America’s Political Nepo Babies – Part I
Also inside: TikTokers are making the move to YouTube Shorts, Dem groups take aim at Schumer in digital ads, and more
Fascination with the family members – especially the kids – of prominent political figures is pretty much a time-honored American tradition at this point. What’s new, however, is that those kids – especially the women – seem to get automatically catapulted to influencer status.
We’re going to take a look at these highly online political kids and how they use their socials. This week, we’re discussing Kai Trump, and next week, Ella Emhoff and Hope Walz. But first…
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Digital ad spending, by the numbers:
FWIW, U.S. political advertisers spent about $11.7 million on Facebook and Instagram ads last week. Here were the top ten spenders nationwide:
Justice Democrats ran new ads on Facebook and Instagram this past week that go after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for supporting the Republican funding bill. The ads have some pretty frank copy – several read “F*ck Chuck Schumer – and ran nationwide with a particular focus on California + New York (Schumer’s state).
Following the news that Trump was shuttering the Department of Education, PragerU started running two ads on Facebook and Instagram that accuse the DOE of wasteful spending and praise DOGE for their actions. The ads are running nationwide with a focus on Texas, California, and Florida.
Meanwhile, political advertisers spent just over $3.2 million on Google and YouTube ads last week. These were the top ten spenders nationwide:
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Campaign for Democracy Committee spent ~$12,000 on two Google and YouTube ads amplifying his new podcast last week: interestingly, one ad promotes his full interview with Gov. Tim Walz, and the other ad promotes his full (and highly controversial) interview with Steve Bannon. Both ads are being shown nationwide.
On X (formerly Twitter), political advertisers in the U.S. have spent around $1.9 million on ads in 2025. According to X’s political ad disclosure, here are the top spenders year to date:
The Freedom Caucus Foundation, AKA @FreedomCaucusF, is running an X/Twitter ad echoing Trump and House Republicans and calling for the impeachment of Judge Boasberg, who blocked the Trump admin’s use of a Revolutionary War-era law to deport people.
…and lastly, on Snapchat, political advertisers in the U.S. have spent around $326,100 on ads in 2025. Here are the top spenders year to date:
What’s trending on YouTube:
Our friends at Tubefilter flagged that the YouTube data issues have been resolved, and we should have a top chart next week!
In the meantime, here’s what I’m reading about YouTube:
Seniors are watching twice as much YouTube on TVs as they were a year ago
YouTube’s 2025 Upfront to Feature Lady Gaga, MrBeast, Brittany Broski and More
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America’s Political Nepo Babies – Part I
Fascination with the family members – especially the kids – of prominent political figures is pretty much a time-honored American tradition at this point. But what’s new is that the kids, and, in particular, the kids who are women, seem to be automatically catapulted to influencer status when a family member runs for high office – whether those kids lean into it or not.
This week, we’ll discuss someone who has really leaned into her influencer status: Kai Trump, the eldest granddaughter of the President. Next week, we’ll take a look over on the other side at VP Harris’s step-daughter, Ella Emhoff, and Gov. Walz’s daughter, Hope Walz.
These days, it appears that – with significantly less effort – Kai Trump is giving her grandfather a run for his money as the most popular Trump on the Internet. Here’s a look at her socials audience:
Two quick notes here: Kai does appear to have a Threads account with ~41,000 followers, but it appears that she doesn’t actually use it. On the flip side, it seems she has a Facebook account she *does* use that also links to her YouTube channel – but it appears, possibly due to her privacy settings, that her follower count is not displayed. However, looking at all the publicly available data, Kai Trump’s total social media following seems to be in the ballpark of 6.6 million followers (not accounting for duplicate followers across platforms).
As for her content, Kai is essentially a vlogger and aspiring pro-golfer… who also happens to attend the highest-profile political events. Recent TikToks from her include a GRWM (Get Ready With Me) for a wedding and a Cheesecake Factory review – pretty standard stuff for a teenage Gen Z girl, except, of course, the President of the United States popping up here and there.
Kai Trump’s content exemplifies how the far right has managed to blend culture and politics so seamlessly that videos that seem focused on lifestyle and entertainment are laden with an immense amount of tacit support for and approval of their party leaders.
Two more things of particular note about Kai Trump’s social media presence. The first is that, for being so popular, she really doesn’t post that much. It appears Kai decided to seize upon her ability to achieve influencer status around the RNC last August – and she didn’t actually post her first YouTube video on her current channel until December 2024. Since then, she’s posted 66 YouTube videos as of publishing, and even on TikTok, where she has the largest following, she’s only posted 49 videos, with the first one being a recap of her at the RNC.
Arguably, Kai Trump, being who she is, only needs to post one video to go viral – but still, it is notable that with a relatively small amount of videos, she has amassed 83 million total views on YouTube and an average of 10.9 million views per video on TikTok. Overall, as a vlogger, it seems like she’s prioritizing long-form, highly-edited videos over shorter content more often – a strategy for us all to potentially mull over.
Second, Kai is a good example of how Republicans are already really good at rising to the top on YouTube… and are clearly still working to maintain their dominance. I wanted to flag her three most popular videos on her YouTube channel here:
Watching a Rocket Launch at SpaceX with Elon Musk! (9.1 million views)
Kai Trump Election Night Vlog (4.9 million views)
My grandpa became the President again (4.3 million views)
That’s all for now! Tune in next week when we take a closer look at the socials of Hope Walz and Ella Emhoff.
More from around the internet:
According to Pew, support amongst Americans for the TikTok ban is even lower than it was in 2023 as we head toward yet another deadline for TikTok to sell. Trump is still wheelin’ and dealin’ but it looks like, for several reasons, TikTok creators are making the move to YouTube Shorts.
Populist influencer Katherine Abughazaleh, AKA Kat Abu, raised $100,000 in the first day of her campaign after she announced her primary challenge of Rep. Jan Schakowsky.
Big influencers on TikTok and YouTube are now officially more popular than movie stars among Gen Z, according to new research from Deloitte.
The White House hosted a meeting for podcasters this past week.
Will elected officials and other top-ranking folks ever learn to private their Venmos?
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