In this Episode
This episode we are joined by, Rich Logis, former MAGA podcaster who is now the founding executive director of Leaving MAGA and author of the short e-book, My MAGA Odyssey, available at LeavingMaga.com.
We’d love to hear your thoughts. Thread or Insta Lisa @lisasharper or to Freedom Road @freedomroad.us. We’re also on Substack! So be sure to subscribe to freedomroad.substack.com. And, keep sharing the podcast with your friends and networks and letting us know what you think!
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Transcript
Lisa Sharon Harper: [00:00:00] Coming to you from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the city of brotherly love and sisterly affection. I’m Lisa Sharon Harper, president of Freedom Road, a consulting group dedicated to shrinking the narrative gap. Welcome to the Freedom Road Podcast. Each episode we speak with national and global faith leaders, advocates, scholars, artists, even athletes and activists, to have the kinds of conversations that we normally have on the front lines.
It’s just that this time we’ve got microphones in our faces, and you are listening in. In this episode, we are joined by Rich Logis, former MAGA podcaster, who is now the founding executive director of Leaving MAGA, an author of the short ebook, My MAGA Odyssey, available atleavingmaga.com.
We’d love [00:01:00] to hear your thoughts.
Please let me know what you think at Blue Sky or on Threads or on Insta and Insta and Threads. It’s at Lisa S. Harper. Or also, you know, talk to us at Freedom Road. At Freedom Road.us both to threads and Insta and keep sharing the podcast with your friends and networks. We are growing and it’s exciting, and we are, we’re very, very excited to be able to bring the people that we bring to you largely because you are really truly listening and writing back.
So thank you for that. Okay, let’s dive in. So, Rich, we always start with our faith stories and, you know, sometimes people are, you know, deeply conscious of their life of faith and other times they’re not. Um, what is your faith story? You know, how do you kind of walk through the world as a person of faith or no?
Rich Logis: Let me just say, Lisa, first, thank you so much for having me. It’s… I’ve been anticipating eagerly this conversation ’cause I know we’ve had it in [00:02:00] calendar for several weeks now.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah.
Rich Logis: So this is, this is my one opportunity to offer my really bad Catholic joke, which is that I’m, I’m really an excommunicated Catholic.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Okay. Yeah.
Rich Logis: But if I’d been, if I’d been in the, lived in the fourteen hundreds, I’d be in the Vatican underground excommunicated files there.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh Lord.
Rich Logis: But my family, you know, we were raised, my siblings and I, both my parents rest in peace to both of them. We were raised Catholic, uh, many, many generations of European Catholics.
Growing up though, Lisa, I would say that even though I went through the sacraments, we were not a particularly religious family.
Yes, we celebrated the traditional holidays. We did that with our extended family, but there was not prayer at the dinner table. There [00:03:00] were no citations from the Bible.
I actually do more of that today.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Hmm. Wow.
Rich Logis: And in particular, and in particular post leaving Maga
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Rich Logis: Than I did, than I did in my upbringing. And in my time in MAGA when I was in the MAGA community, I respected those who were more religious than I was. Mm-hmm. But even in MAGA, I did not consider myself an especially religious person. Wow. I did consider myself a spiritual person, but I would say post maga, I am a person who, as part of my transformation, I became more attuned to the mystery of faith. And, and how so much of our lives, whether we realize it or not, whether we’re speaking of it in a spiritual or secular context, we, we rely on faith quite a bit actually.[00:04:00]
And, and I, I had to, I had to think about after leaving maga, what kind of a born again human being I was going to be. Wow. Because that’s how I, that’s how I describe my own as part of my odyssey. You mentioned the book at the outset. Thank you for that.
You know becoming a, a born again human being.
So, while I wouldn’t say right now, again, I’m not. A particularly prayerful person. Um, we don’t make our kids go to church, although we do raise them in Catholicism.
Rich Logis: Faith and spirituality is something that I, I am much more, I, I am much more attentive to today mm-hmm. Than I was, especially in my upbringing.
Lisa Sharon Harper: So Rich, I’m actually really, enthralled with your story and with your process and you, and honestly, the more I learn about it, the more like my jaw drops. And so I, I’m really interested to know what was it initially that [00:05:00] attracted you to the MAGA movement? In the very beginning,
Rich Logis: I was political for my entire adult life up until 2015 and 16.
But I was also very ignorant and very cynical. And I was of the belief, Lisa, that both parties were the same. I thought that they only represented a very small sliver of the American electorate. I felt like they were two sides of the same coin. And even though Trump ran as a Republican, he was someone who had no background in government or military or politics.
Lisa Sharon Harper: And that was actually for you, a plus.
Rich Logis: Absolutely. Okay. And in addition to that, I started to figure out over time that both parties viewed him as a threat.
Now for, now for some, they looked at that and thought, well, that wholly disqualifies him as a viable candidate, I thought the exact opposite.
My feelings were okay. If he’s actually, if both parties. Consider him the same and view him similarly or identically. That means that I’m on the side with the right guy here. And, I felt like the established political order as it was, Lisa, needed to be obliterated.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Okay.
Rich Logis: And it, and it needed to be not rebuilt, but started anew and here came this guy who seemed willing and able to do it. He didn’t need the job, and I saw him as the right person for the job at the right time. A disruptor. Now it is true, we did get a disruptor, but just one that I came to realize unfortunately, uh, was and is antithetical and anathema to democracy. And I say none of this is a self-defense. I just, I think that for many who supported him both in [00:07:00] 16 and 20 and as well as his past November for wanting to disrupt the status quo.
I think that those are very anodyne, non-controversial reasons, and even though I don’t think they’re applicable any longer, I think there were some valid reasons for wanting to support an outsider candidate. And I, and I was someone who voted third party. I voted for Ralph Nader several times as my first vote ever for president was the year 2000 in New York.
