The room where it happened: How evangelical leaders used a Closed-Door meeting to change sentiment for Donald J. Trump

Abstract

The embrace of Donald J. Trump as a presidential candidate in 2016 was not a given for evangelical voters. The thrice married, one-time advocate for abortion, who prided himself on his ability to attract beautiful women did not seem like someone for whom evangelicals would enthusiastically show up to vote. Understanding the need to excite the tepid Evangelical base, evangelical leaders planned a meeting of 1000 pastors on 21 June 2016 in New York City. Mike Huckabee moderated this carefully planned question-and-answer interview with Donald J. Trump. Well-known politically engaged evangelical pastors, including James Dobson, Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell Jr., Tony Perkins and David Jeremiah, asked planted questions to which Donald J. Trump responded. I learned from ethnographic interviews with evangelical advisors to President Trump in 2020 that this meeting was the moment that they, and many other evangelical pastors, moved from scepticism to support of Donald J. Trump. In this article, I will analyse the 2016 meeting to understand how it helped propel Donald J. Trump into the White House. Specifically, I will use the lens of diffusion theory to understand how this meeting served as a rupture and tipping point of change for evangelical pastors' support.