, and they might be getting us sent to jail with the things that they're doing and recommending.”

Rocketto agreed with Taylor, opining that “as we've learned with folks like Andrew Tate — who spent a lot of time during the [former President Joe] Biden years not in the United States — we know that it's extremely important, and we also know that these far-right movements find a home in far-right culture. And I think what Donald Trump was able to do in both elections that he won is unite a group of people that we'd never seen someone on the right unite before.”

The influencer added, “The cultural right and the political right, for many, many years, had never really been able to get united to build power together. And what Donald Trump did at its core was unite those two groups of folks in a very unholy union. And what you're starting to see is that union starting to fray as he gets a little bit older, as people remember what the first term was like, and as folks are realizing that maybe he is going a little too far. You know, [far right podcaster] Joe Rogan was one of the first folks on the cultural right to start talking about the administration's immigration policy. And I think it would be a mistake to say that we're going to get all those folks back overnight because of his overstepping. But it has created an opportunity, because many of those folks might be saying, ‘You know what? We do think we should deport criminals, but we don't like it when it's being done this way. We don't like it when people are getting shot in the streets of Minnesota and Houston and cities across the United States. We don't like it when masked people show up in our communities and just kidnap folks who haven't done anything wrong.’”

Overall the manosphere has been widely condemned for promoting toxic behaviors. In March Irish Times writer Kathy Sheridan captured the prevailing view in her take on documentarian Louis Theroux’s “Inside the Manosphere” film.

“Watch again and the soulless, ignorant young men become savagely wounded children with podcasts, millions of social media followers and a guru in the shape of the alleged rapist and sex trafficker, Andrew Tate,” Sheridan wrote.

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