Why I voted for Trump (after crying when he was elected last time)

At the time of the 2016 election, I was back in university for the fourth time, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

I was so devastated and angry that I didn’t go to class the next day. I wrote to my professors, sure they would understand – I was grieving.

That day I sat on my bed and wrote a Facebook post that ended up going viral .

If you don’t click to read it, the post was about how I grew up surrounded by more Republican beliefs, that then detailed all the experiences I had as an adult that pushed me into being super liberal.

At the time, I genuinely thought everyone who voted for Trump was a terrible person. I felt hurt, let down, unseen, certain that there must be so many more bad people out there than I thought. I hated men and thought they and the patriarchy were to blame. I thought white people were bad and racist. I threatened to not speak to people anymore if they had voted for him, even people close to me. I got in arguments in person, in public, and online constantly.

I was so intensely liberal that in 2019 I published a book of poetry that includes the line “my body can make babies and I can kill them if I want to.”

My entire voting history includes voting for Obama, Clinton, and Biden.

And yet… this election I excitedly voted for Trump.

How could this happen?

I’m certainly not alone in this, and I hesitated even writing this piece because there are so many other articles out there, so many posts explaining it thoroughly. I know so many people who voted for Biden last time and changed their minds this time, voting for Trump. I don’t know anyone who changed their minds the other way around.

But today I have watched a bunch of news, read a bunch of articles, and I’ve seen so many dejected, confused liberals not understanding how this could have happened….. echoing the exact way I felt 8 years ago.

It’s funny to be on the other side of that. I remember how real my sadness felt. How I felt like everything was being stripped away from me when he won.

And really, I was so far left, publicly, that I want to (also publicly) update how that has shifted. People still buy my books and while I love my books, I also want people to know how my views have changed.

So, let me lead you through the last few years.

In 2020, I was so angry about George Floyd that I sent emails to my high school and former local police stations, telling them that they needed DEI, stat, and if they couldn’t find anyone I (a 27 year old white woman) could help them. (No one ever responded).

Also in 2020, I paid thousands of dollars to a black woman to teach me how racist I was. When I asked a question about how her thoughts differed from another black anti-racist educator, she held an “emergency call” for the group where she yelled and cried about how even me asking that question was “part of the problem.”

I thought, wow, I must have done something really wrong, I must be even more racist than I thought.

When Covid first happened, I thought everyone was largely overreacting on both sides, and I thought masks weren’t a big deal and we should just wear them.

But then…. things started to go a little bit crazy.

The left that I had loved and adored started pushing that we all get a medical procedure, and saying that if you didn’t get it you were a terrible person.

I don’t think that anyone who was vaccinated fully understands what it was like to be an “unvaccinated” person for that (year? two year?) period of time in our society. Socially ostracized, not allowed to go to restaurants, travel, or really do anything, and this constant narrative that if you didn’t comply you were killing people. (which, of course, has now been proven to be completely untrue). I didn’t see my family in the States for nearly 3 years because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get back home, and my Canadian, unvaccinated husband wouldn’t be allowed to come with me anyway.

I hadn’t even been against vaccines before that. I was just hesitant, I thought the Gardasil vaccine I had gotten at 17 had negative effects on me, and I already had enough health issues to not want to inject myself with something new when everyone was in such a state of panic. I don’t think panic makes good decisions.

But over, over, and over again what I was told was: “You’re a terrible person. You’re killing people. You’re not welcome here, or anywhere. You’re going to die!”

It’s easy to forget how significant this was, because in 2022 it was like all of a sudden everyone decided, nevermind, Covid isn’t bad anymore, and it doesn’t matter if you’re not vaccinated! (also, nevermind the Wuhan lab and Fauci and other “conspiracies” that turned out to be true, let’s just brush all that under the rug).

But it was so significant that when my husband and I happened upon an anti-mandate protest in early 2022, it was the first time I had been in a crowd in so long, let alone surrounded by people that didn’t think I was a horrible human being, that I couldn’t stop crying.

Questioning the narrative got you shunned and banned. It got many people fired, even doctors and nurses. It meant you were an idiot who didn’t “believe in the science.”

Over the next few years many things happened. I met people of color who didn’t agree with the woke movement, and I listened to why. I joined and left an actual cult, leading me to learn a ton about cults, which allowed me to be able to see very clearly how cult-like the woke movement is. I became sick and tired of being told I’m a bad person for having opinions, tired of everyone being “canceled” for anything and everything on Earth. I started expanding the sources of news I listened to, seeking out people that I hadn’t agreed with, consuming both mainstream and independent media. The independent media was key, as it started to show from people actually on the ground that most media often lies. I started to see that a lot of what I had idealized as someone in my early twenties – open borders, free everything, censorship on things considered “harmful” – would result in a world I did not actually want to live in.

Like, it’s nice that I traveled to Greece in 2015 to help all the refugees, but what happens to a country, to communities, when you just let people in without discernment? When I was 21 I thought, we have to help everyone, no matter what. At 31 I recognize that we cannot help everyone, and in fact we won’t be able to help anyone if we don’t first help ourselves.

