‘My MAGA started to crack’: How one Christian nationalist Mormon broke free of Trump

Growing up in an ultraconservative Mormon family, Jennie Gage said, she was primed to become a Christian nationalist and supporter of Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again movement — or MAGA.

But about two years ago, at 49, Gage had a reckoning, realizing she had been “literally a white supremacist from birth,” based on teachings from the Book of Mormon.

Gage said she came to see Mormonism as “the OG Christian nationalist church.”

So, she flipped her life upside down, leaving organized religion and the Republican party.

She now calls herself “a raging feminist,” hosts a podcast, “Life, Take Two,” and is a member of “Leaving MAGA,” a nonprofit online community for former Trump followers who found themselves lost in conspiracies, losing friends, even committing crimes in the president’s name.

‘God’s president’

“I would have never said, ‘I'm white supremacist. I'm Christian nationalist,’” Gage told Raw Story. “I would have just said, ‘I'm traditional, and I'm conservative because I believe in church and family and America.’”

But when Trump ran for president in 2016, Gage embraced MAGA.

“I will never forget him on my big-screen TV, saying the words, ‘Make America Great Again,” Gage said.

“The first time I heard that, I literally started crying … and I pictured Norman Rockwell.”

What came to mind was the painter’s “Freedom from Want” — ”The grandma putting the turkey on the table, the Thanksgiving dinner, the beautiful home and just that American traditional family and conservatism," she said.

"Freedom from Want" by Norman Rockwell (Wikimedia Commons)

“Obviously, I hated brown people. I hated all the illegal immigrants. I hated that our country was being overrun with lesbians and feminists, women who worked instead of being in their proper place in the home, gay people — they are like the biggest sinners in Mormonism — and baby killers, all of that,” Gage said.

“When [Trump] said, ‘Make America Great Again,’ what I pictured was this businessman not only is going to save our economy, but he's also going to get rid of all of that stuff that people are doing that's destroying our country, and we're going to return to the 1950s where life was great and everything was simple, and he's going to make America great again.”

‘God’s president’

Gage’s family, she said, took Mormonism to “next-level insanity,” as much of her childhood revolved around The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

“It is a cult without walls,” Gage said.

She attended Brigham Young University, the flagship Mormon college, for two years, taking classes including early childhood development, as well as dating and marriage.

“Even going to Mormon college, I was just indoctrinated also,” Gage said.

As treasurer of the BYU Young Republicans, she canvassed for President George H.W. Bush when he ran against Bill Clinton in 1992.

“It was devastating to see this evil Democrat Bill Clinton get elected,” she said.

As Gage had children, she became less politically involved. Her interest revived when Mitt Romney ran for president.

Jennie Gage with her children when she said she was still a "Mormon trad wifey" (Photo provided by Jennie Gage)

She remembered thinking, “‘We're gonna have a Mormon boy,’ and then that's probably gonna usher in the Millennium, so it's gonna be Mitt Romney and then Jesus.”

Gage began watching Fox News, listening to conservative commentators and reading books by Republican politicians. When Trump announced his run, Gage was familiar with his reality TV show, The Apprentice, and his books, The Art of the Deal and The Art of the Comeback.

“The Apprentice was actually my pipeline into MAGA. It was just really interesting, as we had a business and were really wealthy,” Gage said.

“That sucked me into … completely buying into it because NBC, The Apprentice and his ghost-written books, they showcased him as this really savvy entrepreneur, and that spoke to me because I was this conservative Christian wife of an entrepreneur.”

Gage said she liked the idea of a “businessman” running America, instead of “slimy politicians.”

She became more active on social media and engaged in arguments defending Trump. She recalls one verbal fight with her 10-year-old nephew.

She told him, “Donald Trump to America is going to be what Napoleon was to France. He is going to free us, and generations to come are going to thank God that Donald Trump was voted in office.”

When Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, Gage thought: “President Trump is God's president.”

‘A major shift’

Gage began to upend her life in October 2018. One day at church, she “literally stopped believing.”

“I Googled my own religion for the first time,” she said. “I had never researched Mormonism outside of books that I would go to the Mormon bookstore and read. And so I resigned from the church.”

