Trump, Vance and Musk are avatars of a dark and dangerous force

James Carville recently suggested that Democrats need to do more to reach out to young men, as though pandering to testosterone-fueled grievance and entitlement is the key to winning elections. Let’s be blunt: that’s a bullshit, dead-end strategy that risks ratifying the very worst elements of a crisis in masculinity that’s corroding our politics, poisoning our culture, and endangering our democracy.

And it’s coming from the top, down.

Donald Trump is an adjudicated rapist, according to the judge in his case. A New York jury found him liable for sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll in a civil case, and he’s remained unapologetic. Then he moved straight to pardoning other men in his orbit, even convicted ones like Roger Stone and a rapper with a history of alleged sexual assault. And now he’s telling us to stop talking about Jeffrey Epstein.

Epstein wasn’t an outlier: he was a prototype. A predator who operated in plain sight, protected by the powerful, and normalized by the elite. His crimes weren’t hidden; they were ignored, downplayed, and rationalized until they became impossible to deny.

The recent revelations about the scope of his network, and the prominent men it touched, show how deeply entrenched rape culture is not just at the fringes of politics, but at its very core.

Trump pardoned multiple anti-abortion criminals as well as Ross Ulbricht, who ran the world’s most notorious market for illicit drugs (that some allege could also have been used for human trafficking); Trump's administration apparently helped free Andrew and Tristan Tate, rightwing influencers accused of rape in Romania, from prison in that country, so they could return to America to help promote the GOP to their young male followers.

Rape culture isn’t just at the top; it’s everywhere, especially in the digital spaces young men inhabit. Pornography has become the de facto sex education for millions of boys. A ten‑year‑old with a smartphone has unfettered access to violent, misogynistic content that normalizes coercion and degradation.

This isn’t just a parental issue, it’s a cultural emergency. This content is shaping how an entire generation understands sex, power, and consent.

And Trump’s “best friend” Epstein was an avatar of that twisted worldview.

Trump and Epstein were reportedly best buds for years, partying together, traveling together on Epstein’s private jet, enjoying the same grotesque perks of unchecked wealth.

Both political parties have brushed shoulders with predators, but only one is building a platform that protects them by law. Virtually every Republican in the House of Representatives just voted to conceal the information about Epstein our government currently has.

And now, Elon Musk echoes that same ideology with a techno-eugenic twist, building a brood while normalizing control over women’s bodies in the name of “saving civilization.”

Musk is openly using white women as baby incubators. Musk has fathered at least 14 children with four different women. He’s talked openly about a global “underpopulation crisis” and described his mission to produce a “legion-level” brood of children before the apocalypse. He’s recruited mothers via X, and allegedly dangled millions in hush-money deals. This isn’t family values: it’s eugenic breeding with a Big Daddy tint.

That’s also largely what the so‑called “Tradwife” movement is selling. On social media and in right-wing circles, we’re seeing a resurgence of the Traditional Wife persona; it’s not really about choice or liberty as they try to sell it, but hierarchy. White women are expected to go “back to the kitchen and bedroom,” producing more white babies in a panic about the “browning” of America.

This fixation on race and reproduction mirrors the same “Great Replacement Theory” rhetoric promoted on Fox “News” and other rightwing outlets that fed the Charlottesville rally and inspired mass murderers in Las Vegas, Buffalo, and El Paso.

From Trump saying, “If Hillary Clinton can’t satisfy her husband what makes her think she can satisfy America?” to telling Esquire Magazine that “arm candy” is essential for a successful businessman (“You know, it doesn’t really matter what [the media] write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass”) to sarcastically calling Kamala Harris “a beautiful woman,” our president has long made clear his thoughts on the role of women.

JD Vance has similarly pushed the tradwife meme, arguing that:

“I think that we should fight for the right of every American to live a good life in the country they call their own, to raise a family and dignity on a single middle-class job.”

That “single” job is the key; he’s not talking about economic advancement in the middle class but, rather, pitching the idea that dad should work and mom should stay home to cook, clean, and attend to the kids.

And, like in the 1950s and before, it’s all undergirded by state violence. Jessica Valenti writes with clarity and horror at her Abortion Every Day Substack, documenting how Red states are now arresting women for miscarriages and far, far worse is on the horizon.

Law enforcement officers in Red states are now interrogating women who seek care for pregnancy complications, Republican Attorneys General are demanding records of miscarriages and abortions even from Blue states, and doctors are afraid to treat women in crisis, leading to a doubling in the use of blood transfusions (women almost bleeding to death) in Texas since they passed their draconian abortion ban. It’s deliberate, and it’s escalating.

