I Was Giddy When FBI Raided Mar-A-Lago. Now I’m Voting Trump

By most metrics, I’d be categorized as a young conservative. I am a 22-year-old college student. I interned for a Republican in the U.S. Senate. I was elected president of my former college’s Republican club. No one would mistake me for a progressive activist.

But if you had asked me a year ago about the 2024 presidential election, I would have told you that I was hopeful the Republican Party would move on from Donald Trump. In fact, I would have supported Joe Biden before backing Trump, even though I did not like much of anything about Biden.

I believed that Trump had to be stopped at all costs.

I eagerly watched the Jan. 6 Committee hearings. I was excited when New York State Attorney General Letitia James sued Trump for financial fraud. When legal scholars from the Federalist Society wrote that the 14th Amendment barred him from the presidency, I was hopeful he might finally be done for good. When the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, I felt justice might soon be served against the man who had brought our country to the brink.

I saw the Democratic Party’s policies as harmful, but at the time I believed that temporary damages were worth it if it meant keeping Trump from regaining power.

But over the past year, my view of Trump has evolved, and my view of the broader political landscape has also changed. It became clear to me that while Trump is far from perfect, he is not the true existential threat. The existential threat we face comes from the Democrat Party and Kamala Harris.

The Democrat Party is endangering the foundations that hold America together. This threat is multidimensional, but no concern is more immediate than the Democrats’ creation and defense of an immigration system that has completely abandoned integration and favors the interests of newcomers over those of the American people.

America is not merely a set of ideals. We are a nation — a distinct cultural and political entity. We are a people united by our history and traditions — bound together by an identity much weightier than the parchment on which our founding documents were inscribed.

In the past year, I came to realize that we are not just voting for the next four years; we are deciding what kind of country we want to live in for the rest of our lives. This is especially true for people my age. The America my peers and I will call home throughout adulthood — the America in which we will raise our families — is being shaped at this moment.

The radical immigration regime Americans are being subjected to represents not merely a shift in policy but a fundamental reconstruction of our nation. We are at a critical juncture where the values and cultural heritage that have defined us for generations are being subverted, and if we don’t act decisively, we risk losing the essence of what it means to be American.

Our defining customs, norms, and traditions — including our long-held belief in free speech — are eroding. Our cherished national character is being undermined by an immigration system that fails to protect and prioritize these foundational elements. Our way of life is being displaced in our homeland by an overwhelming influx of migrants who, in the truest sense, are foreign. The sheer volume of new arrivals makes the challenge of instilling a shared sense of identity and belonging nearly insurmountable.

We need to face this reality. Current immigration trends are unsustainable. Untold millions of migrants — receiving ever-increasing coddling from an ever-expanding welfare state and subjected to ever-decreasing assimilatory pressures — constitute a foundational problem for the nation.

Instead of fostering unity, we are creating a fractured society. People are retreating into enclaves, separated by language, culture, and values, with a diminishing sense of shared national identity. The immigration policies imposed on our country in recent years must not only be halted immediately, but decisive action must be taken to reverse their effects. Otherwise, we risk solidifying our decline into a fragmented population, unable to sustain the cohesion necessary for our survival as a unified people.

If we allow this cultural disintegration to continue, we are heading toward a future in which America ceases to exist in a meaningful capacity. Even if the United States survives as a governmental entity, our country is on course to become a hollowed-out version of what it once was, with our collective future sacrificed to placate the left and its self-loathing.

This is why I’ve changed my mind about Donald Trump. He is not the perfect candidate, but he is the only candidate willing to confront the greatest danger we face: irreversible damage to our cultural and political fabric caused by the reckless immigration policies of the Democrats, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris.

We cannot afford to be shortsighted. A year ago, it would have been unthinkable for me to say this, but in 2024, I’m supporting Donald Trump — not because I endorse all that he says or does, but because he’s the only one willing to take decisive action to preserve America’s future.

Johnathon McCartney is an undergraduate student at the University of Florida, a former U.S. Senate intern, and a past president of his former college’s Republican club. He is also a political content creator and has written as an opinion columnist for a student publication.