Happy Thursday! 

Every week brings new surprises. Donald Trump endorsed Jake Paul for nothing in particular yesterday, which got me thinking about all the YouTuber political ambitions we’ve been teased in recent years. More on that below, plus a lot of links. Subscribe to the Yapper tier to read the full newsletter.

Every time a creator teases a bid for public office, a chill runs down my spine. 

It’s not because I believe that creators and influencers would be inherently bad at the job. Although, does that even matter anymore? We have reality TV stars leading the country and UFC fighters training FBI agents. It’s not like a creator in office would be much worse. In this age, everyone is attuned to the attention economy, which has led to, as this person put it in a viral X post, “politicians see[ing] their jobs as clip farming.”  

The thing that worries me most is that the influencers being brought up in these political conversations are often the most attention-seeking, power-hungry ones in the game. What do I mean by this? Well, let’s just look at yesterday’s news. 

President Donald Trump invited Ohio native YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul to speak at his rally in Hebron, Kentucky. It’s not clear why exactly Paul was there, but after a brief speech glazing Trump, the president endorsed the former YouTuber.

Endorsed him for what, you ask? Anything he wants.

“I’m going to make a prediction that you will be, in the not-too-distant future, running for political office,” Trump said. “You have my complete and total endorsement.”

Senator (or something) Jake Paul. Wouldn’t that be a scary sight? You mean the guy who blazed trails for shithead pranksters everywhere? The guy who terrorized his neighbors with his Team 10 collective? The guy who assaulted our ears with “It’s Everyday Bro” and launched a whole trend of horrendous YouTube diss tracks? That guy?