One group is oddly overrepresented among those whom Donald Trump has trotted out during his recent rallies ahead of the midterms: dudes who used to take blows to the head for a living.

Yes, just like in 2024, Trump is leaning on aging boxers — including some with disturbing histories — in his late-stage voter mobilization push.

Convicted rapist Mike Tyson sang the president’s praises during a recent rally in upstate New York. In turn, Trump touted Tyson’s brutality during his prime, calling him a “very dangerous person.” Floyd Mayweather Jr., who served time for domestic violence, recently touted Trump at a rally in Arizona.

And Evander Holyfield appeared alongside Trump this week at a rally in South Carolina, where the president evoked Holyfield’s name to cheer on a supporter who punched a heckler in the crowd. The retired boxer made headlines in 2014 for making homophobic remarks, which certainly makes me wonder what he thinks about Trump’s lecherous observations about men’s bodies lately.

The racial component here is unavoidable. As his administration wages war on Black America in a host of ways reminiscent of the Jim Crow era, Trump is trotting out old Black boxers during rallies — events filled with bigoted diatribes — in a way that might suggest he’s not actually leading a movement fueled by blatant racism. It’s also easy to see how these kinds of men can be made into pawns in a conservative movement that is steeped in toxic masculinity and displays of bravado.

In reality, Trump’s return to office has done very little for men, substantively speaking. He has failed to make good on his vow to bring back supposedly manly jobs — and, in fact, women have accounted for almost all of the net job creation that has occurred since he returned to office.

It’s a topic MS NOW’s Chris Hayes discussed with journalist Adam Serwer during a recent episode of “Why Is This Happening?” And it seems like at least part of the reason why Trump’s support among men has shown signs of softness.

Given all of that, prizefighters of past and present have basically become shiny objects that can distract MAGA men from the president’s failings. I’ve written previously about Trump’s use of combat sports — both boxing and mixed martial arts — to give his movement an air of toughness that he seems to lack on his own. Journalists like Luke Thomas have excellently homed in on this trend in even greater depth.

And the question for voters is whether they think these alliances serve any purpose other than to stroke fragile male egos. If political expertise were measured in jabs taken to the head, endorsements from Tyson, Mayweather and Holyfield might mean something of value. But that obviously is not the case.

These endorsements seem to me, more than anything else, like favors called in for a wannabe strongman whose clout is waning among a core constituency. In other words: weakness masked as strength.

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The CEO of Turning Point USA’s independent offshoot in the United Kingdom is facing scrutiny after he was recorded discussing murder-for-hire abilities.

The scandal surrounding Jack Ross is inconvenient, to put it mildly, for a conservative movement that has sought to portray liberals as the primary culprits for sowing deadly violence. After TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk was assassinated last year, the MAGA movement shamelessly used the killing to encourage a federal crackdown on liberals and to demonize liberalism itself as a vector for political violence.

According to a new report from Al Jazeera, part of an investigation called “Contract Killers and the Far Right,” Ross was shown on camera discussing his ability to coordinate paid acts of violence with a right-wing extremist named Allan Nesbitt.

According to the report:

Ross made clear that he and Nesbitt had a long history together. Ross was filmed by our undercover reporter agreeing to pay Nesbitt thousands of pounds to stage a fake political rally designed to show support for the lifting of UK sanctions against Zimbabwe.

Ross also told Al Jazeera’s undercover operative that for “a certain amount,” Nesbitt and his contacts could arrange physical attacks, saying they could “kick the f*** out of someone. They can start cutting people’s faces up. That’s another amount. They can stab someone,” Ross said. “They can shoot someone. They could kill someone.”

Al Jazeera reported that Ross “denied our findings ‘completely,’ telling us that everything he said to our undercover reporter was not meant seriously.” Turning Point UK, which was launched by Kirk and operates independently of its U.S. affiliate, and TPUSA didn’t immediately respond to MS NOW’s requests for comment.

Despite the “I was just joking about murder” defense, Ross has already been suspended from the U.K.’s Conservative Party. And according to The Guardian, police in Scotland are looking into the matter.

The silence from Republicans on this is telling. It almost goes without saying that if the CEO for an offshoot of, say, the NAACP or the activist group Indivisible were recorded discussing paid opportunities for murder and other violence, conservatives would be airing the footage constantly.

Yet it seems this macabre story is of little interest to MAGA world. The hypocrisy here is clear as day.

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A new federal lawsuit looks to drive a stake through the heart of Donald Trump and his family’s questionable cryptocurrency empire.

The Trump family’s crypto ventures brought in more than $1.4 billion in 2025, as his administration has pressed for crypto-friendly policies. This is part of why polling shows that most Americans think Trump is profiting from the presidency in illegal or unethical ways.

And in a lawsuit filed Thursday, a shareholder of Circle Internet Group — a competitor of the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial crypto company — accuses the Trump business of “corruptly profiting” off crypto deals and says the president has violated the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause. (A spokesperson for Circle said the company “did not initiate, direct, authorize, or participate in the filing.”)

The lawsuit specifically cites the sale of a major stake in World Liberty to an entity involving the United Arab Emirates’ national security adviser — also known as the “Spy Sheikh” — four days before Trump’s inauguration. The suit also details how a UAE-backed firm led by that same official used World Liberty cryptocurrency to make a $2 billion investment in the crypto firm Binance.

The lawsuit comes as some crypto enthusiasts turn on Trump over his profiting off the industry while in office. The president and his representatives have always said his crypto investments are above board, with a White House spokesperson calling the new lawsuit “frivolous” and adding, “There are no conflicts of interest.” A World Liberty spokesperson called the lawsuit “without merit” and has previously said Trump had no role in the company.

Such claims are disputed by people like Protect Democracy’s executive director, Ian Bassin, who has argued that Trump’s crypto dealings are blatantly unconstitutional. And Matt Pelikan, a lawyer whose firm filed the lawsuit, said in a statement:

President Trump has turned his office into a source of private profit on a scale without precedent in American history. The President’s business dealings are not only corrupt, they are illegal.

This lawsuit only stands to fuel voters’ anger over government corruption: A recent Fox News poll showed nearly 9 in 10 voters as extremely or very concerned about corruption. So, with the midterms less than two weeks away, anything that stands to remind the public about Trump’s terrible track record on this issue seems like a threat to Republicans’ electoral hopes.

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