Trump's socialite fans sip white wine, mourn the end of birtherism

You have never heard of a high society female group like the “Trumpettes USA.”

(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

published 2 September 2016

Are you fabulously wealthy, ostentatiously attired, convinced President Obama is a secret Muslim Kenyan, and a personal acquaintance of Donald J. Trump? If yes, Trumpettes USA may be the elite new club for you.

Founded by a group of happy members of Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, the Trumpettes came together after connecting over their mutual love of all things Trump at a gala at the Beverly Hilton. Now they meet, bedecked in oversized jewels and surrounded by gilded photos taken with their good friends, Bill and Hillary Clinton, to talk and fundraise for the Trump campaign.

The group is mostly composed of women around Trump's age, but also includes Pat Boone, a pop singer who was only surpassed by Elvis for chart-topping hits back in the 1950s and early 1960s. They are particularly incensed by allegations that their candidate and his supporters are racist. "I was raised by a black nanny, there's no prejudice on my side," said Toni Holt Kramer, a Trumpette organizer. "I'm not bigoted." The main way Trump's campaign could be better, another member mused, would be more birtherism, alluding to a conspiracy theory that President Obama is not an American citizen.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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