I supported Ralph Nader, so I gravitated to these rogue maverick iconoclastic candidates and campaigns. And with Trump, it was no different.
Lisa Sharon Harper: So your, your website opens with a letter that you wrote to people considering leaving MAGA, and I just thought that was. Honestly it was, it’s really revealing. I mean, it just, there’s so many questions that rise from that letter.
So I’m gonna share a few of my questions [00:08:00] with you in the course of our conversation here. I mean, the first thing that stood out to me was that you said that you were attracted to the idea of saving democracy. So the funny thing, now obviously we’re all standing here watching democracy be dismantled by the MAGA movement and specifically by Trump.
So what was it that, you know, what did you see in the movement that you thought would save democracy?
Rich Logis: So I, in 2016, I was 39 years old. So, Make America Great Again was not nostalgia for me. It wasn’t, well, I remember back in a certain time period in a certain epic when we would take our shotguns to school with the Boy Scouts.
You know, there was none of that for me.
What it was is I actually, as, as much as I roll my eyes at what I’m about to say now, at the time I believed it mm-hmm. And sincerely believed it, which was that I saw Make America great again as [00:09:00] forward facing, as actually something that was progressive. In fact, I actually viewed Make America great again as a second kind of founding for the country because I had believed that the, that the two party system was irreversibly corrupted.
And that all of the ills that we suffered from civically or economically, whether they were jobs going overseas, whether they were once thriving communities that had been hollowed out. I saw the two parties as responsible for that, and saving democracy came in, which was that I, we weren’t, I wasn’t particularly interested in wanting to save one of the two parties, but m my belief at the time had been that if Hillary and the Democrats had won that the, that the Democratic Party would’ve never lost power.
They would’ve seized it permanently and indefinitely. And my and my feeling was that if Hillary and the Democrats had [00:10:00] won that I would’ve been rendered irrelevant as a citizen in my own country. Looking back on it now. I, I wonder both privately and allowed, how is it that I allowed myself to actually think that and believe it.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Interesting.
Rich Logis: But I did. But, but I did, and it’s why I saw Trump as the natural change agent of resistance against that.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Who told you that? Like where did you, do you know where you got that from?
Rich Logis: Well, that’s actually a point that I suspect is gonna come up maybe a handful of times today, which is that every one of us is susceptible to being influenced.
And as I got my, absolutely as I, as I ingratiated myself more and more into the MAGA community, I met other Trump voters and these were people who were. Esteemed in their industries. In some cases, they were small business owners, they were veterans, they were people who were serious and credible and the more [00:11:00] we would have conversations about why it was so necessary to stop Hillary and why it was, why it was non, it was just non-negotiable needed that we needed to elect Trump. It’s more and more it be. I started to develop this mindset that I needed to go all in, and at the end of 15 and early 16, I decided to go and become a campaign volunteer for Trump.
I was making phone calls, I was doing grassroots work. I even wrote part of the call script for the campaign and my contribution was. A passage that read, let’s make history and elect Donald Trump President. And wow. There was history made, which it’s so sad to think about it this way because there had never been a true civilian president without government, without military.
And I was so excited about that. And what it did is, if we think about everything I’m saying now, we could put it under a singular auspice, which is the community [00:12:00] of MAGA.
Lisa Sharon Harper: So when did the scales fall off of your eyes? What happened to make you able to see what you couldn’t see then?
Rich Logis: After 2016? There was not a case of, okay, everybody, we, great job. We won. See you next year. I spent the next several years between 16 and 20 as a MAGA pundit. I had bylines and Fox and the Federalist and American thinker. I wrote for a site called WND, which is the site that originated the Obama birther conspiracy.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Rich Logis: And I knew that, but I still wrote.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Were you the person who originated it, or do you know the person?
Rich Logis: Yes, it was the founder of the site. Joseph Farrah. I don’t know him personally, but I know that it was his, it was his site and he did it, and I didn’t care. I knew that, and it was, it, it, it was, it was irrelevant to me.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Rich Logis: But I did it because it was important to be this patriotic soldier in this [00:13:00] battle. So I, I was quite certain in all of my, my, my four years as a pundit and as a MAGA warrior and an activist. But after the 2020 election. I knew that we had lost. Okay. I’d never thought that Joe Biden had won by fraud.
I knew we had lost, in fact, I even forewarned of a possible loss to some of my fellow MAGA Americans, especially in Florida.
Rich Logis: And it was, so there were, the election lies the constant, what I saw, the constant trauma of leading astray Trump voters in, into making them believe and convincing them that they’d been disenfranchised.
There was also January 6th, which I didn’t support, but I initially thought it had been hyperbolized into a bigger deal than it really was. And the first accelerant for me…
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wait, wait, wait. Go. Can we go back to January 6th really quick? Sure. [00:14:00] Did you watch it? Did you watch it on, on TV like everybody else?
Or did you wanna hear about it or were you there?
Rich Logis: I did. I wasn’t there. I knew people who had been there. I had no problem with, originally with people going, I thought it was futile. And purposeless for anyone to go to it because it wasn’t going to change the outcome.
Rich Logis: But what embarrasses me in saying this about January 6th right now, and, and I say it because I insist on always being transparent about my story. What I was upset about that day was not so much the violence and the attacks on police officers and against our constitution and our government.
What upset me was that I saw that day as possibly hindering our chances of a 2024 comeback.
So it, so I was less concerned about violence and [00:15:00] an insurrection than I was about political strategy and our future and damage control.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Can I ask a question? And I mean, I realize this might take us into a longer conversation, which we’ll probably have to. Cut short a little bit in order to have a break. But is was your experience of being inside of Maga, like being inside of a war strategy, were the people in that space in a war mindset as in, there are only friends and enemies.
