‘I got crucified’: Kaya Walker on her resignation from the College Republicans

On Monday, Feb. 17, CAS senior Kaya Walker publicly resigned as president of the NYU College Republicans after facing backlash for calling Stern first-year Barron Trump “an oddity on campus” in an interview with Vanity Fair. Both her comments and her resignation were reported by major publications like The New York Times, People Magazine and The Daily Mail. In the wake of the controversy and in response to Walker’s “inappropriate” words, Will Donahue, the president of the College Republicans of America, invited Trump to join the student organization.

Over one month after her resignation, Walker opened up to WSN about her side of the story. She discussed what it is like to be a Republican at NYU, facing national pressure to resign and why she no longer wishes to remain quiet.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

WSN: What ignited your interest in politics?

Walker: I’m from Massachusetts originally, but I grew up in Manhattan. Both my parents are from there, so we moved there when I was pretty young. My parents were very liberal, and I think I appreciate that. They have their strong convictions, but I just didn’t. I just grew up in such a way that I didn’t agree with them. I was more conservative — it just turned out that way, my beliefs skewed right, and there’s nothing I can really do about it. People are surprised that I’m a woman, people are surprised that I’m a Black woman. I don’t want to be pigeon-holed into agreeing with my parents just because I’m a certain race or I’m a certain sex. I just think that’s ridiculous.

WSN: What led you to join the NYU College Republicans?

Walker: When I went to college, I was looking for people who shared my views because I just missed out on that my entire life — and I found them. I was a first-year club member at that point. That was really my entry to politics officially, although it was more that we all shared a political affiliation. I’ve just gotten more involved in actual party politics as it’s progressed. Especially in this last election, we’ve grown from five people to sometimes upwards of 40 people, and I’m really proud of that. I’ve spent four years working on that. And it’s only up from there.

WSN: What was your reaction when the Vanity Fair article was first published? 

Walker: I was actually really happy when the article came out. I sent it to the national organization, actually, because when something comes out about us that looks good, they like to repost it. I was like, ‘Yeah, sure, we need more engagement on our Instagram or whatever. Let me send it to their press secretary.’ I sent it to her, and she read it, and you want to know what she told me? She was like, ‘slay.’ It’s so freaking stupid that that happened. 

WSN: It was an X post from the AF Post that first circulated the negative commentary on your statement about Barron. What was your initial reaction to that? 

Walker: I’m in London right now, so I’m in a different time zone. It was like the wee hours of Monday morning and people were sending me that Twitter post about the Vanity Fair article I had done. They circulate the quote where I said, ‘Barron is sort of an oddity on campus. He goes to class, he goes home.’ It seemed like I was saying that Barron Trump was weird because he’s a commuter student. I’m a commuter student. It was a really stupid controversy, and people just ate me alive online. I didn’t sleep at all that night. The juicy details of what happened with me resigning — it was actually terrible and very disappointing, because these are your own people that are doing it to you, really. 

WSN: What were you trying to convey by calling Barron an ‘oddity?’ 

Walker: What it was trying to interrogate was how conservative culture doesn’t really have a young person as an icon, and right now, Barron is like a stand-in for what a conservative icon would be. That’s all people want to know about when they ask to interview me, they want to know about Barron, and I would give the same response: 

People act weird. They record him in class. At Club Fest, people would go up to us and be like, ‘Is Barron in the club?’ Stuff like that. It’s not a usual thing to have the sitting president’s son on your campus, and have him being followed by security and for people to be acting weird and inappropriate about it. So that’s what I was trying to convey, but it was kind of lost. I express sympathy for a situation like that. That must be terrible. He can’t have a normal college experience like the rest of us are having. 

WSN: How did that lead to your resignation? 

Walker: I got a call in the middle of the night from Will. He told me that he would talk to me to prepare a statement that ended up being my resignation letter, addressed to John Parker, the chairman of the New York Federation of College Republicans. Will ended up saying in his press release that I had resigned Saturday night, but that didn’t happen. It was Monday morning. He called me and he was like, ‘Yeah, we have to get you to resign.’ I was definitely emotional. I don’t really cry or anything like that, but I was like, ‘Dude, I’ve been working at this for four years of my life.’ I’m one of their best people. I had been getting so much praise, even especially for our campaign work, for press appearances that I’d done. He had said a couple months before this, ‘Keep doing the good work you’re doing at NYU.’ He said that I could keep acting as president. Even though I didn’t have the title anymore, it was more for show, really.

He also told me in that phone call that I could either resign and not be thrown under the bus so much, or I could not resign and be thrown under the bus. So faced with those two options, my heart hurt. I wasn’t eating. I hadn’t slept. I was just really scared. I told my mother that something was wrong, but I didn’t tell her what was wrong. I’m sure she found out, but she didn’t tell me that she knew until a couple days later. And I was just in a fairly bad place. I was like, ‘Let me just resign, and I can keep running the club like I have been the past four years.’ I didn’t have much foresight, and I wanted things to go back to normal and be quiet.

