“WHY I LEFT MAGA”, MrBeast Fires Employees After Investigation, Jason Kelce Phone Controversy, & More
PDS Published 11/04/2024
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Right, the law firm that was investigating claims into his company found no proof of sexual misconduct.
But the findings are still drawing tons of criticism online, so let’s unpack it all.
You might remember back in July, MrBeast said he hired an independent third party to conduct an investigation after Ava Tyson was accused of grooming. []
And over the weekend, MrBeast announced that:
“A three-month investigation into allegations regarding my company has concluded. The lawfirm/investigators reviewed millions of documents/messages and conducted 39 interviews. I was asked to refrain from making public statements to enable a detailed and unbiased investigation. Below are their conclusions.”[]
The investigation was conducted by the law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, outlets like NBC News obtained their findings, and MrBeast also shared them.
With the most significant findings being that:
“Allegations of sexual misconduct (eg, pedophilia, grooming, CP, etc) between Company employees and minors are without basis. The allegations were soundly rejected, including by alleged victims.”
“Allegations of the Company knowingly employing individuals with proclivities or histories towards illegal or questionable legal conduct are similarly without basis. Here, too, the allegations were uniformly rejected.”
“Several isolated instances of workplace harassment and misconduct were identified during the investigation. The Company was informed of such conduct and took swift and appropriate actions to address the incidents, including, where necessary, disciplining or letting go of implicated individuals.”
That letter noting that in a short time, MrBeast’s company has grown very quickly from a YouTube startup to a much larger entity, and “it is not uncommon that policies and practices essential in a mature company would lag behind commercial success.”
And adding that this appears to have been the case here, and that has “in certain instances, allowed for inappropriate conduct.”
But it also said the company is working to remedy these issues, including by:
Sending a clear message regarding tone at the top, hiring a new CEO, People Officer, General Counsel, and soon a CFO.
Also implementing mandatory corporate training for employees, developing new policies, and establishing a reporting hotline.
As well as swiftly terminating individuals who violated policy.
And in fact, according to the AP, somewhere between five and ten staffers were fired, though a spokesperson declined to give the outlet an exact figure.[]
And there have been a ton of responses to this investigation, with some supporting it, including LavaGS, who was the minor at the center of the grooming allegations, but is now 20-years-old. []
With Lava writing:[]
“It was incredibly difficult having my name thrown around in a public forum without being given the opportunity to share the truth. Thankfully the people doing the investigation actually did reach out and gave me the opportunity to tell the truth, which I very much appreciated. I was not groomed, these were false allegations made up by other people with my name thrown in them. This investigation was conducted by real investigators and not internet detectives. They reviewed everything.”
But then of course, you had tons of people pushing back, MrBeast’s X post about it even got hit with a community note saying the findings were partially false, pointing to previous claims that MrBeast knowingly hired a registered sex offender.
You also had former staffers pushing back, with one former editor writing:
“Was the prostitute I had to give money for a part of the investigation? How about the loli (cartoon child porn) everyone loved? The gun shot that made me lose my hearing temporarily? The workplace bullying when you used slurs and called me the R-Slur everyday? No? Gotcha!”[]
People like Rosanna Pansino adding:
“If your own paid for ‘internal investigation’ leads to a new CEO and finds ‘workplace harassment and misconduct’, as well as multiple firings... I think it might be time for a bigger investigation.”[]
With tons of other people also skeptical about the findings because MrBeast hired the investigators himself. [][][]
And this is likely not the last we will hear about potential workplace wrongdoings and MrBeast, right, he is still facing that Beast Games lawsuit.
And per NBC News, this probe did not look at the claims from the set of the games.[]
But I would still love to know your thoughts on what we have so far here, on the findings and the responses.
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Jason Kelce Slams Phone to Ground After Heckler Uses Slur
And then let’s talk about how Jason Kelce really gave meaning to the phrase “fuck around and find out” over the weekend.
For those who do not follow football or are not Swifties, Jason Kelce is a former Eagles player, and also the brother of Travis Kelce, of Kansas City Chiefs and Taylor Swift Boyfriend fame.
And Jason was attending the Penn State game over the weekend and was walking outside the stadium when someone decided to heckle him and refer to his brother using a homophobic slur.
