TikTok Users Clap Back on Abortion Rights
TikTok Users Clap Back on Abortion Rights
@DateRightStuff Inadvertently Created A Space For Women To Tell Their Stories in a Post-Roe World
You might not know the name John McEntee. But if you spend much time on TikTok, you probably know his face. His handle is @daterightstuff and he has amassed over 3.3 million followers on the platform. Back in 2022, he started a conservative dating app and mostly used TikTok to document his struggles as a conservative looking for love.
But aside from being a lonely man on a journey to find love, McEntee also served as the Director of the White House Personnel Office under President Trump and he’s been extremely involved in Project 2025.
Most of his content on TikTok features him making a joke, doing a bit, or eating something outlandishly – as @waltermasterson has done on the left. Sometimes, he takes his bit too far though… with unexpected consequences.
This week, following the Trump/Harris debate, McEntee published a video where he is eating what appears to be chicken fingers and asks: “Can someone track down the women Kamala Harris says are bleeding out in parking lots because Roe v Wade was overturned? Don’t hold your breath.”
The thing is McEntee left the video open for people to comment, duet, and stitch… which has inadvertently created a space for “the women” to identify themselves.
And they have, en masse: The post has over 22k comments, and so many of them are people sharing emotional stories of themselves or their loved ones who experienced traumatic and dangerous health situations because of the Dobbs decision.
For example, @geekynerdbitchcarmen shared her story about how she was denied care for a miscarriage for 19 days because of Idaho’s abortion restrictions. The video has amassed 6 million views and 1.3 million likes. @deidradarst also stitched the video and shared her horrifying experience. There are many, many more of these responses, which you can scroll through here.
The Harris campaign’s @kamalahq account stitched McEntee’s post with a video from another woman who VP Harris was referring to in her comment, which has 9.7 million views and counting. Comedian and prominent influencer @pearlmania500 also broke down how terrible (and dumb) this was for McEntee and received 615.3K views and 138.4K likes.
Date Right Stuff is learning the hard way that this bit only works when what you’re saying actually makes sense. And in this case – as in many others – his argument most certainly does not.
We’ll give the last word here to @waltermasterson. He was asked to break down McEntee’s whole vibe by @donlemonofficial and he delivered.
Trend alert: Trump’s wildest quotes go viral
As we’ve been tracking political TikTok content week over week, we’ve begun to identify a major trend in this election: users are clipping some of Donald Trump’s most bizarre statements and turning them into trending audio moments.
Last week, we noted that it was happening with Trump’s unhinged “eating the cats and dogs” remarks. This week, there have been over 1,000 videos using a quote from Trump falsely claiming that schools are providing gender transition surgery to kids without their parents’ knowledge. The content, as a result, has been pretty incredible, with this video from a mom, @jujubutera4, gaining 6.9 million views and 1.1 million likes:
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
There are several other examples of moms trolling Trump over his comments that have received a ton of likes and views, including this one from @kayleekawaii and this one from @soccernat007.
With a combined tens of millions of views on the platform on videos like these, it is very likely that more Americans heard this audio of Trump’s bizarre anti-trans remarks from these humorous videos, rather than from Trump himself during the debate.
Top posts: Kamala Harris
According to social analytics platform Zelf, there were around 29,500 posts mentioning Harris on TikTok last week, receiving a collective 865.3 million views.
39% of the top-performing TikTok posts last week mentioning Harris were negative, 2% were neutral, and 59% were positive. These were some of the most viewed:
While TikTok was overall positive for Team Harris this week, the top ten posts leaned negative.
Two critical posts from @teamtrump and one from @realdonaldtrump received millions of views. The more popular one, with 34.6 million views, was shared by Team Trump, featuring someone holding up a camera to the debate while VP Harris said we no longer have troops in an active war zone. The camera then turns to the folks watching the debate, who are revealed to be troops – apparently in an active war zone – and one asks “so where the f*ck are we right now?”
@thecharliekirk has a top-performing video that was anti-Harris for the second week in a row as part of his campus tour, where he interacts with students and tries to school them. In this video, seen 13 million times, he “wins over” a student to vote for Trump, instead of Harris.
Also notably, @dailymail had a video that received 10.4 million views of a Taylor Swift fan abandoning Swift over her Harris endorsement. In it, she’s burning all her Swift stuff and replacing it with End Wokeness gear.
