Hi everyone, this is Rachel Vindman and I'm on Red Wine and Blues' first ever

troublemaker tour.

I'm sitting down with suburban women in Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania

to hear about what matters to them.

Welcome to my kitchen table conversations.

Hi, everyone. I'm Rachel Vindman. Today I am joined by Sophia Fifner. Thank you for joining me, Sophia.

Thank you for having me. This is really exciting, and I think we should just jump in. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Yeah. So I'm a suburban mom who lives in Columbus, Ohio. I'm incredibly passionate about women's organizations. I spend

a lot of my time volunteering with organizations that support survivors of sexual assault

and that support gender equity. I'm a mother of two, and I've spent 15 years in philanthropy and

advocacy and love all things politics. Oh, okay. Well, you're perfect. I can't wait to talk to you.

So you're a former Republican. Is that true? Yeah. It's been a very challenging evolution over the last several years. I would certainly

say that the election of president or former President Trump definitely took a toll on my perception

of the party and the direction that it was moving. Same. Same. I think we're not alone as well as like a group therapy session. But is there one thing sort of

specifically that pushed you out of the party? Yeah. I would say that the election in 2016, when I didn't,

I was like a lot of really suburban women who I saw what was happening in our country in 2016. I was not happy with the

conversations around women, around survivors of sexual assault, around immigrants. I was devastated

the night after the election, or quite frankly, it was the morning after the election. It was

awful. And then since then, I was really hopeful that

perhaps I could understand where some of the MAGA Republicans were coming from. I really wanted

to understand why they felt the way that they did. So much so that I participated in a leadership

program here in Columbus for Republican women because I wanted to speak with other Republicans and get a feel

for why is this happening and how do we stop this progression of cultural intrusions that are

...