\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to do a lap and see who\u2019s cute,\u201d whispers Debra Lea,<\/strong> giggling over the music blasting through Trump Tower in New York. The tower has all the chintzy, gilded glamour you\u2019d expect from the former residence of Donald Trump,<\/strong> and tonight, it\u2019s playing cupid to a newer, younger wave of conservatives hoping to find love.<\/p>\n Lea, a 24-year-old conservative influencer and Fox News regular, is here for The Cruel Kids\u2019 Table, part of a series of singles nights called Make America Hot Again, organized by the conservative dating app Date Right Stuff and its chief marketing officer, Raquel Debono.<\/strong> The event invites people to \u201cmeet, mingle, and embrace the chaos.\u201d The app, founded by former Trump aide<\/a> John McEntee,<\/strong> has cohosted several of these mixers in New York and Washington, DC. But for this one, tickets were a steep $95 dollars\u2014evidently a small price to pay for some in a city they believe favors liberal love.<\/p>\n Quickly, Lea is leaving me to make her way through the crowd of skintight chinos, ties, and polished brown shoes, in search of a tequila pineapple. \u201cI see one tall guy,\u201d she says, laughing, before quickly forgoing her mission, eager to take pictures with the girls before the night gets on.<\/p>\n These days, you\u2019d think it would be much more common to see a roomful of young conservatives partying in Florida, Texas, or even Washington, DC<\/a>. But the lower ground floor of Trump Tower on this Thursday evening says a lot about how New York City\u2014where Trump picked up<\/a> nearly 95,000 votes last year while the Democrats lost more than half a million\u2014has changed. Beyond the pearls, glittery high heels, and sultry side glances, there\u2019s a sobering sense that what it looks like to be conservative has shifted remarkably and that such political affiliations finally have a place in the city\u2019s nightlife.<\/p>\n \u201cThese types of social events did not exist when I lived in New York City,\u201d says Arynne Wexler,<\/strong> a 31-year-old influencer who relocated to Florida in 2021. \u201cThings are certainly changing.\u201d<\/p>\n Wexler, who has degrees from Wharton and Penn and used to work at Goldman Sachs, believes she, like many others in the room, is an emblem of the new right-wing youth identity. These young people are outspoken, urban, and emboldened by controversy, referring to their politics as a \u201cmovement\u201d as opposed to staid, capital-C conservatism. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to have the same Nashville country vibe in order to feel like you can belong in our space now,\u201d she adds. \u201cMy cowboy boots are Louboutin, and I think that\u2019s the perfect summary.\u201d<\/p>\n Before events like this became popular in New York after Trump\u2019s reelection, some in the room felt disillusioned by dating and isolated in the city, and they closeted their political beliefs out of fears of retribution. Young conservative hot spots, likely scattered across Murray Hill or the Upper East Side<\/a>, consisted of debate watch parties or a scarce selection of in-group bars, the names of which I was repeatedly denied when asked. \u201cThere is a bar in the city where people know that that\u2019s sort of like a known conservative spot,\u201d Wexler says of one joint she used to frequent. \u201cYou could even put that in the article, but I refuse to tell you where they are.\u201d All in all, living in the city felt like being in a \u201cpolitical desert,\u201d as Wexler puts it, where you might have been playing the field to no avail for a long time.<\/p>\n But the tide turned sharply, Lea says, in the lead-up to the election: \u201cNever in my life had I seen people wearing MAGA hats in New York City until the night of the Madison Square rally.\u201d A lifelong New Yorker, Lea adds that events like Make America Hot Again are something she loves to see because they show people proudly representing their country. \u201cWe can\u2019t let liberals take New York City. I\u2019ve been here my whole life, and it\u2019s only gotten worse with Democratic leadership,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019re young, hot, successful, and Republican; we\u2019ve already won.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n