In this ongoing series, Logis, a former Donald Trump supporter and founder of Perfect Our Union, answers our readers' questions about leaving the MAGA movement. Send your questions to AskRich@thefulcrum.us.
A reader asks: How can I accept into the conversation about the future of our country those who support a candidate and movement that disavows our own Constitution, does not believe in the peaceful transfer of power and proposes ending elections?
Rich responds: I understand why you — and many others — regard MAGA as anti-democratic. But as someone who spent seven years interacting with MAGA voters on a daily basis, I can attest to the fact that many of them aspire to achieve the same goals as those who oppose Donald Trump: more economic opportunity, holding the corrupt accountable, upholding our constitutional rights and more.
Trump voters sincerely believe that he and the MAGA movement are the elixir to a variety of real and perceived economic, political, social and cultural ills.
I certainly understand the impulse to shun them. I fervently believe, however, that efforts to continue perfecting our union and democracy mandate that we reach out to those in MAGA, in a non-judgmental and empathetic way, to empower them to start questioning the movement’s myths.
I also want to acknowledge that there’s nothing easy about doing this. There are several different ways to start the conversation. Rather than debating policy, you could open up a respectful back-and-forth by asking something such as:
“I recognize some of the reasons why you want another Trump presidency. Do you recognize some of the reasons why others don’t want another Trump presidency?”
They are more than likely to have thoughts about that; once they respond, you’ve created an opening for a discussion that the Trump voter might never have had. Continue to gently probe their beliefs without being confrontational.
Remember, how we challenge is key; acknowledging another’s beliefs does not mean concurrence. The purpose isn’t to polemicize; it’s to dialogue. Inquire as to what the Trump voter’s values and beliefs were before 2016; ask — but don’t demand — what it might take to change their mind; if they might be overlooking pertinent facts; if their worldview might be a bit too black-and-white for a multi-colored world. Relatability can be found here, as all of us have our own blind spots.
Again, I know none of this is easy. But please consider the possibility that most MAGA and Trump voters are good and decent people. That’s what I believe after having spent years congregating, and breaking bread, with them.
If you have friends and/or relatives who remain MAGA supporters, try to separate your respect and love for the person from your opposition to Trump. Think about your relationship with this person before Trump arrived. As a MAGA activist, I severed ties with many of those closest to me because of how they voted. When I left MAGA and apologized to them, almost all of them accepted my apology.
The relationships I have lost, and then repaired, are more loving and enriching today than before I joined MAGA; those closest to me never gave up on me, and I implore those with friends and family who remain in the thrall of MAGA not to give up on them. Over time, I anticipate that more Trump supporters will have their own remorseful epiphany about MAGA; when they do, be there to help them work through the difficult process of renouncing their deeply-held beliefs. Welcoming them back — free of judgment and aspersions — will bring an inner peace to all.
A reader asks: What or who propelled you to diversify your news and opinion sources? I have widened mine to include more conservative sources to get a broader window on issues important to me. A conservative friend that I trust influenced me.
Rich responds: Your friend is very wise! My MAGA community was tight-knit, but insulated from any media and news that rebutted or refuted our sincerely held beliefs; we treated such information as Pravda-like enemy propaganda. In future columns I’ll go into more detail about why I left MAGA, but suffice to say It took me an entire year to leave, from the summer of 2021 to the summer of 2022. I refer to it as “my year of Heaven and Hell.” Leaving MAGA was a very individualized process for me — a personal reckoning.
When I began having doubts about my support for Trump and MAGA, I experienced a surge of curiosity that led me to discover views and opinions that challenged the false and/or distorted storylines and punditry I consumed. I rekindled the voracious inquisitiveness I'd developed years earlier as a newspaper reporter. In addition to diversifying my sources – which include centrist and moderate, left-leaning and right-leaning outlets – my interest in history (especially American) dramatically increased after leaving MAGA; I came to realize how inextricably linked the past and present are.
Knowledge is liberating, and ignorance is oppressive.
A reader asks: You said you left MAGA in 2022 when you became disillusioned. I imagine you still like some things about Trump. If you were able to pick the next president, what qualities in Trump would you like him or her to have and which ones would you not?
Rich responds: Two lasting achievements of the Trump administration were: the Veterans Choice Program Extension and Improvement Act, which expanded access to medical care for our heroic servicemen and women, and Operation Warp Speed, which accelerated production and distribution of the Covid-19 vaccine – a "medical miracle," as former Vice President Mike Pence aptly described it.
