Have you ever been in a really bad relationship? One where your partner lied, cheated, and gaslighted you? One where you made excuses for them because you didn’t want to admit you were involved with someone you couldn’t trust?

I have.

At first things were great. She was very attractive, the sex was good, we laughed a lot. But little by little the cracks began to show. She lied, and when caught in the lie, she denied she had said the lie in the first place. The man she told me was just a friend was actually a guy she was sleeping with.

It was a very dysfunctional relationship, but the dysfunction didn’t show itself all at once, it crept in gradually. After a while I started to realize what was going on, but I denied it to myself. I accepted behavior I shouldn’t have. I defended her to friends who were telling me of her indiscretions. I kept believing that she would change.

She didn’t. So, I had to.

Too many voters in America are in a dysfunctional relationship with President Trump.

After that debacle in the Oval Office between Trump, Zelenskyy and Vance, smart Republican friends of mine were still making excuses for the White House’s bad behavior.

These are people who claimed to be conservative yet stood by Trump as he added trillions to the deficit. They stood by him when he suggested injecting bleach might cure Covid. When it was proven that Haitian immigrants weren’t eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, they blamed the liberal media for lying. Smart people saw the evidence, yet made excuses about President Trump’s involvement in January 6th anyway. Now they are living in denial about Russia being the country that invaded Ukraine.

These are not stupid people. Whenever I would point out the craziness of the Trump administration, my Republican friends would defend him like a battered wife making excuses for her abusive husband.

In my lifetime I have seen people join many different cults. The Moonies, Heaven’s Gate, the Branch Davidians, The Manson family, just to name a few.

I’ve always been fascinated with what can make people throw away common sense to follow some charismatic leader to the point of traveling to a place like Jonestown, South Africa to drink poisonous Kool-Aid. How could someone motivate young women to go to a Hollywood home and murder a starlet like Sharon Tate and her friends?

Although it obviously is on a much bigger scale, maybe what’s going on with Trump’s supporters is not that much different than what happened to me in my bad relationship. It

happens gradually. I didn’t even realize it was happening until the problems became too big to continue to ignore.

I wonder if, when inflation continues to rise due to tariffs on goods from Canada, Mexico, and China, will the Trumpers begin to see the light? Or will they continue to make excuses for him? Will the fever break now that the price of eggs hasn’t dropped on day one like he promised? When the tariffs on aluminum cause an increase in the price of cans of beer, will Joe Six Pack begin to have second thoughts?

I wish I knew.

Some people stay in abusive relationships their entire life. Some people continue their belief in a cult no matter how much family and friends beg them to leave.

In other cases, the followers get tired of the cult’s craziness and abandon it. In extreme cases in both cults and abusive relationships, the end tragically comes with death or suicide.

In the case of my bad relationship, I finally came to my senses. The breakup was messy. I came out of it a different man than I was when the relationship began. In some ways better but the scars remain.

I hope and pray that America will come to its senses and start to get out of this relationship in two years and make the final break in four. I know if that happens it will take some time for us to return to our old selves and for the rest of the free world to trust us again.

When this relationship finally does end, as all relationships do, I hope that America comes out of this better, but the scars will remain.

Tom Becka is a long time Nebraska broadcaster who for over 30 years has been covering Omaha and Midwest issues on both radio and TV. He has been a guest on numerous national cable and news shows, filled in for nationally syndicated talk radio programs and Talkers Magazine has recognized him as one of the Top 100 talk show hosts in the country 10 times. Never afraid to ruffle some feathers, his ‘Becka’s Beat’ commentaries can be found online on Youtube and other digital platforms.

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