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| Trumpettes and their Dear Leader |
President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign will dispatch more than a dozen female surrogates on Thursday to some of the most important 2020 battleground states in its first major push to mobilize suburban women — a critical voting bloc that revolted against Republican candidates as recently as the midterm elections last fall.Sure Kayleigh. That's going to work.
Campaign officials have billed the cross-country events as both a celebration of women’s suffrage — Sunday marks the 99th anniversary of the adoption of the 19th Amendment, granting women the right to vote — and a coordinated effort to train pro-Trump women to become effective volunteers in their communities. As of Tuesday, a campaign official involved with the planning said about 2,000 attendees were expected across the gatherings in 13 states.
“From coast-to-coast we will mobilize and organize to reelect President Trump and give him another four years in the White House,” Katrina Pierson, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, said in a statement.
It’s the first test for the Trump campaign’s women’s coalition — a mash-up of the president’s most loyal female supporters, ranging in background from pageant queens and YouTube personalities to Christian podcasters and political wives — and it comes as the Trump administration grapples with warnings of a possible recession that could make the coalition’s message of women’s economic empowerment a tougher sell next November. Trump and his allies have repeatedly pointed to the women’s unemployment rate, which has hovered between 3.5 and 4 percent since last summer, and the inclusion of a paid family leave plan in the latest White House budget as evidence that American women have benefited from his policies.
“I’m just going to be very direct with people: It’s a complete scam, a hoax, that we’re going into recession,” said Tana Goertz, an Iowa campaign staffer and former “Apprentice” contestant. Goertz will host around 50 women outside Des Moines on Thursday as part of the Trump campaign’s “Evening to Empower.”
Trump campaign spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany, who will host an event in the Atlanta suburbs, added: “The media narrative is always designed to be negative toward the president. There is simply no denying that the economic fundamentals of this economy are strong.”
The latest Quinnipiac poll doesn’t break out suburban women, but it finds that only 34 percent of women overall approve of the job Trump is doing, compared with 61 percent who disapprove; among white women, only 40 percent approve while 56 percent disapprove.
A new NBC News poll is more precise on this point. The good folks at NBC sent me these numbers: Among suburban women, Trump’s rating is 36 percent approve to 61 percent disapprove. And suburban women prefer a generic Democratic candidate to Trump by 61 percent to 32 percent.
Meanwhile, in the new Politico/Morning Consult poll, Trump’s approval among women is 39 percent, while 58 percent disapprove, 46 percent strongly. And among suburbanites, Trump’s approval is 43 percent, while 56 percent disapprove, 43 percent strongly. Put those together, and you probably have really bad numbers among suburban women — with a lot disapproving strongly.
The gap betwn non-col white men & women over Trump is widening. In new @CNN poll, Trump's approval on economy is 20 pts higher w/the men (70%) than the women (50%). His overall job approval is 29 pts higher w/non-col white men (67%) than women-just 38%. That's not enough for him. https://t.co/49Pa2i6oed
— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) August 22, 2019