I never had any friends who supported Trump, and I don’t think I ever could. We could be civil work acquaintances, maybe, but that’s it.
One of the guys in my cohort from grad school was a Trump supporter. We were never close, but we did friend each other on Facebook. After he started posting MAGA crap, I unfriended him. We’ve had no contact since and have no reason to keep in touch.
I have two extended family members who support The Cheating Cheeto. We weren’t all that close to start with, though, so avoiding them isn’t hard to do.
I don’t have a single friend who is a Trump supporter. I have a few Republican friends who are appalled by Trump and don’t really know what to say or do. They’re VERY quiet these days. My brother is one person who no longer feels any loyalty to the party because of the blind and unwavering support of Trump.
I do have one family member who is a big Trump fan. She’s also terrified of EElegals and thinks Trump is a Godly Man. I don’t talk to her anymore. I used to try to have a civil relationship by avoiding politics but she can’t help herself, in every conversation she has to say something truly hateful. She posts hateful links and comments daily about the Great Southern Invasion and despite claiming to my FACE that her problem isn’t with Mexicans, it’s with EElegals, her links and posts prove she’s a flaming bigot, and she knows I see these posts/comments. I have never once set out to argue with her on her wall about this even though I have a child with a Mexican who was an illegal immigrant and she knows this. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t care if her hateful words hurt me, because she’s fighting the evildoers! She’s a PATRIOT!
Our last conversation was about some marriage equality post I made when it passed and she made it clear it was disgusting to her, and posted links on my wall to some religious site that explains how the gay is a demonic possession issue. I let her know she just called my daughter a demon and that was the last time we talked. I just cannot see wasting any time on trying to be friendly with people like this. They are so full of hate and condescension it’s unbearable.
I find that I make more progress in changing minds if I don’t attack the man himself, I stick to debating the completely false underlying “facts” in all those ridiculous memes.
Neither Obama nor Hilary ever planned on coming to take your guns.
Nowhere in the western world has banned anything Christian or switched to Sharia law to appease Muslim immigrants.
Absolutely zero benefits were taken away from veterans in favor of illegal immigrants. And no one is choosing refugees over veterans either.
Bestiality and pedophilia are not “next” if homosexuals are allowed to marry.
When you enthusiastically support someone, that person is a reflection of your own values. That’s all I needed to know, so I simply got rid of them. I now have no friends who are Trump supporters.
Right. My problem with them isn’t that they voted the wrong way; my problem with them is that they are racist, anti-intellectual, and entitled. They’re support of Trump is just a reflection of who they are and they are not the kind of people I would want as friends.
By that definition, at least, neither my pro- nor anti-Trump friends and family members are fanatics, because we can either change the subject, or talk respectfully.
“Agreeing to disagree” seems to be a lost art nowadays. Or at least “we aren’t going to agree, so let’s talk about movies or grandchildren or whatever.” Or, at my age, “what medications we are on, and the side-effects, and how much my feet hurt…”
I’ve got friends - a married couple - who are delightfully quirky, super-intelligent, fanatical cat lovers with a fantastically morbid sense of humor just like mine. I adore then, what’s not to like? But. I was aghast to learn they planned to vote for Trump, because “he’s rich, he must be smart about financial stuff so America will prosper under his leadership.”
With the exception of making a few matter-of-fact observations (fact-based rather than opinion-oriented) about Trump’s financial acumen, I let it go. Since 2016, they have made some unwise decisions that seem to be making their lives miserable. I rarely hear from them, but when I do, politics are the last thing I worry about. I just hope they can get through the tough personal times they are having.
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My parents, especially my father, have been co-opted by Fox “News.” This is terrifically painful to me. Our visits have become fraught with political landmines. It’s so bad, most subjects are off limits. Can’t even talk about the weather: Climate change is sure to come up.
However, we love each other and so manage to avoid these discussions. The universal rule during visits is that the tee vee remains OFF, except to watch something we all agree on. So we watch a lot of Jeopardy (something I only do with them) and indulge in common interests such as perfecting the family chili verde recipe. I cook for them a lot, try to do things for them around their home they are unable to do for themselves nowadays. When they visit here, I take them for driving excursions to places they want to see. That’s how we get through it. We talk about nothing of substance.
I do not reject their views due to intolerance. I reject their views because they are not grounded in factual information.
I can respect that we may have differing values. I can’t accept their conclusions, which are based on propaganda and a complete lack of evidence. This is easy enough to prove to someone who is open to having an honest debate. My parents are not. It makes me very sad.
An aunt died in December. Her funeral will be in June, and a Trump-supporting uncle I spar with and a Trump-supporting cousin-in-law will be there. The cousin rebuts factual data I post with ‘Drain the swamp!’ and ‘Make America Great Again’ and whatnot. Relatives put the ‘fun’ in ‘funeral’.
Seems to me that a funeral would be a weird place to debate politics, but if the funeral is six months after the death, I guess it’s already a weird funeral anyways, so you do you.
My SO has relatives who voted for Trump; we only see them on Facebook and they seem to be realizing that he’s really of the “eating people’s faces” party.
I usually just try to channel Switzerland and remain neutral.
My colleague, with whom I co-own a product, is a staunch Trump supporter. He tries to needle me on my politics all the damn time. Generally I don’t engage. The few times I’ve bitten and provided citations and facts to him (such as when I commented that someone, somewhere will eventually have to pay for last year’s checks resulting from Trump’s tax bill), his responses were so far outside the realm of reality I just stopped trying anymore.
The last time we talked about politics, after he kept referring to the liberal elite, I asked him what that phrase meant. It’s something you hear from conservative pundits, but I wasn’t sure what it meant to actual conservatives and despite the disparity in political views, we’re comfortable enough with each other I can ask. His response was that “No one from Hollywood is gonna tell me how to vote!” Ooookay, then. If you’re looking to Hollywood for advice on how to vote, that’s a whole other problem that doesn’t have anything to do with the “liberal elite” and a whole lot more to do with being really easily led.
I don’t have any Trumpy friends, but I do have some relatives that most likely voted for him. They managed to say some shitty things on FB and we no longer communicate. No loss, as far as I’m concerned.
It sounds like your colleague is not “looking to Hollywood for advice on how to vote” (hopefully nobody is), but that doesn’t seem to have put any dent in Hollywood’s desire to tell people how to vote:
