When we spoke last year, Adela told us she had a hard time understanding her dad, one-issue-voter, who supported Trump in 2016. She's pretty sure he voted for Trump again in 2020, but she is beginning to notice a shift in him.
If you loved this episode, listen to Adela's original episode, Dad Voted for Trump.
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Juleyka Lantigua-Williams:
Hi, everybody. Juleyka here. We’ve been producing the show for almost a year and in the process, you and I have met so many cool first gens and we’ve talked to some of the smartest people thinking about and working through the issues that plague first gens and our parents. For the next few episodes, I’m checking in with some of our OGs, original guests, to find out how things have been going since they were on the show. Today, I’m talking to Adela. Adela’s first episode aired last year on May 23rd. Here’s some of what she shared.
Adela: Hi, my name is Adela. I am Jewish. I was born in America, but my father was born in Israel and my mother was born in England, and in my family, we call our parents mom and dad. Growing up, my parents have always been Democrats and I’ve always been a Democrat, fairly liberal, and that’s just… There really was no heavy political conversation in our family, just because we were all Democrats and that was fine, and everybody was copacetic.
But after Obama, my dad decided to vote for Trump, and it was a really big deal in my family. My mom, she had a hard time with it. She ended up not voting, which made me mad for other reasons. She almost felt like she either had to like go against my dad… If she voted, she was for sure not gonna vote for Trump, and so she felt like if she did vote and she voted for Hillary, it would be like going against my dad.
Lantigua-Williams:
When I asked Adela to come back on the show, I really wanted to know how conversations about politics have been going with her mom and her dad considering all of the stuff that’s been happening with the election, the insurrection, the misinformation campaigns, the pandemic, and all of the things that we’ve been facing. Let’s get into it.
Hey, Adela. Welcome back!
Adela: Hi, Juleyka. So good to be here.
Lantigua-Williams:
We wanted you back because you and I talked about politics, and families, and generations, and Trump.
Adela: Yes.
Lantigua-Williams:
So, when you hear yourself from last year, how does that make you feel?
Adela: Well, I mean I feel pretty much the same way, but it was funny. When I was listening, I was like… I think at the end of the clip I said something like, “You know, there’s no changing anybody’s minds in politics. I’m never gonna change his mind.” And I’m not saying that I changed his mind, far from it.
Lantigua-Williams:
What?
Adela: Far, far from it. But I think he’s kind of come around. I think… I mean, obviously a lot has happened since… Well, November, and certainly since we recorded, but I think just like the nonsense with contesting the election, and taking it to the courts, and not abiding by the court’s rulings, and still calling everybody a liar, and then everything that happened on January 6th cemented in my dad’s head that this is like-
Lantigua-Williams:
The insurrection?
Adela: Yes. The insurrection. Right. But my dad is not like one of the conspiracy theorists. I should make that very, very clear. He never, ever thought that the election was rigged. He thought that was all BS. He knew it was all BS. I think what Trump’s actions after the election and the inciting of the insurrection did for my father is more like make him really realize how dangerous the rhetoric really is in terms of just like the stability of the United States, you know? We talked about how my dad is a one issue voter. And his issue is Israel and the existence of Israel, like it’s very existential for him. And part of the conversation that I had had with him back… like back in the early spring, was that I understand that you see Israel’s existence as being tenuous, but to be honest, I see United States’ existence as being tenuous.
And at the time, he was kind of like, “Are you nuts? The United States is gonna be here forever and it’s such a big and powerful country.” And then everything happened, right? And it just sort of showed him how fragile it really is and how maybe it’s not as strong as he had thought and that it’s not gonna overcome every single adversity it ever faces.
So, I think that has happened in my dad’s mind. He has not said it out loud, so I definitely don’t want to put words in his mouth.
Lantigua-Williams:
Right.
Adela: He’s a very prideful older man, so I doubt he would ever, ever admit he was wrong, but I can see in just like how he doesn’t bait me as much as he used to that he is maybe like, “Oh my God, this guy’s a nut job.” You know?
Lantigua-Williams:
Did you guys talk about how each of you was going to vote? Do you know how he voted?
