The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 11.4 “WHY I LEFT MAGA”, MrBeast Fires Employees After Investigation, Jason Kelce Phone Controversy, &

Episode Date: November 4, 2024

PDS Debt is offering a free debt analysis. It only takes thirty seconds. Get yours at https://PDSDebt.com/defranco  Go to https://hensonshaving.com/defranco and enter DEFRANCO at checkout to get 100 free blades with your purchase. (Note: you must add both the 100-blade pack and the razor for the discount to apply.) Election Day is TOMORROW! Make Sure You VOTE: https://Vote.org  – ✩ TODAY’S STORIES ✩ – 00:00 - MrBeast Releases Investigation Findings  03:57 - Jason Kelce Slams Heckler’s Phone to the Ground  06:30 - Trump Gets “Equal Time” on NBC After Harris Appears on SNL 08:26 - Sponsored by PDS Debt 09:25 - Analyses Find Major Gender Gap in Which Candidates TikTok Promotes to Users  12:22 - New York Times Tech Guild Goes on Strike, Prompting Election Coverage Concerns  15:16 - Former Kentucky Cop Found Guilty of Violating Breonna Taylor’s Rights  17:13 - Sponsored by Henson Shaving 18:21 - “Why I Left MAGA:” An Interview With Former Trump Enthusiast Rich Logis ——————————   Produced by: Cory Ray Edited by: James Girardier, Maxwell Enright, Julie Goldberg, Christian Meeks, Matthew Henry Art Department: William Crespo Writing/Research: Philip DeFranco, Brian Espinoza, Lili Stenn, Maddie Crichton, Chris Tolve, Star Pralle, Jared Paolino ———————————— #DeFranco #MrBeast #DonaldTrump ———————————— Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sup, you beautiful bastards. Welcome back to the Philip DeFranco Show, your daily dive into the news. There is so much that we have to talk about today, but first, a very, very important announcement. Tomorrow, on Tuesday, Election Day, at 6.30 p.m. Eastern, 3.30 p.m. Pacific, I will be doing a live election night show and stream.

We'll be covering and reacting to the results as they come in. We're gonna be talking about some of the key races, some of the key things that are playing out. There's just so much that's gonna be happening. We're gonna sift through all the BS together. And at the very least, you'll have a thing to watch or a place to hang out

while America waits for the results of its biopsy. So make sure you have notifications turned on and that it's also set to all notifications. But of course that is tomorrow and there's a lot to talk about today. So let's jump into it. And the first thing we've got to talk about today is Mr. Beast and those sexual misconduct allegations

back in the news. Right in that, because reportedly the law firm that was investigating claims into the company found no proof of sexual misconduct. But, this is those findings are still drawing tons of criticism online, so let's try to unpack it. Because as you might remember, back in July, Mr. Beast said that he hired an independent third party to conduct an investigation after Ava Tyson was accused of grooming. And so with that, over the weekend, Mr. Beast announced that, quote, A three- month investigation into allegations regarding my company has concluded. The law firm slash investigators reviewed millions

of documents slash messages and conducted 39 interviews. I was asked to refrain from making public statements to enable a detailed and unbiased investigation. Below are their conclusions. So what we saw is that the investigation was conducted by the law firm, Quinn, Emmanuel, Urquhart and Sullivan. Along with Mr. Beast sharing them, outlets like NBC News obtained their findings,

with the most significant of the findings being that, allegations of sexual misconduct between company employees and minors are without basis. The allegations were soundly rejected, including by alleged victims. Also going on to say that allegations of the company knowingly employing individuals with proclivities or histories towards illegal or questionable legal conduct are similarly without basis.

Here too, the allegations were uniformly rejected, and also saying several isolated instances of workplace harassment and misconduct were identified during the investigation. But then adding the company was informed of such conduct and took swift and appropriate actions to address the incidents, including where necessary disciplining

or letting go of implicated individuals. That letter then also noting that in a short time, Mr. B's company has grown very quickly from a YouTube startup to a much larger entity and quote, "'It is not uncommon that policies and practices essential in a mature company would lag behind commercial success.'" And with that, adding that this appears

to have been the case here and that it has quote, "'In certain instances allowed for inappropriate conduct.'" But then regarding that, saying that the company is working to remedy these issues. And doing so by sending a clear message regarding Tone at the top, hiring a new CEO, people officer, general counsel, and soon a CFO. Also implementing mandatory corporate training

for employees, developing new policies, and establishing a CFO. Also implementing mandatory corporate training for employees, developing new policies, and establishing a reporting hotline. Swiftly terminating individuals who violated policy. And in fact, according to the AP, somewhere between five and 10 staffers were fired. Though there, a spokesperson also declined to give the outlet an exact figure.

