I Was The Target Of Racial, Homophobic Harassment by MAGA. I'm Still Voting For Trump | Opinion

I'm Black and gay and until recently, I was a Republican. Then I was the target of racial and homophobic harassment by MAGA Trump supporters last winter. I was harassed by Far-Right Republicans inspired by White Supremacist Nick Fuentes in Phoenix, Arizona in an incident that received international attention. The harassment and the realization that the GOP has no real interest in neutralizing its extremist elements led me to leave the Republican Party—a decision I stand by.

But my support for Trump is a different story.

I'm still voting for Donald Trump this November.

Trump is and has always been what I call a "New York City Republican." He is fairly liberal on social issues, including gay and lesbian support. He made Ric Grennell the highest-ranking gay man ever to serve in a presidential cabinet in history when he was appointed the Acting Director of National Intelligence in early 2020. I went on the campaign trail as a part of the "Trump Pride" Coalition in 2020.

Still, my vote for Trump in the 2024 election was not guaranteed. I am a two-time Obama voter who did not vote in 2016, as I felt at the time that neither Trump nor Clinton had earned my vote. I voted for Trump in 2020, the first time I had ever cast a vote for a Republican presidential candidate. Biden was never an option. RFK, Jr. was eliminated as even a remote possibility very early on for me. One option was not voting, as I had done in 2016. That was a decision I thought long and hard about.

I am done thinking. Trump has my vote in 2024. No matter what I think about the fringes that are still very much active in the Republican Party, I cannot let my negative experience with a few color the larger issues that are facing America.

I am gay and Black, yes—but I am also an American first. The things that affect me—a wide open border, rampant inflation, the Biden administration's disastrous pullout of Afghanistan—affect the vast majority of Americans regardless of their race, gender, or sexual orientation.

It is time for our politics to move beyond the idea that because someone looks or loves a certain way, they are somehow chained to liberal policies. My experience of harassment was horrific in ways that I haven't really fully discussed in depth, but as hard as I thought, as much as I struggled, I still could not bring myself to run back to the Democrat Party.

The fact that I called White Supremacists White Supremacists and decided that I no longer identified as a Republican seemed to indicate to some that I had somehow become a Democrat or a liberal again. That is certainly not the case. In fact, it was the liberals of social media who mocked my experience the most. In their eyes, I deserved exactly what happened to me, because I had committed the cardinal sin of voting, thinking, and believing in ways they didn't approve of. On social media, I was mocked mercilessly by liberals both Black and white. Some even called me racial slurs. A simple search of the incident on any social media handle will show you just how "tolerant and inclusive" liberals can be!

The lie that Democrats and liberals are somehow the party of love and compassion is easily exposed by their reaction to my incident of racial and homophobic harassment. In essence, that is why I made the decision to share the incident via my social media. I was not only exposing the White Supremacists that have infiltrated the grassroots of the Republican Party, but the hypocrisy of the liberals who profess to love all Black and LGBT people ... as long as our beliefs don't make them too uncomfortable.

In my opinion, the 2024 election is bigger than my feelings about certain elements of the Republican Party, or even Trump himself. Trump is not without his drawbacks, of which there are many that are well-documented. Trump was not my first choice in the GOP primary, but he is the choice the primary voters have made, and he is the only thing that stands between America and four more years of the lunacy and insanity that America has been exposed too.

Four more years of the disastrous Biden administration is too much for any American to take, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, or any other immutable characteristics. An estimated 10 million Illegal Immigrants have crossed the border due to his administration's incompetence. As a veteran, Biden's sloppy and ill-advised withdrawal from Afghanistan is egregiously offensive. Because of him, Afghanistan is now under Taliban control with billions of dollars in United States grade military equipment left behind. 13 American soldiers died.

Aside from that, the average Amercian—gay or lesbian, Black or white—is feeling the squeeze from high gas prices, expensive groceries, and a myriad other small yet noticeable declines in our day to day lives as Americans.

This is all so much bigger than a couple dozen young and stupid MAGA youth extremists who harassed me because I am everything they have been taught to hate by far-Right influencers propped up by dark money.

I am Black. I am gay. I am a veteran. I was the target of racial and homophobic harassment by MAGA supporters. And today, I identify as a Trump-supporting Independent. Because if the choice is between Donald Trump and four more years of the chaos that has been unleashed on the wallets, safety, and peace of mind of the average American, the choice is simple: It's Donald Trump.

Rob Smith is decorated Iraq war veteran, political commentator, and host of the "Can't Cancel Rob Smith" Podcast.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.