And now Republicans in Congress and the states are openly talking about bringing back enforcement of the Comstock Act of 1873, the Victorian-era law banning not just abortion but contraception and obscene materials, as I wrote about in The Cold Dead Hand of Anthony Comstock.

Meanwhile, the fetal personhood movement backed by Trump and Vance is becoming mainstream. As vice president, J.D. Vance spoke at the 2025 March for Life rally, declaring “I want more babies in the United States of America” and aligned himself with the GOP’s agenda of fetal personhood, a policy that could make IVF, contraception, and even most miscarriage treatment illegal.

This is a deliberate, systemic reinforcement of toxic masculinity, an ideology of power, control, and domination.

It shows up in incel forums, Proud Boys gatherings, Andrew Tate videos, and in the halls of Congress. It’s being sold to young men as an antidote to their anxieties, be they economic, social, or existential.

From Mar-a-Lago to Manhattan’s Upper East Side, rape culture isn’t fringe: it’s the foundation. And it’s a lie.

Some Republicans will pretend to claim that they just want to return America to the Leave It To Beaver world of June Cleaver, the happy homemaker of 1960s TV. What they don’t like to point out, though, is that in the 1960s most women didn’t have much of a choice.

When Republicans say that your grandmother stayed with your grandfather and should be your role model, they fail to point out that women three generations ago really had few choices unless they were independently wealthy.

Employers could refuse to hire women because of their gender as recently as 1964; home sellers and real estate agents could refuse to sell a house to women up until 1974; it wasn’t until 1988 that the law said landlords could no longer refuse to rent to women. Spousal rape wasn’t criminalized until 1993.

When Louise and I got married in 1972, she couldn’t get a credit card or sign a mortgage without the signature of me, her brother, or her father. She couldn’t serve on a jury, get a no-fault divorce, or enroll in an Ivy League college. And if she’d had an unwanted pregnancy, she’d be out of luck until 1973’s Roe v Wade decision.

In 20 states, Republicans have succeeded in removing from women one of the most important options that allow them to stay in the workplace: abortion of an accidental or unwanted pregnancy. Now they’re going after birth control. And their war on DEI is just another aspect of their war on their own women, as white women are the main beneficiaries of the DEI programs Republicans are demanding corporations and government agencies end.

Republicans are even working hard on ending no-fault divorce: as Vance said, women should stay home and serve their husbands even when those men are physically or emotionally abusive.

They ignore the reality of an 8 to 16 percent decrease in female suicides after states enacted no-fault divorce laws, a roughly 30 percent decrease in intimate partner violence, and a 10 percent drop in women murdered by their partners. Or maybe they just don’t care.

Republican legislators are also pushing back hard against equal-pay-for-equal-work laws, calling such efforts DEI, again arguing that women shouldn’t be on the job in the first place.

These are all aspects of a crisis of masculinity and rape culture that Republicans are exploiting to the detriment of both women and the men who’re buying their perverted siren song.

Thus, Democratic consultants’ calls to “reach out” to young men without challenging these ideas are dangerous. They can be interpreted as code for validation, not transformation.

What we need instead is a redefinition of masculinity: strength defined by compassion, power defined by service, leadership defined by respect.

And there are real exemplars out there.

Look at former Sen. Jon Tester, Montana farmer and Marine vet, who fights for working families without preening bravado. Look at former President Joe Biden — yes, him — who has comforted grieving mothers and lent moral clarity and empathy where so many others have failed. Look at single fathers, teachers, firefighters, nurses, community organizers: men who show up because they care, not to conquer.

True masculinity uplifts. It nurtures. It protects without demeaning. It leads with humility. It affirms the full humanity of women.

That’s the kind of man worth celebrating and inviting young men to be. Not the guy who calls himself a “legion” builder, or hustles violent porn on the internet and brags of his conquests on YouTube, or thinks women exclusively belong at home to “raise the babies.”

Democrats shouldn’t pander to wounded pride. They shouldn’t validate grievance or reinforce entitlement. They should, instead, challenge men to grow up; to become allies in a fight for justice, equality, and democracy.

Redefining masculinity isn’t a side project: it’s central to reclaiming our national soul.

Let Republicans hold up Trump, Musk, and Tate as their sick, twisted role models. Democrats should amplify the real men: the compassionate, the just, the fierce protectors of freedom and equality.

Let’s reject the calls coming from multiple corners to “reach out” to codes of rape culture. Instead, let’s lead the way to a future where strength means service, power means accountability, and freedom means equality for everyone.