November 30, 2025 • 45 mins
"Leaving MAGA" is a community for those who have left the movement, or have doubts and remorse about staying in MAGA but are afraid to leave. Rich Logis and Erica Roach tell their stories of falling into MAGA and then climbing out.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Mission Implausible is now something you can watch. Just go
to YouTube and search Mission Implausible podcasts or click on
the link to our channel. In our show notes, I'm
John Cipher.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
And I'm Jerry O'Shea.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
We have over sixty years of experience as clandestine officers
in the CIA, serving in high risk areas all around
the world, and part.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
Of our job was creating conspiracies to deceive our adversaries.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Now we're going to use that experience to investigate the
conspiracy theories everyone's talking about as well as some of
you may not have heard.
Speaker 4 (00:41):
Could they be true or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 3 (00:43):
We'll find out now on Mission Implausible.
Speaker 5 (00:48):
Today, we would like to welcome rich Lochus and Ericode
wrote from leaving Mega, which is a community an organization
for those who have left the Mega organization.
Speaker 4 (01:01):
You were both deeply entrenched inside of Mega ideology and mindset,
and you both left and so we're really pleased to
have you here to talk about what led you into Mecca,
what motivated it, and what brought you out and what
the consequences are. So Rich or Erica, would you like
to start off and give us to sensed your journey
(01:22):
into the Belly of the Beast.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Okay, I'm a former q Andon supporter follower.
Speaker 6 (01:28):
It's a long story, but summed up in my life,
I kinda like always thought that conspiracies were fun, They
were entertaining, They were a what if, Like what if
there's this grand thing going on that the government is
trying to hide from us? And it was like a
little adventure that I could go on. And for me,
(01:48):
it all started surrounding nine nine to eleven. But I
wasn't like a at first. I wasn't like a hardcore
like nine to eleven truth or anything, but I liked
entertaining the idea that Bush had allowed this to happen,
and on and off into my early twenties, I started
following like the New World Order conspiracy in the Illuminati,
(02:11):
thinking that Alex Jones was like the greatest truth teller ever.
And then I got sucked into conspiracies after leaving an
abusive relationship, Like I just threw myself into it, and
I think it was a coping mechanism for me, And
unfortunately what happened was it led to me finding q
(02:34):
drops and the Dakotas and in the comment sections of
these posts, people believed the same things I believe, and
I thought that I had finally found my place, and
I got heavily, heavily entrenched in this world from twenty eighteen,
probably until just after January sixth, twenty twenty one. At
(02:59):
one point I was a admin in Telegram for a
large Q influencer. He's no longer posting anymore on Twitter,
but he went by the Punisher, and I would spend
my days not only just researching all this stuff and
promoting all sorts of new conspiracies that I researched on
(03:22):
my own, and some days I was on Telegram for
up to twenty twenty two hours doing this stuff.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
So it started out as fun and interesting, and basically
you sort of wandered into quicksand is what you're saying right,
that sort of and that became really involved rich what
was your experience?
Speaker 7 (03:40):
Yeah, So for me in twenty fifteen, I was someone
who was very politically lonely. I believe that both parties
were the same. I felt that they did not represent
most Americans, only represented a small sliver of the country,
the wealthy and the powerful. I had voted third party
(04:02):
many times in my life and very rarely did I
vote for a major party candidate. My first vote ever
for president was Ralph Nader in the year two thousand,
when I was living in New York. You know, being
in New York, al Gore was gonna win anyway, so
my vote was safe. But I didn't vote. I didn't
vote third party solely because of being anti two parties.
(04:25):
I was long attracted to the rogue, iconoclastic candidates, and
when Trump came on the scene in twenty fifteen, I
was curious in the beginning, and even though he ran
as a Republican, what enticed me about his candidacy was
that both parties saw him as a threat and that
he was a true outsider. He had no government, no military,
(04:47):
no political experience. And after many months of justifying away
comments that I knew were indefensible, like the John McCain
comment and the comments about Muslims, the comments about women,
I came to believe that if the Democrats had had
(05:10):
one in twenty sixteen, that they would have seized power permanently.
So I fell prey to the demographics or destiny mythology.
And it was in early twenty sixteen when I went
from Trump curious to being all in and I worked
on the campaign. I was a grassroots volunteer. I did
(05:30):
phone banking, I recruited people to vote for Trump. I
even contributed some of my journalistic and writing skills to
the call script for the campaign. And I felt something
that I had never felt before from the campaign, which
was a communal sense, a sense of feeling belonging. And
(05:51):
I feel like that's going to be a motif that's
going to run throughout this conversation, because you know the
way Erica was talking about having a community through QAnon
and conspiracies. For me, I wouldn't say my entrain to
Maga was conspiratorial initially, but once I was in and
I bought into lock stock and barrels, so many of
(06:13):
the conspiracies that still exists right now. The Democrats are
coming for your guns, and the schools are indoctrinating children
into transgender Marxism, and we're replacing white people with brown
people and foreigners. There's this really toxic amalgam and mix
of lies and conspiracy theories that magas buttressed on. And
(06:35):
I allowed myself to fall prey to those mythologies really quickly,
and I was around people who were Trump voters, people
I knew, people, I was close with people I trusted.
And it was throughout the course of the next several
years after the twenty sixteen election, that I just got
deeper and deeper. I became a Maga influencer, or I
(06:58):
aspired to be a Maga influencer. I was writing freelance
articles for writing publications. My media diet was steadily Maga media.
I was professionally producing a podcast. Was doing all of
this because I felt that I was in this existential
battle between good and evil, and I wanted the president
to see my work because it was my aspiration to
(07:20):
be a Maga pundit and influencer, and that's how I
lived my life devoutly, every hour of every day before
my doubts started. So I really relate to Erica talking
about being online for twenty twenty two hours because for me,
Maga consumed my identity. It was my being, my personhood,
(07:42):
and it was my It was completely how my worldview
had been shaped.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
So it sounds like you're both saying separately that community
was a big part of it, right rich You're saying, yes,
you actually were out dealing with people and stuff, Eric
If I understand yours was more of an online experience.
You're watching infro war as you got onto Twitter. Did
you also go to rallies and do all that type
of stuff.
Speaker 6 (08:06):
Or was it mostly I didn't participate in some protests
in the capital of New York and Albany with some
people who were rallying at the time against Governor Cuomo.
I mean it wasn't like on a regular basis, but
it was significant. But most of my interaction within my
community at the time was online. But I did enter
(08:29):
into real world spaces with those same types of people
as well.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
This is something I've always often wondered about. What is
between the two of you? What is the difference between
a cult and a community? I mean, both have shared beliefs,
both have this sort of fellowship, Both have an us
them sort of relationship with the rest of the world,
and both both can be comforting. One is more threatening.
The word word community seems more fluffy and huggable. What
(08:58):
for you is the difference between cult and community?
Speaker 2 (09:01):
So for me, I.
Speaker 6 (09:04):
Thought that community was people who had shared beliefs with you,
believe the same things and influenced your views. But also
at the same time, you could disagree that I thought
that's what I was in. A cult for me is
actually what I was in. You can't question the leader,
(09:25):
you can't have different opinions on anything, and no matter what,
you have to toe the line. You have to believe this,
You have to believe that there's no questioning what is
being told to you.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Yeah. I remember reading what you some of your experience.
You talk about how even as you were still part
of the community, you would start to ask some questions,
but people really then turned against you and docs.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (09:47):
Yeah, I ended up getting docksed. There was an anonymous
police reports to my local sheriff's office, to the local
child's Protective Services unit. My house was attempted to be
broken into. I had to change my phone number a
couple times, my email addresses. It got very serious and
quite scary. Honestly, It's why I hesitated for so long
(10:09):
to become a public face. It wasn't until I met
Rich that I had the courage to step out from
an anonymous Twitter user.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
He really gave me the courage to do that.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
It's tough because they seem to go after people who
were I mean, even at the highest level, we're seeing
it right now with Marjorie Taylor Green. Right, Trump he
brings people in as long as they're very much fawning
towards him, but the minute they question anything, they become
an enemy. If you look at the people that they're
trying to send to jail, that they're putting, they got
(10:41):
the Justice Department going after right now. Almost all of
the our people he brought in, the FBI director Ray
Kelly Bolton, all these people were his own people, but
they if they disagree with them, they then become enemies.
And so even Marjorie Taylor Green has become an enemy.
So you know, it's a difficult thing because I think
it's has to do with I think Trump's psyche more
(11:04):
than even the movements.
Speaker 6 (11:05):
But at the same aspect, they see him doing those things,
so they think it's okay to do it to everybody else,
which is why you're seeing Marjorie Taylor Green, for example,
being swarmed. Her comment sections are atrocious, they're horrifying. I
don't think that Marjorie Taylor Green is a great person,
but she has every room and every opportunity to change
(11:29):
her mind and change her stance on things, and I
would allow her. I would give her that grace. She
doesn't deserve this treatment. Nobody does.
