Donald Trump’s re-election and his hunky son’s enrollment at NYU are fueling college Republican Club membership, sources tell The Post.
Students are proudly wearing their MAGA hats on campus, membership numbers have doubled and in New York, the club is fielding many enquiries about Barron Trump, a freshman at the Stern School of Business this year.
“Interest was piqued initially by the fact that Barron Trump had matriculated as a student at our business school, but the election motivated a lot of people to act,” said Kaya Walker, president of NYU’s College Republican Club.
“It’s more curiosity than anything. People would come up to us and ask us, ‘Oh, is Baron in the club?’”
Walker says the president-elect’s son has become something of a spectacle on campus, adding: “I feel bad for him more than anything. He’s kind of watched like a zoo animal. He’s kind of hard to miss. He’s very tall.
“People post pictures of him in class on their Instagram Story, and I think that’s really strange.”
Despite the enquiries, Walker points out: “He’s not a member, but we’d love to have him.”
Regardless, membership in the club has soared, according to Walker, who is a senior studying French. She has been a member of the school’s College Republicans chapter since her freshman year and over the course of her time at NYU, attendance at weekly meetings has grown from about five to 40.
“This election made a lot of people more optimistic about the future of conservatism in general, I think, although [our] presence on a liberal academic campus like NYU is still generally looked down upon,” she said.
Other chapters around the country tell The Post their engagement has as much as doubled this semester, following the decisive Republican win.
“The amount of people who are willing to go out there and support President Trump and to be vocal about being a conservative in general is so much higher,” vice president of Penn State College Republicans Tristin Kilgore told The Post.
So far this school year, his club’s enrollment has doubled and it now has 200 active members.
Kilgore, a sophomore studying philosophy, says part of Trump’s sudden surge in popularity with current college students is their experience during the pandemic.
“We were in high school, and it was a really tough time,” said Kilgore, 20. “We’re not supporting the people who were in favor of keeping us away from our friends and away from our schools and setting us back in life.”
Alexander Richmond, president of the University of Michigan’s chapter, also says his numbers are up by about a third.
“On college campuses, people are rejecting the status quo of what we would normally think is the [left-wing] culture and bias on campus,” Richmond, a 19-year-old political science major, told The Post.
While he says conservative freshmen historically hid in the shadows, his club is drawing record-breaking numbers of first-year students: “We have a lot of new kinds of people that have been empowered to show up.”
His club was established in 1892, making it the oldest College Republican Club in the country. Post-election it has 445 students signed up, making its membership roughly half the size of the Democratic Club’s.
“I think that in the coming months, especially with the new presidency, we’re going to see much greater membership,” he predicted.
Matthew Trott, president of UNC’s College Republicans Club, told The Post its membership more than doubled in the two months leading up to the election, from 120 members to 250.
At Babson College, membership has similarly doubled over the course of the semester to a total of 73 young Republicans.
“People are getting more involved now that they’re realizing we’re not just three guys with a thick pair of glasses sitting in a corner of the room,” club president Neko Kady told The Post.
The sophomore says Trump enjoys near-universal popularity with his fellow club members. He describes reaction to the election results as “jubilation.”
“I don’t think there are many anti-Trump, Lincoln Project-type Republicans on campus,” said Kady, a sophomore studying tech entrepreneurship. “I would say the vast majority of our club is jumping with joy.”
Kady has observed a palpable shift on campus this year — suddenly conservatism seems to be out in the open.
“There is definitely an increase in pro-Republican sentiment, like we even had kids walking around with MAGA hats in the library.”
