How Trump lost the bro vote: Iran and Israel, Epstein, and the economy

The numbers are clear: President Donald Trump’s approval rating is cratering across the board, and he’s losing the most ground with groups that were key demographics to his win in 2024.

In that election, men under 30 broke for Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris by about a single point — not a lot, but a big improvement for Republicans, who have struggled with young voters. This year, Trump’s approval with that same group has collapsed. A recent CNN poll had him underwater by roughly 55 points with the same group.

We wanted to understand what’s going on, so America, Actually headed to Washington for Trump’s June 14 UFC event on the South Lawn of the White House. It was a night practically engineered for the White House to speak directly to young men (plus Trump’s own love of combat sports like UFC). My question to attendees was pretty simple: Has their age cohort really turned on Trump, or is this just noise?

What I heard — from the guys standing in line and from Jack Posobiec, the far-right activist who has spent years selling Trump to this audience — is that the softening is real. Three things kept coming up as an explanation:

Almost every person I talked to came back to prices. Trump’s election was built off the promise of cheaper gas and cheaper groceries — and the very literal receipts haven’t backed that up. As one young man put it to me: “[Trump] said he was anti-war. He said he was gonna lower prices, and we’re just not…That result is just not happening.”

Another put it more bluntly: “Prices are ridiculous. Don’t even get me started on gas. I don’t even wanna fill my gas tank no more.” A third, who described himself as middle class, said the disconnect was personal: “I want things that affect my life. I wanna see change in my regular day-to-day, and I don’t see that.”

Even Posobiec, who still supports Trump, didn’t dispute that the economy has been a sticking point for young Trump voters who may be drifting away. “Gas prices are up,” he admitted, but “they are coming down.” He also offered the same defense the Trump administration has given: that higher gas prices are simply the price of Trump’s efforts to quash the Iranian nuclear program. (That might not get them very far, however. As of early July, according to an Economist/YouGov poll, 69 percent of young adults disapproved of Trump’s handling of Iran.)

That’s the second break — and for a lot of these young men, the deepest one. “We didn’t know wars were gonna start with other countries,” one man said. When I asked what single issue they’d want Trump to fix, the answer came fast: “Foreign aid to Israel. A lot less. People are dying, and it just shouldn’t be happening — and we’re paying for that as taxpayers.” His friend agreed: “We don’t want conflict. A lot of young people are on the same page with that.”

This is something Posobiec said that he also hears from young conservatives: “Young men saying, ‘Look, we want more focus on domestic than on foreign policy.’ We heard that a lot today.”

Posebiec tried to mince definitions — “It’s a war, but it’s not a forever war,” he said — but that’s a hard sell to a group that took Trump at his word. And he conceded the two grievances are fused: “You cannot disassociate the war in Iran with the gas prices and the economic pain people are feeling.”

3. Epstein and the broken trust

The third reason is less about policy and more about a campaign promise betrayed. The Epstein files debacle, and especially the sense that Trump had promised transparency and then stalled, has curdled something with his younger voters.

“After the Epstein files and everything, [things have] ramped up with how he’s been acting,” one young man said. “It was a lot more chill before that.” Another put it this way: “No one likes pedophiles. The way it’s portrayed, it seems like there’s trying to be some sort of coverup.”

Even Posobiec, himself an infamous “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorist who helped build the elites-versus-the-people frame in the first place, thinks Trump’s lack of transparency cost him. “Just rip the Band-Aid off. Throw all the files out there,” he said. His warning was that stonewalling costs Trump the exact connection that the UFC night was meant to celebrate. “It becomes a block between that relationship he’s always had with the average people. ‘We thought you were on our side. Release everything.’”

To be clear: None of this makes these young men Democrats. And most came for the UFC fight, not the president himself. But it’s clear that their support for Trump is much softer than the last election — and, on the economy, on Iran, and on Epstein, they’re telling anyone who’ll listen that they feel differently now. It’s a real shift, and one that could have implications not just in the midterms but for election cycles to come.

As always, there’s much more in the full show, so listen to America, Actually wherever you get your podcasts or watch it on Vox’s YouTube channel.