'It's a tragedy': Former Trump supporter explains why he finally rebelled

After voting for Donald Trump in the United States' 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, Alabama resident Kyle Sweetser finally rebelled and didn't support him in 2024. Sweetser refused to vote for Trump a third time, leaving the GOP and registering as a Democrat. Now, Sweetser is running for the U.S. Senate in Alabama, where he is hoping to take on incumbent Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) in 2026 if he wins the Democratic nomination and makes it to the general election.

Sweetser discussed his campaign with Salon's Charles R. Davis during an interview published in the Q&A form on May 17.

The ex-Republican didn't sugarcoat the fact that he is fighting an uphill battle in deep red Alabama, which Trump won by a landslide in 2024. While Trump defeated Democratic nominee Kamala Harris by 14 percent in Texas, he carried Alabama by 30 percent.

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"After 2020, specifically after January 6, I decided to do everything in my power to kind of fight against — speak out against — the direction the GOP was going in," Sweetser told Salon. "Aside from economic issues, I noticed, you know, societal issues, especially down here in the South. My wife is half Thai and going in and out of houses and working in construction, people are a lot more comfortable having people tell you that, basically, they hate immigrants…. They're teaching people to be xenophobic, they're teaching people now to be racist, and they're teaching people to be sexist. And that was going away."

Sweetser added, "So like I said, I decided I had to do everything for power to fight back against it."

The Alabama resident argued that in 2024, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Halen's presidential campaign gave Republicans a chance to "right the ship" — and they nominated Trump instead.

Sweetser decided there was "really no place for socially liberal Republicans" in the GOP and decided he had more in common with Harris.

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"Some of the policies that Trump shifted to would be considered far left," Sweetser told Salon. "And honestly, the truth behind it is, Kamala Harris, the way that she ran her campaign, hopping in there late was, I thought was excellent. She was more conservative than Trump on — as far as the principled conservative goes — on pretty much everything from her economic policy to her foreign policy, to her law-and-order stance and the Constitution…. If you look at Trump, and you look at his stance in those ways, he's not a conservative — he's a right-wing populist."

When Salon asked Sweetser if running as a Democrat in Alabama is a "noble suicide mission" given how deep red the state is, he responded, "There is a grand opportunity."

Sweetser continued, "It's sad how the state of Alabama has been left by the Republican Party, and it's a tragedy…. I mean, we are in bad shape down here. I'll be honest with you: We're in bad shape. I'm so proud of Alabama. I'm proud of the people that live here. But the bottom line is that 40 percent of our population lives in poverty, and we die quicker than everybody else in the United States, almost; we're 49th in life expectancy, and a lot of that is related to poverty. People don't have the access or the ability to get the health care that they need. We've got sky-high infant mortality rates here, likely due to poverty."

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Read Salon's full interview with Kyle Sweetser at this link.