There was a transgender coffee shop near my apartment I once frequented. I swear, everyone who worked there was a trans man, biological women presenting themselves as men to varying degrees of effort.

The baristas were nice enough, but the coffee shop closed, barely lasting six months, which is a travesty considering it declared itself a safe haven for refugees. A large poster displayed on the front window proclaimed, ‘Refugees welcome here!’ with an illustration of a sad Arabic man holding an infant wrapped in a filthy shroud. Where will they go now?

During its sad, brief run I spent many hours in that coffee shop seeped in mediocrity. I’d sit at the counter listening to trans men with names like Girk, Jace and Bailey discuss postmodern gender theory by the espresso machine when some 55-year-old woman from Kansas would fire a meme into my inbox that would leave me in stitches.

I’d think, these Trump moms are undoubtedly more informed, edgy and internet savvy than any 25-year-old BuzzFeed blogger or tatted-up social justice warrior with a pincushion for a face. Ask any conservative who spends great amounts of time online and they’ll tell you: Trump moms are one of the mightiest forces in the culture war. If ‘Republicans pounce,’ the fallback media phrase for right-wing internet reaction, then Trump moms pull over the minivan to swarm and invade, thumbs a-blazing. If you’re coming for the president or ever wronged one of their favorite personalities, they’ve got you on a list and they’re not forgetting.

I asked one Trump mom about her shit list, because they all have one. ‘Alyssa Milano, Cher, Barbra Streisand, the entire UN minus Micronesia and Guatemala, and Robert de Niro. I’m so glad A Bronx Tale closed on Broadway,’ she told me.





You ought to live in perpetual terror of disappointing a Trump mom. I catch myself before firing off some reckless attack on social media or using foul language, asking ‘will this piss off the Trump moms?’ Sometimes, admittedly, it does, but if you’ve sufficiently endeared yourself to this fearless battalion of love warriors, they tend to forgive you. After all, they’re moms. They understand fallacy, impulsiveness, and temptation. And they’ve got their work cut out for them. So many of the online personalities they digitally nurture are mouthy little bastards. Still, they see the good in us first. They’re here to support and help you do better.

They understand something deeper. The Trump movement is full of quite emotionally messy individuals, understandably so. It’s one thing I really like about Trumpers. We’re a population saturated with orphans. We’ve been fired from our jobs, abandoned by our friends, ejected from polite society, consistently slandered as irredeemable and subhuman, even disowned by our families. I’m truly blessed that all but the latter applies to me. My own mother is a Democrat, but firstly a Southern lady, and with all the gossip to dish each week and stories about whatever crazy thing cousin Floretta did, we don’t even have time to talk politics, which is how it should be.

But the Trump moms are there for us in ways that often our real families can’t be. They come from all backgrounds. They’re statuesque Florida country club wives, Jewish PTA presidents and cheeky ol’ Texas gals who’ll march up to you after a speech, shout, ‘I’m Joanne, I follow you on Twitter,’ and slam you into a gardenia-scented embrace. It’s wonderful. Trump moms give the best hugs.

I’m of course talking about Trump grandmoms, too. Plenty of Trump moms and grandmoms have family who’ve disowned them over politics. A Trump grandmom messaged me the other day that her gay grandson cut off communication after the election. She wasn’t feeling sorry for herself. She seemed more benevolent about the whole thing. Still, my God, that must be crushing. And I can’t imagine the kind of demented freak who’d disown his grandmother because she votes the wrong way.

Trump moms are our peacekeepers. By its very nature the Trump movement is filled with squabbling, e-drama, and the kind of brash, individualistic bridge-burners you don’t find on the borg-brain left. I had one of those breaking moments the other night and posted a rant to Facebook about how public appearances give me anxiety and I don’t feel I have anything in common with those right-wing celebs for whom attention and celebrity seems to be a drug. The Trump moms were there to tell me they love me, and to keep going. When a certain unhinged, ‘conservative’ egomaniac e-celeb jumped in the comments to dump a 40,000 word dissertation about how I was clearly talking about him – I wasn’t, but if the shoe fits – the Trump moms were there to pull the kids apart and scold, ‘you two stop fighting!’

Silicon Valley, a left-wing election meddling operation based in California, came for the Trump moms hard this week. Ravelry, an online knitting community, banned all discussions of Trump and started kicking off pro-Trump knitters, despite many having paid for the service. A Trump mom from Texas alerted me to it.

‘I kept thinking of you today when as a conservative knitter I have been banned from Ravelry for my support of Trump,’ she wrote. ‘It’s easier for people to come out as gay than to come out as a Trump supporter…I am so tired of this nonsense but I will keep fighting!’

Other Trump moms told me they got fed up seeing users on Ravelry parade around their pussy hats and ‘fuck trump’ scarves. In response, they began making their own patterns for ‘Build the wall,’ ‘God is love,’ ‘Trump 2020’ and ‘I chose life.’ Those patterns have now been removed as Ravelry pats itself on the back for cleansing the platform of all those KKK grannies and little Eva Brauns.

Getting constantly rebuked and accused of every terrible thing just for daring to like your president can be a rough road. It’s easy to lose your will or your mind. But the Trump moms will always be in your corner, rooting you on, and believing in you when no one else will. Even if every so often they have to call us out for our bad behavior, we still make them proud. Thanks, Trump moms.