Meet the Nodding Lady, who stole the show at Trump’s town hall

The town hall was for undecided voters, but the Nodding Lady ran as for Congress as a pro-Trump independent

Ms Joli responded enthusiastically to the president's answers in Thursday's town hall on NBC. (Mayra Joli/Facebook)

Perhaps it’s a sign of our collective exhaustion with politics, but every debate season, a few main characters emerge who aren’t the candidates on stage. In 2016, there was Ken Bone, the friendly undecided voter in the red cardigan. In this year’s vice-presidential debate, it wasn’t even a human, but a fly lounging in Vice President Mike Pence’s hair. Now, ladies and gentlemen, meet...The Nodding Lady.

Mayra Joli partially stole the show, at least according to Twitter people, during President Trump’s NBC town hall in Miami on Thursday, vigorously nodding and flashing a thumbs up as the president took questions from ostensibly undecided voters.

Ms Joli, however, seems anything but undecided. She’s a former beauty queen and immigration attorney from Florida who ran unsuccessfully as a pro-Trump independent for Congress in 2018, according to the Miami Herald. Her current Facebook profile photo features her wearing a “Women for Trump” shirt, and she has published a number of pro-Trump posts on her feed, including a fawning video encounter with the president following the town ha

In another, she writes, “Ay ay ay, for God’s sake I am going to vote for Donald Trump #noddingladyfortrump."

She wasn’t always a supporter of the president, however. According to the Herald, she gave $500 to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016. Then again, President Trump once donated upwards of $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation, so who’s counting?

NBC did not immediately respond to a request for comment about how audience members were vetted as undecided voters for the event.

Thanks to the cancelled second debate, former Vice President Joe Biden also had a town hall on Thursday, this one in Philadelphia, and his wasn’t free of questions about audience independence either. One questioner, Nathan Osburn, was a speechwriter in the Obama White House, while another was Mieke Haeck, who is married to Ezra Nanes, who ran as a Democrat for state senate in 2018, according to Fox News.