ISRAEL HAYOM INTERVIEWS ELIZBETH PIPKO

'The perfect person to be president': Trump's young confidante on why he 'supports the people of Israel'

Elizabeth Pipko, the granddaughter of Soviet Jewish immigrants, is one of the most influential voices in the GOP. She says Donald Trump "saved my life." In this exclusive interview, she reflects on how his candidacy lifted her up from the low point in her career. Under his leadership, "anything is possible," she stresses.

 

By Ami Friedman  

 

Israel Hayom

Mar 7, 2025

 

Elizabeth Pipko, the GOP national spokesperson from New York, is one of Trump’s leading Jewish surrogates. 

Elizabeth Pipko vividly remembers the hardest day she experienced in the past year. As the spokesperson for the Republican Party in the recent US presidential race, she had no shortage of problems and challenges in Donald Trump's campaign, in which she played an active and significant role. But it's hard to imagine a greater crisis moment during a project to which you've dedicated every spare minute of your time than watching your life's work of recent years nearly completely destroyed before your eyes.

It happened on July 13, at the height of summer, when the American presidential race also reached a boiling point. For a moment, it seemed that the necessary condition for victory for her, in the form of the candidate in whom she wholeheartedly believes, might disappear – and not by choice. "I think after they throw four criminal indictments and a public arrest photo at your boss, and then someone shoots at him while he's speaking on stage, and he almost gets killed in front of the whole world, nothing moves you anymore," she says.

"In those minutes I was with my husband (Darren Centinello, who was the campaign's digital director) at home. It was Saturday and suddenly, our emergency phone started exploding with calls. We read what happened and tried to understand – is he alive? Is he dead? What exactly is happening? We finally look at our phone look at what happened. We click into the event, and at the moment we click in, Donald Trump is on the ground. I think the Secret Service is already on top of him. I think he stood up after, you know, a minute, but it felt like 20 minutes, especially considering the messages we got saying, is he dead? Is he dead? So all we see is him stand up, blood rushing down his face. I'm obviously crying. I'm getting a million phone calls. My husband's trying to reach the president's family to see if we know anything else. 

 

Elizabeth Pipko and her husband with Donald Trump and his wife Melania.

 

"My husband's father was also at the rally and actually sat right behind the president because we got him VIP tickets, so we called to make sure he was alive too. He answered us and said everyone was looking for the shooter, and in the background, I could hear screaming."

Q: How did you handle this? 

"Immediately afterward, most of us in the campaign didn't even stop to think about it because we were so busy we could only focus on what we could control.  It's weird because obviously it's horrible, and I think if you had gone back to the Barack Obama and Mitt Romney days, just a couple of election cycles prior, this never would have happened. If John McCain and Barack Obama were running against each other and a film like that came out against one of them, even the other one, their opponent, would probably have said something about how negative and inappropriate it was. Obviously, in Trump days, everything has changed. I think after your boss gets charges thrown at him four times, gets a mug shot, nearly gets killed in front of the world, shot on stage, nothing really fazes you anymore. Most of us didn't even think about it. I saw a few scenes because people sent it to me. I didn't even watch the movie. I knew he was upset about it. I think he posted something about it once or twice. But A, we're so busy we can only pay attention to what we can actually control. And B, once your boss survives an assassination, has a mug shot that goes viral, once the FBI comes after you and your own family for working for him, nothing fazes you anymore."

Q: That's frightening. Do you think, uh, in a way, the media all over, all around the world and specifically the American media, did it undermine this, that incident in a way? 

"You know, you get scared in general, working in Republican politics, getting the messages that I get, the death threats that I get. And then when you see your boss who has, you know, some of the best security in the world, almost get assassinated live on camera, you wonder what could happen to you. So it was really, really scary for all of us and showing up to the convention and seeing the extra security and seeing our bosses tell us you cannot leave this secure perimeter, everything is dangerous. Don't talk to anyone, be careful where you go, don't go outside where there's no security. It was obviously really, really scary. But again, we're moving. We don't have time to stop. We don't have time to think about it. So it only hits you months later that your boss was nearly, you know, assassinated. The former president was nearly assassinated on stage. I mean, they wanted him to have his head blown off on camera. That's what they wanted in front of the world. And thank God it didn't happen."

