Recently, on Reddit, ex-Trump supporters opened up about what made them change their minds about the President, and their responses were shockingly honest. Here are some of the most thought-provoking answers:
1. "A few months ago, I began to dislike him because of his treatment of Zelenskyy. The Epstein files were the nail in the coffin. I want him impeached now."
2. "I'm originally from Alabama, so I was taught to just vote Republican. So 2016 rolls around, and I do that. I never really paid attention to politics, so I didn't care about my vote. Especially in a red-dominated state. I didn't pay attention to politics til the end of 2019 and going into 2020. When COVID hit, I watched the news more closely and listened to the idiotic stuff he was saying. When he mentioned something about putting disinfectant in our bodies, I knew this wasn't the guy for our country or me. As the months and years went on, my opinions of him got worse and worse."
"Most of my acquaintances that I still talk to ask me if I would rather have 'Sleepy Joe' instead. My response is, 'If someone is sleeping, they are not fucking things up currently.' But apologies that I didn't pay closer attention in 2016. I wouldn't have voted for him if I knew. I can't even vote Republican anymore cause they aren't true Republicans anymore. They are MAGA kiss asses."
3. "Watching 75-year-old Martin Gugino being violently shoved by riot police and cracking his head on the pavement during the 2020 protests in Buffalo, NY. Then watching Trump get on Twitter, making up all sorts of lies to justify it."
4. "I joined the military. I grew up super conservative and carried that into adulthood. Then, being out of my hometown and among a diverse crowd and working with people from other countries, I realized that I was wrong. Empathy and compassion win over bigotry and hate."
5. "Until the 2020 election, I only paid attention to voting records, policy statements, and platforms. What do I care what personality someone has, as long as they vote the way that aligns with my beliefs? It's the policies that matter, it's the bills that matter, not whether a politician is a little off-putting personally. I'm embarrassed now, but I was a Republican for far too long. I believed what the platform spoke of, and I believed the policy guidelines. I didn't pay attention to personalities or even specifics."
And I was more of a centrist-leaning conservative anyway. Not a hardliner, not a fascist. More of a 'yes, changes are needed, but let's do it carefully, let's pace ourselves, let's try not to change everything all at once. Let's take deliberate, well-planned steps, let's not rush things and do things we regret.'
And to be honest, all during Trump's first term, my life wasn't that bad. Whatever the federal government did during that period, it didn't affect me much. So what was I to be upset about? 'Stay the course,' I thought, 'because things are relatively okay for me now.'
But then I caught a random video that compiled many of the horrible things Trump has said and done. This was around January 2020. And I was horrified. Before this, I never gave him any attention.
And then came the 'UV light' thing for COVID and all the chicanery with how he handled the pandemic.
And I pulled my wife aside, and showed the video to her, and I asked her, 'Has he always been like this? Is this new?'
And after her volley of punches at me, and after her voice gave out, screaming, 'Haven't you been paying attention?' I finally decided that I needed to do some more research.
I researched Trump, and all that he's done and said (policy aside). And I was disgusted. I could not believe I'd been blind to it all this time.
And I researched the things Republicans have been trying to get done, and the dealings, and the lies, and the sneakiness, and the collusion, and the patronizing, and the racism, and the indifference to the poor, and the catering to the rich ... and I was also rather horrified, and embarrassed too.
And so I voted for Biden in 2020. I couldn't abide by this kind of leadership, this kind of morally corrupt person at the helm.
And by 2024, I realized ... my life wasn't worse under a Democrat president either. What was I so afraid of?
And I noticed that most liberals weren't extreme anyway. They didn't want to enact sweeping changes that would make the USA look nothing like before. They wanted the same changes I wanted, maybe at a faster pace, maybe at a higher budgetary cost, but there was nothing I outright disagreed with.
And so while I deeply regret voting for Trump in 2016, I don't regret voting for Biden at all in 2020.
There you go. I'm that guy. I bared my soul here."
6. "It was my first time voting. I voted for him in 2016. I was slowly becoming less and less of a fan in his first term. I was solidly not for him, but also not a hater by 2018 and into 19. I started thinking of myself as an independent. But once COVID hit, I saw how he pandered so hard to his conspiracy theorist base, yet got vaccinated. It made me flip a full 180 on him and just accept that I thought he lied, pandered, and did whatever he could to gain votes. He’d flip-flop on subjects based on how he thought which decision would make him more popular with his base."
"I grew up with very conservative parents, and hated Obama because of my parents. But I was in college, and Obama was finishing his last term while the primaries were going on. And I started to see that I actually didn’t hate Obama and thought he was a pretty decent president. So that was kind of the beginning of my political shift. But a full transformation did not happen until around COVID, when I had come to terms with the fact that I just didn’t agree with almost anything Trump or modern-day Republicans stood for."
