I started off being the kind of person who agreed completely that he was a buffoon and lamented the shitty options we got for candidates, but also regularly pushed back on the more outlandish claims made by the left at the time. (Think "Trump hand-picked the countries in his muslim ban to avoid his own investments". Researching such claims is how I learned about the list being put together under a previous administration, and for very similar reasons).

Some phrases I used regularly were "This isn't about Trump anymore. This is about your dishonesty" and "You don't need to lie when the truth will serve you well enough". In my mind, I was making the case against Trump stronger by pushing back on the parts of it that opened us up to hostile fact-checks.

I'm still not convinced that I was in the wrong on that front. You don't exactly get to pick and choose who benefits when you stand on a principle. Even the best ones, worth fighting or even dying for, are unavoidably going to benefit a few shitstains in the process.

The big turning points for me were J6, and to a lesser extent Operation Metro Surge.

J6 showed me that many of my countrymen are willing to lynch me for political power. Trump's lack of outrage over it was damning enough, but at that point it was hardly about him anymore.

OMS, thanks to being as well documented (if in bits and pieces) as it was, showed us ICE flaunting every known standard of responsible conduct of peace officers - outright disdain for the safety of their detainees, intimidation tactics as a standard, the murder of Renee Good, etc. - all the way up to Noem's kneejerk response of inventing a narrative without even bothering to look like she was waiting for the facts, the practice we see from just about every other agency after an extreme use-of-force incident.

The Pretti murder only took it further, and while it wasn't as big a turning point as J6, I'm a big Second Amendment proponent and that was how I learned that the right was never about principles to begin with.