Leaving MAGA: Identity, Propaganda, and the Path Back

A conversation on identity, disinformation, and the path out of political

Raw Transcript – Informed with AI

 JOHN SIPHER

[ 00:00:20,460 ] So today I’m joined by Rich Logis, founder and executive director of Leaving MAGA. an organization that supports people who’ve left or are questioning the MAGA movement. and helps families navigate reconciliation.

JOHN SIPHER

[ 00:00:33,310 ] Rich has spoken openly about his own journey out of MAGA and now works to create a safe off-ramp for others who want to change. So it’s really great to have you with us.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:00:41,880 ] John, thank you. It’s good to see you again.

JOHN SIPHER

[ 00:00:43,700 ] Haha. Very good. So on the New York radio hour, which is pretty heady stuff, you said, ‘Leaving MAGA is hard because it isn’t just politics, it’s identity, belonging, and emotional need.’ So when you think about your own journey, what did you have to give up before you could finally leave?

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:01:00,530 ] Yeah, I… You know, my entree into MAGA was a disillusionment with politics as a whole and the two-party system and feeling that democracy had failed most Americans.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:01:16,410 ] been a part of a political community until MAGA. And when MAGA came on the scene, I found a sense of purpose and feelings of belonging, gathering, and camaraderie. For me, MAGA for me was not just something I did.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:01:32,940 ] It did shape my worldview, my identity, my being, and my personhood. And to walk away from that was difficult for a couple different reasons. The first was I had developed and cultivated a second family.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:01:48,110 ] And that second family, as embarrassed as I am to admit this, sometimes took precedence over my own blood family. And as a result of my MAGA activism, I spent money that would have gone to my family. I neglected at times my duties as a parent and as a husband. So that was one reason that made it really challenging to leave. And the other reason is… I had to accept, after a year of doubts and confusion, that I had allowed myself to have been lied to and believed those lies and shaped an entire persona based on lies, falsehoods, and conspiracy theories. And had to come to the have a reckoning and come to terms with the fact that I had believed so much of what was false. You know, everything ranging from the belief that Democrats were coming for our guns and schools were indoctrinating children into transgender ideology and.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:02:51,020 ] And liberals and progressives were trying to replace white people with brown people and foreigners. I held some of those beliefs and I knew others who also held those beliefs.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:03:02,680 ] To walk away from MAGA after being in this community for more than half a decade, it did make it really difficult because I knew that I was going to walk away from something that I was really so heavily invested in.

JOHN SIPHER

[ 00:03:18,650 ] So for listeners that are meeting you for the first time, what’s sort of the short version of your journey? and then out of it. You mentioned what emotional need MAGA meant for you. But when you think back, what made those conspiratorial explanations feel more convincing than mainstream ones?