So as expected, there have been a ton of responses to this investigation. Some we've seen supporting it, including Lava GS, who is the minor at the center of the grooming allegations, but is now 20 years old. With Lava writing, it was incredibly difficult having my name thrown around in a public forum without being given the opportunity

to share the truth. Thankfully, the people doing the investigation actually did reach out and gave me the opportunity to tell the truth, which I very much appreciate. And adding, I was not groomed. These were false allegations made up by other people with my name thrown in them. This investigation was conducted by real investigators

and not internet detectives. They reviewed everything." Then of course, also with this, you had a ton of people pushing back. I mean, Mr. Beast's ex-post even got hit with a community note saying the findings were partially false, with it pointing to previous claims that Mr. Beast knowingly hired a registered sex offender.

You also had former staffers pushing back with one former editor writing, "'Was the prostitute I had to give money for a part of the investigation? How about the lolly everyone loved? The gunshot that made me lose my hearing temporarily? The workplace bullying when you use slurs and called me the R slur every day?

No? Gotcha. And this is good for people like Rosanna Pansino adding, if your own paid for internal investigation leads to a new CEO and finds workplace harassment and misconduct, as well as multiple firings, I think it might be time for a bigger investigation. Right, and this is among a number of people saying, you know, they're skeptical about the findings

because Mr. Beast hired the investigators himself. And so, you know, with this, one, I'd really love to know your thoughts about the reported findings here. Then also, two, Mr. Beast's troubles are of course not behind him. And that, because at the very least, he's still facing that Beast Games lawsuit right now.

And according to NBC News, this probe didn't look at the claims from the set of the games. But then, why would you fuck with Jason Kelsey? Which also, I'll say, if you don't follow football, you're not Swifties. Jason Kelsey is a former Eagles player and he's also the brother of Travis Kelsey

of the Kansas City Chiefs and Taylor Swift boyfriend thing. And while Jason was attending the Penn State game over the weekend and he was walking outside the stadium when someone decided to heckle him and refer to his brother using a homophobic slur, which Jason did not take lightly. Hey, Kelsey. Kelsey.

How do you feel your brother's a. Kelsey, can I get a fist bump?un, can I get a fist bump? Kelzun, can I get a fist bump? And there were a ton of different angles of this. I mean, so if you didn't catch it, you can see that in one hand, Jason has a six pack still in hand and taking the phone presumably from the guy

who yelled the slur, slam it on the ground before then picking it back up and walking away. And then also in this clip, you can hear Jason shout back. Oh! Oh! Oh! Right, so all of this has gone incredibly viral. it back up and walking away. And then also in this clip, you can hear Jason shout back. Right, so all of this has gone incredibly viral. You know, tons of people supporting Jason, saying things like, if you shout a slur in a guy's face, you are inviting him to break your shit is an important lesson every college student should learn. And I appreciate Jason Kelsey taking the time to educate in Happy Valley today. As well as Jason Kelsey was right. People need to be put

on notice. You cannot just endlessly harass people with your idiotic hatred and not expect a response. Though also there's been some debate over Jason's choice to yell the word back at the guy with some people upset over it. So I'm arguing he has no business using that word, even in retaliation. Saying using the slur as a slur is derogatory. Saying that reinforces that being that word is a bad thing.

That being gay is a bad thing. But there's also, as others said here, I'm seeing a few people who apparently wanted Jason Kelsey to say, that's a hurtful word. And I just want to let all of y'all know that's not how fights work. That bear used the word correctly. To check a homophobe,

we're getting word from the officials up in the booth, but I think there's not gonna be any penalty on the play. After further review, this has been allowed due to the fuck around find out clause. Gay council is adjourned. And all of this has no shortage of videos like this one have been popping up. Hey, I just wanted to come out here and say

what Jason Kelsey said earlier this week. videos like this one have been popping up. Jason, you're fine. You did great. No apology necessary, my friend. No, that was... Slay, oh my God. If I was in his situation, yeah, I'd say the exact same thing. That was perfect. Go about your day, my friend. You did great.

