impressionable

I hope there’s a less depressing explanation — that Trump is just a really effective con man who knew how to convince a lot of highly impressionable young men that a “real man” had no other choice than to vote for him.

Walter Lippmann, the reigning public intellectual of his era, deprecated FDR as “a highly impressionable person, without a firm grasp of public affairs. ... A pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for the office, would very much like to be President.”

Trump has been appearing on podcasts with a string of “manfluencers” as part of a broader strategy to convince impressionable young men that “real men vote Republican.”

But cosmetics brands and the retailers that carry their products are facing a delicate balancing act as they navigate the phenomenon and figure out how to market to a growing cohort of impressionable customers.

It is a character study of a young, impressionable and eager man of privilege, who wants to rebuild Manhattan in his own image and for his own vanity while trying to convince others it’s for the greater good.