There is no in between. There has to be a winner and a loser. There cannot be compromise. There is no regular order of governance at this time. This is about domination and winning. Um, was that the mindset, because that’s a wartime mindset. That’s one. Like, that’s the kind of mindset you have in the middle of the Vietnam War, or, or that’s actually not [00:16:00] even a good example, but World War ii, right?
Or the Civil War, or it’s, was that the mindset?
Rich Logis: If someone was 99.99% with us, they were 0% with us. So you were either fully with us or you were against us. And, Lisa, it’s not just if you were a Democrat or a liberal, or a progressive against us, if you were a lifelong Republican or a lifelong conservative and you were against us and you were not with us in MAGA, we viewed all of you the same.
In fact, we actually reserved a particular ire for Republicans and conservatives who were not with us because we looked at the Democrats and said, well, of course they’re not gonna be with us, but you Republicans and conservatives oppose who are opposing us, you should be with us. And so we had a conquer or be conquered mentality.
Lisa Sharon Harper: So the reason why I ask this is because to hear you [00:17:00] say that the violence of January 6th was not actually the thing that got you, it was the fact that this violence was going to put into jeopardy 2024, the election in 2024. That’s a wartime mentality, right? Because in war, violence and death is acceptable.
It’s an acceptable casualty of war. It’s a consequence, you know, of war. So you just, you just clarified things for me. Thank you for that. I appreciate that.
Rich Logis: Yeah. We viewed anyone not with us as an existential threat. Uh, this was above and beyond just disagreements. This was not a matter of policy differences or ideological preferences.
In fact, we had a fantasy in MAGA at the time that we actually didn’t even want the party to remain a Republican party. We wanted the party to be a MAGA [00:18:00] party. And I think it’s fair to say that that has been achieved. And I was someone who felt that way as well at the time. We voted. I had been of no party before Trump and I became a Republican under his administration, so I voted Republican.
I supported the candidates he did. I had no problem with people calling me a conservative, but it wasn’t Republicanism and conservatism that really motivated me. It was MAGA nationalism. That’s what it was. That excited me. That’s what kept me in the constant adrenaline-fueled wartime mindset that we were either gonna crush our opposition, or they were gonna crush us.
So we needed to do it first. So it, there was very much a militaristic mindset, pervasive and, and was very much a part of the MAGA communal ethos then. And I have no doubt that it’s the case and the same [00:19:00] today.
Lisa Sharon Harper: These are our stories. You’re listening to the Freedom Road podcast, where we bring you stories from the front lines. Of the struggle for justice.
Okay. So, Rich, I wanna, start our second segment by asking a question that kind of walks back a little bit in order to understand what is it, what are the conditions on the ground that are driving people to gravitate to MAGA?
Rich Logis: I have referred to MAGA and I will continue to with a singular word that I think best and most accurately describes it, which is community.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh, wow. Okay.
Rich Logis: All of us.
Lisa Sharon Harper: I did not expect that.
Rich Logis: Yeah. [00:20:00]
Lisa Sharon Harper: And I don’t know why, but I didn’t expect that. Okay.
Rich Logis: And I think that when I break this down. And try to give a take on it from my perspective, which is experiential.
All of us need a communal existence. It is not that we, it’s not that we want it, it’s something that we need. And what do we, what do we need in that communal existence? We want to be validated. We want to be vindicated. We want to be appreciated. We want to be respected. We would like to be around like-minded individuals where there’s mutual trust.
I had all of that. When I was in MAGA and many who were there right now, they, they have the same, there’s the comradery, they’re the events that get attended. There’s also the shared enemy. And the shared enemy is really liberalism. Now, [00:21:00] I didn’t think of it that way at the time.
It’s not really thought about it and discussed that way, I suspect today in MAGA. But the, the enemy we were against, they had names like Democrats and Republicans, and I had a phrase I used called a Tessio Republican, and that’s based on the Godfather with Sal Tessio, who betrays the Corleone family and betrays Michael.
So I called it a Tessio Republican.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Rich Logis: But the real opposition was really liberalism. And, and that’s the, and liberal democracy, because if someone, if someone feels that their life. Is not where they want it to be. Mm-hmm. And, and, and maybe there were some genuine hardships that actually happened that maybe caused economic duress, let’s say, in someone’s life.
Rich Logis: If that person feels like life has passed them by, or life has passing them by in the active, [00:22:00] they, it’s not illogical that they might conclude that liberalism and liberal democracy have, have failed them. And if they believe that it is possibly failed them, they’re gonna look to alternatives.
And MAGA has served as that alternative. It did then, and it did right now, because the fact, Lisa, is that there is no prevailing ideology within MAGA.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Did you, did something happen in your life that made you gravitate toward that or really disdain liberal democracy?
Rich Logis: I never thought about it in exactly that way, in those terms.
But as part of My Leaving MAGA Odyssey book, I devote the first, almost one third of the book to talking about my upbringing. And I will direct people there, not because I [00:23:00] think that I have some very exciting biography. Um, I come from a middle class household, you know, my not very religious Catholic parents, they worked a variety of public and private sector jobs.
But I watched my parents have their home foreclosed, foreclosed upon even before the financial crisis of 2008.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Right.
Rich Logis: And then I, and then I watched other people lose their homes, lose their retirement savings. I saw jobs go overseas. I didn’t, I didn’t lose a job. To outsourcing, but I knew others who did.
I knew others whose livelihoods were adversely affected. I knew that there were communities that were once bustling that fell on hard and despondent times.
And, and so I, I didn’t, it’s. It’s not accurate to say that I grew up wanting everything or, or wanting anything. ’cause my parents provided all the necessities that we needed.
But I, I feel like [00:24:00] between my observations of those economically around me growing up, my own life story, my own biography, and also my own cynicism about American politics, I was, as a voter, I was very fertile ground for MAGA. And I think that, and I, and I say that again, not as a self-defense, but for those who are listening, I have… I suspect that the majority of people who are gonna hear this probably have friends and or family who are in MAGA right now.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.
