Esquire’s profile of a pro-Trump teen is misleading

On February 12, Esquire announced the launch of a series of profiles of American adolescents. The first feature of the series, which also served as the magazine’s March cover story, focused on Ryan Morgan, a 17-year-old white Trump supporter from West Bend, Wisconsin. Controversy about the piece soon ensued.

“The Life of an American Boy at 17,” written by journalist Jennifer Percy, follows Morgan’s day-to-day life, including what classes he’s taking and what he plans to do after high school. While performing these mundane actions, Morgan speaks about his perspective on topics like gender and sexuality.

Morgan tells Esquire that he was jarred by receiving backlash after vocally supporting Donald Trump. “Like, what did I do wrong?” he asks. He also shares that his comments on feminist and LGBTQ+ posts on social media are often invalidated because he is a white male. He concludes that “I know what I can’t do, I just don’t know what I can do.”

“Everyone hates me because I support Trump,” Morgan adds. “I couldn’t debate anyone without being shut down and called names.” In the same breath, Morgan admits to calling feminist-minded posts on social media “stupid.”

At one point, Morgan expresses his unconditional support for Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Josh Hader, who faced controversy last summer after it was revealed that he had sent homophobic and racist tweets in the past. Morgan says in the piece that “someone must’ve been jealous of [Hader]” for publicizing his past tweets. “It’s like, yeah, you say a lot of stupid stuff when you are 15,’” Morgan adds.

This profile’s presentation of a straight, white male as victimized in any way in our current climate of rising white supremacy is not only inaccurate but potentially dangerous. In actuality, since 2017, anti-Black hate crimes have increased 16 percent, hate crimes against Jewish communities have increased 37 percent, hate crimes against disabled people have increased 66 percent, and hate crimes against women have increased 48 percent in the U.S. The only reason that Morgan’s identity can be viewed as in any way different from the countless generations of white men like him who came before him is that he doesn’t get to sit back and automatically reap the rewards of a static conservatism that penalizes people of color and minority sexual identities for simply being. He still maintains power over them; that power is just now more widely questioned.

What’s more, while Esquire claims that Morgan is “like all seventeen-year-olds” in their description of the piece, casting any kind of universality to his experiences is reductive. In fact, Morgan represents the minority political opinion of his generation. Only 30 percent of Generation Z approves of Trump’s presidential performance, compared to the 43 percent of baby boomers who do. While Morgan complains that he is treated unfairly for being a white male, the majority of his peers vouch that people of color are the ones truly treated unfairly — a whopping 82 percent of Gen Z Democrats and 43 percent of Gen Z Republicans believe that the U.S. treats black people less fairly than white people.

In response to criticism of the profile, Esquire editor Jay Fielden wrote that the series will expand to cover adolescents of color and those who identify as LGBT. While this is a good step, it doesn’t erase the danger of the publication’s decision to publish this article in the first place. Readers were already encouraged to sympathize with and normalize Morgan’s views and values, which have had very real damaging effects on a number of people.