(tl;dr former liberal who voted Johnson in 2016 but Trump in 2020)

I'm a 24 year old who, 4 years ago, did not care about politics. I guess I would have considered myself a default liberal who thought Obama was alright but generally didn't care. I'd was the type of person who would see an out-of-context video online and get outraged about it. In 2016 my mom picked me up from my college to vote. My girlfriend was a Bernie supporter and I was on Reddit at the time quite a bit so I also had the passive anti-Trump propaganda influence in the back of my mind.

Regrettably, in 2016 I voted for Gary Johnson for president; not because I liked him or even knew what his platform was, but because voting Trump was heresy and voting Hillary was also something I knew better than to do (my parents were staunch Republicans). Trump won that evening and I was somewhat shocked but I remember not being worried about how the future of this country would turn out.

Unfortunately, the propaganda on social media began to ramp up in 2017 and by summer I was a full blown Trump hater. I remember lashing out at my dad for defending confederate statues when I came home from college. I remember blindly hating Ajit Pai because Reddit told me to. I remember going on unhinged paranoid rants about Russia believing that John McCain was the brightest foreign policymaker in modern US history. I remember telling myself yelling about how I would never vote Republican again in my life.

In 2018, I lived in New Zealand for a few months. I shared an apartment with 8 other people and I was one of two Americans there. Every time I would go out to the bars or meet new people I would have to apologize about being an American (mostly to the appeasement of white Kiwis who would give me grief about it). After a while it got under my skin. One of my roommates was an Indian culinary student who I became close to and politics became a inevitable conversation. He was a pretty middle class dude (slightly upper middle class by India standards) and we started talking about Trump. I don't even think he was a Modi supporter but he was telling me that it's okay not to apologize about my country and that he respects Trump. He mentioned that even though he doesn't agree with 100% of all his policies, but that he admires that he at least loves the United States.

That definitely broke my worldview. No joke, I genuinely figured everyone outside of the United States despised Trump. I didn't think there could be any redeeming qualities about him. But hey, I had never been an anti-American person and that was something I for which could side with Trump.

Later in 2018, when the division was heating up due to the mid-term elections. I was on Reddit and there was a few second long video on the "justiceporn" subreddit (forum of people getting their comeuppance) which was "pinned" by the moderators; of a Trump supporter getting beaten in the street by someone, clearly with no context. I had never really seen political violence blatantly endorsed by a mainstream social media site. I voiced what I thought was a reasonable stance that political violence is never okay and I was downvoted and pooh poohed in the comments that "it was okay because he was a nazi". It completely disgusted me that it was becoming a mainstream opinion that political violence was acceptable against some select enemies. I began to watch the plethora of videos of people on the right just being needlessly attacked by leftists and I was completely outraged that nobody was talking about or disavowing it. I started to decrease my use of websites like Reddit because people were becoming more and more unhinged on the site and it was trickling into my friend groups who were becoming increasingly more radical.

It wasn't until October last year during the Democrat's Ukraine-gate scandal for Trump and the Hong Kong protests where my YouTube algorithm started to recommend me to Tim Pool. Tim, a liberal centrist with a track record of being a respected journalist and commentator was attractive to me. I didn't know people with rational approaches to current events even still existed. I didn't know anyone in my social group who approached anything political with even a modicum of principle; it was all just ideology and revolution. Seeing Tim dissect the narratives that I had been spoon fed for years changed me completely. From that point, I began to realize all of the blatant lies and partisanship of the media and sought out independent news sources while actually reading articles and not just the headlines.

From about that time a year ago I've been a full fledged Trump supporter and through COVID and the riots, its become more obvious that Trump is on the side of America and, equally important: truth.

I voted today and my hand was trembling as I filled out my ballot. This was not at all because I was apprehensive about voting straight Republican. Instead I think that the collective gravity of each small instance that has led me to get out of my propaganda bubble and enthusiastically support the President had been a miracle in its own right. I was thankful that I knew I made the right decision for not only myself but for the country.

God bless America and God speed, Trump. Let's win it all today. Trump 2020