Monday, September 28, 2026
Vol. VIII
Est. 2019

The Mind Shield

News · Opinion · Politics · Analysis

“Fraud and liar”: Trump loses support among his most devoted fans.

“Fraud and liar”: Trump loses support among his most devoted fans.
Members of the Front Row Joes arrive early for a Trump rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, in 2022. Photo via The New Republic

Some members of a group of Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters are turning on him ahead of the midterm elections.

Two members of the Front Row Joes, a community of die-hard Trump superfans who travel the country to secure front-row seats at his rallies, told Politico’s Playbook that they have soured on the man they followed around the country for years.

Trisha Hope told the outlet that she joined the group in 2018 after publishing a book of Trump’s tweets, which helped to pay for her travels to Trump’s rallies, and even went to the Capitol to defend him in his impeachment trial.

“I went to every single senator’s office as well as Republican congressmen,” Hope said. “I did everything I could for him.”

Hope now calls Trump a “fraud and a liar,” adding that she lost faith in him over his response to the Epstein files.

“It was like a dagger in my heart,” Hope said. “It was like a light switch went on and a veil lifted, and I saw him for who he was, and I have not been able to unsee it since.”

The war in Iran vindicated her feelings.

“He’s said the war is over 600 different times. He tells us they don’t have a military, they don’t have a navy. They’re still blowing up things. It’s just all lies,” she said.

Meanwhile, Rick Frazier, one of the group’s founding members who has been to over 100 Trump rallies, says the MAGA leader “can’t be trusted.

“Epstein crimes and feeding the industrial military complex … those are big nos for me,” Frazier told Playbook. “He promoted himself as a no-war president. That didn’t work out.”

Frazier said he is done with politics for now.

“I’m to the point of not going to the polls in November,” he said.

Frazier admitted that a majority of the Front Row Joes remain “unwavering” in their support for Trump, but the fact that some members of the Trump loyalist group are souring on him is raising concerns about other non-MAGA voters who took a chance on Trump in 2024.

Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who also produced a documentary about the Front Row Joes, told Playbook that defections from loyalists make him more concerned heading into November about the softer voters who helped put Trump over the top without ever fully identifying with MAGA.

“Can another candidate even really pull off a rally?” Spicer said, noting it raises bigger questions about the party’s post-Trump future. “It’s like asking where Deadheads go after the Grateful Dead broke up.”