Charm and devotion: How Donald Trump has held onto his fan base

PALM BEACH, Florida – On this island of the rich and famous, Toni Holt Kramer winters in a six-bedroom mansion up the road from Trump's Mar-a-Lago country club.

The day Trump declared his candidacy in 2015, she founded "Trumpettes USA" and has kept her booster club going for nearly a decade. A framed photo of her with Trump sits on her living room mantle.

Mary Kelley, 78, known by her friends as "MAGA Mary" for her dedication to the president, lives in a three-bedroom bungalow in Lake Worth, on the mainland. When Trump first returned from New York to Mar-a-Lago after announcing his first run, Kelley rushed to the bridge leading to his estate, hoping to greet him. She's kept up her bridge visits for nearly a decade, welcoming and bidding farewell to the president, ever since.

Though disliked by some, Trump's personal brand of politics has inspired a loyalty and fervor in his supporters rarely seen in American politics. He has positioned himself as a man of the people, also beloved by the rich. His supporters aren't just voters; they are devoted.

Over the years, Trump has also cultivated a rally culture with followers like the "front-row Joes," the "beautiful ladies from North Carolina" and the men dressed as Uncle Sam, who have all become rally celebrities in their own right.

As Trump prepares to move from Mar-a-Lago to the White House Monday, these loyal supporters are among those celebrating his return.

Holt Kramer met Trump at a Mar-a-Lago New Year's Eve bash in 2010. She and her husband, Robert "Bobby" Kramer, who made his fortune selling luxury cars in Beverly Hills, are part of the Trump family's ultra-wealthy social circle in Palm Beach.

She used to write Trump notes addressing him as "Mr. President" years before he declared his first candidacy.

"I had an instinct," she said. "Dear Mr. President – that was what I called him."

Kelley has met Trump, too. Before her late husband passed, they would attend the balls Trump held for law enforcement in West Palm Beach. She met Trump once when he was still the boss on The Apprentice television show.

"I sort of felt like I knew him," she said. "He is very tall. I reached up and shook his hand and told him, ‘You’re fired.’ And he looked at me like a tree had fallen on me. And then I said, ‘I love your show.’ It just came out of my mouth. I had that connection. I had no idea he would run for president."

Leader of the 'tribe'

A decade on, if it seems like nothing will cause his die-hard supporters to abandon him – not personal scandal, allegations of sexual assault, a criminal conviction, an insurrection at the Capitol – nothing will, said Julia Sonnevend, author of Charm: How Magnetic Personalities Shape Global Politics.

Leaders with charisma and charm have a unique ability to inspire – or in some cases, manipulate – a dedicated fan base. Charisma belongs to the godlike character symbolic of wealth and power, while charm is associated with everydayness, said Sonnevend, associate professor of sociology at The New School for Social Research in New York.

Trump has both, she said.

"He is a godlike, far-away person who people associate with wealth, with being able to make it in the U.S.," she said, "but there is also this everydayness about him with the baseball hat and him saying the things people think but cannot say."

"Trump is the leader of the 'tribe' and tribal loyalties – and belonging – are more important than anything," she said. "You forgive almost anything for them."

Perhaps in no other context would Holt Kramer and Kelley ‒ the former a millionaire and the latter a retired respiratory therapist and policeman's widow ‒ belong to the same "tribe," yet they're both members of a local chapter of Club 47, which bills itself as one of the largest Trump fan clubs in the country. Its stated goal is "to keep Donald Trump supporters in our area connected and engaged and to support the present and future endeavors of Donald Trump."

The two women have been in the same room more than once, thanks to Club 47, Holt Kramer and Kelley said. Both chalk up their unflagging support for Trump to what he represents for them personally: pure American patriotism.

"This is what I believe – and I know him pretty well – what I believe is that he is a man who genuinely with his heart and soul loves this country," Holt Kramer said, on a chilly December evening.

Sonnevend said there are pros and cons to spurring such devotion in politics.

