“We voted for Trump, not realizing that he was going to slam as hard as he did, but it was on day one when he sat down, right after inauguration, and started signing those executive orders and just trashed us federal employees, it was a kick in the teeth,” Ron said.
“That point was the beginning of my turning away from MAGA.”
Rather than leave the GOP quietly, the couple from Byron, Georgia, decided to publicly announce their decision to break with the party, and joined a growing community of former Trump supporters called Leaving MAGA.
“If people would just listen and research and do something other than just listen to Fox News, we may all be better off, but it's going to take an open mind and an ability to say, ‘I made a mistake,’ because once you say you made a mistake, you can turn the ship around,” said Chrissey Kelley, 50, a stay-at-home mom.
Speaking out against MAGA cost the Kelleys relationships with friends and family members who support Trump, but in sharing their story, they hope to inspire others having doubts about the GOP.
“It's okay to be wrong. You made a mistake, it was a bad choice, but it's not the end of the world. We can fix it. We just got to ride it out and hold strong and support each other through it,” Ron said.
“It widens the field for everyone so that they can feel comfortable coming out saying they supported this guy instead of being embarrassed and trying to hide it.”
‘Bought into the lie’
The Kelleys’ journey into MAGA took place over many years.
Chrissey said she became a Republican as soon as she started voting.
“You were just a conservative. There was no thought behind it. You listen to Fox News, and you listen to conservative outlets, and you're spoon-fed,” Chrissey said.
Ron and Chrissey Kelley (Photo courtesy of Chrissey Kelley)
When Trump ran the first time she remembered thinking, “He's gonna fix everything. He's a businessman. He's gonna help us.”
Ron, who served in the military for 25 years, said the 2008 housing market crash left him “really disillusioned with the Democratic Party.”
When he couldn’t find work in Detroit, he moved to Georgia. He supported Republicans because he associated them with bigger spending on defense.
Ron said he supported Trump with donations, bumper stickers and the “whole nine yards” of MAGA.
“I bought into the lie about the stolen election and all that, and I thought January 6 insurrectionists were actually patriots,” Ron said.
“I just remember being content with thinking that he was what we needed, and he was going to drain the swamp in Washington until he got into office this third [election], and realizing that I was dumb as a rock, and I believed everything that I was spoon fed.”
‘Lie after lie after lie’
Ron came to regret his vote when he said Trump's executive orders started to “destroy my life, which affects my family.”
Months later, Ron said DOGE is still complicating his work at HUD.
“They brought DOGE in and created a whole new layer of bureaucracy that we're still suffering from,” Ron said.
“They've created so much headache and so much overhead.”
In addition to Ron’s furlough, Chrissey said the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files and its treatment of immigrants pushed her away from MAGA.
“Just watching the policies of what's happening in our world today unfold one by one by one, I just started drawing up very different conclusions and found out that I was clueless, and most people are today, but now I'm awake and looking at it for what it is, and I cannot believe that he had my support,” Chrissey said.
“It's lie after lie after lie.”
Others in the Leaving MAGA community have been vocal about the extremes they went to while supporting Trump — from embracing Christian nationalism to believing conspiracies, losing friends and marriages and committing crimes in Trump’s name.
Ron said while there are some people in “deep, deep red MAGA that you're never going to convince that Trump is not who they think he is,” he thinks more people are turning away from MAGA quietly.
“I believe that the more that we share, the more of the fringe MAGA are dropping off,” Ron said.
“As you see in the polls that they keep taking, that Trump is dropping lower and lower and lower almost daily, so the only way that that could happen is that his base is leaving him, which means that MAGA is moving.”
Ron said he now votes for Democrats, and Chrissey said she considers herself an Independent but has voted for Democrats three times now, something she “never thought in my entire life” would happen.
“The road we're headed down now, if we don't turn this truck around, we're so close to going off the edge of the cliff that we need to stick together,” Ron said.
“We need to put our country back together. It might take decades, but don't give up. We need to be vocal. Stay strong, and follow our laws and Constitution, and hold strong with our values, not the values that the MAGA claims that we have, but the values that we've had in the past 250 years from the founding of the country til Joe Biden's era.”
Kristy Morrow, community organizer; Ricardo Hernandez-Navarette; Liliana Navarrete-Capazan; and Steven Navarrete reunite on Tuesday.