“We ask for the wisdom of God to be upon our President, upon our Vice-President, upon every person in the campaign—that you would supernaturally download strategies from Heaven, that you would give us the mind of Christ according to Philippians, Chapter Two, Verse Five.” So went the opening prayer from Paula White, Donald Trump’s personal pastor, at the launch event of the Trump reëlection campaign’s Women for Trump group, which was held on Tuesday, in a basement ballroom at the Valley Forge Casino Resort, in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. Hundreds of women, mostly white, mostly older, packed the room. It was 10:30 A.M., and everyone had her Trump gear on: red hats; red shirts; red, white, and blue capes. The stage was set with a podium and five white leather chairs. The backdrop was a wall of pink and red roses. “So as believers,” White continued, “we have the right to stand on your word, knowing that Isaiah, Chapter Fifty-five, Verse Eleven, says the word shall not return void.”
Outside the casino, Trump’s standing among women was abysmal. In April, Pew found that only thirty-two per cent of women support the job that Trump is doing as President. On Tuesday, as the Women for Trump event was taking place, Trump was busy attacking Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and three other Democratic congresswomen of color. Just a few weeks earlier, a writer, E. Jean Carroll, had published an article accusing Trump of raping her. (Trump denied the allegations.) Inside the casino, though, it was a different story. When the recent dispute between Nancy Pelosi and Ocasio-Cortez was described by one speaker as a “cat fight,” for instance, everyone in the audience laughed. Onstage, Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, declared, “Look at all these beautiful, strong, intelligent women for Trump!” She invited Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, to join her. “It is my great honor to bring my partner in crime”—she checked her idiom—“actually, my partner in good-doing, to the stage,” she said. Parscale—tall, bearded, wearing a suit—emerged from backstage and held up his phone to document the room. “Now, that’s a crowd of women,” he said.
Out came Kimberly Guilfoyle, the former Fox News host who is now a Trump campaign adviser and the girlfriend of Donald Trump, Jr. The Trump 2020 campaign will be as much a family affair as in 2016. “The mainstream media, right?” Guilfoyle said. “They say we don’t exist.” This was the over-all message of the event: don’t believe what you hear; you are not as alone as you think you are. “I was in the CNN green room on a very special day I like to remember, November 8th, 2016,” Kayleigh McEnany, the campaign’s press secretary, told the crowd. “I thought I was alone, sitting there, twiddling my thumbs, thinking that Donald J. Trump is now President Donald J. Trump. And as I’m sitting there I see this man in the corner of my eye, at the door. He looks both ways, scurries in, and he comes and whispers to me and he says, ‘Hey, I can’t tell anyone in this building, but I voted for President Donald Trump.’ ” This was not a story of a silent majority but a crypto one. “Happens everywhere I go,” McEnany said.
The headliner on Tuesday was Lara Trump, a Trump campaign adviser and the wife of Eric Trump. Eight months pregnant, she delivered a bright, confident speech, tinged with cheery grievances. “They make it hard, right? They don’t make it easy for us to be Trump supporters. They try to make you feel bad about it,” she said, drawing nods in the crowd. “But keep this in mind. You remember the feeling on November 8th? Remember everybody crying, over at the Javits Center? The media, like some people, was on TV, literally crying announcing Donald Trump was President? Think about how much more their heads are going to explode in 2020.” The crowd roared in appreciation, and Trump added, over the din, smiling, “If you need something to keep you going.”
A panel discussion followed. Lara Trump, Parscale, and McEnany were joined by two more Trump advisers, Mercedes Schlapp and Katrina Pierson. They sat down in the white chairs. Women for Trump is one of several “coalition” groups that the Trump campaign, flush with money, plans to pour millions of dollars into during the next year and a half. Parscale offered some thoughts on campaign strategy and philosophy. “A lot of people use very traditional polling to do a lot of things,” he said. ”We don’t really believe in that science.” The Trump campaign is looking at different metrics than the polls—many of which show Trump trailing his would-be challengers. Parscale spoke of the importance of event turnout, campaign donations, and voter data. He was bullish when he announced that nearly a million people had given money to Trump’s campaign in the last quarter, and that the percentage of donations from women was way up from the last campaign. “It’s going to take about two million volunteers across this country to really help the President get reëlected,” Parscale said.
This seemed to be the point of the event. It is impossible to imagine that Trump will win women as a demographic in 2020. Over all, women preferred Hillary Clinton to Trump by twelve points in 2016. But that margin can obscure a racial divide: white women preferred Trump to Clinton by two points. The President needed the women in the room—many of whom were retirees and empty-nesters, suburban Pennsylvanians with time and energy to contribute—out in the streets, doing work. “It’s people like you in the crowd that make a difference,” Parscale said.
Lara Trump was asked what people should tell others in their efforts to recruit support for the President. She said to ask people if they were doing better now than they were a few years ago. “Now, you don’t have to agree with everything that Donald Trump tweets,” she said. “You don’t have to agree with the way that he delivers every single message. But you sure as heck are going to like the fact that you have a bit of a better life now, thanks to this President.” Trump had another crypto-majority story to share with the crowd, from a workout class she took that morning. “This girl came up to me as I was filling my water bottle, and she was, like, ‘I have to show you the background on my phone.’ It’s the picture of the President hugging the flag,” she said. “I’ll be standing at a crosswalk. And people are like”—she lowered her voice to a pinched whisper—“ ‘Keep up the fight.’ In Manhattan. In New York City.” Schlapp urged people to “get those millennials. Talk to them.” Pierson, who is black, was asked about reaching out to minorities. “Share with us what we should tell our neighbors and our friends who are black Americans,” McEnany said.
“When you knock on their door,” Pierson said, “just say, ‘Are you tired of winning yet?’ ”