Rich Logis: And they’re gonna be thinking about, I want to tell this part of my story to give them some understanding of, of when they’re thinking about, I don’t understand how my. My friend or my brother, or my mom or my dad, I don’t understand. They can, they could stay in MAGA and still, and still follow this.
Yeah.
Rich Logis: Perhaps my story will enable them to think, okay, maybe it’s a [00:25:00] little more nuanced and complex than I, than perhaps they may have originally thought about why people gravitate.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Right. Yeah. Rich, I’m sorry, where, where did you grow up? Where was that?
Rich Logis: So I’m from New York originally. I was born in Westchester County.
So not, not quite New York City, but the suburbs and public school graduate. For up until high school I did attend a four year private. Now it’s a university, a Catholic university. I own a university.
Rich Logis: So New Rochelle, New York, Westchester County. So, and I was a theology minor.
So, uh, my, so I’ve, I’ve got, I’ve got faith and religiosity as it’s interwoven into my story. And, and to, to, if I could quote the book of Isaiah for a moment, what I talk about, we MAGA as, as bringing [00:26:00] good news to the afflicted.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Hmm. So the afflicted, I wanna, I wanna go there because in your letter that’s on the first page of your website, you actually mention the anxieties that are kind of plaguing the people that actually end up getting exploited by MAGA.
You talk about MAGA exploiting the anxieties, uh, anxieties about change in particular. Um, how are they being exploited? How are these anxieties about change being exploited?
Rich Logis: You know, something that I have really, and continue to ponder on and contemplate after having left MAGA. Is that me being a white man and my wife, that I and my ancestors. There is a benefit and a privilege to that. That’s unafforded to others.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Were you aware of that before [00:27:00] MAGA or while you were, were in MAGA.
Rich Logis: No, no, no.
In fact, to give you an example. So being in MAGA our approach, let’s say to anti-black racism was we didn’t defend it. We didn’t justify it. If we were talking, let’s say about slavery, our approach was, well that happened hundreds and hundreds of years ago, right?
It was, it was indefensible, but we’ve moved on from that.
You know, today we’re post-racial and everything is all, all the progress and gains are equally spread across all groups. That’s what we believed.
And that isn’t true. And I think that we are all exposed to, we are exposed to racist sentiments that we don’t realize, that as we’re hearing them in real time [00:28:00] and how they can influence our thinking and our biases over the course of our lives.
You know, and when you think about exploitation, I try to offer, again, a nuanced take on this, okay. Is that if someone who is of a. A particular age in America, we’ll say a white person of a particular age. Mm-hmm. They grew up seeing almost solely in positions of power and influence other white males. That’s who they grew up. That was whether it was business or whether it was politics, or whether it was a variety of industries.
And so I think for those, the church, the
Lisa Sharon Harper: Exactly. Especially the church,
Rich Logis: you know, and in community, in the Catholic community.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm-hmm. Right.
Rich Logis: And especially in the, the catechisms hierarchy of the church.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm-hmm.
Rich Logis: That’s who they saw.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm-hmm. [00:29:00]
Rich Logis: So I think that it is, there is a na, there is a natural fear that we have about change and I think that people who have panics about. Demographic change. I don’t think it’s necessarily because that they are racist, but it is a reflection of that panic is a reflection of having been exposed to racist ideas that they, that they adopted unknowingly.
And, and yes, it’s true that like in any large group, there are gonna be bad people. There are going to be people in MAGA now who are racist and are going to be unreachable no matter what. We,
Lisa Sharon Harper: I mean, come on, we got Elon Musk doing the Nazi salute. Right? So I mean, some, some of the people are actually consciously
Rich Logis: Yes.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Like Nazi, like white supremacists, like
Rich Logis: Yes. [00:30:00]
Lisa Sharon Harper: You know, so I, I get, but I get what you’re saying. Not everybody in the movement actually is consciously, you know, a white supremacist.
Rich Logis: Well, these and these fears that people have about change in instead of instead of addressing the natural fears in such a way to say that change can be stressful. And especially if it’s change as it’s happening all around us, because demographic change is a visual change.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm-hmm.
Rich Logis: So there’s nothing theoretical, nothing abstract about it. Instead of what, what the Republican party could have done, instead of exploiting and manipulating this, these fears that, oh, these changes that are happening, it means that we’re losing our country and it means that our, our our, our values and our culture are being eroded.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm-hmm.
Rich Logis: That’s not the approach that the party as a whole has taken over the years. They’ve [00:31:00] taken the approach that, hey, these. These phobias that you, that you feel about change. They’re not, they’re not phobias. Those are valid fears that you should have, that a changing America is not going to be as good a country to live in as, as, as great a place to raise a family in or start a business in as it was before there was this rapid demographic change.
And yeah. And, and, and that’s, and that’s where I was, that’s why for me, when I mentioned earlier about MAGA being progressive and forward facing, I, I, I didn’t see my, I didn’t look at myself as a white person and think, well, I, I, no one did anything for me and Right. These, these sentiments, right? Mm-hmm.
Which people will, will, will, will say and say, well, yeah, no one, no one helped me. And, and. On, on a case by case individual basis. It’s sure it’s true that not everyone may have benefited as a result, indi in, [00:32:00] uh, individually as a result of their race. But to say that the people as a whole, that white Americans have not, is not historically accurate to say that there has not been a benefit to being a white person in America throughout our history.
Yeah.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh, go on. I’m sorry.
Rich Logis: And I will say as part of my, my post MAGA education. Mm-hmm. Something that I also came to realize is that from the moment that slaves were brought to Jamestown in 1619, black Americans have been swimming upstream from that day until now in the United States. And yes, I want to give.
