April Ryan doesn’t want to lose Trump-supporting friends, ‘let’s talk after the election’

Embed from Getty Images
I haven’t checked TMZ in months. I stopped reading them after their positive coverage of Trump. They’ve been toxic in their coverage of women. Plus they’ve hurt so many families of celebrities we’ve lost by needing to be first to break the news of deaths. Today I checked their headlines and wanted to report on this interview with April Ryan. You may know April as the veteran White House press corps reporter who regularly challenges Trump and is often a direct target of his racism. She called into TMZ and talked about how she deals with her Trump-supporting friends – with kid gloves.

I know some people who support this president. I have said ‘look I have been attacked because I talk about racial unification.’ They turn it around and talk about other things. I’m like ‘but that’s part of it.’

Before the election we’d have conversations about issues. They would say ‘yeah I know he’s not the greatest person but this is what he’s doing.’

‘Do you realize I had to move my home [because of threats]?’

‘Yeah, but.’

It’s that but. I actually told one friend, I said ‘let’s talk after the election because I don’t want to lose you as a friend. This is very personal for me. I’m not telling you who to vote for, but I’m telling you who I’m not going to vote for because of how personal it got for me.’

[From video on TMZ]

How gracious is she?! Her life has been threatened and she had to move due to Trump targeting her and yet she’s still telling a Trump supporter she wants to keep him as a friend? That person absolutely deserves to be cut out! I have no Trump-supporting friends now and while I suspect I did pre-pandemic (we didn’t talk about it) that has definitely changed. This is not a time when you can reconcile or reason with those people, that has long passed. As a white woman I’m sure I was able to look past “politics” for way longer than I should have. My heart goes out to those of you with Trump-supporting family members.

This is basic good versus evil. The pro-Trump Republicans are the same ones spreading the virus around and cosigning violence against innocent people. I can’t tell pro-Trump people to get back to me at another time – I don’t want to talk to them again. I’m mad at the Bernie Bros too. I don’t give a sh-t about unity, frankly. I can be nice to people’s face if I need to talk to them, but they will never be my friends. I won’t give them my business either.

AprilRyan

AprilRyan2

Photos credit: Getty and via YouTube

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

25 Responses to “April Ryan doesn’t want to lose Trump-supporting friends, ‘let’s talk after the election’”

Comments are Closed

We close comments on older posts to fight comment spam.

  1. Lanie says:

    Gracious, but sad. Her “friend” is not really her friend if they made excuses for Trump while he was calling her out by. And and she had to move because of the death threats.

    This is the hard lesson for many people now. They’re finding out that you really can’t be friends with people who don’t see your humanity. It’s bad for your spirit and will wear you down.

    • Jamie says:

      ITA. I lost a lot of friends this way in 2016. I miss the memories we shared, but I am not interested in being friends with people who drain my life force.

  2. Heylee says:

    I don’t care about unity either. I’m not sorry about it. Human rights are a non negotiable for me. It makes me ill to think about what Trump had done to people over the past four years.

    I have now dumped all my Trump friends.

    I have always been politically radical and the past 4 years has just made me more so. And I like myself more now.

  3. teafortwo says:

    Nope. You have to choose good over evil, or risk being aligned with evil. Voting for Trump at this point is, IMO, evil. And I will not align with evil. The good news is that there are still some 70 million+ Americans who voted for Biden that you CAN align with.

  4. sa says:

    She’s a bigger person than I am. I had one friend that voted for him and when she defended him after a reporter asked about a rise in hate crimes and Trump responded by bragging about his electoral vote (this was pre-Charlottesville), that was enough for me.

    I’m sure it was much easier for me that I only had one casual friend (at least who admitted voting for him) and no family. If I lived in a pro-Trump area or had Trump supporting family, it probably wouldn’t be an option to stop engaging with them.

    • Joy says:

      My parents, brothers, in laws and extended family are big Trump lovers and it’s hard.

    • Carol says:

      @SA – I hear ya. I think its hard during Trumps era of terror to keep friends who support him. I have one close friend who became a trumper in the last 2 weeks (I think she was brainwashed by a vile ex-boyfriend) and she was spewing the most ludicrous conspiracy theories. We’ve stopped talking politics because neither of us want to destroy our friendship over this idiot.

  5. Megan2 says:

    One of my co-workers is American, and I knew she had voted for Trump in 2016. I don’t know her very well, but I always side-eyed her for that and for the fact that she basically voted for a fascist and then left the country. But, I had sort of thought that maybe she regretted it and wouldn’t do the same this year… but nope. I heard from a mutual friend that she is still pro-Trump and now I’m stuck working with this woman who, while I can definitely be polite and professional with at work, I would absolutely cut dead if I was ever asked to spend time with outside of that work environment. I am slightly comforted by the fact that she is by far the dumbest of all our co-workers, so at least it doesn’t feel as frustrating as it would if she was in any way competent at life.

