Trump Shifts Stance on Tik-Tok, Crypto, and Cannabis…
Who has influenced these changes? It looks like Gen Z’ers are including his son, Barron. Can Trump shave off enough Gen Z voters to make a difference?
August 24, 2024–In recent weeks, former President Donald J. Trump, is seemingly going after the Youth Vote – the 18-34 demographic who traditionally votes Democrat – with three groundbreaking new policy proposals and statements surrounding China-owned social platform Tik-Tok, crypto currency (like Bitcoin), and even his new openness to legalizing cannabis (or CBD).
All of the above is a departure from Trump’s previous stances. Will these shifts bear fruit in time to shift votes in key demographics? And, what or who, has been influencing Trump’s thinking on these issues?
As Trump makes direct appeals to blacks and Hispanics – vote demos that Democrats traditionally win in overwhelming numbers – it now appears he wants to make inroads with the Youth Vote. (We covered Trump’s outreach to blacks in two parts here and here.)
Voter outreach to niche demos speak to the tried-and-true strategy election strategy of shaving off small percentages of voters from groups that the opposite party usually wins in very high percentages.
To remind, Trump earned 12% of the black vote in 2020 up from 8% in 2016. Polls show he could win as much as 26% of the black vote in 2024. If Trump’s vote goes that high with just the black vote alone adding to his tally – it would represent a landslide win for Trump.
Meanwhile, Harris launched a surprise outreach called Evangelicals for Harris last week that backfired. She ran an ad featuring famous American Christian Baptist evangelical minister, Billy Graham, that inferred she had support from Franklin Graham, his son who carries on his father’s famous global ministry. The younger Graham got wind of it and slammed Harris for her mistake. The News & Observer asks if her efforts will pay off and sway the race. Today 80% of Christians vote for Republicans and have voted for Trump is big numbers to date. For that article, go here.
An Emerging Gen Z Threesome 4 Trump
We’re getting a slow trickle of social media posts revealing that Trump’s youngest child, Barron, is beginning to get involved in politics. First, we heard it was Barron who set up that big interview with Tik-Tok influencer and his friend, Adin Ross, at Mar-a-Lago recently. His father publicly thanked his son for it too.
Now we’re seeing Barron Trump with another young influencer, Bo Loudon, pictured above on the right with Tucker Carlson and on the left at MAL with his father.
Bo Loudon, is the son of Gina Loudon, who is chummy with Trump and is American Sunrise morning anchor on Real America’s Voice. At 17, Loudon is making waves with his activism. He’s being called ‘Trump’s secret weapon’ who is featured on Fox News, is an ambassador for TPUSA, Students for Trump, and Today is America. Go to his website here for more.
Ross presented Barron’s father with a custom-designed Tesla Cyber Truck before their sit down. Below Ross mugs with Trump for the camera. You will recall he’s worth an estimated $250 million from making social media videos. We wrote about this event a few weeks ago. See it here.
Are these Gen Z’ers our next generation who will shape our politics? Ross, Loudon, and Barron Trump. A triumvirate who are making some noise and it seems as though they might be getting results with their peers.
Will these influencers – with their connections and ambition – become the next Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson? And, what lies ahead for the young Barron Trump, son of a president, who could one day run for office?
These three influencers and others getting behind Trump must be a threat – otherwise why bother to write an article about what dipshits they are? “Donald Trump is looking for young dudes on the internet. Are those dudes old enough to vote?” crafted to tell us why Trump’s election strategy to reach young male voters is meaningless when we know Trump’s youth vote strategy could be a threat. Click the image for the article.
According to a recent YouGov poll, Trump only lags by two points behind Harris with this demographic. Of course, Trump can go after young males! Like other demo groups that traditionally vote Democrat, it’s a challenge for any Republican candidate to attract these voters.
But Trump brings new appeal and this was borne out by sensational post-Musk-Trump interview stats.
- One, that interview broke the Internet with 26 million views in real time plus a total of one billion impressions soon after.
- Two, 77% of the audience was male and between the age of 18-39.
And, we hear Trump will sit down with Musk again soon in another two-hour long interview.
