The Trump campaign held a training session for campaign volunteers in Pennsylvania that only had two people sign up, and they both canceled.
Olivia Nuzzi wrote in New York Magazine:
In a blue room in the back, beneath an American flag with the words MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN printed in block letters inside the white stripes, a woman sat alone at the end of a conference table. She wasn’t participating in the volunteer training. She was the volunteer training. There just weren’t any volunteers.
When she first thought I might be one, she was friendly. She offered me coffee and asked me to sit down. Two people had signed up for the Trump Leadership Initiative training, she said, but each of them had canceled, one citing an ear infection and the other citing allergies.
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Nuzzi’s article contains several of these stories. Campaign training events in Harrisburg, Lancaster, and Pittsburgh all with no one showing up, and in the case of Pittsburgh, no one appeared to know that an event was scheduled.
None of this is a surprise. Trump didn’t win the 2016 election due to a superior campaign organization, and the idea that one of the most unorganized presidential campaigns in history could turn it all around and become an unstoppable grassroots machine seems like a fantasy.
Trump has his core base of support, and they will show up for him, but Donald Trump may not be able to reach the fringe Trump voters that Democrats have been in contact with since 2018. Trump has a massive problem in Pennsylvania, and evidence is piling up to suggest that things are getting worse for the top of the Republican ballot in the Keystone State.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