7. "Meeting a trans woman in real life. I was horrifically indoctrinated into the alt-right from discovering 4chan at 8 years old and didn't leave until 24. Narcissism became my coping mechanism, like all the other hurt children in adult bodies I hung out with. We were better than everyone who wasn't us, and anyone who didn't agree or fall in line was devalued and attacked. My friends would post pics of trans people we found online to make fun of together as nightly bonding. The left were hysterical, blue-haired, daddy issues, no friends, etc. It was all just projection from all of us. We couldn't make friends any other way, so we made friends through hate."
8. "Back at the start of college, I liked the idea of 'draining the swamp' and getting a businessman and non-politician into government. Unfortunately, you can’t run the country like a business. It’s not meant to make a profit; it’s not supposed to be transactional. We do this, you do that."
"I was already not following him anymore by the time COVID came around, but his handling of the pandemic, attacking people, and treating it almost like a joke made no sense to me. At a time when you need someone to bring people together and comfort a public that was scared, he did nothing but point fingers, yell, and blame.
Come the Project 2025 stuff, I could not imagine supporting him. I’m still registered as a republican, but he holds no values that the true Republican Party holds, and has warped it into the MAGA party."
9. "I've realized that he is not in line with God's teachings regarding how to view immigrants and the poor."
10. "Oh boy... I'd say my girlfriend had a big part in it, but specifically Tim Pool. Like many Republicans I know, I got my political info from rage-bait YouTubers and Facebook memes. I'd get riled up and say stupid shit, and she would listen, and then start to ask questions, and we'd look up the issue and discuss, and more often than not, I'd admit I was wrong and eat a nice helping of crow. That being said, the single event that made me go 'wait a fucking minute...that doesn't sound right at all' was the New York Attorney General fraud case against Trump."
11. "At a terrifying time, when what we truly needed was empathy and unity, I saw the guy I'd proudly voted for in '16 do the opposite of everything my morals stood for. Every day, I watched him bitch and complain about everyone who disagreed with him. Then the BLM George Floyd protests started. The demonization of anyone standing up for civil rights and change was too much. And the final straw was when he had his goons tear-gassed peaceful American protesters, so he could pose for his stupid photo shoot, cemented it."
12. "I voted for him because I definitely didn’t want Hillary. I wanted an outsider to come in and drain the swamp. It became pretty clear not long into his first term that he wasn’t going to drain the swamp. He also chewed through some people I respect highly (Generals Mattis and Kelly, among others) and was extremely disrespectful towards them, which I had a problem with. While it was chaotic, it was entertaining, but I knew pretty quickly he was not a good leader. The events of J6 to me were surreal and really opened my eyes up to what a bag of shit he was."
13. "The barbaric actions of ICE agents rounding up and deporting people of color. A large portion of the workforce is immigrants who are honest, hardworking people. Some of the people being detained are US citizens, but they don’t ask for proof of citizenship. It’s just detain first, ask questions later. When he said he was going after criminals, I was hoping for violent gang members like Tren de Aragua. He also mentioned tighter border policies, and I was hoping it would reduce the flow of fentanyl into this country. I wanted a safer border and country, not the deportation of immigrants who haven’t done anything wrong."
14. "I was suppressing my homosexuality my entire life up until I was about 21, which would’ve been 2018. I liked Trump and was loud about liking Trump, I think in part, to hide any suspicion from anybody (maybe even myself?). Weirdly, my family was not Republican. I was the only loudmouth in the family, and they just tolerated me. After several years of loneliness, I bravely explored the community I was by nature chosen to belong to and found out I wasn’t a monster after all. I am now married to a man and have angrily rejected the divisive and harmful bullshit Republicans spew. Give your loudmouth Republican teenager some time. They may be dealing with what I was dealing with."
15. "As an independent, I leaned more conservative, so I usually voted Republican. (But not always. I stumped and voted for Obama.) I was really on the fence in 2016, but I was so upset with Clinton and her handling of Benghazi that I just couldn't bring myself to vote for her. Most of my family was voting for T., so I went along. I regretted that choice."
"Pretty much everything he did regarding environmental policy and pulling out of the Paris Accord angered me. I have been around long enough to remember rivers being on fire, and coughing my way to work, driving through smog that was as opaque as any heavy fog.
But how he, and the entire GOP congress, peddled COVID-denying science, recommending stupid 'cures,' sending test kits to Russia, repudiating vaccines... ZERO compassion. Bad enough that he was doing it, but for the entire party to echo his insanity...
I still consider myself an Independent, but I'll never vote Republican again."
