SURGE IN YOUNG REPUBLICANS


Trump Triggers Historic Surge in Young Republicans


“Straight-talking” president restores their faith in government. BY DAVID A. PATTEN


s a conservative influencer and DEI critic with more than a million followers on social media, Robby Starbuck sensed before


Election Day that the nation was on the verge of a titanic political earthquake. That revelation arrived for Starbuck, 35, courtesy of his 16-year-old “independent- minded” daughter. She was not really treated


well in some grades, he tells Newsmax, due to her support for traditional values. But as Election Day drew near, all that began to change. The snappy “old guy” dance moves of Donald J. Trump were going viral at the time. The world’s richest man,


Elon Musk, endorsed the former president. Over 100 million people, including many youths, were following Trump on X and Truth Social. To most teens, Trump


was the celebrity former president who’d been shot at several times yet looked happy serving french fries at McDonald’s. Then, everything changed. “One of the big shifts I


noticed,” Starbuck recalls, “was every single peer of my daughter’s was in some way supporting Trump. “They were wearing MAGA


hats. They offered full-throat- ed support. And some of these were the types of young people you would have said five years ago [that] there’s no way they


The snappy “old guy” dance moves of Donald J. Trump were going viral as Election Day drew near. The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, endorsed the former president.


could say, ‘Yeah, I want Trump to win the election.’” That’s when Starbuck


realized the notion that young people would always vote for liberals was a myth. “I said, ‘OK, something’s re-


ally shifted in this dynamic,’” he tells Newsmax. “If you have young people unafraid to go to their schools and talk about this, or wear MAGA hats . . . I mean, that was not happening in 2016!” Never one to miss an op-


portunity, Starbuck that very day placed a “high, five-figure bet” on the prediction markets that paid off handsomely in November, as Trump tallied what is widely regarded as the greatest political comeback in U.S. history. Analysts say Trump ulti-


mately overcame his enemies in large part thanks to voters who were still in junior high and middle school when he first won the office in 2016. Young millennials and Gen Zers, the first generations to


MARCH 2025 | NEWSMAX 47


FLAG/LPETTET©ISTOCK / SUPPORTER/SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES


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