remembered a mock debate where their teacher made students stand on one side of the classroom or another to signal their allegiance. “The majority of the class were on the liberal side, but Tom, no matter what, always stood his ground on the conservative side,” Smith said. “That’s still the picture I have of him. Just standing alone on one side while the rest of the class was on the other.”
Gonna do some armchair psychoanalyzing because that's what everyone is going to be doing over the next couple days. He probably was a old fashioned Republican conservative, small government, guns rights etc. who was a loner. Whenever he tried to speak to his beliefs his classmates would always just respond with some dumb things trump said and he'd get frustrated and point to him as the reason no one took him seriously.