Now, of course, with all that, as was said before, no individual can make a call on whether saying slurs is okay. I'm definitely not. And so that's actually part of the reason I'd love to pass the question off to you. What are your thoughts here? Especially if you're part of the LGBTQ plus community. But then let's talk about the Kamala Harris SNL controversy. Because as you might've seen Kamala Harris hopped by SNL to be a part of a skit. You'd Maya Rudolph playing Harris before turning to a mirror where then we saw the

real Harris. Where the mirror bit's a classic SNL thing. And it was all pretty tame. They did some jokes around rhyming her name. They're saying that the American people might vote for Kamala because they want to end the dramala. Repeating some of Harris's key phrases like, "'We know each other so well, "'we even finish each other's belief "'in the promise of America.'"

Was probably the most overtly political about the thing being, I'm going to vote for us. And so while the skin itself was generally light, many Republicans were up in arms that Harris was featured at all. With that, claiming that NBC was breaking federal election laws. And in fact, federal regulators like Brendan Carr, a commissioner with the Federal Communications Commission,

called out NBC and said that her appearance was a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC's equal time rule. And that's been a rule for decades. And the short version is that if a TV or radio broadcasters offers access to one candidate, it has to do the same for the other. So because of that, Carr went on to add,

"'The purpose of the rule is to avoid exactly "'this type of biased and partisan conduct. "'A licensed broadcaster using the public airwaves "'to exert its influence for one candidate "'on the eve of an election, "'unless the broadcaster offered equal time "'to other qualifying campaigns.'" Now, an interesting thing with all that

is that the Trump campaign itself has not officially complained. As the FCC itself said, "'The FCC has not made any determination "'regarding political programming rules, "'nor have we received any complaint from any interested parties. Right, and that's possibly because NBC was very quick

to react to this whole situation, with the filing a notice with the FCC stating that it was giving Trump that access after the NASCAR Xfinity 500 yesterday. And while he didn't get an SNL skit, instead he put out an ad where he gave his normal campaign messages. Though I will say this may not be the end

of the drama love for NBC. Right, and that because the executive producer of SNL actually touched on this whole can of worms back in September when they told the Hollywood Reporter that neither Trump nor Harris would be on the show because, quote, you can't bring the actual people who are running on because of election laws and the equal time provision.

You can't have the main candidates without having all the candidates. And there are lots of minor candidates that are only on the ballot in like three states and that becomes really complicated. But for now, or at least as of recording, it remains to be seen if the FCC will care enough to do anything about this.

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that women support Harris over Trump by 16 points, while men back Trump over Harris by 18 points. So that amounts to a gender gap of 34 points that could prove decisive tomorrow night. And as far as why it's so big this year, there are a few big guesses being tossed around. Where things like the candidates themselves being different genders,

the importance of abortion this election cycle, and the general divergence of young men and women politically in recent years. But then also, what if there's another factor that's amplifying all these other ones and creating an impact of its own? Right, what about TikTok, the platform that some 17% of adults routinely turn to

for news according to a recent Pew poll? I mean, it was just 3% as recently as 2020. And then when you look at Americans under 30, the share who routinely get news from TikTok, it jumps to nearly 40%. And the reason that we're talking about this is that the gender gap is reflected in, and perhaps partly caused by, the platform's algorithm.

Right, and it's something that we should consider since the Washington Post convinced more than 800 American adults to share the last six months of their viewing histories from TikTok's For You page. And when they analyzed the data, they found that female users received roughly 11% more content about Harris than men did. Where then men, and we're talking about even liberal ones,

seeing more Trump than women did. Though they still saw a roughly equal number of videos about both candidates. And then you had the post analyzing a different data set of 300 users from Cybersecurity for Democracy, which is a nonpartisan multi-university project. And what they found there was a shocking 40% gap in how often women saw videos directly

from the Harris campaign compared to men. And although both genders mostly saw election-related content, they differed on some other stuff. So men tended to see more about Ukraine, immigration, and inflation, while women tended to see more about reproductive rights and healthcare. Now with that said, I wanna be clear, right?