I wanted, I do wanna recognize that gains have been made. You know, there, there have been, there has been progress, there have been racial gains made, but that doesn’t change the fact that there’s still a swimming of upstream for black Americans.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah, it’s, that’s exactly right. I mean, for enslaved people who came, who were brought here in [00:33:00] 1619, um, on board the White Lion, um, which was a British warship.
Uh, and then they blamed it on the National Order to escape responsibility. Many were indentured, some were enslaved. But the reality is, is that with that beginning, they were swimming upstream and then it didn’t take long, right? Between 1619 and 1662, and the very first race law was ever levied on that same land in Virginia that created race-based slavery, right?
That now a whole class of people are born to be enslaved according to the law. So, I’m with you there. I think I’m just really struck that you had this process. You had a post, uh, MAGA process where, where you actually. I don’t know. I’m not exactly sure what that process was. Was it, you know, I just, you just said, I don’t understand and I need to understand.
And so you started reading and watching documentaries [00:34:00] or like, what was that process? And in your letter you actually talk about your leaving process being a tumultuous roller coaster experience. So I’m just, I’m fascinated by, by your characterization of your leaving process and then also by the reality that you even demonstrate here that you actually really have done some homework.
So what was that process like for you?
Rich Logis: When I started, when my doubts commenced, it was from a combination of factors to paraphrase, uh, the venerable American writer, Ernest Hemingway, my epiphany happened gradually and then suddenly all at once.
Hmm.
Rich Logis: So there were, there there. The mismanagement of the pandemic, the election lies January 6th.
These were all factors. They weren’t enough for me to leave.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm-hmm.
Rich Logis: But they were influences. The first accelerant for me for leaving was actually not Donald Trump. It was actually my governor [00:35:00] Ron DeSantis.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Hmm.
Rich Logis: In the late summer of 2021, early fall, Ron DeSantis platformed at his press conferences, anti-vaxxers.
He had people come up and say that the Covid vaccine was changing people’s RNA, that the Covid vaccine was deadlier than the virus. I never believed that, I never believed that Covid was a bio weapon. It’s true. I didn’t take it as seriously as I should have, but I didn’t think that it was that it was some kind of democratic ploy to keep us from winning reelection.
And I was not an anti-vaccine person then or now.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm-hmm.
Rich Logis: So when Ron DeSantis had these people speaking as press conferences, it was like I ran face first into a brick wall. I was confused, I was shocked. I didn’t understand why this was happening. And it was right around that time that I did something that I never did when I was in MAGA, which is I diversified my news and information [00:36:00] sources.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh, interesting. So Covid was the thing that actually made you go, okay, maybe I need information that is not just within my bubble.
Rich Logis: It was, it was Covid combined with, combined with this anti-vaccine sentiment that I, that I knew was pervasive across the MAGA community.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Right.
Rich Logis: And it was right around that time as I diversified news and information sources that I also delved a little bit deeper into January 6th, and I thought that these groups, like The Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. I’d been in events where Proud Boys had been there, and I just looked at those guys as hangers on and just they, to them politics was just a, was just a social gathering.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm-hmm.
Rich Logis: It was when I actually read more from credible sources outside of the right wing media, echo bubble.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm-hmm.
Rich Logis: That it, I discovered to my horror [00:37:00] that these groups actually were not just hobbyists. That they had the blessings of the most powerful person in the history of the world. And it was at that, and it was around that, that late summer, early fall of 21 when I started my own odyssey of leaving and I went.
I vacillated between, do I stay and support this or do I leave? Do I stay? Do I leave? I would, I would hear Trump say something again about a stolen election, and I knew it was false, but then I would look at a photo at a Mar-a-Lago event I attended, and I would say, no, no, no. I’m in the right place.
We’re just, we’re hitting a roadblock here. And, then I would hear Ron DeSantis talk about Fauci and the biomedical security state. And I would think, I don’t, this is not true. What he’s saying, it’s false. He’s lying and he knows that he’s lying. But then I would watch a speech that I gave at a Trump group, and I would think, no, I’m, let me, let me, I, I know I’ve got my [00:38:00] doubts, but let me try to, let me just try to block them out.
And I went through this. Month after month after month, just myself and my thoughts late at night.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm-hmm.
Rich Logis: And throughout the course of the next many, many months, we had the Republican party call January 6th, legitimate political discourse. That was in February of 22. And then for me, my, the final straw for me was May 24th, 2022.
That was the day of the Uvalde School shooting.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh, wow
Rich Logis: Not, and I, and I am a firearm owner. I believe I carry a firearm. I’m a believer in responsible ownership. And I knew, as I was listening to the reports of children having been murdered, I knew what the response was going to be by the GOP.
And it was, and it was shortly thereafter, Uvalde that I quietly left.
So I quietly quit MAGA. But there was something that was gnawing at me [00:39:00] and what that was, that conscience still didn’t turn off even though I left because I was so unapologetically public in my support for Trump.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah.
Rich Logis: I felt, I felt I needed to be public in my renunciation of MAGA. And it was on August 30th, 2022.
That exact day I published a mea culpa and I said that I was wrong to have supported Trump, DeSantis, and MAGA that I was sorry that I aired. I wanted to acknowledge my mistake and I wanted to say I’m sorry to anyone whom I may have hurt with my actions and my rhetoric. And I published that story that day.
And the God’s honest truth, Lisa, I never thought anybody would care when I did it.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Where did you publish it?
Rich Logis: It was at a site called Occupied Democrats. Um, not, not the, not to sound like an eng. Great. Not the biggest fan of the site. It’s a very hyperpartisan left site. But they did give me a chance to publish that story.
And I remember just as I’m getting ready to publish it, if you can visualize [00:40:00] my hands on the mouse, the arrows over the publish button, on one hand I feel exhilarated. But on the other hand, I’m afraid because I know that if I publish it, that’s it.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah.
Rich Logis: And, and the permanence, the permanence of walking away is what’s so frightening.