Adela: I didn’t talk to him. I just… I’m 95% certain he voted for Trump.
Lantigua-Williams:
Wow. Okay.
Adela: Yeah, so there was no changing his mind, especially in that moment, right? Like if the election was held now, I think maybe he would reconsider, but at the time, I don’t think there was any sort of consideration of not voting for Trump.
Lantigua-Williams:
And did your mom vote this time?
Adela: Yes. She did and she was very much a Biden supporter and was like… You know, obviously there are so many gender dynamics at play, especially for the older generations, and I’ve had many conversations with my mother over the past couple of years about how she sees my relationship with my husband, and she knows that I’m an equal partner in my relationship with my husband, and that like I can say yes or no, and sometimes I’m the boss. You know?
Whereas, for her generation that was never the case for the woman. They were not the boss. The man was the boss. And so, I think it took a lot for her to sort of stand up to him, and I think she regrets not standing up last time.
Lantigua-Williams:
Have you become more understanding of how your dad came to his politics? Or have you become even less understanding given all of the things that Trump spurred in the country?
Adela: So, okay, I will never, ever understand people who vote for Trump, so I’ve become less understanding of that over time. But I don’t think… My dad wasn’t voting for Trump.
Lantigua-Williams:
Right.
Adela: My dad was voting for Israel and he was voting for Republicans. So, I think he wished it wasn’t Trump, right? But it was more… So, in that vein, I can understand it. I think that’s why. I think had it been that he was a Trumper, that would have been just really hard for me.
Lantigua-Williams:
Okay, so since Trump leaving office and the new inauguration, and all of the conversations you’ve been having with your dad, have other issues surfaced that are important to him? Especially issues that are related to the democracy and the existence of the United States?
Adela: You know, I don’t know. And I am staying very far away from conversations like that with my dad, and he is surprisingly staying away from conversations with me about it. So, that’s why I think that there’s sort of a stubbornness to him that he just won’t admit he was wrong. So, we haven’t talked about it and I’m staying pretty far away from it, and I will say that I have… You know, as horrible as everything, as just January 6th was, like I hate to say this, but I was unsurprised, and that makes me incredibly sad to say that.
Not to say I’m a fortune teller by any stretch of the imagination, but you know, this was just like, “Okay, my nightmare is actually happening in reality. I’ve seen this happen a thousand times already and this is really not surprising to me.” It’s very sad that I’m not surprised, but I’m not surprised.
Lantigua-Williams:
Right. No, so I think that there was definitely the collective gasp of, “This is happening in the United States.” For people who didn’t have any connection to countries where this happens, you know? In cycles. I think that that was definitely a first generational moment in which… Yeah, I’m stuck right in the middle of this, because my parents may have come from a country that very recently experienced this, or is currently under an authoritarian ruler, and then me enjoying the freedoms of being in the United States, and now witnessing something that we were supposed to leave behind.
Adela: Yep. Yeah.
Lantigua-Williams:
Right? Like, have you guys, maybe you and your mom talked about… Does this change how they see themselves in the U.S.?
Adela: Yeah. So, it’s a hard conversation to have with my mom. My mom is… I think she would call me a pessimist or a glass-half-empty type of person. Just because that’s sort of immediately where my mind goes, so like when I want to talk about it, she’s just sort of like an ostrich. In my mind, she’s an ostrich who wants to just stick her head in the sand and just doesn’t want to talk about it. You know, I think she’s one of these people who thinks, “Well, okay, all the problems are solved now that Biden’s in office and we don’t have to worry about it anymore.”
And I’m the person who’s like, “No, somebody smashed the vase on the ground, and we are not gonna be able to glue it back together. We’re gonna have to start over.” You know, there’s no just rewinding and pretending like the last four years didn’t happen.
Lantigua-Williams:
All right, so I’m gonna ask you an impolite question, which is do you think that that has to do with their class?
Adela: You know, I don’t know what that has to do with, because my mom is really well read, and she’s also very well versed in the history of World War II, so you know, history is repeating itself in a lot of ways, and so I’m sort of surprised. And maybe you’re right. Maybe it is just because she has the luxury and the privilege of being in the class that she’s in, and being comfortable, and not having to witness some of the things firsthand.
