If you view Donald Trump's election as a series of dominoes that fell into place, you would find that, near the start of the line, was an event called GamerGate, a cultural phenomenon that happened around 2013 and 2014. You've likely heard it discussed in legacy media, if not on this very website by yours truly, and the reason matters.
It activated a massive group of people across the globe into being politically aware who otherwise would've stayed quiet and kept to themselves. To give you the entire rundown of events would take a book, but the important strokes of GamerGate are that it made many gamers aware of two things. The first is that the legacy media is corrupt and hates the average American, and the second is that there are institutions out there that would love nothing more than to destroy everything they hold dear in the name of political idealism.
The importance of GamerGate can't be overstated, because it involved one of the largest global subcultures being attacked by the left, and it truly drove both people and establishments of every kind into political corners they never intended to arrive at. The activation was so severe that it would contribute to the eventual election of Donald Trump due, in no small part, to the fact that the ideological attack on gamers was primarily on males, and would contribute greatly to the evacuation of men from the Demcorat Party. Of course, there were more factors, but it was a large part of the puzzle.
During the last election, one of the things the Democrats realized far too late was that they actually needed men to win the presidency, and despite their best efforts — like putting gay men in a pro-Kamala commercial to pretend to be straight — they could not get men to come back. They had gone Republican, having been pushed there for years.
This is an important thing to understand, because you can see what happens when gamers are attacked. Even as I write this, businesses are in the midst of burning to the ground (figuratively) because they turned their back on gamers and insulted them in some way. They are a subculture that slays dragons as a hobby, and by virtue of its sheer size and technological literacy, moves fast and hits hard. When gamers say they're going to boycott you, it's not like other groups. The boycotts actually happen, and they hurt.
When Sarah Huckabee Sanders released her latest ad that targeted the same group that leftists have been targeting for years — young male gamers, particularly white males — she made them the face of problems our society is facing economically; I was as surprised as I was appalled. This seemed like more like she was firing from the hip than actually paying attention to what she was doing, and going after a group that has been very friendly to conservatism lately, even if they don't identify as Republican.
You pay taxes to cover welfare for people who just choose not to work. That’s why I launched a welfare-to-work requirement.
— Sarah Huckabee Sanders (@SarahHuckabee) September 28, 2026
If you’re young, healthy, and get government assistance, you should work, go to school, or volunteer. pic.twitter.com/M83nxNMdry
As my colleague Jennifer O'Connell wrote, the nitty-gritty of the stats show a story that does not point to this particular subculture of white males being the highest of welfare recipients.
So why attack them?
Because too many people in high places aren't paying attention. They think it's safe to attack male gamers and blame them for everyone's problems. It's not. Recent history has shown us this. The Democrats are, as I speak, trying to figure out how to retrieve the male vote without actually having to talk to men. They keep having to go back to the drawing board because they can't seem to redefine or villainize masculinity for men with any success.
The last thing Republicans should do is make the same mistakes the Democrats did. They should not be attacking men, specifically gamers. Well over half the men in America take it up as a hobby. That's not a small group of nerds. That's 1980s thinking. It's a different world now where even the jocks are dedicated gamers.
If I had any advice for the Republicans right now, it's that they should do what Trump does. Trump seems to realize how much gamers actually mean to the Republican Party, as he creates posts that include and honor their hobby all the time. The internet responds positively to these posts, and it infuriates the left to no end because they know how effective and culturally relevant gaming is.
Hey! Listen! pic.twitter.com/brGDWq89fV
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) September 9, 2026
To be clear, it's not that Sanders' ideas are bad. She needs to find a different way to sell them that doesn't alienate a group that has endured way too much alienation already and for no good reason. The GOP would do well to actually continue to treat gamers as a legitimate block of voters, not a safe punching bag.