Top posts: Donald Trump
According to social analytics platform Zelf, there were 106,000 posts mentioning Trump on TikTok last week, receiving a collective 1.8 billion views.
63% of the top-performing TikTok posts last week mentioning Trump were negative, 3.5% were neutral, and 34% were positive. These were some of the most-viewed:
This week’s top ten may have been tough for Team Harris, but it was equally tough for Team Trump.
@kamalahq had three very high-performing videos critical of Trump in the top ten this week. This video — with over 21 million views – was simply Donald Trump talking about Nicky Jam, saying “she’s so hot,” and then showing a photo of Nicky, who is actually a man. This one from @kamalahq, with almost 11 million views, hits Trump for being a narcissist.
@dailymail made the top charts for both Trump and Harris TikTok content this week with this video of Harris mocking Trump for saying he had a “concept of a plan.”
And finally, this truly heartbreaking video from @chrismowrey – with over 9 million views – breaks down the unnecessary death of Amber Thurman due to complications from pregnancy that would have been preventable had Donald Trump not packed the Supreme Court with Justices who overturned Roe v Wade.
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 Fitness to Serve, followed closely by the Presidential Debate.
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 post about the candidates’ “Fitness to Serve” was a breakdown of the debate from @thedailyshow where host Jordan Klepper slammed Trump for his complaining about the debate. The post has 16.2 million views and 1.9 million likes. The next most popular video in this category came from the @dailymail with that clip of Harris mocking Trump for having a concept of a plan – which has received 15.7 million views and then followed by @joepags with a harsh review of Harris’s first solo interview, which has 9.4 million views.
From the campaign trail…
Here’s how many total views each campaign’s videos have received since the start of the campaign:
NOTE: When we first launched this newsletter, we were only tracking the two campaign accounts: @bidenhq (which became @kamalahq) and @realdonaldtrump. Shortly after Harris became the nominee, her campaign rolled out @kamalaharris and we added it to the mix. In late July, the Trump campaign rolled out @teamtrump. But they only recently started using the account with much frequency. We’ll be including it in our reporting moving forward.
This week, Harris’ combined TikTok accounts gained 228.3 million new views and posted 36 videos.
It’s worth noting that @kamalahq is just about to pass a billion lifetime views – and by the time this hits your inbox, they might have done so already.
Their top post this week, with over 21 million views, was the one about Nicky Jam, followed by a video with Taylor Swift lyrics about never trusting a narcissist (with a picture of Trump on screen) that has 10.9 million views.
Their third most popular post – with 8.8 million views and 1.6 million likes – was a very fun pro-Walz edit.
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign gained 44.8 million new views to their @realdonaldtrump account and posted four new videos. Starting next week, we’ll also be including @teamtrump in their new view count, but it’s worth noting that they posted to that account 40 times this week.
Of the posts shared by @realdonaldtrump, the biggest – with 6.5 million views – was Trump asking why Harris hasn’t already fixed everything.
That was followed up by two post-rally posts and then by a video of Trump thanking the officers who stopped the would-be shooter at Trump’s golf course.
Creator Spotlight: @maga
In case you haven’t been following, pro-Trump Super PAC MAGA Inc. is on Tiktok via the handle @maga. They have steadily amassed 542.8K followers and 11.1 million likes over the past few months.
Despite only launching the channel in May of this year, they’ve driven this massive growth by sharing clips and commentary supporting former President Trump and attacking VP Harris.
Their top post to date showed Harris at the debate inviting people to attend a Trump rally and then showed his rallies in a positive light. It has 13.2 million views and 2.4 million likes.
Other top videos from @maga include this bizarre video of JD Vance attacking Harris – but using a filter that slowly makes Vance, and the folks in the background, look like they have cartoon chins – and this “boom or doom” video that should give you some insight into how they’re approaching the platform
News & platform updates
The TikTok ban is in court. Will the app still be around in 2025? The courts will decide.
TikTok is rolling out an edit and repost option for videos.
WaPo did a deep dive into the state of misinformation on the platform.
Former President Barack Obama pushes voting on TikTok.
More and more Americans are turning to TikTok for their news.
Singer Billie Eilish posted an endorsement video for VP Harris, which made a big splash on TikTok.
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?
Have a tip, idea, or feedback? Reply directly to this email.
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.