And Jason did not take it sitting down:
“Kelce, Kelce, Kelce…Hey, Kelce. How does it feel your brother's a f*****dating Taylor Swift? *yelling continues, Jason walks back to throw the guy’s phone on the ground." (0:04-0:17)
There are a ton of different angles of this, so if you did not catch it, you can see in this one that Jason, six pack still in hand, takes the phone from presumably the guy who yelled the slur and slammed it on the ground before picking it back up and walking away,
And in this clip you can here Jason shout back:
“Gimme my phone…who’s the f***** now?” (0:03-0:06)
And this has all gone incredibly viral.
Tons of people supporting Jason, saying things like:
“‘if you shout a slur in a guys face you are inviting him to break your shit’ is an important lesson every college student should learn and I appreciate Jason Kelce taking the time to educate in Happy Valley today.”[]
“Jason Kelce was right. People need to be put on notice. You cannot just endlessly harass people with your idiotic hatred and not expect a response.”[]
Though, there has been quite a debate over Jason’s choice to yell the word back at the guy, with some people upset over it. [][]
Arguing he has “no business using that word, even in retaliation.”[]
Further adding that he was:
“using the slur as a slur, it’s derogatory, saying that reinforces that being [that word] is a bad thing, that being gay is a bad thing.”[]
“I’m seeing a few people who apparently wanted Jason Kelce to say “that’s a hurtful word!’ And I just wanna let all of y’all know that’s not how fights work…That bear used [the word] correctly! To check a homophobe. We’re getting word from the officials up in the booth, but I think there’s not gonna be any penalty on the play.”
“After further review, this has been allowed due to the Fuck Around, Find Out clause. The Gay Council is adjourned.”[]
“Straight or not, Jason matching energy here in this way feels justified. Show the homophobe how the homophobic slur feels.”[]
And of course, no individual person can make a call on when saying slurs is okay, I certainly am not trying to, this was just a major debate that happened as people were reacting to these videos and the incident overall.
And I would love to know your thoughts on any of it here, whether it be that debate or the whole debacle.
Right, this idea that people clearly feel too comfortable being assholes in public if they think they can get away with hurling a slur at a football player, as if he doesn't know how to fight back.
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NBC gets into trouble after airing Harris SNL skit, forced to accept a Trump ad as part of federal law that gives candidates equal time in airwaves
NBC had a bit of a “whoopsie” this weekend after it nearly broke federal election laws by airing an SNL skit with Kamala Harris.
The skit itself was pretty tame and featured Maya Rudolph playing Harris before turning to a “mirror” where the real Harris was.
They poked fun at Harris a bit, saying things like “The American people want to stop the chaos.” “And end the drama-la.” @7:16
They also repeated some of Harris’ key phrases, like “We know each other so well, we even finish each other’s ‘belief in the promise of America.’”@7:49-7:56
And probably the most overtly political thing was this:
“I am going to vote for us.” @8:16-8:25
“Great, any chance you’re registered to vote in Pennsylvania?”
“No, I am not.” “Well, it was worth a shot!”
Despite the fact that it was mostly a joke and very light on politics, Republicans were still up in arms that Harris was featured at all and claimed that NBC was breaking federal election laws.
(Not to mention that it was a near identical rip-off of a sketch Jimmy Fallon did with Trump back in 2015.. Or with Mitt Romney before that… or of the many other similar sketches done with this premise).
And federal regulators like Brendan Carr, a commissioner with the Federal Communications Commission called out NBC and said that her appearance was “a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC’s Equal Time rule.”
Right, that’s a rule for decades and the short version is that if a TV or radio broadcaster offers access to one candidate it must do the same for their opponent.
Because of this, Carr went on to add:
“The purpose of the rule is to avoid exactly this type of biased and partisan conduct – a licensed broadcaster using the public airwaves to exert its influence for one candidate on the eve of an election. Unless the broadcaster offered Equal Time to other qualifying campaigns.”
Interestingly though is that the Trump campaign itself hasn’t officially complained, as the FCC itself said:
“The FCC has not made any determination regarding political programming rules, nor have we received a complaint from any interested parties.”
