It’s Exhausting Having Trump Supporters in Your Immediate Family
The gaslighting never ends
I waited a week after Wednesday’s insurrection to contact my dad. After the violent images beamed worldwide of extremists storming the Capitol to stop the certification of the election, I thought, at least this will prompt my conservative father to choose country over party, and rejoin me in reality and see Donald Trump for the authoritarian that he is.
Nope.
My father thinks Antifa was responsible for the Capitol insurrection last Wednesday to overthrow the US Government.
Despite Trump flags, confederate flags, MAGA hats with the words “Civil War” stitched on them atop of the heads of the Capitol’s rioters, my dad insists they were Antifa.
Articles from newspapers, like WAPO, NYT’s, and the AP, written with confirmed sources backing them, went flying via text to my dad. My thumbs moving at warp speed on my iPhone. I had to convince him. Save him. He sent me only one article back.
I sent him several more.
I asked him if he trusts the FBI? Because the FBI says, there is “no indication that Antifa took part in US Capitol Riot.” I sent him articles from the AP News and one from the BBC confirming the FBI’s statement. Trump supporters stormed the White House — white supremacists, QAnon conspiracy theorists, Trump extremists, and The Proud Boys. Trump supporters on a mission for the President to stop lawmakers who were certifying the presidential vote. Because they’d been lied to by the President. Leading them to mistakenly think the election is fraudulent.
My dad shot back, “your info is BS.”
And then, “stop sending me information.”
And that was it.
Who is Antifa? Pronounced “an-TEE-fuh.”
Mark Bray, a historian at Rutgers University and author of “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” writes, “Think of them as radical anti-racists who want to take matters into their own hands to try to stop white supremacy… The difference between them and a normal opponent of these things is that antifascists don’t trust the government or police to efficiently bat down white supremacy and fascism. There’s a suspicion among Antifa that police and a capitalist society are actually supportive of these ideals. So from there stems the notion of taking matters into their own hands, which lends an air of militancy to their mission.”
It’s embarrassing to know you were raised by someone who believes lies propagated by a deranged president and his sycophants. Embarrassing and heartbreaking. I used to hide the fact my dad is a Trump supporter. Shame prevented me from telling my friends. I blocked him on Facebook in the lead up to 2016 after he started posting misinformation in my comment sections. I couldn’t take his public harassment of me, mocking my politics with memes in my comments. Yes, I’m in my own bubble, but I look for news outside of Facebook.
He wouldn’t stop commenting with lies and hate. It was embarrassing. I gave him a warning. I told him, you can’t share stuff like that on my posts. He didn’t listen. After I defriended him and let a bit of time pass, I accepted his second request for a Facebook “friendship” (we talk IRL, and I know how ridiculous it sounds that my 75-year-old father won’t respect his child’s wishes). Within the same month, he said something bigoted and derogatory targeting LGBTQ people. I unfriended him again, telling him I will not allow homophobic rhetoric on my comment section on my wall. I won’t stand for it.
I’m not willing to be estranged from my father, but I do have a say over what goes on my feed and in my comments.
We still talk on the phone, occasionally, and try to steer away from political conversations. We cannot talk about our political views, both of us end up heated, and one hangs up on the other, saying “goodbye, gotta go” to get off the phone as quickly as possible.
For years I was ashamed to share that I have a parent who is a Trump supporter. You think those you tell will silently judge you, and think some of that bigotry and hatred must have poured into you growing up, that you are somehow complicit by relation.
I soon found out my peers were dealing with similar issues, and nearly all my friends have a close relative who is all in on Trump’s propaganda, stoking lies, hatred, and race bating.
Shortly after the insurrection, my daughter asked, “have you talked to grandpa yet? Is he still a Trump supporter?”
I hadn’t contacted him yet. I was too raw.
Too numb from all the footage and violent videos taken by the extremists busting into the People’s House, peeing while standing on its walls, gleefully breaking windows, dragging a police officer out by his legs and beating him with a flagpole attached to the American flag while chanting “USA, USA!”
I was trying to process the photo of the man smiling as he put his boot on the House speaker’s desk with a smug smile. I mistakenly viewed the woman being shot in the neck. I can’t get that violent image out of my head. I’ve never seen anyone shot before. During the insurrection, I watched it live on MSNBC in real-time. I saw the woman who got shot being rushed out on a gurney drenched in blood. I knew she wouldn’t make it; there was too much blood, the light in her eyes gone.
Images of the lone black Capitol Hill police officer facing down a mostly white mob, being chased up the stairs after he made the calculated decision to lead the thugs away from the area where the Senate was conducting business still replayed in my mind. That single officer. Alone, bravely leading a gang of violent marauders away from the people he took an oath to protect.
The President took an oath to protect all of us but instead put all of us in danger by inciting the riot with his words and commands of “we are going to have to fight much harder.” That officer, who was chased up the stairs, outnumbered, has more courage and valor than the President of The United States.
I was putting off picking up the phone to call my Trump-supporting father to see if he’d come to his senses. When deep in my heart, I knew he hadn’t.
I waited a week.
I didn’t call but texted.
Once again, disappointed, I put the phone down, and abandoned sending more articles of the truth, disheartened. It won’t matter to him. He has he own “truth.”
I’m related to someone who can be fooled, manipulated, and who stands behind a president who fails, again and again, to protect the nation against enemies foreign and domestic.
Here are some facts from the Austin American-Statesmen (yes, I sent this to my dad).
“One of the reasons baseless Antifa claims spread like wildfire online was a Washington Times story posted Jan. 6 with the headline, ‘Facial recognition firm claims Antifa infiltrated Trump protesters who stormed Capitol.’
The story sourced information putatively from a Singapore-based facial recognition technology company that reportedly identified members of the mob as people with Antifa ties. But the company the Washington Times sourced refuted the report, saying that it was never in contact with the newspaper about the story. By Thursday, the story was retracted. But that didn’t stop social media users from sharing the story thousands of times. PolitiFact rated these claims False.”
Jessica is a writer, an online entrepreneur, and a recovering perfectionist. She lives in Los Angeles with her extroverted daughter, two dogs, and two cats.