Speaker 7 (11:37):
I understand, guys, why people would look at MAGA and
say this is a cult. I can attest to the
fact that in my life there were some cult like aspects.
I always mentioned in this context that I had a
magas second family, and that second family oftentimes took precedence
over my own blood family, where I neglected husband and
(12:00):
familial and parental duties in the pursuit of this movement.
That I was a part of the reason I'm ambivalent
about referring to MAGA as a cult is largely informed
by my work at leaving MAGA and the kind of
advocacy that Erica has done for our organization as well.
We want to extract people out of MAGA, especially as
(12:23):
they start to have doubts, and we feel that if
we refer to people in MAGA as cultists, it's going
to make them dig their heels in. You know, when
I was in MAGA, we used to hear the cult language,
and we used to all the time say not even
half facetiously, but half seriously, that we weren't in the cult,
that everyone in the outside world was in the cult,
(12:44):
and that we weren't the crazies. Everyone else in the
outside world were the crazies. And as hard as it
is to leave MAGA, it's still, I believe, easier to
leave MAGA than it would be a bona fide cult
of which I've never been a part of. Unless we're
going to call my Catholic upbringing that, No, I shouldn't say.
(13:04):
That's a joke. Everyone that's a joke. One's a Catholic,
always a Catholic. My wife and my family's to hear
that and say, is that what you really think about
your Catholic upbringing? No, I don't really think of it
that way. But I've not been in an actual cult.
But I do see where people can think that about MAGA,
and there are certain traits about it that would match
(13:26):
most likely being in an actual cult.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
Yeah, Rich you said something really interesting that I want
to touch back on. You mentioned Trump's comments about John McCain.
John McCain, you know, just to remind people, was shot
down over North Vietnam. He was tortured. He could have
left early the prison, he refused. He was stayed with
his men. This is a guy who was crippled lifelong,
and I've had the opportunity to meet with John McCain
(13:51):
inside CIA to brief him in Bagdad, a place that
was really dangerous at the time he flew in. He
was really interested in the truth. He was interested in
the people who were serving on the front lines, troops,
CIA officers. I have enormous respect for the guy. And
when Trump a draft died, or at least he never
served in the mid military called him a loser because
(14:12):
he was shot down and tortured by the North Vietnamese,
I thought, as so many of us have in so
many occasions, that's the end of it. Right, There's certain
third rails you can't touch, and one is like going
after genuine bona fide war heroes. I mean, you can
disagree with their political stance, but the fact that they
serve their country and sacrificed is undebatable. And yet that
(14:33):
didn't happen. And yet people who swore that they loved
the military and swore by American heroism and they just
abandoned John McKay and so I was wondering, what is
it for both of you? But that is an example
when a tenet of the community interferes with what you've
always believed in or interferes with basic reality. How do
(14:55):
you react to it. Is it like I've got to
I don't really believe it, but I've got to say
this in order to stay in the community, or do
you actually change your mind?
Speaker 6 (15:03):
For example, we'll take McCain because that's relatively easy to
talk about.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Unfortunate.
Speaker 6 (15:10):
So regardless of his war hero status, the being a
political prisoner, the being tortured, all of that, because Trump
called him out. Within the q Andon community, he was
a trader to his country and that was justifiable. The
way that it works within q Andon is Trump highlights
people who we need to dig into to find out
(15:30):
what traitorous actions they did against the United States and
the American people. So as soon as he says these
types of awful things about John McCain or any other
but any anybody else, they're a trader, they did something horrific.
They deserve to be put to death. That's why you'll
still see to this day they compare like Dan Crenshaw
(15:51):
to being the new John McCain. And then at John
McCain's funeral, the flag on his casket was wrinkled, so
that meant that he was executed in the q Andon world,
and because it's something that gets pushed and pushed and
pushed and pushed, it's that repetition that makes it believable,
and you just go along with it whether you believe
(16:13):
it or not. But eventually, if you are a true
believer like I was, you believe it.
Speaker 7 (16:19):
Even before the Obamacare vote from Senator McCain, John McCain was,
amongst many in MAGA a hated person, and one of
the disparaging remarks that was often made about the late
John McCain and MAGA was that he was a globalist.
This was something that was which I'm thinking about again,
(16:42):
the conspiratorial way of how people opposed to Trump and
MAGA were, how they're identified, just like with Mitt Romney,
similar referred to as the same way as a globalist,
a crony capitalist, these kinds of monikers. But that's the
moment for me, the John McCain comment that I should
have run. Whatever curiosity I had about the Trump campaign
(17:06):
should have ceased at that moment because I knew that
that it was an unjustifiable comment. But I so quickly,
and I should preface by saying that none of anything
I say, I want to be construed as a self
defense because everyone has agency, and I made these choices
on my own. Nolan coaxed to course me into my support,
(17:27):
but I so quickly fell prey to the idea that
the Democrats would win in political power indefinitely and I
would be an irrelevant citizen of my country that I
look the other way on the John McCain statement. And
throughout Trump's presidency, there were several times that I had
very critical private conversations about Trump. Charlottesville was another one.
(17:51):
I was very close with someone who worked as a
paid staffer in Trump's campaign, and I remember when Charlottesville happened.
I'm a little embarrassed to talk about it the way
that I will, and ashamed because my concern wasn't the
fact that a woman, Heather Hire, had died and that
people were in My worry when Charlottesville happened was that
(18:13):
the press and Democrats and anti Trump Republicans were going
to label all of we and NAGA as neo Nazis
and white supremacists. So my concern was damage control. It
wasn't the fact that a woman was innocently run over
and murdered and that others committed violence. So I had
that kind of I remember we censured Trump privately, but
(18:39):
that's private. We never did it publicly. Maybe they hurt
our cult explanation and they're still thinking, well, it still
sounds like a cult. I'm going to give them fodder
on this one because you just never criticized Trump publicly.
You didn't do it because if you did it, you'd
be exiled, just like Eric is saying, and just like
we're seeing what Marjorie Taylor Green right now, if you
(18:59):
go and censure the president in your remarks publicly, you're
going to become persona and on grive. And that's because
you absolutely will be. Because Trump is the he's the
titular leader of the community. He's the one who took
a brand of right wing politics that are not new,
not novel, but he branded them. And for me, make
(19:22):
America Great Again was not nostalgic. I was thirty nine
years old in twenty sixteen. As delusional as it sounds,
Make America Great Again, for me was very forward facing
and progressive. I saw it even as a second kind
of founding of the country. So that's that was just
that was my fealty to Maga and whenever Trump was attacked,
(19:45):
we felt that we were attacked. So I even had
a phrase that I used for the media that I trademarked.
I called it the Democrat media industrial complex. You know
that it was in that trademark's now available if anyone
wants it. I don't have I don't have it anymore
because I don't think that there I don't think there
is a I don't believe that there's a liberal media conspiracy.
(20:07):
But I did believe that at one time.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
Being part of a tribe, being part of something bigger
than yourself is powerful. Did you come out of it?
What was the hardest part about realizing you no longer
believed in it, or how you were coming out of it?
And we could tell there's probably a lot to this,
but just start to talk a little bit about like
when did you start to realize there was a problem
if you could justify all those things for so long,
when did it turn? For both the Maybi era, cos So, for.
Speaker 6 (20:42):
Me, it was towards the tail end when the vaccines
were being discussed. Operation warp Speed was almost completed. That's
for me where my doubts started coming in. On one hand,
Trump was touting and just so excited about Operation Warp
Speed and the COVID vaccines that were going to be
(21:04):
coming to Fruition soon. And on the other hand, everybody
in my community was telling me that it was built
Gate's death job coming to populate us. So it was
a very confusing time for me. And then January sixth happened,
and I knew people who were there. I'd had an
opportunity to go, but I didn't have anybody to watch
(21:26):
my kids, and I couldn't leave them for a couple
of days by themselves, so I didn't go. But the
fact was that I could have met up with my
friends there and participated in what unfolded that I watched
live happening. It was just such a shock to the
system that I couldn't ignore my questions anymore. But a
(21:47):
lot of my doubt was around COVID because I had
actually gotten COVID and I got very, very sick. I
got pneumonia after I was recovering from the COVID and
I was sick for almost three months. It damn near
destroyed my lungs. So it wasn't just a flu, It
wasn't just you know, something that's going to go away
in fifteen days and go away. If we don't test,
(22:09):
possibly could have killed me. So I knew that we
were being misled somehow. And then the COVID vaccine talks started,
and I just I couldn't ignore it anymore.