How much of this gap is due to men and women genuinely being interested in different content? And how much is the algorithm showing bias based on gender? I mean, your guess is as good as mine. But with that, it does seem like the Harris campaign has been able to take advantage of TikTok much more effectively than Trump. With, for example, Zelf, an online measurement firm, recently finding that Harris had gotten 100 million more views than Trump on TikTok, despite having half as many followers. But all of this also is, I think it's important to keep in mind that most people aren't tapped into politics with a constant IV drip like you or I. Right,

on average, the post found that only around 6 to 10% of any given person's feed is political, though of course some see much less and others much more. And then of course, depending on the news of the day, there might be a big spike. Right, like the day that Biden dropped out of the race, the proportion of videos related to politics nearly doubled from 10%. And so naturally we can expect to see a surge

of political content in the days leading up to Tuesday and on, and possibly depending on how it goes, a few days after. And again, TikTok is just one part of the equation. I mean, when we look at social media in general, it's all drastically changed. On Instagram, you have them saying, you know, they're not trying to lift up political news,

but then Twitter slash X. I feel like whatever that for you algorithm is, is just insane. Like I do not, or I've rarely ever interacted with Elon Musk's feed, but it's just swamped these days. And so much of it leading up to this election is him megaphoning right-wing claims and politics. So yeah, it's a very interesting thing to consider

of just how much we are molded by the algorithm versus the algorithm is molded by us. Because as we become more and more addicted to these devices, and unfortunately I am addicted, there's a lot of power in deciding what's gonna be on this screen. And then after months of threats and failed negotiations, the New York Times Tech Guild just went on strike today,

which means that thing that so many people love, that they hate, some have PTSD from it. The New York Times election needle may not be a thing this year, because we're talking about the roughly 600 software engineers, product managers, data analysts, and designers who make up the backbone of the Times' digital side.

And with the election being literally tomorrow, those workers are needed now more than ever. Because according to one tech guild member and senior software engineer, the increased traffic on the Times website on election day, it puts serious strain on their system. And this is other times staff say that without the tech guild,

they'll likely struggle fixing any bugs that may pop up from the traffic surge, as well as struggling to update content on the Times' more sophisticated digital tools, namely the needle. But also understand this isn't coming out of nowhere. Many times staffers have been raising the alarm about the impact this could have on election day

if a strike were to happen. In fact, the Times Guild and the union representing Wirecutter previously signed a pledge urging the publisher, CEO, and executive editor to close a deal with the tech workers. That letter reading, we can't do our jobs without the tech guild. Can you imagine if our election needle didn't work,

the app didn't open, or the homepage went down? Though notably, this is also happening as a Times spokesperson has promised that they have, quote, robust plans in place to make sure everything goes smoothly. But whatever those plans are, they do not seem to be sharing with the rest of the Times staff,

with one business reporter and the secretary for the Times Guild saying that nothing has been communicated to the newsroom. And adding there, we are very nervous. There's a lot of moving pieces around election day, and I don't think anyone knows what's going to happen if the tech folks aren't there to fix things on the fly. But this also is there are some who jumped from nervous

to angry about the tech guild's decision to strike right now. And that's including those within the Times' ranks, like one National Desk reporter who said, "'Guild leadership could have chosen any other day, "'364 of them, in fact, to make the entirely reasonable point "'that workers deserve a fair contract.'" And this also is others within the industry have had similar opinions, like Bill Gruskin, for example,

where he's a professor at Columbia Journalism School and former Wall Street Journal editor who said, "'Those new workers clearly feel more comfortable "'than their journalism colleagues would "'in threatening to shutter the most important news site "'in the country during the most important election "'in many decades.'" And so, you know, with all that, of course,

you have people asking, well, if the shit's gonna hit the fan tomorrow, if the tech guild isn't around, why are they walking out now? And while there, you have people noting that the tech guild's actually been negotiating with the company for two and a half years now after getting certified

in a National Labor Relations Board election back in March of 2022. And this is their three key issues, their pay equity, remote work, and just cause job protection. Meaning that they can't be fired without reason and due process. And back in September, when it was clear

that a deal wasn't within reach, the union overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike. And they made it clear that their timing, the week of an incredibly important election, it was not an accident. And this is the tech guild now says that they were hoping to avoid a strike, but after negotiations last night,

still didn't yield an agreement, they're out of options. With one member saying, we love our jobs and we're looking forward to being able to do them, but we haven't seen enough movement for management and we've been bargaining for far too long. The ball is in their court. And this is in response, the Times said,

while we respect the union's right to engage in protected actions, we're disappointed that colleagues would strike at this time, which is both unnecessary and at odds with our mission. But for now, we'll have to wait to see what happens, right, if any sort of last minute deal can happen before polls start closing tomorrow or not.

And then, after four years and three trials, Brett Hankison is going to prison. Because Brett is one of the three officers who executed the botched raid that ended up killing Breonna Taylor back in 2020. With him now having just been found guilty of violating Breonna's civil rights, and he's facing up to life in prison.

And while I know most probably remember Breonna's story, here's kind of the quickest recap if you don't. Louisville officers were conducting what turned out to be a bad warrant on Breonna's apartment and plain clothes. It was also a no-knock warrant, so they battered down the door and Breonna's boyfriend thought someone was breaking in

and shot at them. But the cops then returning fire, killing Brianna and injuring her boyfriend. And Hankison specifically fired 10 shots through a sliding glass door and window, which were covered with blinds and curtains. Brianna's death sparked a national pushback, one, against no knock warrants,

and two, she became one of the faces of the racial justice movement in 2020. Hankison was then fired for violating department procedure when he quote, wantonly and blindly fired into Brianna's apartment. And notably, while Hankison actually wasn't the one who fired the fatal shot, he was the only one of the three cops who has been charged,

with prosecutors determining that the other officers were actually justified in their use of force where Hankison wasn't. And specifically, the indictment accused him of depriving Brianna of her right to be free from unreasonable seizures and also depriving her neighbors of their right to be free from the deprivation of liberty

without due process. Now with that, interestingly, at first, the jury came back with a not guilty verdict on the charge regarding Breonna's neighbors, and the judge then sent them back to continue deliberations on the charge for her. But then, hours later, late into the night, they finally delivered a guilty verdict there. With Breonna's mother saying on that, the later it got, the harder it got, and I'm just glad to be on the other side. Now I just want people to continue to say Breonna Taylor's name. And after the trial, she told reporters outside the courthouse.

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And really notably, this is not the first time Hankison stood trial for this, right? In fact, it's the third. Last year, the first federal trial was ruled a mistrial after the jury couldn't form a unanimous verdict. Then he was acquitted on the state level for three felonies. But now with this guilty verdict, he's facing up to life in prison

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Then, with the election playing out tomorrow, we have so many people in this country wondering, how the hell is this election so close? And then in that group, you have another specific group wondering, how does Trump still have so much unwavering support? You know, in order to even begin to answer that question, I think we also need to ask another question.

One that really isn't talked about nearly enough in the media these days, and that is, what is the anatomy of a MAGA diehard? Who are the people who make up this powerful MAGA base that continues to fuel Donald Trump's iron grip on the country? And that is an insanely important element of all this, because there is a tendency among many Americans,

progressives, moderate Democrats, even plenty of traditional conservatives, to think and talk about Donald Trump supporters as a monolith, the sort of singular entity, an evil other that can be demonized. And yeah, sure, it is easy and even comforting to slip into that sort of simple thinking, right? It provides an outlet for all the rage

and the frustration you might very rightly feel. But if we really wanna understand and try to make sense of how America has gotten to this point we need to take a step back and look at the human level. And so to do that, we actually talked to Rich Lojas, a married father of two and former MAGA diehard who left in 2022. And notably since then he's founded the group,

Leaving MAGA, which is a group that aims to empower people to leave Donald Trump and share their stories, help them reconcile with estranged friends and family and turn them into leaders who can help others do the same. And Lojas provides such a powerful insight into the anatomy of MAGA supporters because he wasn't just someone who dabbled on the fringes. And I mean, he'll be the first to tell you

just how deep in he got. He became intensely involved in the movement, volunteering on the campaign, writing articles for numerous right-leaning outlets, and even launching his own podcast. In his own words, he was an aspiring MAGA pundit, but it also went beyond that. Being in MAGA for me, it was my identity. It was who I was. It was like another limb of my

body. I had a MAGA second family. These were individuals who validated me, who appreciated me, who liked my company. They respected my writings and my podcast that I was producing. And as much as I'm embarrassed to admit this, the truth is, because I feel it's important to be transparent, my MAGA second family often took precedence over my actual blood family. So it wasn't just, let's vote for Trump, see you in four years. This was who we were. It was core to our values and to our personhood. And this idea that MAGA isn't just a political movement, but also a community is one that Lge's talks about a lot in his work. It's that sense of belonging. It's that sense of identity that drove him and many others to Trump, especially people who like Loge's felt like they had been excluded and ignored by the political system. Outsiders who felt like they didn't fit