16. "I just matured, honestly. I had a kid and started thinking more about the world I wanted for him. Watched my wife go through a pregnancy, which gave me a deeper insight into women’s healthcare and its importance. Realized a lot of previously held beliefs didn’t reconcile with reality. The only thing I’m right-wing on now is strong second amendment rights, everything else is left."
17. "When he said, 'I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters.' I laughed when I first heard it. Then I realized… he wasn’t joking. That was the moment I stopped laughing."
18. "I genuinely didn't like the overstepping of political correctness. Then he stacked the Supreme Court, and we witnessed the overturning of Roe v Wade. That's when I realized the man is a pawn in a larger crusade, and they have the upper hand. That's when I got genuinely afraid. Don't get me wrong, I quickly saw how much of an A-hole he was, but it was all water under the bridge until major, life-changing things happened even before he was back in office. Now he threatens my life and everything I want out of this life (to do my science). That fear has turned into rage."
19. "I went to one of his rallies. Seriously, I was a moderate republican for DECADES, and I went to one of his rallies in Ohio and actually heard him talk unedited for the first time. He's kind of funny, and REALLY gone mentally. Like rambling incoherence gone. I'd been watching Fox, so I just figured the left was whining about nothing, then I was like... Oh. he crazy."
20. "In 2016, I was a college student surrounded by mostly well-off conservative friends. We were taught that things needed to change in American politics (I still believe that, but not in the way I once did). We loved that he was less of a politician, less guarded with his words, and really seemed motivated to make changes. We also didn’t really think he would win. Personally, I was generally closer to the center politically. I could agree with some things Democrats said, but I also wasn’t very politically minded and mostly listened to the discussions my friends were having as my primary source for political news."
"And then I started watching the news on my own, and I didn’t really like the things he said. I didn’t like his rhetoric or the way he went about things, and the changes we had hoped to see never really happened. Slowly, I started to become disillusioned with him. During that time, I also changed my major to history and focused mostly on the WW2 era. I started making connections and didn’t like what I was seeing. I never voted for him again, and now a good portion of my job is trying to get people to make those same connections I did.
I’m still a bit conservative. I hope one day there will be a conservative party I can support, but it’s certainly not this one."
21. "I’m Canadian, and honestly, I did like Trump during the first half of his first term. There was something refreshing about how he called out corruption overall, especially when he said he knows there are big tax loopholes and corruption, and pointed out that Hillary said she is against corruption while just enriching herself and her inner circle. But the irony didn’t take long to hit. As time went on, it became clear he wasn’t draining the swamp — he was just redirecting the flow to himself and his own circle of elites. That hypocrisy was the first crack."
"But the final straw? The tariff war, especially with Canada. It wasn’t that I suddenly became emotionally charged over a Canada vs USA rivalry; I looked at it objectively, and it was just… dumb. Economically dumb.
Canada and the U.S. are deeply integrated economically, especially in manufacturing — auto parts, machinery, raw materials, you name it. Slapping tariffs on imports from a major trade partner that your own industries depend on? That’s not tough negotiation, that’s shooting yourself in the foot while looking in the mirror and calling it a power move.
And ironically, Canada barely felt a thing. If anything, we just shifted slightly, stopped buying some U.S.-specific goods where we could, especially if there was only a minor price difference. Most of our day-to-day stuff — like beef, produce, even fast food supply chains like McDonald’s — are domestically sourced here anyway.
What baffled me most was how none of his so-called 'pro-business' party members seemed to get it. Not even a surface-level Google search economist would’ve greenlit that move. It was a lose-lose dressed up as a win.
So yeah, Trump went from being someone I thought was a refreshing player in politics to someone I disliked but respected for playing the game, to someone I just outright lost respect for. The tariff war made it clear: it wasn’t strategic, it wasn’t patriotic — it was just reckless, and even a kilometre away you could see the crash coming."
22. "Mocking that disabled reporter was the last straw for me."
23. "I preferred Trump over Clinton in 2016, but for me, it was the Helsinki Summit. His secret meeting with Putin, where nobody was allowed in, and all notes were destroyed. And the groveling and sucking up he was doing was embarrassing to see from an American President. Basically, everything after that, I just saw him for what he is."
24. "For me, it was rather simple. I started to see his BS rhetoric as just that. Everything he did was the best it had ever been done. No, it wasn't. He'd double down on shit. My elderly mother-in-law does the same when called out on stupid shit (not politically related). Then he started vilifying everyone who disagreed with him in public. It made me cringe when he spoke for Americans because I didn't feel that way. The way he demeaned people was the last straw. I would say I'm still conservative, but as long as MAGA represents the face of conservatism, I will have nothing to do with it."
25. And finally, "Pretty much anything he did this whole year."