Speaker 7 (22:19):
So I like to paraphrase the late and venerable Ernest
Hemingway and say that my epiphany out of MAGA happened
gradually and then suddenly all at once. Trump's mismanagement of
COVID January sixth, the stolen election lies, those were all
some of the cracks, but they weren't enough for me.
The first accelerant for my leaving of MAGA was actually
(22:41):
not Donald Trump. It was my governor, Ron de Santees.
In the summer of twenty twenty one, if we recall,
there had been the delta surge of COVID and children
were getting sick, children were dying from the virus, and
Ron de Santees, rather than continue his vaccine advocacy, he
started platforming anti vaxers at his press conferences, people who
(23:04):
said that the COVID vaccine was changing people's RNA and
was deadlier than the virus. Now, I am a parent
of two children, and I recall when I would read
the stories about children getting sick and dying from COVID,
all I could think about was the suffering that those
kids went through, and the parents and the parents, the
(23:26):
bereaved parents, grieving and in mourning. So when Ron Desantas
did that when kids were getting sick, it really shocked me,
and I didn't understand why he took that approach. And
it was shortly thereafter that I did something that sounds
very simple but was very profoundly life changing and altering
for me, which was I diversified my news and information sources.
(23:49):
And as soon as I did that, I started to slowly,
painfully but liberatingly realize that so much of what it
was that I had believed and had created an identity around,
was not true. You know, the conspiracies I mentioned earlier
about gone and our kids being indoctrinated in white replacement theory,
(24:14):
these kinds of conspiracies that exist legion within MAGA. I
had a lot of late nights just myself and my thoughts,
where I would sit at my desk and I would say,
I have been believing lies for years, and not just
one or two wives, but years accumulated of them. And
the final straw for me was May twenty fourth, twenty
(24:37):
twenty two, which was the day of the Uvalde, Texas
school shooting, another incident where children died and were injured
and others died and were injured. And I knew exactly
how the Republican Party and Donald Trump were, how they
were going to respond to that incident, and they responded
exactly as I knew they would. They would nonchalantly accept
(24:59):
yet another incident of avoidable deaths and suffering, just like
ron De Santees did with the anti vaxxer, just like
January sixth of politically motivated violence and acceptance of avoidable
debts and suffering. And it was shortly after Uvalde that
I quietly left MAGA. I only told my wife and
(25:20):
a few other people. But there was something, guys, that
was really gnawing at me. After Uvalde and after I
silently left MAGA. I was always so unapologetically public in
my support for Trump. I felt that I needed to
be public and my renunciation of the movement, And it
was on August thirtieth of twenty twenty two, which is
(25:40):
what I call my leaving magaversary. I wrote a mea culpa,
and in that story I said that I was wrong
for supporting Trump and Maga, that I was sorry, and
that I wanted to apologize to anyone I may have
hurt with my words and deeds. And the God's honest
truth is that I never thought anybody would care. I
thought that I would just do it, I would close
(26:02):
that chapter of my life. It would bring the catharsis
of finally severing myself from that world and moving on.
But it turned out that people did care, and I
received instantaneously, one after another from friends and family of
people in MAGA. And I was completely naive and oblivious
(26:22):
to how many relationships had been torn asunder by this movement.
And I had a hand in that. I was culpable,
I was complicit. I was complicit in helping the president
divide the country and amplify conspiracy theories.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Yeah, I mean reach individuals. It's a large country. You
can't put too much on yourself, but I think it
is important for the people who are listening to hear,
like if there are other people looking to come out
of the movement, you know, the guilt, the anger, the relief,
how you deal with it as a person. It sounds
like you had some guilt around it and how you
got over that guilt, and Erica, it sounds like you
(26:59):
started to question things. Did you find yourself all of
a sudden having all sorts of anger issues or was
it relieve?
Speaker 6 (27:06):
At first, I was very hesitant. I thought again against
it as hard as I could, because I knew that
on the other side of my beliefs was things in
people and events that were truly horrific that I justified
for years, and I didn't want to face that. At first,
(27:27):
I was scared, but I found a great little support
system online, people who had been debunking QAnon conspiracies for
years at that point, and it took about probably six
months after I started talking to them, and then, like
Rich said, it was slow at first and then suddenly
(27:50):
it was all at the same time. I resisted hard though,
because I truly believed that the deep state had conspired
to get Trump out in twenty twenty, because the Democrats
wanted to unfold the sixteen Year Plan, which ushered in
globalism in the New World Order and pretty much just
capalist slavery and depopulation. I believed it to my core
(28:14):
and the things that I justified, the things I accepted,
the things in relationships that I fractured.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
All that pain.
Speaker 6 (28:23):
If I accepted that I was wrong this whole time,
all that pain was going to be front and center.
And it took a while to get to that point.
And then I spent probably a good year grieving, grieving,
re educating myself, diversifying my media, and take the people
around me, the people I spoke to, And it was
a long, very painful, very like agonizing to realize just
(28:48):
what I had believed in.
Speaker 4 (28:50):
So bringing in John and I are CIA background, this
is really interesting because in our careers we dealt with
a lot of people, people who were in Al Qaeda,
people who were in the Russian system, the North Korean system,
and they tell similar stories that I remember sitting across
(29:10):
from one North Korean and he had too many drinks
and he really wasn't supposed to be talking to me.
Although he didn't know I was CIA at the time,
he probably could have suspected it, but he'd lowered his voice.
He looked around after telling the greatness of North Korea
how wonderful it was, and he said, it's really not
that great, the dear leader isn't as good as people say,
(29:35):
and he had just committed treason. He had committed a
capital crime by saying that he could have been ostracized.
It was dangerous to his family. And yet he clearly
had been saying to everyone who would listen, to his
own family, this is what I think, but inside he
knew it wasn't true. And oftentimes, at least in our
(29:57):
world of espionage, we look for people Russians, people inside
the Russian government of the Chinese government, who like, they
know it's not true, right, and they can't live with
the lie, and eventually they want to do so something
about it, and some go into internal exile, some just
never mind. Others actually wanted you know, it's like I
want to fight back, and you know, I'd like to
(30:18):
work with the US. John, You've had a lot of
experience with Russians who had been in a system, who
who were afraid to say what they really thought. And
some of our best spies, Russian spies, are people who
simply couldn't do it anymore.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
They were living with that with Vladimir Putin. So when
your country fell apart is like a trauma. So these
people belonged to a country they thought was one of
the most powerful in the world. It was a superpower
and it fell apart. Can you imagine if you're a
person who's defending that, the trauma of trying to deal
with that. You can imagine if our country actually did
get into civil war and fell apart. But you see,
(30:53):
you think you feel guilty. Now imagine how you would
feel if that kind of happened. And so, you know,
dealing with those kind of people. Different people have different
ways of reacting to things. Some like Vladimir Putin doubled
down and said I'm going to be more aggressive and more.
Others that we try to deal with would say, hey,
you just want to be a normal country. What can
we do to move forward? And that's why it's really
(31:14):
interesting to talk to you guys, because you know, you
belong to one tribe and then you had to come
out of it. What's the next step do you, like,
are you looking for another tribe? Do you become a
democrat or do you just stay away from politics? What's
the next step?
Speaker 7 (31:28):
I think of it as an odyssey, and I am
very lucky in that after I left Maga, I didn't
know where I was going to go, but I was
asked by various media and organizations to keep recounting my story.
So I kept doing it, and I did it because
I felt it was part of an ongoing reckoning to
(31:49):
continue to make amends for my past. So I found
myself telling my story over and over again, and it eventually,
from the telling of that story was born our organization
Leaving MAGA. And when I founded it, I never run
a nonprofit before. I didn't know what it would what
(32:10):
form it would take, but I remember thinking, there have
to be others out there who also left, you know,
it couldn't be just me. There's got to be others
out there. And Erica was one of the very, very
first leaders I ever met who left MAGA. When there's
a I would really encourage everyone to read her testimonial
at our Leaving Maga dot org site, and all of
(32:32):
our testimonials for that matter. It shows the courage that
so many went through to have to come to their
own realization that they needed to leave because being in
MAGA didn't comport any longer with their values. So, you know,
when it came to q and On, I knew of QAnon,
but when I was in Maga. Again, I was naive
and ignorant. I thought it was basically a hobby. I
(32:56):
didn't know anyone who was in QAnon. I remember Katie
Turr asking Trump in that interview before the election about
q and on and and I remember thinking, this, this
line of questioning is so silly. Q and On is
just a couple of people online in the bowels of
the Internet talking about whatever conspiracy that they are. And
then it was after my diversification of news and information
(33:20):
sources that I realized that not only was QAnon not
a hobby, but that it had the blessing of the
most powerful person in the history of the world, along
with groups like the Proud Boys and the Oathkeepers. This
was another moment for me where it was like running
into a brick wall, where I realized that this conspiracy
that existed had reached all the way into the upper
(33:40):
echelons of the power structure of our country.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
So for me, the most important thing after I left
was making amends.
