Trump’s Volunteers: ‘Beautiful Ladies’ From a Secretive Evangelical Church

Former President Donald J. Trump has gruesome rhetorical staples he likes to deploy at his political rallies, including homicidal sharks, bird-killing windmills and Hannibal Lecter. Amid the litany, one less morbid aside tends to escape notice.

“Those beautiful ladies from North Carolina are here again without their husbands,” Mr. Trump observed at a rally in Mosinee, Wis., on Sept. 9, veering off from a rant about the 2020 election. He gestured toward the rafters and a row of a dozen impeccably coifed women in brightly colored pantsuits, as if they had wandered in from an Easter gala.

The women waved and blew kisses at the former president, who speculated that the women had attended “249 or something” rallies. “That means they have money,” he said approvingly.

Mr. Trump has called out the self-described “North Carolina Girls” at rallies this year in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, Arizona and South Carolina, in addition to events in their native state. But the women are unusual in ways beyond their ubiquity.

All are members of an evangelical charismatic Christian church in the tiny town of Spindale (population 4,238) in western North Carolina. The church, Word of Faith Fellowship, has for decades drawn controversy over its cultish insularity and its treatment of children and adults who have been judged by church leaders to be sinners.