The Young Men’s Research Institute polls issued these stats on young male voter preferences July 24th:
Young men aged 18-29 support Kamala Harris over Donald Trump by just 38-36 percent, with fully 21 percent saying they would be undecided or unsure if they would vote. In a three-way head to head, men 18-29 are split 32-33 in their support for Kamala Harris or Donald trump, with RFK Jr taking 15 percent and 6 percent saying they are unsure or would not vote.
That 15% for RFK, Jr. may well go to Trump now that he has officially endorsed Trump for president. (The news broke yesterday and Kennedy appeared at a massive rally in Arizona Friday evening. Search YouTube for full clips.)
Then there is this clip taken by Charlie Kirk (here is his X feed) after last nights historic Trump rally in Glendale, Arizona with Young Male Voters posing for photos with Donald Trump. Kirk co-produced that rally. His TPUSA organization targets youths to get involved in conservative causes and politics. His contribution to the event deserves nothing but accolades as it was the largest indoor rally Trump has ever held, it was staged as a scaled down RNC convention, and it showcased (with fireworks) RFK, Jr.’s ‘mystery guest’ entrance upon making his endorsement of Trump official. Click the screenshot to watch.
ICYMI, YouTube video of last night’s can’t miss Trump rally is here.
For RFK, Jr.’s afternoon speech announcing he would suspend his campaign, focus on swing state votes for Trump, and excoriating the media and the DNC on his way out, go here.
WHY THE SHIFT TOWARD TIK-TOK, WHY NOW?
For the record, it’s not a flip flop when Trump does it. (Insert laugh emoji.)
During his tenure in the White House, Trump wanted to ban Tik-Tok in the U.S. because as a Chinese company it was operating to collect data on Americans; and, the U.S. version of it is reportedly designed to keep users hooked while the Chinese version bears little resemblance content-wise to ours.
By 2024, the FBI under the direction of Christopher Wray, found that Tik-Tok’s Chinese propaganda arm targeted U.S. political candidates from both parties during our 2022 midterm election cycle and now the Justice Department has security concerns about it too. Trump warned of same back years ago.
Last March, Reuters reported that Trump said (as told to CNBC) regarding the new development, “I’m not looking to make Facebook double the size. And if you if you ban TikTok, (then) Facebook and others, but mostly Facebook, will be a big beneficiary. And I think Facebook has been very dishonest.”
The New York Post followed Trump’s progression from wanting a ban it back in 2020 to reversing course. This is an excerpt from June 2024 article:
“Trump had originally been against TikTok and had issued an executive order banning it in 2020, but has reversed course since leaving office.” As background: “Biden signed a bill into law in April mandating ByteDance sell the app in six months or have it be banned in the US — a process that will take about nine months to come into effect.”
On July 24, Reuters reported, “Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said he supports TikTok even as a potential ban looms if Chinese-parent company ByteDance fails to divest the short video app’s U.S. assets.”
Time magazine took note of the shift and delved into the reasons behind Trump’s shift in stance. It gets a bit gnarly when trying to grasp the back-and-forth amongst Congress, China, Trump (and his executive order to ban Tik-Tok that went nowhere), investors, ByteDance, and big donors. Two reasons for the change stands out: 1) Trump sees the utility of reaching ‘young kids on Tik-Tok who will go crazy without it’; and, 2) he’d like to make social media platforms more competitive to keep Facebook/Meta in check.
Time’s “Why Trump Flipped on Tik-Tok here: https://time.com/6900348/tiktok-ban-donald-trump-congress
Donald Trump opened his first Tik-Tok account a few weeks ago. On the first day, 10 million people followed him. Ever the showman, Trump posted a video that went viral with fighter, Jake Paul. It’s pure gold but everything Trump does lately is working on all cylinders. Click to watch.
TRUMP’S GROUNDBREAKING BITCOIN SPEECH
Highlights:
Trump is the first American president to ever address a Bitcoin conference, and the first major party candidate to accept Bitcoin campaign donations.
Trump thanked a long list of luminaries including Bitcoin founder, David Bailey, they met at Mar-a-Lago along with a dozen other crypto currency execs leading up to the event. “Bitcoin is doing great since we made this announcement,” during this speech.
