Once, I publicly said I’d disown my Trump-voting relatives. This study proves I was wrong

I’m not too proud to say I changed my mind — and the latest research shows we should all be open to doing the same

Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity (Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

A new study has found that Fox News viewers who watched seven hours of CNN a week were effectively de-radicalized. As if by magic, these viewers were found to have changed their attitudes on Covid-19 policies, become more critical of Donald Trump and other Republicans, and were able to recognize the bias in Fox News. It’s as if Anderson Cooper is Prince Charming waking Sleeping Beauty from the curse of Tucker “Maleficent” Carlson.

Over the past seven years, since Donald Trump first descended a golden escalator like a modern-day Rumpelstiltskin, there has been a tendency on the left to dismiss his supporters as irredeemable. Hillary Clinton referred to half of them as “a basket of deplorables.” A 2017 study found that nearly half of liberals didn’t even want to be around Trump voters. Left-wing pundits like Cenk Uygur referred to Trump voters as being a “lost cause,” tweeting in November 2020 that they “live in an alternate reality” and the rest of us must “adjust to that fact.”

That may be true for some of the most strident Trumpians. It is far from true for all of them.

Of course, we have known for some time that a steady diet of Fox News or, perhaps, far-right content spewed by an algorithm has the ability to change folks. In 2019, researchers at Facebook compiled a report that showed how their own website was leading people through the QAnon looking glass.

Last year, Ashley Vanderbilt — a mother from South Carolina — told CNN how she became radicalized on TikTok in a matter of months. Following Biden’s election, she was convinced “we’re all going to die. We’re going to be owned by China. And I was like, I might have to pull my daughter out of school because they’re going to take her.” Vanderbilt’s mother, also a Republican, tried to reassure her. She remained convinced the Storm was coming, though.

Vanderbilt told her story in February 2021, mere months after the 2020 election. By that point she was de-radicalized. Her story, along with the new study showing that only a few hours of real news a week helped wake people from their Trumpian fever dreams, should inspire hope among the rest of us. Both show that it does not take long for the spell to wear off.

Ashley Vanderbilt’s mother and other loved ones never gave up on her. They cared enough to be there, to reassure her, and to eventually break the curse she was under. The rest of us should be so compassionate and loyal. We must not give up on our Trumpian relations as lost causes, because most of them are not. Everyone can be redeemed.

I have seen this in my own life. My first piece for The Independent, over five years ago, was about how I was no longer speaking to my Trump-voting relatives. I soon learned that was not only a petulant and condescending approach, but that it also wasn’t helping anything. They were not going to change their minds because I decided they were irredeemable villains forever damned to the curse of the orange ogre.

So, I began talking to the Trump voters in my life. I found a grandmother who was sympathetic to Black Lives Matter. A sister troubled with the state of healthcare. An uncle who wanted to decriminalize marijuana. We didn’t agree on much, but we found common ground. We found a shared humanity. And we found our way to living in the same reality. I also found lots and lots of people struggling to make ends meet who felt no one else was listening; who felt lost, ignored, scared, and hopeless.

I live in Appalachia, which has been called “the unending forest.” But this forest isn’t enchanted and there is no white knight to rescue us. We must then rescue ourselves. That can only be accomplished by honest dialogue. We must engage with Trump supporters and those who honest to God believe the nonsense spouted by Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, and their companions in the right-wing media ecosystem.

The good news is this seems not only possible, but easier than many of us imagined. It requires no magic beans, no all-powerful spell. It just requires patience, empathy, and a willingness to engage. It just requires love.