America’s battle with the coronavirus pandemic is a watershed moment in the history of this country and a turning point in this historic presidency. It’s also uncharted territory for political campaigns.
President Trump has now assumed the role of a wartime chief executive against an invisible enemy while supporting millions of Americans who are facing health threats and economic hardship as a result of this pandemic. That’s good; the nation needs his steady, confident leadership. While we at the Trump Campaign realize that our fight must continue, we know that the president’s first duty is to protect the health of all Americans and preserve our economy’s ability to bounce back after this unforeseen, foreign-born crisis is over.
The American people, including many Democrats, understand this reality as well. The most recent Gallup poll, taken March 13-22, shows that 60% of Americans approve of the president’s handling of the coronavirus crisis. He has exceeded the country’s expectations, appearing daily to update the nation on new developments alongside his team of world-class experts, all of whom join him in giving detailed and forthright answers to every question asked. Meanwhile, his administration is working closely and cooperatively with other elements of the federal government, as well as state and local governments, and enlisting the aid of patriotic business leaders to coordinate the nation’s full might behind a unified effort to bring this disease under control.
Team Trump is doing our part while the president does his. We closed our campaign offices in Arlington, Va., and elsewhere. Our staffers have been working remotely to help arrest the spread. Fully embracing these new limitations -- an unprecedented circumstance in a presidential election year -- we have rolled out a slate of new campaign tools and initiatives to carry the campaign through this unexpected moment in American history.
Our National Day of Action and National Week of Training for the 2 million volunteers who will take us through the race to November had long been scheduled for March 2020. Instead of cancelling these plans, we chose to exploit our hard-won advantage in digital and virtual campaigning and collaborated with the Republican National Committee to pivot to a virtual national campaign. During this time, we trained thousands of new volunteers and made 3.2 million phone calls (including almost 1.5 million calls in one day). We’ve made nearly 10 million calls since we switched to a virtual campaign on March 13. These numbers are unheard of this early in an election year.
Our training sessions, like our town hall events with Republican elected officials and campaign surrogates, will be conducted virtually for the foreseeable future. While Americans do their part to fight the pandemic by practicing social distancing, they will have the opportunity to participate in our town halls featuring nationally known figures -- and, if they so choose, supporters can also sign up to receive the training they’ll need to register voters and turn out the vote for Donald Trump this fall.
More than half a million die-hard Trump supporters have already signed on to help Keep America Great. With tens of millions more voters who have the same faith in the president -- and the same determination to keep the unsteady, unsure hand of Joe Biden out of the White House -- now was the perfect time to launch our “Army for Trump” initiative.
We’re not slowing down. Our first Women for Trump event was a huge success, drawing more than a million viewers across all platforms. That was no fluke, because we replicated that success a few days later with our Latinos for Trump Online event. We’re now offering new programming every night of the week, and every single broadcast has attracted over a million unique viewers.
If you had told me three months ago that I would have to plan a campaign strategy without Trump springtime rallies for the good of the country, I wouldn’t have believed you. Nevertheless, that’s where we are. But as the president leads the fight against the coronavirus, his leadership is making the job of selling his presidency to the public even easier than it was before.
If you find yourself looking for a constructive activity while staying home and social distancing, I urge you to check out our Army for Trump site or sign in to one of our virtual events that are being streamed live daily. See for yourself how we’ve reshaped the world of political campaigning and how President Trump is still headed to victory in November.
