February 23, 2016. It was the night of the Nevada Republican caucuses and my first time appearing on one of those infamous CNN election night panels as the lone conservative Trump supporter stacked against seven anti-Trump panelists. You know the ones I’m talking about. Anderson Cooper in front of a glistening red, white, and blue set between two glass tables with four news personalities on either side of him. Well, I was one of those panelists, sitting just to the left of Anderson. I was that blond girl passionately advocating for then candidate Donald Trump, proudly wearing my gold cross and often seen sparring with the likes of Van Jones through the primaries, the debates, the conventions, and ultimately election night—a night no one will ever forget.
“I think Donald Trump is, at this point, the inevitable nominee,” I said to my colleagues that night of the Nevada caucuses, several months before Trump would go on to clinch the Republican nomination. “He’s restored hope in the American people.” My liberal co-panelists at CNN were less than enthused by my optimistic Trump projections, but—much to their dismay—they would realize on November 8, 2016, that Donald Trump was indeed on an unstoppable path to the White House. As it turned out, conservative icons such as Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, and Mark Levin had a far better read on the American people than the Hollywood and media elite.
During my path through the heights of academia—Harvard, Georgetown, and Oxford—I had supplemented my curriculum with the work of conservative thought leaders like these. They often provided common sense that was woefully lacking on my liberal campuses, and their well-formed opinions equipped me to battle for President Trump in the bowels of the mainstream media.
As a young girl, I grew up listening to Rush Limbaugh in my dad’s truck—a nostalgic memory that I was honored to share with Rush in person at the 2017 Media Research Center Gala. And as a teenage college student, I served as an intern for Fox News’s Hannity & Colmes, where I learned from Sean Hannity, a valiant, bold, thoughtful conservative leader and one of the few television hosts with the foresight to see Donald Trump’s victory on the horizon. Sean’s occasional notes of encouragement throughout the 2016 election would rejuvenate my embattled spirit as I fought back against false and misleading stories aimed at taking down Donald Trump. His show, Hannity, now serves as a haven of truth for conservatives everywhere.
My internship with Hannity & Colmes eventually turned into a job at Fox News as a producer with The Mike Huckabee Show. Governor Mike Huckabee, a man of unparalleled integrity and Christian faith, opened my young eyes to the many exasperating aspects of Washington that Donald Trump would go on to describe as “the swamp”—the petty political games, the broken promises, the corruption, and betrayal. I took notice of Governor Huckabee’s earnest demeanor and love for everyday Americans—attributes found rarely in the political class.
My work at Fox News with these two great conservatives undoubtedly prepared me for my role as a rare Trump supporter at CNN, but I would be remiss if I did not mention my liberal mentor and friend whom I miss deeply—the late Alan Colmes.
When I was just a no-name college student, Alan took the time to recommend me for an internship. It didn’t matter that I was conservative or a millennial; Alan wanted to help me because helping was in his DNA. For the next ten years of my career and last ten years of Alan’s life, he would periodically reach out to check in or provide words of support. “You maintained your composure and dignity, and that is key,” he wrote to me after a particularly hostile CNN segment.
All throughout the election, conservatives—and even some liberals—would stop me and ask “How do you keep your cool on those outnumbered panels?” Well, the wise words of a man lost too soon are the answer. “[Y]ou don’t fight fire with fire, you fight it with water,” Alan shared with me. Faced with attacks that got far too personal, I would continually remind myself of those words. They gave me serenity. Another Alan truism always seemed to come in handy: “Don’t pay attention to any critics.”
My very public role at CNN as Trump supporter made me a target throughout 2016—a target for the left, for Saturday Night Live, and for Twitter. Just like any TV commentator, I received all kinds of hateful messages and calls. I laughed most of them off, but one always got to me. It’s one I received just one day before that first CNN election night panel: “I believe you may want to tuck your cross in when showing support for someone who goes against so many things that the Bible teaches.”
I found the sarcastic suggestion to be entirely wrongheaded. None of us are perfect—not me, no politician, and certainly not the judgmental author of that criticism. None of us are deserving of wearing a cross. And yet, therein lies the beauty of that symbol around my neck: the perfect God nailed to the cross so that humanity might have a chance at a salvation that we do not deserve.
Van Jones, my far left colleague at CNN, had no idea about that message I received one day before the Nevada election night panel. In fact, until that evening, Van and I had never even met. When I arrived at CNN’s DC bureau, I was escorted upstairs to the greenroom. As I rounded the corner in anxious anticipation, I saw a room packed with political pundits. Before I could even introduce myself, I heard a voice confidently ring out from the crowd, “I love your cross.” It was Van Jones, a man whom at the time I knew as Obama’s radical left-wing green czar but whom I would come to know as a devout Christian and kind-spirited colleague.