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:03:38,240 ] Well, for those who are meeting me for the first time, I would like to apologize for my past MAGA activism. It was my belief when I was in MAGA that anybody who was not with us was against us and should be considered an existential political threat to myself, my country, livelihood, and my family. And as part of my disenchantment with politics in 2015 and 16, I thought the way to save democracy was to destroy it.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:04:13,040 ] And I was very much attracted to the outsider candidacy of Trump because I saw him as someone who was willing and able to obliterate the established political order. And while I don’t say this as a self-defense, because all of us have agency and no one coaxed or coerced me into supporting Trump. I think my story is a cautionary tale because I… allowed myself to be influenced by MAGA media and right-wing propaganda and agitprop. And I think that it’s, it’s important. and to emphasize to people who are seeing this that for those of them who have friends and family in MAGA, that we are all susceptible to being influenced and we are vulnerable to propaganda. And I fell really hard for it. I was under the belief that if Hillary and the Democrats had won, that we would have seen only that Democrats would have seized power indefinitely and permanently. So I didn’t just support Trump and then walk away and then come back four years later. Later, I got deeper and deeper in this community. I became a professional.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:05:24,520 ] I professionally produced the podcast. I was writing for MAGA Media. I had bylines in places like Fox News, The Federalist, Real Clear Politics, World Net Daily, which is a site that originated the Obama birther conspiracy. I was very much unapologetically and publicly a Trump and MAGA supporter. But my first crack started to show.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:05:50,220 ] Significantly in the summer of 2021.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:05:54,030 ] Which, if we recall, that was when the Delta surge of COVID was ravaging the country, and my governor, Ron DeSantis, decided to platform anti-vaxxers at a press conference. And I’m a parent of two small kids, and I remember thinking, ‘That parents around the country were in intensive care units with their children who were befalling ill to COVID. They were greeting their children at morgues, those who had died of the virus. And it really shocked and confused me why Ron DeSantis became an anti-vaxxer after being a proponent of it. And after that happened, John, I decided to do something that sounds really simple— but was profoundly life-changing and altering for me, which was I diversified my news and information sources.’ And I went back and looked at, for example, January 6th. January 6th was not an event that I supported, but I thought that it was hyperbolized into a bigger deal than it really was. And then, after… expanding my news and information sources and widening my information aperture a little bit, I realized that January 6th was in fact an attempt by the president to overturn a free and fair election.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:07:04,760 ] And then the final straw for me was on May 24th, 2022, which was the Uvalde, Texas school shooting. That was the day that I quietly left MAGA. But something had really been gnawing at me.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:07:19,200 ] Because I was so unapologetically public in my support for Trump, I felt that I needed to be public in my renunciation. And it was on August 30th of 2000. 2022, it’s the day I call my leaving MAGAversary. I wrote a mea culpa. And in that article, I said that I was sorry for supporting Trump and MAGA, and I wanted to apologize to anyone I may have hurt with my words, deeds, and rhetoric. And I published the story, and the God’s honest truth, John, is I never thought that anybody would care.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:07:49,000 ] But it turned out that people did care. And since then, I’ve been recounting my story. And born from all of that was our organization, Leaving MAGA, which I founded as a new community for people who leave and for those who are having doubts, as well as for friends and family. Of those still in the thrall of MAGA.

JOHN SIPHER

[ 00:08:07,650 ] Well, so you talk, it’s fascinating and, you know, your journey is one I think that can be really eye-opening for others. And so, but you talk about it as a, as a community and looking for different communities. You’ve also talked about it like, and I think of look at it as almost like an addiction or entertainment.

JOHN SIPHER

[ 00:08:25,010 ] But I remember in some of your discussions, you’ve talked about anger addiction. So in practice, socially, what did outrage do for you day to day, like energy, confidence? You know, and connection and stuff like that. So it’s all of these things, right? It’s community, it’s anger, it’s entertainment. So what do you mean by that when you say anger addiction?

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:08:47,070 ] You know, being in MAGA was exhilarating and enthralling and communal, but it was all of that until it wasn’t. After leaving MAGA… I realized that I was in these perpetual states of rage and fear and despair and paranoia. And we do these Tuesday night support groups with our organization for friends and family. We do them online every single week. They’re free. They’re open to friends and family.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:09:17,060 ] And we talk a lot about the addiction to rage. It creates an actual dopamine effect in the individual. And I’m not— I’m not learned enough or qualified to speak to all of the psychology of it. But I was always angry and rageful toward my political opponents because there always needed to be— an enemy— who was shared within the community. And that addiction is what created this really militant mindset that still exists in MAGA. This day, which is, if you were not 100% with us, you were considered fully against us. And it didn’t matter, John, if you were 99. 9% with us. If you were not 100% with us, we considered you an enemy political combatant. And I was on the right side of history as the real American, and everybody else who was against us, they were the fake Americans. And that way of thinking… was really traumatizing. And I had to de-traumatize myself after leaving MAGA because I always say that… Leaving MAGA was good for my soul, my psyche, and my mental health. And for anyone seeing this who’s in MAGA, especially if they’re having doubts, I want them to know. That today is a stellar day to leave MAGA because… The people who were our enemy, John, we considered them a ‘they.’ You know, they were always out to get us. There was always a ‘they’ coming for us. Guns indoctrinating our kids, replacing white people, you know, they, people who believe that that they were disenfranchised and their vote defrauded as a result of them, Democrats and liberals. It was a way of being that was only exciting until it wasn’t. And I came to realize just how much I had been subsumed into this world of hate and anger, being in MAGA, because MAGA is an extremist group, because it encourages its adherents to dehumanize, vilify, and demonize its opponents.

JOHN SIPHER

[ 00:11:36,079 ] Let’s talk about the media.

JOHN SIPHER

[ 00:11:38,570 ] That rage.

JOHN SIPHER

[ 00:11:41,220 ] There is someone, there are people, who are pushing that for their own means, whether it’s money or political power or whatever. So you consume this steady diet of this MAGA media, you talked about, and it shaped what you believed and repeated.