That’s possibly because NBC was quick to react to their mess up and filed a notice with the FCC stating that it was giving Trump that access after the NASCAR Xfinity 500 yesterday.
He didn’t get an SNL skit and instead put out an ad where he gave his normal campaign messages. [broll]
However, this might not be the end of the drama as the executive producer of SNL actually touched on this can of worms back in September when they told the Hollywood Reporter that neither Trump nor Harris would be on the show because:
“You can’t bring the actual people who are running on because of election laws and the equal time provisions.”
“You can’t have the main candidates without having all the candidates, and there are lots of minor candidates that are only on the ballot in, like, three states and that becomes really complicated.”
So it remains to be seen if the FCC will care enough to do anything about this now,
And if it does will it be more than just a slap on the wrist?
But what I want to know is if you think this rule makes sense,
Or is it just too restrictive?
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TikTok feeds Harris/Trump videos to women/men
If you’re paying attention to this election, you’ve most likely heard about this enormous gender gap among registered voters.
With this brand new NBC poll showing that women support Harris over Trump by 16 points, while men back Trump over Harris by 18 points. [Chart, find “16-point”]
Amounting to a gender gap of 34 points that could prove decisive tomorrow night. [Same asset]
And as for why it’s so big this year, there are a few big guesses being tossed around.
Things like the candidates themselves being different genders, the salience of abortion this election cycle, and the general divergence of young men and women politically in recent years.
But what if there’s another factor amplifying all those other ones and creating an impact of its own?
I’m talking about TikTok, the platform that some 17% of adults routinely turn to for news, according to a recent Pew poll. [Quote, find “17%”]
With that number notably shooting up from just 3% as recently as 2020. [Same quote]
And when you just look at Americans under 30, the share who routinely get news from TikTok jumps to nearly 40%. [Quote same link, find “39%”]
But the reason we’re talking about this is that the gender gap is reflected in, and perhaps partly caused by, the platform’s algorithm.
Right, The Washington Post convinced more than 800 American adults to share the last six months of their viewing histories from TikTok’s “For You” page.
And when it analyzed the data, it found that female users received roughly 11% more content about Harris than men did. [Quote, find “11 percent”]
With men, even liberal ones, seeing more Trump than women did, though they still saw a roughly equal number of videos about both candidates. [Same quote]
And then, the Post analyzed a different dataset of 300 users from Cybersecurity for Democracy, a nonpartisan multi-university project.
And what it found there was a shocking 40% gap in how often women saw videos directly from the Harris campaign compared to men. [Quote same link, find “40”]
Also, although both genders mostly saw election-related content, they differed on some other stuff.
So men tended to see more about Ukraine, immigration and inflation, while women tended to see more about reproductive rights and healthcare. [Quote same link, find “reproductive rights”]
Now as for how much of this gap is due to men and women genuinely being interested in different content, and how much is the algorithm showing bias based on gender, your guess is as good as mine.
But it does seem like the Harris campaign has exploited social media much more effectively than Trump’s.
With Zelf, an online measurement firm, recently finding that Harris had gotten 100 million more views than Trump on TikTok, despite having half as many followers. [Quote, find “100 million”]
Now with all that said, you should keep in mind that most people aren’t tapped into politics with a constant IV drip like you and me.
Right, on average, the Post found that only around six to 10 percent of any given person’s feed is political, though of course some see much less and others much more. [Bar chart, find “8% political”]
But even still, the outlet also found that political content spikes right after major political news breaks. [Image]
So for example, the day after Biden dropped out of the race, the proportion of videos related to politics nearly doubled from 10%. [Quote, find “doubled”]
And naturally we can expect to see a surge of political content in the days leading up to Tuesday.
So the question is: will that influence people to go to the polls, especially if they’re on TikTok for non-political stuff and just happen to see some videos that convince them?
And if so, will that influence men and women differently?
Links:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/11/03/tiktok-politics-gender-election/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/09/13/harris-tiktok-social-media-team/
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Did the New York Times’ election coverage just get cut off at the knees??
Right, after months of threats and failed negotiations, the New York Times Tech Guild went on strike today - walking off the job as the clock struck midnight. []
We’re talking roughly 600 software engineers, product managers, data analysts, and designers who make up the backbone of the Times’ digital side. [B Roll 0:00-0:12]
And with the election being literally tomorrow, those workers are needed now more than ever.
