From Fanaticism to Bewilderment - Trisha Hope’s Break with Trump

Trisha Hope was never a fringe figure. In the world of Trumpism she belonged to the loud ones: self-proclaimed national delegate from Texas, permanent activist, chronicler and cheerleader all in one. Her book series “Just the Tweets” made her the curator of the Trump cosmos - page after page an archive of adoration. She traveled, campaigned, raised money, organized, defended. Fanatical is not a harsh word for someone who gave everything for three election campaigns and made it a personal project. And then, as we now know, in early July, the break in a single outcry: “I voted for this man three times, I campaigned for him, I worked my ass off, and I feel like I do not recognize him at ALL. This is sickening!” A cry from inside the movement, not a call from outside. Anyone who knows the loyalty economy of the Trump milieu feels in this sentence the tectonic shift: not the opponent doubts, but the believer. The answers beneath it read like a snapshot of American present. There are the loyal ones, who also stagger and describe the moment as a punch in the gut. There are the mockers, who soberly calculate for her that one should not wonder about thousands of lies, insults and scandals only on the third try: “You voted for him three times. But this is your breaking point?” There are the disenchanted, who whisper to her that one could see for years how charisma turned into cults and campaigns into cash. And of course there are those who immediately stir the pain into conspiracy mush - suddenly it is again about Israel, about shadow powers, about the old escape routes of radicalized world explanation.

What is remarkable is less the escalation than the sobriety that resonates in many replies. One reads the laconic tone of those who do not triumph but record: It was always in front of you. The cult leader never tried to hide it. Misogynistic remarks were not an accident but permanent program. The unscrupulous self-staging - from the stage to the family album - was never subcutaneous but glaringly illuminated. Even the grotesque courtesy greeting to Ghislaine Maxwell in prison was public, not behind closed doors. The shock that Trisha Hope now formulates therefore says less about him than about the mechanics of belief, belonging and self-protection. Loyalty there is not opinion but identity - and identity has the longest half-life in politics. Precisely for that reason this tweet is so revealing. It is not a political change of position but a biographical rupture. From the “we” of the movement there becomes for a moment an “I” that no longer recognizes itself. And yet the scene seems as if behind the curtain the next backdrop is already ready - the temptation to transform the doubt into a new narrative in which others are to blame again: advisers, media, enemies, fate. The cult lives from this constant redirection. That in the replies anger, mockery, care and fatigue mix at the same time shows how brittle the camps have long since become. One feels the exhaustion of a public that has seen it all before.

In the end the sober observation remains, which lies in the timelines like a cold cloth - the one sentence that sums everything up and makes any pathos superfluous: “I don’t know, man. We have been watching him for years saying weird stuff about women, repeatedly making comments about his daughter and sending greetings to Ghislaine Maxwell in prison. No idea how you missed that.”
Ich weiß nicht, Mann. Wir haben ihm jahrelang dabei zugesehen, wie er komisches Zeug über Frauen gesagt hat, immer wieder auf seine Tochter anspielte und Ghislaine Maxwell im Gefängnis Grüße geschickt hat. Keine Ahnung, wie du das verpasst hast.

Investigative journalism requires courage, conviction – and your support.