Garrett, a Logan Paul fan in his late 20s from Houston, runs his own YouTube channel under the name Spy Jay.
He said he found Paul’s brand of “being an ideologue” attractive, and before watching the interview he had a generally positive view of Trump, calling him a “patriotic nationalist who wants to bring the country back to a better state than it was before.”
“But the persecution he faces, while the media has a relentless drive to rewrite who he is and what he stands for, signifies a greater evil,” he said. “And that makes me feel more inclined to openly vote for him.”
Watching Trump on Paul’s podcast – the internet star asked Trump if he had ever been in a fight – and Trump’s interview with Adin Ross only reinforced his views, Garrett told the BBC.
Garrett said he thinks young Americans are becoming more tuned into politics, and that Trump is tapping into alternative media spaces “like no other candidate has before.”
“So whether it’s a good strategy or a bad one, it’s going to reach quite a few young people,” he said.
Online response to the video has been generally positive. “Nobody can convince me that Trump isn’t just a bro when it comes down to it,” said one, while another read “Love or hate Trump, he sure knows how to make an interview interesting.”
But some experts question whether Trump has much room to increase the vote among the predominantly male subcultures where he has long enjoyed support.
“Trump seems to have already captured the monosphere and hypermasculinity of the over-25s, so this is a late-stage and pretty desperate attempt to be relevant,” said Jack Bratich, a Rutgers University media professor who studies the male-dominated online space. “manosphere”.
Bratic says that young people who are very active online were very active during the 2016 election campaign, when political memes and extreme message boards like 4chan became popular.
The situation is very different eight years later, he says, with “no right-wing online youth political movement” actively involved in this year’s contest.
Still, he notes that the risk for Trump is small and the rewards potentially large.
Whether this will pay off will depend on whether we convince young people who are not inclined to engage in politics to log off and go to the polls.
Like so many things in this election, the performances for young voters are full of unknowns.
