A Lebanon County man is headed to Milwaukee next week to rally for Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention.
Steven Wolfe, 35, of North Lebanon Township, was elected this spring to be a delegate to the RNC, which runs from Monday to Thursday, July 15-18.
And Wolfe – who slips into a dead-on impression of Trump at the slightest provocation – is excited to go, to rub elbows with GOP luminaries, and to throw his support behind the 45th – and, he hopes, 47th – president of the United States.
“I love this country and I will do everything I can for this country,” Wolfe told LebTown during an interview on the Fourth of July … which is, of course, a celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
“When our Founding Fathers signed that document – everyone’s bashing Donald Trump for being a felon, but they were all felons of the British Empire,” he said. “We’re celebrating this holiday because of them.”
Early political activities
Wolfe declined to discuss his occupation – “I’d like to keep that under wraps for now. I don’t feel that it’s relevant,” he insisted when pressed on the subject – but said he has been active politically since he started voting at age 18.
He served for six years in the Pennsylvania National Guard and one in the Army Reserve, he said. He got more active in politics a dozen or so years ago, he added.
“I started seeing things going downhill in 2008, when gas was $4 a gallon and we were involved in two wars overseas under George Bush,” Wolfe said. “Things were tough at the time. The housing market was crashing. I figured I had to get involved.”
He credits his desire to get involved to the civics lessons he learned at an early age through FFA and the North Mountain 4H Club.
“We learned about Roberts Rules of Order, respect for the flag, serving your community, serving your country, all of the stuff that goes along with that. Volunteering, being responsible, and helping out your neighbors,” Wolfe said.
He described himself as a “history nut” in school and said he chose the FFA motto – “Learning to Do, Doing to Learn, Earning to Live, Living to Serve” – as his senior yearbook quote.
Wolfe feels deeply connected to the United States and to Pennsylvania specifically, he said, noting that his ancestors received land from William Penn. “It’s time we start helping to save this country,” he said.
He said he first got involved in former state Rep. RoseMarie Swanger’s reelection campaign in 2012. He has since kept active in local politics, working on campaigns for state Reps. Russ Diamond and Frank Ryan, among others.
Then, in 2016, “I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off – registering people to vote, getting Trump signs, going to Patriot meetings, going to Oath Keeper meetings, going to Libertarian meetings, and going to Trump rallies.”
Joining the Oath Keepers
Wolfe acknowledged that he was a member of the Oath Keepers until the organization dissolved following the arrest and imprisonment of its founder and leader, Elmer Stewart Rhodes III.
The Oath Keepers, defined by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “one of the largest far-right antigovernment groups in the U.S. today,” is largely inactive since Rhodes was convicted for seditious conspiracy and other charges related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He was sentenced in May 2023 to 18 years in prison.
“We don’t have an organization any more. The organization fell apart with him in jail,” Wolfe said.
But Wolfe quickly defended the group, which he said has been unfairly judged for its involvement on Jan. 6.
“I want to make this very clear, we are not a militia. We do not advocate violence in any form but self-defense. We take an oath to uphold the Constitution,” he said.
Although Wolfe stopped short of saying he was in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, he noted that “nobody was armed in our group. We didn’t hurt nobody. We didn’t beat down any cops.”
If they had been armed, he said, things would have turned out differently. “If there was an armed insurrection, we would have taken that place and we would have kept it,” he said.
Although Oath Keepers may not have carried firearms to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, members of the organization have testified that a large stash of weapons was stockpiled close by in a hotel room in Arlington, Virginia. Rhodes himself later lamented their lack of guns.
“My only regret is that they should have brought rifles,” Rhodes was recorded saying on Jan. 10, adding that they could have “fixed it right then and there” if they had weapons with them at the Capitol.
Wolfe said he also has attended monthly meetings of the Patriots, whom he described as “a group of likeminded people. They want the Constitution followed. They want the fundamentals that this country was founded on to be preserved, defended and protected.”
Presidential elections
The 2016 election proved how pivotal a small region such as Lebanon County can be in national affairs, Wolfe said. That year, he said, the presidential race “came down to Pennsylvania. It came down Lebanon County – we were the last county called.”
When Trump won Pennsylvania, Wolfe said, it put him over the threshold to win the Electoral College. “So this county put the nails in Hillary Clinton’s coffin and put the end to her political career.”
More recently, Wolfe said, Republicans “got gypped” in the 2020 election.
“COVID was part of that. … It’s very likely it came from a lab in Wuhan, but you weren’t allowed to talk about it, you weren’t allowed to post anything online,” he said. “You weren’t allowed to talk about Hunter’s laptop. But if people knew about all that, it could have swung the election.”
He also cited “2,000 Mules,” a widely discredited documentary that alleged a broad conspiracy by Democrats to steal the 2020 election. (Salem Media Group, the conservative media company behind both the book and film, issued an apology in May for allegations made in the documentary and said it would remove both the film and book from its platforms.)
“Nobody wants to look at that and say, ‘Hey, there was a problem here,'” Wolfe said, further claiming that legal challenges to the results, such as Texas v. Pennsylvania (in which Texas sued Pennsylvania and three other states for changes to their voting procedures prior to the election), did not get a fair hearing in court “even though they were absolutely legitimate.”
