It’s not just hopium: People really are leaving MAGA

When I tell people I founded an organization that helps people leave Donald Trump‘s MAGA movement, the response is often a derisive snort.

“Why waste your time on them?” people sometimes say. “They’re a lost cause. It’s a cult.”

I firmly believe that kind of dismissive contempt is misguided. In fact, I know it, on a profound personal level. Yes, there are many folks so deep in Trump’s thrall that they may never see him for what he is. But there are also a great many who may one day leave the bubble. I know because I’m someone who already did, and I’ve started a community of former MAGA Americans.

From 2015 until 2022, I was a hardcore MAGA activist and pundit. I spoke at pro-Trump events. I wrote numerous op-eds, and even hosted a podcast dedicated to promoting all things Trump.

I loved that he wanted to burn down the established political order. I felt that neither major political party cared for the working person. When Trump ran the first time and was elected against what seemed like impossible odds, it was exhilarating and new. It was also a communal experience. MAGA became my second family.

Recognizing that MAGA provides a strong sense of community is key to understanding its appeal. Another integral element of MAGA’s power is the pro-Trump media echo chamber. For several years, I got my information almost exclusively from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Breitbart. Everything outside the echo chamber, to my community, was Democratic Party propaganda.

It’s hard to overstate the formidable power of believing the MAGA media’s daily lies and distortions. I was addicted to rage and fear. Even though Trump had been elected president, I lived in a perpetual state of despair, desperation and paranoia.

As I write in my memoir, “One Betrayal Too Many: Why I Left MAGA,” I was convinced that a shadowy enemy — mostly comprised of Democrats — was working to turn America into a Communist hellhole, in which the government would persecute Christians, replace white people with dark-skinned immigrants, and take away our guns.

For me, the walls began to crumble when the governor of my state, Ron DeSantis, began to platform anti-vaccine activists in 2021, at the height of the COVID pandemic. Children were dying, and as the father of two young girls, I couldn’t comprehend why he would turn away from science.

As I struggled with my confusion, I did something that sounds simple, but was profoundly life-altering: I diversified my news sources. Slowly, as I integrated non-MAGA media into my information diet, I began to recognize the lies and conspiracy theories that had become gospel for me.

Crucially, I went back and learned what actually happened on Jan. 6, 2021. (Taking my cues from MAGA media, I had downplayed the uproar over the attack on the U.S. Capitol as much ado about nothing.) Confronted with the truth, I felt rage, confusion, shock and shame.

But I stuck with MAGA. The fear of losing my community terrified me. For the better part of a year, I spent myriad sleepless nights wrestling with my conscience.

The final straw came for me on May 24, 2022, when a gunman massacred 19 kids and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. MAGA’s response was that we needed more guns. My research had shown me that was egregiously mistaken. Overwhelmed by guilt for having contributed to this madness, I quit MAGA.

Three months later, I published a mea culpa, in which I renounced my support for Trump and apologized for my hurtful deeds and rhetoric. I never imagined that anyone would care. But the opposite was true: I was deluged with requests for help from people hoping to save their relationships with their friends and loved ones in MAGA.

I wanted to help them, and I wanted to reach out in an organized way to the many MAGA Americans who, like me, were having doubts about the movement. So I founded Leaving MAGA.

We are a safe and supportive community for those who have left MAGA or are questioning their allegiance to it, as well as for friends and family of those in the movement. We don’t debate politics or policies, and we don’t try to change anyone’s mind. What we offer is an off-ramp for those struggling with the cognitive dissonance caused by the conflict between their sincerely-held beliefs and their recognition that something is amiss in Trumpworld and our nation.

We’ve received a lot of national and regional media coverage. And we have launched a national billboard campaign to reinforce our messaging and outreach.

Our work is bearing fruit: More MAGA Americans than ever are reaching out to us asking for help leaving the movement and changing their lives.

Again, it’s critical to remember that MAGA provides community and camaraderie for those who feel abandoned by our political system. I’m not defending ignorance or bigotry, but many of the folks in MAGA are not uneducated or racist. They are decent people who have been led astray.

There’s no ideological purity test at Leaving MAGA. People of various political stripes have renounced Trump and joined us. Their testimonials on our website demonstrate that they are real, complex human beings, not caricatures.

Consider the story of Stephania Messina. She had a rough childhood: Her father was a heroin addict, and she had undiagnosed ADHD. Later, she became a born-again evangelical and was sucked into Christian nationalist beliefs, which led her to MAGA. She believed Trump was “the persecuted white savior” who was implementing the Christian nationalist agenda.

But Stephania lived in turmoil, because she was a feminist at heart. She worked as a respiratory therapist, and recoiled from MAGA’s backlash against the COVID vaccine and masking. Then she fell down the QAnon rabbit hole for several months, finally realizing in early 2021 it was an elaborate scam.

Around that time, the father of Stephania’s oldest son died. Her church responded by telling her son he was better off without his dad, because his dad hadn’t been a Christian. Stephania left her church, finally got her ADHD diagnosed, and began the  deconstruction of her religion.

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She stopped watching Newsmax and OAN, and started listening to NPR. She did her own research, as we say on the internet — but for real. “I started to think critically again,” Stephania says. She speaks of the hard work she undertook to unlearn “the internalized misogyny reinforced by Trump and the church.”

Today Stephania is a left-leaning Democrat, but she hasn’t abandoned her faith. In fact, she says she  feels “more spiritually fulfilled than ever. Looking at Jesus through sober eyes, free from the intoxication of the church, has led me to be a more authentic Christian, as I seek to love and support others without the bigotry and hate that fundamentalists in MAGA falsely believe is God’s way, and that they use to justify their support of Trump.”

If you had met Stephania during her Trump-loving MAGA days, you would probably have written her off as a hopeless case. But she found her way out, and many others are doing that, too. We have gathered more than 30 stories of people who have left MAGA on our website, each of them as unique and compelling as hers.

On the eve of America’s 250th birthday, our democracy is in crisis. I firmly believe the key to resolving it lies partly in forming unlikely but necessary alliances. Those who leave MAGA are worthy of our grace, and can become stewards of our democracy. We cannot afford to shun them. If anything, we should welcome them; our future depends on it.