Q: You seem to take it personally.

"It's hard for me because I've been around Donald Trump and I've seen the way people cover his life and his actions and his campaign or his staff compared to anybody else. I believe that there was a different race and it was, you know, Ron DeSantis and Joe Biden or Jeb Bush or any Republican that people would have accepted that wasn't Donald Trump. It would have been talked about very differently. I think, in general, Donald Trump is not treated fairly in the press. I will stand by that, not just because I've seen it happen to him, but because I've seen it happen to me because I'm associated with him. I've seen the way people have lied about me and my family and misreported so many things just to hurt me because I work for Donald Trump.

 

 Republican candidate Donald Trump is seen with blood on his face, surrounded by secret service agents as he is taken off the stage at a campaign event at Butler Farm Show Inc. in Butler, Pennsylvania, July 13, 2024

 

"I thought that was such a bad event that it would kind of make people go back to normal, make people realize that this could have happened to Joe Biden or Kamala Harris too and that the last thing you want is for a former president, current president, anyone, especially a politician who represents a group of people to be targeted in that way. And it would take America back to a really, really dark place. So I thought people would freak out so much that they would become normal again and say, Donald Trump is not the man we support, but he's the man that just almost got shot on stage, and millions of Americans support him. And we should respect the fact that this is a horrible tragedy in America and maybe speak normally about the election moving forward. And that lasted about two hours. And then people forgot it happened. They started making assassination jokes. Um, some people claimed it wasn't real. Obviously, politicians went back to saying Donald Trump was Hitler and a threat to democracy and insulting him and inciting the same kind of hatred that they were doing beforehand, almost, you know, 48 hours later. So, it did not last clearly. And it's obviously disappointing, but it's not surprising."

Q: How shaken was he by the attempt on his life?

"I do think he changed. I really do. I have heard him talk about it. Um, I didn't hear him talk that week. I was not with him personally. I heard his speech, obviously, and I thought he was a little different, but even seeing him later on, um, throughout the campaign and talking to him and hearing his voice when it comes up and saying, I think God saved me. Yeah, I think he definitely changed. I didn't hear him talk about God ever as much as he did after that incident. And I think, in general, no matter how tough and how strong and how cool you are when you get shot in the head, you're going, you're going to change. So I think, I think something changed in him, but you know, now he's the same Donald Trump, you'd never know. But I do think internally, he feels as though God saved him. He says it all the time. And he also knows that he survived the gunshot to the head, making him even tougher and even cooler. So he's definitely a changed man, but almost just like an elevated version of the same Donald Trump."

Q: In the end, the incident produced an iconic image, perhaps even leading to victory.

Seeing someone like that in your life who gets shot in the head and thinks in that moment, not how do I get off stage as fast as possible, but how do I respond in some way to inspire people and let them know that I'm okay. And that America's never going to be taken down if I'm in charge. Knowing someone thought of that in the moment is, I mean, one of the most inspiring things you'll ever see. And I saw a lot of Democrats, a lot of people who didn't support him, say the exact same thing. They said when he raised his fist and screamed fight, how on earth do you not take inspiration from that? And I don't know who else could have responded the same way in that moment." 

Q: Trump is considered a Wild Card. Unpredictable and inconsistent. Not exactly a statesmanlike politician.

"I will say working in politics, the grossest, most horrible word you can tell me is "politician". I hate politicians. I hate almost every politician that has existed before Donald Trump. I don't care if they're Democrats or Republicans. So I think the fact that people try to use the argument that he's not a politician to get people to vote against him backfired because most people agree with me that politicians are not the people that you want. 

 

 

Elizabeth Pipko and her husband, Darren Centinello, married at Trump's Mar-a-Lago in December 2018. 

