Alva Johnson could save us all from the Trump presidency — if we let her

There were a lot of people who took Trump at face value, not because they were stupid but because they were optimistic and hopeful. We achieve nothing by demonising such ex-MAGA evangelists

“Grab 'em the pussy” wasn't going to do it. Describing an Olympic ice skater as “wonderful looking while on the ice” but “built like a linebacker” with a “bad complexion” up close wasn’t going to do it. Telling a journalist who wrote about his bankruptcy that she had the “face of a dog” wasn’t going to do it. And calling Hillary Clinton a “nasty, mean enabler” because of her husband’s affairs certainly wasn’t going to do it. But now Alva Johnson, a former Trump 2016 staffer, has said that the president kissed her without her consent while they were attending a rally in Florida on the campaign trail. She’s filed a lawsuit against him in Tampa. And that may, ultimately, do it.

What’s different about Alva Johnson? Well, for one thing, she was a fully signed-up evangelist for the MAGA cause. Described in her lawsuit as “a highly accomplished African American woman”, she climbed the ladder in the Trump campaign and was promoted after numerous successes in outreach and operations. “To Defendant Trump, however,” the lawsuit continues, “Ms Johnson was nothing more than a sexual object he felt entitled to dominate and humiliate.” She was, her lawyer also alleges, paid less than similarly qualified male employees and less than her white compatriots, even those who were lower-ranked than her. The lawsuit adds that Johnson “seeks to bring this case as a collective action on behalf of female campaign employees who suffered unlawful pay discrimination at the hands of Defendant Donald J Trump for President, Inc”.

That might seem like an about-face for someone who decided to throw themselves in to electing someone like Trump for president. Aren’t those people the sorts who laugh when women get called pigs and dogs; who think a man should justifiably expect his wife to eschew her own career and make sure dinner is on the table as soon as he gets home from furthering his; who subscribe to a brutal, dog-eat-dog kind of capitalism that is sceptical about the minimum wage and supportive of “cutting red tape” without care or compassion?

Well, not exactly. Johnson voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012, her lawyer says, but “during President Obama’s two terms in office, she saw the African American community in Alabama [her home state] continue to experience severe economic hardship, and felt that perhaps… Trump, with his background in business, could help invigorate the economy and provide jobs for her community.” When she first met him as a presidential candidate, she tried to explain that she was “a political outsider, like him, and was coming from the private sector”. She organised numerous rallies, including one in her home county of Madison, where Trump won in the primary. She travelled to Missouri, Utah, Wisconsin, Indiana and California helping to pull together similar-sized crowds.

The lawsuit continues, and it makes for sad reading. Alva Johnson committed herself to keeping volunteer morale high and organised an “appreciation event” called Super Saturday. Travelling from state to state, she transformed offices, coordinated yard signs and bumper stickers, and reached out to African Americans in the area. She knocked on doors. There is a picture of her kneeling behind large boxes spelling out “TRUMP” with her fellow volunteers, an American flag hung in the background next to a cardboard cut-out of The Donald. She managed the huge motorhomes (RVs) which the whole campaign used as mobile offices while traversing the country. “After Hurricane Hermine,” the lawsuit says, “instead of campaigning, Ms Johnson instructed the North Florida RV to purchase hundreds of dollars of supplies to deliver to community members who had been impacted”.

It was one of these RVs that Donald Trump was exiting when he allegedly tried to kiss Alva Johnson on the lips, straight after she’d encouragingly told him that he should go out there and “kick ass” in the name of volunteers like her who’d been working away from their families for months. She says she cried when she rang her parents and partner and told them what had happened. She called in sick the day after seeing the infamous “grab ‘em by the pussy” Access Hollywood tape, because “she realised that what… Trump had done to her was not an isolated incident, but part of a pattern of predatory behaviour towards women”.

Johnson said that she spoke with other female Trump supporters in the wake of the Access Hollywood tape, and that they said they believed the tape “had been doctored”. She quit the campaign and kept her head down, assuming no one would believe her in turn.

The reaction to Johnson's lawsuit has been mixed. Some Democrat-voting liberals have embraced her; others have struggled with the idea of backing someone who worked so assiduously to put the president into the White House. Some Republicans have said they are disturbed by the allegations; others (mostly on Twitter) have claimed it's “all a liberal hoax”. One Twitter meme features a hand hovering between two buttons, imploring “liberals” to “choose one already”: one is labelled “Trump kissed black former staffer” and the other “Trump is a racist”.

In other words, Alva Johnson is in danger of having fewer sympathisers on both ends of the spectrum than others who have made similar allegations. Neither diehard Democrats nor Republicans have come out solidly in support of her. If both groups did, we might end up seeing genuine, thunderous change.

When you read through the lawsuit, you get a sense of Johnson's story, her ambitions, and her regrets. The whole thing feels genuinely relatable, and it’s part of the reason why Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” comment stung so much when other, seemingly much worse insults were being thrown about left, right and centre. There are a lot of Trump supporters who desperately wanted to believe in him, who needed to believe in him, because otherwise it meant giving up on democracy completely. There are a lot of people whose communities remained mired in poverty and crime throughout successive presidencies from both parties. There were a lot of people who took Trump at face value, not because they were stupid but because they were optimistic and hopeful. And there were a lot of people who reacted to the smug crows of Democrat voters every time Trump did something wrong with anger, incredulity and defensiveness.

In this landscape, Alva Johnson stands out even more. She poured her heart and soul into a project that allegedly collapsed in a moment. She dedicated months of her life, away from her loved ones, to something she can no longer stand by. Many of us — most of us — who’d put in such time and effort to a cause would hesitate to call it all a waste of time; most of us would have fallen for the sunk cost fallacy.

Not so for Alva Johnson. It takes a lot of strength and integrity to publicly admit that you made a mistake — a big, political mistake. It takes even more to speak out when you’ve been the victim of a sexual assault. This woman’s courage may well be the tipping point for the Trump presidency — if we can find it within ourselves to allow it.