President Donald Trump’s political movement has been widely compared to a cult — and now billboards in Tennessee are offering adherents a way out.
“Having Doubts? You Are Not Alone,” proclaims the advertisement for the website “Leaving MAGA” along Nashville’s Interstate 40, according to a report by The Tennessean on Thursday. Its founder, Rich Logis, told the publication that he is trying to provide former Trump supporters — like him — with a safe space to leave the right-wing movement.
“If someone’s going to leave one community, they needed a place to go,” Logis explained. “And Leaving MAGA, we want … to be that place to go, and give people a pathway out of MAGA extremism where they can find with us a renewed sense of belonging and gathering and camaraderie.”
He added, “Because if someone is in MAGA right now and they’re having those doubts, they’re less likely to leave if they don’t have a new community to go to, and we want to be that off ramp and that new destination for them.”
Logis said he hopes that people will see his billboard, reach out to his organization and feel comfortable reembracing values like political compassion.
“When they walked away from MAGA extremism, they became what I call born again human beings. They reclaimed their individuality, their agency, and their empathy,” Logis told The Tennessean.
The publication continued, “Leaving MAGA hopes to reassure those experiencing doubts that they are not alone and provide support as they navigate what can be an emotionally difficult break from a movement that has become central to many people’s identities.”
In June, Logis told Rick Wilson from the Republican anti-Trump group The Lincoln Project that he deeply regrets having supported Trump for many years.
“Let me just open with my usual customary apology,” Logis told Wilson. “I would like to say that I’m sorry for my past support of Trump and MAGA. When I was in MAGA, the Lincoln Project was the devil — loathed and despised. And if I had met you when I was in MAGA, I would have said that you were an existential threat to our country.”
Logis added, “My journey really started in 2015. I was very politically disillusioned. I believed that the two parties had been the same — that they failed to represent most of the country, except for the wealthy and the powerful. I was unapologetically all in. I spoke to Trump groups. I donated to them. I was a sponsor. There was probably no one who was as devout a supporter of Trump and MAGA as I was.And born from that apology and recounting of my story was our organization, Leaving MAGA, which we founded as a new community — a new destination for people who are leaving MAGA, who are having doubts.”
In May, Logis explained to MS NOW that he agreed Trump supporters were particularly hypocritical after the anchor pointed out that many of them blasted a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, for alleged corruption over the Whitewater real estate scandal, even though Trump’s profiteering in office is far worse.
“When Trump ran, I fell for the lies that he would drain the swamp and would root out corruption. And he was correct in pointing out the graft and the fraud and the abuse,” Logis told MS NOW. “But what he has done is he has continued to enrich himself and his own family at the expense of the American people.”
He concluded, “I realized that Trump was lying and that I had allowed myself to believe these lies, which eventually led to my leaving MAGA. And I think that there are more people than ever who are in the MAGA community who right now are having doubts about their support for Donald Trump.”