WSN: Do you have any regrets? 

Walker: I mean, I regret resigning now. There were a lot of people who supported me through rain or shine, but some people — I mean Will and his entire board — I think that they’re cowards. They’ve really disappointed me. They told me to shut up, essentially. I was told by many people that I once admired and respected to shut up, let this die. Will was going on a press tour talking about this, but I was told not to speak to anybody. What ended up happening were the most one-sided articles, where Will gave a comment and I couldn’t really speak, because they told me to be quiet or else I’m over in this whole world — not in this whole world, but in politics. I was afraid of retribution, really.

I wish I would have gotten to talk to people and clarify my statements, and to hold accountable these cowards who don’t stand up for people who they’ve otherwise been praising, and who are really dedicated to the movement. I don’t think that they are representative of the movement, it’s just very disappointing. I think that we’re better than this, not even just as Republicans or conservatives, but as Americans. 

WSN: How did it feel to see those negative comments about you and the organization online? 

Walker: Our political discourse has devolved, and it’s so sad to see. I would have arguments in high school with my friends, but we would never levy heinous racist slurs against each other, which I was seeing online. It was stuff about my race, stuff about me being a woman — and you know that stuff is out there, but it’s so gross to see it written about yourself. Not even just that, but criticizing my appearance, speculating what race I am, saying that they hope that I end up working as a janitor or something. People were saying that I want to date Barron, which is weird, as if I gave the comment because I have a crush on him or something. I’m a grown woman.

WSN: Do you think the pressure to resign was less about what you said, but more about how your comments were perceived?

Walker: Yeah, it was entirely because of how it was perceived, because the CRA wanted to save face. If you read the press release that the organization put out on their Instagram and all their socials, it said that I was asked to resign because my statement was inappropriate or because I didn’t ask for permission, but also because Barron Trump is the future of the conservative party and the CRA would love for him to have a meeting with us. That’s something that they had been asking me to do for months, since he first matriculated into the school. I told them that that’s not realistic, and that I’m going to focus on the kids who want to be here. So essentially, I got crucified so that this guy Will Donahue could possibly get a meeting and a handshake with a 19-year-old.

WSN: Do members of the NYU College Republicans agree with the CRA’s decision? 

Walker: We all just thought it was so stupid. Most College Republicans in the New York metropolitan area think it’s stupid because we know each other. People keep telling me I’m the sweetest person ever, that I’m not meant for politics. It’s very unfortunate, people were telling me, ‘Don’t resign.’ But it was that fear, like I said. Everybody’s saying that they’re waiting for my return and I’ll be back next year, and we’ll figure it out. So they support me, and they’re not — we’re not — happy with the CRA. Nationals’ handling of the situation was definitely ‘inappropriate,’ to use their word against them. 

WSN: Has your view of the Republican party changed? 

Walker: I like to think of these things on an individual level. I named some names during this interview, like Will Donahue, John Parker — people who I thought I could trust, but I learned that I couldn’t in this game of politics. People have been asking me if my party affiliation has changed in any way. No, not at all. I’m a Republican, I’m a conservative, and I’ll always be, till the day that I die. I can’t really do anything about the way that I think. I’m going to stand firm in what I believe. 

WSN: Has this experience affected your overall outlook on politics? 

Walker: I always considered us to be the party of free speech. I feel like we need to be stronger as a party and as conservatives, especially when it comes to young people. We need to know who our friends are. I consider myself to be a part of a conservative movement in America. I’m proud of that, and I’ll continue working at that. But for our movement to have longevity, we can’t do this. I don’t think that all the people who were saying things were Republicans or conservatives at all, a lot of them were like, white supremacists and stuff like that, and that’s disgusting, and we can’t let those people win. 

A lot of times the right will say the left eats itself. This is an instance of the right eating itself. And I am the self that got eaten. It’s ridiculous. It’s part of the whole sensational aspect of politics right now, and it’s really bad, and I look to a day when it’s not like this, but I doubt it’ll happen. I just want to keep working to change the world like anybody else would. 

WSN: What does your future look like, in politics and beyond?

Walker: I am planning on running again for president next year. I might not because I want to focus on grad school, but we’ll see. I really do want to. I am going to stay involved, and I’m going to work my hardest to make sure that we succeed. It’s always been my dream to do this thing called Judge Advocate General’s Corps. So I want to join the military and be a lawyer there — I’m committed to a life of public service, no matter what I do. I don’t know if that fits into a career in politics, but I really just want to make sure that conservative interests aren’t sidelined. I feel like it’s in my interest to advocate for myself. You can be a lawyer and advocate for other people, but I want to advocate for myself and my interests as an American citizen. And if I can do that by going into politics, I will — although I know the rules of the game now. I’m going to be very careful, even though there’s nothing wrong with what I said. There is nothing at all wrong. I’ll die on that hill till the day that I die.

Contact Emily Genova at egenova@nyunews.com.

This story ‘I got crucified’: Kaya Walker on her resignation from the College Republicans appeared first on Washington Square News.