I converted a Trump supporter — my 87-year-old mom

I noticed she inched closer from the couch whenever Trump spoke, nodding at his illogical sentences and strange tangents. ‘I got the gist of it,’ she said

Close up of Donald Trump (SplashNews.com)

When I suggested my elderly mother write a bucket list three years ago, she asked, “Why? Like I’m going to jump out of a plane?” I ended up twisting her arm nevertheless. Eventually, she read aloud some items:

1. Marry off my three daughters and see them happy.

2. Hire a PR firm and driver for my real estate business.

3. Get an office in Trump Tower.

To Mom, Trump was a businessman from Queens who made good. She was a realtor from Brooklyn still striving. She stood out in suburbia with her hanging earrings, red lipstick and charisma. Until that day, I didn’t know how much this livewire adored business.

When half my Democratic family became Republicans, I was bewildered. I never liked politics, but when Trump separated children from parents and caged the toddlers, I became obsessed. I avoided political conversations with my sister in LA. Mom and I skirted the subject.

Once Mom briefly explained: “Trump is a businessman. You’ll all have jobs. Our economy will prosper.” I understood. Trump’s brash, tell-it-like-it-is, bullying style was, to her, his street schtick. “He gets to the bottom line. You know where he stands.”

After the death of my younger sister, Risa, we planned a move to Florida. While helping Mom pack in California, I complained about Trump’s sexism and lies. “He married three times and cheated constantly. He’s a sexual predator,” I said.

Mom shrugged as if to say: he’s a man. “He even mocks the disabled and insults a gold-star family!” I interjected. But she was overwhelmed by packing and grieving.

We arrived in Sarasota mid-March, right before the pandemic shut everything down. We knew nobody here. I couldn’t find toilet paper. Every night, we watched World News, ending her customary habit of watching Fox News. Mom called David Muir “Pretty Boy.”

I noticed she inched closer from the couch whenever Trump spoke, nodding at his illogical sentences and strange tangents. “I got the gist of it,” she said. Then she’d cut up her cheesecake. I bristled at Trump blaming fake news. “Like dictators, he attacks the press,” I said. “They say you should never discuss politics or religion,” Mom advised.

When New York became the epicenter of the virus, Mom and I fan-watched Cuomo’s news conferences. I pointed out his assertive but compassionate style while Trump golfed and tweeted about ephemera. In bed, I worried. Jet planes stood parked and I couldn’t get back to Manhattan. When a woman from my New York writer’s group died of Covid, the virus seemed closer.  

As Dr Fauci disappeared from Trump’s briefings, I snacked on Entenmann’s Coffee Crumb Cake. To hell with my healthy lifestyle. “This manipulation of medical facts is bad,” I remarked.

“They don’t know. Nobody knows,” Mom insisted.

“You’re dismissing medical experts?!” I replied. Maybe she’d lost trust after doctors failed to save her youngest, I thought sympathetically, seeing the framed photo of Risa on the coffee-table. Meanwhile, Trump suggested ingesting bleach. Michigan protestors, some with guns, objected to virus restrictions. By now, I was yelling at the television.

After George Floyd’s death blocks from my son’s Minneapolis home, Mom and I watched the Black Lives Matter protests quietly. She winced at the vandalism and violence. I wished I could march. Trump staged his photo op, bible in hand. “He’s pandering to the evangelicals and they’re shooting innocent protesters,” I railed at the TV, her and the coffee cake.

By the time the Tulsa campaign rally came, attended by maskless devotees, my low blood pressure skyrocketed. Though 4 percent of the world’s population, the US boasted more than 25 percent of the world’s Covid deaths. In late June, despite my vigilance, I tested positive for coronavirus myself.

Luckily, Mom didn’t get the virus and I recovered. As we sat on the patio in 105 degrees, Mom reminded me, “Everyone still wants to come to America.”

I freaked out. “With the gun violence, Trump befriending dictators and alienating our allies, you’re wrong. He’s threatening Obamacare, which I’m enrolled in and Risa used for chemo and radiation. That payroll tax he’s talking about, by the way, is about cutting your social security. This isn’t that dream America.” She listened, but I was exhausted.

It was her idea to watch the Democratic convention with me. She liked what Bloomberg said. While our law-and-order president, who never condemned white supremacists or neo-Nazis, continued to fan the flames of division and violence, she offered, “Biden seems like a decent man.”

In September, while fires and smoke engulfed the west coast and hurricanes smacked the east, I was short with Mom. “Trump ignores everything not Trump. He doesn’t mention Black Lives Matter and the nearly 200,000 deaths from Covid as if all will go away. He should be arrested for negligence.”

Finally, one night over pizza, I said, “He’s corrupt, Mom, and has ties to the Mob. Trump stiffed small businesses; he has shady business practices. He spent millions from campaign funds like a piggy bank for his family businesses.” She stopped texting and looked up. I continued. “He was sued for fraud for Trump University and the Trump Foundation was shut down for misconduct. He’s not that successful businessman you think he is.”

She perked up; I remembered her bucket list. She loved business. “Maybe politicians and lobbyists weren’t honest in other administrations either. But hiding his taxes, hiring his family and millionaire or billionaire donors in his administration, profiting shamelessly while president by having guests stay at his hotels and properties…” I was onto something.

I kept going: “Did Reagan or either of the Bushes in office constantly fire staff, deal with so many book exposés coming out about them or get impeached?”

After it was reported that Trump had called our military troops who died in war “losers” and “suckers,” Mom had enough. “I’m not voting for Trump,” she told me. I asked what changed her mind. She said, “Trump went too far over the line when they gave their lives to make America great.”

While not a prescription for conversion, I suggest having long, agonizing conversations, eating unhealthy desserts together and praying. It may result in just deserts.