Why Is Leaving MAGA So Difficult?

0:05You're listening to The Political Scene. I'm David Remnick. Early each week, we bring you a conversation from our episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

0:25This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. A recent poll, this one from NBC, found that only 30 % of the American public identifies with the MAGA movement. Now, that's very far from a national mandate, but MAGA has a huge influence and power over the entire electorate. To people outside the movement, the intense loyalty of the coalition in the face of endless scandals and political setbacks is sometimes absolutely confounding. Defections seem rare, and they come with the risk of reprisal, even reprisals from the president himself. Our producer, Adam Howard, spoke to someone who's trying to make defection easier.

1:10Back in 2016, Rich Logis was a man in search of a political movement. He was drawn to candidates who were looking to break the stranglehold of the two-party system, and he even voted for Ralph Nader more than once. When Donald Trump came along, he liked his economic rhetoric, but he especially liked that he was viewed as a threat by the establishment. Logis became a Make America Great Again true believer. He wrote MAGA articles, he hosted a MAGA podcast, he even contributed to the call script for the Trump campaign. But somewhere along the way, Logis hung up his red hat for good. He built a website called Leaving MAGA, where people like himself can share their stories and provide an outlet for friends and families struggling with MAGA believers.

1:54I talked with Rich Logis the other day about what it means to walk away from the MAGA movement.

2:04Rich, you once wrote that the Democratic Party is the most dangerous group in the history of our republic, foreign or domestic, more than Islamic supremacists, more than the Nazis. Did you really believe that, and what led you to that conclusion? Sadly, I did. And one of the reasons I believed it is because all I consumed was a very steady diet of MAGA media. It was the kind of media that I wrote for. I wrote numerous articles, freelanced, I had a professionally produced podcast. And I allowed myself to be influenced into believing that because it was what I was hearing in MAGA media. It was what I heard from those with whom I'd gotten close in MAGA.

2:49looking back on it, I know how delusional it all sounds. But at the time, what I wrote was what I believed. And there are other statements that I made also that I'm quite ashamed of to this day, having referred to Democrats, for example, as malignant. It's one of the reasons why I went back and apologized to so many of my longtime friends with whom I'd lost contact with who were blue voters because I needed to offer a mea culpa to them because of the way that I had thought about them and lumped them into that kind of group. What was it specifically about the Democratic Party that MAGA hates so much?

3:29Those in MAGA believe that liberalism is the source of all of our national ills, our political ills, are the source of hardships in each of their households. and there's a belief that liberal democracy has often failed many of us in the country, which in fairness, I think some of that concern is valid and is warranted. But the belief was and is that anything that even is perceived as liberalism should be considered a threat. And that could be anything ranging from Democrats are coming for our guns to children are being indoctrinated in the public schools to anything that has to do with electoral power, for example, that Democrats and liberals are trying to import foreigners and brown people to replace white people.

4:27These kinds of beliefs were what I trafficked in, and these kinds of falsehoods are what I propagated as a pundit and as a MAGA activist for many, many years. I think that there's a lot of trauma within the MAGA base, whether it's political or economic. And I think a lot of MAGA support, especially those kinds of beliefs, Adam, I believe that they are cries for help. I'm not qualified to make any kind of diagnosis. I'm not a therapist or a clinician, but there's a lot of pain within MAGA. And I think that a better question of asking what's wrong with you in MAGA, I think a better question is what happened to you?

5:08And I discovered through getting to meet people who left that they endured all kinds of trauma, whether it was in their households, their families, or their churches. When you were writing and doing the podcast and all that stuff, were you excising some personal demons of your own? Or what was your sort of personal goal and mission, and how did you view your role in the movement? it. I looked at the 2016 victory as a second kind of founding of the country. And I actually viewed Make America Great Again as something very progressive and very forward-facing. I was 39 years old in 2016. Make America Great Again was not nostalgic for me.

5:55I wasn't thinking about the good old days back in the 60s and 70s, I had become a parent for the first time in 2016, and I justified so much of my, and I became a parent for a second time in 2019, so I justified so much of what I wrote and said as doing it for my family. And many in MAGA would say exactly the same today with those who have children. They would say they're doing it for their family. But in looking back on how I approached this, I felt like I was not just a peripheral character in this. I viewed my role as being a true patriotic soldier in this existential battle of good versus evil.

6:44And anyone who was with us, we considered ourselves to be on the right side of history, and we were the real Americans. And anyone who was against us, they were on the wrong side of history, and they were the fake Americans. So what was the inflection point for you? Because you're going from having those very deeply held beliefs to breaking with MAGA. When did that happen? Why did that happen? How did you fall out of love with this movement? to paraphrase Hemingway my epiphany happened gradually and then suddenly all at once and there were numerous factors that eventually led me to leave there was Trump's mismanagement of the pandemic there were the stolen election lies I never believed that the election was stolen in 2020 there was January 6th there was my governor Ron DeSantis who platformed anti-vaxxers at his pressers.

