'You were fooled': Disillusioned Trump supporters speak out on breaking away from MAGA

[0:00] Joining me now, Media Matters President Angela Corazon, Amanda Carpenter is still with me, [0:04] along with political strategist and content creator Sawyer Hackett, and MS Now's David [0:08] Noriega, who's been covering fractures in the MAGA movement in Trump's second term. [0:13] Sawyer, I thought this was supposed to be a party for the country. Why does it seem like it's a [0:16] party for him? Yeah, I think Tom Nichols had it exactly right there. I mean, this is, I think [0:19] great presidents would use this as an opportunity to unify the country and to elevate the country, [0:24] really. And Donald Trump has clearly just used it to divide America and elevate himself. [0:29] And it's really to his detriment, because it's such an opportunity to kind of bring the country [0:33] together behind kind of shared history, shared ideals. And instead, it just becomes a political [0:38] rally. And like everything he touches, it just turns to a complete hacky mess. I mean, the reflecting [0:43] pool with the ballroom, you know, Iran, everything he touches just completely turns into a cheap [0:49] looking mess. And that's exactly what you saw in that event. You have states pulling out of America's [0:53] 250th anniversary celebration. You have big musical artists essentially conned into [0:58] performing there only to realize that this is going to be a MAGA rally. It's really just kind [1:03] of a pathetic, it's a pathetic turn of events, which should be a rallying point for the country. [1:09] I want to be clear, Amanda, it could be easy to act as though we're talking about like some [1:11] groomzilla here who's gone too crazy on a party. But this ties back to all the democracy work that [1:17] you were doing. He is trying to make the nation's capital, the country in his image. [1:22] Yeah, this cap, the capital belongs to us. It is for everyone. And the fact that he is doing a Trump [1:29] MAGA rally on July 4th really puts into focus. But anyone that visits Washington, D.C. right now can [1:36] see how it has changed. Yes, there's now a giant tarp over the Kennedy Center because he got his name [1:41] stripped off, but he still put his name on it. He put his name on the Institute of Peace, which is right [1:46] by that building. He has wrecked the reflecting pool, which is just around the road. You drive down [1:51] Pennsylvania Avenue and you see federal buildings with his face and banners covering it. He wants to [1:58] put that gaudy arc to Trump, which I call the Eagle Arch, in the middle of the view between Lincoln and [2:04] the Arlington National Cemetery, which was designed so people could reflect on the Civil War and all the [2:11] sacrifices that were made in this country to free it from slavery. And he wants to put himself [2:15] in the middle of it. And none of this belongs to him. I mean, this is why it's such a gross abuse [2:20] of power. It's not just, well, Trump is an egomaniac. None of it belongs to him. The capital [2:26] city is ours. He did not get permission to do any of this, to spend any of this money. And it's just [2:32] being thrown in our faces on our nation's 250th birthday party. There was this detail from the new [2:38] Haberman-Jonathan Swan book, Regime Change. It says, quote, [2:41] Privately Trump has also mused about the possibility of topping the arc with a replica of his own fist [2:47] raised as he cried, fight, fight, fight, after a 2024 assassination attempt. Angelo, who wants that? [2:54] I mean, he does. And obviously people that want to curry favor with him, right? I mean, [2:59] when I read that part of the book, the first thing I thought about is it's not that fantastic [3:04] because he already has a 22-foot Don Colossus statue of Trump-der-all. So he's done something [3:10] similar already, which is the fight, fight, fight thing. And he put that portrait in the White House. [3:14] So he does. And the people that want to curry favor with him. And he'll put it out there, [3:18] see how people respond. But it's part of the larger story we're telling here. He's shaping the [3:22] physical world around us, in most cases breaking it. And we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that as [3:27] much as he's breaking the world of D.C., these physical spaces, he's stamping all of our [3:31] institutions as well, and destroying them in the same way. They're just not as, they're just not [3:36] physical, so you can't see them. But he's putting his stamp on all the things that sort of make [3:41] America, America. I ask the question, David, who is this for? Because I don't get it, to be frank, [3:47] right? I don't see what the appeal is. I understand that there is a base of people who may find this [3:52] appealing. But you've actually been speaking with former MAGA loyalists who are beginning to see the [3:58] light. Yeah. So I found out that there was this support group, essentially, for people who have [4:04] left MAGA. And it's called Leaving MAGA is the name of the support group. And I was initially a [4:08] little bit skeptical because they talked about it in cult terms, right? They offer de-radicalization [4:13] resources, therapy for them and family members, etc. And I've reported on cults before, and I thought [4:19] it was important to make sure that we understand that, you know, supporting Donald Trump is not in fact [4:24] a cult. It is a political ideology. It's the dominant political ideology. Voting for Trump does [4:28] not mean you're a member of a cult. But I met with these people. I met with a group of five of [4:32] them. Where? In Fort Lauderdale, which is where the group is based. There are corners of MAGA that [4:39] are, in fact, very cult-like. And we're talking about the way that Trump is reshaping the physical [4:44] world. He has also completely reshaped the worldview of many people in this country in a way that is [4:50] not concerned with empirical truth, right? And so when you spend years of your life in a place like [4:56] that, a headspace like that, and then suddenly something causes you to reassess it, it's not easy [5:00] to suddenly transition out of that. So, you know, let's play a little bit of the interview that I did [5:05] so that we can talk about it. So let's listen to that and then