JOHN SIPHER

[ 00:11:54,670 ] And how important is that MAGA Media ecosystem that you lived inside, and how powerful was that feedback loop?

JOHN SIPHER

[ 00:12:02,250 ] Was there one kind of content, podcast, article, social media, influencers, television that especially was effective at keeping you in, and nowadays keeping others in?

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:12:13,300 ] Yeah, there are many. In addition to the places I wrote for, where I had penned articles for Fox and The Federalist, American Greatness, very, very pro-MAGA, very right-wing media outlets, the site that I consumed the most of all was Breitbart.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:12:33,210 ] I lived on that site, John. I would check that site dozens of times a day. I lived in the comments section. And it was never a website that I read or checked out before MAGA. I knew about it. Maybe occasionally I might have seen an article here and there. But I was very, very much enmeshed in the MAGA Media echo chamber.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:12:55,740 ] And the reason that it’s important that that media be kept in front of people who are in MAGA with a steady diet of it is that when I was in the community, any information— that even remotely refuted the pervasively held mythologies of the community— was shunned. It was kept out. It was considered enemy media. There’s very much a belief in the liberal media conspiracy with legacy media. I even had trademarked a phrase when I was in MAGA called the Democrat Media Industrial Complex.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:13:31,990 ] That’s how much I bought into the so-called liberal media conspiracy. And then leaving MAGA, I realized that so much of what I considered to be the liberal media was just your standard fair legacy media, you know, your New York Times, your Washington Post, your NPR, your PBS, you know, outlets that were considered enemy media to people in MAGA, but we’re just— I realize— your standard fair media that, that maybe depending on. On the article or depending on the columnist, it might be a little bit left-leaning. But there was no conspiracy. That’s something that I I had to painfully conclude and come to realize now.

JOHN SIPHER

[ 00:14:18,300 ] You’re out. You look back and you say, ‘Now I go back and look at Breitbart.’ Do you think the people pushing the material on a site like that believe the stuff they’re doing, or do you think they are doing it for some other purposes, whether to just make more money or… for political purposes? What’s your view now that you look back at that, when you look at those sites?

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:14:40,790 ] You know, I struggle with that question because the reason I do is I often wonder if the people pushing and propagating their content on the right wing— I often do wonder if they believe what it is that they’re saying.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:14:58,080 ] You know, does a, Does a Tucker Carlson believe what he’s saying? Does Breitbart believe what they’re saying? Does a Candace Owens or a Nick Fuentes believe what they’re saying? You know, do people at Turning Point believe what it is that they’re saying. And I feel like it’s really one of two answers that they don’t— but they’ve been able to capture so many people by keeping them aggrieved and afraid.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:15:25,200 ] Or they’ve told themselves a lie so much that they come to believe it. You know, even with Donald Trump himself, I’ve often wondered. Does he really believe a lot of what it is that he says? I used to think that all the time and wonder aloud about the 2020 election. You know, I used to think, does he really believe? That the election was stolen and there was a time that I was convinced he didn’t believe it. Now I wonder if he does because he just told himself that lie over and over. And I just, and I think that. That MAGA Media is designed to keep people mis-and disinformed. And I think that mis-and disinformation has reached a crisis level of, of, of, uh, within our country, uh, at, a, national, level, of, of, crisis, proportions, and I think that it’s at that mis-and disinformation is at a, is at a, point, right now, where it’s very obvious that those who are doing the

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:16:28,210 ] dividing, it’s very rewarding and very lucrative for them, and there are incentives to to keep people polarized and divided and afraid, with that media.

