Donald Trump Panders to Evangelicals

Donald Trump’s November 16 rally in Knoxville began with a conversion story. The opening speaker was Beada Corum, a 92-year-old local woman who had never registered to vote before hearing Trump speak on television earlier this year. She told the crowd: “I thought, ‘Oh my Lord, this man makes a lot of sense to me!’” The rally was held in a large ballroom at the Knoxville Convention Center, adjacent to the city’s downtown core and the University of Tennessee. Most of the audience stood clustered around the small stage, and latecomers continued to stream in throughout the event, though the hall never filled. The next day, Trump’s people would criticize local media for estimating the size of the audience at 5,000—campaign organizers insisted that it was double that number.