Divided over politics, a father and son in Minnesota sought a therapist’s help
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André LaTondresse has a lot of affection for his adult son, Chris, the chief executive of Beacon Interfaith Housing Services.
“I am so proud of him. And I tell people he is the most amazing person I’ve ever met,” said André.
Chris reciprocates the love. But both felt like the political divide between them was creating some distance.
A big piece of the tension stemmed from André’s support for President-elect Donald Trump, about whom Chris has strong, negative feelings.
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Chris, a Democrat who has served in the Obama Administration and as a Hennepin County commissioner, supported Vice President Kamala Harris in the recent election.
“It often feels like there’s places in our relationship where we can’t talk about things that deeply matter to us out of a fear of running into a landmine,” said Chris about his father. “And I don’t want that to be true for the time that we have together.”
The father and son decided to take advantage of the opportunity to get coached on discussing politics by marriage and family therapist Bill Doherty, the co-founder of the political bridging organization Braver Angels.
On a recent afternoon, the three met at MPR News headquarters in St. Paul and allowed their conversation to be recorded.
“And so what happens when the two of you talk about politics?” Doherty asked.
“We don’t, by and large,” said André. “But it does stand sort of as a wall, and you can go around this side of the wall and talk, you can go around this [other] side of the wall and talk. But when you’re on opposite sides of that wall, it’s like, ‘Well, let’s just be happy that we’re protected by the wall.’”
André is conservative politically and deeply committed to his Christian faith. In the ‘90s, he moved his family to Siberia for a couple years to serve as Christian missionaries.
He was initially wary of Trump but eventually came around to supporting him in two elections.
Chris wanted to understand why his father changed his mind.
“I am choosing, in this moment of incredible change in our country, and I would say alarming change, to try to take a path of curiosity rather than contempt,” he said. “I believe if we’re going to move forward as a nation, and if I can’t do that with my own dad, what hope is there for any of us?”
As their coaching session got underway, it became clear that far more was at stake than André’s support for Trump.
Both father and son were nursing old wounds and brought them up.
Chris recounted the time his dad said he had been “brainwashed” by liberal Christian thinkers. “It's like, really? They're brainwashing me at a Christian college?”
And André shared that he had felt offended when his son snarkily criticized a book he was reading. Chris had said the author was a “bad historian” and told his dad, “You shouldn’t be reading that book.”
The discussion seemed like a long warm-up to talking about Trump, but Doherty said there were lots of other dynamics in play.
“When people have really strong reactions politically like this, there is a backstory that is about more than Republicans, Democrats, Trump and never-Trump,” he said.
When they did arrive at the topic of Trump, Chris struggled to pose a question to his dad in a nonjudgmental way.
“I feel like the most open minded, open hearted, curious approach would be to look my dad in the eyes and say, ‘How did you come to voting for Trump for a second time?’” he said.
He admitted the temptation to launch into a preamble asking how his Dad, as an American and as a Christian, could support Trump.
Eventually, he posed a more neutral question. And André explained that he came to see some of Trump’s more outrageous statements as a kind of act.
“As I observed Trump over time, I realized that he had a persona that was something he puts on,” he said. “That’s quite unattractive. But also, at the same time, I’m hearing from people who know him personally, who are saying, ‘Well, no, that’s not him at all,’” he said.
André went on to detail a widely disputed view that Trump was the rightful winner of the 2020 election.
“I will go to my grave believing that the 2020 election was stolen,” he said.
As the conversation continued, the father and son discussed the role of their Christian faith in both their lives. Chris emphasized how central it is to everything he does.
A few weeks later, both men said they had positive takeaways from the conversation.
“The fact that in what is otherwise a secular context, Chris was the one who introduced the role of Christ in his life into the conversation … nothing could have made me happier,” André said.
And Chris felt like he learned something really important about his dad’s politics. The most eye-opening moment was when his dad said he believed the 2020 election was stolen.
“Had he shared that with me, with Bill [Doherty] not sitting there, I probably would have immediately launched into, ‘How could you possibly believe that?’” he said.
But the experience allowed Chris to stop and ask himself, “If I believed that to be true, how might that affect my politics?”
Chris said he and his dad went out for dinner after the coaching session and had a deeper and richer conversation about politics than they’ve had in years. He said he suspects they finally had permission to broach the topics and show curiosity about each other.