They voted for MAGA. Now they want out

Donald Trump’s promise of a new MAGA golden age for America is cracking from within. A decade into his rise to power, a growing number of his coalition’s supporters are not just tired — they are walking away.

Rich Logis, founder and CEO of Leaving MAGA, is a former MAGA podcaster and fundraiser, and the author of “One Betrayal Too Many: Why I Left MAGA.” In a speech at the 2024 Democratic National Convention supporting Vice President Kamala Harris, he reflected on his experience with MAGA and why he finally left. Now he is going a step further. To encourage defectors from Trump’s coalition, his organization is paying for billboards with messages such as “You are not alone,” “Welcome home” and “Find your new community.” The campaign, which is estimated to cost $20,000, launched April 15 in Texas, and will soon expand to Florida, Pennsylvania and Iowa.

Leaving MAGA, Logis told Raw Story, is experiencing “record-high” fundraising and more MAGA followers are reaching out to the organization “than ever before.” But what is driving them out? His answer is direct and clear: the president’s lies, which Logis described as “Trump’s toxic superpower.”

Other reasons are also piling up. The president’s tariffs, which have in part led to spiraling prices for food, housing, gas and other essentials. His broken promise to end “stupid foreign wars” — followed by a war of choice against Iran. The cruelty of Trump’s mass deportations, which are ensnaring and killing Americans. The Epstein files. Greed and blatant corruption. An image of the president as Jesus Christ, which he proudly shared on April 12 and, after widespread criticism, including from evangelicals, he deleted the following day.

“Moral injury” is playing an underappreciated role in why MAGA members are leaving the movement. They chose to support Trump, but that choice can no longer be reconciled with their belief that they are actually good people.

Some are apparently feeling an internal schism and regret when they see their neighbors — not the vile invaders and “poison in the blood” of the nation that Trump described — being taken away by federal immigration officers, their families broken apart. For others it is even more personal and tangible: a spouse, relative or friend who has been hurt by the president’s budget cuts and other policies.

In a Reddit post that has been widely circulated online, a self-described white 67-year-old Trump-supporting small business owner shared his shock and regret at watching his immigrant employees terrorized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “They are not employees to me. They are family,” he wrote. “It breaks my heart to see these fine families getting separated and having to live in fear, when all they want is to make an honest living.”

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution profiled two Argentine-Americans living in North Carolina who had supported Trump because of his tough stance against undocumented immigrants. But when Martín Verdi and Débora Rey’s son, a legal green card holder, was arrested by ICE and marked for deportation because he was on probation for a misdemeanor, they reassessed their commitment to MAGA. “This was a massive deception,” they told the newspaper. “We went from having a completely open door to closing it shut with 10 bolts.” The couple would spend nine hours driving from North Carolina to visit their son, who was being held at a detention center in south Georgia.

Emily Anderson of Duluth, Minnesota, supported Trump after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed the former president. While she continues to support Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement, she now regrets voting for Trump. “I feel so stupid, guilty, regretful — embarrassed is a huge one,” she told the Wall Street Journal. “I am absolutely embarrassed that I voted for Trump.” She called it “the biggest mistake of my life.”

In Florida, a viral video shows a woman, overwhelmed with emotion, pleading with an immigration judge to free her terminally ill father from ICE detention. Her appeals failed. She is now working to raise awareness for immigrants’ rights.

These are the red lines that have finally forced some MAGA people to leave the movement. “There’s still a lot of fealty to Trump within the MAGA community,” Logis told Raw Story, “but I think most people in MAGA have a red line, and when that line of demarcation is reached — when there’s one lie too many, when there’s one betrayal too many — it makes them start to wonder: if Trump is lying about one issue, is he lying about other issues?”

That red line is now being crossed for many other people.

Public opinion polls and focus groups conducted since Trump’s return to power show that his approval ratings have plummeted to historically low numbers — 33%, according to the most recent AP-NORC poll. The number of Trump supporters expressing disappointment in the president, or even regret for their vote in the 2024 presidential election, has also risen. A recent CNN poll found that 17% of those surveyed “declined to express confidence in their vote” or reported having “mixed feelings” — a 9% increase over the past year — and 5% admitted to regretting their vote. But as the poll notes, the latter number is deceptive. When respondents were asked about recasting their votes, only 84% replied they would vote again for the president.

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Polls also show that a growing number of “Trump curious” voters — Hispanics and young men, specifically — who helped put him in the White House in 2024 are abandoning MAGA in growing numbers.

These people are giving permission — symbolic but real — to others to join their exodus. Their message is being underscored by prominent right-wing influencers, including Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and former GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who have denounced Trump. 

Leaving is not easy. For the most committed MAGA members, the movement is all-encompassing. It is their identity, social world and way of life. For many true believers, it means alienating friends, family, neighbors, and leaving the right-wing echo chamber of conspiracism, lies and “mass radicalization.”

In a 2023 interview with Salon, Logis reflected on both the movement he left and how he now tries to reach those still inside it. “MAGA is a politically traumatic, exploitative mythology,” he said. “I will engage with MAGA voters — not by impugning them, but by showing them that realizing we were wrong, and acknowledging our errors, are traits of strength, not weakness. Castigating MAGA voters only strengthens their already rabid support of Trump.”

As positive of a development as this is, it’s important to note that MAGA voters did not just make a political error. They voted — some of them three times — for a leader who explicitly promised to hurt entire groups of people through his policies, and who has delivered grandly on that promise in his second term.

The families separated, neighbors deported, people abused and killed, governing institutions gutted, democracy degraded — these harms were not accidental. They must be named explicitly before anything that deserves to be called “national healing” and reunion can take place.

Moral reckoning and reconciliation are not opposites. They work in tandem. What Logis and Leaving MAGA are modeling is that acknowledging that you were wrong, deceived or — for the most honest — enthusiastically endorsed Trump’s political sadism and American carnage is not weakness. It is a foundation for doing better in the future.

The work ahead demands something much more difficult than one of America’s empty national conversations. It will demand rebuilding civic trust between people who have been on the opposite side of a deep moral and political chasm. This will be raw and uncomfortable because it will involve trying to build relationships between people who were hurt and who, in many cases, actively supported that pain. But in the end, these acts of maturity and vulnerability will be necessary if American democracy is to heal and be made stronger.

The post They voted for MAGA. Now they want out appeared first on Salon.com.