Trump campaign says impeachment is spurring more volunteers to help in reelection

Trump campaign officials said Tuesday that Democrats’ impeachment effort is motivating more volunteers to join the president’s reelection effort.

In addition to a spike in online donations in the past month, campaign officials said they are seeing more Trump supporters register to vote and to volunteer their services across the country. Many of them are in training to become “team leaders” in their neighborhoods.

“All of that has picked up in the last couple of weeks” since the impeachment inquiry began, a senior Trump campaign official told reporters on a conference call. “With this second witch hunt, this ridiculous talk of impeachment — I think it’s getting people off the sidelines. This is making our job easier. These [campaign] rallies seem to have gotten bigger.”

With staffers working to build a network of 2 million volunteers, the official said, “This is the largest campaign in presidential history.”

A second campaign official said later that although he couldn’t provide specific numbers, recent volunteering is “nearly double the amount of sign-ups” as prior to the start of the impeachment inquiry.

“Our staff conducts 1-to-1 meetings with the new volunteers, and it’s been so many that our staff is working seven days a week in order to stay caught up,” the official said.

Impeachment is “not something that people outside of D.C. want,” a senior campaign official added.

“It goes to show you how upset voters are,” he said. “The Democrats can’t find a way to beat him. This is what I’m hearing from volunteers. They feel like Democrats are trying to cancel their vote in 2016.”

The campaign saw an increase of about 313,000 new donors in the third quarter of fundraising, and online donations rose 29% over the second quarter, a development that officials attributed to anger over impeachment.

The president will hold a rally Thursday night in a 20,000-seat arena in Dallas — his third campaign event since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the impeachment inquiry. Mr. Trump has been telling supporters that Democrats are trying to “erase” their vote from three years ago.

It will be Mr. Trump’s second rally in Texas this year, following an event in El Paso in February. Republican presidential candidates don’t usually devote resources in the traditionally red state, but the latest Morning Consult survey has Mr. Trump’s approval rating in Texas at 49%, with 47% opposed, with his net approval in the state having declined 18 percentage points since his inauguration.

Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said the president “has created almost 782,000 jobs in Texas since taking office, including more than 69,000 manufacturing jobs.”

“That compares to 55,000 manufacturing jobs lost under President Obama,” he said. “And with his dedication to supporting and expanding the energy industry, President Trump will help grow the Texas economy even more after he’s reelected.”

The campaign official said of Mr. Trump’s rallies, “They work. It gets people motivated to participate in elections who otherwise would not.”

The president’s campaign is banking on massive grassroots organizing in 2020, a departure from the 2016 race. The Trump Victory Leadership Initiative, a training program for volunteers and organizers, has a goal of 2 million compared with 700,000 trained volunteers in 2016.

The campaign has data indicating a 15% increase in voter turnout in areas where it has fully developed neighborhood “team leaders” who will organize voter registration drives and get-out-the-vote efforts. Its goal is 90,000 team leaders in the 2020 election.

Training sessions last about six weeks and train volunteers how to register new voters, as well as preparing for door-to-door operations.

Party officials say the campaign will continue with a strong push and robust staff in states that the president won narrowly in 2016, including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The campaign is also making a bigger effort in several states that Mr. Trump lost in 2016, including Minnesota, New Hampshire and New Mexico.