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LOS ANGELES: When longtime Democrat Mayra Gomez told her 21-year-old son five months ago that she would vote for Donald Trump in the presidential election on Tuesday (November 3), she removed her from her life.
“He specifically told me, ‘You’re not my mother anymore, because you’re voting for Trump,'” Gomez, 41, a personal care worker in Milwaukee, told Reuters.
Their last conversation was so bitter that she is not sure they can reconcile, even if Trump loses his re-election bid.
“The damage is done. In people’s minds, Trump is a monster. It’s sad. There are people who no longer speak to me and I’m not sure that will change,” said Gómez, who is a fan of the repression of Trump against immigrants and his handling of the economy.
Gomez isn’t the only one who thinks the bitter divisions within families and among friends over Trump’s tumultuous presidency will be difficult, if not impossible, to repair, even after he leaves office.
In interviews with 10 voters, five supporters of Trump and five of Democratic candidate Joe Biden, few were able to see that the shattered personal relationships caused by Trump’s tenure were completely healed, and most believed they had been destroyed forever.
Throughout his nearly four-year presidency, which broke the rules, Trump has stirred strong emotions among his supporters and opponents.
Many of his supporters admire his moves to reform immigration, his appointment of conservative judges, his willingness to jettison conventions and his tough rhetoric, which they call speaking frankly.
Democrats and other critics view the former real estate developer and reality show personality as a threat to American democracy, a serial liar, and a racist who mismanaged the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed more than 230,000 people in the United States so far.
Trump dismisses those characterizations as “fake news.”
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Now, with Trump trailing Biden in opinion polls, people are beginning to wonder if the fractures caused by one of the most polarized presidencies in American history could be healed if Trump loses the election.
“Unfortunately, I don’t think national healing is as easy as changing the president,” said Jaime Saal, a psychotherapist at the Rochester Center for Behavioral Medicine in Rochester Hills, Michigan.
“It takes time and effort, and it takes both parties, no pun intended, to be willing to let go and move on,” he said.
Saal said that tensions in people’s personal relationships have skyrocketed given the political, health and social dynamics facing the United States.
Very often, you see clients who have political disagreements with their siblings, parents, or in-laws, as opposed to their spouses.
NEIGHBOR VS NEIGHBOR
Trump’s 2016 election divided families, broke friendships and pitted one neighbor against another.
Many have turned to Facebook and Twitter to post unrestricted posts critical of both Trump and his many critics, while the president’s own carefree tweets have also inflamed tensions.
A September report by the independent Pew Research Center found that nearly 80 percent of Trump and Biden supporters said they had few or no friends who supported the other candidate.
A study by polling organization Gallup in January found that Trump’s third year in office set a new record for party polarization.
While 89 percent of Republicans approved of Trump’s performance in office in 2019, only 7 percent of Democrats thought he was doing a good job.
Gayle McCormick, 77, who split from her husband William, 81, after he voted for Trump in 2016, said: “I think it’s going to take a long time to recover from Trump’s legacy.”
The two still spend time together, although now she lives in Vancouver, he in Alaska.
Two of his grandchildren no longer speak to him because of his support for Democrat Hillary Clinton four years ago and he has also distanced himself from other Trump supporters and relatives and friends.
She is not sure that these divisions with friends and family will ever be fixed, because each believes that the other has a totally strange value system.
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Democratic voter Rosanna Guadagno, 49, said her brother disowned her after she refused to support Trump four years ago.
Last year, his mother suffered a stroke, but his brother, who lived in the same California city as his mother, did not notify him when his mother died six months later.
They gave him the news after three days in an email from his sister-in-law.
“I was excluded from everything that had to do with his death and it was devastating,” said Guadagno, a social psychologist who works at Stanford University in California.
Whoever wins the election, Guadagno is pessimistic about reconciling with his brother, though he said he still loves him.
UNCERTAIN POST-TRUMP WORLD
Sarah Guth, 39, a Spanish interpreter from Denver, Colorado, said she eliminated several friends who supported Trump from her life.
He couldn’t reconcile with his support on issues like separating immigrant children from their parents on the southern border, or with Trump himself after he was caught on tape bragging about groping women.
He also stopped talking to his father who was voting for Trump for several months after the 2016 election.
The two now talk, but avoid politics.
Guth said some of her friends cannot accept her support for a candidate, Joe Biden, who is in favor of free choice on the abortion issue.
“We had such fundamental disagreements on such basic things. It showed both parties that we really have nothing in common. I don’t think that will change in the post-Trump era,” he said.
Fervent Trump supporter Dave Wallace, 65, a retired oil industry sales manager in West Chester, Pennsylvania, is more optimistic about families in conflict in a post-Trump world, though he said his support for the president has caused tensions with his son and daughter. in law.
“The hatred for Trump among Democrats is just staggering to me,” Wallace said.
“I think it’s just Trump, the way he makes people feel. I think the anguish will lessen when we go back to being a normal politician who doesn’t piss people off.”
Jay J. Van Bavel, a professor of psychology and neural sciences at New York University, said this “political sectarianism” has become not only tribal, but also moral.
“Because Trump has been one of the most polarizing figures in American history around fundamental values and issues, people are not willing to compromise, and that is not something that can be made to disappear,” Van Bavel said. .
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Jacquelyn Hammond, 47, a waitress from Asheville, North Carolina, no longer speaks to Carol, her mother who supported Trump.
“I also discouraged my son from talking to my mother about politics. I am not going to let her influence him politically,” he said.
He said he would like to heal the relationship, but believes it will be difficult, even if Trump loses the election.
“Trump is like the catalyst for an earthquake that has just divided two continents of thought. Once the Earth is divided like this, there is no going back,” he said.
“This is a marked moment in our history where people had to jump from one side to another. And depending on which side you choose, that will be the trajectory for the rest of your life.”
Hammond said he first realized his relationship with his mother was in trouble shortly after the 2016 election when he defended Clinton while driving with his mother.
“He stopped the car and told me not to disrespect his policy. And if I don’t want to respect his policy, I can get out of the car,” he said.
Bonnie Coughlin, 65, has voted primarily Republicans her entire life, except in 2016 when she backed a third-party candidate.
This time, she is in favor of Biden, even hosting a small rally for him on the side of a road near Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania.
Raised in a Republican and religiously conservative family in Missouri, she said her relationships with her sister, her father and some cousins, all ardent Trump supporters, have deteriorated.
Coughlin said he still loves them, but sees them differently.
“It’s because they have willingly accepted someone who is so heartless and just doesn’t show empathy for anyone under any circumstances,” he said.
She added: “And if Biden wins, I don’t think they will quietly go into the night and accept it.”
