USF Road to the White House 2024 - Barton

In the morning we went to the Columbia office and met Joe Wilson and Marjorie Taylor Greene! We also spent some time phone banking and sign waving.  We got to attend the Trump Victory Gala to celebrate the win and meet lots of people!

  Today we got to go to a Trump rally in Rock Hill, SC. We got there super early to help park cars and guide people to their seats. Everyone was so nice and the event was so much fun, it felt like a concert! Since we got there early and volunteered, we were able to secure seats right in the front! Valeria and I also made it onto Trump's instagram.  Completely unrelated but this SWAT truck was very cool and the officer was awesome! It was cool to see all the security measures taken to ensure everyone's safety during this event. 

This morning I woke up feeling very bad once again so I had to miss the tour of the SC State House this morning. However, I will be resuming after lunch with the Trump campaign! 

  Unfortunately, I got sick on Wednesday and spent my morning in the urgent care. Luckily, my classmates were able to share their experiences with me. Team Trump got to see Laura Trump in person at their office in Charleston.  The Students working fro the SCDP had the really cool opportunity to see Vivek Ramaswamy at a brewery. While i'm sad I had to miss out, I am lucky that I caught my illness early and will be ready to go tomorrow!

  This morning we heard from Professor Scott Huffman who runs the Winthrop poll. His presentation was very interesting and he taught us about priming, framing, and word choice and how all of these can affect a respondent's opinion.  After, we headed straight to Greenville, SC to get in line for Trump's Town Hall with Fox  News and Laura Ingraham. This event was so cool, and much bigger than the one we watched fro Nikki Haley. It was extremely exciting to see Former President Donald Trump as well as his secret service detail. I have never been in the same room with someone so famous before so this was a great opportunity for me, even though we didn't get to meet him. 

  This morning we got to talk to AP national Reporter Meg Kinnard. I really enjoyed her attitude towards her work and her authenticity to the Associated Press' brand. She was very insightful and offered us a lot of information.  After we were able to go to the SCDP headquarters and talk with the Executive Director, Jay, and Chairwoman, Christie Splain. They talked about why the democratic arty chose South Carolina to go first in their nomination process and what they do in their positions. 

Today we went to Fox News' Town Hall with Nikki Haley hosted by John Roberts. I thought this was a super neat experience as we got to watch the process of live television being made. After, we got the change to say hello and get a picture with Nikki Haley.  Then, the other Trump interns and I went to a campaign office in Columbia where we met some other campaign managers and interns from USC who were all extremely helpful and intelligent. We did some more phone banking before heading back to the hotel for dinner.   

  My first day campaigning for Trump in SC was super exciting! We got to learn about and participate in phone banking and canvassing. At the end of the day, we got to meet with former White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley. He was so insightful and gave us an opportunity to ask any questions! Made it on the leaderboard for phonebanking in the Trump office!

  Our first day of in-person class on Thursday, January 11th, my class participated in an activity called "citizenship bingo" in which we were tasked with going around the classroom and asking others a question on our bingo board, that was taken from the U.S. Citizenship Test. Then we needed to write the answer and the students name - their last name. 

  We were assigned groups in order to research and present each candidate running for the 2024 presidential election. I was paired with Grace and Olivia and we were assigned President Joe Biden for our research presentation!

  We took pictures for Bay News 9 and USF in our new matching "Road to the White House 2024" T-Shirts! Check out our article here !

The next few classes we were tasked with reading Redlawsk's book  Why Iowa?,   and evaluating his analysis of the importance of the Iowa caucus through a 4-5 page paper. I found this interesting because when we were reading this book and making our case, the Iowa Caucus was occurring in real time!

We were tasked with reading and evaluating Professor Dante Scala'a book,  Stormy Weather.  In this book he discussed the importance of the New Hampshire Primary and this was interesting because we had just seen the odd results of New Hampshire this year. 

My name is Ellie, I am a Junior and I will be interning for the Trump Campaign. When first interviewing for a spot in this class, I was unaware of the preparation necessary to have a smooth, successful internship experience in South Carolina. However, I am almost positive that all of the hard work will be worth it!