 

"At the same time, when the world is literally on fire, I think the argument is even stronger. Joe Biden was in the White House for four years. Joe Biden was one of the longest serving politicians that we have had. Joe Biden was a vice president. He was a senator. He has more foreign policy experience as a politician than Donald Trump will ever have. And yet the world was on fire when Joe Biden was in office. Maybe politicians are the reason that the world is on fire and, that Americans aren't happy, and that things continue to happen the exact same way that no one wants to find peace because they like when things are in chaos because that's what politicians create. So, I 100% agree he's not a politician. He was the president of the United States and he's still not a politician. And that's why I support him."

Going to synagogue on holidays 

For 29-year-old Pipko, Trump has been much more than a boss. In her incredible life story, the American president constitutes a defining event, no less. A person who changed the course of her life from the moment she became aware of his political work. An almost divine factor who taught her no less than any rabbi she met in the synagogues she attended. A mentor, a spiritual teacher.

"Trump completely changed my life," she says. "So, my entire life has focused around Donald Trump for about eight years, a little bit longer. So I don't think my brain has realized yet what it means to not be in a campaign and not be fighting for Donald Trump because that's all we know. My husband and I used to joke that we'd get divorced after the election was over because we didn't know if we had anything else to talk about because all we talked about was Donald Trump…I met my husband through the campaign. I grew, I learned from Donald Trump. I love Donald Trump genuinely."

Considering that joining his team was the moment that helped her emerge from the greatest low point of her life, it's understandable. Today, she is one of the women closest to the president's ear. After working with him for eight years, and being a spokesperson for the Republican Party, coordinating campaign fundraising, and helping him reach the White House twice, Pipko is one of Donald's confidantes, and to a large extent, this involves explaining the Jewish and Israeli views to him in the current war in Gaza. 

She regularly appears in studios and gives interviews, makes regular television appearances, and defends Israel passionately. She condemns progressive nonsense, points out "woke" hypocrisy, and raises awareness of problematic to outrageous statements by people in positions of power in higher education institutions in the US. Through the "Jexodus" movement she founded (later renamed The Exodus Movement), she helps American Jews, a population that until recently was mostly identified with the left side of the political map, move to the right side. Now, she's leading a joint project with Chabad that will make mitzvot accessible to Jews in America. And to think that in a parallel universe, she's actually an Olympic athlete.

Pipko was born in New York in 1995, the daughter of a Jewish immigrant family from the Soviet Union and granddaughter of the artist Marc Klionsky. "I attended an Orthodox Jewish school from age 3, but I wouldn't say we were devout," she says. "We went to synagogue on holidays, sometimes on Saturdays, and of course, I learned Hebrew. I did everything my parents wanted me to do, but we didn't keep kosher. I never ate pork, shrimp, or cheeseburgers, but I would eat meat outside, for example."

In her youth, she discovered the world of figure skating on ice, convinced her parents to switch to homeschooling, and devoted all her time to training for the biggest and most important competitions in the world, but a leg injury pulled the ground out from under her feet and brought her to a mental low before she turned 20. After investing years in a dream that evaporated in a second, Pipko was more lost than ever.

"It was a terrible period, really awful," she recalls what she now understands was depression. "I moved to Florida to skate on ice; that's all I knew how to do; I was far from family and friends, I studied from home, so I didn't have school friends, and I skated for 15 hours every day, and then I found myself returning to New York with a huge cast on my leg, unable to walk and still studying online, so I had no friends.

"Everyone I knew was applying to good colleges; I never thought of going to college because I wanted to go to the Olympics. I stopped going to class and doing work. I just cried in my bed all day, every day.  After they removed my cast, I realized I couldn't go up and down stairs, and I was now a 17-year-old girl who was behind in her classes, had no friends, didn't know what she was going to do, and had to go to the doctor five days a week to relearn how to walk and how to do stairs.  I had nothing. And I continued being depressed and a giant mess for two years three years.

"I  still don't know how my parents kept it together and weren't so worried about me that they interfered. I think they just knew that, eventually, I would snap back. I basically was probably years behind on my schoolwork. I would go out with losers that I knew in the city and just do nothing all day, cry in my bed all night, write some sad poetry, and do the same thing the next day. I could have had a great future. I didn't understand why, after working as hard as I did, everything was taken from me. For three years, I didn't think I had a future. I was sure that eventually, I would work as a waitress, and that would be my life."