Speaker 6 (33:48):
I didn't care where I went, or I didn't honestly,
I didn't want to continue anything with politics. I wanted
to make my amends and I wanted to walk away
It was almost like I had to refigure out who
I was because it consumed every part of me. And
after a while I realized that but for me, making
(34:10):
amends wasn't enough. That I needed to not only tell
my story and reach out to people who are still
in or who have questions, or people on the other
side of the political spectrum who don't understand why their
loved one has left them behind for this movement that
(34:30):
is just based on conspiracies. So I decided that I
was going as long as there was people who believed
in Q andon, I was going to continue to speak
out against it. Whether that's on Twitter or Facebook or
Reddit or wherever, on podcasts.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
It doesn't matter.
Speaker 6 (34:47):
As long as there's people in there, there's still hope
to get them out.
Speaker 4 (35:04):
So I did want to ask anti Semitism is that
inside of Q and on in the MAGA movement. I've
been outsider. I hear different things. There's struggles going on
with Tucker Carlson plantforming Flentes, who is a Holocaust denied
or a clear anti semi. Are there factions within the
MEGA movements pro Israels, more anti Semitic, more sort of
(35:26):
pro Nazis, more or less, and how would you differentiate
some of the streams within the current mega movement.
Speaker 6 (35:33):
Specifically for q Andon, QAnon is roughly based on hundreds
and thousands of years of old anti Semitic tropes.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
It is built on anti Semitism.
Speaker 6 (35:44):
You may not be aware of that when you first
start to believe it, but coming out of it and
you learn about all of these tropes that have gone around,
all this anti Semitism, all this Jewish hatred over centuries
is exactly similar things that people in QAnon believe currently
now though since October seventh with Israel and Hamas. Prior
(36:05):
to that, there was certain groups in q and I
who believed that saving Israel for last meant that the
Jewish people were going to be taken care of, that
their lives were going to be exposed, that their control
over our country was going to end, and that Trump
was going to expose all of us. However, since October seventh,
(36:28):
there has been a clear divide between people in QAnon
who truly believe that Israel is doing the right thing,
Israel has the right to exist, nata Na who is
not doing anything wrong, et cetera, et cetera, And then
there are people who have gotten fed up with Trump
supporting Israel, and now they're converging onto the path of
(36:51):
Nick Fuintees, where they're denying the Holocaust.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
Their Hitler was right, we need another Hitler.
Speaker 6 (36:57):
We need to, you know, purge every Jewish person from local, state,
federal government. It's very extreme in some aspects. And then
there's certain QAnon followers who just believe that q is
saving Israel for last, that the fake Jews, which in
(37:18):
certain aspects are called the Sabataean Jews or Kazarian Jews
in their speak, that they're going to be exposed, that
they're not real Jews, but they pretend to be Jews
to control everything. One of the last interactions that I
had with somebody who is in a very vocal Nazi
now he's involved with a lot of the kind of
(37:40):
Patriot Front groups where they go out and they put
stickers everywhere in White Lives Matter. He's involved with those
types of things now. One of the last interactions I
had with him before I left was him sending me
translated Hitler speeches into English, telling me that the deep
State had gotten to Hitler and that they're going to
do the same thing tom before.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
The deep state existed. He somehow got to Hitler and
that they.
Speaker 6 (38:04):
Framed him to have killed six million Jews. And I'm like, no,
because I'm abs with topics. Okay, I find something I
want to learn about and I will learn it to death. Titanic,
World War Two, the Holocaust, Cambodian genocide. It's just who
I am, and I knew right then and there like
something's wrong here. I don't support Hitler.
Speaker 7 (38:26):
There is a form of anti Semitism that happens in
Maga that I think a lot of adherents don't realize
their trafficking in and I'll give you a specific example
of it. We used to say all the time that
democratic voting Jews were not real Jews, and that democratic
voting Christians were not real Christians. And anyone who was
(38:50):
with us on the Maga side, we were the real Americans.
We were on the right side of history, and everyone
against us they were the fake Americans, and they were
on the wrong side of history. And anyone who was
not one hundred percent with us, they were one hundred
percent against us. It didn't matter if they were ninety
nine point nine nine with us. You were either with
(39:11):
us or you were against us. And so the idea
that we cast aspersions on someone's faith because they don't
vote a certain way, and in particular with democratic Jews,
that to me is a form of anti Semitism that
I think is overlooked amongst those in Maga. And I
think not to defend, but I think most in Maga
(39:34):
who engage in that kind of rhetoric, I don't think
they're thinking of it that way. They're not thinking of
it as antisemitic. They're thinking of it as who's on
the right side of history and who's the existential threat?
Because I looked at if I had met you guys
when I was in Maga, and if I met Erica
right now and I was still in Maga, I would
(39:56):
wump you into the one big category of being an
existential threat to my life, my livelihood, my family, and
my country. That's what I would think, without knowing anything
about you, that's what I would say about. So this
idea of who's a real Jew and who's a fake Jew,
and who's a real Christian and a fake and a
(40:16):
fake Christian, that that went on all the time when
I was in Maga. There was even a movement.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
It didn't.
Speaker 7 (40:22):
It gained very little traction, and to my knowledge, it's
not even really around anymore. There was a group called Jexit,
which was Jews Exiting the Democratic Party. Yeah, Jexit. You know,
I knew people who who had founded this organization, and
you know, talking about how you can't be a Democrat
(40:43):
and be a Jew at the same time. And I
was all about it. I said, yeah, I said, look
at these, look at these, look at Jews, and look
at Black Americans, and look at minorities, the way they
vote Democratic and they vote against their own interests. I
was engaging in those kinds of tropes as well without
me realizing it. And again I don't say that as
(41:03):
a self defense. It's that it was my own obliviousness
and ignorance that spoke that way.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
Are you finding that more and more people are interested
in what you're selling? Are you finding that more people
are starting to come around? I mean, I think in
the regular media you hear because of the elections in
New Jersey and Virginia, and people think that they're starting
to there's some movement away from Trump. But that's just
in the mainstream media. I wonder if you're seeing it
(41:29):
where you are.
Speaker 6 (41:30):
Yeah, absolutely so, Rich and I are in many group
chats together, and if I was to look through my
messages right now, I probably have at least ten different
group chats where we had to keep adding people to
them because there's so many people who are reaching out
(41:51):
to Rich who have decided that they're done and they
want to tell their story. But also separately, for me,
I keep a lot of my conversation on Twitter with people,
and at least once a week I have somebody who
will comment under something or tending me a message, and
(42:12):
we talk.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
And I let them know when you're ready, I'm here.
Speaker 6 (42:17):
Granted, getting somebody out of Quenon is a little bit
harder than most other things because it's been so long
since they've been involved with the conspiracies, and normally there's
a trauma underneath and it has to be addressed as well,
So that's a little harder than what Rich does so eloquently.
Speaker 7 (42:36):
Well, thank you Erica for saying that, And I'm glad
that all of you are mentioning trauma because being in
Mega is a traumatic experience and having left MAGA was
good for my soul and for my psyche. It improved
and resurrected relationships that I had lost with people I
fell out of contact with. Why because they were Blue voters,
(42:56):
even though I had known them for years and they
were important people in my life. But I'm happy to
report that leaving MEGA as an organization has never been busier.
We have testimonials we're working on at the moment. We
have some twenty twenty four MAGA supporters who have come
to us privately and they're working through their own doubts
(43:20):
and their own trauma. So between our public speaking, our
media requests, our fundraising, the testimonials we're working on, we're
growing our staff. As an organization, We've never been more active,
And I don't take any credit for that. That's really
a reflection of our leaving MAGA leaders like Erica and
(43:40):
all of the others, who have so eloquently given witness
to their own stories. So I would encourage everyone who's
listening to read those stories. Read Erica's, read the others.
We've got people who are in Christian nationalist churches. We
have leaders who were at the Capitol on January sixth
and served time and rejected Trump's pardon. We have a
(44:03):
black American who so desperately sought community as a MAGA
supporter that he wore a Confederate flag wristband as part
of his time in MAGA. I think people will find
these stories to be quite uplifting and inspirational, and so
everyone can reach out to us and find us at
Leavingmaga dot org. My email is on our contact page
(44:23):
and yes I actually do check my email, so anyone
who reaches out to us will make sure to acknowledge
the message.
Speaker 3 (44:29):
Now, thank you guys both. What you've done is difficult
and it's hard. It's hard to leave. Your experience I
think will be useful for other people.
Speaker 4 (44:37):
Thank you very much for com on. Thank you very
much for what you guys are both doing and you
are going to say it.
Speaker 8 (44:46):
Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry Osha, John Cipher,
and Jonathan Stern.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
The associate producer is Rachel Harner.
