Last week at our event in Delray Beach, a woman walked up to the microphone during the Q&A in front of 300 people to discuss a painful subject:
“[My mother] promises she loves me and she wants to change, but she recently told me I have Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
The woman said she had a question she wished she could ask her mother: “How do you love me if you support people that hate me?”
I’ve answered a version of that question hundreds of times. But every time I hear it, it lands the same way.
Because it’s not just her question. It’s the question millions of people are carrying right now — about a MAGA-supporting parent, sibling, or friend they’re afraid of losing.
The Palm Beach Post was in the room in Delray Beach with us, and the headline they chose does a great job of summarizing the desperation people feel — the questions they need answered: “What draws people to Trump? A former MAGA insider explains.”
The crowd wanted to know — how do we break through to our MAGA relatives?
How do we get them back?
I’ve explained that MAGA is a community.
When I first joined MAGA, disillusioned with both political parties, I immediately felt a sense of belonging. That’s what held me there, long after I began having doubts. All the close friendships I’d made. The feeling of “us vs them” that bonded us close together. A belief that we were the “real” Americans.
Sound familiar?
The first time I considered leaving MAGA was during the botched COVID-19 pandemic response. Governor Ron DeSantis began bringing anti-vaccine conspiracists on stage during press conferences. I’d never been anti-vaccine. Is this what I was supporting?
I didn’t leave MAGA right away, but I began diversifying my news sources. That was critical. As I began to get information from different places, I realized that many of the claims I’d made were misleading, incorrect — and some were outright lies.
Trump’s claims about January 6 were the next red flag for me. I knew Trump had lost the election, fair and square. Did I really want to support a man who would overturn our democracy just to hold on to power? But the friendships I’d built were that strong. The community was that deep.
It wasn’t until the mass shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, that I hit my breaking point. It was the last betrayal I could endure. I said goodbye to my MAGA community and began trying to make amends for the harm I’d done.
Leaving MAGA is my attempt at making amends.
No one has to stay in MAGA because they have nowhere else to go. There is a community waiting for them — one that understands exactly what they’ve been through, that won’t shame them, and won’t let them walk that path alone.
That’s what the people in your life who are still in MAGA need right now. And that’s exactly what Leaving MAGA offers them.
That event in Delray Beach happened because people like you made it possible. The Palm Beach Post covered it because we showed up.
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Thanks for being with us on this odyssey,
Rich
