MAGA’s Divorced Dude Energy

Divorced men make up a big part of Trump’s coalition.

Pictured: A man with healthy, well-adjusted relationships. (Photo by Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

1. Convention Week

God help us, but The Bulwark is sending people to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee next week.

Joe Perticone, Marc Caputo, and Sam Stein will be on the ground reporting and we will be livestreaming the primetime events on our YouTube all week. Every night we’ll host a pre-show discussion, then air the proceedings, and then give you our live reactions after the shirt-show gavels.

This is a pretty big level-up for us and we’re attempting it because of how well you guys received our coverage of the debate. The livestream will have a place for Bulwark readers to chat about everything together, as it’s happening. And if something really nuts goes down, we’ll break in to talk about it in real time.

So if you want to watch the Republican National Convention next week, do it with us. I’ll have links for you every morning next week.

One last thing: This is a heavy lift on our end. Sending people to the convention, committing resources to video production, wrangling staff to do hours of on-camera work.

It’s a little like creating a pop-up cable network.

And this is only possible because of the unbelievable support of Bulwark+ members. Fam: I cannot thank you enough for building this thing of ours.

Never in a million years did I dream that a place like The Bulwark could exist in the world. Thank you.

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All of next week’s broadcasts will be open and free to the world and I know that Bulwark+ members want it that way. Because that’s the mission. The idea isn’t to hide the good stuff behind a paywall. It’s to save democracy, together.

Come be a part of it. This is special.

For any Bulwark+ members wanting to level up their support, upgrade to a founding membership and get free subscriptions to give away to others.

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2. Gorilla Mindset

I can’t put my finger on when or why, but for a long time I’ve thought there was a weird aspect in the way some middle-aged men went cuckoo for Trump. There is a particular type of mental break—I think of it as Divorced Dude Energy—that you see out there.

Let me say at the outset: None of this is a value judgment. A little less than half of all marriages end in divorce. Not every—or even most—men who get divorced have Divorced Dude Energy. I’m trying to be descriptive, not pejorative.

And I’ll be honest—I don’t know exactly how to describe Divorced Dude Energy. It’s more of a know-it-when-you-see-it phenomenon. Elon Musk, for example, might be the most Divorced Energy Dude on the planet.¹ It’s the kind of thing where a seemingly normal guy’s marriage breaks up and suddenly he’s a different person. Angry. Resentful. Superior. Kind of agro.

Again: Lots of men get divorced and not all—or even most—are like this! But there is a personality type here that we can agree exists, yes?

Anyway, purely as an anecdotal matter it has seemed to me that a lot of the energy in MAGA looks like Divorced Dude Energy.

And yesterday pollster Daniel Cox blew my mind with his report on how well Trump does with divorced men:

Since at least the 1990s, married Americans—both men and women—have voted more consistently for Republican candidates than single Americans have. In 2024, we found that 48 percent of married voters were supporting Trump compared to 34 percent who had never been married, a 14-point gap.  

There is another gap that caught my attention recently.  

Fifty-six percent of men who are divorced said they are voting for Trump, compared to 42 percent of divorced women. The voting divide between men and women is larger among the formerly married than any other group. Married men and women report supporting Trump at remarkably similar rates (50 percent vs. 45 percent). Single men are somewhat more likely to vote for Trump than single women . . .

The divorce divide in American politics is something new.

Here’s the chart Cox put together and holy schnikes:

This gap is even crazier when you look at party identification by marital/divorced status:

I don’t know about you, but I find this fascinating and you should absolutely read the whole thing and subscribe to Cox’s substack.

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Cox posits that there’s something about men and divorce going on here. He notes that in marriages and cohabitations, men and women tend toward having the same political views and voting preferences.

There’s a lot that’s murky. Here’s the theory Cox tentatively offers:

Part of what I think is happening is that as Americans spend more time uncoupled, they are more likely to develop a tribal approach to politics, a tendency to see the political interests of men and women as fundamentally at odds. The rising sense of anxiety felt by men and women about their place and future in America makes it more difficult to appreciate the problems of others. What’s more, these feelings of insecurity and grievance are being channeled through our politics. 

Whatever the case, this is the kind of data point that once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

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3. The Unironic Cybertruck

Drew Magary drove a Divorced Dude Mobile around for kicks.

I got to drive a Tesla Cybertruck for a day this spring. You jealous? You should be, because Elon Musk’s Boy Scout project is the kind of virile, powerful spacetruck that should be owned and driven only by our largest, wealthiest, whitest men. The kind of men who use speakerphone on airplanes. The kind of men who talk big about colonizing Mars as if it’s a realistic scenario. The kind of men who are training artificial intelligence to not only take your job but also steal your wife. Real can-do American men.

I am one such man. That’s why SFGATE asked me, someone who knows precious little about how cars actually work, to test-drive a Cybertruck. I fit the customer profile for one to a T. I am tall. I am white. I am loud. I don’t really have many friends where I live. Most important, I desperately want people to think I’m cool. You can see my thirst from the f—king moon, so why not drive an equally conspicuous truck? 

So I opened up a Turo account (Turo is like Airbnb but for cars) and found a brand spanking new Cybertruck to rent for $500 a day, or roughly $850 once all taxes and fees had been included. While I was standing next to my rental Cybertruck, a woman on the street — a self-proclaimed medium named Free — walked up and started touching the car like it was a pregnant woman’s belly. Free cried out, “Goddamn! This s—t seems like plastic!” Whether the spirits told her this was unclear, but she was deeply unimpressed. 

That’s because the exterior of the Cybertruck is ugly. You might have deduced this merely from looking at pictures of Elon’s beloved car online, but I assure you that seeing the truck in person won’t change your mind. This car is all hard angles and even harder steel, with exterior panels that are often off in alignment. It’s a loud car, which is by design. Anyone who buys a Cybertruck, or any journalist who rents one as a stunt, is doing so for the attention. That included the gentleman who rented it to me, who once worked for Tesla and was surprised (and seemingly displeased) that the people taking his car out for a joyride worked for the press. He suspected we were going to say mean s—t about Elon, and he was right. Elon Musk is a penis.

Read the whole thing.

1. Josh Mandel—remember that guy? Lots of Divorced Dude Energy. Mike Cernovich turned his Divorced Dude Energy into a lifestyle brand.