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Share on bsky*Editor’s note: Elephant Journal articles represent the personal views of the authors, and can not possibly reflect Elephant Journal as a whole. Disagree with an Op-Ed or opinion? We’re happy to share your experience here.
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*Author’s note: This was written before the 2025 holiday season. Life happened and I didn’t get it posted. Now with the mindboggling events that have occurred in 2026 (and January isn’t even over), I thought it was too late. However, history is happening and it needs to be chronicled. This is one small piece of history that is important to me.
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This photo was taken on November 6, 2025.
It’s been a few months since the event in this photo took place. When I first saw it, I thought it was AI.
Surely this couldn’t be the president of the United States’ reaction to a medical emergency during a meeting?
But I saw the video of this event, and it showed the photographer snapping this picture of Donald Trump as journalists were escorted from the room because someone in the meeting had collapsed. In the firehose of atrocities and mayhem this administration creates, this photo was quickly washed away and replaced with the next “chaos of the day.”
But there is something about this scene that I keep returning to, that keeps me intrigued. Some message hidden in plain sight.
Back in the summer of 2024, before the election, I met up with an acquaintance from high school. After some chit chat, he pointed to my Kamala Harris T-shirt and said, “I’m confused. Our dads, I mean…I know your dad was conservative. He voted Republican, right?”
Now it was my turn to be confused. Is this person saying that I, a 60-plus-year-old woman, have no reasoning ability to make choices beyond that of my dead father? I could go on about the misogynistic implications of his query, but he continued.
He went on, talking about how our families were “conservative”—Catholic, therefore pro-life, therefore vote Republican. I listened to him prattle on, almost justifying to himself this stance of being Republican. Maybe that’s part of it right there. Republican as a state of being—no thought or deciphering the reality of what’s happening right now. Just like being Catholic. You don’t question anything about it. You simply go thru the motions because that’s “how you were raised.”
He wasn’t asking for my input, so I simply listened. When there was a pause I said, “The Republican party is not what it once was. It is now a right-wing hate group.”
He had nothing to say about that and quickly changed the subject.
By the time this conversation took place, Donald Trump (the Republican presidential candidate) had been adjudicated by two separate juries to be liable for sexual abuse. I’m sure people who pull the lever for Republicans because “that’s what daddy does” had no idea about these cases. (At least that’s what I tell myself so I can continue to walk among them.) The case had headlines for a day or two, but the Republicans ignored it, Trump continued to deny and play victim, and more chaos was quickly created to erase it from the news cycle.
So, to review, a woman, E. Jean Carroll, was one of the many women who came forward to say Trump had sexually abused them in some fashion. For whatever reason, Trump focused on Carroll and repeatedly made defamatory statements about her. She finally sued him for this defamation. The jury awarded her $5 million and the judge said, “Stop talking about her.”
Trump didn’t even make it out of the courthouse before continuing his derogatory tirade.
Carroll wasn’t standing for this. This man was threatening her career, her family, even her life. So, she took him back to court and this time she had to lay out the gory details of how he assaulted her. After listening to her experience with Trump, this jury decided on an $83.3 million defamation award, and the subsequent appeals court (because Trump appeals every verdict against him) determined this dollar amount as being “reasonable in light of the extraordinary and egregious facts.”
In the closing statements, the judge said what Trump did to Carroll met all the criteria of rape—forced, non-consensual, restraint of the victim, and penetration. However, for it to be labeled “rape” in this particular jurisdiction, penetration needed to be done with a penis. Trump used his fingers. (Evidently, “Grab ‘em by the pussy” wasn’t just a cat call.) Therefore, legally, it was labeled “sexual abuse.”
Maybe the term “sexual abuse” doesn’t hold people’s attention. They tend to dismiss it. Ignore it. Forget about it. But for me, who has experienced rape, it doesn’t matter how you downplay it. Rape is rape. And while the injured party can heal, it leaves a hell of a scar that doesn’t fade.
A few months later, the election was held and Donald Trump, a confirmed sexual abuser, was elected president of the United States.