Because, according to one Tech Guild member and senior software engineer, the increased traffic on the Times website on election day puts serious stress on their system. []
And other Times staff say that without the Tech Guild, they’ll likely struggle fixing any bugs that may pop up from that traffic surge. []
As well as struggling to update content on the Times’ more sophisticated digital tools - namely, the famous Needle which predicts who will win the election as information comes in.
But this isn’t coming from left field - many Times’ staffers have been raising the alarm about the impact an election day strike could have for a while now.
In fact, the Times’ Guild and the union representing Wirecutter previously signed a pledge urging the publisher, CEO, and executive editor to close a deal with the tech workers - reading, []
“We can’t do our jobs without the Tech Guild. Can you imagine if our election needle didn’t work, the app didn’t open or the homepage went down?” []
Now, a Times spokesperson has promised that they have, quote, “robust plans in place” to make sure everything goes smoothly. []
But whatever those plans are, they don’t seem to be sharing them with the rest of the Times staff.
With one business reporter and the secretary for the Times Guild saying that nothing has been communicated to the newsroom. []
Adding,
“We are very nervous. There's a lot of moving pieces around Election Day and I don't think anyone knows what's going to happen if the tech folks aren't there to fix things on the fly.” []
But there are some who jumped from nervous to angry about the Tech Guild’s decision to strike right now.
Including those within the Times ranks - like one national desk reporter who said,
“Guild leadership could have chosen any other day—364 of them, in fact—to make the entirely reasonable point that workers deserve a fair contract.” []
And others within the industry have similar opinions - like Bill Grueskin, a professor at Columbia Journalism School and a former Wall Street Journal editor, who said,
“Those new workers clearly feel more comfortable than their journalism colleagues would in threatening to shutter the most important news site in the country during the most important election in many decades.” []
So if shit’s going to hit the fan if the Tech Guild isn’t around tomorrow, why are they walking out now?
Well, the Tech Guild has been negotiating with the company for 2 and a half years now - getting certified in a National Labor Relations Board election back in March 2022. []
And their three key issues are pay equity, remote work, and “just cause” job protections.
Meaning they can’t be fired without reason and due process. []
And back in September, when it was clear that a deal wasn’t within reach, the union overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike. []
And they made it clear that their timing - the week of an incredibly important election - was not an accident.
Even still, the Tech Guild says they were hoping to avoid a strike but after negotiations last night still didn’t yield an agreement, they’re out of options. []
With one member saying,
“We love our jobs and we're looking forward to being able to do them but we haven't seen enough movement from management and we've been bargaining for far too long … the ball is in their court.” []
In response the Times said,
“While we respect the union’s right to engage in protected actions, we’re disappointed that colleagues would strike at this time, which is both unnecessary and at odds with our mission.” []
So we’re just going to have to keep our eyes on this - to see if some agreement is made before tomorrow and, if not, what the Times’ election coverage will look like.
But I would love to know your thoughts about this - do you think that the Tech Guild should be on strike right now?
Let me know in those comments down below.
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After 4 years and 3 trials, he’s finally going to prison!
Right, we’re talking about Brett Hankison - one of the 3 officers who executed the botched raid that ended up killing Breonna Taylor back in 2020.
He was just found guilty of violating Breonna’s civil rights and is facing up to life in prison. []
I’m sure most of you remember Breonna’s story but here’s the quickest recap if you don’t:
Louisville officers were conducting what turned out to be a bad warrant on Breonna’s apartment in plain-clothes.
It was a no-knock warrant so they battered down the door and Breonna’s boyfriend thought someone was breaking in and shot at them. []
The cops returned fire, killing Breonna and injuring her boyfriend.
Hankison, specifically, fired 10 shots through her sliding glass door and window which were covered with blinds and curtains. []
And Breonna’s death sparked a national pushback against no-knock warrants and she became one of the faces of the racial justice movement in 2020.
And Hankison was fired for violating department procedure when he, quote, "wantonly and blindly" fired into Breonna’s apartment. []
While Hankison wasn’t the one who fired the fatal shot, he was the only one of the three cops who has been charged.
