I’m a lifelong progressive and I’m about to say something I never thought I would: I now support Donald Trump. And this once impossibility is now true because the Democrats’ raid on Mar-a-Lago has shown me that they’ve truly descended into tyranny.

Before I get into why the Mar-a-Lago raid changed me, let me give you a little background on my progressive bona fides.

When I say I’m a lifelong progressive, I really mean it. Since the age of two I knew I was a progressive. I’d ask my parents why conservatives opposed helping the poor, why they wanted to oppress womyn, and why they wanted to destroy the Earth. So there was never any doubt about my identity.

And from childhood onward, I was a hardcore progressive activist. As an adult, I’ve always voted Democrat. Womyn’s rights, minority rights, environmental rights, LGBTQI rights, and the rights of the poor were things I never stopped advocating for. My entire career I’ve worked for a succession of advocacy groups and forward-thinking corporations that put people over profits, and I’ve always advanced the progressive agenda in all my positions.

LGBTQI rights became particularly dear to me after I entered college. That’s when I began to think about my sexuality. Or rather, I began to realize who I was. I realized that although I had been assigned female at birth, I actually was male. And it was then when I began to acknowledge that I was a transgender man. I began to identify that way openly and by the time I was in my mid-20s, you’d have thought I was the manliest man ever. I mean, I had every stereotypical “masculine” trait: huge muscles, full facial hair, a deep voice, tons of hot girlfriends, and I called myself “Trent.”

A few years ago, though, I realized that I had let our patriarchal society brainwash me. Who’s to say what a man is supposed to be? And isn’t our society already drowning in toxic masculinity? So I jettisoned being the stereotypical man—no more hormone blockers and testosterone, no more facial hair, no more deep voice, and I now have the thinnest, curviest frame you’ve ever seen. And I call myself “Ellen” again. I’m now fully embracing my true identity as a transgender man who identifies as a woman. It’s wonderful to be the true me. Plus, is there any better way to subvert toxic masculinity than this? I’m literally double transgender.

So I’m as progressive as it gets. You won’t find anyone who is further left than me. And I’ll never change my progressive beliefs—even as how I define the beliefs always remains up for reinterpretation.

But while I haven’t changed and won’t change, the progressive movement has. Democrats have too. And while I’ve tried to deny it these past few years, I can’t any longer.

The first inklings that there was something very wrong with the Democrats and progressives came around 2016. You know, when they went crazy over Trump. I was a huge Hillary supporter, and I was in a months-long depression after she lost. But the conspiracy theories about Trump-Russia collusion and the deranged attitude in general towards him by progressives and Democrats was something that I couldn’t ignore.

Oh, I tried to pretend I wasn’t seeing those things. But that was a next-to-impossible task. I mean, unless you shut yourself off from society, how were you supposed to get away from it? Still, I wasn’t even thinking of becoming a Trump supporter. Regardless of how hysterical my side was getting, he was still the enemy. Right?

Anyway, flash forward to 2020 when I was cheering on the Democrats stealing the election from Trump for Biden. It was great seeing all the tears of the cons and Republicans at another election we stole (like I said, I still viewed Trump as the enemy). And after Hillary losing in 2016? It was one of the greatest highs I ever felt. Maybe now the Democrats and progressives would return to normal.

But then January 6, 2021 rolled around. As much as I hated conservatives and Republicans, I still believed in liberty. So when I saw the government attack peaceful protesters and then declare they were engaged in an insurrection, I couldn’t believe it. Whatever happened to free speech, peace, and not being totally evil?

I could go on with what happened after that but you already know the story. Biden and the Democrats—my progressive movement—became full-on communist. They became tyrannical. Sure, I still tried to deny it. But it kept eating at me. Suddenly the other side didn’t seem like MAGAts any longer. The truth kept getting harder to deny. Trump no longer seemed like an enemy. The Jan. 6 show trials that the Democrats have been producing for the past few months particularly made it hard for me to keep lying to myself.

And then the communist Biden regime decided to raid Mar-a-Lago the other day. That was it. That was the last straw for me. I now see Trump in a completely opposite light. I no longer hate him. I now see his voters as humans—the Jan. 6 political prisoners as suffering injustice. And I don’t understand how anyone calling zirself progressive or Democrat can support what progressives and Democrats are doing.

Indeed, I’m the true progressive and Democrat. I want to save progressivism and the Democratic Party. At the same time, I have to put country over party and call out what the radicals are doing. And that’s why I have to say that the Biden regime’s raid on Mar-a-Lago has made me see that extremists have taken over my progressive movement and Democratic Party and turned American into a tyrannical nightmare.

It’s why I have to say that the Biden’s regime raid on Mar-a-Lago turned me into the impossible: a Trump supporter.

Top Photo: Donald J. Trump website.