Former President Donald Trump once said he would date his daughter, but that isn’t stopping conservatives from criticizing Democratic politicians for having what appear to be pretty normal, loving relationships with their families.
On Monday and Tuesday, conservatives took issue with a video clip from Monday’s Democratic National Convention of Vice President Kamala Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff and his daughter Ella. They also mocked Tim Walz’s son Gus for crying during his father’s speech on Wednesday. Gus Walz has a non-verbal learning disorder, ADHD, and an anxiety disorder, as the Walzs detailed to People.
“Talk about weird,” conservative commentator Ann Coulter wrote on X, formerly Twitter, about Gus Walz crying at the convention.
“Tim Walz stupid crying son isn’t the flex the left thinks it is,” wrote Trump delegate Mike Crispi. “You raised your kid to be a puffy beta male. Congrats. Does Barron Trump cry? Nope. Does he love his father? Of course. That’s the types of values I want leading the country.”
Crispi later deleted the post, saying he didn’t have context. However, his timeline still features a post criticizing Walz’s family for crying during their father’s speech.
Earlier in the week, conservatives teed off on Ella Emhoff having her arm around her father’s shoulders, with his arm around her waist.
“Totally not weird,” Charlie Kirk, founder and CEO of Turning Point USA, posted on X, formerly Twitter. Turning Point USA is a group that aims to promote conservative politics among students.
Democrats began calling Trump, his running mate J.D. Vance, and the Republican Party “weird” last month. It’s clearly gotten under the skin of conservative commentators like Kirk, who have been trying to turn the attack around on Democrats. The line has also been driving Trump crazy. Yesterday, the former president felt the need to spend time at an economic event trying to clarify that he and Vance are “extremely normal people.”
“This is Kamala’s family. Beyond parody,” wrote X account End Wokeness, which has nearly 3 million followers.
“Creepy,” posted Benny Johnson, a conservative political commentator and YouTuber.
Ella Emhoff, 25, is a model and artist. She got attention elsewhere for her camouflage hat, which says “Harris Walz” on it. The hat is similar to one that singer Chappell Roan is selling.
The Emhoffs weren’t the only ones to receive this kind of attention on Monday night and Tuesday morning. Johnson also posted a video from Monday of Joe Biden hugging his daughter Ashley. “What is going on here?!” Johnson wrote on X. “Joe Biden creepily hugs his daughter Ashley before taking the stage tonight,” he added on Instagram.
In her appearance at the DNC on Monday, Ashley called her father the “OG girl dad” and said, “He told me I could be anything and I could do anything.”
Perhaps this outrage at the videos from Monday is projection, as Trump sets a good example of what being creepy with your daughter actually looks like. Photos have circulated of Trump and his daughter being uncomfortably close, such as one photo in which a teenage Ivanka sits on his lap.
In 2004, Trump told radio host Howard Stern that it would be OK to call Ivanka a “piece of ass.”
“My daughter is beautiful, Ivanka,” Trump said.
“By the way, your daughter,” Stern said.
“She’s beautiful,” Trump responded.
“Can I say this? A piece of ass,” Stern said.
“Yeah,” Trump said.
Now, that’s creepy.
President Donald Trump discussing Venezuela at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago.
Why Venezuela Could Be a Turning Point in Gen Z’s Support for Trump
When Donald Trump called himself “the peace president” during his 2024 campaign, it was not just a slogan that my fellow Gen Z men and I took seriously, but also a promise we took personally. For a generation raised in the shadow of endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it felt reassuring. It told us there was a new Republican Party that had learned from its failures and wouldn’t ask our generation to fight another war for regime change. That belief stood strong until the U.S. overthrew Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Growing up in the long wake of the wars in Iraq in Afghanistan shaped how my generation learned to see Republicans. For us, “traditional” Republican foreign policy became synonymous with unnecessary conflicts that caused young people to bear the consequences. We heard how Iraq was sold to the public as a necessary war to destroy weapons of mass destruction, only to become a long conflict that defined the early adulthood of many millennials. Many of us grew up watching older siblings come home from deployments changed, and hearing teachers and coaches talk about friends who never fully came back. By the time we were old enough to pay attention, distrust of Bush-era Republicans wasn’t ideological, it was inherited from what we had heard.
As the 2024 election was rolling around, that dynamic had flipped. After watching wars in Ukraine and Gaza dominate headlines while Joe Biden was president, the Democrats were now the warmongers. My friends constantly told me how a vote for Kamala Harris was a vote to go to war. On the other hand, Donald Trump and the Republicans were the ones my friends thought could keep us safe. “I’m not voting for Trump because I love him,” one friend told me. “I’m voting for him because he cares about us and I don’t want to go fight in a stupid war.” For many of my friends, much of their vote came down to one question: Who was less likely to send us to fight? The answer to them was pretty clear.
Fast forward to now, and Venezuela has begun to complicate that belief. Even without talk of a draft or a formal declaration of war, the renewed focus on U.S. involvement and troops on the ground has brought back the same language of escalation my generation was taught to distrust. Young men online have been voicing the same worries, concerned that the ousting of Maduro mirrors the early stages of wars they were raised to fear. When I asked a friend what he thought about Venezuela, he shared that same sentiment. “This is how all these wars always start,” he told me. “They might try to make it sound like it’s not actually a war, but people our age always end up being the ones that pay the price for it.” For young men who supported Trump because they believed he represented a break from interventionist politics, Venezuela blurs the line between the “new” Republican Party they thought they were backing and the old one they were raised to reject.
For many young men, Venezuela has become a major part of a broader shift of how they view Trump. A recent poll from Speaking with American Men (SAM) found that Trump’s approval rating has fallen 10 percent among young men, with only 27 percent agreeing with the statement that Trump is “delivering for you”.
Gen Z men’s support of Trump was never about ideology or party loyalty, it was about the idea that he had their back and would fight for them. But that’s no longer the case. Recently, Trump proposed adding $500 billion to the military budget. Ideas like that will only hurt the president with young men. My friends don’t want more military spending that could get us entangled in foreign wars; they want a president who keeps them home and fights for their economic and social needs. As Trump pushes for a bigger military and more intervention abroad, the promise that once made him feel like a protector of young men now feels out of reach.
For my generation, Venezuela isn’t just another foreign policy dispute, it’s a conflict many young men worry they could be the ones sent to fight. Gen Z men didn’t support Trump because he was a Republican, but because they believed he was different from the old Republicans. He would be a president who would have their back, fight for their interests and keep them from fighting unnecessary wars. Now, that promise feels fragile, and the fear of being the ones asked to face the consequences has returned. For a generation raised on the effects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the idea of another war isn’t abstract, it’s personal.