Though I don't believe there is a singular foundational characteristic of a successful, positively influential leader, if I had to pick one quality it would be: genuine care for others. George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden come to mind. We entrust our elected officials with immense power; no one will ever get everything perfect and disappointments are inevitable. A leader worthy of studying and emulating is one who takes responsibility for failure (even if the leader wasn't the cause), and gives the credit to the team for wins.
I don't believe effective leaders surround themselves with unapologetic "yes” men and women, as Trump did. Important decisions that have potential ramifications for our nation, and perhaps the world, mandate a potpourri of ideas, so the leader can find a compromise that incorporates an amalgam of the best suggestions. Leaders with bold visions do not easily succumb to the temptation to scrap their entire blueprint after a temporary setback.
Eric Trump, the newly appointed ALT5 board director of World Liberty Financial, walks outside of the NASDAQ in Times Square as they mark the $1.5- billion partnership between World Liberty Financial and ALT5 Sigma with the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell, on Aug. 13, 2025, in New York City.
Why does the Trump family always get a pass?
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche joined ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday to defend or explain a lot of controversies for the Trump administration: the Epstein files release, the events in Minneapolis, etc. He was also asked about possible conflicts of interest between President Trump’s family business and his job. Specifically, Blanche was asked about a very sketchy deal Trump’s son Eric signed with the UAE’s national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon.
Shortly before Trump was inaugurated in early 2025, Tahnoon invested $500 million in the Trump-owned World Liberty, a then newly launched cryptocurrency outfit. A few months later, UAE was granted permission to purchase sensitive American AI chips. According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, “the deal marks something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.”
“How do you respond to those who say this is a serious conflict of interest?” ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked.
“I love it when these papers talk about something being unprecedented or never happening before,” Blanche replied, “as if the Biden family and the Biden administration didn’t do exactly the same thing, and they were just in office.”
Blanche went on to boast about how the president is utterly transparent regarding his questionable business practices: “I don’t have a comment on it beyond Trump has been completely transparent when his family travels for business reasons. They don’t do so in secret. We don’t learn about it when we find a laptop a few years later. We learn about it when it’s happening.”
Sadly, Stephanopoulos didn’t offer the obvious response, which may have gone something like this: “OK, but the president and countless leading Republicans insisted that President Biden was the head of what they dubbed ‘the Biden Crime family’ and insisted his business dealings were corrupt, and indeed that his corruption merited impeachment. So how is being ‘transparent’ about similar corruption a defense?”
Now, I should be clear that I do think the Biden family’s business dealings were corrupt, whether or not laws were broken. Others disagree. I also think Trump’s business dealings appear to be worse in many ways than even what Biden was alleged to have done. But none of that is relevant. The standard set by Trump and Republicans is the relevant political standard, and by the deputy attorney general’s own account, the Trump administration is doing “exactly the same thing,” just more openly.
Since when is being more transparent about wrongdoing a defense? Try telling a cop or judge, “Yes, I robbed that bank. I’ve been completely transparent about that. So, what’s the big deal?”
This is just a small example of the broader dysfunction in the way we talk about politics.
Americans have a special hatred for hypocrisy. I think it goes back to the founding era. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in “Democracy In America,” the old world had a different way of dealing with the moral shortcomings of leaders. Rank had its privileges. Nobles, never mind kings, were entitled to behave in ways that were forbidden to the little people.
In America, titles of nobility were banned in the Constitution and in our democratic culture. In a society built on notions of equality (the obvious exceptions of Black people, women, Native Americans notwithstanding) no one has access to special carve-outs or exemptions as to what is right and wrong. Claiming them, particularly in secret, feels like a betrayal against the whole idea of equality.
The problem in the modern era is that elites — of all ideological stripes — have violated that bargain. The result isn’t that we’ve abandoned any notion of right and wrong. Instead, by elevating hypocrisy to the greatest of sins, we end up weaponizing the principles, using them as a cudgel against the other side but not against our own.
Pick an issue: violent rhetoric by politicians, sexual misconduct, corruption and so on. With every revelation, almost immediately the debate becomes a riot of whataboutism. Team A says that Team B has no right to criticize because they did the same thing. Team B points out that Team A has switched positions. Everyone has a point. And everyone is missing the point.
Sure, hypocrisy is a moral failing, and partisan inconsistency is an intellectual one. But neither changes the objective facts. This is something you’re supposed to learn as a child: It doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing or saying, wrong is wrong. It’s also something lawyers like Mr. Blanche are supposed to know. Telling a judge that the hypocrisy of the prosecutor — or your client’s transparency — means your client did nothing wrong would earn you nothing but a laugh.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.