Rob Kelly

I have a confession to make: I did a bad thing. Something the younger me Would hate myself for doing. Something that only a few people (and maybe Bytedance) know: I voted Republican last November. I know, I know I can hear the crush of disappointed voices: Say it ain’t so, Joe. And yes, I can hear other voices cheering in the background, welcome to the club. * So I would like to take a few moments to explain this choice to my younger self who cast his first ballot for Al Gore in 2000. Young Joe, first of all, stop frosting the tips of your hair, it’s not cool. Secondly, those Democrats you’ve voted for your whole life aren’t the same party they used to be. Like your fashion sense, they’ve lost their way. Hopefully they’ll make an effort to win people like me back. * Yes, I know I’m late to the party on this, and there’s already a thick gold chain in the punch bowl. (I hope he drops the Facebook Files in there next.) But today we stop hiding the truth from our close Never Trumper friends: That we support a party that isn’t going to run this country into the ground. A country that people from all over the world dream about living in. I love our nation, our people, and even our standard measurement system. We were told by the media that loving this country meant hating Trump, and for many years I believed that. Until I committed the second greatest sin that I’d like to confess today: I did my own research. And I found something that shocked me. He is not a fascist determined to destroy democracy. He deeply cares about our nation. (I also happen to deeply care about our nation.) He deeply cares about safe cities. (I also like my car still being where I parked it in the morning.) He deeply cares about government efficiency and spending. (I also care about the next generation, and love the whole DOGE initiative.) He cares about bringing common sense back to our country. (So do I.) He cares about making our borders secure. (I actually don’t like going through the customs process myself, but I do respect the fact these safeguards exist.) * I did, however, find a problem, something that stopped me in my tracks, besides dropping a meme coin on the eve of the inauguration: One of his cabinet picks, RFK, is saying some pretty out-there things. I think the establishment may even be more afraid of him than Trump. For starters, this crazy guy wants to make our tap water safer to drink. This guy wants us to stop over-medicating. This guy wants to make our grocery store aisles less poisonous. This guy is clearly a threat to our way of life. Doesn’t he know how much money these companies make slowly killing us? So I did that bad thing again and looked into these ideas with an open mind. Lo and behold, I found out that they were exactly what our country needed. Desperately. Make America Healthy Again. Make America Great Again. Make America America Again. Say it with me, MAAA. * I’m guessing even young Joe wouldn’t have liked living in the eggshell ages of these last few years. A time of silence, shaming, and fear, where calling a duck a duck meant you hated ducks. It was kind of like the dark ages, complete with its own plague, but with more modern forms of torture, like having to watch CNN for news. So, if like me and many others, you also had a woke-up call, it’s time to talk about it. Better late than never. It’ll unburden you, and you’ll no longer have to live a lie, pretending like the other party had a good plan in place. And if you disagree, please don’t remove me from your Christmas card list. I certainly won’t remove you. I hope listening to each other will become the new shouting at each other. Together, we can make this nation great again, from the Gulf of America in the South all the way to the great state of Greenland in the North.