The Daily Populous Wednesday August 6th, 2025 evening edition
Authored by usatoday.com and submitted by gradientz

Going to an all-boys high school, where I graduated this spring, I understand why many young men voted for President Donald Trump.

But now, convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein might have changed that, ushering in a major shift in how older members of Generation Z, those born between 1997 and 2012, vote in the next election.

My peers are not your rich country club conservatives. They are scrappy guys who liked Trump because he wasn’t polished or predictable. To them, he was a rebel outsider who would fight “the swamp” with all he had. I remember heated lunchroom debates where they’d argue about whether or not he could truly upend our system and its backers.

Even if he couldn’t remake Washington, they said, Trump would at least cause the unseen power brokers to sweat by releasing the Epstein files and making public the names of the disgraced financier’s clients.

Trump's mishandling of Epstein files is sign of something bigger

Fast-forward to now, and that looks like a fever dream.

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My friends who supported Trump and were holding on to the promise that he’d stay true to his word of fighting the elites are now scratching their heads.

Trump declined to release the Epstein files because he said it would falsely incriminate innocent people. But that has left them wondering: Is Trump just the swamp?

This isn’t a small hiccup in Trump's presidency. It’s a signal of something bigger: Young male conservatives, like my friends, are starting to wonder if their anti-establishment hero has joined the swamp he swore to fight.

They’re wondering if he is giving harbor to the people he promised to expose. Or worse, was he one of the elites who committed crimes with Epstein?

Popular podcast bro turns on Trump

A big influence behind this shift are the young “podcast bros” ‒ the people many Gen Zers listen to and who were once some of the loudest Trump supporters, but who are now undergoing a transformation in their thinking and even considering backing Democrats.

Take Andrew Schulz, a conservative comedian and podcaster with a strong base of young listeners. Schulz was an outspoken supporter of the president this past election. He would talk at length about how Trump was an outsider who would recreate Washington and release the Epstein files.

Now Schulz, along with fellow podcast bros, are upset and feel duped. They say the president has not followed through on his promises.

This whole turnabout is a personal one for my friends. They didn’t like Trump because he was a Republican; they liked him because he would be a “disrupter in chief.”

Now they've got someone they think might just be another “swamp creature.”

The Epstein files were a crucial turning point. They expected transparency and wanted someone who wouldn’t be afraid to take on the bigwigs and reveal who's guilty finally. But now many of them think it was a show.

The broken promise to release the files left them with many more questions than answers. And they’re not alone.

When they hear their favorite podcasters like Schulz continue to voice his new opinion, it makes them more worried and question what they held as true. They wonder: Is Trump just a showman who lied to us and deceived us this whole time?

I hear many of them saying that their president has now cozied up to the establishment and abandoned people like them in the process.

Where do they go now? One obvious possibility is to the Democratic Party. But Democratic leaders would need to do more than act like they care about people like my friends. They need to offer a clear, transparent alternative that can successfully brand Democrats as more honest and authentic.

If the Democrats do, they might be able to show that they are the true disruptors. And that Trump truly is the swamp.

Eli Thompson is an 18-year-old journalist focused on Gen Z issues, with an article in The Wall Street Journal, appearances on NBC Chicago, WGN and SiriusXM Patriot and two years as a twice-weekly contributor to a nationally syndicated radio show affiliated with CBS, NBC, Fox and CNBC.