into the existing structure, who didn't have a home politically. I was someone who was political, but I believe that the two parties were the same. I didn't think that they represented all Americans. I think that there were valid reasons people had for supporting Trump feeling left behind, feeling unseen, unheard. Yes, it's true that Donald Trump ran as a Republican, but he ran really truly as an outsider without any government, any military experience, feelings of estrangement and alienation from our two parties in our political system. I think that many across a wide ideological spectrum felt that way. And they had good reason in many cases to have felt that way.

And Trump, he really lended his voice as someone who could be an advocate for those unseen, forgotten individuals. So as a result, many people felt politically empowered for the first times in their lives that they belong somewhere in politics, that they had a community of like-minded people. And that, through the collective power of this community, their demands were finally being heard

and they had the power to actually change things. You know, it is very powerful to feel like you identify with a community in that way, especially if you never have before. So it can be very easy to just throw yourself into it entirely. And so also those feelings of power and inclusion, they can be very hard to walk away from. And that is incredibly important because it really hits at the core of the central question that we started with. Who really are the people within MAGA? And this, as Lo just explains, that a big part of the reason people stay is simply because it's incredibly

difficult to leave. Even if folks end up knowing deep down that they should leave, they don't because they long for that community and connection and they don't know where else they can get it. The ones who know they should leave probably won't because it's more comfortable to usually stay in a place

they know they shouldn't be if they don't have a new place to go. Because if you don't know where to go, you're just going to be a lost and wandering soul without a new destination place. When a diehard MAGA supporter leaves, they're saying goodbye to a community that is central to their identity, that has formed who they are in their entire belief system. And Loja says that's made even harder by the fact that those belief systems are based on lies Trump tells his followers. Falsehoods that he describes as

dramatic right-wing MAGA mythology centered on the idea that liberals want to ruin America and indoctrinate the country with their beliefs. MAGA is designed to point the direction and attention toward groups and individuals who are not responsible for whatever hardships they might be feeling in their lives. And while I don't defend their or my ignorance, I do think it would really behoove the country to just keep in mind that all of us are susceptible to being influenced. And I allowed myself to be subsumed into that really traumatic right-wing MAGA world, which just keeps people in these perpetual states of desperation, panic, and despair. And I felt that way as many of us did on the winning side, right? Winning in 2016. So imagine after 2020, how so many felt that those feelings of hopelessness and even nihilism, these ideas now that you see within MAGA, that this is the last

stand to ensure that liberalism doesn't take over and irreparably harm our country. Right, so that creates this vicious cycle where Trump instills these deep-rooted fears and convinces his supporters that he's the only one who can save them. And then if and when he fails, he claims it's because the evil liberal forces are working against him still, which only reinforces those fears.

So Lojas says that the combination of being stuck in that negative feedback loop, while also feeling a strong sense of community and political empowerment, it all creates this black hole with a powerful gravitational pull that's so hard to climb out of. I mean, think about your just every day to day. It can be very hard to concede you were wrong about even the

smallest of things. When someone leaves MAGA, they essentially have to admit that the ideas that they believed and pinned their identities to, that they're wrong. And to leave MAGA, one must come to this really, really difficult conclusion that it isn't just that we may have been wrong about one or two issues, that we were wrong about pretty much everything. It's not a natural act for us to change our minds and to apologize, especially publicly. So because of all that, Lo just says that when people do decide to leave, that's not something they come to overnight. I'm saying that for him personally, it was a long, tormenting process where he spent a whole year in an intense political and personal battle, questioning everything he believed

and so fervently devoted himself to. So with that, he said it wasn't just one thing that pushed him over the edge. Instead, saying it was actually a chain reaction that started because of Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida where Lojas and his family lived. With Lojas saying that during the pandemic, he thought DeSantis had been sensible

in his COVID leadership. Then saying he became confused when during the Delta surge in the summer of 2021, the governor started spreading misinformation and lies about vaccines, even as kids were getting sick and dying. That confusion ended up opening a Pandora's box of doubts about everything he believed. And so slowly he started to move out of the right-wing media echo chamber that he had directly contributed to. Once I started to move out of the right-wing echo