With prosecutors determining that the others were justified in their use of force where Hankison was not. []
Anyway, the indictment accused Hankison of depriving Breonna of her right to be free from unreasonable seizures and also depriving her neighbors of their right to be free from the deprivation of liberty without due process. []
At first, the jury came back with a not guilty verdict on the charge regarding Breonna’s neighbors and the judge sent them back to continue deliberations on the charge for her.
Hours later, late into the night, they finally delivered a guilty verdict. []
With Breonna’s mother saying,
"The later it got, the harder it got, and I'm just glad to be on the other side.”
"Now, I just want people to continue to say Breonna Taylor's name.” []
And after the trial, she told reporters outside the courthouse,
“It took a lot of patience. It took a lot of time. 1,694 days.” 0:00-0:05
“Thank God that he covered 12 jurors who chose to do the right thing. Breonna deserved justice.” 0:13-0:19
Now, this isn’t the first time Hankison has stood trial for this - in fact, it’s the third.
Last year, the first federal trial was ruled a mistrial after the jury couldn’t form a unanimous verdict. []
And then he was acquitted on the state level on three counts of felony wanton endangerment.
But with this guilty verdict, Hankison is facing up to life in prison with his sentencing being scheduled for March of next year. []
And I would love to know your thoughts about this - especially if you’ve been keeping up with Breonna’s story.
Let me know in those comments down below.
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We are just days away from the election, and if you’re watching this show, there’s a good chance you’re among the many people who can’t stop thinking: how the hell is this election so close?
After everything, how does Trump still have so much unwavering support?
Now, obviously, those are enormous, existential questions for America as a whole, and sure, a lot of it boils down to policy.
But in order to even begin to answer them, I think we also need to ask another question — and one that isn’t talked about nearly enough in the media: What is the anatomy of a MAGA die-hard?
Right, who are the people who make up this powerful MAGA base that continues to fuel his iron grip on the country?
And that is an insanely important element of all this because there is a tendency among many Americans — progressive, moderate democrats, even plenty of traditional conservatives — to think of and talk about Trump supporters as a monolith.
A sort of singular entity, an evil “Other” that can be demonized.
And sure, it’s easy and even comforting to slip into that way of thinking — it provides an outlet for all the rage and frustration you may very rightly feel.
But if we really want to make sense of how America has gotten to this point, we need to take a step back and look at the human level.
So to do that, we talked to Rich Logis (Low-Jus) — a married father of two and former MAGA die-hard who left in 2022.
And since then, he’s founded the group Leaving MAGA.
Which aims to empower people to leave Trump and share their stories, help them reconcile with estranged friends and family, and turn them into leaders who can help others do the same.
And Low-Jus provides such a powerful insight into the anatomy of MAGA supporters because he wasn’t just someone who dabbled on the fringes — and he’ll be the first to tell you just how deep in he got.
Right, he became intensely involved in the movement, volunteering on the campaign, writing articles for numerous right-leaning outlets, and even launching his own podcast.
Right, in his own words, he was an “aspiring MAGA pundit,”
But it also went beyond that — as Low-Jus tells it, MAGA consumed his whole life:
“Being in MAGA for me, it was my identity. It was who I was. It was like another limb of my body.” 11:06 - 11:12
“I had a MAGA second family. These were individuals who validated me, who appreciated me, who liked my company. They respected my writings and my podcast that I was producing. And as much as I'm embarrassed to admit this, the truth is, because I feel it's important to be transparent, my MAGA second family often took precedence over my actual blood family. So it wasn't just let's vote for Trump, see you in four years. This was who we were. It was core to our values and to our personhood.” 11:24 - 11:55
Right, and this idea that MAGA isn’t just a political movement but also a community is one that Low-Jus talks about a lot in his work.
And it’s that sense of belonging and identity that drove him and many others to Trump.
