When I was a MAGA believer, I told myself I was fighting for freedom. I was sure the country needed a revolution — a clean break from the political order I believed had failed us.
It took me years to understand what I was really chasing: belonging.
Like their liberal and moderate neighbors, most people inside the MAGA world feel that something in America is off. But once your identity is welded to a movement, admitting you were wrong doesn’t feel like a simple change of opinion. It feels like losing your community, your purpose, and the sense that you matter.
I know that because I lived it. For years I was so deep in MAGA that it strained my marriage and my friendships. I became a pundit, wrote op-eds, hosted a podcast — all in the hope that I might earn Donald Trump’s attention and approval.
My path out began when Ron DeSantis, the governor of my state, started giving a platform to anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists. That pushed me to reexamine what had really happened at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. What I felt wasn’t abstract disagreement. It was shock, grief, guilt, rage at myself, and shame.
For a full year, I drifted in and out of MAGA. Part of me couldn’t accept the casual shrugging off of avoidable deaths, the lies, or the rationalizing of political violence. Another part of me still felt the movement’s pull — because leaving meant walking away from the people who had become my world.
Then came Uvalde. After that massacre, I quietly stepped away. Three months later, I went public with my renunciation of MAGA and my opposition to Trump.
Because I’ve been inside it, I think I understand MAGA Americans well. My gut tells me many of them would admit that Trump isn’t an honest man. But MAGA is bigger than Trump now, even if he remains its centerpiece. It’s a culture that offers recognition to people who feel ignored and disrespected. In a warped way, shared grievance and isolation became the glue. For many, MAGA isn’t just politics — it’s a cry for help. Some readers will disagree, but I believe most MAGA supporters are not monsters. They’re people who’ve been manipulated, exploited, and led astray.
And there’s a breaking point. Almost everyone in MAGA has a moment when the cruelty, chaos, or moral rot becomes too much to keep excusing. Many are nearing that line right now, nearly a year into Trump’s disastrous second term. The moments of clarity come in different ways, and not always through policy debates. But they do come.
So don’t give up on the people you love who are still loyal to MAGA. I say that because the people closest to me didn’t give up on me.
Some MAGA-aligned Americans are living through an existential crisis as they slowly realize how many lies they’ve absorbed. There are the tariffs, the inhumane immigration policies, the open erosion of constitutional rights — and the story that won’t go away: the files tied to Jeffrey Epstein, the late child sex trafficker. We still don’t know exactly how close Trump was to Epstein’s crimes, but it was likely closer than he’s admitted.
When doubts surface, we have choices. We can meet people with empathy — or we can shame and exile them. Leaving MAGA requires accepting responsibility for past actions and rhetoric. If someone is ready for that kind of accountability, are we ready to welcome them?
Is online judgment really worth it?
One of the biggest reasons people stay in MAGA is fear. Not only fear of losing their community, but fear that the wider world will reject them forever for having been part of it. That judgment — real or imagined — keeps people stuck. I felt it myself. Walking away meant risking the loss of what had become my de facto family.
Liberals aren’t wrong about MAGA’s dangers, but they don’t always make the exit easy. Ridicule and moral superiority slam shut the door to honest dialogue. Empathy and understanding — hard as they are — crack that door open.
I’m convinced many liberals would welcome those who leave MAGA. But the loudest voices online often offer only contempt. And online life amplifies the worst instincts in all of us. Outrage is the currency. Misinformation and conspiracy thinking spread fast, soaking into conversations like mold after a flood.
Social media’s explosion around Barack Obama’s election permanently altered our political culture. Politics became performance. Outrage became identity. We saw the Tea Party and the surge of anti-Obama animus grow in ecosystems designed to turn conflict into community.
How MAGA took root
People are drawn to MAGA because they feel left behind — economically, culturally, and politically. When people experience loss, humiliation, or invisibility, they become vulnerable to movements that offer simple villains and a ready-made tribe.
Liberals and anti-Trump Republicans have sometimes fueled that resentment. Phrases like “uneducated” or “flyover country” may be tossed off casually, but they land as proof of contempt. Many MAGA supporters were already hurting — from economic instability, political betrayal, and the sense of being forgotten. That pain made them easier prey for propaganda and for influencers who reframed real disaffection into a grand “elite” conspiracy.
Inside MAGA, curiosity is discouraged. Hostility toward science, higher learning, and expertise is woven into the culture. That doesn’t mean supporters lack intelligence or integrity. It means the movement punishes any question that threatens its myths. MAGA isn’t the only community trapped in a silo, but few are sealed as tightly. It’s an environment where conformity is rewarded, and dissent is treated as betrayal.
When I was immersed in MAGA, I didn’t see how outrage was shaping me. I was angry almost all the time — enraged at someone or something, living in constant panic and dread, convinced that liberalism had ruined the nation and only “we” could save it. What I couldn’t recognize then was simple: the outrage wasn’t a side effect. It was the control mechanism.
The work ahead won’t be easy
I don’t believe America’s divides are permanent. But healing starts only when we stop treating each other as enemies and start looking for the human need beneath the anger — the need to belong, to feel safe, to feel seen.
That’s the heart of my organization, Leaving MAGA. We host weekly support groups for people trying to cope with what MAGA has done to those they love. We grieve what’s been lost and practice ways to keep the door open for a loved one’s possible return. Our next step, we hope, is to offer similar spaces for people who are beginning to question their own MAGA involvement.
This work isn’t mostly about winning arguments. It’s about confronting the loneliness and fear that MAGA feeds on.
We use communication strategies developed by Julianna Forlano, a therapist and transformational coach who has taught compassion-based conflict tools for decades. She understands how hard compassion can feel when the stakes are personal.
“When people you love are voting to take away your bodily autonomy and your dignity, showing compassion can feel impossible,” she says. “In our groups we hold space for that. Nonviolence doesn’t mean passivity or self-erasure. It means refusing to let cruelty decide who you become. Setting boundaries, speaking truth, and protecting yourself are acts of compassion — for you and for the world you’re trying to mend.”
Forlano offers a few practical reminders for navigating these relationships:
Remember to breathe. Take space before you respond. Breathing isn’t just a pause; it’s a boundary. It pulls you out of reactive chaos and back into yourself. Sometimes the best response is no response. The question in the breath isn’t “What do I say?” but “Who am I right now?”
Remember to let go. MAGA can function like an addiction. Your loved one may be caught in an outrage cycle, chasing the next hit of indignation. What’s coming at you isn’t fully them; it’s the sickness. Don’t take it personally. You didn’t cause it, and you can’t cure it alone.
Remember to stay active. Stop spending your life trying to control what you can’t change — including someone else’s ideology. Instead, redirect that energy into places where it can grow something real: your community, your art, your organizing, your relationships that are still healthy. Build the world you want. Leave room for the relationships that might one day find their way back.
Remember to grieve. We have to mourn what’s been lost — trust, closeness, the illusion of safety — before we can rebuild. Grief isn’t weakness. It’s the soil where something new can take root. And as these groups remind people again and again: you are not alone.
