MATTHEW CONTINETTI: Trump’s Youth Revolution.
News alert: Washington Post journalists are panicked that some DOGE employees previously worked at Elon Musk’s private-sector companies and “are in their early 20s.”*
The horror.
Outrage over Musk’s whiz kids reveals another progressive double standard: Young activists are praised when they are on the Left and denounced when they join the Right.
The Post, moreover, is blind to the real story. Trump may be the oldest man elected president, but he leads a youth movement that will shape politics for decades to come.
Trump shattered the cliché that Republicans are the party of seniors and Democrats the party of young people. And he’s staffing his administration with men and women who will form the next GOP governing class.
The Beltway is only beginning to grasp the implications. Young people not only define the cultural landscape. They carry the political categories they learn in their 20s for the rest of their lives.
Such is the power of youth that even losing candidates who win over young people have lasting influence. The young people who worked on George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign, such as Bill and Hillary Clinton, were the liberal future.
Ron Paul’s collegiate supporters in 2008 and 2012 previewed the anti-Establishment, anti-war GOP. And Bernie Sanders’s bros and girls in 2016 and 2020 pointed toward the Democrats’ coming lurch to the Left.
When a youth-driven campaign wins power, the consequences are profound. Think JFK accepting the torch passed to a new generation of Americans. Or Reaganauts forging the doctrines that guided the GOP for 40 years.
* Curiously, up until last month, Washington Post journalists used to demand that full attention be paid to exuberant youth:
—The Washington Post, July 23rd, 2019.
● Why a 24-year-old gun-control activist is running to help lead the DNC.
—The Washington Post, January 10th, 2025.
UPDATE: Paul Farhi of the Washington Post wants Musk’s young digital hooligans to keep off the USAID grass:
