Trump sits down with controversial live streamer Adin Ross

For an hour and 20 minutes on Monday, former President Donald Trump sat down with 23-year-old live streamer Adin Ross, a popular influencer who is known for hosting white nationalists on his streaming show.

The controversial social media personality traveled to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida with his parents and the even more popular live streamer Félix Lengyel, who goes by the name xQc, for the lengthy discussion with the Republican presidential nominee. Ross gifted Trump a Rolex watch and a custom Tesla Cybertruck, which sparked questions online about possible campaign finance violations.

“My sons told me about and, you know, they told me about how big,” Trump said, to which his youngest son, Barron, told him: “’Dad, he’s really big.’”

“Big stuff, Adin, so I just have to say, outstanding. To do what you’ve done at a young age and I know how old you are, you’re young. But seriously, my suit is older than you,” Trump added.

The pair discussed Trump’s anti-immigrant positions, U.S. relations with foreign leaders, crime in California and Chicago, the former president’s recent appearance at a conference of Black journalists, the assassination attempt on Trump’s life, cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, President Joe Biden’s exit from the race and Vice President Kamala Harris’ impending ascension to the top of the Democratic ticket.

“They’re destroying our country, Adin, they’re destroying — stupid people. He’s not a smart man. He wasn’t smart 35 years ago. He wasn’t smart 20 years ago. Now he’s really not smart, and you saw that from the debate, and he’s really gone down the tubes,” Trump said of Biden, later adding of Harris: “She’s, by the way, considered the most unpopular vice president we’ve ever had, but she’s a horrible — she’s worse than [Biden] is. I actually think he’s smarter than her and I think he’s a really not smart person, but I think he’s smarter than she is.”

In a statement, the Harris campaign attacked Trump for “lying about his record and attacking the media instead of speaking to the issues young voters care about” in “a boring, low energy interview.” They noted Ross has “used racial slurs against Black Americans in livestreams and has a record of encouraging white nationalists.”

“Donald Trump’s sad attempt to connect with young voters flopped because like the rest of America, Gen Z isn’t into an unhinged, tired man trying to increase their taxes, kick them off their parents’ insurance, deny climate change, rip away their freedoms, and force his Project 2025 agenda on their entire generation,” Harris campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said.

The Harris campaign also highlighted clips of Trump on Ross’ stream, including one where Trump addresses the disputed election in Venezuela by describing President Nicolás Maduro as a “dictator” before claiming the country’s Caracas capital is safer than U.S. cities because “they’ve released tremendous numbers of criminals into our country.”

In another clip shared by the Harris campaign, Trump attacks ABC News journalist Rachel Scott, saying she should be fired for her line of questioning about his history of racist remarks and how he talks about Black political opponents and journalists. Scott was one of the moderators of the eventful and hostile interview Trump sat down for at the National Association of Black Journalists Convention last week that resulted in him falsely claiming Harris hid her Black identity until recent years.

“Once you sort of walk out there, you put the guard up and you actually give less information than what you would’ve if they did it with sugar,” Trump said. “But she doesn’t know about sugar, that one. It was sort of terrible.”

Monday’s interview with Trump was helped set up by UFC CEO Dana White, Ross said last week. White is a longtime supporter of the former president and introduced him on the final night of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last month. 

During the sit down portion of the interview, Ross gifted Trump a Rolex watch before then taking him out to a driveway to give him a Tesla Cybertruck with a custom wrap featuring the American flag and a photograph of Trump with his fist in the air and his ear bloodied from the moments after he was shot by a would-be assassin in Pennsylvania last month.

Federal campaign finance laws limit individual contributions to candidate’s political campaigns to $3,300. While it was unclear from the stream what watch Ross gave Trump, Rolex watches start at $5,500 and can sell for as much as $75,000, according to Bob’s Watches, an online marketplace predominantly used for buying and selling Rolex watches. Tesla Cybertrucks cost north of $55,000 — and that’s before the custom wrap job. 

“As a federal candidate, Donald Trump cannot legally accept a Rolex watch, a Tesla Cybertruck, or any such lavish gift. All federal candidates are subject to contribution limits that ensure that candidates do not become beholden to, or provide special favors for, wealthy donors once in office,” said Shanna Ports, the senior legal counsel for campaign finance for the nonprofit watchdog Campaign Legal Center, in a statement. “For the 2024 cycle, a federal candidate may not accept more than $3,300 per election—in cash or items of value—from any individual. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) has previously determined that even a purportedly ‘personal’ gift given to a candidate, because they are running for office, is nonetheless a campaign contribution. Accordingly, it would be illegal for Trump to accept these luxury items as gifts.”

The pair sat in the Cybertruck, praised Tesla’s billionaire CEO Elon Musk and played songs from a Trump-curated playlist, including “California Dreamin’” by the Mamas and the Papas — a reference to Harris’ home state that Trump said would “come back under proper management.” They then exited the car and danced to “YMCA” by the Village People, a favorite of Trump’s that is played often at his rallies, before the stream came to an end.

“Mr. President, I do want to say, first of all, you took a bullet for everyone in this room. Everyone watching the reaction that you gave, no other president is going to do that,” Ross told Trump earlier in the stream. “You are a brave man. You stood up and went like this, and it’s pretty badass picture, by the way.”

Ross currently claims 1.3 million followers on the live streaming platform Kick, known for its gambling content and looser content rules than the more mainstream Twitch live streaming platform. Prior to being banned from Twitch last year, Ross had 7.2 million followers on that platform. The stream on Monday was at times watched by more than half a million people live. The audiences for Ross’ content and live streamers in general skews young, with Ross previously claiming most of his audience are in their teens and early 20s. 

Ross has gained notoriety outside of the live streaming world, where he got his start playing video games like “NBA 2K,” for his discussions with white nationalists like Nick Fuentes and his close friendship with the self-proclaimed misogynist influencer Andrew Tate, who is awaiting trial in Romania on charges of human trafficking, rape and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women.

Ross, who is Jewish, has had Fuentes — one of the United States’ most prominent white nationalists and Holocaust deniers — on his show multiple times. Trump infamously sat down with Fuentes and antisemitic rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, for a dinner in November 2022 at Mar-a-Lago. Then, Trump claimed he didn’t know Fuentes was going to be there. On Monday, Trump said Ye was “complicated” and “a really nice guy, but he could get himself into trouble.” 

Ye, who ran for president in 2020, has praised Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. He recruited Fuentes, who is also a fan of Hitler and the Nazis, to help run his ultimately abandoned campaign. Months after Fuentes and Ye had dinner with Trump, Ross offered his help to Fuentes with the campaign on one of his live streams.

“I just didn’t like that one clip, you said something like that ‘Jews were the spawn of Satan’,” Ross said to Fuentes in March 2023.

Fuentes responded by saying he didn’t remember saying the quote, but that “I do believe that Jews are doing the work of Satan.”

Their discussion that day ended with Fuentes, who the Department of Justice has described as a “white supremacist,” attempting to clear up Ye’s praise for Hitler and Ross offering to help their campaign. Ross had previously advocated Kick’s leadership to allow Fuentes, who was widely banned from most mainstream social media platforms for his use of hate speech, onto their platform. 

Ross has also repeatedly allowed self-identified neo-Nazis onto his channel in an attempt to dialogue with them about their hatred of racial minorities and Jews. Ross’ manager told him last year that mainstream celebrities don’t want to be on his popular stream because “they don’t want to be associated with a guy that’s having Nazis on his stream.”