JOHN SIPHER

[ 00:16:39,520 ] Yeah, and with social media, it’s easy to be nasty at people on social media, whereas if you’re out in the real world talking to people, you know, you’re, coming across people that are very nice people. You’re dealing with them every day. And then you can go back inside, and you sit on line, and you start attacking maybe the same people that you met and were friendly with outside. It’s almost like this. People get caught up in this fake world of… political entertainment.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:17:03,840 ] And that’s one of the deceptions of the right-wing media ecosystem. And I’m not trying to say that, you know, those who are in legacy media or… Left-leaning media don’t part, don’t contribute to this, to some extent. Also, but what right-wing mega media doesn’t tell its its audience and viewers is that If a pro-MAGA and anti-MAGA person got together and had an actual conversation, they would realize that they actually agree more than they disagree. Now, there might be disagreements about the solutions for problems or how to get to certain outcomes. But if you just tell your audience to be afraid of Democrats and liberals and progressives and to fear anti-Trump Republicans and conservatives, then you’re always going to think that there’s some conspiracy against you. And it’s so important that, that, that.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:18:04,080 ] That, that, that.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:18:06,640 ] That worldview be sold by MAGA and right-wing media. I know that for me… I allowed myself to get duped into the fear of believing that anyone against me must have posed an existential threat. threat, and it was crush your enemies or be crushed by them. This was the kind of thinking that was commonplace and is still prevalent throughout. I know because I’ve had conversations with people who are in MAGA and I hear them talk about Democrats with the KKK, you know, Demo, Demo, KKK, Krat. And, you know, satanic worshiping pedophiles. And it’s easy to do all of that online. It’s harder to say that about someone when they’re face-to-face. And MAGA Media does not want people… Who are in MAGA consuming that information to know that there’s actually more agreement than disagreement. You know, we want a safe and secure country.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:19:06,890 ] We want economic opportunity. We want good schools for our children. But if you think that liberalism is the source of all of our personal and political ills, then naturally you’re going to feel like they are an enemy to us.

JOHN SIPHER

[ 00:19:25,570 ] Absolutely. So when you started stepping away, what was the hardest thing to change? Was it the content, the habits, the social circle? And did you replace it with anything? Like what is it? What is it as you moved out of it that made it? Successful for you to do that. And when you left, why wasn’t it enough just to leave privately? Why did you feel you had to renounce it publicly?

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:19:48,650 ] You know, I just had a memoir that came out recently. It’s entitled ‘One Betrayal Too Many, Why I Left MAGA.’ And the visual that I give in the memoir is a wall of bricks. And I would take one brick out, Trump’s mismanagement of COVID. I would take another one out, the 2020 election lies. I would take out Ron DeSantis’ platforming of anti-vaxxers. I would take out a brick of Uvalde. And eventually, you take enough out. And the wall just falls and collapses.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:20:21,850 ] I was always so unapologetically public in my support for Trump and MAGA, as this activist and this nationalist, patriotic, soldier that when I… When I came to the conclusion that MAGA no longer comported with my values, I just felt I needed to go public.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:20:43,400 ] And I didn’t think that anything would happen except just experiencing the catharsis of closing that chapter of my life and moving on. But after I went public, I realized that people did care and I received one message after another. Desperate. from desperate friends and family who approached me and said, ‘Rich, can you talk to my mother, my brother, my sister, my kids, my parents, my best friend?’

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:21:15,040 ] I was completely oblivious and naive.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:21:18,480 ] to how many relationships had been torn asunder by this movement.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:21:23,170 ] in communities, in… in families, friendships, places of worship. And I had to have my own reckoning, realizing that I was complicit in helping the president divide the country, and I was culpable in amplifying conspiracy theories. I like to paraphrase the late, venerable Ernest Hemingway in saying that my epiphany happened gradually and then suddenly all at once. And there was this. It was a year-long road to Damascus moment where, like Saul in the Bible, the scales fell from the eyes because I realized that I could no longer believe the lies that I had come to believe, and that upon scrutiny… As much as I may have ignored facts when I was in MAGA, once I started having my doubts, my confusion, and questioning my beliefs, I could no longer ignore that I had been lied to and that I had allowed myself to believe those lies.

