When Donald Trump narrowly won the 2024 presidential election, he did so with the help of both his hardcore MAGA base and independents who were feeling frustrated over inflation and liked his promise to lower prices “on Day 1.” Now, with the 2026 midterms less than four months away, many polls are showing Trump in trouble with independents, while hardcore MAGA voters are still loyal to him. And according to MS NOW, there is another type of one-time Trump voter: former MAGAs who were once fierce Trump loyalists but have grown quite disenchanted with the MAGA movement.
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MS NOW’s “Morning Joe,” on Monday following the 4th of July Weekend, aired a segment with five former Trump voters who explained to reporter David Noriega why they have turned against the MAGA movement.
Noriega noted that former Trump supporter Rich Logis founded a nonprofit group called Leaving MAGA, which consists of other ex-MAGA voters and includes “deradicalization” resources. And all five of the voters Noriega interviewed are Leaving MAGA members.
Logis told Noriega, “What MAGA does provide is a place where people feel seen and heard and validated. We used to say, ‘We’re not the cult. The outside world is the cult.’ And ‘We’re not the crazies. The outside world are the crazies.”
Leaving MAGA member Tori Hurst told Noriega that being a part of MAGA goes way beyond political ideology — it becomes a part of one’s core identity.
Hurst explained, “It was very much this conversation of: if you want to have nice things, be a Republican.”
Another Leaving MAGA member, Steven Francisci, told Noriega, “I really wanted acceptance with my father, and my father was very much into Fox News. So, that was something we could connect on.”
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Another interviewee told Noriega that the MAGA Republicans she was close to favored “household voting,” which is when a husband dictates who is wife votes for.
“I became heavily indoctrinated into tradwife culture. We were all absolutely fine with household voting,” she noted.
Noriega asked the five Leaving MAGA members if, back in 2020, they believed Trump’s claim that the presidential election was stolen from him — and all of them said that they did.
Leaving MAGA member Ron Kelley told Noriega, “I did believe that the election was stolen. I believed that the riots, that those were patriots — until I actually switched off Fox News and started getting my news from other places. My information, that’s when it finally hit.”
After “Morning Joe” aired the Leaving MAGA interviews, Never Trump conservative Elise Jordan told MS NOW’s Jonathan Lemire, “I would say, though, that I would hesitate to call this a widespread trend at all. Because you look at the polling, and his hardcore MAGA base is, overall, not leaving him. But this is an interesting sliver and subset of showing just the earthquakes that have happened.”
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