"Saved my life"

Luck began to turn in her favor thanks to her mother, or to be precise – thanks to the family dog.

"My mom used to walk our dog in Central Park, and one day a photographer who was there stopped her and asked if he could take the dog for a short time for a photo session. When he asked how he could repay her, Mom replied: 'Can you do a photo shoot with my daughter? She's very depressed, and I think she'll feel better.' I met the photographer the next day. We maybe, you know, did 30 minutes of some pictures in the park with her just trying to do it as a favor for My mom decided to send the photos to the biggest modeling agency in the world and a week later they offered me a contract.

"I never thought of such a possibility. As a little kid, I was bullied severely for being ugly. Never thought that it was gonna happen. Every girl dreams of modeling. So I'm not gonna say I didn't think about it, but it was not something I thought of at that time or worked toward. And it was basically just handed to me by God in the moment. I don't think it was the greatest part of my life, but it certainly brought me some confidence and a lot of accomplishments. For a young woman who cries all day, seeing yourself on magazine covers definitely strengthened me a bit and became a very cool part of my story."

 

  

Elizabeth Pipko celebrating Hanukkah as a child 

 

From that point onwards, she became a sought-after model, signed with Wilhelmina Models, appeared on the covers of magazines like Esquire, Grazia, and Contrast, and is physically compared to model and actress Emily Ratajkowski ("Gone Girl", "Entourage"). But the real change in her life came alongside Trump's first run for the presidency.

"To witness the whole world mocking him when he says he's going to be president, to see him running and continuing the campaign and, of course, ultimately winning, was simply inspiring. I watched his videos, read his books and later started volunteering for his campaign.

"Today, I have a bachelor's degree from Harvard University and a master's degree from UPenn, I was the spokesperson for the Republican Party, and I think I'm doing truly important things for the world. I truly believe that Donald Trump saved my life."

Q: But it's hard to deny that he's a controversial figure, and his statements regarding women don't paint him in a positive light either.

"If I didn't know him myself and hadn't spent time with his family and staff but only read the stories about him, I would hate him too.

"I say that all the time because the stories are horrific. At the same time, when you look into the stories, you find out that this is a lie and this is exaggerated, and this is here. So, I think there are two ways to look at it. However, I have never argued Donald Trump was the perfect person. I have never argued that he was an angel on earth and that all the accusations or everything he's been through was a lie. The only thing I've argued is that he's the perfect person to be president of our country. 

"I'm not going to tell anyone he's the perfect husband or the perfect friend. I am sure that I would be wrong, and I'm sure that even he would tell me I wasn't the perfect husband, or I wasn't the perfect friend or I wasn't the perfect this. He is not a perfect man. I do not try to convince people that he was. My only argument was that against Hillary Clinton or against Joe Biden or Kamala Harris or really any other Republican or anyone else who could have run against him, he was the only man for the job... I would die on that hill. That is an argument that I think I get proven right with almost every single day with his actions. I am proud to have stood by him this entire time, but it was never because of his personal life. It was because of what he could have done for America and the world."

Q: You define yourself as a feminist, how does that align with his opposition to abortions?

"That's actually a question that's easy for me to answer. I started researching this topic in 8th or 9th grade after watching a woman testify in Congress that her mother tried to abort her, and she survived. I did a lot of research, and at some point in my life, I wanted to be closer to the Jewish religion, so for m,e the answer to this question is not found in politics but in the Torah. It's a religious issue for me and a topic close to my heart. At the time, I thought, 'how the hell can people claim that it's okay to have an abortion?' and as I grew up and met people with different opinions, I understood that these things can happen. So, as a woman, I am very anti-abortion, but I'm also very pro-America.

"Trump just said that this is an issue that should be decided by the states. I'm not for telling people what they can or cannot do, but there is a middle way. America is a great country because even if you don't agree with a law – whether it's related to abortions, gun rights, marijuana use, or anything else – you can protest it, change it, or move to a place where you agree more with its principles."

