In July 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump called on the Russian government to hack the emails of his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. It wouldn’t be long before the scandal of Russian election interference would dominate headlines for much of the campaign and Trump’s presidency. And Trump has since claimed that his public call — for Russians to “find the 30,000 emails” so that “our press” could have a field day — was somehow a joke.
But in the intervening years, the former and perhaps future leader of the free world has provided ample evidence that he wasn’t, well, joking at all. In a 2019 interview with ABC, the then-sitting president explicitly stated that “I think I’d take it,” when asked if he would accept dirt on a political opponent that was offered up to him by a foreign power. Trump only added he’d “go maybe to the FBI” if he thought “there was something wrong.”
Today, the shoe is entirely on the other foot, with Trump and his campaign now the victims of an alleged foreign hacking and leaking operation during the most crucial months of a close American presidential contest. This time, it doesn’t seem to be Russia. Team Trump is pointing the finger at Iran; Rolling Stone has yet to independently verify that claim. The FBI is investigating the alleged hack.
According to two sources familiar with the matter, the Trump team has been scrambling to assess the extent of the damage, and how, exactly, the apparent hacking may affect different facets of the Trumpworld elite, not just the presidential campaign’s staff. “It’s very scary stuff,” one source close to Trump, who has been communicating with campaign officials in recent days about the alleged hacking operation, succinctly notes to Rolling Stone.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung claimed in a statement that Iran was responsible for the apparent hack of a senior campaign staffer’s internal communications. No outlet has published any leaked documents yet. Cheung preemptively criticized any journalists who dare to report on them.
“Any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications are doing the bidding of America’s enemies and doing exactly what they want,” he said.
That’s a radical departure from 2016, when Trump openly called on Russia to hack and release Clinton’s emails. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said at a press conference. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Russian actors reportedly targeted Clinton’s campaign and personal office on or around that same day. Trump argued the source of the Clinton campaign materials shouldn’t matter — the content was more important. In October 2016, Trump complained that the hacked emails released by WikiLeaks were not getting enough coverage from reporters. “Very little pick-up by the dishonest media of incredible information provided by WikiLeaks,” he posted on X (formerly Twitter).
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Monday asking whether the former president still believes that it is acceptable for media outlets and political candidates to cover and highlight a campaign’s internal documents or communications if they were hacked.
News of the hack comes at a time when Trump is mired in the final two-and-a-half-month blitz of his 2024 crusade to retake the White House. It’s an election with remarkably high stakes for the American public — and for Trump personally. The outcome of the race between him and Vice President Kamala Harris won’t merely decide whether Trump gets a chance at implementing his increasingly authoritarian vision for the nation. Election Day in November could very well determine whether or not Trump ever faces actual prison time.
And it’s in this environment in which a foreign actor, allegedly the Iranian government, is trying to mess with Trump’s electoral chances at returning to power. Iranian officials are still furious with Trump for, among other things, blowing up Qasem Soleimani, and have wanted vengeance for years.
However this alleged attack by Iran on the Trump team’s private communications shakes out, it will be done in the shadow of years of MAGAland openly gloating and mocking elite Democrats for getting breached by Russian hackers.
For instance, in December 2016, senior veterans of the Trump and Hillary Clinton campaigns gathered at Harvard University, to make first-draft-of-history-style presentations for the assembled crowd and journalists. With the wounds of 2016 still fresh, the event quickly devolved into chaotic sniping, insults, and hurt feelings. At one point, when the issue of Russian election interference, which was designed to help Trump win, came out, Trump lieutenant Brad Parscale told the lineup of Clinton officials that there was such a thing as two-step verification for email accounts… and that maybe Democrats should try it.
Years later, in the lobby of what was, at the time, Washington, D.C.’s Trump International Hotel — just walking distance from the Trump White House — this reporter caught up with Parscale about what he said to the Clinton senior staff. He smiled, recalled that it was a “funny” line that he trotted out, and reveled briefly in his trolling of Trump’s political nemeses.
Things are different now.
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.