Defecting ex-Trump ‘Front Row Joe’ ticks off broken promises as he declares MAGA dead

A former superfan who traveled to dozens of President Donald Trump’s rallies says he’s done with the MAGA movement, and that Trump has “nobody to blame but himself” for Republicans’ midterm drubbing.

Rick Frazier, an Ohio voter and an organizer of the “Front Row Joes,” who famously camped out for front-row spots at Trump rallies, told CNN’s Pamela Brown that he split his ticket Tuesday, backing Democrat Amy Acton for governor and Democrat Sherrod Brown for Senate.

“I wasn’t expecting to do what I did,” Frazier said, adding that an attack ad featuring Acton's long-estranged mother turned him against Republican Vivek Ramaswamy.

In six key races, CNN found that 1 in 10 Trump voters from 2024 said they backed a Democrat for Senate, and Frazier explained his own choice.

"I go back to 2015 when he came down the stairs and he said that he was going to drain the swamp and lobbyists were bad, Frazier said. "Well, it turns out that lobbyists is what drives the elections these days. When you got Elon Musk putting in over $250 million and you go right on down the line, there's more lobbyists involved now, and the swamp has gotten bigger. So I'm very disappointed in that aspect of it as well."

"I was a no-war person, and the war is huge right now," he added. "It's caused chaotic, you know, chaotic situations throughout the world, you know, not only in our country. So the war is huge. That wrecked our economy; it's making it hard on people."

The final straw, he said, was the Jeffrey Epstein files. Frazier recalled crowds chanting “lock them up” at rallies, and he then pointed to former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s account that Trump told her releasing the files “may hurt some of my friends.”

“That was the day that I thought something just doesn’t square,” Frazier said.

“I expect to get no war, I expected the Epstein thing to be cleared up, and I expected $2 gas," he added. "I expected the war in Ukraine to end. Well, none of that has happened.”

Asked whether he felt misled, Frazier admitted he once took Trump at his word.

“It seems like politicians are allowed to lie where the average guy isn’t,” he said. “Anything that Donald Trump said, I believed.”

He also dismissed Trump’s claim that Republicans would have won if he’d been on the ballot. Before the election, Trump had told voters to pretend he was.

“You can’t have it both ways," Frazier said. "You’re either on the ballot or not on the ballot. He’s created the mess.”

Asked whether the Trump era is over, Frazier didn’t hesitate.

“I believe so, I do,” he said. “I think it’s ran its course.”

From now on, Frazier said, he’ll vote for the candidate, not the party.

“There won’t be an R or a D beside my name,” he said.

- YouTubeyoutu.be