Introducing 'Leaving MAGA' — We Help People Find a Way Out
Trump's re-election won't slow us down.
In the midst of the insanity otherwise known as Donald Trump’s second stint as president-elect, I am here to offer a dollop of hope.
A little over a year ago I connected with Rich Logis, a Florida man who used to be heavily into MAGA and Donald Trump. He wrote op-eds, he had a podcast — he was all in. Then a series of events sparked questions and doubts, and Rich began a journey of discovery that led him to recognize that he had been lied to about pretty much everything.
Rich publicly left MAGA in the summer of 2022. But he felt so remorseful about the damage he felt he had inflicted on the country as a dedicated foot soldier in the movement that he wanted to do more. So we formed a nonprofit called Leaving MAGA. I am Rich’s consigliere and editor-in-chief. Here is our mission statement:
Empower others to leave MAGA and tell their stories.
Foster reconciliation with their friends and family.
Develop movement leaders to help others leave.
Our approach is predicated on the premise that millions of intelligent Americans — people like Rich — were hoodwinked into embracing MAGA, and in the process isolated themselves inside the movement’s information bubble: Fox, NewsMax, OAN, Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, etc. That in turn shut off their access to almost all independent journalism and research that puts the lie to the MAGA mythology.
Before Trump ran for president in 2015, Rich had always been a political independent, someone who felt the two major parties were “essentially two sides of the same coin: organizations more motivated by power, fame and riches than public service.” He voted for Ralph Nader in 2000.
Rich’s alienation grew when many in both parties backed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. When the Great Recession hit, Rich couldn’t believe the government had let such a crisis unfold. As campaigning began for the 2016 presidential election, it appeared to him that the nominees for the two major parties would be a Clinton (Hillary) and a Bush (Jeb).
“As I saw it, this was not just further proof of a uniparty,” Rich wrote in his e-book, My MAGA Odyssey. “[I]t would usher in a quasi-monarchy. In the span of less than three decades, we’d already had three Bush administrations and two Clinton administrations.”
After Trump entered the race, Rich realized that both major parties considered him a threat. He eventually concluded that “Trump was the candidate I’d been waiting for: Someone who not only was willing to obliterate the established political order, but seemed able to do so.”
Rich’s media diet became Fox, Rush Limbaugh, and a heavy dose of Brietbart, which “was filled with articles and commentary that fed my growing panic about the creeping socialism and communism that would take over the country if Trump lost…Breitbart taught me there were Illegal immigrants everywhere, and that some were terrorists and drug dealers…Soon, I believed that Clinton and the Democrats — in fact anyone who opposed Trump — posed existential threats to my life, livelihood, family, and nation.”
After Trump’s election, Rich fell deeper into the MAGA information bubble: he became a devoted reader of (and contributor of op-eds to) sites such as The Federalist, WorldNetDaily, American Greatness, and The Daily Caller. Meanwhile, his MAGA community grew. Tellingly, his fellow movement activists included accountants, attorneys, public sector workers, and Ivy League-educated professionals.
Rich didn’t believe everything Trump said. But he kept his doubts to himself. “Going public with even a mild rebuke of the president would mean exile from MAGA,” he wrote. “You would be branded as an apostate and a traitor to the cause.”
Rich didn’t think the 2020 election was stolen, but after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, he adopted the narrative that “the Democrats and most of the national media had hyperbolically elevated January 6 to a position of historical importance equal to Pearl Harbor and Sept. 11.” He stopped paying attention to coverage of the insurrection.
Oddly enough, it was actions by another politician — Ron DeSantis — that started Rich on his journey out of MAGA. When the pandemic hit, DeSantis initially was an advocate of public health measures and a staunch proponent of the vaccine. Then his position started to change. DeSantis appeared alongside people who falsely claimed the vaccine could change a person’s RNA and was more likely to kill or injure someone than Covid.
“I couldn’t get out of my mind the images of desperate parents of Covid-stricken children in intensive care units, and of the parents of kids who were in morgues,” Rich wrote. “I kept thinking, what if that had been one of my girls?”
He felt he had run “face first into a brick wall. I didn’t understand what was happening.” That led him to take a fateful step: “I returned to reading outlets in what I once categorized as the DMIC — the Democrat Media Industrial Complex: the New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and even The Guardian of London.”
As he learned more and his doubts grew, Rich educated himself about Jan. 6. He had always dismissed the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers as “fringe hobbyists.” But his research led him to the realization that the militias “were not irrelevant groups. That’s why Trump did not renounce them. They were his allies, and they had the blessing of the most powerful person in the world. That meant they had been my allies, as well.”
Rich felt complicit in the Jan. 6 violence. “I felt rage, confusion, shock, and, most acutely, shame. I deserved to be inextricably linked to the domestic terrorist groups I had once yawned at.”
The school massacre in Uvalde, Texas was the last straw. Rich grew incensed as he “listened to one Republican politician after another prattle on about mental health and hardening school doors.” He had reached his breaking point, but it still took him a full year to renounce MAGA. He calls it “my Year of Heaven and Hell.” Rich wrote: “The true challenge lay in cutting myself off from what had become my community. It was excruciating to even consider it. I had become wholly invested in MAGA with all of my being. It was my family, my purpose. My identity and social status depended on it.”
Rich’s story teaches us a lot about how people get lured into MAGA, why they stay, and how hard it is to leave even when the scales have fallen from their eyes.
But they can leave. And that’s where Leaving MAGA comes in. I know more than a few will dismiss us as naive idealists fighting a Sisyphean battle. To be sure, we are under no illusions about the enormity of the task we’re taking on. But we are certain there are a lot of people in MAGA who are having doubts, and for one reason or another don’t feel they can act on those doubts.
We’re still in our early days, but so far six other people who left the movement have told us their stories for the Leaving MAGA website. I’ll introduce you to them in future posts. (We’re also going to start sharing the stories of people who have friends and/or family in MAGA.)
You can catch Rich’s videos on the MeidasTouch Network on YouTube. The interviews are also on our podcast.