    As an aside, while none of my family are Trump voters (Canadian eh), they are almost universally a bunch of racist rednecks. I have had no contact with them for a couple of years now due to that. My Dad passed away suddenly last month (not Covid), and I hadn’t seen him in 2 years. While I am so sad and the grief process has been complicated and difficult, I still feel like I made the right choice. And my family has shown me how right I was; two days after I got the news his brother called me to offer condolences and to try and ask me to talk to my boss at work about possibly adopting a new invoicing technology that he’s hawking. There have been a few of those instances in the first couple of weeks and… yeah. Ignorance shows itself in a lot of ways, not just racism, and I could never have people like that back in my life for any reason.

    TL:DR: Trump and anyone who voted for him and anyone who holds the same views as him can go take a long walk off a very short pier forever and ever.

    • Frida_K says:

      It may (or may not) be tough, but you’re doing the right thing, @Megan2.

      I have never EVER espoused the “well, it’s a difference of opinion” or “we need to get along” viewpoint with regard to that menace and his minions.

      There’s no excusing racism and hatred and genocide and if you’re on the tRump train, that’s the platform you stood on before getting on to ride.

      I’m not supporting that with niceties or forbearance.

    • bluemoonhorse says:

      Most of my family are Trumpers. I don’t talk w them or do social encounters w them. I don’t regret it in the least. Their ideas of what humanity is diverges to radically from my own.

  6. Beach Dreams says:

    Thankfully I don’t have that “problem”. No Trumpites in my circle.

  7. Midnight@theOasis says:

    For me, this comes down to a person’s character, values and morals. If you buy into anything Trump is selling then our values and morals don’t align and you cannot be in my life in any form. You’ve shown me who you truly are. And as Maya Angelou said “when a person shows you who they are, believe them.” Life is too short to have negative energy and discord disrupt your life.

  8. BearcatLawyer says:

    I still subscribe to JFK’s adage, “Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.” I keep some right wing Republican “friends” in my life primarily so I know exactly what misinformation and misguided beliefs they are spouting. I prefer to play both offense and defense when lives are on the line.

  9. Dragonlady sakura says:

    One of my coworkers is a sweet old lady who’s always been kind to everyone at work, but she’s also a Trump supporter and I can’t wrap my head around that.

  10. Leah says:

    I guess I’m lucky that way because none of my friends are trump supporters.

    I went to college with a Trump supporting older woman who had a minimum wage job and was disabled. She supported Trump to a degree that I couldn’t understand even after his negative remarks about disabled people. She made it a point to tell the rest of us (in a left leaning university in a very liberal city) that she voted for him. The retail chain she worked for started to go under even before the virus put a final nail in it and I’ve always wondered what happened to her.

  11. Sadiebelle says:

    I understand that people can have fundamentally different perspectives on life which can affect how they vote. I have many conservatives in my family. But… Trump? Just seems like the worst of human nature: no real principles or beliefs, just whatever gets him ahead. I have a similar problem where a work friend has started supporting the Tories over Brexit. Just ugh. She told me that ‘Boris is growing’ on her, I suggested that he could easily be removed….

  12. Bevvie says:

    I consider Trumpublicans (and all Republicans really at this point) to be of the absolute lowest moral and intellectual character. They are sub-human as far as I am concerned and I don’t care about unity either. I fired my best client right after he gassed peaceful protesters for the bible photo op because I had previously seen a big blue Trump 2020 flag flying on their home. F*ck that sh*t.

  13. Valerie says:

    Really? That isn’t my way. A lot of people came out of the woodwork and voiced their support for him once the pandemic started. They had kept quiet until then; before I knew it, online friends were posting about the “China virus” and spewing drivel about secret cabals and underground tunnels. There were a few I’d had my suspicions about, but they had been mum until then—and my instincts were right.

  14. SomeChick says:

    My dad has always voted republican. He’s a good guy otherwise, although he does always think he’s right, haha. We’re not very close (partly because he’s one of those men who just doesn’t talk about “personal” things). Back in 2016, we were speaking on the phone and I just had to ask him – with much trepidation – how he was planning to vote. He was like, “that guy? Aw HELL NO.” He sees him as an embarrassment to republicans. What a relief!

  15. Julia K says:

    We should all be more gracious; she is a better woman than most people I know. My motto has always been “I can forgive you a thousand times but I can trust you only once.”

  16. JRenee says:

    She’s far better than me. It’s not just opposing views, it’s about morals, humanity and democracy.

  17. MsIam says:

    A person who could still support Trump after knowing that their friend was threatened by Trump supporters has soul problems. Bless April’s heart for her generous spirit.

  18. Cali says:

    She is not a better woman, she is a silly woman to ignore the obvious that these “friends” aren’t her friend at all

    • Julia K says:

      She is not “silly”. That is a derogatory term directed mostly at females. I applaud her for feeling free and open enough to share her feelings, as is her right.