Speaker 8 (44:55):
Mission Implausible It's a production of honorable mention and abominable
pictures for iHeart Podcasts
Mission Implausible is now something you can watch. Just go
to YouTube and search Mission Implausible podcasts or click on
the link to our channel. In our show notes, I'm
John Cipher.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
And I'm Jerry O'Shea.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
We have over sixty years of experience as clandestine officers
in the CIA, serving in high risk areas all around
the world, and part.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
Of our job was creating conspiracies to deceive our adversaries.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Now we're going to use that experience to investigate the
conspiracy theories everyone's talking about as well as some of
you may not have heard.
Speaker 4 (00:41):
Could they be true or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 3 (00:43):
We'll find out now on Mission Implausible.
Speaker 5 (00:48):
Today, we would like to welcome rich Lochus and Ericode
wrote from leaving Mega, which is a community an organization
for those who have left the Mega organization.
Speaker 4 (01:01):
You were both deeply entrenched inside of Mega ideology and mindset,
and you both left and so we're really pleased to
have you here to talk about what led you into Mecca,
what motivated it, and what brought you out and what
the consequences are. So Rich or Erica, would you like
to start off and give us to sensed your journey
(01:22):
into the Belly of the Beast.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Okay, I'm a former q Andon supporter follower.
Speaker 6 (01:28):
It's a long story, but summed up in my life,
I kinda like always thought that conspiracies were fun, They
were entertaining, They were a what if, Like what if
there's this grand thing going on that the government is
trying to hide from us? And it was like a
little adventure that I could go on. And for me,
(01:48):
it all started surrounding nine nine to eleven. But I
wasn't like a at first. I wasn't like a hardcore
like nine to eleven truth or anything, but I liked
entertaining the idea that Bush had allowed this to happen,
and on and off into my early twenties, I started
following like the New World Order conspiracy in the Illuminati,
(02:11):
thinking that Alex Jones was like the greatest truth teller ever.
And then I got sucked into conspiracies after leaving an
abusive relationship, Like I just threw myself into it, and
I think it was a coping mechanism for me, And
unfortunately what happened was it led to me finding q
(02:34):
drops and the Dakotas and in the comment sections of
these posts, people believed the same things I believe, and
I thought that I had finally found my place, and
I got heavily, heavily entrenched in this world from twenty eighteen,
probably until just after January sixth, twenty twenty one. At
(02:59):
one point I was a admin in Telegram for a
large Q influencer. He's no longer posting anymore on Twitter,
but he went by the Punisher, and I would spend
my days not only just researching all this stuff and
promoting all sorts of new conspiracies that I researched on
(03:22):
my own, and some days I was on Telegram for
up to twenty twenty two hours doing this stuff.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
So it started out as fun and interesting, and basically
you sort of wandered into quicksand is what you're saying right,
that sort of and that became really involved rich what
was your experience?
Speaker 7 (03:40):
Yeah, So for me in twenty fifteen, I was someone
who was very politically lonely. I believe that both parties
were the same. I felt that they did not represent
most Americans, only represented a small sliver of the country,
the wealthy and the powerful. I had voted third party
(04:02):
many times in my life and very rarely did I
vote for a major party candidate. My first vote ever
for president was Ralph Nader in the year two thousand,
when I was living in New York. You know, being
in New York, al Gore was gonna win anyway, so
my vote was safe. But I didn't vote. I didn't
vote third party solely because of being anti two parties.
(04:25):
I was long attracted to the rogue, iconoclastic candidates, and
when Trump came on the scene in twenty fifteen, I
was curious in the beginning, and even though he ran
as a Republican, what enticed me about his candidacy was
that both parties saw him as a threat and that
he was a true outsider. He had no government, no military,
(04:47):
no political experience. And after many months of justifying away
comments that I knew were indefensible, like the John McCain
comment and the comments about Muslims, the comments about women,
I came to believe that if the Democrats had had
(05:10):
one in twenty sixteen, that they would have seized power permanently.
So I fell prey to the demographics or destiny mythology.
And it was in early twenty sixteen when I went
from Trump curious to being all in and I worked
on the campaign. I was a grassroots volunteer. I did
(05:30):
phone banking, I recruited people to vote for Trump. I
even contributed some of my journalistic and writing skills to
the call script for the campaign. And I felt something
that I had never felt before from the campaign, which
was a communal sense, a sense of feeling belonging. And
(05:51):
I feel like that's going to be a motif that's
going to run throughout this conversation, because you know the
way Erica was talking about having a community through QAnon
and conspiracies. For me, I wouldn't say my entrain to
Maga was conspiratorial initially, but once I was in and
I bought into lock stock and barrels, so many of
(06:13):
the conspiracies that still exists right now. The Democrats are
coming for your guns, and the schools are indoctrinating children
into transgender Marxism, and we're replacing white people with brown
people and foreigners. There's this really toxic amalgam and mix
of lies and conspiracy theories that magas buttressed on. And
(06:35):
I allowed myself to fall prey to those mythologies really quickly,
and I was around people who were Trump voters, people
I knew, people, I was close with people I trusted.
And it was throughout the course of the next several
years after the twenty sixteen election, that I just got
deeper and deeper. I became a Maga influencer, or I
(06:58):
aspired to be a Maga influencer. I was writing freelance
articles for writing publications. My media diet was steadily Maga media.
I was professionally producing a podcast. Was doing all of
this because I felt that I was in this existential
battle between good and evil, and I wanted the president
to see my work because it was my aspiration to
(07:20):
be a Maga pundit and influencer, and that's how I
lived my life devoutly, every hour of every day before
my doubts started. So I really relate to Erica talking
about being online for twenty twenty two hours because for me,
Maga consumed my identity. It was my being, my personhood,
(07:42):
and it was my It was completely how my worldview
had been shaped.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
So it sounds like you're both saying separately that community
was a big part of it, right rich You're saying, yes,
you actually were out dealing with people and stuff, Eric
If I understand yours was more of an online experience.
You're watching infro war as you got onto Twitter. Did
you also go to rallies and do all that type
of stuff.
Speaker 6 (08:06):
Or was it mostly I didn't participate in some protests
in the capital of New York and Albany with some
people who were rallying at the time against Governor Cuomo.
I mean it wasn't like on a regular basis, but
it was significant. But most of my interaction within my
community at the time was online. But I did enter
(08:29):
into real world spaces with those same types of people
as well.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
This is something I've always often wondered about. What is
between the two of you? What is the difference between
a cult and a community? I mean, both have shared beliefs,
both have this sort of fellowship, Both have an us
them sort of relationship with the rest of the world,
and both both can be comforting. One is more threatening.
The word word community seems more fluffy and huggable. What
(08:58):
for you is the difference between cult and community?
Speaker 2 (09:01):
So for me, I.
Speaker 6 (09:04):
Thought that community was people who had shared beliefs with you,
believe the same things and influenced your views. But also
at the same time, you could disagree that I thought
that's what I was in. A cult for me is
actually what I was in. You can't question the leader,
(09:25):
you can't have different opinions on anything, and no matter what,
you have to toe the line. You have to believe this,
You have to believe that there's no questioning what is
being told to you.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Yeah. I remember reading what you some of your experience.
You talk about how even as you were still part
of the community, you would start to ask some questions,
but people really then turned against you and docs.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (09:47):
Yeah, I ended up getting docksed. There was an anonymous
police reports to my local sheriff's office, to the local
child's Protective Services unit. My house was attempted to be
broken into. I had to change my phone number a
couple times, my email addresses. It got very serious and
quite scary. Honestly, It's why I hesitated for so long
(10:09):
to become a public face. It wasn't until I met
Rich that I had the courage to step out from
an anonymous Twitter user.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
He really gave me the courage to do that.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
It's tough because they seem to go after people who
were I mean, even at the highest level, we're seeing
it right now with Marjorie Taylor Green. Right, Trump he
brings people in as long as they're very much fawning
towards him, but the minute they question anything, they become
an enemy. If you look at the people that they're
trying to send to jail, that they're putting, they got
(10:41):
the Justice Department going after right now. Almost all of
the our people he brought in, the FBI director Ray
Kelly Bolton, all these people were his own people, but
they if they disagree with them, they then become enemies.
And so even Marjorie Taylor Green has become an enemy.
So you know, it's a difficult thing because I think
it's has to do with I think Trump's psyche more
(11:04):
than even the movements.
Speaker 6 (11:05):
But at the same aspect, they see him doing those things,
so they think it's okay to do it to everybody else,
which is why you're seeing Marjorie Taylor Green, for example,
being swarmed. Her comment sections are atrocious, they're horrifying. I
don't think that Marjorie Taylor Green is a great person,
but she has every room and every opportunity to change
(11:29):
her mind and change her stance on things, and I
would allow her. I would give her that grace. She
doesn't deserve this treatment. Nobody does.
