NYU College Republican Pres outsted over Barron Trump comments: “Why would I have any ill intent towards him?”
After resigning over her comments about Barron Trump — remarks she believes were taken out of context — the former president of NYU’s College Republican club told The Post she now regrets stepping down.
“I’ve been killing myself trying to support the conservative movement,” Kaya Walker, a senior, told The Post. “Everybody knows that it’s an uphill battle being a Republican at NYU.
“I’ve put my everything into building up my chapter,” she added. “I built [attendance] up exponentially. It’s been insane, especially this past year, we’ve seen such a rise in membership and had such a great time.”
Walker resigned Sunday night, after AF Post, a popular conservative news profile on X, tweeted quotes she had given Vanity Fair, calling fellow NYU student Barron an “oddity on campus.”
“He goes to class, he goes home,” Walker told Vanity Fair of Barron, who lives at his family’s Upper East Side home rather than on the Greenwich Village campus.
“[AF Post] took it to say that I was saying that Barron was strange for being a commuter — which I thought was crazy because I’m a commuter,” Walker told The Post of the out-of-context tweet, which racked up nearly 100,000 likes and almost 10 million views and led many to wrongly accuse her of making fun of Barron.
“They [made it] look like I was calling the president’s son weird, but I feel like anybody who can read would know that’s not what I was doing,” she said.
Instead, Walker was advised by the College Republicans of America to resign her chapter post — in what I would call a a textbook case of cancel culture.
Any fair read of the February 12 article from Vanity Fair shows Walker deserves the benefit of the doubt for empathizing with Barron.
“NYU — and its business school in particular — lacks a central social life, with classrooms and living arrangements dispersed throughout Lower Manhattan,” the article says, before quoting Walker: “Barron’s classmates described his day-to-day comings and goings to me as limited.”
Calling Barron an “oddity” is hardly an insult — it’s precisely how gawking classmates and paparazzi treat him.
“I just feel bad that he’s having this hard college experience, and I understand that he wants to be left alone,” Walker told The Post, clarifying her statement. “I don’t even know Baron Trump. I campaigned for his father. Why would I have any ill intent towards him?”
She also has a track record of sticking up for Barron. When Walker spoke to me for a December article about College Republican clubs, we discussed how the president’s son is perceived at NYU.
“I feel bad for him more than anything,” she said. “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.”
Since the AF Post’s tweet went viral, Walker said she and her family have been subjected to an endless stream of nasty comments and threats.
“I don’t know how I’m gonna get through this, honestly,” she said.
In a statement, the College Republicans of America — which has more than 200 chapters nationwide, including at NYU — said Walker’s comment “does not align with the values and principles upheld by our organization” and was “inappropriate.” The group also extended an invitation to Barron to join its NYU chapter.
Will Donahue, President of the CRA, told The Post that chapter presidents are expected to request board approval before speaking to “left-wing journalists” — in this case, Vanity Fair.
“Left-wing organizations have a tendency to misconstrue what we say, and a college student without media training tends to be a ripe candidate for predatory journalists,” he said.
Donahue confirmed to The Post that his organization advised Walker to resign.
“The conversation that we have with Kaya is, look, this is blowing up out of proportion, to protect your reputation and the organization, the prudent move would be for you to step down,” he said, clarifying that “she did so on her own volition.”
Walker declined to comment on the CRA or any communications with the group. She said she felt no choice to quit but, in retrospect, “I actually regret resigning.”
The real irony is that Walker got canceled for speaking to a left-leaning source, when Vanity Fair presented her comments perfectly fairly. By contrast, the conservative AF Post actually took them out of context and amplified them.
Walker getting press attention from a diversity of outlets should be celebrated.
I know, as a former NYU student myself, how it’s much easier to put your head down and go with the leftward flow on campus. The last thing a brave conservative student leader needs is a public cancellation.
Walker deserves credit for holding the line at NYU and building a refuge for conservatives who are vastly outnumbered. She joined the club as a 17-year-old freshman, and she’s watched weekly attendance swell from 5 to over 40.
Holding her accountable for how a fringe X page mischaracterizes her statements will almost surely have a chilling effect on club officers and members across the country.
