“I think democracy’s at stake. The whole Republican party is under his control.”
“My name is Jeremy. I’m from Tucson, Arizona. I’m an engineer here and, I’ve been a lifelong Republican. I voted for Trump once and I’m not doing it again. I’d like to tell you a little about why, I’ve been a conservative evangelical my most of my adult life, and, as such Republican political affiliation was basically a given, driven by pro-life, but a lot of other things end up playing in there.
“But you just don’t even, most people don’t even question it. The high percentages of Trump voters, evangelical Trump voters kind of tell that story, and I was one of them in 2016. I wasn’t really paying attention. I knew he was, I knew Trump was a bit bombastic. I knew he wasn’t very presidential, but I didn’t realize, I didn’t really know anything about him beyond that.
“But then in 2020 some stuff had changed my life. I started listening, I mean, really listening to what the man was saying. And the first thing that got ahold of me was his divisiveness. I could not believe I had been, you know, sensing the tension, the political tension, cultural tension, and to start to listen to the things that he was saying that I just hadn’t listened to, hadn’t bothered to listen to before, where he was throwing gas on all the fires.
“And that, once I realized that, that was really repulsive to me. Then I started paying attention. I started seeing all his other wonderful character traits. He’s utterly self-centered. He compared himself to Jesus. I saw a video in 2020, okay. And then to come to find out, that’s not really that uncommon.
“He’s done that. Other times other people do that on his behalf. I realized he was setting up doubt all year for the 2020 election. Later I learned he’d done that all his life. He did that for the 2016 election, which he won legitimately. It’s just what he does, “hey, if I lose, it was rigged If I win, great.” Well that’s not adulting, that’s not real life. You win some, you lose some. I mean, I certainly win some and lose some. So that, well and we saw how that played out post-election and continues to, so clearly that’s a big issue. And I mean the January 6th and everything around that huge, huge issue.
“So I had never voted for a Democrat in my life till 2020. I voted mixed ticket. I tried to research people and vote my conscience according to either party.
“By 2022. I said, I can’t vote Republican again until they right the ship, because the party’s broken. The party’s been taken over by Trump. The party does his bidding. The party is not the party that it used to be, or the party I thought I belonged to. I am still a registered Republican, for what that’s worth at this point. So in 2022, I voted all blue.
“As we’ve learned about the Putin connections, maybe I should say, as I’ve learned, because some of this stuff’s been known for a while, the constant lying 30,000 documented lies in four years in office. That’s 20 Now we have this stuff with FEMA that he’s telling all these terrible lies is preventing people from getting help from the hurricanes.
“I mean, he’s taking advantage of the people in the direst of circumstances who believe him. They believe him, and he feeds them lies. And just to take advantage for his political advantage, to try to present the government as broken and only he can fix it.
“”I alone can fix it” he says, this is not legitimate campaigning. This is not legitimate democratic behavior. The disrespect, I mean, I like to be a respectful guy. I disagree with people about things, but we can discuss this and I mean, his name-calling and his disrespect is legendary. Now, with a female candidate, it’s taken on forms.
“It’s disrespectful of the fact that she’s female, disrespectful of the fact that she’s not white. This is not okay. This is not okay. This is terrible. And now I think democracy’s at stake. The whole Republican party is under his control even while he is not in office. He’s self-aggrandizing. He’s vindictive.”