Speaker 7 (11:37):
I understand, guys, why people would look at MAGA and
say this is a cult. I can attest to the
fact that in my life there were some cult like aspects.
I always mentioned in this context that I had a
magas second family, and that second family oftentimes took precedence
over my own blood family, where I neglected husband and
(12:00):
familial and parental duties in the pursuit of this movement.
That I was a part of the reason I'm ambivalent
about referring to MAGA as a cult is largely informed
by my work at leaving MAGA and the kind of
advocacy that Erica has done for our organization as well.
We want to extract people out of MAGA, especially as
(12:23):
they start to have doubts, and we feel that if
we refer to people in MAGA as cultists, it's going
to make them dig their heels in. You know, when
I was in MAGA, we used to hear the cult language,
and we used to all the time say not even
half facetiously, but half seriously, that we weren't in the cult,
that everyone in the outside world was in the cult,
(12:44):
and that we weren't the crazies. Everyone else in the
outside world were the crazies. And as hard as it
is to leave MAGA, it's still, I believe, easier to
leave MAGA than it would be a bona fide cult
of which I've never been a part of. Unless we're
going to call my Catholic upbringing that, No, I shouldn't say.
(13:04):
That's a joke. Everyone that's a joke. One's a Catholic,
always a Catholic. My wife and my family's to hear
that and say, is that what you really think about
your Catholic upbringing? No, I don't really think of it
that way. But I've not been in an actual cult.
But I do see where people can think that about MAGA,
and there are certain traits about it that would match
(13:26):
most likely being in an actual cult.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
Yeah, Rich you said something really interesting that I want
to touch back on. You mentioned Trump's comments about John McCain.
John McCain, you know, just to remind people, was shot
down over North Vietnam. He was tortured. He could have
left early the prison, he refused. He was stayed with
his men. This is a guy who was crippled lifelong,
and I've had the opportunity to meet with John McCain
(13:51):
inside CIA to brief him in Bagdad, a place that
was really dangerous at the time he flew in. He
was really interested in the truth. He was interested in
the people who were serving on the front lines, troops,
CIA officers. I have enormous respect for the guy. And
when Trump a draft died, or at least he never
served in the mid military called him a loser because
(14:12):
he was shot down and tortured by the North Vietnamese,
I thought, as so many of us have in so
many occasions, that's the end of it. Right, There's certain
third rails you can't touch, and one is like going
after genuine bona fide war heroes. I mean, you can
disagree with their political stance, but the fact that they
serve their country and sacrificed is undebatable. And yet that
(14:33):
didn't happen. And yet people who swore that they loved
the military and swore by American heroism and they just
abandoned John McKay and so I was wondering, what is
it for both of you? But that is an example
when a tenet of the community interferes with what you've
always believed in or interferes with basic reality. How do
(14:55):
you react to it. Is it like I've got to
I don't really believe it, but I've got to say
this in order to stay in the community, or do
you actually change your mind?
Speaker 6 (15:03):
For example, we'll take McCain because that's relatively easy to
talk about.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Unfortunate.
Speaker 6 (15:10):
So regardless of his war hero status, the being a
political prisoner, the being tortured, all of that, because Trump
called him out. Within the q Andon community, he was
a trader to his country and that was justifiable. The
way that it works within q Andon is Trump highlights
people who we need to dig into to find out
(15:30):
what traitorous actions they did against the United States and
the American people. So as soon as he says these
types of awful things about John McCain or any other
but any anybody else, they're a trader, they did something horrific.
They deserve to be put to death. That's why you'll
still see to this day they compare like Dan Crenshaw
(15:51):
to being the new John McCain. And then at John
McCain's funeral, the flag on his casket was wrinkled, so
that meant that he was executed in the q Andon world,
and because it's something that gets pushed and pushed and
pushed and pushed, it's that repetition that makes it believable,
and you just go along with it whether you believe
(16:13):
it or not. But eventually, if you are a true
believer like I was, you believe it.
Speaker 7 (16:19):
Even before the Obamacare vote from Senator McCain, John McCain was,
amongst many in MAGA a hated person, and one of
the disparaging remarks that was often made about the late
John McCain and MAGA was that he was a globalist.
This was something that was which I'm thinking about again,
(16:42):
the conspiratorial way of how people opposed to Trump and
MAGA were, how they're identified, just like with Mitt Romney,
similar referred to as the same way as a globalist,
a crony capitalist, these kinds of monikers. But that's the
moment for me, the John McCain comment that I should
have run. Whatever curiosity I had about the Trump campaign
(17:06):
should have ceased at that moment because I knew that
that it was an unjustifiable comment. But I so quickly,
and I should preface by saying that none of anything
I say, I want to be construed as a self
defense because everyone has agency, and I made these choices
on my own. Nolan coaxed to course me into my support,
(17:27):
but I so quickly fell prey to the idea that
the Democrats would win in political power indefinitely and I
would be an irrelevant citizen of my country that I
look the other way on the John McCain statement. And
throughout Trump's presidency, there were several times that I had
very critical private conversations about Trump. Charlottesville was another one.
(17:51):
I was very close with someone who worked as a
paid staffer in Trump's campaign, and I remember when Charlottesville happened.
I'm a little embarrassed to talk about it the way
that I will, and ashamed because my concern wasn't the
fact that a woman, Heather Hire, had died and that
people were in My worry when Charlottesville happened was that
(18:13):
the press and Democrats and anti Trump Republicans were going
to label all of we and NAGA as neo Nazis
and white supremacists. So my concern was damage control. It
wasn't the fact that a woman was innocently run over
and murdered and that others committed violence. So I had
that kind of I remember we censured Trump privately, but
(18:39):
that's private. We never did it publicly. Maybe they hurt
our cult explanation and they're still thinking, well, it still
sounds like a cult. I'm going to give them fodder
on this one because you just never criticized Trump publicly.
You didn't do it because if you did it, you'd
be exiled, just like Eric is saying, and just like
we're seeing what Marjorie Taylor Green right now, if you
(18:59):
go and censure the president in your remarks publicly, you're
going to become persona and on grive. And that's because
you absolutely will be. Because Trump is the he's the
titular leader of the community. He's the one who took
a brand of right wing politics that are not new,
not novel, but he branded them. And for me, make
(19:22):
America Great Again was not nostalgic. I was thirty nine
years old in twenty sixteen. As delusional as it sounds,
Make America Great Again, for me was very forward facing
and progressive. I saw it even as a second kind
of founding of the country. So that's that was just
that was my fealty to Maga and whenever Trump was attacked,
(19:45):
we felt that we were attacked. So I even had
a phrase that I used for the media that I trademarked.
I called it the Democrat media industrial complex. You know
that it was in that trademark's now available if anyone
wants it. I don't have I don't have it anymore
because I don't think that there I don't think there
is a I don't believe that there's a liberal media conspiracy.
(20:07):
But I did believe that at one time.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
Being part of a tribe, being part of something bigger
than yourself is powerful. Did you come out of it?
What was the hardest part about realizing you no longer
believed in it, or how you were coming out of it?
And we could tell there's probably a lot to this,
but just start to talk a little bit about like
when did you start to realize there was a problem
if you could justify all those things for so long,
when did it turn? For both the Maybi era, cos So, for.
Speaker 6 (20:42):
Me, it was towards the tail end when the vaccines
were being discussed. Operation warp Speed was almost completed. That's
for me where my doubts started coming in. On one hand,
Trump was touting and just so excited about Operation Warp
Speed and the COVID vaccines that were going to be
(21:04):
coming to Fruition soon. And on the other hand, everybody
in my community was telling me that it was built
Gate's death job coming to populate us. So it was
a very confusing time for me. And then January sixth happened,
and I knew people who were there. I'd had an
opportunity to go, but I didn't have anybody to watch
(21:26):
my kids, and I couldn't leave them for a couple
of days by themselves, so I didn't go. But the
fact was that I could have met up with my
friends there and participated in what unfolded that I watched
live happening. It was just such a shock to the
system that I couldn't ignore my questions anymore. But a
(21:47):
lot of my doubt was around COVID because I had
actually gotten COVID and I got very, very sick. I
got pneumonia after I was recovering from the COVID and
I was sick for almost three months. It damn near
destroyed my lungs. So it wasn't just a flu, It
wasn't just you know, something that's going to go away
in fifteen days and go away. If we don't test,
(22:09):
possibly could have killed me. So I knew that we
were being misled somehow. And then the COVID vaccine talks started,
and I just I couldn't ignore it anymore.
Speaker 7 (22:19):
So I like to paraphrase the late and venerable Ernest
Hemingway and say that my epiphany out of MAGA happened
gradually and then suddenly all at once. Trump's mismanagement of
COVID January sixth, the stolen election lies, those were all
some of the cracks, but they weren't enough for me.
