The Trump campaign is deploying its full cast of ladies—Mother Pence, the wife of one Trump son, the girlfriend of another, and a couple of appropriately glossy campaign aides—to search for “hidden” women voters. Polls show Donald Trump struggling with women voters, who helped propel the blue wave of 2018, but the Trump campaign is convinced (or claims to be) that it can find enough women to turn the tide.
At Women for Trump events, supporters get pep talks from the women of Team Trump, like daughter-in-law Lara Trump. “We know it’s not easy sometimes to be a Trump supporter,” she told a crowd in Minneapolis. “We appreciate you so much. You stand up for what you believe in.” Campaign adviser Katrina Pierson told a Michigan crowd that “I applaud you all for having the courage to stand up for what you believe in.”
The New York Times interviewed one such “hidden” voter, who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 but is now a Trump supporter. It was … instructive. Jamie Starkweather, 42, stopped working after marrying a conservative man whose trucking business is doing well. She thinks liberals talk about race too much and that Trump’s black supporters like Candace Owens show he’s not racist. “If he’s so racist, and if he’s such a bad man, then why are these people supporting him?” Also she’s fine with Trump’s sexual assault habits because “He was a little bit of a playboy. Everybody knows that.”
Spoken like a seasoned Trump supporter. The question here is how many women have discovered such feelings in Trump’s favor since the 2016 election. The 2018 election suggested the movement has been mostly in the opposite direction. And now, in Minnesota, a state the Trump campaign hopes to flip in 2020, “a Star Tribune Minnesota Poll released last week showed voters split on impeachment, and women overwhelmingly more likely to say that Mr. Trump has abused his power.”
Look, 2016 showed us never to let down our guard. Trump will have gigantic piles of money, Facebook, and Russia on his side. But what we have to fear when it comes to Trump winning over white women who are okay with racism and sexual assault is not Lara Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle giving them pep talks. It is Facebook allowing millions of dollars of fraudulent campaign ads and Russians doing gawd knows what to divide and conquer.