I guess rape is okay with the “I’m conservative, Catholic, pro-life” crowd. What if it was your wife, girlfriend, daughter, sister, mother? It doesn’t matter. A vote for Trump said you were fine with this assault on women.
For days after the election, I walked around in stunned disbelief. Shock. Raw. Exposed. Unsafe.
People I interact with in my daily life had said rape was okay with them.
In writing this, I kept going down rabbit holes, trying to list some of the more abhorrent actions that have occurred in this administration, hoping to awaken some sense of decency. But I realized all that information is already out there if people choose to look.
Unfortunately, living blindly in the “I’m Republican” bubble is easier than discernment.
Trump will not last. Even as we speak, he is so far into what many believe is dementia that he belongs in the locked ward of a memory care unit—certainly not someone equipped to wield the powers of the presidency. However, I don’t believe the Republicans will remove him from office despite the threat he presents to the safety of this country. The Republicans put him there to begin with. They have supported, defended and protected this man and all the hateful, hurtful, vengeful, destructive harms that this administration has inflicted on people, not only in this country, but in the world.
And, in my opinion, the Republicans will perpetuate this path of destruction laid out by Trump when he is gone.
I reluctantly realized that regurgitating harms done won’t change minds or hearts. The conservative, Catholic, pro-life, therefore vote Republican faction—where “pro-life” is a buzzword used to further subjugate women and doesn’t stretch to cover actual living, breathing humans—will continue to vote Republican no matter the evidence presented.
Maybe that is why this photo is so striking to me. The vacant, soulless eyes. Standing apart, isolated. Back turned on someone’s suffering, someone in need. Annoyed that attention is being given to someone other than himself. This is what the Republican party represents today. Backs turned on the people they were elected to represent. Backs turned on the suffering that is being inflicted by their party. Annoyed and scapegoating when anyone points it out.
I look at this picture and cringe. This is not me. This is not what I want for my kids, my grandkids, my family, my friends, my neighbors, my co-workers. This is not what I want for my country.
So yes, I was raised in a conservative, Catholic, pro-life, Republican family. While these labels once denoted a moral stance, they now provide a coverup for crimes against humanity. They no longer represent me, if they ever did.
And that is why I don’t vote like daddy.
Afterword:
It bothers me the way this ends. It wasn’t my intent to write just another rant. So what is my purpose in writing this?
I recently read about this study, the Asch Conformity Experiments, where several people in a room are asked a simple question that has an obvious correct answer. It was found that if everyone answered the question incorrectly, the last person to answer will give the wrong answer also, in order to fit in—staying silent and doubting their truth.
The need to belong is deeply ingrained in our survival, and we’ll set aside what we know in our hearts to be true if honoring that means being ostracized.
However, there comes a time when we can no longer deny our truth. It’s crazy making! It’s crazy making to hear someone say they’re pro-life and then vote people into Congress who refuse to pass gun control laws, so our children continue to get blown away by gunfire in their classrooms.
It’s crazy making when someone says they are a good Catholic/Christian who follows Jesus, and then put people in office who are rounding up kids, grandparents, mothers, fathers and putting them in concentration camps or deporting them to someplace where they’ll be tortured or killed.
These same pro-lifers voted for Republicans who reneged on money already appropriated to USAID allowing 15 million people to starve and die from disease—5 million of them children. The inconsistencies can no longer be ignored. The Republican party today resembles a cult more than a political party.
Our souls know they are the “wrong” answer.
But here’s the interesting part of the study. If just one other person in the room answers correctly, then the one who is questioning their answer, their truth, will be bolstered up enough to answer correctly too. Not everyone. Not the majority. Just one. All it takes is just one other person to stand with you to give you the power to own your truth, even while surrounded by people clinging to the “wrong” answer.
I needed to share this in order to connect with others to stand with me so I can own my truth. And maybe, hopefully, someone who believes they are alone in this sea of ignorance will read this and see that they are not crazy. They are not alone.
We are not alone. We just need to stand together.
We will. We are.
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