On Tuesday night, I stood behind the MassGOP delegation to the Republican National Convention on the convention hall floor. Donald Trump wasn’t speaking that night, but even as he entered the arena to take his seat, women all around me leaped onto their chairs and started dancing, shouting, and waving Trump signs. Their devotion extended to their outfits, strictly red, white, and blue. Some wore Trump-branded “Not made in China” buttons, others sported bedazzled “Trump Girl” hats, and one wore a surprisingly elegant “Don’t Tread on Me”-themed ball gown.
Trump doesn’t even have to be in the room to get them on their feet. On Wednesday, as a Trump montage to the song “YMCA” played on the jumbotron, women got up on chairs laughing and did the former president’s signature dance move, pumping their arms back and forth.
All this for a guy who last year was found liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll in 1996, and, just a month before his 2016 victory, was caught on a leaked 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape talking about grabbing women by their privates. The candidate who gained just 39 percent of women’s votes in 2016, 44 percent in 2020, and currently is trailing President Biden with women by 7 points in the latest Times/Siena College poll.
Yet the women who are with Trump are really with him. A recent poll by KFF, a health policy research nonprofit, surveyed women nationally and in two battleground states, Arizona and Michigan, revealing that women Republican voters are more motivated (53 percent) to go to the polls than women who support Biden (44 percent). And of the women voters in 2020, 83 percent are sticking with Biden while 92 percent are sticking with Trump. The poll came out a week before Biden’s disastrous debate performance.
Many Democrats ask how a woman could support Trump. But when I stopped to ask women delegates why, it became clear that they supported Trump not while holding their noses but enthusiastically because they believe women have been sold a lie. They believe they have seen the light: Not only do they think Trump is a good person, they think he’s the best person to be president in terms of strength and character.
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That doesn’t mean everyone was on board right away. Brooke Weiss, a member of the Moms for Liberty chapter in North Carolina, voted for Trump in 2016. As a sexual assault survivor, she resented the way Hillary Clinton and her husband treated Monica Lewinsky. Weiss grudgingly voted for Trump, despite his “TV locker room talk.”
Retired Washington delegate Donna Russell, 71, preferred Ted Cruz in the 2016 primary because she regarded him as a better Christian. “I thought Trump was a bullying third-grader, with all the name-calling and everything he would do on the debate stage.” When Cruz dropped out of the race, she changed her tune. “I paid more attention to him and his campaign and what his values were. And I think he’s a wonderful person.”
Women often flipped the question on me and asked if Trump was so bad, why were their lives improving so much under his leadership? Weiss, who’s Jewish, said Trump impressed her by keeping his promises, especially when it came to Israel. “He actually moved the capital to Jerusalem. The Abraham Accords were a miracle.”
Russell talked about a stronger economy under Trump, lamenting that her kids can no longer afford to buy homes. “Do you like $2 for a gallon of gas or $4.50 for a gallon of gas?” she asked. “Vote for the guy that’s gonna bring food prices down and keep you able to work one job and take care of your kids and your family.”
Weiss calls accusations of Trump’s sexism an “outright lie.” “I think the man has a tremendous respect especially for powerful women.” Indeed, most of the women I spoke to pointed out the women that have been in Trump’s inner political circle, including former UN ambassador Nikki Haley; former press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who is now governor of Arkansas; and former counselor Kellyanne Conway. May Mailman, Trump’s former legal adviser, said that he “actually listens to women’s opinions more than men’s.”
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Many pointed to Trump’s family as evidence of his character. “I don’t know how you can look at the Trump family and not see that that is a strong-bonded family that should be held up as an example to other families,” said Carolyn Hall, 54, a project manager from Washington. On Wednesday night, Donald Trump Jr. brought out his daughter, Kai, who delivered a speech about her grandfather. “To me, he’s just a normal grandpa. He gives us candy and soda when our parents aren’t looking,” she told a swooning crowd.
The family values extend to his vice president pick, JD Vance, who during his Wednesday speech gestured to the president’s box, where his mother was sitting in tears, and said, “I’m proud to say that tonight my mom is here, 10 years clean and sober.” The crowd chanted “JD’s mom! JD’s mom!” Women clutched their hearts.
Black women at the RNC told me that women in their community have been sold a double lie about Trump’s sexism and racism. Kansas native Jai Maze, 43, said Black women are being duped because “of what the media says. … It’s all a bunch of malarkey.” She likes Trump because of his business mentality but also because he promotes “Judeo-Christian values.”
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Trump’s women supporters assert that they don’t ignore his past but are being pragmatic. “If I was voting for someone to be my priest, then maybe that would be relevant. But I’m voting for someone to be my president,” Mailman told me. Women even find humanity in his foibles. “He who is without sin, cast the first stone!” Maze said.
It doesn’t hurt that many of these women hold culturally conservative values that make them see the Democratic Party as anti-woman. Riley Gaines, a contributor to the sports media website OutKick and host of the Gaines for Girls podcast, supports Trump because “there is only one party that advocates and supports women-only spaces.” Gaines, 24, became a conservative icon after tying with Lia Thomas, a transgender woman swimmer from UPenn, for fifth place in the NCAA 200-yard freestyle championship. Thomas, not Gaines, was handed the fifth-place trophy. Gaines spoke of “the extreme discomfort we felt in the locker room when we had to turn around and see a 6-foot-4 man fully undressed, fully intact.”
And for these women there’s no greater proof of Trump’s selflessness than the challenges he continues to face. “Look at what he’s willing to sacrifice to be in office,” Hall said. “Would you give up your career and run for office and be put through the vitriol that this man’s put through?”
They believe that they are in on the truth about Trump. And the more mud flung against him, the happier they are to stand — and dance — with him.
Carine Hajjar is a Globe Opinion writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
