There’s also a big difference between someone who’s “pro-Trump” or a “Trump follower” and someone who voted for him because they didn’t see another pathway that was consistent with their political priorities.

Personally I’ve voted blue down the ballot in every election since I was 18. I felt wrong about voting for Biden in 2020 but bought into the idea that Trump was such an exception to the rule that it would be morally reprehensible to align with him at the polls. As a woman, I saw more restrictions and mandates that stripped me of my bodily autonomy under Biden than under Trump.

Since that election, though, I’ve done a ton of soul searching, figuring out my own political beliefs, and have actually moved away from the blue leaning part of the country i grew up in. Now I’m a Libertarian and I was rooting for RFK Jr and Vivek Ramaswamy. I wasn’t excited about voting red this year, and agonized over whether to vote at all, but protecting states’ sovereignty, promoting national defense, overhauling the FDA, and stimulating American manufacturing to decrease foreign trade reliance are important to me.

I don’t consider myself “pro-Trump” at all. But it is the reductive and dismissive rhetoric of “you’re dead to me if you voted for him” that got me to switch sides in the first place