But I did it and the moment I did it, I knew it was the correct decision, but I didn’t think anyone would care. And instantaneously I was receiving messages from people telling me, or asking me, Rich, can you talk to my mother, my brother, my father?
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh yeah.
Rich Logis: I was, I was completely oblivious and naive, Lisa, to the fact that this movement tore asunder so many relationships I was ignorant to that fact. I was unaware of that.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Walking Freedom Road from coast to coast and around the globe. This is the Freedom Road [00:41:00] podcast.
Rich, you talk about relationships that were torn asunder. Um, can you share a little bit about your experience of that in your own life and then what you found once you left MAGA published that, that story? What did you find in MAGA world?
Rich Logis: You know, there were two particular aspects that I mentioned about why it was so hard to walk away.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm-hmm.
Rich Logis: And the first is that community. You know, for me, MAGA was a second family. I. And as much as I’m embarrassed to admit this, oftentimes my second family took precedence over my own blood family. Hmm.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm-hmm.
Rich Logis: And that comes back to your point earlier about wartime thinking. You know, I, I, I justified sometimes neglecting my familial duties because I was, I was in a, an existential [00:42:00] war against my enemies foreign and domestic politically.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Rich Logis: So that community part was, was what made walking away and weaving so difficult. The other, the other part that made it arduous was that it, I painfully but liberating realized that pretty much everything that I had believed was a lie. And that I allowed myself into not just believing lies, but actually creating and shaping an identity around them.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Rich Logis: Because that’s what MAGA ultimately it’s, it’s not about politics.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm-hmm.
Rich Logis: You know, it, it isn’t about ideology. It is about one’s identity. And being in personhood,
Lisa Sharon Harper: That’s deep.
Rich Logis: MAGA for me, was I, I never took an hour off from it because it was who I was. I, you, you don’t take an hour off from, from being who you are.
You are who you are. And [00:43:00] in my case, for those years being in maga, that that is the person that’s who Rich Loges was as a person, you know, a, a MAGA soldier with my fellow soldier and compatriots.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Right.
Rich Logis: And so between the community and between having to change my belief system and knowing that I didn’t just believe one or two falsehoods, but years that I had accumulated.
So that, that is what made it for me. It was an entire year of a process to leave until I finally did.
Lisa Sharon Harper: So this, I mean this, honestly, it sounds like your process, your leaving process was much like what it’s like to leave a cult because a lot of these elements are very similar to cult dynamics where your involvement in the cult takes up your entire life.
It actually does define your identity. Um, it is about the relationships and the community that you build and, and [00:44:00] everything else is shut off while you are foc and, and, uh, the cult actually demands your full attention, um, and your resources. And because you put so much into it, it actually becomes, it does become a part of who you are, such that to extricate yourself from it is actually to lose the self.
Or at least that’s the fear, right? So what am I if I’m not this nothing? And so people stay because who wants to be nothing, right? So. Is that, was, was that your experience? Did that, does that accurately describe it? Um, and if so, what, what’s the process that you’re seeing that works for people who are in that process of imagining the possibility of leaving now?
Rich Logis: You know, I consider myself by the graces of God, very, very fortunate that [00:45:00] I still had the wherewithal to leave, even though I didn’t have anywhere to actually go.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Hmm.
Rich Logis: Because on that day, August 30th, 2022, when I said, I’m, I’m leaving this.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm-hmm.
Rich Logis: I, the, the comparison and visual I like to, I like to use is the one from the end of the Truman Show when Jim Carrey realizes that he was living in a safe, controlled environment and he has a choice to stay or he can walk through that.
That black door at the very, very end. Where, which, which will, he doesn’t know what’s on the other side, but it will take him to freedom. Dangerous freedom. Yeah. Yeah. And he walks through that door. I was at that point in my life where I was at a black door, and I needed to decide, am I going to, am I gonna stay in maga even though I know deep down I shouldn’t, it might be painful to stay, but it might be more painful to leave.
Do I stay or do I say no? This does not reflect anymore who I think I am [00:46:00] as a person, as a man, as an American, as a human being.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm-hmm.
Rich Logis: And I walked through that door, and as a, and after I did it, I needed to make amends with some of the people I, I had allowed myself to lose touch with. And these were people whom I had known for decades.
They were important people. They were close friends. They were influences in my life.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm-hmm.
Rich Logis: And, you know, Lisa, it wasn’t a case of. For example, one I, I’ve got in mind, he told me after I apologized to him, he said, rich apology, except that I always knew that you were gonna come back. You know, he actually said that.
And so it wasn’t like that gentleman. I picked up the phone and I said, Hey, uh, during, in my time in MAGA, hey, I just want you to know I’m a Trump supporter now and we can’t talk anymore because you’re a blue. I know you vote blue. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t like that. It’s just that we supplant the ones we knew, the ones I had known for many, many years with my new friends and my new family in [00:47:00] that MAGA community.
But everyone I went to, I said to them, I said, I want to apologize for what I thought about you. It was unfair how I considered you as a person just because of the way you voted. And I would ask that you please accept my apology. And everybody did.
Rich Logis: And in fact, even one, uh, we. We were able, we were able to make some amends last year after several years of, of my trying to reach out to him.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm-hmm.
Rich Logis: To apologize. And I was relentless and I was, I was persistent, you know, and as, and I, I remember telling him at the time, you know, one day there might come a day, you know, the quote, the God I was using of citing the paraphrasing the Godfather said one day and that day may never come. You know, you’re, you’re gonna accept my apology.
I remember telling him that, and to his credit he did last year, and we were able to rekindle a little bit of our [00:48:00] past relationship.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm-hmm.
Rich Logis: Now, regarding the cult part, I want to address, if I may, that because
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah, please.
Rich Logis: This comes up, this comes up a lot.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm-hmm.
