"Red-Pilled Romance: A Valentine's Day Party with a MAGA Twist | Vanity Fair"
It was Friday the 13th, but that hardly seemed to deter the young Republicans trying their luck at finding love in the capital. The 'MAGA Is In The Air' event, at a club in downtown DC known for its burlesque acts and bottle service, promised young conservatives the opportunity to pair with others who share similar values and opinions. In a city that is overwhelmingly liberal and where dating is notoriously difficult, this drew 400 people ready to mix, mingle, and cut loose.
Staffers with Donald Trump’s administration, Hill minions, and other conservative politicos stuffed into Sax, a two-story cabaret and club in downtown DC. They were dressed to impress: men in suits, women floor-length gowns, many wearing the off-brand MAGA hats available on almost every table (alongside matchboxes adorned with the president’s face). Cliques sipped free champagne or well drinks, the latter available for purchase at the first-floor bar (additional “service charge” automatically included). Projected on the wall above the bar: “MAGA IS IN THE AIR.”
About an hour in host CJ Pearson appeared, heading straight to the bar’s upper floor with his entourage. Clad in a velvet red jacket and black pants, the 23-year-old conservative influencer and former co-chair of the Republican National Committee’s Youth Advisory Council ascended to a U-shaped balcony with an open bar, firmly cordoned off from the masses below.
The area is for CJ’s “close friends,” an assistant of his tells me, though there are well over 100 people up there. Bottle service starts moments after he arrives and continues throughout the night, with female bartenders in revealing dark red leotards serving bottles of Grey Goose and Clase Azul. The only food that appeared was McDonalds, which I was told had nothing to do with it being the president’s favorite grub.
Soon after Pearson’s arrival, assistants went through the crowd handing out wristbands—green for the singles, red for those unavailable—hoping to catalyze the matchmaking. “The only way to beat the bad guys is to out-populate them!” Pearson posted on X when announcing the party.
Eventually, both floors were packed. Couples sporting red wristbands canoodled in the corner, as groups of guys wearing green swarmed the bar. Green pairs chatted, danced, sipped their drinks, and as the night went on, some ended up making out in seats on the sidelines. There was no Bad Bunny, but there was no Kid Rock, either. The vibes resembled those of a year ago, when young conservatives were celebrating Trump’s return to the capital and their own triumph over an un-fun, “woke” left.
The entertainment included dancers in masks or dangling from aerial silks. But for people in a “safe space,” as a few put it to me, many were extremely averse to chatting, even off the record. One seemed almost paranoid when I went to shake his hand, and some refused to give me more than their first name.
The crowd wasn’t entirely twenty-somethings. South Carolina Congressman William Timmons (age 41, no wristband) was moving around and in no mood to chat, though he said he was there in part because his press secretary was a good friend of Pearson’s. White House staff secretary Will Scharf (39, green), best known for presenting the president with his executive orders, was chatting off to the side. Cara Castronuova (46, green), the pro-Trump reporter for pillow salesman/election conspiracist Mike Lindell’s news network, floated around.
One House staffer said she was just out to have fun with her friends. Working on the hill, she said, was kind of like being on campus. Another said he was out “with his boys.”
When I spoke with Pearson, he was chatting with a friend in the corner. He’s affable and media-trained, was not wearing a wristband, and was cagey about his relationship status. (He later told me he has no trouble dating in liberal DC. “Even liberal women want to be with a conservative man who won’t Venmo request them for a cup of coffee or make them split the bill,” he said.) And this bash is not his first rodeo. A year ago, he hosted a party celebrating Trump’s re-coronation that was chronicled (among others) in New York magazine, in a cover story headlined “The Cruel Kids Table.” Pearson threatened to sue the magazine after the story ran, alleging that it cropped out the black party attendees from photos. Since then, he’s embraced the moniker.
“It was a pejorative that was assigned to us that we took over,” Pearson said. He calls his partying cohort of young conservatives a “movement,” of which he is the founder. It is one that he thinks will outlive the Trump era, and one that comes with swag; “CRUEL KIDS XOXO” was stitched into many of the free baseball caps.
To Pearson, young conservatives are still on the rise; polls that show Trump has squandered the record support he built among young Americans in 2024 be damned. He insists that Gen-Z is still looking for something new that speaks to them, and that the left has failed to provide.
“What we’re focused on is making Gen-Z cool again…Big Balls!” Pearson interrupted himself to greet the former DOGE staffer with the profane nickname, whose assault last summer spurred the president to deploy the National Guard to DC. After the pair hugged, Pearson told the 21-year-old software engineer (birth name: Edward Coristine) to stay close, but he scrammed once he heard the word “interview.” (When I ran into him later and asked if he had a couple minutes to chat about what he’s up to post-DOGE, he barked “No!” and scurried away.)
Pearson attended the University of Alabama for a time, and calls himself the “social chair of MAGA.” He stresses that he does not want his parties to resemble those thrown during the Republican National Convention.
“For a long time, people would roll up to these events and they’d be so cheugy and cringe,” Pearson said. “It’d be 70 percent men and 30 percent women. Look around, what do you see? That’s from my Alabama education. If you’re going to have a good time, you need a good proportion.”
Pearson rose to prominence before he could drive a car by posting YouTube videos criticizing Barack Obama and the Democratic Party. He’s now a Fox News regular and has mused about one day running for the highest office in the land. But tonight, he’s hesitant to talk politics. He dodged when asked if there’s a Trump successor he likes the most and whether the president himself may be undermining his mission with policies that hurt younger Americans. But he acknowledged that in this era of politics, “Gen Z has to fight for Gen Z.”
“We are going to inherit the consequences of the current era of governance today,” Pearson said. “So if we’re not fighting, then we will be left behind.”
Does he think the misogyny and racism espoused by the likes of Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate risks the movement he is trying to grow?
“They’re doing what they’re doing, and I don’t really pay much attention to it,” Pearson said. He added: “We are on the precipice of an entire cultural revolution. And we are killing it.”
The club was visibly sweaty when the night’s headliner, Waka Flocka Flame, took the stage. People rose to the rafters in a bid to get a better view of the 'O Let's Do It' singer, who endorsed Donald Trump in the last presidential election. “MOVE!” one woman (green) shouted at me when I inadvertently bumped into the photo she was taking.
Flocka himself was much more relaxed. It’s not his first time performing at a CJ Pearson-hosted event, but he said the crowd’s conservative bent had little to do with his return. “It’s the love,” he told me. “It’s organic. It’s a real free space.”
How does he politically identify?
“With the people,” Flocka said. Spoken like a future politician.
A couple attendees felt the same. “I think people should be more warming to each other and not so mean,” said Cierra Garcia (red), a 26-year-old visiting from Texas, about her fellow second-floor partiers. “Everyone up here has some fuckin’ ego.”
Garcia, she said, was all about love and is not overtly political. “Everyone argues, everyone bitches, and I just wanna have a good time!”
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