The church’s history of polygamy pushed her away. Simultaneously, she said, she ended her 24-year marriage, due to infidelity.

She “plunged pretty headlong into Christianity, and in a way, that kind of kept me stuck in that traditional conservative Americana,” she said.

But she continued “deconstructing” her beliefs, and by the time of the 2020 election had seen “a major shift” in her values.

She was prepared to vote for Trump, but on the way to the voting booth, Gage said, “my MAGA started to crack.

“I remember sitting there in the car, and I just felt sick thinking about Donald Trump because some of the debates that year, he started to seem a little bit unhinged, and the MAGA crowd was just no longer aligning with me.”

Gage and her partner decided not to vote for either Trump or Joe Biden.

Gage returned to her computer, to research political issues.

“I’m like ‘Oh s—. There's not one f—- thing that the Republicans are doing that I support. Not one. I'm a Democrat,” Gage said.

“I literally support everything that most of the Democratic leaders are currently doing, and the entire Democratic platform speaks to me so much.”

Gage said she began “really stepping into my true, authentic self.”

While it was “extremely unsettling” and “terrifying” to change her beliefs,” her life in Tucson, Ariz., now looks far different than her life in MAGA.

She has a diverse group of friends, is an atheist feminist, and calls herself an “anarchist” and “white apologist,” for her ancestors’ roles in massacres of Native Americans.

“I am moving farther and farther away from everything that originally made me lean into MAGA,” she said.

‘American Gestapo’

To Gage, Trump is now “f— reprehensible” and “so hateful.”

“Donald Trump is the president of only the people he gives a f— about,” Gage said.

“Everybody else is just out. He's more of a mob boss, and he is a president, and that's not the way that America is supposed to work.”

During the 2024 election, Trump accused Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, of eating cats and dogs. Gage called that the “a straw that broke the camel's back.”

“I wouldn't want him to be in charge of our PTA. I wouldn't vote for him for the president of our homeowners’ association,” Gage said.

“Listening to the debates and the hatred in some of the rallies, I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience, and it made me panic because I'm like, ‘Oh, now what? I hate Donald Trump, and the whole entire MAGA movement no longer aligns with who I am.’”

Gage now calls Trump administration immigration enforcement agents an “American Gestapo.”

Just in cases reported by Raw Story, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has detained a breastfeeding mother, proposed a plan to deport unaccompanied immigrant children, physically assaulted bystanders and deported young adults with pending immigration cases.

“The whole point of the Gestapo was to be this police force out there terrorizing people,” Gage said.

“Sure, deport illegals if they're a threat, but to drag people down the street, the masks, the fear-mongering, the scare tactics, is absolutely reprehensible.”

‘It’s going to re-brand’

Gage is starkly concerned about Trump and the GOP’s quickening push toward Christian nationalism.

“I wasn't just Christian nationalist for logistical reasons,” she said. “It was part of my religion.

“I believed Jesus had written the Constitution and that the American government was just the interim government until Jesus came back, and then Jesus was going to rule America, and the rest of the world from America.

“The Charlie Kirk people … or Christian nationalists, honey, they ain't got nothing on the Mormons. We took Christian nationalism next-level. I believed all of that 100 percent.”

A college student wearing a “Make America Great Again” cap looks on at a Turning Point USA event, held at University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida on Nov. 13. REUTERS/Octavio Jones

Gage likens Christian nationalism to “a virus,” particularly as it gains a platform with Turning Point USA, the youth nonprofit founded by Kirk, who was killed in September.

“My worry is that these religious institutions and these political movements … are targeting the people that they need to target in a way that's effective enough that they are always going to be 10 steps ahead of us, and they're specifically targeting those emerging young adults,” Gage said.

“I'm afraid that conservative Christian nationalism will not die out, that just like a very smart virus, it's going to adapt. It's going to re-brand. It's going to emerge on the other side, maybe a little bit different than the 2020 MAGA movement, but it has a vested interest in protecting itself.

“They have the money, they have the power. They don't want to let that go, so they're going to fight to the death.”