For Peyton Refitt, 18, what began as dinner-table conversations ended with her family torn apart and her father sentenced to the longest prison sentence yet for his part in the Capitol uprising inspired by Trump. American family life in the age of Trump has taken on a toxic dimension, the young Texas woman said. Peyton said her family’s disintegration began as angry arguments between father and children and ended when her brother, Jackson Refitt, then 18, turned his father in to the FBI. After the 2021 Capitol Hill riot, Guy Reffitt, 49, returned to Wylie, a suburb of Dallas, and told Jackson and then-16-year-old Peyton that they would be “traitors” if they turned him in. But Jackson had already notified the FBI in December 2020 after becoming increasingly concerned by his father’s radicalized right-wing rhetoric. “We are an example of how the modern American family is becoming more fragile as the political climate rises,” Peyton said in a message to Insider. “American families are not adequately protected from the impact of propaganda and misinformation.”
Dad’s radicalization
Peyton Refitt, left. Her father, Guy Refitt, right, has been given the longest sentence yet for his part in the Capitol rebellion. Peyton Reffitt, FBI/Fox News video
Guy Refitt was part of a militia movement called the Three Percenters, many of whom joined the January 6 uprising. The movement centers on the myth that only 3% of colonists fought during the Revolutionary War. Members see themselves as “modern versions of these revolutionaries, fighting against a tyrannical US government rather than Britain”. Guy Refitt was sentenced on August 1st to seven years and three months in prison, the longest prison sentence so far received by the Capitol rioters. He was found guilty of carrying a weapon into Congress, interfering with police and threatening his children, NBC reported. On the courthouse steps immediately following their father’s sentencing, Peyton and her sister, Sarah, tried to understand what happened to their family in front of the television cameras. They went viral on social media when Peyton told reporters that “Trump deserves a life sentence if my father is in prison that long.” Peyton believes her family – and others like them – are being treated as “disposable pawns” in a power struggle. “Former President Trump is not entirely responsible for my father’s actions that day on January 6th. However, in my opinion, I believe he used orchestrated language that uses subliminal projection, that leads up to her day, that in a real way bypasses rational thought and appeals to his supporters’ deepest emotions,” she said in a text to Insider . The Reffitt Family in 2006. Peyton Reffitt “I think it would just be for former President Trump to be convicted and serve the maximum sentence for the events that occurred on January 6, 2021,” Peyton said. Peyton is joined by a majority of Americans who believe Trump should be impeached on Jan. 6, according to an IPSOS and ABC News poll. A prison sentence for Trump “would be a liability to set a real precedent for our future as a nation to protect all American families and democracy itself,” he said. Donald Trump at a rally in Missouri on November 5, 2018. JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images In recent years, families and friendships have been destroyed by the rise of extremist views, misinformation and conspiracy theories. A Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted in the first months of Trump’s presidency, found that 16 percent of respondents said they had stopped communicating with a friend or family member after the 2016 election. Jacquelyn Hammond, 47, a bartender in Asheville, North Carolina, who had cut off contact with her Trump-supporting mother, Carol, told Reuters that “Trump is like the catalyst of an earthquake that just split two continents of thought . Once the Earth is divided like this, there is no going back.” Even though her father is in prison and her brother is estranged from the family, Peyton said she sees a light at the end of the tunnel and believes her family can heal in time. “As a family, we don’t have to understand each other to the fullest, but appreciating each other’s differences is a beautiful lesson that broadens our perceptions without judgment,” she said.