"Creating precedents" 

Last week, the world was shocked over the meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. For Pipko, this meeting also touched on a very personal point. "The two main issues I talk about are the issue of Israel and the Middle East and the issue of Russia and Ukraine," says Pipko. "My family is from there, and when the war began, I loudly supported Ukraine. Even Trump said it's a shame that Russia invaded Ukraine. The fact is that it didn't happen during his term; several years have passed, and now that he's the president, he is committed to supporting peace.

"I think if Zelenskyy had disrespected other presidents that way, they likely would have talked back to him as Trump did. It didn't happen under Joe Biden, whether that's because they were team Ukraine and against America or because Joe Biden didn't have it in him and didn't have the capabilities, I don't know, but I think when a war has gone on as long as it has and you have to answer to the American people who have had billions of their own tax dollars sent over there and who have never been told this is how close we are to victory or this is what a victory would look like, you owe it to the American people to stand up for us and demand something of this man. Trump wants the war to come to an end. He did not say I am team Russia, I'm team Ukraine. He said, 'I want the war to come to an end,' and Zelensky had a problem with that, and Donald Trump is the president of the United States of America who has a responsibility to his supporters and to these people in the country to not send over billions of dollars more to Ukraine without an explanation for why and to try to bring peace to the world, which is what he promised always knew Donald Trump was going to yell at someone if they disrespected him, but more importantly they disrespected his country. He genuinely believes that if people talk to him in that way, they're not disrespectful to the man, but they're disrespectful to the United States of America, and he thinks it is his job to be the representative for the United States of America…no one has heard anyone debate Zelenskyy or Putin or anyone else for four years because we've had a president who literally hid from the media and from foreign leaders for four years in the White House. So, no one has seen anything like this. I don't think it's that shocking."

Q: How would you define the relationship between Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?

"I mean, in general, I think the back and forth that they've had between good and bad is a good thing. I think when you have a real relationship, it has its ups and downs. I think it proves how close our nations are in general. think when two leaders have to talk as much as they have to talk, when two leaders have to work together as much as they do, A there's going to be ups and downs and B it shows how connected the two countries are. I call them sister nations in the fight in in the world right against the exact same enemies. Like Bibi said our enemies are the same enemies. Our victories will be the same victories. I think the relationship that they have proves that they both see the world in the same way.

"Trump witnessed what happened on October 7, and he is much more focused on trying to support Israel and trying to bring peace to the region than on his personal relationships with any of those involved. These aren't two leaders who meet to take a photo and then don't talk for a year. These are two leaders and two nations that actually work together in the world to try to bring goodness and preserve Western civilization for the rest of society. I think that's why they're as close as they are. That's why they have their ups and downs because their relationship is so important, and I truly am proud to have a president who treats Israel and treats its leader in a way that a lot of former presidents, at least in my recent lifetime, have not…I think they probably see themselves in a similar light and see a lot of the hatred that they get in their own country in a similar way." Before October 7 obviously, Netanyahu was dealing with the kind of protest that we see over here all the time. So I think they deal with a lot of the same things politically, . I think Donald Trump respects a strong leader, respects a strong leader who's made a comeback like he has. I don't know if anyone's comeback has been as strong as Donald Trump's but Netanyahu certainly knows his way around a comeback as well. I think, in general, the leaders have a lot in common, and again, I'm proud to know that Donald Trump will support any democratically elected leader of Israel because he supports the people of Israel and he supports the message of Israel regardless of who was in charge honestly." 

Q: Is the voluntary deportation plan from Gaza a realistic thing?

"Under Donald Trump, anything is possible. The man has done many things that many people said were impossible, that's for sure. Trump has a very specific negotiation style, right? And very often, he says things or demands things or asks for things that people say are impossible, maybe that he even knows are impossible, and at the end of the day, the compromise ends up being exactly what he would have wanted from day one. So, I'd say very often, I would question those who want to judge any of Donald Trump's negotiation tactics. 

"He's very famous and very famously known for obviously the art of the deal, but more importantly, I think people should look to him as someone who has put in the thought into wanting to change the status quo with what has gone on in the region for far too long. Whether his plan, the exact plan that he came up with, works or not, obviously, we're going to have to wait and see. But the fact is, how many leaders before him have promised peace and done absolutely nothing? And how many leaders before him have tried to do the exact same tactics and gotten absolutely nowhere? 

