'I did not call Barron weird': NYU GOP club president breaks silence after resigning over remarks on Trump's son
Kaya Walker resigned as the president of NYU’s College Republican club days after she referred to Barron Trump as "sort of like an oddity on campus.”
Kaya Walker, the president of NYU’s College Republican club, resigned allegedly over her comments about Barron Trump. In an interview with Vanity Fair magazine earlier this month, Walker referred to Trump's18-year-old son Barron, a student at the university, as "sort of like an oddity on campus.”
Speaking to NY Post, Kaya Walker said she now regrets her decision to step down.
“I’ve been killing myself trying to support the conservative movement. Everybody knows that it’s an uphill battle being a Republican at NYU," she said.
“I’ve put my everything into building up my chapter. 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," she added.
What did Kaya Walker say about Barron?
The Vanity Fair article says, “NYU — and its business school in particular — lacks a central social life, with classrooms and living arrangements dispersed throughout Lower Manhattan” before quoting Walker as saying, “Barron’s classmates described his day-to-day comings and goings to me as limited.”
“He goes to class, he goes home,” Walker adds.
Quote taken out of context?
Walker received backlash after AF Post, a popular conservative news profile on X, tweeted quotes she had given Vanity Fair.
Speaking about the “out-of-context” tweet, Walker told NY Post, “[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."
“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 added.
Barron lives with his family on the Upper East Side and commutes to campus from their home, rather than residing on the Greenwich Village campus.
The College Republican Club’s Response
The College Republicans of America issued a statement saying Walker’s comment “does not align with the values and principles upheld by our organization” and was “inappropriate.”
Will Donahue, President of the CRA, told NY Post that chapter presidents are expected to seek board approval before engaging with "left-wing journalists" like 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 also confirmed that his organization recommended Walker 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.”
The College Republicans have over 200 chapters nationwide, including one at NYU.