JOHN SIPHER

[ 00:22:25,390 ] Let’s talk a little bit about Donald Trump, because obviously, in many ways, he’s the key here. And there’s two things. Like one is, you know, for outsiders to look at him, I don’t see him as this, you know, you can imagine, right? Different people look at it a different way. What is your take on Donald Trump and his role here? And I think you’ve said in other interviews that. You think MAGA may unravel once he leaves. Tell us a little bit why. about Trump and why you believe that.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:22:53,270 ] You know, I think that what explains the fealty to Trump himself amongst those in MAGA is that Trump took right-wing politics, which have existed for generations, and created a brand and a community around it. You know, where people go to the rallies and they go to events like I used to. I used to be a donor and I used to be a sponsor of a local well-known Trump group when it was in existence. And there was a shared purpose and there was a shared enemy. And Trump created this feeling of belonging where people who felt unseen and unheard were finally recognized and appreciated. And because he’s the titular leader of that community, that explains the devotion to Trump himself. But when he’s off the political scene.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:23:44,110 ] I don’t think that MAGA will go away, but I do think that it will slowly unravel because you can’t replace… the originator of the community. You know, and there’s a lot of talk in our political discourse about whether it’s J. D. Vance or whether it’s Marco Rubio or is it someone else who might be able to supplant the president as the leader. But I don’t think anyone’s going to be able to. And if it does, in fact, unravel even slowly.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:24:12,850 ] then the fact is, John, that’s really good news for us because it means that there are going to be millions of people at a crossroads. And we have to catch people before they are inculcated into whatever comes after MAGA, whether it’s… america first or whether it’s this tech bros technocracy that we that we see that’s that’s been i think it was under the radar for a long time and then in the last year or so has become more it’s more at the forefront and more publicly visible so i i think that when When Trump is off the political scene, we are going to see a lot of people who are not sure what they’re going to do politically. And that’s a chance for us to catch them and give them an exit ramp and an off ramp and a new destination, which is what I am and our team is working to create. Leaving MAGA as.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:25:07,000 ] As that new destination and that new community for them.

JOHN SIPHER

[ 00:25:10,380 ] Because political parties, in many ways, used to be sort of you know, somewhat ideologically driven or policy driven. What MAGA has done and what Trump has done is destroyed the Republican Party that had this sort of coalition. Lessons Apply is now. You know, the policies of Meg are all over the place. Some of them might have been, you know, radical left. Some of them might have been radical right. Some of them just, you know, are different. So it’s going to be interesting to see.

JOHN SIPHER

[ 00:25:33,580 ] How that coalition comes together. And if it’s just one coalition, or more than one. You know, for a two-party system, it’s going to be interesting to see. But let me talk a little bit about. Again, coming out and family, you know, and how loved ones should deal with this. I mean. What mistakes do you think that family members make when? To try to reach someone that’s still deep in the movement? What is the way that… You know, people who have mega people in their family, what’s the best way for them to deal with them and help them come out of mega? This is what you’re doing with the organization, obviously.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:26:07,480 ] I just wanted to make a point when you mentioned about the Republican Party. It was a fantasy of ours when I was in MAGA to kill off the GOP and make it into a MAGA party. So that has very clearly been achieved and accomplished.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:26:24,320 ] You know, this is a really difficult and tough spot for friends and family to be in right now because they’re looking at their loved ones whom they… They still love, they still care about their friends, their family, those who are close to them. And. There’s a temptation to want to write them off as being hopeless or too far gone.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:26:49,250 ] But I think that my story and some of the stories that people can read at our website at leavingmaggot. Org, other testimonials, we are living proof that people can change. And what I would encourage friends and family to do is something that they’ve already been doing, and I know it’s a big ask, but to continue to do it. Which is just to remain patient. Because I do believe that most people in MAGA have a red line. And yes, there are some who will support Trump and MAGA no matter what. But I think that most people who are in MAGA have a line of demarcation. And I actually think that there are many, if not most, in MAGA who are looking around the country, and they see.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:27:36,010 ] They’re looking and they know that something is amiss in the nation. You know, whether it’s about The Iran War, or whether it’s about defying court orders, or whether it’s the tariffs, or the gutting of the federal government, the way that ICE has operated.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:27:52,780 ] I think there’s this burgeoning cognitive dissonance amongst many in MAGA where they have these these cemented beliefs, but their eyes are telling them that there’s something wrong. And I would really encourage friends and family to not give up on their close ones. When I left MAGA, I went to my longtime friends whom I had lost touch with.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:28:18,800 ] Because I had a second MAGA family and also because some of my longtime friends, I knew that they were blue Democratic voters. And I went to them. And I said, ‘Look, if you don’t, accept my apology. I will understand.’

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:28:33,330 ] But I would like to apologize for categorizing you into this group of being an existential threat. And the fact is, John, every one of them accepted my apology, and one who was a mentor of mine and still is.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:28:47,780 ] He even said to me, ‘Rich, I always knew that you’d come back.’ You know, and I talk about that in my memoir about going back to my friends. Even to this day, I get emotional thinking about it because if they gave up on me, I would not be here talking to you right now. There’s a good chance that. If Trump had won the election in 2020, I mean, I may never have left MAGA, you know, never say never, but… there’s a better than not chance that if Trump wins in 20, that I probably don’t leave MAGA.

