Reaching out to our Trump-supporting friends and family is an important step in reclaiming our democracy and rebuilding our society. Unfortunately, these conversations can be especially difficult. They are often emotional, draining, and prone to backfiring. It’s easy to slip into arguments or frustration.

But a simple shift in how you approach these conversations can make all the difference. The goal isn’t to get someone to say, “OMG, you’re right. How did I not see that?” This is not about winning a dispute; it’s about helping the other person find truth on their own. If you can lock in this perspective, you’ll greatly increase the probability of having meaningful, productive conversations.

To support that goal, we offer a simple supportive mindset to help ground your conversations in the three principles of Empathy, Authenticity, and Fellowship. These are ways of being for you to adopt that will create a positive and collaborative environment for these conversations. Importantly, these principles are also models for those we talk to, reminding them how we might relate to one another in a healthier, more humane society.

Empathy, Authenticity, and Fellowship create the conditions for awareness to take root in the other person: their first subtle sense that something isn’t right. From there, through your ongoing engagement and their reflection, that awareness can lead to awakening: a deeper understanding of how we’ve been misled, by whom, and what else might be possible. 

The purpose of this mindset is to help you manage your expectations, bring patience to these conversations, and remind you to let folks figure things out on their own. If things go off track, try returning to these core principles.

Putting the Mindset into Practice

The mindset uses a simple, ongoing practice:

• Have one conversation

• Prioritize the relationship

• Reflect

• Repeat

Bring Empathy, Authenticity, and Fellowship to each conversation. Afterwards, reflect on what you learned, what worked, what didn’t, their fears and concerns, and where the relationship stands. Then use what you learned in the next conversation. 

Use the Principles to guide the Practice, and let the Principles deepen as you repeat the Practice. Focus on one conversation at a time; you don't need to get anywhere specific on any given day. Protect the relationship and come back another day. 

This model is meant to be adaptable, and how you use it will vary depending on your relationship with the person, their connection to Trump, and how deeply they’re entangled in right-wing messaging. Let’s take a closer look.

Empathy

Empathy keeps you grounded in the reality that this person is not your enemy, even if it feels like you're on opposite sides. Many of us have been shaped by propaganda that feeds a sense of victimhood, feelings of exclusion, and anxiety.  Empathy helps us to stay mindful of this; use it to get you through difficult conversations.

Empathy can be contagious. Your calm, your openness, and your refusal to meet anger with anger. These alone can be disarming. Sometimes, the most eye-opening moment isn’t a fact or argument but simply realizing that someone still cares.

Importantly, showing empathy doesn’t require you to excuse their harmful beliefs. 

Practicing Empathy:

• Start with the person. Separate who they are from the beliefs shaped by propaganda.

• Listen before responding. Try to understand what they believe, why they believe it, and what matters to them.

• Don’t push them to change. Help put them in a position where they can question, reflect, and change on their own.

• Stay empathetic when it gets difficult. Don’t let something they say turn the conversation into judgment or an argument.

• Learn from each conversation. Their concerns, fears, sensitivities, and values should help guide the next one.

• Let them move at their own pace. Progress may be slow, silent, and invisible.

Have one conversation, reflect on what you learned, and come back for another. Empathy builds trust, invites openness, and creates the conditions for change.

Authenticity

Authenticity helps you create a deeper connection by expressing yourself genuinely and transparently. It builds credibility and the trust these conversations depend on.

Practicing Authenticity:

• Start by being yourself. Don’t perform, lecture, or pretend to know things you don’t.

• Open up. Share your own experiences, uncertainties, and concerns rather than just your political positions.

• Show vulnerability. Acknowledge things you’ve been wrong about and things that bother you about your own political side.

• Give them room to share. As you open up, be sure to give them the opportunity to do the same.

• Build on what they share. Remember what they tell you and return to it in later conversations

Show more of yourself with each conversation you have. It encourages them to do the same and models the kind of society we hope to build.

Fellowship

Fellowship goes beyond conversations - it’s an environment that you create. It’s about working together through these conversations toward greater awareness, while recognizing that we face many of the same forces working against us and we need to stand together to push back. 

This fellowship is refusing to give up on your Trump supporter, even when it's hard. It’s the choice to stay connected and remember that our relationships are more powerful than misguided allegiances.

Creating Fellowship:

• Start with the relationship. Remind yourselves of the history, experiences, interests, and values you already share.

• Remind them you have more in common than not. Pay attention to shared concerns rather than political differences.

• Find common problems. Recognize the problems affecting both of you and the ways your interests overlap.

• Look at who benefits. Discuss how corporations, billionaires, and other wealthy interests benefit from a system that gives them so much power over our government, economy, and lives. 

• Explore together. Look for solutions to your common problems and ways to push back against the growing threats.

• Grow the relationship. Keep showing up, keep talking, and keep finding things to do together.

• Build a sense of “we.” Over time, replace the idea that you're on opposing sides with the sense that you're actually in this together. 

Fellowship helps us hold the line when others are trying to pull us apart, and it will carry us beyond these conversations. It's about rebuilding civil society and creating a better democracy.