Especially people who, like Low-Jus, felt like they had been excluded and ignored by the political system — outsiders who felt like they didn’t fit in the existing structure, who didn’t have a home politically:
“I was someone who was political, but I believe that the two parties were the same. I didn't think that they represented all Americans. I think that there were valid reasons people had for supporting Trump, feeling left behind, feeling unseen, unheard. Yes, it's true that Donald Trump ran as a Republican, but he ran really truly as an outsider without any government, any military experience.” 00:17 - 00:41
“Feelings of estrangement and alienation from our two parties in our political system. I think that many across a wide ideological spectrum felt that way. And they had good reason in many cases to have felt that way. And Trump, really lended his voice as someone who could be an advocate for those unseen, forgotten individuals.” 2:41 - 3:01
So, as a result, many people felt politically empowered for the first time ever — that they belonged somewhere in politics, that they had a community of like-minded people.
And that, through the collective power of this community, their demands were finally being heard and they had the power to actually change things.
Right, and it’s very powerful to feel like you identify with a community in that way, especially if you never have before, so it can be easy to throw yourself into it entirely.
But those feelings of power and inclusion — they’re hard to walk away from.
And that is super important because it really hits at the core of the central question we started with: who really are the people within MAGA?
And Low-Jus explains that a big part of the reason people stay is simply because it’s incredibly difficult to leave.
Even if folks know deep down they should leave, they won’t because they long for that community and connection and don’t know where else they could get it:
“The ones who know they should leave probably won't because it's more comfortable to usually stay in a place they know they shouldn't be. If they don't have a new place to go because if you don't know where to go, you're just going to be a lost and wandering soul without a new destination place.” 13:06 - 13:24
Right, when a die-hard MAGA supporter leaves, they are saying goodbye to a community that is central to their identity, that has formed who they are and their entire belief system.
And Low-Jus says that’s made even harder by the fact that those belief systems are based on lies Trump tells his followers.
Falsehoods that he describes as “traumatic right-wing MAGA mythologies” centered on the idea that liberals want to ruin America and indoctrinate the country with their beliefs:
“MAGA is designed to point the direction and attention toward groups and individuals who are not responsible for whatever hardships they might be feeling in their lives.” 31:27 - 31:40
“And while I don't defend their or my ignorance, I do think it would really behoove the country to just keep in mind that all of us are susceptible to being influenced. And I allowed myself to be subsumed into that really traumatic right-wing MAGA world, which just keeps people in these perpetual states of desperation, panic, and despair. And I felt that way as many of us did on the winning side, right? Winning in 2016. So imagine after 2020, how so many felt that those feelings of hopelessness and even nihilism, these ideas now that you see within MAGA, that this is the last stand to ensure that liberalism doesn't take over and irreparably harm our country.” 9:10 - 9:56
Right, and that creates this vicious cycle where Trump instills these deep-rooted fears and convinces his supporters he’s the only one who can save them.
And then when he fails, he claims it’s because the evil liberal forces are working against him, which only reinforces those fears.
So Low-Jus says the combination of being stuck in that negative feedback loop while also feeling a strong sense of community and political empowerment — it all creates this black hole with a powerful gravitational pull that is so hard to climb out of.
Right, it’s always hard to concede you were wrong about, even about small things.
But when someone leaves MAGA, they essentially have to admit that the ideas they believed and pin their identities to are wrong:
“And to leave MAGA, one must come to this really, really difficult conclusion that it isn't just that we may have been wrong about one or two issues, that we were wrong about pretty much everything.” 11:55 - 12:10
“It's not a natural act for us to change our minds and to apologize, especially publicly.” 30:13 - 30:18
And because of that, Low-Jus says that when people decide to leave, that’s not something they come to overnight.
Right, for him personally, it was a long, tormenting process where he spent a whole year in an intense political and personal battle, questioning everything he believed and so fervently devoted himself to.
But it wasn’t just one thing that pushed him over the edge — rather, it was a chain reaction that actually started because of Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, where Low-Jus and his family live.
And specifically, Low-Jus says that, during the pandemic, he thought DeSantis had been sensible in his COVID leadership.
But he became confused when, during the Delta surge in the summer of 2021, the governor started spreading misinformation and lies about vaccines — even as children were getting sick and dying.
And that confusion opened a Pandora’s box of doubts about everything he believed.
