There Is a Very Simple Explanation Why Trump's Nominees Are So Bad
In bro culture, the more unqualified, the more qualified the person.
The world has watched transfixed as nomination after nomination goes before the United States Senate and offers up non-answers to questions about their lack of qualifications for the positions the president-elect has nominated them.
Beginning with the nomination for attorney general of the alleged rapist Matt Gaetz, who wisely pulled out, to F.B.I. director, secretary of defense, secretary of the department of energy, and all down the line, Donald Trump had demonstrated to the country that two things qualify all of these people more than anything they could bring to those respective departments: First, they are all so flawed enough that they will owe a boatload of gratitude for their sudden career advancement to him. Secondly, they are all “bros,” including Pam Bondi, who was nominated for attorney general.
Since the election, the curtain on Trump’s sudden surge into the presidency has been pulled back, and what we learned was that Trump’s victory could be broken to simply this: His core constituency makes up an unflinching 30 to 40 percent of the American public. These are people who will never leave Trump’s camp no matter what happens. In 2024, Trump expanded that core by a few percentage points to, say, 42 percent. The remaining seven to eight percent he needed came from a combination of voters bailing on Biden and Harris because of the war in Gaza and the harnessing of bro culture.
As I have tried to show in the preceding pages, Donald Trump has lived, in many ways, by the ethos of the bro culture his whole life. An outsider to the elite Manhattan social circuit because his family lived in Queens, Trump’s early years were spent trying to prove to his wealthy peers that the Trump name also symbolized New York royalty.
Donnie, though, was never truly accepted, and more often than not, they laughed not with him but at him. This is why he aligned himself with the thuggish lawyer Roy Cohn. Cohn taught Trump all he would later use to rise to power and convince millions that he didn’t lose in 2020: “Always fight the establishment and never admit defeat.”
This sentiment is the essence of the bro ethos. Losers admit defeat. Never let them make you do what you don’t want to do, especially if it means making room for a minority or a woman. Always fight. The establishment will always err to make everything more inclusive (affirmative action, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, gay marriage, transgender women in sports, etc.), and anyone who fought back to prevent the erosion of male influence in society was a hero to the great bro cause.
After January 6th, Trump genuinely lost a massive amount of support from Americans. If the election were to be redone immediately after January 6th, Trump would have likely only gotten his core to vote for him — 35 percent or so. The rest of the country was in shock by what he caused. And yet, once the prosecution of January 6th happened, a significant portion of bro-dom started coalescing again around the Trump sun.
However, these gaming bros weren’t paying attention to the details of the January 6th hearings. Thanks to their alliance with the alt-right, which came about because of Gamergate, alt-right gamers, Elon Musk, and the whole army of right-wing amplifiers created an upwelling of support for Trump.
What they saw, and what was being discussed online in the games, on Twitch, in memes, was that the “everyone should be represented equally in society” forces, the Democrats in their world, were using the powers of the “establishment” to destroy Trump. He might have had his flaws, but if bro culture didn’t have Trump’s back, then the bros would be replaced and made redundant. It was imperative to fight back, and the least they could do was vote for Trump.
The bro machine went into overdrive as the election neared and the rhetoric on both sides heated up. There are dozens of channels hosted by bro influencers. Each of them has millions of followers, and all of them use the bro modus operandi of humor, imagined rebellion, anti-progressivism, anti-inclusion, misogyny, and ignorance for the issues — “Bro, to be fair, I don’t know what I am talking about. I do know, though, I don’t want some Indian woman calling herself Black going up against Putin.” — to sway their fellow gamers bros. Amplified by the alt-right platforms, Trump had an army of bro zombies obligated to support him or risk being blackballed.
Here are some of the key influencers: Joe Rogan, Bradley Martyn, Grant Cardone, Gary Vaynerchuk, the Nelk Boys, Ninja, Dr Disrespect, Tim theTatman, Rob Dyrdek, Shaun White, The Logan brothers, and many more. These influencers have millions of followers and are dopey as hell when it comes to the issues but don’t hide their dopiness, which makes them appealing to the bro army. Remember: Self-respecting bros are never supposed to get heated or emotional about matters of the establishment. The most important thing is to be against the establishment and all that makes it tick.
When Trump won, bros celebrated, and the bros responsible for shaping the mood of bro-dom started to gloat because they knew they could. They had united to hold off the forces of do-goodism and were, in the headiness of the post-election, even able to mock those forces. Take the concept of “your body, my decision,” which resonates in certain elements of bro culture where power dynamics, control, and societal privilege come into play.
Some bros adopted the phrase as a tongue-in-cheek slogan, intending to mock feminist rhetoric rather than seriously engage with it. Thus, the phrase reflects bro culture’s unifying tactic of pushing the boundaries through humor, often crossing into offensive territory.
It was no longer necessary, however, to push those boundaries. High on their victory by getting Trump elected, the rationale was why let up on the gas? The fact that this phrase became another “rallying point for faux rebellion” against the establishment in the wake of Trump’s victory, especially given all of the angst many American women over abortion rights are experiencing, demonstrates what is in store for the country during Trump’s second term.
And that “super unqualified cabinet of misfits (bros)” will make sure that women do indeed lose rights over their bodies.