Why I Left MAGA In 2020

The real, honest truth

If you know me, you know that I used to be a Republican. And I didn’t just vote Republican—I loved Donald Trump. I thought he was hilarious—hateful rhetoric and all. I thought liberals were soft, and their outrage made me laugh. They weren’t in on the joke. I was.

Somewhere along the way, I lost any empathy for people who didn’t talk, vote, or live the way I thought they should. They didn’t understand what it meant to be an American. But I did. Of course, that’s only because I was white, blonde, and raised in a wealthy suburban neighborhood in Northern Virginia. Why couldn’t they just be like me?

But the way I thought wasn’t how I was born. No one is born with hate or disdain. It’s taught—passed down when we’re young and impressionable. That’s why so many people end up parroting the politics of their parents. Because most people’s worldviews aren’t shaped by facts—they’re shaped by the people closest to them.

As a teenager, I spent hours in the car listening to conservative talk radio—Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Mark Levin. I watched Bill O’Reilly’s nightly show. That might sound like a typical lineup for a 65-year-old, but I was 14.

If you can imagine what it’s like to be a 14-year-old hearing that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, was secretly part of the Muslim Brotherhood, and had wormed his way into the presidency to destroy America from within—then you can imagine what it was like to be me. The conspiracy theories ran deep: Michelle Obama was secretly a man. Sandy Hook was a hoax. The grieving families were just crisis actors.

And I believed it. I was horrified. How could the Democrats have let this happen?

I put my fear into action. I started volunteering and knocking doors for Ken Cuccinelli’s gubernatorial campaign in 2012—ironically, against Terry McAuliffe, who I’d end up working for nearly a decade later. I became Vice President of my high school’s Young Republicans chapter. I interned at the Arlington County GOP headquarters.

I was all in.

When the 2016 election rolled around, I was ready to fight. My candidate was Ted Cruz and I couldn’t stand Donald Trump, at first. I thought he was vulgar and unserious, and I was sure that Ted Cruz was a man of principle (yes, I know what you’re thinking). But somewhere along the way, I started laughing at Trump’s insults. I told myself it was just entertainment. I told myself he was just trolling the libs. It didn’t matter that he mocked people with petty nicknames, insulted women, or used racist rhetoric because he was going to shake things up. Drain the swamp. Burn it all down.

And I loved it.

I proudly voted for Donald Trump in November 2016—and just a couple months later, I drove up from college to attend his inauguration in D.C.

When scandals hit, I buried my head in the sand. When the first impeachment happened, I shrugged it off. It was a witch hunt, right? I was addicted to the outrage cycle. Every liberal meltdown felt like a victory. I thought, “We’re finally winning.” But winning what, exactly?

That’s how far I had fallen. Not into conservatism, but into cruelty masquerading as politics.

Growing up, I had been positive I wanted to work in politics as an adult, but as I witnessed more of the Trump circus, I wasn’t so sure anymore. When my best friend in college told me she was going to work on Capitol Hill for a Republican congressman after graduation, I cheered her on. But when she encouraged me to do the same, I told her that I didn’t think I wanted to be involved in politics right now.

I got a job in technology sales (fun stuff) after I left college, then the pandemic hit in 2020. I was working from home, wondering when life was going back to normal, while I watched as the president I once admired treated a global health crisis like a PR problem. He downplayed the virus, mocked masks, pushed bleach and hydroxychloroquine, and turned lifesaving public health measures into a partisan culture war. Instead of leading, he lied. Instead of uniting the country, he divided it even further. People were scared, hospitals were overwhelmed, and Trump was busy tweeting and blaming everyone but himself.

That was when I really started to question everything.

Not just Trump—but the entire conservative movement I’d bought into for years. Because the truth was, he didn’t just hijack the Republican Party. He exposed it for what it was. And what he showed wasn’t pretty. The party of “family values” had rallied behind a man with multiple affairs and history of hanging out with sexual predators. The party of “fiscal responsibility” was handing out tax cuts for billionaires and running up record deficits. The party of “law and order” cheered as he tried to overturn an election and unleashed a mob on the Capitol.

It turned out they didn’t care about character. Or integrity. All those values I thought we stood for? Nowhere to be found.

If any of them did care, it didn’t matter. They couldn’t stand up to him. Not even when he was killing thousands of Americans everyday by refusing to encourage mask-wearing during a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.

Once I saw that, I couldn’t unsee it.

So I started asking myself questions I didn’t want to answer. Why was it so easy for me to laugh when people were upset? Why did I see empathy as weakness? Why did I think people who didn’t grow up like me deserved less?

Those questions didn’t get answered overnight. But I started to listen—to the people I used to make fun of. I started to see who was actually fighting for democracy, for equality, for the truth. And it wasn’t the side I was on.

I spent months during the pandemic reading books, researching, and recalculating where it all went wrong. Those conspiracy theories about Barack and Michelle Obama weren’t true. They were actually just….racist. The one about Sandy Hook? A heinous lie. It was easier for Republicans to make up an alternate reality than to live in the one that they created—the one where guns were more accessible than healthcare.

The values I thought the GOP stood for turned out to be nothing more than platitudes. They love to preach “family values,” but when it comes to actually supporting families—through things like paid leave, affordable childcare, birth control, IVF, or adoption rights—they’re nowhere to be found. They don’t walk the walk. They just talk.

Democrats, on the other hand, are doing the work. They’re the ones pushing to make family planning accessible, expand paid leave, fund public schools, lower childcare costs, and actually reduce the number one killer of kids in America: gun violence. Meanwhile, Republicans are busy banning books and attacking LGBTQ children. If you care about families, the choice isn’t even close.

If you care about true religious freedom—the kind that protects your right to worship how you want and your neighbor’s right not to be forced into your beliefs—the choice isn’t close. If you care about raising the minimum wage, capping prescription drug costs, and expanding access to mental health care—the choice isn’t close. Democrats are the only ones fighting for these things.

Hell—at this point if you care about the cost of groceries, national security, and lowering the national debt, Republicans are definitely not your party.

So no, I’m not a Republican anymore—and I never will be again. Because once you see the truth, you can’t unsee it. It isn’t about left or right anymore. It’s about reality. It’s about who’s actually trying to solve problems and who’s just making noise. I used to laugh at the outrage, but now I understand why people are angry—because they should be. I should’ve been too.

You don’t have to stay loyal to a party that isn’t loyal to you. I got out, and I’m so glad I did. Not because Democrats are perfect, but because they’re trying. They’re fighting for families, for freedom, for fairness, for truth. And in this moment, that fight is everything.