Now, just before the mid-term election in November, 2018, the enthusiasm for Donald Trump’s leadership seems to be greater than ever, to judge by the size of his rallies, the rapturous applause that greets him and his every statement. People wait through the night to get into a stadium where he is to speak the following night. Tens of thousands get in, more tens of thousands watch him on screens and listen to him outside. Though the weather is cold. Though the mainstream media tell voters that he is as bad as the worst dictator who has ever lived, this generous, unaffected, extremely capable businessman, with a star’s charisma and all the right values, has won the love and trust of at least half the American people.

And thousands are walking away from the Democratic Party, discovering, probably to their surprise, that they are Trump supporters. They have formed a movement called #WalkAway, founded and led by Brandon Straka.

Brandon Straka

How the revelation that Trump Is Right came to this former Democrat, Jani Allan records at the Epoch Times:

When you are a gay, strikingly handsome cosmetologist, hairdresser, singer, and a theater actor in New York City, chances are you’re also a Democrat.

On the night that Trump won the presidential election, Brandon Straka wept; there are pictures of him crying.

He said:

I was devastated. I still believed the media! … They told us that Trump was a racist, a bigot, and a homophobe. I thought he would harm black, Jewish, and gay people; he was “dog-whistling” to hate groups. We were told that hate crimes were spiking and that Vice President Mike Pence was going to advocate conversion therapy for gays. …

The Democratic party was my tribe.

Then he began to notice a discrepancy between what the media said and what was actually happening.

A friend showed him a compilation video of the media trashing Trump. …

I saw all the moments that were replayed by the mainstream media. Remarks taken out of context. Black people edited out of audience shots. Endless fodder for the Trump-haters. Then the Charlottesville rally happened. I had had my eyes opened to how dishonest the media is and how they manipulate people’s behavior and then, they twist the narrative again. At Charlottesville, I saw clearly that Antifa are the aggressors. They become violent, but the media never denounce the violence of the left. More recently, there was the Kavanaugh lynching. There is no level to which the left will not stoop. [To them] the ends justify the means.”

Last year he wrote, produced, and sang Resist: A Rock Revolution. What began as a demi-opera — something written by a liberal devastated by Trump’s election — grew into Straka’s personal journey to conservatism. …

A friend warned him about speaking out.

Which made him all the more determined to speak out.

There is a reason it’s called the silent majority. There are reasons people don’t speak out and say, “Something is very wrong here.” They are afraid of being shunned by their friends, losing work, being considered crazy because they are no longer part of the hive-mind. Look what they did to Kanye West when he went to the White House. I wish I could reach out to him! But it just needs one person to speak up, one person to say, “The emperor isn’t wearing any clothes.”

Straka speaks as though slightly amazed …

Then, one day, I was jogging in Central Park and it came to me in a flash. I am not going to be silent! As a gay man, especially, I am going to be the unsilent minority.

That’s when  he decided to do the #WalkAway Campaign and make a video to launch it.

I wrote the script in 20 minutes. It was as if there was a printer in my mind. After I finished, I thought, “Everybody needs to hear this! … I’m an actor and a singer. I am good at setting a stage and telling a story. …”

A friend pointed the camera at him. This is what he said:

Once upon a time I was a liberal, but the Left has devolved into intolerant, inflexible, illogical, hateful, misguided, ill-informed, un-American, hypocritical, menacing, callous, ignorant, narrow-minded and, at times, blatantly fascistic behavior and rhetoric. Liberalism has been co-opted and absorbed by the very characteristics it claims to fight against. The Left has allowed themselves to become hypnotized by false narratives and conclusions perpetuated by social-justice warriors who misrepresent and misconstrue facts, evidence, and events, to confirm their own biases that everyone who does not comply with their prejudicial conclusions and follow their orders is a racist, a bigot, a Nazi, a white supremacist, homophobic, Islamophobic, xenophobic, misogynistic, and alt-right extremist. 

It was May 26 when he posted the video, which he edited himself, on social media.  

Five months later, Straka has more than 97,000 followers on Twitter, and his Facebook video has been viewed a million times.  

The movement has been endorsed by Sarah Palin, Dinesh D’Souza, Tomi Lahren, Roseanne Barr, and Robert “Buzz” Patterson (who walked away after serving as the senior military aide to President Bill Clinton). 

Straka has become a cynosure of attention. … People like Candace Owens, from the conservative advocacy group Turning Point USA, are contacting him.

I didn’t think when I released my video I would be celebrating at a fancy hotel wearing an “I Love Trump” top hat and tuxedo.

Then this happened, to Straka’s immense delight:

On Oct. 27, he received a tweet from the president himself:

#Walkaway. Walkaway from the Democrat Party movement marches today in D.C. Congratulations to Brandon Straka for starting something very special. 

On Saturday October 27, 2018, “Straka and his ‘unsilent minority’ took the #WalkAway movement to Washington” and he led a march of thousands. 

The event was totally ignored by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, ABC’s Joy Behar, and the late night comedians. In fact, apart from Fox and the New York Post, none of the mainstream media covered the event.

Still, everyone [who knew about it] agreed that the #WalkAway from the Democratic Party D.C. march was a “YUGE” success.

So what lies ahead for Straka? That is, apart from his newfound political clout.

He said:

I want to make documentaries about American culture … I want to make it cool to be a patriot and an American.

Which can only mean an American who honors and will defend the Constitution. A citizen of the Constitutional Republic of the United States.

Americans are bound into a nation by the Constitution. Nothing else.

