Ex-MAGA Supporters Reveal Fear, Rage and Conspiracy Theories Pulled Them Into Trump's Movement

Four former MAGA supporters have described how fear, rage, conspiracy theories and the search for belonging drew them into Donald Trump's political movement before they eventually walked away. Their accounts, shared with The Guardian, reveal how leaving MAGA can involve questioning not only political beliefs but family relationships, faith and long-held ideas about identity.

The accounts come through Leaving MAGA, a non-profit support network founded in 2024 by former Trump campaign volunteer Rich Logis after he publicly left the movement in 2022. Logis said the organisation does not try to persuade people to leave MAGA, but instead offers support to those who have already begun questioning their beliefs.

Thousands of people have reportedly connected with the network through group chats and in-person meetings. Its billboard campaign is now running in 27 states with the message, 'Having doubts? You are not alone.'

For some former supporters, that sense of doubt came after years of political commitment. For others, it was rooted in religion, family, or deeply personal experiences that gradually changed the way they understood the world.

How Ex-MAGA Supporters Became Drawn Into the Movement

Steven Francisci, from Virginia, said he grew up in a Trump-supporting family and developed what he described as unhealthy beliefs about race, identity and LGBTQ+ issues. After the 9/11 attacks, he became Islamophobic, while his move to the Bible Belt led him from Catholicism towards evangelical Christianity.

Francisci said he continued supporting Trump through a motorcycle accident that left him with a traumatic brain injury, a troubled marriage, and a suicide attempt in 2016. By 2020, he had bought a MAGA hat and was advocating for Trump's re-election.

His eventual departure was gradual. Trauma-informed therapy prompted him to question beliefs he had inherited during childhood, while years of self-reflection changed how he viewed Trump's behaviour.

'I couldn't see it until I could see myself more clearly,' Francisci said.

Stephania Messina, from Michigan, described a different route into the same political world. After having her third son, she experienced severe postpartum depression and turned towards evangelical faith. She said she became deeply committed to the idea that women should submit to their husbands and described herself as a 'tradwife'.

Messina said her political identity was less about Trump personally than about her church. She recalled being told not to consume left-wing media because it was 'demonic'. The Covid pandemic eventually disrupted that worldview.

As a respiratory therapist, Messina said she was troubled by conflicting messages about masks, while her pastor described lockdowns as a 'demonic deep-state attempt' to keep people from church. The death of her oldest son's father in a motorcycle accident in March 2021 became another turning point.

After the funeral, she said she was finished with the belief system she had previously embraced.

Leaving MAGA Meant Confronting More Than Trump

For Logis, the process involved confronting his own role in the movement. He grew up in New York in a largely apolitical family but became attracted to Trump's outsider image in 2015 and his campaign's 'burn-it-all-down' approach.

Logis did more than vote. He worked on Trump's campaign, wrote part of its call script and recruited Bernie Sanders supporters. After the 2016 election, he became increasingly involved in MAGA media and described having it become a kind of second family.

He now believes fear and rage played a central role in keeping him engaged.

'I'd been addicted to fear and rage, addicted to a belief in a "they" coming for my rights, my children, my guns,' Logis said.

His departure began after he became concerned about Ron DeSantis platforming Covid anti-vaccine figures in 2021. He subsequently broadened the range of news sources he followed. The Uvalde school shooting on 24 May 2022 became the final break.

Three months later, Logis published an apology for rhetoric he believed had contributed to division and conspiracy theories. The response led him to establish Leaving MAGA.

Carter Brown, from Georgia, said conspiracy theories had been central to her own journey. Raised in a strict evangelical household, she believed for years that her primary purpose was to become a wife and mother.

In 2019, she encountered Save the Children and QAnon content and said she became deeply invested in the conspiracy theories surrounding them. Her views began to unravel after she questioned the way she had been taught to interpret the Bible.

In January 2025, another video prompted her to reconsider her beliefs about hell. Brown described the months that followed as an identity collapse, forcing her to consider what she might lose by changing.

Leaving MAGA, for her and the others, was therefore not simply a political decision. It meant reconsidering the communities and assumptions that had shaped their lives.