Die-hard Trump supporter Christy Edwards Lawton was at a Manhattan party last year when she noticed a beautiful woman across the room.
The woman, who had “stunning” good looks, according to Lawton, seemed like someone who would have no trouble finding love. But she also had a surprising secret: she couldn’t find a boyfriend in New York City because she voted for Trump.
“I’m a Republican,” the woman whispered to Lawton, she recalled. “They don’t want me.”
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Faced with romantic despair, Lawton saw opportunity. That encounter at the party—and the now-infamous incident where a Virginia restaurant refused to serve White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders—inspired her to start Righter, a dating network that caters to Trump supporters who have been rejected on more mainstream dating apps over their political beliefs.
Righter, which launches later this month, is meant as an amorous safe space, but only for those who back the president. If you’re a liberal, Righter might actually sue you if you try to join.
“I have a very nice legal team that will be handling that,” Lawton said. “This is zero tolerance.”
Righter is far from the first dating site aimed at Republicans only. Fox News host Sean Hannity started a not-long-for-this-world dating site dubbed “Hannidate” for his fans nearly a decade ago. In October, a Trump-centric dating app called “Donald Daters” launched... and immediately exposed its users’ data.
But Righter differs from rivals like Donald Daters by being pitched specifically towards Trump supporters who believe their political views have kept them from finding love or even a hook-up on dating sites like Tinder, Bumble, or OKCupid. (OKCupid and Tinder are owned by IAC, the parent company of The Daily Beast.) Righter’s Instagram posts position the app as a place where Trump supporters can escape the rejection they’ve experienced in the cold liberal dating scene.
“I kept hearing repeatedly how they kept getting swiped left on and couldn’t even get a date,” said Lawton, who fundraised for Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Lawton insists that the market is there. She said that ahead of the launch, she and her staff created tests profiles on apps like Tinder where they found profiles that rejected Trump voters outright. She also said they discovered Tinder users who would pay to “super-like” their accounts but reject them once they learned they supported Trump.
“You just paid money to like us, but you want nothing to do if we’re conservative,” Lawton said.
That’s not to say Righter isn’t just as eager to push culture-war buttons of its own. In one Instagram post promoting free premium account benefits for members of the military, Righter juxtaposes pictures of migrants waiting at a border wall (caption: “ACCESS DENIED”) with soldiers stringing barbed wire (“FREE BENEFITS”).
Lawton’s app has some unusual rules as far as dating sites go. Men can be reported if they don’t pay for the first date. Lawton also insists Righter is “not a sex app,” and wants users to hurry and meet up.
“We are not online to have pen-pals,” Lawton, a former banker who lives in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, said.
Righter users can’t hide their age, and the app will be policed for photoshopped pictures added to make a would-be dater look better. Users who are caught altering their pictures will get three strikes before getting the boot from Righter entirely.
“Females make themselves look different, younger, thinner, better,” Lawton said. “That’s not going to happen on our app.”
Righter has also taken swipes at some of its competition. In one Instagram post, Righter uses a popular meme format to show Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson looking shocked when he learns that women must initiate conversations on Bumble, a potential Righter rival.
"On Righter, men initiate, women respond,” the post reads.
Any obvious Democrats will get the boot from Righter, according to Lawton, though she conceded that it might be difficult to immediately figure out the ideology of the user in order to purge him or her. But if they did find a Trump critic on the platform, Lawton said she wouldn’t rule out calling in the lawyers to get them off. Asked whether suing a would-be dater was a bit extreme—an anti-aphrodisiac, if you will—she insisted it wasn’t.
“Bring it on,” Lawton said. “This is ridiculous. They’re sitting here suing our president.”
