From the This American Life episode “Personal Recount,” devoted to stories of people changing their minds. Louis Rosman is an Iowa farmer who voted for Donald Trump in 2016. His granddaughter Lizzie Johnson interviewed him for the show:
LJ: How long did it take you to figure out that Trump was not that change that you wanted?We need to hear more stories of people changing their minds.
LR: Well, this virus has really convinced me because he totally disregarded it and still does. He acts as if it don’t exist. And all these people are dying, and he still thinks that’s all you have to do, is just ignore it. And then he said, it’ll be over with by Easter. It’ll be over with by July. And it’s always a bunch of damn lies. It scares the hell out of me. I ain’t ready to die yet.
And then the deal the way they were handling those children down at the border, herding them around like a prisoner-of-war camp. Five hundred-some are separated from their parents, and some of them are six months old.
LJ: It sounds like thinking about those kids without their parents has really stuck with you.
LR: Well, why wouldn’t it? With anybody, anybody with feeling. Trump has no feeling. Absolutely none. That’s why I like Joe Biden, because he has a soft voice and he doesn’t tell lies. I wanted someone who cares for someone or something besides himself.
LJ: Would you have thought I was crazy if, in 2016, I told you, hey, you would vote for a Democrat in 2020, straight down the ticket?
LR: If you would have told me what was going on now back then, I wouldn’t have believed this could happen.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump* is retweeting a crackpot who says that Georgia’s governor and secretary of state “will soon be going to jail.”
[“Who voted for Donald Trump”: I’ve dropped the asterisk for impeached, as Trump* wasn’t an impeached president in 2016. I’ve made one slight alteration in the TAL transcript.]
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