So slowly, he started to move out of the right-wing media echo chamber that he had directly contributed to:
“Once I started to move out of the right-wing echo chamber, I started to diversify my news and information sources. And that sounds so simple, but it was so positively and profoundly life-altering for me. And once I started to do that, I started to then more closely inspect other issues.” 5:39 - 5:55
Like, for example, Jan. 6, which Low-Jus used to believe was just a small group of bad actors who were making the whole movement look bad.
But when he dug into it more, he found that the insurrection was actually the act of domestic terrorists egged on by Trump himself.
Still, as this process continued, Low-Just kept going back and forth on whether he should leave — that is, until the Uvalde shooting, which was the last straw.
After that, he knew he couldn’t stay, and while he initially kept his MAGA departure quiet, telling only a few people close to him, he started to feel like he needed to do more:
“I was very unapologetically public in my support for Trump. I felt that I should be very unapologetically public about my renunciation.” 7:36 - 7:45
“And it's why it's necessary for me to continue apologizing for helping Trump divide the country and assisting him in pitting complete strangers against each other. I am complicit and culpable for helping Trump tear asunder communities and families and friends and households and places of worship. And I'm sorry that I did that.” 22:00 - 22:25
So since leaving Trump, Low-Jus has devoted himself to telling his story and sharing his message that others can do the same.
Because while he knows there are bad folks in MAGA, just like any large group, he truly believes that, deep down, the majority are good people whose actions are driven by the fundamental, human need for community and connection.
And no, that doesn’t excuse their actions or their need to take responsibility — Low-Jus is VERY clear about that.
But it does create an opportunity for an inroad: right, if they are afraid to leave because they will lose their community, just give them a new one.
And that’s exactly what Leaving MAGA aims to do:
“We founded our organization leaving MAGA as a new destination, a new community for them. It's an exit ramp.” 12:47 - 12:54
“And so we're trying to provide that as a new community. That's one that is actually welcoming and people can reclaim their individuality to counter the toxicity of the MAGA community.” 13:25 - 13:35
Right, and Low-Jus is working to grow that community even more by urging people who left MAGA to share their stories in order to encourage others to do the same.
And since the group has been gaining more recognition — particularly after Low-Jus delivered a recorded speech at the Democratic National Convention — he says more and more people have been coming to him.
Asking to join his community and sharing testimonials of their personal accounts to further the group’s mission.
And in addition to that, a big part of Leaving MAGA’s focus is on reconciliation.
Right, helping former MAGA-supports reconcile with family members and friends who they have become alienated from because of their beliefs, and giving others the tools to do the same.
And eventually, Low-Jus wants to take this effort to a much bigger scale:
“In addition to those testimonials, yes, I want leaving MAGA to lead what will be akin to a forgiveness and truth reconciliation commission, that the idea of what happened in some other nations, also in our nation post-Civil War and post-Below America.” 16:01 - 16:20
Now, understandably, many of us might be skeptical about whether reconciliation is really possible given how deeply divided and polarized our country is.
And while Low-Jus openly acknowledges that it will be tough, in order to even attempt this kind of reconciliation, he says it is absolutely imperative to understand that key component that makes a MAGA supporter: the need for community and to be heard.
Right, if we want to even try to communicate with MAGA supporters, we need to understand their drive, extend empathy, and think of them as human beings who, above all else, just want to be part of something:
“There have been probably billions of words spoken and penned about how Trump voters are Nazis and misogynists and racists and islamophobes. And every time that's said, what it does is it just strengthens that already strong bond between MAGA Americans and Donald Trump. Now again, are there some who are like that? Yes, but I don't believe that most are. So there needs to be, think for those who might be skeptical, I would ask them if they're willing to consider a good faith effort to at least say, okay, I believe that even though I think MAGA Americans might be wrong and misguided and some of what they say is just abhorrent and reprehensible, yes, there's gotta be somewhere in there some goodness.” 28:45 - 29:34
“It is, I feel, really important for the country to keep in mind, especially those who have friends and family in MAGA, most of whom, I guarantee most of whom will see this conversation have friends and family who are in MAGA. And I would ask all of those friends and family to not give up on their loved ones and those closest to them, because it is very, very difficult to walk away.” 12:22 - 12:46
And on that note, that’s where I’m gonna leave this one, but I’d really love to hear your thoughts on all this in those comments down below — what do you make of all this? Does it change any of your opinions or ways of thinking?
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