On April 18, 2025, I posted an article titled “The Leftists Who Cried Wolf (Trump)”.  In it, I wrote that the left had shattered their credibility in opposing Trump by exaggerating and making up stories.

I wrote: “For some people, including some people who don’t care much for Trump, it has destroyed the credibility of the Trump haters who make up fake stories.  And it should destroy their credibility.  The problem is that we shouldn’t necessarily always believe the opposite of what they say.”

This is a problem with both Team Republican and Team Democrat.  The party loyalists typically just take a stance against what the other team says.  If Trump says that taking hydroxychloroquine may help against COVID, then the Democrats must oppose it.  If leading Democrats say that Iran was not an imminent threat, then Republicans often feel the need to take the opposite position.

One side could say that puppies are cute, and the other side would feel compelled to take a different position.

To be sure, there are people in both parties that do not do this, but these are also the people who are often criticized by the “leadership” in their own party.

Trump the Authoritarian

The problem right now, especially with the war in Iran, is that we don’t have enough meaningful opposition to the war and Trump in general.  The meaningful opposition is coming from libertarians, independents (who often have libertarian leanings), and people from within the Republican Party.

It is a lot more meaningful right now when Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones speak critically against the war in Iran.  When Hillary Clinton criticizes the war, it is completely meaningless.  She would have supported it if Biden were president.  She would have been capable of waging such a war if she were president.

Even the voices of the left in general are far less significant because of their previous hysteria over Trump.  It’s not to say that these voices are completely meaningless and without significance.  But if the left had been more honest about Trump up until now, then they would have more credibility, and their opposition to Trump now would mean more.

To be clear, I am not criticizing the left for having criticized Trump in the past.  I am criticizing the left for making up fake stories about Trump and opposing even the good things that Trump said.

The people who were more honest about Trump, whether they ultimately supported him or voted for him or not, are the most important voices now.  Their criticisms of Trump and the latest war are much more meaningful.

Regrets in Voting for Trump?

I very hesitatingly voted for Trump in November 2024.  There were many areas where I disagreed with Trump.  There were many things I didn’t like from his first term.  But there was a group of people surrounding Trump near the end of the campaign who seemingly offered something different.  They were not libertarians, but many of them had libertarian leanings in certain areas.

These people included Tucker Carlson, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr., Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and even, to a lesser extent, JD Vance.  At least they did not represent themselves as neocons.

To be sure, the Democrats did play a role in my vote.  We were coming off of the Biden regime where we got continued COVID insanity, vaccine mandates, war in Ukraine, and devastation in Gaza.  And Kamala Harris said she wouldn’t have done anything different.  This was far from an exhaustive list either.

I knew Trump had hostilities towards Iran just based on what he did in his first term.  I have known for a long time that he is bad on economics.  He is a spender (with other people’s money).  He favors tariffs, which are taxes.  On foreign policy, Trump was inconsistent in the things he said and did, but he seemed better than most of the alternatives, and there was at least a little bit of hope that the people mentioned above might influence him in being less interventionist.

I made a choice to vote for Trump knowing what I knew at the time.  I knew he was also capable of being a disaster, which is what has now happened.  Maybe he was lying the whole time.  Maybe he is just easily influenced, and the war hawks have learned that they just need to constantly kiss Trump’s butt and tell him how great he is in order for him to do their bidding.

It’s hard to say that I regret voting for Trump because I made the choice based on the information I had at the time.  If I had known then what would happen in his second term, I definitely wouldn’t have voted for him.  But I didn’t know, so I made the best choice I could make at the time given the information that I had.

Staying Honest

I look back at my post on April 18, 2025, and I realize I had already turned on Trump.  I was highly critical of his administration arresting legal immigrants for their speech against Israel, which started very early in Trump’s second term.  Trump started his insane tariffs in April 2025.  I also recognized that he was already bombing Yemen.  It turns out that a total of 7 countries would be bombed in Trump’s first year back in office (Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Nigeria, Somalia, and Venezuela).  There was also no peace in Gaza or Ukraine.

I turned hard against Trump as soon as he started betraying his talk of America First.  I recognized his turn to authoritarianism early on.  Many Trump supporters have been late to the game on that, but I would encourage anyone who supported Trump to oppose him now.  It is better late than never, and we need all of the opposition we can get.

If Trump’s approval ratings manage to fall below 30%, that will be something else to see.  Trump can cite a CNN poll saying he has 100% support from MAGA, but that doesn’t mean much if there are fewer MAGA people than before.  Also, perhaps Trump is too stupid and into himself to realize that he didn’t win in 2024 because of MAGA alone.  He needed people who do not have a strong affiliation with either major party.

I know many people who voted for Trump in 2024.  Most of these people wouldn’t identify as MAGA.  They would never be wearing a MAGA hat.  They didn’t consider themselves MAGA in 2024.  But they voted for Trump for varying reasons.  I personally know at least 4 people, possibly more, who voted for Trump in 2024 and are highly critical of him today.

This is why the Democrats are going to win big in the 2026 mid-terms.  It’s not that former Trump voters will go vote for Democrats.  It is more that some of them will just not show up to vote.

We need honesty more than ever.  We need hardcore opposition to Trump, especially from those who previously supported him.  We need to repudiate all of the war making and authoritarianism from the last year. Call your Congressional “representative” and let them know that you support impeaching and removing the president for war crimes.