"We pay more attention to politics because of the personality – that is the plus side," Sonnevend said. "But there is a big negative: an unstable political environment," in which all hopes hinge on a single person."

Leaders can also "weaponize" charisma and charm, she said.

Inside the mansion

At Holt Kramer's home on an early December evening, Stormy, her rescue poodle, pranced down a spiral staircase into the living room. Holt Kramer took the elevator. She sat on a couch crowded with pillows and dropped an ice cube into a martini glass of tequila and water.

She was on a ship with friends when Trump descended the escalator at Trump Tower to announce his candidacy, in 2015, "and I screamed so loud when we heard it, that everyone in the dining room turned and looked around," she said.

Holt Kramer formed the Trumpettes that night. The private organization boasts "thousands" of members, she said, but doesn't do any fundraising. She donates to the president personally, she said. On Instagram, Holt Kramer shares photos of herself in gems and furs wearing a Trumpettes sash, and she boosts Trump and his causes.

"He is so smart. He is so aware," she said. "And he will never lose if he believes in something. The last eight years, what they put him through! Any normal person would say, 'Oh screw this, I'm out of here. I'm rich. I'm important.'"

When Trump first bought Mar-a-Lago in 1985, the island's elite wanted nothing to do with the brash New York businessman who was willing to upend old-money values – and exclusionary tactics. The island's social clubs were almost all exclusively open to white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, said former gossip columnist Jose Lambiet, who now runs the private investigation firm Palm Beach Research International.

Trump – though already extremely wealthy – democratized elite society, he said.

"Trump is the first one who didn’t care what ethnic background you were," Lambiet said. "As long as you had green money he didn’t care."

At Mar-a-Lago, "he had rappers, he had Jews, he had Arabs," Lambiet said. "He had everything you can think of, and that was new. That got him some respect in some circles."

Holt Kramer is a New Yorker, like Trump, and she holds onto a trace of her accent. Her father was Jewish; her mother was half Jewish, both born in the U.S. to Russian immigrants. She spent most of her career as a red-carpet reporter, interviewing Hollywood stars and Washington, D.C., politicians. She once backed Hillary Clinton but switched allegiances when Trump emerged on the political scene.

If Trump has stayed in the fight, she says, instead of retiring to one of his properties or retreating to private life, it's because he loves America. "He would only do that after he saves America," she said, pulling on a gray fox fur coat. Her husband was waiting in the Rolls Royce.

The bridge people

A day earlier, a stiff December wind blew over the Southern Boulevard bridge to Palm Beach and Mar-a-Lago. Trump-Vance and America First flags whipped from the 30-foot pole Jestin Nevarez had tied to his black Nissan. Music blasted.

Kelley asked Nevarez to play AC/DC's "Thunderstruck" while she held fast to her own flag, her blond hair flapping under a white "Club 47" ball cap with the president's face in the center. She wore a denim jacket outfitted with Trump pins.

"The president knows us as 'the bridge people,'" she said. "Before he was president, he would stop and get out of his vehicle and wave."

She and a couple dozen other supporters gathered that afternoon to welcome Trump home to the "winter White House." They were following a flight-tracker app and believed the president was en route to the airport in West Palm Beach from New York, where he rang the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange that morning.

"We have to save our country," she said about why she shows her support on the bridge. "We are never leaving early, and we are standing here because you never know what he is going to do for us."

"He knows that we love him and we're always here," she said, recalling the times Trump sent over pizza, cookies or Make America Great Again hats.

Once, he invited the group for lunch at Mar-a-Lago, where membership now costs $1 million, and the well-heeled jockey for access to the president. Kelley missed that one rally and still kicks herself.

But this weekend, she's headed to Washington, D.C., for the inauguration where a local MAGA politician gave her a seat on the president's parade route.

"Isn’t that something?" Kelley said. "We all love President Trump ‒ whether we have a dollar or a billion dollars."