With anti-Trump rallies happening practically every week this spring, it might seem like New Yorkers have finally found something they can agree upon (besides the fact that NYC sucks and no one else should try to live here). However, it seems Donald Trump has a group of NYU student supporters who have hesitantly begun to vocalize their love for the least credible presidential candidate in modern history.
Shockingly, it seems that the overwhelmingly-liberal NYU might not be the most pleasant place for Trump fans: "Supporters generally try to keep it hidden from the rest of the student body," junior Dylan Perera told the Post today. "They’re afraid of losing friends, being ridiculed in class, getting worse grades and are even afraid of being assaulted and physically hurt."
Perera, who was the only Trump supporter willing to let the Post publish his name, said he has been hounded by fellow students for his views: "[One woman] freaked out and started yelling and screaming in my face, calling me a racist and a fascist. It was impossible to even have a conversation," he said, which is basically the inverse of how many Trump supporters have embraced malignant stubbornness in the face of overwhelming evidence of Trump's unique stupidity.
Perera estimates there may be as many as 30 Trump supporters at the school, but there is no official group or meet-ups: "It’s really decentralized," he told the Post, because "most people are too afraid to start an official group." One anonymous student told them he was ostracized by his "radical social-justice warrior" roommates ("Their hatred towards me started escalating after we had a few political discussions"); another said his professor made a Trump joke at his expense.
"There are definitely a decent number of Trump supporters at NYU that are hiding in the closet," a freshman, who wears his "Make America Great Again" hat around campus, told NYU News. "When I tell people I’m a Trump supporter, they just laugh it off. They don’t like to believe that there are non-white Trump supporters. But once you wear the hat, you accept the fact that people aren’t going to like you, but it feels pretty weird to hide my political beliefs in a place that is so diverse."
"Like me, most of [the other Trump supporters on campus] don’t even support absolutely everything Trump says, like building a wall and deporting all 11 million illegal immigrants," he added, leaving one to wonder what exactly he agrees with Trump about. Is it his views on abortion, which have changed five times over the last week? Is it his foreign policy views, which our current president called stunningly ignorant?
"I know what the spirit of the campus is so I keep quiet about my views just because it makes the day go easier," junior Jillian Spataro, who is planning to vote for Trump, told NYU News. "I do hear the side comments and see the Facebook pages. As a registered Republican, it’s just easier for me to turn a blind eye instead of getting involved."
Last year, NYU alum Megan Powers took a job out of school to become a Trump campaign coordinator, and brought NYU Local on a tour of Trump's campaign offices in NYC. "Everyone has fans and everyone has people who aren’t fans," she said at the time. "I’ve had a lot of my friends want to talk to me about it because they think it’s so interesting. They ask me kind of the same things you’re asking me: what’s it like and do you actually like him, do you actually think he’s good? And I think Mr. Trump is fantastic."