He called out the Winklevoss twins (original founders of Facebook), Ron and Rand Paul, Vivek Ramaswamy, Kid Rock, Jake Paul, all in attendance as well as so many others like Sen. Marsha Blackburn, and Sen. Tim Scott.
This event doubled as a fundraiser and tickets topped at $844,600 with other seats going for $100,,000.
As the keynote speaker, this speech signaled that Trump flipped from a crypto skeptic to a crypto champion.
At 14:40, “Today I am laying out my plans to ensure that the United States will be the crypto capital and the bitcoin super power of the world. We’ll get it done.”
“And, if we are going to go into it, I want it to be mined minted and made in the U.S.A. It’s going to be and if Bitcoin is going to the moon, I want America to be the nation that leads the way and that is what is going to happen.”
175 million people are in Bitcoin. Trump asserts the SEC will not continue to wage war against crypto-currency thanks to his plans to keep crypto-currencies out of the hands of centralized governments.
At 20:21 “Sadly when we see attacks on crypto part of much larger pattern being carried out by the same by left-wing fascists who weaponized government against any threat to their power, they’ve done it to me…”
At 22:00 “It should be no surprise that these same totalitarians are hellbent on crushing crypto – you have the SEC you know what they are doing, they are obliterating Bitcoin – the reason is Bitcoin stands for freedom, sovereignty, and independence from government coercion and control. The Biden-Harris repression of bitcoin is wrong and it’s very bad for our country.”
This year Trump has made increasingly bullish comments about his intention to embrace crypto-currency which culminated in his keynote remarks in July at the Bitcoin conference.
As with Tik-Tok, he now wants to ward off centralized government or big tech control of crypto. He told the Libertarian Convention last May in D.C. that he wants to keep “Sen. Elizabeth Warren and her goons away from bitcoin holders.”
Trump announced his team raised $25 million in a combination of dollars and Bitcoin since we made that announcement to accept as donations in May.
Trump has dipped into the digital currency world prior to this announcement with his NFT (non-fungible token) playing cards and gold sneaker promotions which run on the Solana blockchain payment platform.
For more background, go here: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/18/trump-bitcoin-conference-fundraiser-tickets.html
AND THEN THERE IS THE POT VOTE?
Believe it or not, Wikipedia is doing a series of background entries on Donald J. Trump. We located the one on “Cannabis Policy of the Donald Trump administration”.
Click the link below. It’s just as gnarly policy-wise as Tik-Tok and Bitcoin in terms of legislative and societal hurdles that have surrounded legalizing cannabis for decades.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_policy_of_the_Donald_Trump_administration
In 2017, Trump was struggling with definitions around medical use of marijuana versus recreational use.
While Trump’s fluctuations on the topic of legalizing pot have been noted, today Donald Trump is considered by experts in cannabis policy to be ‘cannabis-ambivalent.’ Some pro-legalization of cannabis activists believe he is softening his views to be politically expedient.
Here is what the Budding Trends Blog concluded after reviewing and comparing Biden’s policies to Trump’s over the years in its article, “Biden vs. Trump: High Stakes for Cannabis Policy?”:
The American people support cannabis liberalization. Neither candidate Trump nor candidate Biden seem to personally view the issue as top of mind, but nor will either apparently stand in the way of liberalization.
So, in the end, maybe all of this discussion was for naught. Maybe the results will be the same regardless of who calls 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue home on January 21, 2025. Maybe what really matters is who controls Congress, who controls the statehouses, and who controls the judicial branches that interpret the law.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, anyone can find Donald Trump’s policy platform on his website. Here is the bullet point version of the platform adopted by the Republican party at the RNC convention for handy reference:
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform
All other policies remain the same – until further notice that is.
We might presume there will be a few more changes to policy as he embraces ideas from his newest ally in the campaign, namely Democrat Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and now former candidate for president running as an Independent.
Notably Trump is steadfast about his stance on EVs and tells Elon Musk publicly that ‘they’re okay for some things but not everything’ every chance he gets.
But, hey Trump is light years beyond lightweight Kamala Harris who 90 days into engineering her coup to unseat President Joe Biden from his job has yet to issue any policies nor has she had any media interviews or press conference.
So Team Trump issued a policy website for her:
We’ll keep you posted on more policy shifts in the weeks ahead of the election.
