This J6er Rejected MAGA — And Trump's Pardon

"I don’t need his pardon. I don’t need his approval," says Jason Riddle. "Besides, it came from the man who started the riot."

Jason Riddle started drinking as a teenager, and he was an alcoholic for the next 15 years. Despite his drinking problem, he served about two years on a Navy cruiser. He also served in the Navy and Army Reserves following his active duty.

In 2015, Jason got a BA in political science from the University of Southern Connecticut. Jason was a Republican, and he originally backed Jeb Bush in the Republican presidential primary race.

But as he explains in his testimonial for Leaving MAGA, things changed for Jason while watching the candidate debate in which Megyn Kelly confronted Trump about calling women he didn’t like “fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals.” Trump interrupted and said, “Only Rosie O’Donnell.”

“That was when he took control of the crowd and I was really impressed by it,” Jason writes. “Every time after that when Trump got criticized for his behavior, I felt I related.”

Jason became a big MAGA follower, along with another veteran he befriended in college. “It became a part of my identity. I had a big red Cadillac, and I put a Make America Great Again bumper sticker on it. My friend and I started going to as many Trump rallies as we could.” He loved how he felt “an instant bond with total strangers” at the rallies.

Jason is gay. “I made a shirt that said LGBT for Trump. That got me on the news multiple times.”

He moved from Connecticut to New Hampshire in 2016. “After Trump won, I became a correctional officer, but my drinking got worse and they finally fired me. The more useless I became, the louder I became about Trump and MAGA.”

Jason “created my own little world of Trumpism…I had 5,000 Facebook followers, and they were egging me on, wrapping my ridiculous behavior in patriotism.”

By the time Joe Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 election, Jason was “a non-functioning alcoholic.” He knew Trump had lost, “but I honestly didn’t care.” When Trump called on people to protest in Washington, DC on January 6, for Jason and his friend “it wasn’t a question of whether we would go — we knew we were going…I convinced myself that was something I needed to do, to show support and see him as president one last time. I felt a vague sense of duty.”

Jason and two friends headed down to Washington. After taking an Uber to the wrong address, they finally ended up on the National Mall, and could hear Trump speaking from somewhere. They saw people walking towards the Capitol, so they thought Trump was speaking there.

“When we got to the first police barrier, my friends stopped, but I kept going,” Jason says. “I will note that I was not drinking that morning, so I don’t have that excuse.”

Seeing people storming the building, Jason was confused. “Wasn’t Trump speaking here? Is he inside? Is he being held hostage? I was also confused by the chants of ‘Hang Mike Pence.’ I didn’t have strong thoughts about him one way or the other.”

Jason entered the building. “I saw people destroying property, throwing papers around. It felt like we were fans of a team that had just won a championship and we were rioting after the game. Although I didn’t really know what was going on, I was euphoric, jubilant.”

He helped himself to some wine he found in a liquor cabinet in one lawmaker’s office. “I also picked up a leather-bound book that was on a desk — Senate Procedure. I felt I was taking a souvenir to remember the riot.”

After a while, a police officer told him to leave. “Outside, I was talking to a guy who saw the book and said, ‘I’ll give you 40 bucks for that!’ So I sold it to him.”

The man also told Jason someone had been shot in the Capitol. “That’s when all the jubilation and excitement, those immature feelings I was having, quickly turned into fear. I started looking at the police differently.”

Jason ended up running away from the Capitol, and his friends later picked him up.

The FBI arrested Jason in February 2021 and charged him with several misdemeanors. “I loved negative attention so much. I wanted to piss everyone off as much as I could; it almost became a mission for me. At one point, I posted on Facebook that my only regret was that we gave the Capitol back. That showed up in the Boston Globe.” He gave a TV interview in June 2021 in which he said he was going to run for office, although “I mixed up the names of my Congressmember and my State House member.”

A lot of Jason’s family stopped talking to him. Then later that year, a friend took her life. “I was so depressed about it that one day I got drunk, went to her home, and talked about taking my life. After that the court imposed a new condition on my probation: I had to use a breathalyzer twice a day. That was what I needed to finally get sober.”

Jason entered into a plea agreement in November 2021, pleading guilty to two misdemeanors: theft of government property (the book) and parading, demonstrating or picketing in the Capitol building. At his formal sentencing in April 2022, “I didn’t think I would go to prison; the judge was a Trump appointee and in a couple previous cases she had not sent January 6 rioters to jail. I went to court with bravado, wearing Trump socks.”

But the judge sentenced him to 90 days in prison, starting that August. He served at a minimum security federal prison in Massachusetts. While inside, “I became a folk hero, mostly among the correctional officers who cheered me on for having stormed the Capitol building. That made prison life very comfortable.”

But now that he was sober, “I started thinking rationally. Things Trump was saying no longer seemed rational.”

After he got out of prison, Jason signed up to run for Congress. His 2023 Ballotpedia survey avoided any mention of Trump “while still pushing the hero nonsense. I called myself ‘a recently released January 6th political prisoner with a message of hope…I believe there is room for compromise between Democrats and Republicans and I will fight to find common grounds for all Americans regardless of race, gender, or creed.’”

Jason said his “epiphany” about Trump and MAGA came in March 2023, when Trump asked people to come out to protest for him because he was about to get indicted for falsifying business records in the Stormy Daniels coverup.

“I thought, ‘How could he do that? There could be another riot, there could be another Ashli Babbitt. Someone else might get killed, how could you do this?’ Then it hit me. I said to myself, ‘Trump doesn’t know you, and the fact that you’re even thinking about his feelings proves you have an unhealthy obsession. And you’re an idiot for even believing he cares.’”

Jason tried to drop out of the Congressional race, but he had missed the deadline to do so. “I deleted all my social media and cut off contact with my Republican friends.”

His “campaigning” consisted of writing two letters to the New Hampshire Union Leader in which he attacked Trump. In a June 2024 letter Jason called himself “your local domestic terrorist,” and said Trump should go to prison for his role in January 6.

“After having actively participated in this fascist movement, I felt the need to do more.” Jason also gave money to the Kamala Harris campaign.

When Trump pardoned all the January 6 rioters on his first day in office, “I rejected the pardon. I don’t need his pardon. I don’t need his approval.”

Besides, Jason adds, “it came from the man who started the riot. I find his narrative of January 6 extremely insulting, not just to the police officers who died, but to the rioters who died. Ashli Babbitt was a veteran, someone who loved her country.”

He now considers Trump’s influence over his followers to be “scary. It sucks having been part of something so scary, and knowing that I so easily became an enthusiastic supporter.”

Jason’s story is just one of a dozen featured on the Leaving MAGA website. (I’m Editor-in-Chief.) We believe sharing the stories of those who found their way out of MAGA can help folks who are having doubts, or who want to leave but are afraid to lose their community.