The final place I anticipated to see a bobbing crimson sea of MAGA hats was on a school campus. However these are unusual instances. And a crimson tide is strictly what I witnessed this week on the College of Georgia.
If Donald Trump wins the presidency once more, a giant a part of the coalition and the story will doubtless be the help he attracted, or failed to draw, amongst Gen Z voters, particularly younger males.
It’s standard knowledge, and one firmly rooted in historic precedent, that faculty campuses are usually hotbeds of liberalism. Up to now few months, nevertheless, I’ve been encountering increasingly proof that one thing new is afoot throughout the cohort of younger males, one thing that runs counter to the narrative. So I made a decision to go to a key swing state and test it out for myself. (I’m at present producing a documentary in regards to the influence of Gen Z on the 2024 election.)
On Tuesday, I attended a campus rally on the College of Georgia in Athens, sponsored by Turning Level USA and that includes its charismatic and controversial chief, Charlie Kirk, who, since he based the group in 2012, has been the tip of the spear relating to mobilizing younger voters to the conservative trigger.
On this event, his “You’re Being Brainwashed Tour” invited college students to a plaza the place he merely sat at a desk and answered questions.
Notably, Kirk not solely gladly answered hostile questions, however inspired them, usually asking Trump supporters to get out of the road in order that unfriendlies might grill him. And he went nonstop for 2 hours. The plaza was so crowded, I had hassle transferring by means of it. And he signed and tossed out crimson MAGA hats till he rapidly ran out of the two,500 that his crew had introduced alongside to distribute.
Kirk was, for probably the most half, agency however cordial. He expressed his factors of view with a rapid-fire depth, conviction, and readability. And whereas he’s a partisan Trump advocate, he doesn’t succumb to hyperbole or convey false confidence. He additionally yields to apparent truths which may in any other case ruffle Trump surrogates. He acknowledges, as an illustration, that Trump is not going to win the Gen Z vote.
“It’s going to be exhausting for Trump to win on these campuses and get a majority,” Kirk concedes. “However I can say, confidently, we’re going to lose by much less.”
