Brilyn Hollyhand, a 19-year-old conservative influencer, had just finished fielding questions from a room full of voting-age high school and college students in Ohio when he pulled out his phone to deliver a sharp warning to the Republican Party.
“If Republicans focus on everything except the economy going into November, we deserve to lose the midterms,” Hollyhand, former co-chair of the RNC’s youth council, said in a video posted to X and Instagram. “Gen Z doesn’t care about cultural-war wins. We don’t care about 20-point policy papers. We want solutions.”
Hollyhand, who remains a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump, told MS NOW that doubts about whether the “American dream” is still attainable are a recurring theme in the political debates he participates in with young people across the country. Hollyhand is urging Trump to go to college campuses to make the case directly about why the GOP is the best choice in 2026 to deliver economic prosperity to a generation anxious about its future.
“I hear the questions from students, and I want those answered — not just by me, but by my friend, the president,” he said.
In interviews with MS NOW, young conservative leaders echoed similar concerns about how cost-of-living frustrations — including soaring gas prices, elevated interest rates and an uncertain job market — could affect the voting group. Others are concerned about the U.S. conflict with Iran, which some described as a betrayal of Trump’s campaign vow to pursue “America First” policies.
“A lot of people are anti-war,” said Carson Carpenter, a 20-year-old who runs a conservative media management company. “When I get asked the question, ‘Is Gen Z going to swing their vote in the midterms because of a foreign conflict?,’ the normal answer would be ‘No.’ But just because of all the domestic repercussions that we’re seeing, it probably will this time around.”
The warning signs are real. In 2024, Trump posted the best margins for a GOP presidential candidate in two decades with voters under 30 — a historic showing the party is now scrambling to maintain. Only 58 percent of GOP voters under age 35 said they would back the Republican candidate in their district in the midterms, according to a Generation Lab survey conducted last week. Another 10 percent said they would support the Democratic candidate, while 31 percent said they would support “neither” or wouldn’t vote at all. Nearly 70% of young Republicans characterized economic conditions as “bad” or “terrible,” and nearly half said Trump’s choice to take military action against Iran was “the wrong decision.”
“I think turnout will be pretty low this next election,” Carpenter said.
Collin Jones, a senior at Penn State who serves as press secretary for the school’s chapter of the College Republicans, said he sees the war as an “unnecessary conflict,” and described the subsequent supply-chain disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz as “self-inflicted.”
In a statement to MS NOW, White House spokesperson Liz Huston said that “young Americans are directly benefiting from President Trump’s policies, which include the largest middle-class tax cuts in history, improved housing affordability, the most secure border in history and the lowest murder rate since 1900.” Huston continued: “President Trump will continue to advance his proven economic agenda to accelerate growth, create jobs, and lower costs for Americans.”
But the president’s messaging doesn’t seem to be resonating with Gen Z.
“I don’t think the president has really talked about affordability a huge amount, and in the way that Americans want to hear it,” said Carpenter, who noted that Trump typically discusses stock-market performance or blames former President Joe Biden for high costs. “I still think they’re severely inflated. People see it every day.”
Carpenter, who voted for Trump, says focusing on affordability and ending the foreign wars would “do a lot” for public opinion, as well as “toning-down the rhetoric,” referencing a since-deleted post by Trump that depicted him as Jesus, which offended some conservatives.
“The ball’s in their court,” he said.
Outreach efforts online and IRL
Vice President JD Vance has visited college campuses through events with Turning Point USA, one of the largest youth conservative groups in the country, including stops at the University of Georgia and Ole Miss.
But Hollyhand says the party needs to reach nonpartisan audiences, too — not just reliable supporters. “If we just speak in an echo chamber, how are we reaching these students that don’t care about voting or voted against us last time?” he noted.
The White House has kept up a robust presence on social media, including accounts on TikTok, X, Instagram and the Trump-owned platform Truth Social. Many of the administration’s posts have garnered millions of views and, at times, criticism — including the video game-inflected compilations of military strikes of Iran and A.I.-generated illustrations of immigration arrests.
