Four MAGA defectors say they were addicted to fear and rage

Leaving MAGA now offers a place to land for people who walked away from Donald Trump’s movement. Four former supporters have joined the nonprofit support network and spoken about what it cost them to stay. One defector said, “I’d been addicted to fear and rage.”

That sentence stayed with me. It is plain. It names a feeling many people know but do not often admit in public. Fear and rage can feel like energy. They can also feel like a trap.

What Leaving MAGA does

Leaving MAGA began in 2024 as a movement and later became a nonprofit. It was founded by Rich Logis, a former Trump campaign volunteer who left MAGA in 2022 and published a public apology to help others see that it was okay to challenge the movement. The response was strong enough that he built a support network for people unpacking their role in bolstering Trump’s platform.

The group does not try to persuade people to leave. It tries to give them somewhere to land when they are ready. That is a small difference with a large effect. It changes the tone of every conversation.

Leaving MAGA runs weekly online support meetings for the friends and family of people still inside MAGA. It holds monthly in-person meetups for those who have already left. It has a billboard campaign in 27 states with a simple message: “Having doubts? You are not alone.” It also offers a media literacy program meant to help people recognize disinformation.

Through the website, people can sign up for a newsletter that shares testimonies about journeys out of MAGA. They can access a guide on how to talk to family members and friends still engaged in Trumpism. They can join online group chats and monthly meetups with others who have left.

Why people leave

The four defectors who spoke publicly describe their past involvement in bolstering Donald Trump’s political platform. They do not all tell the same story. They do share a sense of loss. Leaving MAGA is built on the premise that abandoning the MAGA identity functions less like changing one’s mind and more like leaving a high-control religious group, fighting a disease or breaking an addiction.

That frame matters. It treats the pull of constant fear-based media and conspiracies like a health problem, not a moral failure. Julianna Forlano, a therapist who facilitates some of the group’s sessions, has said people who consume a steady diet of fear narratives become fearful in general. They adopt a “with us or against us” mentality. They start treating loved ones as threats.

One defector said the glue holding the MAGA community together was “lies and falsehoods” and an “addiction to fear and rage” fueled by misinformation and disinformation. He described a dangerous belief in a “they” who were trying to abridge his rights, indoctrinate his children, take his guns, and replace white people with brown people and foreigners. That kind of thinking does not stay on a screen. It walks into kitchens and living rooms.

Leaving MAGA’s founder has said the goal is to counter the toxicity of the MAGA community by providing an exit ramp and a community where people can become what he calls “a born-again human being” and reclaim their individuality, empathy and agency. That is a tall order. It asks people to rebuild belonging without the old enemy at the center.

What this means for ordinary people

I keep coming back to the families in the weekly support meetings. They are not the ones who left. They are the ones who watched someone close become not the person they once were. Spouses, adult children, parents, siblings, friends. They describe a slow drift into anger, suspicion and isolation. They want their person back more than they want to win a political argument.

This story is not only about national politics. It is about what happens at the dinner table when one person believes the other is part of a plot. It is about what happens when a parent stops trusting a teacher, a doctor or a neighbor because a video told them to. It is about how hard it is to come home from that place without shame.

The departure of former MAGA supporters highlights shifting attitudes within parts of the Republican base. It may signal growing disillusionment with Trump’s rhetoric for some voters. At the same time, the motivations and sincerity of the defectors’ departure are subject to debate. Some question whether they are genuine or politically motivated. That question will not be settled by one news cycle.

What I can say is that the work Leaving MAGA describes is slow and unglamorous. It is not a rally. It is not a new party. It is a group chat at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday. It is a billboard that does not shout. It is a guide that helps someone ask a gentle question instead of issuing a verdict.

I do not know how many people will walk through that door. I do know that fear and rage are easy to sell. Calm is harder to build. If even a few hundred people find a way back to their families without carrying the old poison, that will matter more than any headline.