Rich Logis: And for understandable reasons, for anyone who’s never been in MAGA and they’re looking at MAGA and they might think, well, this definitely sounds like a cult.
I do agree that there are some cult-like aspects to it. Mm-hmm. Certainly. My experience was such, the reason that I, I caution against referring to it in such a way though, Lisa, is because I don’t want to strengthen the already strong bond between those in MAGA and the president. The reason that there’s such devotion to the president is because he is the leader of the community.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm-hmm.
Rich Logis: And that community is inextricably linked to the movement itself. Yeah. And so I, when I was in MAGA and we used to hear people say cult, we, we used to say, no, no, no. We’re [00:49:00] the sane ones. It’s the outside world. Who are the crazies? You know, we’re not in the cult. It’s the outside world who aren’t with us.
They’re in the cult. And I just, I like to mention that just because I. I don’t want us to do anything inadvertently that harms our efforts to eventually try to get people to leave. Because when people start to have doubts, I didn’t have a place to go, but I created a place accidentally, I should say, completely unintended with leaving MAGA and leaving MAGA is that community that can counter the MAGA community.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah.
Rich Logis: So people have now a place that they can go if they have left or they’ve got doubts or they quietly quit.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm-hmm.
Rich Logis: Maybe. Maybe they wanna support group. Maybe they want a place where they could go, where there were like-minded people at one time, but they mm-hmm. But through their own personal road to Damascus moments with their, with the [00:50:00] scales falling from their eyes, now they’ve got others whom they can confer with and can wean on.
That’s what, that’s what I, that’s what I created with leaving Maga. It wasn’t a plan that I had where it was a two year game plan and year one we were gonna do this and year that was nothing. It was nothing at all like that. It, it just, I consider myself so fortunate that I still left, even though I had nowhere to go and that I had, and that I had the idea of saying, no, we need to create another community.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Because if someone wants to leave, don’t they need some place to go to
Rich Logis: Right. And MAGA doesn’t have an exit ramp, there’s a good chance that person’s gonna stay, even though they know that they should not.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow. So we are having this conversation right now in the midst of. Tariff gate, for lack of better terminology.
It’s a huge, huge global backlash against Trump’s tariff policy that’s happening right now. The stock market free fell yesterday, [00:51:00] 1600 points. Right now it’s down another 1600 points. Actually, it actually got to 1900 points, um, uh, earlier, like maybe about an hour ago. Um, so it’s, it’s now in the realm of 2020 where it actually was, had the highest drop in American history in 2020 under Donald Trump.
So we’re back there. We’re, we’re back in, in that space. What kind of response are you receiving from people in the MAGA movement now? Like, have you heard from folks? Is there, are there people who are, who are now reaching out to you going, okay, what is this? Like, they’re not feeling steady about it or has, has the.
I mean really kind of the juju, um, that Trump works. And he, there’s a real specific way he does it. He warns people that the bad stuff is coming so that when it comes, they think, okay, he’s prophetic. [00:52:00] Like he knows what he’s talking about. We are in good hands because he told us this bad stuff was gonna be coming, but he never told anybody how they’re gonna get out of it.
Like he never said, this is, this is our plan. So are people feeling nervous now? Are they feeling like, okay, you’re getting more inquiries about possibility of leaving it Even before you had the market free fall, you had Doge running around and closing all of the different departments in our entire government.
So what has been the response in the real time now?
Rich Logis: So I am just like epiphanies. I’m expecting that we’re gonna have. Slow in a slow number of inquiries and then a massive amount all at one time.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Hmm.
Rich Logis: Because we do have more, we do have more testimonials of people who have already left. We’re gonna be putting up at our site, and everyone can read all of them with our videos at, at our weaving maga.org site.
So they’re all there. [00:53:00] Not paywall anyone can read them. I see the reports that are out there of people expressing regret being here. Lisa, with you also, you know, I’m grateful that you are able to introduce us to a new audience because mm-hmm. We need more and more Americans to learn about us, so that way when, when they learn about us and they’re starting to have their doubts, they know that we’re a place that they can turn to without judgment, without ostracization, it’s gonna take time.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm-hmm.
Rich Logis: I, I know that it’s gonna take time because they’re most, most people in MAGA, I believe right now, know that these tariffs. Are wrong and are harmful, they know it.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm-hmm.
Rich Logis: But if someone is so, has dug their heels in so much in a belief system because it’s their identity, it’s who they are.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm-hmm.
Rich Logis: They’re not gonna just publicly say, most of the time they’re not gonna just [00:54:00] publicly say, this is it. I’m out. I have regret if they’re, it’s gonna take time for them to hear those doubts, their conscience. The alarm’s gonna keep going off. It’s gonna keep sounding. And I think that over time, leaving, leaving MAGA is busy right now.
I think that we are going to grow to a point where. We are gonna have an actual staff who’s gonna have to handle just those who take testimonials, because that’s what I’m expecting to have happen. And you know, you mentioned earlier something about wartime thinking and the acceptance of death and violence.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Rich Logis: That’s actually quite an appropriate statement you made because mm-hmm. I came to realize that the acceptance of avoidable deaths and suffering is present within the Republican Party is present. Yeah. It’s present amongst Trump. It, it, it is there. And there’s also the defense and justification of politically motivated [00:55:00] violence.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Well, when you see the Department of Education being closed down and U-S-A-I-D being closed down, even though you’re, you have droughts all over the world and people are absolutely dependent on on what? On the contracts that we have actually issued and our own farmers. I mean, this is real economic violence that that is happening, and it’s not only happening because of Trump, it’s happening because of all of the people who are refusing to get in the way of it.
I mean, even just the tariffs alone, right? So the, the Senate, uh, two days ago voted, uh, to, uh, to, to block the tariffs because they could, they could actually take that vote and they were only able to do that because of four Republicans, only four that decided to join in on that. But it went dead on arrival in the house because Mike Johnson decided that he was going to do an end run, [00:56:00] a, a, a crazy mechanism where he declared that all of the days of the rest of the year are only one day on the, on the house calendar.
