CHICAGO – This week’s Democratic National Convention featured an unusual speaker: a lifelong Republican from Alabama.
Kyle Sweetser, a former President Donald Trump voter from Mobile, said at the party’s convention Tuesday night that he will vote for Vice President Kamala Harris in November, even though he voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020.
“In 2016, I was looking forward to voting for Trump,” Sweetser told AL.com a day after his convention speech. “The people in Mobile, the people down in Alabama, we were kind of forgotten … (Trump) seemed like a change of pace.”
During Trump’s first term, Sweetser noticed “increasingly strange behavior” from the president. In 2018 Trump’s tariffs Construction workers like him would be harmed by the increase in costs, he said.
Regardless, Sweetser “held his nose” in 2020. He donated to the former president and voted for him in the election. He said he believed the fallout from the election, unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol meant Trump would not run again in 2024.
As Sweetser began criticizing the former president’s behavior, he became more dedicated to his “Make America Great Again” base, noting similarities between Russian disinformation surrounding the invasion of Ukraine and the messages of “MAGA influencers,” he said.
“From that moment on, I decided that if this guy runs again, I would vote Democrat for the first time in my life,” Sweetser said. “That’s when I started speaking out against Trump.”
In his view, Trump’s record on fiscal responsibility, his insistence on expanding tariffs and his isolationist approach to international politics are not conservative. The former president is “not a law-and-order president,” especially compared to the Biden-Harris administration.
Sweetser, who told AL.com he is still a Republican and has supported former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley since the early stages of the Republican primaries, said he believes Trump is bad for the Republican Party.
After it became clear that Haley would not receive the nomination, Sweetser was prepared to vote for President Joe Biden. He knew there was a possibility that Harris could replace Biden because Haley frequently talked about that possibility.
Sweetser began volunteering with groups including Republican voters against TrumpRepublicans for Harris and Haley voters for Harris. He supported the groups’ efforts to unite by getting rid of “the extremism” of Trump.
“As I was doing that, I learned about how MAGA operates, how they want to harass, intimidate and silence other Republicans in a coordinated effort to speak out against their policies,” Sweetser said. “I found it odd that they put more effort into persecuting other Republicans than they do Democrats.”
While speaking out against Trump, Sweetser said he and his family have been subjected to online insults, a doxxing incident and death threats from pro-Trump trolls and accounts.
“It’s crazy when you’re a Republican and you speak out against Trump,” he said. “What comes after you is unbelievable.”
For Sweetser, the fact that Trump’s Republican candidates lost crucial elections on all ballots was proof that the former president was ensuring that his party lost power. In 2024, the Democrats’ platform on issues such as the economy and crime will be more conservative than that of the Republicans, he said.
“As far as a conservative lifestyle goes, I’m one of the most conservative people you could know,” Sweetser said. “Our kids are homeschooled… I have more guns than my family and I still support Kamala Harris on principle.”
Sweetser reiterated his remarks before the DNC, emphasizing his support for Harris’ presidential campaign and her efforts to return to the American values she represents, saying he hopes the GOP can be “reformed” into a party without MAGA-mindedness.
“Trump brings out the worst in people, he stirs people up,” Sweetser said.
Griffin Uribe Brown, a third-year student from Chicago studying magazine, news and digital journalism and political science, reports for AL.com during the Democratic National Convention. He is covering the DNC as part of a program with the SI Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.