7:40I was never an anti-vaxxer. I believe that the COVID vaccine was in fact a medical miracle. And the final straw for me was on May 24th, 2022, which was the Uvalde, Texas school shooting. And it took me an entire year to come to a realization that I was wrong and that so much of what I believed turned out to be false and inaccurate. And one of the ways that I came to that painful but liberating conclusion was I diversified my news and information sources. And I realized that Democrats were not our enemy and that liberalism was not an existential threat to us. And so after Uvalde, I quietly left MAGA.

8:33But there was something at the time that was really gnawing at me because I had always been so unapologetically public in my support for Trump. I felt that I needed to be public in my renunciation of the movement. And it was an exact day, August 30th, 2022. I wrote an article, I published it, and I said in there that I was wrong, that I was sorry for supporting Trump and MAGA, and that I wanted to apologize to anyone whom I may have hurt with my words and my deeds and my past actions. and the God's honest truth is that I never actually thought anybody would care. But it turned out that people did care, and the people who commented and responded to me almost instantaneously after publishing that were friends and family of those still in the thrall of MAGA, and they approached me with what was very tangible desperation in their voices and their messages because they so badly wanted to have a relationship again with their MAGA close one.

9:38And so after that year's time where I finally broke from MAGA, I spent the next many months recounting my story. And from recounting that story is how it was born from all of that, our organization, Leaving MAGA, which is now in our second year. And the core part of what we do with leaving MAGA is the storytelling. It's featuring others who, like me, left MAGA as well. What do you say to those who might argue, you know, why didn't you check out after birtherism or Access Hollywood or Charlottesville or the whole litany of transgressions? I think that's a fair criticism. And I didn't agree with the statements about women and Muslims.

10:24Looking back on it, the moment that my curiosity should have ceased and I should have run, was Trump's comments about the late John McCain. That was the moment when I should have said, I cannot support this person. But I so quickly got deep into MAGA that I justified the unjustifiable because I believe that even with those flaws, that Trump was still a much superior choice to Hillary and the Democrats. How was your departure from MAGA received by your friends in that community? One of the hardest parts of leaving MAGA was knowing that you're going to walk away from a second family and you're not going to have relationships with them anymore.

11:10It's hard to have relationships after you leave because now you went from being a MAGA soldier to now being the existential threat. Because remember, anyone who was not with us was wholly against us. so those with whom I'd grown close in MAGA my relationships they ended but what came of that though was I was able to create a new community with people who left I was able to also rejuvenate some of the relationships with people I'd lost contact with and in fact one who was very influential in my life said to me Rich I always knew that you'd come back and I feel like the lesson and the moral and all of that for those listening who have friends and family in MAGA, and I suspect most who are going to hear this do, don't give up on your close ones.

12:03Because if I left and the others, if we all left, it's possible for others to leave. So don't, don't feel like that those relationships are lost. They might be strained right now, but I don't believe that they need to be lost. And what would you say is the ultimate goal of the leaving MAGA site? You know, we are looking to just continue to feature people who left. What does it look like to leave MAGA? What does that exactly mean? Someone must take responsibility for their past actions and rhetoric. I don't believe that you can actually leave and you can't sever yourself from the movement unless one takes accountability.

12:45And taking accountability means reclaiming your individuality and reclaiming your humanity. And it means no longer engaging in the kind of language that you read earlier about what I said about Democrats. and as part of taking responsibility, as part of a reclamation of humanity and individuality, what happens is something that I refer to as becoming a born-again human being. And you realize that those people with whom you disagree are not evil, they are not your enemy, they are fellow Americans, and even more importantly, they're fellow human beings. But when being in MAGA, we lose sight of that humanity.

13:36And Donald Trump himself traffics in this kind of rhetoric all the time, right? You know, referring to people as animals and referring to others as vermin. This kind of language is what I celebrated when I was in MAGA until I realized to my own personal horror the kind of person I allowed myself to become. And what kind of people has the site been drawing? The people whom we feature, they have fully left. And there's a whole variety and diversity of people who left. We have a multiracial, multiethnic coalition. We have those who are gay Trump voters. We have, for example, one lady, Stefania, whose entree into MAGA was through Christian nationalism at her church.

14:25We have another, Jason Riddle, who served time for his role in January 6th, and he rejected Trump's pardon. There's another, we have James Hicks, who is a Black former MAGA supporter and so desperately sought community that there's a photograph that he shares of him as a Black man wearing a Confederate flag wristband. so this is somebody who got very very deep into MAGA because he so yearned for what it is that we all need which is a feeling of belonging and gathering and those who come to us don't have to become a democrat or a liberal or progressive we have those who are centrist those who are left those who are center-left and we even have some who still share some conservative believes.

