Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy says he walked away from the Democratic Party for a simple reason: the Left decided that “white dudes” are the villains of American society — and he’s done pretending that makes any sense.
In a CBS Sunday Morning interview, Portnoy — who grew up in what the program described as a “liberal Jewish home outside of Boston” — explained that Democrats have alienated a massive swath of young men who once leaned left but now believe the party holds them in contempt. As correspondent Tony Dokoupil put it, these disenchanted men have “turned away from Democrats” and largely backed President Donald Trump.
Dokoupil asked Portnoy directly: “What happened to the Democrats? Why did they lose so many young men?”
Portnoy’s answer was blunt. “People often think I have the answer,” he said, before offering what he called his “nutshell” explanation: Democrats became “very anti-normal guys.” When pressed on what he meant, Portnoy cited the party’s cultural hostility toward men who simply want to enjoy life — “guys who are into ‘hot’ girls” and who have fun at frat-type social scenes.
But the tipping point, he said, was the way the Left began casting “the white guy” as America’s perpetual villain. “The white guy… became the bad guy,” Portnoy told CBS. He added that many men feel unfairly blamed for “colonialism” or “stuff you guys are complaining about 200 years ago,” even though, as he put it, “I’m not the bad guy.”
Portnoy argues Democrats made matters worse by smearing Trump supporters as “Nazis” or, in Hillary Clinton’s infamous framing, “deplorables.” The Biden–Harris era intensified that climate. In 2024, then-President Biden claimed Trump would never have considered pardoning Jan. 6 defendants if they were Black. A year earlier, Biden declared at Howard University that white supremacy was the “most dangerous terrorist threat” facing the country.
Those sweeping denunciations only widened the political fault line. And when President Trump returned to the White House earlier this year, he swiftly unwound Biden-era Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion directives, calling them “shameful discrimination.” His executive order argued that Americans “deserve a government committed to serving every person with equal dignity and respect.”
The CBS interview also touched on another subject Portnoy says has reached a breaking point: the rise of open antisemitism. “It’s every day now,” he told the program, describing a “definitive shift” in public hostility. As a prominent Jewish figure, Portnoy said he feels a responsibility to call it out: “You have to be like, alright, this is not normal.”
That warning became personal earlier this month when a heckler interrupted one of his now-famous pizza review videos, shouting “f*** the Jews!” and throwing coins at him — a vile, stereotypical antisemitic gesture.
For many Americans, Portnoy’s candid comments reflect ordinary men who now say the Democratic Party left them behind.