The first accelerant for my leaving of MAGA was actually
(22:41):
not Donald Trump. It was my governor, Ron de Santees.
In the summer of twenty twenty one, if we recall,
there had been the delta surge of COVID and children
were getting sick, children were dying from the virus, and
Ron de Santees, rather than continue his vaccine advocacy, he
started platforming anti vaxers at his press conferences, people who
(23:04):
said that the COVID vaccine was changing people's RNA and
was deadlier than the virus. Now, I am a parent
of two children, and I recall when I would read
the stories about children getting sick and dying from COVID,
all I could think about was the suffering that those
kids went through, and the parents and the parents, the
(23:26):
bereaved parents, grieving and in mourning. So when Ron Desantas
did that when kids were getting sick, it really shocked me,
and I didn't understand why he took that approach. And
it was shortly thereafter that I did something that sounds
very simple but was very profoundly life changing and altering
for me, which was I diversified my news and information sources.
(23:49):
And as soon as I did that, I started to slowly,
painfully but liberatingly realize that so much of what it
was that I had believed and had created an identity around,
was not true. You know, the conspiracies I mentioned earlier
about gone and our kids being indoctrinated in white replacement theory,
(24:14):
these kinds of conspiracies that exist legion within MAGA. I
had a lot of late nights just myself and my thoughts,
where I would sit at my desk and I would say,
I have been believing lies for years, and not just
one or two wives, but years accumulated of them. And
the final straw for me was May twenty fourth, twenty
(24:37):
twenty two, which was the day of the Uvalde, Texas
school shooting, another incident where children died and were injured
and others died and were injured. And I knew exactly
how the Republican Party and Donald Trump were, how they
were going to respond to that incident, and they responded
exactly as I knew they would. They would nonchalantly accept
(24:59):
yet another incident of avoidable deaths and suffering, just like
ron De Santees did with the anti vaxxer, just like
January sixth of politically motivated violence and acceptance of avoidable
debts and suffering. And it was shortly after Uvalde that
I quietly left MAGA. I only told my wife and
(25:20):
a few other people. But there was something, guys, that
was really gnawing at me. After Uvalde and after I
silently left MAGA. I was always so unapologetically public in
my support for Trump. I felt that I needed to
be public and my renunciation of the movement, And it
was on August thirtieth of twenty twenty two, which is
(25:40):
what I call my leaving magaversary. I wrote a mea culpa,
and in that story I said that I was wrong
for supporting Trump and Maga, that I was sorry, and
that I wanted to apologize to anyone I may have
hurt with my words and deeds. And the God's honest
truth is that I never thought anybody would care. I
thought that I would just do it, I would close
(26:02):
that chapter of my life. It would bring the catharsis
of finally severing myself from that world and moving on.
But it turned out that people did care, and I
received instantaneously, one after another from friends and family of
people in MAGA. And I was completely naive and oblivious
(26:22):
to how many relationships had been torn asunder by this movement.
And I had a hand in that. I was culpable,
I was complicit. I was complicit in helping the president
divide the country and amplify conspiracy theories.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Yeah, I mean reach individuals. It's a large country. You
can't put too much on yourself, but I think it
is important for the people who are listening to hear,
like if there are other people looking to come out
of the movement, you know, the guilt, the anger, the relief,
how you deal with it as a person. It sounds
like you had some guilt around it and how you
got over that guilt, and Erica, it sounds like you
(26:59):
started to question things. Did you find yourself all of
a sudden having all sorts of anger issues or was
it relieve?
Speaker 6 (27:06):
At first, I was very hesitant. I thought again against
it as hard as I could, because I knew that
on the other side of my beliefs was things in
people and events that were truly horrific that I justified
for years, and I didn't want to face that. At first,
(27:27):
I was scared, but I found a great little support
system online, people who had been debunking QAnon conspiracies for
years at that point, and it took about probably six
months after I started talking to them, and then, like
Rich said, it was slow at first and then suddenly
(27:50):
it was all at the same time. I resisted hard though,
because I truly believed that the deep state had conspired
to get Trump out in twenty twenty, because the Democrats
wanted to unfold the sixteen Year Plan, which ushered in
globalism in the New World Order and pretty much just
capalist slavery and depopulation. I believed it to my core
(28:14):
and the things that I justified, the things I accepted,
the things in relationships that I fractured.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
All that pain.
Speaker 6 (28:23):
If I accepted that I was wrong this whole time,
all that pain was going to be front and center.
And it took a while to get to that point.
And then I spent probably a good year grieving, grieving,
re educating myself, diversifying my media, and take the people
around me, the people I spoke to, And it was
a long, very painful, very like agonizing to realize just
(28:48):
what I had believed in.
Speaker 4 (28:50):
So bringing in John and I are CIA background, this
is really interesting because in our careers we dealt with
a lot of people, people who were in Al Qaeda,
people who were in the Russian system, the North Korean system,
and they tell similar stories that I remember sitting across
(29:10):
from one North Korean and he had too many drinks
and he really wasn't supposed to be talking to me.
Although he didn't know I was CIA at the time,
he probably could have suspected it, but he'd lowered his voice.
He looked around after telling the greatness of North Korea
how wonderful it was, and he said, it's really not
that great, the dear leader isn't as good as people say,
(29:35):
and he had just committed treason. He had committed a
capital crime by saying that he could have been ostracized.
It was dangerous to his family. And yet he clearly
had been saying to everyone who would listen, to his
own family, this is what I think, but inside he
knew it wasn't true. And oftentimes, at least in our
(29:57):
world of espionage, we look for people Russians, people inside
the Russian government of the Chinese government, who like, they
know it's not true, right, and they can't live with
the lie, and eventually they want to do so something
about it, and some go into internal exile, some just
never mind. Others actually wanted you know, it's like I
want to fight back, and you know, I'd like to
(30:18):
work with the US. John, You've had a lot of
experience with Russians who had been in a system, who
who were afraid to say what they really thought. And
some of our best spies, Russian spies, are people who
simply couldn't do it anymore.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
They were living with that with Vladimir Putin. So when
your country fell apart is like a trauma. So these
people belonged to a country they thought was one of
the most powerful in the world. It was a superpower
and it fell apart. Can you imagine if you're a
person who's defending that, the trauma of trying to deal
with that. You can imagine if our country actually did
get into civil war and fell apart. But you see,
(30:53):
you think you feel guilty. Now imagine how you would
feel if that kind of happened. And so, you know,
dealing with those kind of people. Different people have different
ways of reacting to things. Some like Vladimir Putin doubled
down and said I'm going to be more aggressive and more.
Others that we try to deal with would say, hey,
you just want to be a normal country. What can
we do to move forward? And that's why it's really
(31:14):
interesting to talk to you guys, because you know, you
belong to one tribe and then you had to come
out of it. What's the next step do you, like,
are you looking for another tribe? Do you become a
democrat or do you just stay away from politics? What's
the next step?
Speaker 7 (31:28):
I think of it as an odyssey, and I am
very lucky in that after I left Maga, I didn't
know where I was going to go, but I was
asked by various media and organizations to keep recounting my story.
So I kept doing it, and I did it because
I felt it was part of an ongoing reckoning to
(31:49):
continue to make amends for my past. So I found
myself telling my story over and over again, and it eventually,
from the telling of that story was born our organization
Leaving MAGA. And when I founded it, I never run
a nonprofit before. I didn't know what it would what
(32:10):
form it would take, but I remember thinking, there have
to be others out there who also left, you know,
it couldn't be just me. There's got to be others
out there. And Erica was one of the very, very
first leaders I ever met who left MAGA. When there's
a I would really encourage everyone to read her testimonial
at our Leaving Maga dot org site, and all of
(32:32):
our testimonials for that matter. It shows the courage that
so many went through to have to come to their
own realization that they needed to leave because being in
MAGA didn't comport any longer with their values. So, you know,
when it came to q and On, I knew of QAnon,
but when I was in Maga. Again, I was naive
and ignorant. I thought it was basically a hobby. I
(32:56):
didn't know anyone who was in QAnon. I remember Katie
Turr asking Trump in that interview before the election about
q and on and and I remember thinking, this, this
line of questioning is so silly. Q and On is
just a couple of people online in the bowels of
the Internet talking about whatever conspiracy that they are. And
then it was after my diversification of news and information
(33:20):
sources that I realized that not only was QAnon not
a hobby, but that it had the blessing of the
most powerful person in the history of the world, along
with groups like the Proud Boys and the Oathkeepers. This
was another moment for me where it was like running
into a brick wall, where I realized that this conspiracy
that existed had reached all the way into the upper
(33:40):
echelons of the power structure of our country.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
So for me, the most important thing after I left
was making amends.