JOHN SIPHER

[ 00:29:20,770 ] Interesting.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:29:21,430 ] So I think for friends and family out there, it’s really important to remember that… Facts and policy don’t move people. People don’t make decisions that way. We make decisions on emotions and perceptions and feelings. And for all the mythology of rugged individualism within MAGA, The fact is that MAGA is as emotional a group as any and is also a highly conformist group. You know, I mentioned earlier about information silos.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:29:56,520 ] I don’t think MAGA is the only information siloed group. But I do think it is the most information siloed group in the country.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:30:04,410 ] And I know that.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:30:06,160 ] And I can attest to that. Having been someone who only… consumes mega media. So for friends and family out there, I’d also encourage them, John, to check out our website and our support group page. And think about attending our groups because we focus a lot on self-care and we message that we want people to, we want to relieve people of the pressures of feeling like they can change their loved ones because we can’t change another person. All we can do is wait for them to change on their own, because the change has to come from the individual.

JOHN SIPHER

[ 00:30:44,230 ] So you’ve been generous with your time, and I don’t want to keep you too long, but just one question about the organization— how you set it up. You’ve been doing it now for a little while. What are you learning? What works? What doesn’t work? Tell us a little bit about this new step in your life, the organization.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:30:59,770 ] Yeah, you know, this is our third year. My first year, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. My second year, I started to get a little bit of my footing. And right now, with it being in our third year, I am happy to report. That we have never been busier between our media appearances, my memoir, our fundraising, our testimonials. We are meeting. Now, couples who were MAGA together who left for a variety of different reasons. So we have never been more active. And what I am learning is that it is not a sign of weakness for us to change our minds. We are working to change the stigma societally and culturally.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:31:45,590 ] That changing your mind is a weakness. It’s not. It’s a sign of strength. It’s a sign of evolution. It’s a show of maturation.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:31:52,950 ] And I’m also… learning that people… are forgiving people. Most people I meet who are anti-Trump and anti-MAGA have welcomed us and they’ve welcomed the others who have left. And yes, like we were saying before about the online crowd.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:32:11,470 ] You know, sometimes I get mean comments from those on the left, and I often get mean comments from those who are in NAGA. But I don’t think that the online world is representative of people as a whole. So we want to encourage people out there to remember that it is possible for us to make a change. And even though apologizing is not a natural act for us, especially publicly, apology is how we make a difference. For us, we don’t have any ideological purity test. But the only non-negotiable mandate that leaving MAGA has is someone has to take accountability for their past words, deeds, and rhetoric. Because without leaving— or without apologizing— you can’t really leave. And when I left, I became what I like to call a born-again human being. And walked away from. An identity. That was shaped on lies and extremism and became a person who no longer dehumanizes those with whom I disagree.

JOHN SIPHER

[ 00:33:19,290 ] Well, Thank you so much. You’ve been gracious with your time. Really respect what you’re doing. And I both know how hard it is, but also how important it is. Before we leave, can you tell people how to find me and about your book and your website and your… organization and social media areas.

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:33:37,770 ] Sure, thank you. Anyone who wants to contact us, follow our socials, learn more information about our support group and our memoir, you can visit us at leavingmaga. org. We also have an entire page of testimonials of people who left. I think that those who read those stories will find them to be quite inspirational. We have a diverse assortment of people who left. So feel free to drop us a question or a comment at leavingmaga. org. We look forward to always hearing. And yes, we actually do check all of our messages.

JOHN SIPHER

[ 00:34:12,100 ] Well, I will try to find your book. Is it for sale, the book?

RICH LOGIS

[ 00:34:15,100 ] It is, and people can order a copy right from our memoir page on our website.

JOHN SIPHER

[ 00:34:21,400 ] Outstanding. Okay, well. Again, Rich, so inspiring.

JOHN SIPHER

[ 00:34:25,380 ] So important. I know it’s not easy. I’m sure you get attacked from some people who are still inside, but you’re doing really, really important work. So thank you so much. So for our listeners, if you like what you’re hearing, please subscribe to the Steady State Sentinel. Follow SteadyState content and give us a five-star review if you would on Google. The reviews really help. Get this important content to the widest audience possible. So stay informed and stay engaged. And join us next week for another episode of the Steady State Sentinel. This is John Sipher, still standing watch.