Q: Is he aiming for the Nobel Peace Prize?

"I would say this: After Barack Obama got it for nearly nothing, Donald Trump certainly might deserve it for even the Abraham Accords in his last term, or we'll see what happens in this one. But I mean, when he said I'm bringing the hostages home and I'm making you know peace in the region, he meant it. That's why he got to work on day one and I hope people take him seriously when they realize that his legacy is only important to him if it's the legacy that he would have wanted. He's not trying to make a legacy for himself that comes with this award and that award for the wrong reasons. He's trying to actually prove that if you do things differently and maybe not like a politician, you cannot only bring peace but prove to the world how easy it would have been to set a new precedent and move forward and do things differently and I know that he knows he has one term to do that and hopefully everyone that comes after him will continue doing what he's doing."

"A global problem" 

In a parallel universe, one where she would still injure her leg but not be swept after the current president, Pipko could belong to a completely different political camp. On the face of it, this is the life path that would be paved for a young woman from Generation Z who dabbles in poetry and went to two of the most extreme universities in terms of their approach to the events of October 7 and the war in Gaza.

In the place where she studied, privileged students who had never known real conflict in their lives called for boycotting Israel, excluded Jewish students, and declared that they were in a completely delusional and imagined humanitarian crisis, which prevented them from accessing aid and food supplies that were within walking distance from the campus lawns to the cafeteria.

"On paper, given the fact that I'm Jewish with two degrees from the Ivy League and the daughter of immigrants, I should be a Democrat," she says. "I should have blue hair and ugly glasses, and I should be screaming that I love Hamas. I did have blue hair at some point in my life, but I never supported Hamas, and the credit for that goes to my parents. I had the best parents, and upbringing, and backbone in the entire world.

"I always tried to do the right thing because I wanted my parents to be proud of me, but I also know the story of those who came before them. Even at my lowest point, I was still a proud American and Jew. I knew what my values were. If more people listened to their parents and paid attention to their history, they would be on the right side of history. There's a good side, and there's a bad side, and anyone who learns a little about the subject on a basic level knows that regarding Gaza – Israel is on the good side, and Hamas is the bad side."

Q: What do you think creates the perceptual dissonance of the "woke"? After all, Hamas represents everything they stand against – religious extremism, patriarchy, toxic masculinity, hatred of LGBTQ+.

"A few things happened quickly and all at once. The fact that our country became politically polarized during the rise of social media is a really big problem. It was hard for me to see how the media decided that its role is to tell people what to think and feel and how to vote because it was afraid of Donald Trump instead of doing its journalistic work. That was scary. Any person can consume any piece of misinformation in the world on social media and follow random celebrities who don't know anything, but feel free to tell their followers and the world what to think, feel and share. Meanwhile, our universities, whose role is to educate, decided that they need to shape.

"At the universities I studied at, I didn't have a single pro-Israel professor. Before I enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania I asked former students there a few questions. There was a Jewish girl there who said students in her class would prefer to discover that she took part in the January 6 riots at the Capitol than to discover that she's a Zionist. She told me, 'Just don't tell anyone here that you're a Zionist.' This happens on campuses, and no one says anything.

"These professors become their mentors and leaders. I'm very happy that the protests at educational institutions in America were so bad and extreme because finally, parents are saying, 'wait, I need to check this school out before I send my kids there.' I see donors saying, 'I'm not going to donate my money to Harvard.' It's not a Jewish problem but a global problem. Everyone needs to understand how badly they messed up. These are good, decent, and smart kids whose minds have been washed to support a terrorist organization that would kill them in two seconds."

Q: You said that you wanted to be a part of the administration. So what's next? 

"It would be the honor of a lifetime, of course, to serve the American people. So I'm not going to stop thinking about it. I'm going to focus on a few other things at the same time right now, but I'm sure I'll make my way into the administration before it's over."

Q: Where do you see yourself in 10 years?  

"President? Maybe that first female president. I mean, why not? We need a first female. We need a first Jew. Why not just combine the two, you know?"