Why Unfriending Trump Supporters is a Mistake
Five strategic reasons to keep Trump-loving friends and family close if you’re a Democrat.
Trump supporters are more likely to change with you in their lives.
In late 2015 I got in a spat with my Republican uncle on Facebook. He posted several anti-Obama memes that were untrue and, frankly, racist. I called him out for being “hateful” and he responded with shock and anger. He called my mom and told her he was deeply hurt and hinted that he wanted an apology. There was no way in hell I was giving him one so after that we stopped communicating.
We didn’t speak again until I reached out on Facebook shortly after the 2016 election. By then, in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s devastating loss, I’d started coming to terms with my role in creating the Trump phenomenon. I didn’t yet understand why Trump had won, but I knew I’d done a bad job preventing it from happening. And to make sure it didn’t happen again, I needed to know why my uncle and so many others had chosen to vote for a man who (to me) was horribly unsuited to the presidency.
Once we started talking online, I quickly realized I’d made a mistake cutting him off. During the time we’d been out of contact, he’d gone from strongly…
