Nicholas Aparicio is 20 years old. He's the president of the College Republicans chapter at Binghamton University in New York. And less than a year after Donald Trump took office, he's not sure he's even going to vote in next week's midterms.

That's a hell of a thing to admit if you run your campus GOP chapter.

What changed? Pretty much everything he was hoping would get better.

The pitch that worked

Aparicio voted for Trump in 2024 because he believed the guy would fix the economy and open up some real prospects for a young person just starting out. He liked the personality too. Trump felt like an entertainer who somehow still felt like "your guy."

"He's not like us, because he's a billionaire, but he's willing to empathize with us," Aparicio told CBC News. "He's going to fight for us."

That's the pitch a lot of young men bought into last year. A billionaire who talks like he's on your side. Who's rich enough to not need anything from you, but somehow makes you feel like he's in your corner anyway. It's a powerful story, and it worked.

The reality a year later

Here's the thing about stories, though — eventually reality shows up and checks the receipts.

Aparicio says buying a home, affording gas, even imagining starting a family all feel further out of reach now, not closer. "The idea of starting a family feels very out of reach these days," he said.

His verdict is blunt: "I feel like we got duped."

That's not a guy quietly grumbling. That's the president of a college Republican chapter telling a national news outlet he might sit out an election. When your own organizers start checking out, something's shifted underneath the whole movement.

Why this matters beyond one guy in Binghamton

I've spent years now talking to people from all walks of life, all ages, all over the world. One thing I've noticed: the people who show up loudest for a cause early on are usually the ones who notice first when the promises don't land. They were paying the closest attention. They're the canaries.

Young men and right-leaning podcasters were two of the groups that helped put Trump back in the White House in 2024. Both groups built real energy around him — online, on campuses, in casual conversations about the economy and the future. And now both groups, according to this reporting, are pulling back.

That's worth sitting with for a second. Not because of who's in office, but because of what it says about how trust gets built and how fast it can erode when the economic ground doesn't shift the way people were told it would.

I'm almost 70. I've watched a few of these cycles come and go. The one thing that never changes is this: people vote with their hopes, and then they live with the results. When the results don't match the hopes, people notice. Doesn't matter if you're 20 or 60.

What this means for you

Maybe you voted for Trump. Maybe you didn't. That's not really the point here.

The point is this: pay attention to what the people closest to a cause are saying once the cameras move on. Aparicio isn't some outside critic. He's an insider who ran a campus Republican chapter and still ended up saying "we got duped."

That kind of honesty is rare in politics right now. Most people double down out of loyalty or embarrassment. He didn't.

So here's the question worth asking yourself, whatever side of this you land on: when was the last time you checked whether your own expectations about something — a leader, a job, a plan — actually matched what showed up?

Aparicio did that math. And he's deciding whether to even show up to vote next week because of it.

What would you decide?

Source: CBC

Related reading from us: A UC Davis Podcast Just Beat CNN and Amy Poehler at Their Own Game