by Joseph Adamje AJ Feeney-Ruiz
Ten years ago next Tuesday, I left the victory party of what would be my last gig in politics or government. Twenty years of my life.
I had ended up running current Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita’s 2014 re-election campaign for Congress. Easy campaign to win in a heavy red district.
Todd is up for re-election on November 5. I met him in 2002, when he was on the campaign trail for Indiana’s Secretary of State. My team of DePauw University College Republicans canvassed and campaigned for him that November. Two years later, he hired me to work as his Communications Director – a role I held for two years and another Rokita re-election campaign.
The MAGA hate-filled, fake bravado, husk of a man-child that Todd has become in 2024 is not the person from 2002 that inspired an eager group of college kids over pizza. I have noted on Twitter (as a sort of therapy) that I’ve had a backstage pass to Todd’s descent into super-villainy. If you don’t know him, he’s not worth your time. But if you are curious, the vitriolic bile he has come to spew is not hard to find on the Internet. I am truly sorry for my part in the rise of Rokita and the pain Hoosiers and others have endured as a result.
Weirdly (and likely to his narcissistic disappointment), this is not about Todd. In a way, he saved me – not with a job out of college or after my unsuccessful 2012 campaign for the Indiana House, but because of his admiration for Donald Trump.
On our way to a late October campaign stop in 2014, Todd asked me what I thought of Trump. I gave my honest assessment that I felt he was and always had been a toxic presence that did not represent the Republican Party to which I had dedicated 2/3 of my life at that point.
I chose the GOP because of my admiration for Sen. Richard Lugar. A good man. A statesman. A leader and public servant for all. Trump was the anti-Lugar. Todd replied that he liked what he saw and later would brag that he was the first in Indiana to endorse Trump. That moment cut the last thread still connecting me to Todd.
Trump and his MAGA disciples are the embodiment of everything counter to what I hold dear. There is no compassion. No empathy. No integrity.
MAGA is a cult of bullies. A cult of hate. A cult of self-proclaimed ‘alpha males’ and their ilk, cosplaying as patriots who are so out of touch with reality that they think the government controls the weather, kids are getting gender reassignment surgery at the school nurse’s office, and that 50,000 people fit into arenas capped at far less than half that.
The world recently had a front row seat to witness MAGA’s racism, misogyny, and delusion at Madison Square Garden just days before Election Day. We have seen the burning of ballot boxes in heavily Democrat areas and attempts to skirt the law and purge voters from the rolls after federal deadlines. We have especially seen their xenophobia, ignorance of the law, and cruelty in these final days.
MAGA is also anti-democratic, and both a majority of supporters and their Dear Leader now openly lust for, and on the record, an authoritarian regime that Trump has said will punish their enemies – migrants, lawyers, media, supporters/donors of the opposition, etc – to great applause.
I’m going to skip MAGA’s terrible policies (social and economic) they have actually rolled out (while many others have been promised and not delivered for the past 8 years). Project 2025 (look it up if you are unfamiliar) is really the game plan for the next MAGA president (Trump or Vance). I worked as part of ‘the vast right wing conspiracy’ in early 2000s DC. At the time, these were fringe issues/papers/ideas that most didn’t take seriously or thought to be a pipe dream, until they got their champion in Trump. Now they are mainstream. These policies are bad, but I’m not basing my vote on just those this election.
Through my travels, I have had the odd opportunity be on the ground to see the last days of several democratic governments and movements and the dawn of fascist dictatorships. I have been in the thick of even more. Venezuela in 1998. Syria 2008-09. China/Hong Kong 2007-09/2015-16. Myanmar/Belarus/Russia 2016. Plenty of others to varying degrees. I also spent almost a decade of higher education studying authoritarian governments, movements, leaders, laws, and business. I am voting to preserve what we have left of our democractic institutions in the face of a potential MAGA authoritarian regime.
Democracy dies if we let it – if we voluntarily give power to those bullies. You see it happening already with the press at the LA Times and the Washington Post and the decisions of their billionaire owners to not endorse a candidate for President. You see it with how the GOP sold its soul to Trump in return for the illusion of their own power.
While there are still Republicans out there that have not bended the knee to MAGA, most have been consumed by the cult or are too afraid (for various reasons) to speak up. MAGA doesn’t end with a Trump defeat at the polls on November 5. It ends when we defeat every last candidate and elected official who wears that red hat or proudly waves their Trump endorsement in our faces.
There has never been a person that is less deserving of the pain this country and world have endured, than Donald Trump. He is a literal snake oil salesman; pimping fake Swiss watches, an obvious Crypto scheme, Bibles with his name on them, a meme stock, trading cards, apparel, etc in these final months. He is banking on reelection to escape accountability for his many adjudicated criminal actions. He has bragged about assaulting women. He owes half a billion dollars in legal judgments (so far) to his victims.
He is universally regarded as being a fraud as a ‘successful businessman’ by the very people who were paid to make him appear as one. He is opposed by 40 of 44 of his cabinet officials from his 2017-2021 presidency. His former senior aids, generals, and VP call him the most dangerous threat to our country. He already has encouraged his followers to overturn the results of the last election and openly says he will do it again if he does not win.
If you care to dig deeper into any of this, I have done my best to curate thoughts, articles, videos, etc. on my un-retired Twitter @ajfeeneyruiz. I hope to never have to use that vile cesspool of an app again after next Tuesday.
I never really got to say goodbye to politics and government. The decision to completely walk away took a few months and a move to the other side of the earth, and I never felt the need to address it. This is my farewell to that chapter of my life – ten years delayed and after the fact.
On November 5, I will be voting for every Democrat on the ballot, and will be voting to not retain the Indiana Supreme Court justices who stripped Hoosier women of their own bodily autonomy under the cover of bad legislation. I will continue to do this until every last MAGA candidate and politician is gone from office.
I have just my vote, but I know I’m not alone. Please take a stand for democracy. Choose country over party, and make Indiana purple again. Choose hope. Choose joy. Choose kindness. Choose integrity. Choose compassion. Choose to end the MAGA/Trump era on November 5.
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Joseph Adamje AJ Feeney-Ruiz worked for Rokita as his press secretary and on his re-election campaign.
