We begin with a clip from an interview with the content creator and looksmaxxer Clavicular, a.k.a. Braden Peters broadcast on CBS Australia last month. Clavicular ended the session early when he was asked about his relationship with Andrew Tate, an indicted felon and MAGA influencer.
Copyrighted music licensed by Likd: Le Freak (Original Mix) by Diego Forsinetti and Suki Soul.
Braden Eric Peters, known online as Clavicular, after his arrest for illegally discharging a firearm in the vicinity of an alligator on March 26, 2026. Image credit: Broward County Sherriff’s Office/Wikimedia Commons
In the News:
Primaries this week have demonstrated once again that Donald Trump has a solid grip on the 70% of Republicans who support him. MAGA voters in Kentucky’s Fourth Congressional District knocked off Thomas Massie and mustered behind State Representative Andy Barr, who defeated outgoing Senator Mitch McConnell’s pick to replace him. In Georgia, former Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger will not be the Republican nominee for Governor, while two Republican incumbents fended off well-funded Democratic challengers for the State Supreme Court. After these successes, Trump urged candidates aligned with him to jump into a primary against Lauren Boebert (CO-4) at the end of June, however the deadline has passed and she will run unopposed.
Despite these primary successes, Trump still faces a bleak midterm outlook: Democrats need only four flips to take control of the Senate, and they could get more. One will come in North Carolina, where Governor Roy Cooper is kicking Michael Whatley’s behind; there are three toss-ups (Maine, Michigan and Ohio); and reaches in Georgia and New Hampshire. After Trump announced he was backing Attorney General Ken Paxton over incumbent John Cornyn in the Texas Republican Senate runoff, the Lone Star State may be in play for the first time since Lloyd Bentsen was elected in 1988. Republicans in the Senate are distressed and angry that Trump has undermined a key member of their leadership team. James Talarico, the Democratic nominee, is currently leading both Republicans in the polling.
A California judge has barred the New Jersey-based nonprofit with an ear worm jingle, Kars4Kids, from advertising in the Golden State. As it turns out, the proceeds from donated cars do not go to children more broadly, but to a charity called Oorah, which gives some of its money to some kids. A faith-based Jewish nonprofit that spends primarily in New York and New Jersey, Oorah does not identify itself in the ads as religious, but most of its spending goes to programs that take youth of varying economic backgrounds to Israel and a Jewish dating service. Recently, the organization also purchased a $16.5 million building in Israel.
In academic news, Harvard University’s faculty voted yesterday to limit the number of A’s awarded in any given class to 20% plus four. In the 2024-25 academic year, 2/3 of grades awarded were A’s. No other grades will be capped: 201 faculty voted against and 458 voted for. Here are some reasons why experts think that grade inflation matters. As faculty members Jason Furman and David Laibson wrote in The New York Times today, the generic A makes it “hard for truly exceptional students to stand out from their merely successful peers.”
Your hosts:
Claire Potter is a historian of politics and media, a writer, a podcaster, and the sole author and editor of the Political Junkie Substack. Her most recent book is Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020), and she is currently writing a biography of feminist journalist Susan Brownmiller.
Neil J. Young is a historian of religion and politics, a journalist, and a former co-host of the Past Present podcast. His most recent book is Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right (University of Chicago Press, 2024).
In early April, Clavicular appeared to be overdosing in a club while doing a Kick Livestream. Image credit: screenshot by author/YouTube
News focus: Clavicular and MAGA masculinity
From Trump on down, the MAGA movement is preoccupied with masculinity, good looks and power—but not with any of the virtues that might be associated with adult manhood. Journalist Jill Filipovic calls this “the adolescent style in American politics:” an ecology of influencers has grown up around the idea that they can sell wealth, beauty, wellness, and power to young American men adrift in the economy.
Here’s a recent profile of Clavicular from the New York Times. Born Braden Eric Peters in Hoboken, New Jersey, Clavicular became interested in looksmaxxing—a dedication to raising oneself to the highest standard of masculine beauty-- as a young teenager. During the Covid-19 pandemic, 14-year-old Clav became addicted to online incel and looksmaxxing content and began injecting himself with testosterone he purchased on the dark web. By 2025, he became a top TikTok streamer: he has almost a million followers.
Looksmaxxing appears to be a form of body dysphoria that emerged in 4chan in the 2010s and has now gone mainstream. Young men seek to “ascend”—or gain social power—by refining their personal appearance and gaining wealth; they are particularly focused on their faces, and on becoming lean. It is mostly associated with right-wing manosphere, the incel community, and white supremacy, although there is a small and embattled subset of Black looksmaxxers.
Looksmaxxing is about male dominance—specifically, power over women, but also power over other men. This dominance, or “mogging,” which can be learned and is theoretically available to all, offers a path out of irrelevance and failure.
But looksmaxing, while it draws on fitness culture, is specific to the internet, and is the most recent form of self-improvement ideology that has been an aspect of American masculinity since the 19th century. But it also derives from gay culture.
Although he claims he is not political, Clavicular has been associated with Andrew Tate and Nick Fuentes; he draws his constituency from online far right and gamer communities, and is a descendant of the shock-jock ecosystem that elevated Donald Trump in his first campaign. He is on the Kick platform, which is controversial for its promotion of online gambling content and relaxed moderation policies towards violent language and harassment.
Another connection to politics is how Clavicular mirrors the do-it-yourself “healthmaxxing” of RFK, Jr.’s MAHA coalition, an ecosystem of health and beauty influencers who make significant incomes through sponsorships and subscribers. Clavicular is said to be making $100K a month.
Clavicular is open about his drug use, particularly methamphetamine and testosterone. He has also had recent run-ins with the law: police were called to a Fort Lauderdale Air BNB in February because of a fight between two women that he instigated or staged, and in mid-April, he appeared to overdose in a restaurant while streaming. Later in April, he was arrested for shooting into a swamp, allegedly at an alligator, which he settled last week in a plea bargain.
What we want to go viral:
Neil wants you to read Katherine Stewart’s new essay, “A Very Authoritarian Semiquincentennial Celebration” (The New Republic, May 15, 2026), where she points out that instead of celebrating American Independence this summer. Donald Trump and his white Christian Nationalist allies are asking us “to settle for a festival of corruption, lies, bigotry, and divisiveness.”
Claire wants you to run, not walk, to see The Devil Wears Prada 2 (David Frankel, 2026) starring Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci. A sequel to the original move of the same name, it takes on the demise of journalism, America’s new Gilded Age, and is a tribute to the pleasures of work for ambitious women.
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