Lantigua-Williams:
Do you think that maybe your dad was one of these folks that maybe bought into disinformation? Or you still think that this is just the one issue voter mentality of, “I’m going to really ignore what else is impacted by my vote because with this vote I get to vote for the thing that is most important to me.”
Adela: No, I think my dad was 100% swayed by propaganda. I think it was not the typical propaganda that you think of when you think of misinformation around Trump. I think it was specifically about Israel, but about misinformation, about policies and actions around Israel. Like he’s sending me stuff about the U.N. and resolutions against Israel that they’ve never done against other countries. So, my dad’s well informed. He’s also well read. But it wasn’t like the QAnon nonsense with like… It wasn’t that kind of misinformation I think that was getting through to my dad. It was more like this… like he would get…
I’ll give you an example. My dad would get emails, and again, this is not about Trump. It’s about a larger kind of anti-Semitic… and anti-Semitism exists. 100%, it exists. But he would get emails that, you know, the U.K. is going to be eliminating the Holocaust from its curriculum. And then he would send it to me, and he’d be like, “Can you believe this?” And I was like, “No, I can’t believe this. Let me look into it.” And then I’d look into it and it’s like nonsense. It’s fake. Just fake.
And I would send it to him, and I’d be like, “You know, all you have to do is go to this site called Snopes. I will bookmark it for you, and you can just type in a couple keywords and see if it’s true.” But in the meantime, he’s already done the damage, because he’s forwarded it to everybody on his contact list and 80% of those people are exactly like him and will just believe it without researching it. It’s that kind of stuff, and I don’t know what that comes from. I don’t know where that comes from.
I think that there’s like an underlying reason that those kinds of fake news stories are going out and there might be something around sort of… You know, you’ll see Jews for Trump, that kind of thing, right? Because Jewish people have traditionally been Democrat. Like as a group, I think a big portion are Democrats. But there’s been movement from that group toward the Republican side recently, and I wonder how much those kinds of news pieces are sort of soft pushes for them to push people that way, do you know what I mean?
Lantigua-Williams:
Yeah. The propaganda has been not only relentless, but ubiquitous. And also intangible in many ways, precisely because of how fast it spreads, so that by the time you identify it, so much damage has been done. Last question from me is has your dad donated to political campaigns, supported in any material way any politicians or political platforms or any groups?
Adela: I doubt it. I don’t know for sure, but like you would I mean knock me over with a feather if I found out that he had donated to a political cause, because he is-
Lantigua-Williams:
Why?
Adela: Well, because he just believes… He just thinks all of that is just BS and he’s just not… He’s not into donating anything, anytime, ever, you know? He’s just not that type of person.
Lantigua-Williams:
Okay, then.
Adela: Like maybe just used clothes and stuff, but he’s not gonna donate his hard-earned money toward a cause. Yeah.
Lantigua-Williams:
Yeah. I hear you. Thank you so much for coming back.
Adela: You’re welcome.
Lantigua-Williams:
If you haven’t yet, listen to Adela’s original episode. It’s called Dad Voted For Trump, and you can find it on our feed, on our website, anywhere you’re listening to the show right now.
How to Talk to [Mamí and Papí] About Anything is an original production of Lantigua Williams & Co. Virginia Lora produced this episode. Kojin Tashiro mixed it. Manuela Bedoya is our social media editor. Cedric Wilson is our lead producer. I’m the show’s creator, Juleyka Lantigua-Williams. On Twitter and Instagram, we’re @TalktoMamiPapi. Please, please, please, please, please subscribe, and rate us, and share us, and tweet about us, and all of the things. You can rate us on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, and anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts. Bye, everybody. Same place next week.
CITATION:
Lantigua-Williams, Juleyka, host. “OG Check-in: Dad Voted for Trump, Again 42.”
How to Talk to [Mamí & Papí] About Anything,
Lantigua Williams & Co., February 15, 2021. TalkToMamiPapi.com.