Donald Trump is A Gangster Now?

And 50 Cent and TikTok are helping him do it.

and

Jul 18, 2024

While Donald Trump chose a new VP this week, and the RNC launched to very mixed results, one of the biggest stories on political TikTok was Donald Trump getting shot at at a Pennsylvania rally last Saturday.

All of the top Trump posts were either directly about the shooting or alluded to it in some way.

The top post of the week in both views and engagement, according to Zelf, was a clip of a 50 Cent concert where the rapper superimposed Donald Trump’s face on the album cover of Get Rich or Die Tryin.

@loga1o 50 cent— Many Men Live in Boston @50 Cent ⠀ #50cent #hiphop #rap #gunit #trump #maga #donaldtrump #usa #republican #conservative #america #biden #politics

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Obviously Donald Trump is no gangster. He spends his days playing golf and eating omelets at his private club. There are those who think his being a felon – or now getting shot at – will make him more popular with Black voters. Those both sound like highly problematic tropes to us. And we’ve seen nothing in the content to back it up. But it’s definitely a narrative Republicans are trying to make stick as seen here and here.

And several of the other top posts of the week alluded to his newfound power, like this video and this video.

Interestingly, many of the top posts simply showing footage of the shooting came from international accounts – and that’s a continuation of a trend we’ve seen with international media or simply international accounts getting pretty involved in this election on TikTok.

There wasn’t a single mention of JD Vance in the top posts, though we’re quite sure we’ll be seeing his perfectly manicured beard in the weeks to come. (Unless of course he’s shaved it off by then.)

This contrast – especially as Trump continues painting himself in this “bad boy” image to appeal to voters he thinks it might resonate with – is definitely something to pay attention to. Because by the looks of what trending on TikTok this past week… it seems to be working.

On the issues…

Out of 15 major political issues that we’re tracking each week with the help of Zelf’s tracking tools, the political topic receiving the most engagement last week was the Trump assassination attempt.

Note: For purposes of this newsletter, “Top-Performing Posts” can be defined as any posts that TikTok displays in its search functionality. Many posts that receive very few views are not distributed widely and are excluded from search.

The top posts in this issue area were this one from @brettporter13 of country singer Cody Johnson denouncing violence at his concert, this one from @joshuamorrison272 that allegedly shows Trump’s detail taking him to the hospital, and this one from @dailymail about the death of the shooter.

Other top issues this week were the age and fitness of both Biden and Trump, highlighted by this top video we mentioned above from @dailymail about the moment when President Biden accidentally referred to Vice President Harris as Trump, and the integrity of the 2024 election, which was highlighted in this video from @jade._meg with a joke referencing pop superstar Chappell Roan.

From the campaign trail…

Here’s how many total views each campaign’s videos have received since the start of the campaign:

Team Biden gained about 9.3 million views this past week and posted 22 new videos (to be clear, these new views could come from their new videos or from past videos). Their top video this past week was a clip of President Biden’s remarks condemning the assassination attempt on Donald Trump – it garnered 466,800+ views and 31,500+ likes.

Over on Team Trump, they gained 49.1 million new views this past week. They actually haven’t posted a new video since June 23rd, so all of their new views are on the three videos that they currently have posted – a pretty impressive feat.

And finally, Team RFK Jr. gained 36.8 million views last week and posted 15 new videos. Four of these videos got over 1 million views – and the top video was a clip of RFK Jr. saying he’s the only one who can actually beat Trump. It has amassed a whopping 4.2+ million views and 283,000+ likes.

Creator Spotlight: @dailymail

The Daily Mail is essentially the British version of The New York Post. While both do report the news, they’re known for their sensationalist journalism, a heavy focus on celebrity gossip, and leaning in hard on attention-grabbing headlines. But while The Post has less than 1 million followers on TikTok, @dailymail has over 9 million, with over 670 million lifetime likes.

Their top posts involve animals, kids, and embarrassing moments in random people’s lives. And when it comes to embarrassing people, they seem to have it out for President Biden. (To be fair, they also sometimes go after Trump… but definitely seem to prefer going after President Biden.)

They’ve wracked up some huge numbers showing President Biden stumbling over his words or simply looking awkward. And of course, they never seem to let the truth of what was actually happening in these videos get in the way of a good story.

Remember that video of Joe Biden looking lost and awkward at the G7, seemingly waving at no one, while his fellow world leaders tried to get his attention? The Daily Mail shared a clip of that moment that wracked up almost 4 million views. The problem? It was intentionally misleading.

Turn the camera just a bit, and suddenly we see that President Biden was actually watching skydivers descend onto the field. See the more accurate version of the video here. That latter version was shared by Politifact, which rated the claim he wandered off at the G7 Summit “False.” Their video got less than 7000 views – less than 0.2% of the views on the Daily Mail’s post.

What’s working?

Project 2025. Content about Project 2025 across social media, including TikTok, is having a moment. According to Zelf’s analysis, the top TikTok posts about the far-right plan to take over the federal government include this one from @zactivist with 4.7 million views and this one from @dashdobrofsky with 4.5 million views.

For more on how Project 2025 is breaking through online, check out last Friday’s issue of FWIW.

News & platform updates

Lia Haberman flagged that TikTok now lists creator videos by “latest” or most “popular” but *only* on the desktop version as of right now.

TikTok is apparently partnering up with Eventbrite to allow creators to add Eventbrite ticket links directly to their videos.

Dozens of TikTok users started hawking merch about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in real time over the weekend. Some even live-streamed themselves designing the shirts to boost sales.

We know that a lot of Gen Zers get their news from TikTok… but it turns out that they are also turning to the app for other important information: a recent study found that a large number of Zoomers use TikTok as “their main form of health advice.”

That’s it for this week. We’ll be back in your inboxes next Thursday with more charts, data, and insights. If you enjoyed today’s newsletter, would you mind forwarding it to a colleague or sharing it on Twitter or Threads?

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The #FYP newsletter is a product of FWIW and produced by Josh Klemons, Kyle Tharp, and Lucy Ritzmann. Most data included in this newsletter is provided by Zelf, an AI-powered social analytics platform.