A Teenager's Journey Into — And Out Of — MAGA

A son of Mexican immigrants, Steve Vilchez fell so deeply into MAGA that he thought troops should "shoot people trying to cross into the US."

I’m re-surfacing this post from January because it’s so important that we consider how to reach young people who fall for MAGA’s lies. —PG

Steve Vilchez was a few weeks’ short of his 13th birthday when Donald Trump was elected president in 2016. He had heard a lot of bad things about Trump, so he was nervous.

In his testimonial published on the Leaving MAGA website (I’m Editor-in-Chief), Vilchez says he resolved to be open-minded. But “[m]y teenage brain told me that to be open minded didn’t mean listening to both sides; it meant I should reject what I used to listen to, and start listening to Trump and his supporters.”

So he turned away from CNN, MSNBC, Vice, Vox, and his other sources of news, and embraced Fox, Newsmax, OAN, Turning Point USA, and others: “anything or anyone who claimed to be pro-Trump and America first.”

Not surprisingly, the young teenager became “a full-throated MAGA American, very pro-Trump. I embraced anything Trump said.” Even though his parents are Mexican immigrants, “I became pro-border wall, I thought Mexico should pay for it, and that we should even send troops and shoot people trying to cross into the US.”

Vilchez says he supported MAGA policies “even if I thought they were morally wrong. I knew I believed in contradictory things, especially on immigration. I never had an explanation for it. I told myself it made sense to do what Trump wanted while finding a way to protect my mom from his policies.”

As he moved into high school, Vilchez became an outspoken MAGA advocate, and “friends I’d known for a long time stopped talking to me.”

When the pandemic hit, the now 16-year-old Vilchez “became very anti-COVID vax (while still supporting all other vaccines).” And while “I didn’t entirely believe them, I gave credence to the conspiracy theories about Bill Gates and microchips being placed in the COVID vaccine so we could be tracked.”

Some things gave him pause, including “when Trump started talking about injecting bleach and shining a light through the body as ways to fight COVID. I’m a big believer in science, so I knew those things weren’t true.” And Vilchez knew “thousands of years of data” disproved Trump’s claim that climate change is a hoax. “But I was so deep into MAGA that I went along with what he said.”

Expecting Trump to win reelection in 2020, Vilchez was shocked by the results. As Trump and his followers yelled fraud, “I went into full election denialism.” He refused to budge even as every audit, recount and court case confirmed Joe Biden’s victory: “I wondered if all the Republican state and local election officials and the Trump-appointed judges had faked their loyalty to Trump to get their jobs, and now that they had their jobs they were showing their true colors.”

Vilchez began seriously questioning his MAGA beliefs after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. “I couldn’t think of anything to defend Trump on this … By the end of that day, I felt Republicans should be ashamed of themselves. We’re a democracy and we should fight to continue being a democracy.”

A few months later, Vilchez decided he needed to become “truly open-minded. By this point, he understood that “to be open-minded means getting my information from a variety of sources.” He cut back on his right-wing media outlets, and returned to CNN and NBC.

While he still considered himself part of MAGA, Vilchez’ views on a variety of issues started shifting to the left, initially on immigration and health care. “I tried to look at things from the standpoint of morality. I mean, these are human beings we’re talking about.”

Vilchez found himself shifting left on LGBTQ rights, guns, and taxes. “And yet I still backed MAGA and Trump!” He fully broke away from the movement after the 2022 midterm elections. “Trump endorsed so many election deniers across the country, and when they lost, they again claimed fraud. After what happened on Jan. 6, I knew we couldn’t have that happen again. That was it — I was done.”

Today, Vilchez is a political independent. Sadly, most of the friends he’d lost over his joining MAGA have not resumed their friendships with him. “It doesn’t bother me that much,” he writes. “If they were really my friends they would have stayed with me regardless of my beliefs.”

Vilchez is majoring in Biology Teacher Education at Illinois State University. “And I’m looking forward to my new life beyond MAGA. I feel I’ve learned how to truly think for myself — it’s liberating!”