Is it time to embrace Trump voters who are tired of losing?

There’s a large man at my gym I’ve been quietly dreading for the better part of a year. White-haired, beer-bellied — at least that’s what we used to call it — with the self-satisfied bearing of someone who clearly imbibes in martinis while arrogantly bragging about how much Trump is saving them on their taxes.

He is, in every visible way, the archetypal country club Trump supporter. And he lives up to it. Whenever he climbs onto the elliptical next to mine, his oversized screen blazes Fox News, almost like a dare.

I’ve responded the only way I know how, and that’s by staring straight ahead at my own screen, which is reliably tuned to Morning Joe, and pretending he doesn’t exist.

I’m sure he’s been doing the same to me.

Then, on Monday, something shocking happened. I glanced over and almost fell off my machine. He was watching CNN. And then, for the first time ever, he looked up and gave me a small — very small — nod.

Now, I don’t want to overstate a slight nod at a gym. But I’ve been thinking about it ever since, because it felt like something more than a change in cable TV choices. In some ways, he looked diminished to me. Smaller. And dare I say defeated..

The cultural dominance that MAGA has exercised for years, the obnoxious, oversized flag-flying, those gross MAGA hats, and the stupidity of invincibility have always depended on one thing: the belief that Donald Trump was untouchable.

Challenging these bullheaded, brainwashed MAGA folks was an exercise in futility. Even more dangerous since these zealots thrived on confrontation.

Most of us abhorred their attitude and adjusted accordingly. We learned to keep our heads down and avoid it at all costs. It was better than trying to argue with some of these ignorant people who stubbornly refused to believe that they were wrong in their worship of Donald Trump.

I took some time to read some comments, and there were tons of them, on news stories about Trump’s thoughtless war, his threat to wipe out a civilization, rising gas prices, and then the post he shared, then deleted, of himself as Jesus Christ.

So many commenters said, paraphrasing here, “I voted for you three times, and I’m done with you.” Taken with my gym friend, it got me thinking, is it time to embrace the Trump voter who might be, finally, looking for a way out?

Because it seems that the polls, especially among MAGA voters, show that the elections taking place recently are overwhelmingly being won by Democrats, and the culture is shifting away from Donald Trump. And even podcasters and right-wing pundits like Joe Rogan, Alex Jones, and Megyn Kelly have started to call Trump out for what he is: a fraud.

On Sunday, Viktor Orbán, the man Trump and JD Vance had championed as a beacon of nationalist populism, was routed in Hungary’s parliamentary election, conceding defeat after 16 years in power. It sent a chilling message to autocrats and wannabe autocrats like Trump that your days are numbered.

Péter Magyar, the opposition leader who ran on a platform of fighting corruption and rejoining the European mainstream, won in a landslide. Hungarian voters turned out in the greatest numbers since the fall of communism to make it happen.

Related: Viktor Orbán won't be the last anti-LGBTQ+ strongman to topple

The situation in Hungary is the same one gathering force here at home - people eventually tire of being governed by someone whose promises have given way to personal enrichment and ill-conceived wars, and the effect all that has had on our daily lives.

Other things, like ICE, ballrooms, Trump’s name and visage plastered on buildings and dollars, and his obsession with a luxury jet from Qatar. It reeks of privilege, grift, and the ignoring of the needs of the people. It’s Trump’s way of saying, “Let them eat cake.”

There’s also a religious component. Many so-called Christians supported Trump, but instead of praying, when pigs fly, Trump decided to start a holy war with Pope Leo XIV.

Over the weekend, Trump lashed out at Pope Leo XIV on Truth Social, calling him “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” and accusing him of “catering to the Radical Left.” Trump followed that with that horrific AI-generated image of himself as Jesus, which was swiftly labeled blasphemy online before he deleted it and claimed it depicted him “as a doctor.”

The Pope’s response was measured and tough. Flying to Africa to begin an 11-day apostolic journey, Leo told reporters: “I have no fear of the Trump administration or speaking out loudly of the message of the Gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do.”

The Pope isn’t looking away. He is, according to Catholic scholars, doing something with essentially no modern precedent: directly and repeatedly challenging an American president in terms that contain no diplomatic hedging. And Christians are paying attention.

I wrote, not long after the 2024 election, that we had every right to be angry at the people who voted for Trump, and for the most part, I still believe that. But being angry seems foolhardy as we head into the midterms. The man at my gym who nodded at me was suddenly not my enemy.

He’s someone who may be waking up to the same disaster of a presidency the rest of us have been watching.

Related: This is why it's okay to be angry at anyone who voted for Trump

The economy is grinding people down. The war has gone on longer than promised. The Epstein files remain sealed. The promises made to working people, mostly that inflation would come down, have turned out to be lies.

Instead, Trump is preoccupied with his ornate ballroom, an “L’Arc de Trump” in front of Arlington National Cemetery and the Kennedy Center, and tearing apart the White House, along with a litany of other things that have nothing to do with the American working class.

On Monday, Trump told a delivery driver outside the Oval Office that he “makes people better.” It might be the most demonstrably false thing he’s ever said.

He’s making things incredibly worse. He’s hurting people, and that pain is starting to metastasize. It is reaching down into the very people in the MAGA world whom I, and many like me, still harbor resentment toward; however, maybe it’s time to let them know they have a chance to fix things.

Related: Trump asked an American worker about trans athletes at the White House. It backfired spectacularly

Remember Trump’s most blabbered campaign promise, “We’re gonna win so much, you may even get tired of winning. And you’ll say, ‘Please, please. It’s too much winning. We can’t take it anymore, Mr. President, it’s too much.’ And I’ll say, ‘No, it isn’t. We have to keep winning.’”

And now, the opposite is occurring: Trump is losing, and losing badly, and it’s becoming too much. And no one, not even many Trump supporters, likes to support a loser.

And that puts the rest of us in a quandary: do we open our arms and welcome them to the winning side, or do we stand by and watch them lose again?

Opinion is dedicated to featuring a wide range of inspiring personal stories and impactful opinions from the LGBTQ+ community and its allies. Visit Advocate.com/submit to learn more about submission guidelines. We welcome your thoughts and feedback on any of our stories. Email us at voices@equalpride.com. Views expressed in Voices stories are those of the guest writers, columnists, and editors, and do not directly represent the views of The Advocate or our parent company, equalpride.