I had been so pro-LGBTQ whatever, which was easy when my own internal narrative was that I am a bad white cis woman who knows nothing and should be quiet. But then I had some clients that identified as “they” who realized (completely on their own) that once they had done some emotional work that they actually were just women. And then I started to feel pretty annoyed with the fact that now I am a “person with a uterus” instead of a woman, as if the word “woman” is degrading. I started to suspect that the trans movement is mostly filled with people with mental disorders, and instead of questioning and treating that, we are hormonally medicating them and trying to make the rest of society adhere to sharing pronouns and acting as if men can be women and women can be men. I started to feel that raising children without gender and putting them on puberty blockers and allowing them to get surgery is child abuse.

Even worse, I very quickly realized that voicing my hesitations around this led not to thoughtful discussions, but to people yelling at me, setting “boundaries” of never being around me again, and telling me I am a terrible homophobic, racist, sexist person. (It’s worth mentioning there are plenty of gay and trans people who also disagree with the woke movement and actually find the movement itself homophobic).

I saw people get deplatformed for “hate speech.” No discussion, no consulting with what most people thought – just someone who decided this is hateful and so we can take your platform away.

More than anything, I value free speech.

That has been perhaps the most obvious and consistent thread throughout my entire life.

I have had multiple social media accounts removed for sharing about topics considered taboo (but not against guidelines), even when they were my entire business. I know what it’s like to have your voice taken away and how the people doing it don’t have to explain why, how you don’t have to be breaking any rules, they just decide, we don’t like you so you’re now gone.

In fact, just last year I paid many thousands of dollars to protect my own free speech when threatened with a (unfounded) defamation lawsuit.

The truth matters. Being able to speak out matters.

I value our right to speak up and say what we think and feel, even if it’s about others, yes even if someone thinks it’s “hateful,” or it hurts their feelings, no matter what.

I joined a book club recently and after my first meeting, I felt so nourished I could cry. It was so refreshing. It was perhaps the first time in my adult life I’ve been a part of a discussion where you could freely share your opinion and people could have differing opinions and discuss them, without anyone implying you were a bad person for your opinion.

I’m currently reading Anna Karenina (incredible, highly recommend) and something I’ve found fascinating is how many discussions obviously took place in the 1800s among close family and friends where the people have wildly different opinions and heated discussions about issues, often leading to a common consensus, but sometimes not, and no one says “you’re canceled” or “you’re a shitty person because you think that.”

I think if you’re young, like me, the only generations you’ve really lived through as an adult are ones where discussion like that is prevented and discouraged. And so it is incredibly refreshing to find anything like it anywhere. I watched a man on CNN yesterday share how many college kids are scared to speak up in class because they’re afraid of saying something politically incorrect. It makes sense!

Freedom of discussion is not only a basic, fundamental human right, it is actually essential in order to be able to refine opinions and come to decisions that take everyone’s needs into account. We are sorely lacking that right now.

I do not want to end up in an era where the government gets to monitor the internet and what we can and cannot say. That is such a slippery slope. Actually one of the only things that protects us from – and exposes – a lot of current corruption, IS the internet. What happens when the ones that are doing the monitoring, are the ones who are lying?

As the years went by, I started thinking, “oh my gosh, am I conservative now? These conservative women seem.. really smart? What is happening?”

I didn’t think I could vote for Trump. But I saw the obvious cognitive decline of Biden that the media was hiding, because I followed independent journalists. I remember saying to a family member who watches CNN, like a year ago, “Biden has dementia.” And they were like, “What are you talking about?”

The media we were seeing was so different. Mainstream media concealed that for a long time.

When RFK Jr appeared, I listened to his multi-hour podcast on Joe Rogan, where I heard a man who sounded incredibly smart, reasonable, and down-to-earth. And I saw the media paint him as insane, often taking him out of context, even though I had listened to him speak and knew he wasn’t insane. I was hopeful with RFK – did I dare to hope that we could have that kind of change in our food systems, in healthcare? – but then he wasn’t allowed to debate. I didn’t want to use my vote on someone who couldn’t win.

And then I thought, man, I don’t really like Trump, but I don’t like Biden either and think he is unwell. Then they announced Kamala! And for a split second I thought, is this it? Wow, a woman! I don’t know much about her, maybe I could vote for her? But then I watched her and listened to her… And watched the parts of her speaking that mainstream media cut out… and it was so obvious to me that this woman was completely fake, with the typical phony politician phrases (except somehow less articulate), that I thought, I will never be able to bring myself to vote for this woman.

Then Trump announced JD Vance as his running mate. I ordered JD’s memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, and I loved it. I could feel his heart and that he was a well-meaning person. The more I listened to him campaign I just really liked him. He’s smart and he’s young, he listens to both sides, he has good values. And I like the idea of that kind of energy going into the White House, and I bet he’ll make an incredible president some day.

Following the election coverage here and there, I started to see how much the media lied about Trump. All these reasons I had hated him, for all these things he said…… many of them turned out to be fake. The “very fine people” bit, for example – easily debunked by now but continuously pushed by the left (even Obama!). The most recent was the Liz Cheney one and I watched that in real time. Trump talks about how Liz wouldn’t be so quick to go to war if she had to go to war herself; mainstream media takes a tiny clip and runs with headlines like “Trump wants Liz Cheney shot!”

It’s pretty insulting to people to blatantly take things out of context, edit them, and lie – but media makes it hard to even find out the truth for yourself when you search, especially considering most social media companies lean left, Google leans left, even Wikipedia portrays things through a left-wing narrative. How could anyone blame you if you believe Trump is a racist, sexist, bigot, the most awful human alive? That’s all they’ve shown on mainstream news for years. The very people saying they want to combat “misinformation” are purposefully spreading it.

That leads me to Elon Musk, who I also love. I read Elon’s biography earlier this year and while before that perhaps I thought he was crazy (actually, years ago I wrote a piece grieving climate change where I was angry at him for wanting to go to Mars), I then decided that I love him. The guy has one mission: to get to Mars and help humanity, and while I still don’t particularly care about Mars, I love that he is more committed to his dream than to money. He made the terrible financial decision of buying Twitter (now X), to preserve free speech. X is actually very cool in the way it has “community notes” as a fact checking element. I also listened to Elon on multiple podcasts and other interviews, and I understand and appreciate his ideas.

I don’t even know that I believe in climate change anymore! Things are wild.

I love Joe Rogan’s podcast because I love hearing people talk for hours mostly uninterrupted. I loved listening to Elon on there, and also Trump and Vance. In long conversations like that you can really hear people and what they stand for, there is no script, you can just feel them as who they are. Same with books – these formats are much different than tiny snippets of speech played on the news. I think being off social media this year has really benefitted me in this way, because instead of my thoughts being formed by other people’s opinions and small clips, I sought out long-form content to decide on my own what I thought.

I was already going to vote for Trump by the time I listened to that podcast, but hearing him speak for the first time in an actual conversation (rather than just parts of speeches and debates), I found myself surprised. Here was a man who sounded a bit like my grandfather… who was actually… likable? Human? A little self-deprecating, very funny? Yes, he avoided some questions, he had his typical “I have the greatest of everything” moments, but this time, he came across very differently to me. And I started to feel what I thought would never happen………… I started to… kind of like him?

I see Trump’s 2024 victory as a victory for free speech, for food systems, healthcare, for our borders, for families, for freedom in general, and as hope for our future.

But it’s not so much about Trump himself – I feel the most excited about Vance, Elon, Tulsi, RFK Jr, Vivek, and others getting into positions of governmental power where they can start to make real change. Getting rid of useless government bureaucracy and spending, outing the constant coverups and corruption, bringing back good journalism, ending chronic disease – these things are exciting to me and make me hopeful that perhaps Americans could be proud of our government again one day.

Perhaps the funniest thing going around since the election is the narrative that “uneducated people voted for Trump,” and trying to make that mean that the dumb people are voting for him. As someone who both went to college and doesn’t have a degree, I can tell you why that is: American universities are where people get inundated with liberal thought. Wildly, many of the people at academic institutions are some of the most closed-minded, smug, and self-important people I’ve ever encountered.

And also, you might hate to hear this if you’re in tens of thousands of dollars of college debt, but university just doesn’t mean as much nowadays. I went to 4 different universities and quit a semester before I would have graduated to start my own business (and yes, I even created a six-figure business without a college degree!). I appreciate some of the topics I learned about and I had some awesome professors, but in general college for me was a waste of time and money. But hey, without a very special, important degree I probably count toward that “uneducated” statistic, so what do I know.

And the reproductive rights issue?

How could the woman who wrote “my body can make babies and I can kill them if I want to” vote for people who are pro-life?

Well, abortion isn’t going to be outlawed (contrary to some media portrayals I’ve seen), it’s now up to the vote of people in individual states, with exceptions that make sense. I think women should always have access to safe abortions, and I’ve also heard Vance discuss it and think his perspective is reasonable. I think women should be taught more about how our bodies function so we can track our fertility and prevent pregnancy without relying on pharmaceuticals. And to be honest while I think that is still a great line of poetry in an artistic sense, I laugh reading it now, because it’s full of young angst and I would never write that sentence today!

Truth being told, while I am fully “my body my choice” .. I don’t know that I morally agree with abortion now, either.

So there you have it.

If you are upset about the election and have only concluded that most of America must be racist, sexist, unintelligent assholes (including all the people of color and other minorities who voted for Trump), you might want to consider instead that perhaps your media sources are lying to you. And you might want to start having real, open discussions with the rest of us.

Though life has brought me to living in Canada, I am proud to be an American, grateful I’m able to vote, and I’m proud of the spirit of our country.