So all of the days are actually in his universe, and that’s all that matters since he’s the speaker of the house only one day. And because there are only one day, this does not have to go to the floor. And it’s a way of basically killing it on arrival. So you not, it’s not only Donald Trump’s tariffs, but it’s literally, um, uh, the GOP Yes.
The ruling party is in collusion with this, like with people losing their five, you know, 4 0 1 Ks and it’s unbelievable. And social security killing Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. I mean, this is, it’s literally unbelievable. So that you said that, um, it is, it is, it’s, it’s con it’s [00:57:00] confirming for me, um, ’cause what I’m watching is I’m watching warfare, I’m watching economic and social warfare.
And it sounds like you’re confirming Yes. That is what it is.
Rich Logis: Yeah. We, we were proud and happy to cause chaos and wreak havoc. You know, that’s how, because that’s what you do in war. You know, that’s what you do to the opposition. And, and I, you know, I, I feel remorse every day that mm-hmm. I helped to work to get this individual elected the first time.
I also did similar work in 2020 mm-hmm. To get him reelected. And though I can’t prove this, Lisa, the what if that I think often about is if, if, uh, Joe Biden had lost in 2020, I almost certainly would not be here speaking to you.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh yeah.
Rich Logis: [00:58:00] Because if I had been on the winning side again, I’m not sure I ever would’ve, would’ve left.
You know, when you’ve dedicated so much of your life and you’ve invested so much, not just financially, but emotionally and personally and politically, when you’ve mm-hmm. When you’ve sacrificed in order to be part of a community. If I had been on the winning side, I don’t think it’s likely that I would’ve ever left.
Even if I knew deep down I should have, I probably would not have.
Lisa Sharon Harper: I’m really struck by your use of the word community, that that is so central to the experience of people in MAGA and that that’s not only limited to the foot soldiers, per se, the people who stormed the capitol, but it’s also, um, applicable to people like Mike Johnson, that he’s a part of that community and that’s part of how he can do what he does, is that he is grafted into that community, um, and he has that [00:59:00] community to lose if he were to, if he were to, um, betray it.
I have another question for you, actually. Several, but I wanna, I wanna take them now on fast succession ’cause we’re coming to the end of our time. Sure. Um, the first one is, what do you dream. For our country. What’s your dream for the us?
Rich Logis: Well, I, I do not. I am working for, toward a, uh, a place where I want Americans to not view those with whom we disagree as our mortal enemies.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Rich Logis: And, and, and it’s, it’s true that it’s never quite existed that way, but there are also times in, in eras in our history when that has been, that kind of extremism has been particularly acute. And we, we find ourselves in that, in that time right now, you know, people call it political polarization.
Um, I, I [01:00:00] am not an expert in that field, but I know that us viewing each other mm-hmm. Uh, uh, by, by as subhuman and dehumanizing those with whom we disagree, um, is one of the big reasons we’re here right now. I, I will not. Engage in that way with those who are in MAGA. I am a person who extends the olive branch to them.
And doing that shows that it’s okay to do that to people with whom we disagree because we are ultimately all on one team as Americans. This is all of our country. It’s, yes, individually, it’s my country, your country, but it’s really our nation.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm-hmm.
Rich Logis: And I do have some optimism and try to remain hopeful that, that, that we are capable of a, as a nation and as a people of being that way of living in that kind of harmony.
Lisa Sharon Harper: What do you imagine that the people that were considered the opposition within maga, like MAGA [01:01:00] looking outward, sees them as the opponent, the ones that need to be dominated and, um, and, and ruled over. What do you imagine those people, the ones that were, the targets that they dream for our country? You know, I, or since you’ve left, if you’ve listened, have you heard?
What have you heard?
Rich Logis: You know, we, we know that being in MAGA we can be there for what we think are the right reasons and they are sincerely held beliefs. But it’s, it’s a predatory community and it traumatizes us. And, and I believe that it, it makes us, we, we allow ourselves, and I wanna say allowed because we all have agency, you know, MAGA we allow ourselves in MAGA to become people.
We really aren’t. And there was just something about the GOP and MAGA mythologies that change people, it does something to them that, that severs them from who [01:02:00] they may have been and their own values. But the good news is that, that severance does not need to be permanent.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm-hmm.
What is your prayer for people in the MAGA movement right now?
Rich Logis: My prayer is I want them to be healthy. Mm. You know, I, I, I want them, I want them to live fruitful lives that are enriching and are fulfilling. It’s what I want for myself. And I’ve mentioned this point because if a pro MAGA and an anti MAGA person get together and actually can have a conversation long enough, we’ll discover that we share many of the same hopes and dreams and, and perhaps goals and concerns.
Uh, but I want those in MAGA to have a way out also, because I believe that for many in the community, not all, but [01:03:00] for many, and perhaps the majority of them, there’s gonna come a time when they’re gonna wonder if they should leave. And I want them to know, my prayer for them is that it’s okay to say.
That I may have been mistaken in that it’s not a, it’s not a sign of weakness to admit error. It’s actually a show of strength and evolution and maturation, and that’s what I pray for them. For that.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Thank you so much, Rich Logis.
The conversations leaders have on the road to justice. This is the Freedom Road Podcast. Thank you for joining us today. The Freedom Road Podcast is recorded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and this episode was engineered and produced by Corey Nathan of Scan Media Freedom Road Podcast is executive produced by Freedom Road, LLC.
We consult, coach, train and design experiences that bring [01:04:00] common understanding, common commitment, and lead to common action. And you can find out more about our work at our website, freedom Road, us, and saying the No by signing up for our updates on Substack. Somebody say Substack. Yes, we are there and we have lots of great content that comes out every single day actually.
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