Speaker 6 (33:48):
I didn't care where I went, or I didn't honestly,
I didn't want to continue anything with politics. I wanted
to make my amends and I wanted to walk away
It was almost like I had to refigure out who
I was because it consumed every part of me. And
after a while I realized that but for me, making
(34:10):
amends wasn't enough. That I needed to not only tell
my story and reach out to people who are still
in or who have questions, or people on the other
side of the political spectrum who don't understand why their
loved one has left them behind for this movement that
(34:30):
is just based on conspiracies. So I decided that I
was going as long as there was people who believed
in Q andon, I was going to continue to speak
out against it. Whether that's on Twitter or Facebook or
Reddit or wherever, on podcasts.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
It doesn't matter.
Speaker 6 (34:47):
As long as there's people in there, there's still hope
to get them out.
Speaker 4 (35:04):
So I did want to ask anti Semitism is that
inside of Q and on in the MAGA movement. I've
been outsider. I hear different things. There's struggles going on
with Tucker Carlson plantforming Flentes, who is a Holocaust denied
or a clear anti semi. Are there factions within the
MEGA movements pro Israels, more anti Semitic, more sort of
(35:26):
pro Nazis, more or less, and how would you differentiate
some of the streams within the current mega movement.
Speaker 6 (35:33):
Specifically for q Andon, QAnon is roughly based on hundreds
and thousands of years of old anti Semitic tropes.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
It is built on anti Semitism.
Speaker 6 (35:44):
You may not be aware of that when you first
start to believe it, but coming out of it and
you learn about all of these tropes that have gone around,
all this anti Semitism, all this Jewish hatred over centuries
is exactly similar things that people in QAnon believe currently
now though since October seventh with Israel and Hamas. Prior
(36:05):
to that, there was certain groups in q and I
who believed that saving Israel for last meant that the
Jewish people were going to be taken care of, that
their lives were going to be exposed, that their control
over our country was going to end, and that Trump
was going to expose all of us. However, since October seventh,
(36:28):
there has been a clear divide between people in QAnon
who truly believe that Israel is doing the right thing,
Israel has the right to exist, nata Na who is
not doing anything wrong, et cetera, et cetera, And then
there are people who have gotten fed up with Trump
supporting Israel, and now they're converging onto the path of
(36:51):
Nick Fuintees, where they're denying the Holocaust.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
Their Hitler was right, we need another Hitler.
Speaker 6 (36:57):
We need to, you know, purge every Jewish person from local, state,
federal government. It's very extreme in some aspects. And then
there's certain QAnon followers who just believe that q is
saving Israel for last, that the fake Jews, which in
(37:18):
certain aspects are called the Sabataean Jews or Kazarian Jews
in their speak, that they're going to be exposed, that
they're not real Jews, but they pretend to be Jews
to control everything. One of the last interactions that I
had with somebody who is in a very vocal Nazi
now he's involved with a lot of the kind of
(37:40):
Patriot Front groups where they go out and they put
stickers everywhere in White Lives Matter. He's involved with those
types of things now. One of the last interactions I
had with him before I left was him sending me
translated Hitler speeches into English, telling me that the deep
State had gotten to Hitler and that they're going to
do the same thing tom before.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
The deep state existed. He somehow got to Hitler and
that they.
Speaker 6 (38:04):
Framed him to have killed six million Jews. And I'm like, no,
because I'm abs with topics. Okay, I find something I
want to learn about and I will learn it to death. Titanic,
World War Two, the Holocaust, Cambodian genocide. It's just who
I am, and I knew right then and there like
something's wrong here. I don't support Hitler.
Speaker 7 (38:26):
There is a form of anti Semitism that happens in
Maga that I think a lot of adherents don't realize
their trafficking in and I'll give you a specific example
of it. We used to say all the time that
democratic voting Jews were not real Jews, and that democratic
voting Christians were not real Christians. And anyone who was
(38:50):
with us on the Maga side, we were the real Americans.
We were on the right side of history, and everyone
against us they were the fake Americans, and they were
on the wrong side of history. And anyone who was
not one hundred percent with us, they were one hundred
percent against us. It didn't matter if they were ninety
nine point nine nine with us. You were either with
(39:11):
us or you were against us. And so the idea
that we cast aspersions on someone's faith because they don't
vote a certain way, and in particular with democratic Jews,
that to me is a form of anti Semitism that
I think is overlooked amongst those in Maga. And I
think not to defend, but I think most in Maga
(39:34):
who engage in that kind of rhetoric, I don't think
they're thinking of it that way. They're not thinking of
it as antisemitic. They're thinking of it as who's on
the right side of history and who's the existential threat?
Because I looked at if I had met you guys
when I was in Maga, and if I met Erica
right now and I was still in Maga, I would
(39:56):
wump you into the one big category of being an
existential threat to my life, my livelihood, my family, and
my country. That's what I would think, without knowing anything
about you, that's what I would say about. So this
idea of who's a real Jew and who's a fake Jew,
and who's a real Christian and a fake and a
(40:16):
fake Christian, that that went on all the time when
I was in Maga. There was even a movement.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
It didn't.
Speaker 7 (40:22):
It gained very little traction, and to my knowledge, it's
not even really around anymore. There was a group called Jexit,
which was Jews Exiting the Democratic Party. Yeah, Jexit. You know,
I knew people who who had founded this organization, and
you know, talking about how you can't be a Democrat
(40:43):
and be a Jew at the same time. And I
was all about it. I said, yeah, I said, look
at these, look at these, look at Jews, and look
at Black Americans, and look at minorities, the way they
vote Democratic and they vote against their own interests. I
was engaging in those kinds of tropes as well without
me realizing it. And again I don't say that as
(41:03):
a self defense. It's that it was my own obliviousness
and ignorance that spoke that way.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
Are you finding that more and more people are interested
in what you're selling? Are you finding that more people
are starting to come around? I mean, I think in
the regular media you hear because of the elections in
New Jersey and Virginia, and people think that they're starting
to there's some movement away from Trump. But that's just
in the mainstream media. I wonder if you're seeing it
(41:29):
where you are.
Speaker 6 (41:30):
Yeah, absolutely so, Rich and I are in many group
chats together, and if I was to look through my
messages right now, I probably have at least ten different
group chats where we had to keep adding people to
them because there's so many people who are reaching out
(41:51):
to Rich who have decided that they're done and they
want to tell their story. But also separately, for me,
I keep a lot of my conversation on Twitter with people,
and at least once a week I have somebody who
will comment under something or tending me a message, and
(42:12):
we talk.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
And I let them know when you're ready, I'm here.
Speaker 6 (42:17):
Granted, getting somebody out of Quenon is a little bit
harder than most other things because it's been so long
since they've been involved with the conspiracies, and normally there's
a trauma underneath and it has to be addressed as well,
So that's a little harder than what Rich does so eloquently.
Speaker 7 (42:36):
Well, thank you Erica for saying that, And I'm glad
that all of you are mentioning trauma because being in
Mega is a traumatic experience and having left MAGA was
good for my soul and for my psyche. It improved
and resurrected relationships that I had lost with people I
fell out of contact with. Why because they were Blue voters,
(42:56):
even though I had known them for years and they
were important people in my life. But I'm happy to
report that leaving MEGA as an organization has never been busier.
We have testimonials we're working on at the moment. We
have some twenty twenty four MAGA supporters who have come
to us privately and they're working through their own doubts
(43:20):
and their own trauma. So between our public speaking, our
media requests, our fundraising, the testimonials we're working on, we're
growing our staff. As an organization, We've never been more active,
And I don't take any credit for that. That's really
a reflection of our leaving MAGA leaders like Erica and
(43:40):
all of the others, who have so eloquently given witness
to their own stories. So I would encourage everyone who's
listening to read those stories. Read Erica's, read the others.
We've got people who are in Christian nationalist churches. We
have leaders who were at the Capitol on January sixth
and served time and rejected Trump's pardon. We have a
(44:03):
black American who so desperately sought community as a MAGA
supporter that he wore a Confederate flag wristband as part
of his time in MAGA. I think people will find
these stories to be quite uplifting and inspirational, and so
everyone can reach out to us and find us at
Leavingmaga dot org. My email is on our contact page
(44:23):
and yes I actually do check my email, so anyone
who reaches out to us will make sure to acknowledge
the message.
Speaker 3 (44:29):
Now, thank you guys both. What you've done is difficult
and it's hard. It's hard to leave. Your experience I
think will be useful for other people.
Speaker 4 (44:37):
Thank you very much for com on. Thank you very
much for what you guys are both doing and you
are going to say it.
Speaker 8 (44:46):
Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry Osha, John Cipher,
and Jonathan Stern.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
The associate producer is Rachel Harner.
Speaker 8 (44:55):
Mission Implausible It's a production of honorable mention and abominable
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Hosts And Creators
Adam Davidson
John Sipher
Jerry O'Shea
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