Jake Paul went from Air Force One to the microphone on Monday night. The Cleveland native traveled with President Donald Trump to a midterm rally at the Covelli Centre in Youngstown, Ohio, where the president brought him out on stage and Paul led the crowd in chants of “USA” before delivering a short speech.
“It’s good to be home,” Paul said. “I grew up about an hour from here in Cleveland.” He told the crowd his mother was in the building.
The rally was interrupted several times by protesters, and Paul went straight at them. “I get confused by the left, the protesters,” he said. “Do they not have jobs? All they do is carry signs around while we’re doing the work.”
He kept going. “We face evil. We face these people who are willing to do anything to destroy us,” Paul said. “All they do is talk on Twitter, but Twitter fingers never built the country. Hate has never built a country. And the woke socialist movement that we face has never built a country.”
Paul closed with a sports metaphor and a pitch for turnout. “So, you guys have a choice,” he said. “You can watch from the cheap seats like the left, or you could lace up, get on the field, and fight for what’s right. God bless you, Ohio. Go vote November 3rd, and we will keep control. God bless you, America.”
The lines were not new. Paul used the “Twitter fingers” and “cheap seats” language in a post on X last month, responding to criticism of a trip he and his brother Logan made to Washington. On Monday he delivered them to an arena.
Trump praised Paul’s toughness in introducing him and, after the speech, again raised the idea that Paul could run for office one day. That echoed March, when Paul joined Trump on stage in Hebron, Kentucky, and the president told him, “You have my complete and total endorsement.” Paul is not a candidate for anything.
Paul had stepped off Marine One with the president earlier in the day at Joint Base Andrews alongside former NFL head coach Jon Gruden, a Sandusky native, according to the Associated Press. Gruden introduced Trump at the rally. Ohio has a closely watched Senate race between Republican Sen. Jon Husted and Democratic former Sen. Sherrod Brown, and Monday marked the president’s second campaign stop in the state in 10 days.
For boxing, the timing is the story. Paul has not fought since December 19, 2025, when Anthony Joshua stopped him in the sixth round in Miami and broke his jaw in two places. He had surgery the next day and a second procedure in February after the hardware came loose. In May he said on a broadcast, “Everything is healing perfectly.”
This month his business partner at Most Valuable Promotions, Nakisa Bidarian, made it official, writing on X, “Jake Paul has been cleared to return to the boxing ring.” Paul followed with a wish list that opened with the words “Before I rest” and ran through Canelo Alvarez, Francis Ngannou, Conor McGregor, Ryan Garcia, KSI, Deontay Wilder and a world title.
No opponent, date or site has been announced. Paul is 12-2 as a professional and has said he plans to campaign at cruiserweight when he returns.
The setting carried some boxing weight of its own. Youngstown is the city that produced Ray Mancini and Kelly Pavlik, and it has long treated its fighters as civic figures. On Monday night it got a fighter with a very different kind of following, and a speech that sounded a lot like a man warming up for something other than a fight.
