Seven years ago, Stepfanie Tyler marched through Las Vegas wearing a black and white t-shirt emblazoned with the words “F— Trump” and an unflattering picture of the newly inaugurated president’s face.
Now the former women’s studies major wants to know if MAGA hats come in black.
“Seeing Trump stand up and pump his fist in the air after an attempted assassination, something inside me was like, ‘Oh. Patriotism. I feel it,’” Tyler told Fox News Digital Monday in her first news interview.
Stepfanie Tyler pictured in 2017 at a women’s march in Las Vegas. She felt herself falling out of step with the left in recent years and said Saturday’s assassination attempt solidified her decision to vote for former President Donald Trump this November. (Courtesy Stepfanie Tyler)
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Tyler’s social media following exploded over the weekend when the assassination attempt on the former president spurred her to “come out” as a Trump supporter.
“[W]atching Trump survive an assassination attempt and act like a total f—ing savage just shifted me into some strange, patriotic gear that my fancy-feminism-white-men-bad infected brain never showed me,” she wrote on X after a brief summary of her liberal background.
“[S]orry, but I’m voting for that,” she added in the post, which was viewed tens of millions of times in the 24 hours after she wrote it.
As of Thursday morning, the post had been viewed more than 57 million times on X.
Now the entrepreneur and AI enthusiast with a background in marketing has caught the attention of Elon Musk, been deemed a “must read” by Bill Ackman, and received an outpouring of direct messages from individuals still too afraid to publicly voice their political opinions. She calls the experience “surreal” and “freeing.”
“It does seem a little hard to wrap your head around coming from women’s studies and ending up here,” she said. “I never thought this would be the case, but you know people grow and change and evolve and now I’m here.”
Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump reacts as multiple shots rang out during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, July 13, 2024. (Reuters/Brendan McDermid)
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Tyler, 35, described herself as “pretty far left” going into college. She lost touch with her conservative father, who became a police officer around the time she was getting into women’s studies.
“Obviously, those two things clashed at the time,” she said, taking full responsibility for the political wedge driven between father and daughter. “He did not care for one second who I voted for.”
Tyler said her transformation from crying over the 2016 election results to publicly endorsing Trump was built by dozens of tiny moments over the years — excesses of the Me Too movement, the debate over biological sex, and the consequences of DEI policies, to name a few.
But she had long feared speaking up about her true opinions — “People will destroy your livelihood,” the entrepreneur said — and even doubted whether her skepticism of liberal ideology was valid.
“I felt at the time like … there’s a reason that everybody’s saying this,” she said. “Clearly I’m missing something.”
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Despite secretly registering as a Republican in 2018, she voted for Biden two years later, believing him to be a better option than the businessman from Queens. She credits Trump’s nearly hour-long appearance last month on the “All-In” podcast, hosted by four venture capitalists, with starting to open her mind.
“‘This sounds nothing like what I thought he sounds like based on CNN clips or viral clips on social media,’” she recalled thinking.
Then came Saturday, and Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The 20-year-old suspected shooter gunned down a father and badly injured two other spectators before being killed by U.S. Secret Service personnel.
Tyler was cooking dinner when a friend texted her about the attempted assassination. She switched on the TV and saw a replay of the shooting moments after it happened.
Watching the former president touch the side of his head, then disappear behind the podium, she felt a sense of clarity.
“He better get up,” she thought, her food abandoned in the kitchen.
And then he did, punching the air as blood dripped down his face, an American flag billowing in the background in an image Tyler and many others have labeled “iconic.”
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump raises his fist while surrounded by U.S. Secret Service agents after a bullet grazed his ear at a campaign rally July 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
“I wanted to talk about it, right? I felt this sense of patriotism,” she said. “I’m part of this great country that the left wanted me to look at through this lens that just didn’t fit.”
She said she didn’t feel brave writing her now viral X post, although plenty of people have called her courageous in the days since. Rather, she felt “impatient.”
“I want humanity to succeed. And I want to be on the side that is helping make that happen,” pointing to tech giants like Musk and David Sacks who have both thrown their support behind Trump.
“I want to build, I want to innovate. I want to support innovators. I want to move this country forward.”
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Tyler said she’s been bombarded with messages from people who feel “suffocated” by popular narratives and are starting to break free from “mental prisons” they’ve been trapped in. The assassination attempt ignited a sense of patriotism in many of these voters, like it did for Tyler, who has even been shopping for an American flag on Amazon.
“I just don’t think people fully understand what patriotism means,” she said. “Patriotism shouldn’t mean you’re on the right or the left. It should just mean you’re for America … and right now I see the right being for America.”
To hear more from Tyler, click here.
Nora Moriarty contributed to the accompanying video.