So far, Trump’s appearances on non-traditional platforms have not yet kept pace with his 2024 cadence of engagement with social-media figures and podcasters. He appeared on an estimated 20 podcasts in the 2024 cycle ahead of his win, according to an Edison Research review of PodChaser data. Jones, the 22-year-old Penn State senior, said it was “genius” for Trump to tap into audiences of streaming platforms like Twitch, Kick and Joe Rogan’s charting-topping podcast.
But now, Trump has “kind of gone back to being a politician again,” Jones said. “We’re not really getting as much of that anymore.”
A White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the president is still privately cultivating relationships with influencers, particularly those popular with young men. MS NOW first reported that on Thursday, Trump met with the Nelk Boys, the popular YouTuber pranksters who supported him in 2024.
Last fall, Trump called into ESPN’S “The Pat McAfee Show,” spoke to conservative commenter Scott Jennings for his show and gave an Oval Office tour to the business leaders who host the “All In” podcast (including his own tech advisor, David Sacks). This year, the president appeared on “Josh Pate’s College Football Show” to talk about college sports during a campaign stop in Rome, Ga., ahead of the special election to succeed former GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. A month later, he sat down with YouTuber Jake Paul for a wide-ranging, half-hour interview in Kentucky, where Trump was boosting a challenger to maverick Republican Rep. Thomas Massie.
“Republicans, for whatever reason, don’t do great with youth, but I did unbelievably,” Trump told Paul.
Trump has tried to preserve a relationship with Joe Rogan, who supported him in 2024, despite the podcaster’s public criticisms of Trump’s policies — including his mass deportation campaign and the war in Iran. Rogan was in the Oval Office in April for the signing of an executive order to expand access to psychedelic treatments — a measure that Trump said he pursued at Rogan’s request.
The White House official didn’t rule out another appearance on Rogan’s show, and noted that several aides maintain a relationship with him. The official said there is still a months-long runway until November’s election for the president to appear on podcasts. “It’ll be a busy summer,” the person said. Trump will also continue to travel to battleground districts, the person added, though the frequency of those trips has declined since the war began.
The 2028 question
Among Jones’ friends in Penn State’s College Republicans, conversations about the party’s next presidential nominee tend to boil down to a simple question: Vice President JD Vance or Secretary of State Marco Rubio?
Approximately 31% of Republican voters under 35 said they would back Vance in a 2028 presidential primary, according to the Yale Youth Poll, while 12% preferred Rubio.
The survey, conducted in March, found that roughly half of young Republicans want the GOP to focus on energizing the base with “America-first, conservative” policies rather than moderating their positions or leaving their strategy unchanged.
That ideology has typically been more closely associated with Vance. But across age groups, support for Vance amongst Republicans dropped by eight points since Yale’s fall survey, while Rubio’s support has grown by 12 points.
“Personally, I will say, I’m a big Marco Rubio guy,” said Jones. “I think he’d be a great pick for the next president.”
Carpenter, 20, says new leaders who can carry Trump’s mantle may come “out of the dark,” and he noted the rising public profiles of figures like Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback and Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt, a former reality TV star.
“You’re going to see these out of box people rise into the mainstream, because there’s almost a vacuum of Trump on his way out,” he predicted.
But before November 2028, Trump allies, including Vance and Rubio, will be tasked with helping him stave-off a Democratically-controlled House this fall. And at this moment, Republicans face an uphill battle to keep the Gen Z voters who backed Trump in 2024 on board.
Trump has shown flashes of awareness about the challenge. During his call-in to “The Pat McAfee Show” in November, he reflected on the transactional nature of political loyalty in a way that could easily describe his own situation as the midterms loom.
“You gotta keep winning, because if you win but you don’t win the last couple of — it’s about ‘What have you done for me lately?’” Trump said. “Unfortunately, I find that a lot, certainly in politics.”
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