That leads directly into the GOP’s strategy in 2024, he said.
“We have to play the Democrats’ game and beat them with the mail-in ballots,” Wolfe said. “We have to beat them at their own game, that’s part of our strategy. We’re going to follow the ballot. We’ll have people calling saying ‘Hey, we know you got a ballot … we want to make sure you filled it out, here’s our list of candidates who are running on the Republican side, here’s what they stand for. Fill out that ballot.'”
Also, Wolfe said, “I don’t believe for one second that Joe Biden got 81 million votes… especially when you have Trump, who got more votes than any incumbent president ever before. His poll numbers were up.”
According to the Federal Election Commission, Biden received 81,283,501 votes in 2020, or 51.31% of the popular vote, while Trump received 74,223,975 votes, or 46.85% of the popular vote.
As for the upcoming election, Wolfe is even more confident after watching the first presidential debate.
“I watched the debate at the Republican Committee headquarters. There were about 40 of us watching it live,” he said. “Joe Biden was a train wreck. Even the Democrats are saying that now. We were telling them that five years ago.
“I think their convention is going to be wild. I think the Democrats are going to go full cannibal and eat themselves alive.”
At this point, Wolfe said he doesn’t believe the Democrats could field any candidate who could prove to be a challenge to Trump’s campaign.
Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, even Michelle Obama – Wolfe ran through a litany of prominent Democrats and claimed none of them are well liked or capable. Besides, he said, “I would like to see the Democrats keep Biden as the candidate. I hope the Democrats and the media who have lied about Biden for the past five years get stuck with him … and have to eat crow.”
Providing representation
In 2020, Wolfe ran for a seat on the local Republican Committee and won. He also ran to be an RNC delegate in 2020 but fell more than 1,000 votes short.
It was a moot point anyway, he said, since COVID-19 restrictions that year forced the convention to be cancelled.
This year, he said, “I decided to run again.” And this time, he won.
According to results posted at electionreturns.pa.gov, eight candidates vied for three delegate positions in the 9th Congressional District in the 2024 primary. Wolfe, with 30,710 votes (15.79 percent) received the most votes, followed closely by David A. Huffman Jr. of Lycoming County (29,539 votes) and Laura Jane Miller of Berks County (27,252 votes). All three delegates will go to Milwaukee for the convention.
The 9th district includes Berks, Bradford, Columbia, Lebanon, Luzerne, Lycoming, Montour, Northumberland, Schuylkill, Sullivan, Susquehanna, and Wyoming counties. Besides Lebanon, Wolfe was the top vote-getter in Columbia, Montour, and Northumberland counties.
“I got involved and I want to stay involved because I love this country. I believe we should have an America First agenda. I stood up for Donald Trump and his agenda during his first term,” Wolfe said. “I believe in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, I believe in the fundamentals of this country. We need to save this country now, we’re going in the wrong direction and need to turn things around. I believe I can help spearhead that and make a difference.”
He’s eager to get to Wisconsin to do his part, he said. He believes Trump needs to win Pennsylvania to win the presidency, and he hopes to gain seats in the state Senate to pave the way for a Republican to replace Gov. Josh Shapiro in two years.
“I want us to win,” Wolfe said. “I help Republicans win.”
It’s important to show unity to the rest of the country and demonstrate that this “is Donald Trump’s convention,” he added.
“Pennsylvania is being focused on a lot,” Wolfe said. They’re probably going to put us up toward the front on the convention floor, because there’s so much focus on us. We’re the center of attention. … The country is going to be watching.”
Obviously, he added, “we’re waiting to hear Trump’s pick on vice president. I have no idea who that will be yet.”
But, while people argue over issues such as the economy, abortion, and border security, Wolfe said the real issue now is “stopping World War III before it starts. We’re on the verge … and we’re not ready for it. We’re not ready for it at all.” Electing Trump, he insisted, is the only thing that will make foreign leaders “sit back and stop behaving like animals.”
Eyeing future campaigns
Despite his concerns, Wolfe said he plans to do his part to ensure there is no fraud in this November’s election.
“I want to make sure that we have people working at the polls, watching the polls, so they do it the legal and proper way,” he said. “No funny business on the day of the election, no nonsense going on at the polling places or where the votes are being counted. … We need to make sure there’s no funny business going on either side. We have to be sure things are on the up and up, or we don’t have a country any more. Make sure everyone is following the rules.”
Asked if he had political aspirations, Wolfe quickly slipped back into his Trump voice and said, “I might. I’m 35, so I’m constitutionally eligible if Trump needs a VP. Four years Trump, eight years Wolfe.”
Seriously though, Wolfe said he hasn’t made his my mind yet. “That stuff will come in due time. I do have a PAC, so I can raise money.” In the meantime, he said, “I’m getting deeply involved in the campaigns now. I’m still helping with local GOP campaigns, down to local municipalities, judges and school boards.”
Wolfe said he frequently mans a booth at area events, from Old Annville Days and the Lebanon Area Fair to flea markets at the Sunset and local gun shows, where he hands out pocket-sized copies of the U.S. Constitution.
“I want to make sure that life is better for the kids coming up,” he said. “We need to make things better than it was for us. … I’m not doing this for me, I’m doing it for future generations. I want to make sure that America is for Americans.”
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