Outside a Trump rally in Pennsylvania, young people in MAGA hats say they’re scared for their future

It was a college town, so the crowd was bound to be younger than usual. But the sheer amount of fresh-faced college and high school-age youths at Donald Trump’s rally in Indiana, Pennsylvania on Monday evening was something to behold.

They lined up for hours in MAGA hats of all colors; many of them wore T-shirts with Trump’s most famous image on the front — his fist in the air and the American flag billowing in the background in the seconds after the first attempt on his life a few weeks ago.

What could bring out so many young people to see a former president, I asked, as I waited in a line that extended to the parking lot?

“The economy,” said Brodie Lyons, a 22-year-old law student as he waited to enter the arena at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

“Look how it was four years ago — pretty much everything has doubled [in price],” he added.

Those concerns were shared by other fellow students who tried and failed to get into the packed arena alongside me. Indeed, so many people were keen to see Trump speak on Monday night that hundreds were turned away.

“I’m scared for my future. I want my future economy to thrive,” said Kelsey Moyer, a 20-year-old student at Indiana University. “Both presidents have had a four-year span and you can see the difference in the country.”

Young people have traditionally been a reliable voting bloc for the Democrats. And polls show Harris has a strong lead among young people across the country generally — she’s leading by 31 points among likely voters between 18 and 35, according to one new poll by the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School, for example.

But Trump has been making inroads into this demographic — with young men in particular. The same poll found that while