I felt it was important to share the life of Alan Colmes and the words of Van Jones with you, especially now. It’s no secret we live in highly partisan times, but we are more alike than we think. Left or right. Conservative or liberal. Lively dialogue and dissenting thought animate the American spirit, but love of country and countryman defines the American heart.
If you picked up this book because you recognized my name or my picture, you likely know about my passionate advocacy for Donald Trump, a man who I believe is draining the Washington swamp and changing it for the better. You might love my viewpoint or maybe you hate it. Either way, I think it’s important that we come to know one another as people, not just as political partisans. Though some may sum me up as “that girl on TV,” I’m really just a small-town girl from the world’s strawberry capital.
Yes, I’ve spent the past decade of my life walking the halls of some of the world’s most elite institutions: the twisting stairwells of Oxford University’s Gothic spires, the old brick roads of Georgetown University and Harvard Law School, the checkered floors of the Old Executive Office Building (where the offices of most of the White House staff are located), and the bustling, illuminating sets of New York City newsrooms. But these venerable institutions always felt distant from the place I call home.
For the first sixteen years of my life, I grew up in a small town called Plant City, in the heart of Florida. The quaint agricultural town was truly idyllic, iconic small-town America, where you treated your neighbors as friends, where the weekend revolved around Little League games at the ballpark, and where every Sunday you occupied the pews of the local church. With a dad who built a roofing company from the ground up and a mom who was a teacher turned stay-at-home mom, I learned the values of faith, family, and a good day’s work.
As I left the comfort of my tiny all-girls Catholic school and the pews of my Southern Baptist church for the soaring confines of academia, it became clear that there was not just a misunderstanding of the worldview of small-town America but an outright disdain for it. My neighbors were the first responders, teachers, and local business leaders. They were not “deplorable” or “irredeemable”; rather, they were the forgotten men and women who Donald Trump vowed would be “forgotten no longer.”
Just after Donald Trump was inaugurated as the forty-fifth president of the United States, I endeavored to tell the stories of the faceless Trump voters. There are many books that profile the president, but this would profile the people. I would of course set out to interview many in the Trump world: Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Lara Trump, Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and several others in the campaign and administration. Their stories are inseparable from the story of the 2016 election and are included in this book. But there is a story beyond the public faces we all know. It is the untold story of the nearly 63 million Americans who sent Trump to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Me and a spontaneous group of Trump voters at a University of Florida football game. Courtesy of Author’s Collection
As I traveled the country in search of the unknown Trump voter, what I found was anger toward the governing elite that defied party lines. Millions of Americans had been left behind by a government purporting to represent them. These people are the backbone of American society, and these are their stories—the stories of the men and women who have been trampled beneath the polished shoes of the elite. They are good, hardworking citizens who just wanted a shot at the American Dream. Instead, they found themselves up against a rigged system.
In the beginning, I aimed to capture the anger that motivated a distrustful, change-oriented electorate, but instead, what I encountered were tears—the tears of a mother who lost her only son and husband in a heinous act of terrorism; the tears of a wife who lost her other half to incompetent medical care; the tears of a family who lost their brave loved one in a valiant act of heroism; and so many others. Tucked away in a charming, family-built log cabin in Wadsworth, Ohio, and sequestered in the corner of a barbecue restaurant in Texarkana, Texas, I heard deeply moving stories of loss that burdened my heart and moistened my eyes.
I found Americans who were plagued by the greatest issues of our time: terrorism, crime, health care, immigration, and poisoned water in Flint. But amid tragedy, I recognized breathtaking signs of strength and hope that forever changed me. Remarkably, when faced with various crises, their solution was consistent: God, not government. Though these men and women might have cast a ballot for a presidential candidate, their ultimate hope rested not in the elaborate promises of a politician but in the eternal ones of a savior—a savior who saw them through the unimaginable and lifted them up in a way government never could. It was a journey through the soul of America, and a life-changing one at that.
As the great Americans whose stories fill these pages welcomed me into their homes and communities and opened their hearts to me, a beautiful quote by C. S. Lewis consistently came to mind: “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” For it was amid struggle and hardship that the men and women I interviewed heard God in the most miraculous of ways. They had profound faith, boundless hope, and contagious optimism as they confronted what many would see as a dismal future. But this isn’t just a story of their struggle—it’s a story of their triumph, an account of their hard-fought battle and eventual victory on the day people dethroned the elite and took their country back.
As you proceed through the pages that follow, you will encounter a wide array of great Americans. Their stories will touch your heart. It’s the story of Election 2016, yes. But more than that, it’s the story of the American people—their struggle, their triumph, their resilience, and their heart.