talk on the other side. Hearing you [5:12] guys talk about MAGA and about supporting Trump, it sounds like you're talking often about, like, [5:18] a cult that's damaged. Yes. Right? Yeah. We all have a need for community. Our species yearns for [5:27] communal existence. And what MAGA does provide is a place where people feel seen and heard and [5:35] recognized, and some of their very valid fears and concerns are acknowledged and validated. We used [5:44] to say, we're not in the cult. The outside world is the cult. And we're not the crazies. The outside [5:49] world are the crazies. So just to add a little bit more detail to that, one of the people you saw in [5:55] that group for a long time was deep in the online trad wife subculture. One of the women you saw in [6:02] that group, she actually believed in household voting, like the idea that women shouldn't vote, [6:06] instead their husbands should vote on their behalf. That's how deep some of these people go. So [6:09] extracting themselves from that is difficult. The thing that I think is really, really interesting [6:14] about this, just a detail, given the election results in New York, a lot of these folks, when [6:18] they stopped voting for Trump, they didn't go to conventional Democrats. They went towards [6:21] social, towards democratic socialists. One of them is campaigning for Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan. [6:26] They're huge Mamdani fans, right? So there's really interesting dynamic going on. [6:31] There's an interest in system disruption, which I think we've understood that there's a populism that [6:35] is rising globally that is bigger than any single figure. But I also thought there was another [6:40] interesting part of the conversation that you had with all of these folks. And that was about [6:44] their media consumption and how once their media consumption changed, so did a lot of their [6:50] thinking. Let's play that sound and then we'll talk about it on the other side. [6:55] And they made me watch a documentary on January 6th. And I didn't even know what happened on January 6th [6:59] prior to the PBS documentary. And I looked at him and I said, Scott, did that really happen? And he was [7:05] like, where have you been? It's so hard for people. Because I said, it's not that you're dumb. You were [7:11] fooled. That's incredibly hard to admit. We are in the United States of algorithms right now. And [7:18] MAGA media is very efficacious. It's very effective. And it's very disciplined. [7:27] Angel Corso, is it strange to you to hear the thing that you have been shouting from the mountaintop [7:33] being repeated back to you by folks who are now rethinking their own media consumption and their [7:38] association with MAGA? Yeah, we call ourselves Media Patterns for a reason. Because it is, you [7:43] know, we all live in a story. It's the thing that connects us. It helps us shape our civic life. It's [7:48] how it's the lens through which we see and experience the world is our media diet. I think [7:53] people sometimes think about it as just news. But it really does help figure out who you are and what [7:57] your place is. And yeah, every data, every study that's ever been done on this shows that that's the [8:02] case. That if you take a break, you know, there was a big study that happened a few years ago where [8:08] people who are diehard Fox viewers didn't watch it for a month, all of them, 100 percent believed [8:14] in, stopped believing in election denialism, their positions about the Republican Party changed, [8:21] all sorts of things. They were less likely to be susceptible to conspiracies. That was only 30 [8:25] days. And it's not that they became converts, but it's that you create space for other stories of facts [8:31] to get in there, for conversations and new connections to be built. So yeah, it's, it isn't, [8:35] it isn't, I'm happy when people see it. I think it's something we all kind of know and feel. [8:40] And they have, the bubbles are far bigger than just the algorithms. It's, it's, it's not just [8:44] those online. It's also these offline spaces, which is part of what made MAGA so intense is that you [8:49] were getting it not just in your news diet or in Newsmax or online, but then you were getting it at [8:55] these rallies, at these events in your peers. And your bubble became increasingly smaller in all of [9:00] your interactions, which was intensifying and calcifying that worldview. [9:04] So I, the last time I saw you, I think I was reporting for Vice News and you were working [9:09] for Julian Castro on his presidential campaign. So to my great surprise, all of a sudden you came [9:14] across my Instagram feed, um, in a lot of the new work that you're doing, which, which speaks to this, [9:19] which is there is a whole group of people that are not being reached by our parties, by modern [9:25] politics, by the institutional media system. Um, and so I imagine you were thinking about this [9:30] question all the time. Yeah. I mean, part of the reason why it's been so hard to break people from [9:34] this kind of, if not a cult, a cult of personality has been, uh, it's coincided with this consolidation [9:40] of the media that's happening both, you know, in traditional legacy media, but also on these social [9:44] media platforms. Uh, and I think we underestimate, uh, the impact that, that guiding these algorithms [9:50] to, you know, everybody has their own algorithm. We open up our phones and it's specifically [9:53] tailored to it. You know, you build it brick by brick. They know I am a millennial mom. They know [9:58] the things that get served to me. You wouldn't believe. I started making cooking content with [10:02] politics because it was my way of kind of widening the circle of people who would take in the political [10:06] commentary. Uh, just my attempt to kind of shift the narrative a little bit by, by giving someone [10:11] a visual cue that they can watch while, you know, hearing my, my voice. Uh, and it's my ham-fisted [10:16] way of doing that, but we all have to find ways to reach out of our own bubbles because these [10:21] companies, these massive companies find ways to kind of keep us segmented and keep us isolated [10:25] from news that may have disrupted that kind of cult mentality about people like Trump.