15:20Rich Logis of Leaving MAGA, talking with Adam Howard. More in a moment.

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16:07Rich, we're having this conversation right now amidst a resurgence of the Jeffrey Epstein story in the headlines. The last time it was sort of the dominant story, there was this, maybe this was wishful thinking, but there was this expectation that this was one of the rare stories that might actually break up the MAGA movement or certainly create a fissure. Do you believe that that happened or do you believe that it's not actually going to move the needle in any real way? I think that this story is the flame that won't extinguish itself. And I'm actually very encouraged by the fact that there are congressional Republicans who are willing to buck the president and release more of these files.

16:49It's become increasingly more difficult with this story for us to conclude anything other than the fact that the president has not been honest about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. And I think for those in MAGA, there's a question to ask, an existential question. If Donald Trump is lying about this, what else is it that he might be lying about? When he says things that are just blatantly obviously untrue, like drug prices are coming down a thousand percent, or there is no inflation, or, you know, that the Epstein story is entirely a hoax, how do people in the MAGA movement reconcile that?

17:29Unfortunately, there are some in MAGA who who will support Trump no matter what. Even if there was irrefutable evidence that Trump knew exactly what Jeffrey Epstein was doing and did nothing about it, there are some people in MAGA who will remain devoted to the president. Why is that? Why do you think he personally inspires that level of devotion? And do you think any other figure in American political life could accomplish that? No, I don't think so. And I think that the reason that Trump has the kind of allegiance that he does with so many in MAGA is because he very wisely took MAGA, which was not new and novel.

18:18It was a form of right-wing politics that have existed for generations, but he branded it. And as part of the branding, he's the person who is the expert when it comes to this form of politics. So I think that so much of the sycophancy that people in MAGA have toward Donald Trump stems from the fact that he's an irreplaceable figure in MAGA. There are others who will eventually try to jockey for that position. But I think that when Trump is finally off the political scene, it's not that MAGA will go away, but it will unravel. And I think that there are people right now who recognize some of that unraveling.

19:03And, you know, I can name people like Nick Fuentes, who has taken to his audience to harshly censure the president. I think he's a person who recognizes that there's going to be a post-Trump MAGA and he wants to position himself as a leader. I think Charlie Kirk, rest in peace, was trying to do that with Turning Point. You mentioned them unraveling, but what does that really look like and what does that mean? There's going to be millions of people who are going to be at a political crossroads. They're not going to have a leader anymore. I don't think a J.D. Vance or a Marco Rubio, a Marjorie Taylor Greene, they just, they don't inspire MAGA the way that Donald Trump has and continues to.

19:45and what the election results recently show is that when trump is not on the ballot maga struggles and i don't see that changing he himself is the is the singular figure who drives mag and without him in the picture maga will weaken and as it weakens we need to be there to catch all those millions of people who might get attracted to whatever the next iteration of maga is What has it been like for you personally? How have you changed once you've left MAGA behind? And did you ever have moments of being tempted to go back? You know, leaving MAGA was good for my soul and my psyche. And while I have no regrets about leaving, I will admit that sometimes when I tell the story of my MAGA odyssey, even today, talking about my past, the feelings are conjured.

20:48those feelings of being welcomed and feeling like you're part of something and the exhilaration that comes from that those feelings haven't gone away it's just that i've i've now transferred them and i channel them in a different kind of way your organization you know isn't the first and won't be the last working against the mega movement what would you say to people who are sort of skeptical since the movement has endured and Trump is back in the White House and obviously, you know, MAGA politicians control both houses of Congress. What would you say to skeptics of both your transformation and then also your mission to turn people away from this?

21:34The fact is that we did make poor choices in the past. So I don't hold it against anyone who might be suspicious of our own transformations. What I would ask them, though, is to consider offering grace to anyone who legitimately changes and seeks penitence. And I think for leaving MAGA, we know that we're in the long haul, that this is an old saying that activism is a life sentence. But we're not just an anti-Trump organization. I feel like there's a plethora of those, and most of them have not fared very well. So we're not positioning ourselves as simply anti-Trump. We're positioning ourselves as pro-humanity and pro-human being and pro-change.

22:28Thank you so much for coming in and sharing your story with me. My pleasure, Adam. Thanks for having me. That's the Radio Hour's Adam Howard speaking with Rich Logis, the founder of Leaving MAGA I'm David Remnick and you can find The New Yorker all week long at newyorker.com and you can subscribe there as well, newyorker.com Thanks for joining us, see you next time

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23:32Thank you.