Donald Trump Made The GOP Cool Again

President-Elect Donald Trump and Vice President-Elect J.D. Vance were the cool candidates this election, and everybody knows it.

While Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democrats followed the tired script of courting Hollywood celebrities to campaign on a deflated brand of masculinity, the Trump-led Republican ticket leaned into the cultural dichotomy that characterized presidential politics to reclaim the popular high ground. Put another way, Trump and Vance didn’t shy away from the popularity contest run by Harris. They competed and won, infuriating leftists along the way who exposed themselves as far too obsessed with identity, far too insulated by machine-driven media, and far too barren of genuine humor. The Democrats’ reaction to Trump’s New York City rally at Madison Square Garden exemplified how the Harris team closed the campaign as all of the above.

On Oct. 27, nine days before Election Day, insult comic Tony Hinchcliffe enraged Democrats with his performance at the Manhattan rally where he made an insulting joke.

“I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now, Hinchcliffe said. “I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”

The comment whipped Democrats and the media into a routine bout of hysteria, and they were outraged that a literal insult comedian would, as the Associated Press put it, make “crude and racist insults” and that his “set also included lewd and racist comments about Latinos, Jews and Black people, all key constituencies.”

“Vice President Kamala Harris described Trump’s rally Sunday at Madison Square Garden as ‘more vivid than usual’ and said he ‘fans the fuel of hate’ before she flew to Michigan for a campaign event,” the AP reported.

President Joe Biden would go on to call Trump supporters “garbage” while on a campaign call with Latino activists.

“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters,” Biden said.

The president’s remark not only reminded voters how the left approaches comedy but also how the left approaches Republicans — with the very contempt Democrats claim to condemn on behalf of minorities they assume are similarly outraged. Trump charismatically responded by rolling into a Wisconsin rally in a garbage truck while dressed as a garbage man.

“How do you like my garbage truck?” Trump asked reporters at the Green Bay venue. “This truck is in honor of Kamala and Joe Biden.”

The episode came shortly after Trump generated even more iconic images during his shift at a McDonald’s drive-through to mock Harris’ authenticity. The Washington Free Beacon reported in August that she likely fabricated her experience as a McDonald’s fry cook when she started campaigning for president in 2019.

While most politicians (like Mitt Romney) would have responded to the news about their opponent by blasting the opponent’s credibility in a news interview, Trump showed up at a McDonald’s instead to work the fryer himself in one of the best displays of retail politics in recent presidential history.

Trump ran with a charisma that was completely absent from the Democrat ticket, which was hellbent on lecturing Americans about racism and sexism. Instead of blindly recruiting a bunch of A-list celebrities to tell Americans how to vote, Republicans instead carefully co-opted a select few to prove a particular point. Whether it was Amber Rose sharing her evolution as a black rapper who used to believe every media smear about Republicans or Hulk Hogan re-appearing at Madison Square Garden to present an alternative to the left’s emasculation of men, team Trump triumphed in the culture war with a multiracial coalition that refused to buy what Democrats were selling.

Trump and Vance, both of whom appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast and ultimately earned his endorsement, particularly dominated over Democrats among male voters across the electorate. Trump captured a majority of men aged 18-44, and his historic inroads among black and Hispanic voters were propelled by support among young men. Democrats, however, campaigned as if they were trying to dissuade men from embracing the Harris/Walz ticket. The video below was an actual ad created to court more “dudes for Harris.”

Clearly, young men whose masculinity has been written off as “toxic” by the Democrats were more receptive to messages from Republicans who had drawn the support of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is on a crusade to reverse the tide of plummeting testosterone levels. “Normal gays” disillusioned by the left’s transgender hysteria were certainly compelled to vote for Trump following Vance’s testimony on Rogan’s podcast that gay men “just wanted to be left the hell alone.” After all, the Republican platform under Trump formally dropped the party’s explicit endorsement of traditional marriage.

To most Americans, then, the response to Trump’s win among young men and women who are tired of an emasculated dating pool comes as little surprise. By this fall, the stigma associated with voting for Trump that existed in 2016 was completely erased.

Contrast the celebrations of Trump’s victory to the bizarre impulse of leftists to record themselves in unhinged fits of rage flooding tears across the internet, and it’s even more clear who the cool candidates were this cycle.

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at [email protected]. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.