chamber, I started to diversify my news and information sources. And that sounds so simple, but it was so positively and profoundly life-altering for me. And once I started to do that, I started to then more closely inspect other issues. Like for example, January 6th, which Lo just used to believe was just a small group of bad actors who were making the whole movement look bad. But when he then dug into it more,

he found that the insurrection was actually the act of domestic terrorists egged on by Donald Trump himself. Though still, as this process continued, Lo just kept going back and forth on whether he should leave. That is though, until the Uvalde shooting, which was the last straw for him. After that, he said he knew that he couldn't stay. And while he initially kept his MAGA departure

quiet, right, telling only a few people close to him, he started to feel like he needed to do more. I was very unapologetically public in my support for Trump. I felt that I should be very unapologetically public about my renunciation. And it's why it's necessary for me to continue apologizing for helping Trump divide the country and assisting him in pitting complete strangers against each other. I am complicit and culpable for helping Trump tear asunder communities and families and friends and households and places of worship. And I'm sorry that I did that. And so since leaving Trump, Logeus has devoted himself to telling his story and sharing his message that others can do the same. Because he said that while he knows that there are bad folks in MAGA, just like any large group, he truly believes that deep

down, the majority are just good people whose actions are driven by the fundamental human need for community and connection. Well, Loge just made very clear that no, he doesn't think that excuses their actions or their need to take responsibility does create an opportunity for an inroad, right? If they are afraid to leave because they will lose their community, just give them a new one. So that's actually what Leaving MAGA aims to do. We founded our organization, Leaving MAGA, as a new destination, a new community for them. It's an exit ramp. So we're trying to provide that as a new community that's one that is actually welcoming and people can reclaim their individuality to counter the toxicity of the MAGA community. Right, you have Loge's working

to grow that community even more by urging people who left MAGA to share their stories in order to encourage others to do the same. And since the group has been gaining more recognition, especially after Lojus delivered a recorded speech at the Democratic National Convention, he says that more and more people have been coming to him, asking to join his community and sharing testimonials of their personal accounts to further the group's mission. In addition to that, a big part of leaving MAGA's focus

is on reconciliation, helping former MAGA supporters reconcile with family members and friends who they've become alienated from because of their beliefs and giving others the tools to do the same. And eventually with all this, Lotus wants to take this effort to a much bigger scale. In addition to those testimonials, yes, I want Leaving MAGA to lead

what will be akin to a forgiveness and truth reconciliation commission. That the idea of what happened in some other nations, also in our nation post-Civil War and post-Bell of America with that many people watching might be skeptical about whether Reconciliation is really possible given how deeply divided and polarized our country is right now and while Lojas openly acknowledges that it will be very Tough in order to even attempt this kind of reconciliation He says it is absolutely imperative to understand that key component that makes a MAGA supporter, the need for community and to be heard. If you or I want to even try to communicate with MAGA supporters, we need to understand

their drive, extend empathy, and think of them as human beings who, above all else, just want to be a part of something. There have been probably billions of words spoken and penned about how Trump voters are Nazis and misogynists and racists and Islamophobes. And every time that said, what it does is it just strengthens that already strong bond between MAGA Americans and Donald Trump. Now, again, are there some who are like that? Yes, but I don't believe that most are. So there needs to be, I think, for those who might be skeptical, I would ask them if they're willing to consider a good faith effort to at least say, OK, I believe that even though they might, even though I think MAGA Americans might be wrong and misguided and some of what they say is just abhorrent and reprehensible.

Yes, there's there's got to be somewhere in there some goodness. It is, I feel, really important for the country to keep in mind, especially those who have friends and family in MAGA. I guarantee most of whom will see this conversation have friends and family who are in MAGA. And I would ask all of those friends and family to not give up on their closest, on their loved ones and those closest to them. Because it is very, very difficult to walk away. But that, my friends and or people who have just come across this video, is where we're gonna end this one.

No matter who you are, what your background is, I'd of course love to know your thoughts on this whole situation and then the thought process behind it. So yeah, let me know what you're thinking in those comments down below, and I'm sure we'll talk about it some more on tomorrow's Election Results livestream.

But that, my friends, is the end of your Monday evening, Tuesday morning dive into the news. I love yo faces and I'll see you right back here tomorrow for one, a brand new Philip DeFranco show, and two, for the live election results coverage. It's finally happening, whatever it may be.