Is this the start of a big enough trend to wreck the Democratic Party, or at least to force a total revision of its policies, values, methods, and aims?

A former Democrat, Brandon Straka, is leading a movement of which he says:

Today I’m kicking off the #WalkAway campaign by releasing my video about why I am walking away from liberalism and the Democratic Party.

It is my sincere hope that you will join me in this campaign and that we may start a movement in this country – which not only encourages others to walk away from the divisive left, but also takes back the narrative from the liberal media about what it means to be a conservative in America. It is up to all of us to make our voices heard and reclaim the truth.

The Democratic Party has taken for granted that it owns racial, sexual, and religious minorities in America. It has encouraged groupthink, hypocrisy, division, stereotyping, resentment, and the acceptance of victimhood mentality. And all the while, they have discouraged minorities from having independent thought, open dialogue, measured and informed opinion, and a motivation to succeed.

Please like and share my video, and please post your own #WalkAway video!! If you are a former liberal who has walked away from the left, please share your story, or your message, or your thoughts in a video on the WalkAway Campaign Facebook Page.

If you are a lifelong conservative or non-Democrat, please share your story, message, or thoughts on what it truly means to be a conservative. Right now, the liberal media continues to perpetuate a false narrative about the “hateful” and “bigoted” right. Use your voice to let people know who conservatives really are. Be sure to use the hashtag #WalkAway.

Please like and follow me on Facebook and Twitter:
@usminority
The Unsilent Minority
and subscribe to my YouTube channel: The Unsilent Minority
https://youtu.be/4Pjs7uoOkag

Celia Farber writes at the Epoch Times:

Some 5 million people on Facebook and YouTube have seen the video by now. A very handsome gay man, who you just assume is about to scold you on progressive talking points, instead says this:

They gather at his two Facebook groups, “The Unsilent Minority” and “WalkAway Campaign.” Those who have the courage post their own video testimonials about the moment when the abuse, rage, and ugliness of the Democrats caused them to finally leave the party and “walk away”. 

“This is so much more than a hashtag on Twitter,” he said. “This is a testimonial campaign, a grassroots movement that is going to change the political landscape of this country.”

And that’s the astonishing twist here: If these people have been driven into the arms of Donald Trump, who’s left on the left? …

Those who are walking away are not Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables”, but rather, in many cases, lifelong Democrats who simply could not take it any longer and have longed for this very moment, when somebody like them would make it safe for them to come out of the closet and speak their minds. …

A man adjusts his video camera and sits back. The walls behind him are a tasteful grey-blue. He’s a gay, affluent, native New Yorker, and he’s coming out of the second closet of his life. For Ricky Roberts, the moment came after the Orlando nightclub shootings.

“Trump said he was going to protect gay men, and he did, [with] the travel ban. Hillary was telling Americans not to ‘pick on all Muslims because of this’,” and that did not feel like protection, Roberts says. … “I can’t do it anymore. I really can’t. You know, listen, I’m a gay guy from New York City, but before that, I’m an American, I’m a patriot. …”

His assessment of the Democrats: “From immigration to everything, they are just a disaster. They’re anti-American, anti-common sense, [anti-]rational — anything good, they’re against it.”

It took Brandon Straka himself a little longer than that to see the light:

Straka, who grew up in a small town in Nebraska, was on board with the fear and loathing campaign around Trump until he began asking people back home why they had voted for him. To his astonishment, they told him about Obama-era regulations that had crippled their small businesses.

He started to research media canards like the one about Trump supposedly mocking a disabled reporter. When he found that it was a total distortion, he kept going, his anger rising.

He eventually became “completely “red-pilled”.  And isolated. He told himself that he would have to give up his lifelong dream of becoming an actor if he hit the “publish” button on his video, but, encouraged by one conservative gay friend, he decided to go ahead.

“This was a matter of the media specifically using and manipulating people’s deepest fears, based on legitimate traumas,” he explained.

Many gay people have experienced very serious homophobia and even physical violence. Can you imagine manipulating a domestic violence survivor’s fears just for political purposes? It’s insane. I was afraid of losing all my friends. As I began posting about these things on social media, people started attacking me and unfriending me. But I thought, “You know what, this is too important.” Maybe it’s the fact that I’m a gay man and I’ve already been through this — people making up lies about what it means to be gay and trying to shame me. … [But] the more resentment I received, the stronger I got. Finally, I thought, “To hell with it. I’m just going to blow the lid off this whole thing and make this video.”

The video has garnered 1.3 million views on his Facebook page and has been shared on many other popular pages. It is estimated to have reached some 5 million viewers so far.

There are some 27,000 followers of the Facebook group, with new people posting both video and text testimonials every day. Straka calls them “the patriots”.

Initially, my focus was on the gay community because I was so angry at how they were [being terrorized]. Then I thought, why should I limit it to just us? They’re doing the same thing to black people. And Hispanic people. And frankly, they’re doing the same thing to everybody in one way or another. But it’s really the minorities in America who don’t feel like we have a choice. That’s what they keep telling us over and over: “You’re not safe on the right. They don’t want you on the right. They hate you on the right. You’re only safe with us. We are here to protect you.” Meanwhile, are you kidding me? You’re here to “protect” me? All you are doing is use my fears to scare the [expletive] out of me — to terrify me and to try to manipulate the way that I vote.

Libby Albert, one of the WalkAway Facebook group members, said “This is taking off,” citing the snowstorm of thousands of hashtags on Twitter. “It’s kind of incredible.”

Said another: “It’s kind of incredible. It’s OK. Walk away.”