- On election night, I didn't know
what was going on in the country.
- [Reporter] What started off as unlikely is now reality.
- [Reporter] And the wall comes tumbling down.
- I thought I had been paying attention to the news,
but actually, I was quite ignorant.
- [Reporter] Donald Trump will be
the 45th president of the United States.
- It was really emotional.
Just a lot of feelings of shock, and disbelief,
and I felt like I had to do something
with all of this energy and emotion.
I wanted it to be something productive.
It just made me realize we need to hear from each other
because clearly we haven't been doing that.
- But I don't know any Trump supporters.
I don't know anyone who voted for Trump.
- I didn't know any Trump voters personally.
And then the dinner idea came.
I just emailed Tria.
- I want to host a dinner . . .
- Where we bring Trump
and non-Trump voters together.
- And see if we can come up
with something real and delightful.
- And that's where it all came from.
- [Narrator] This is the the story of Justine and Tria,
two Bay area friends who like many Americans
were pretty shocked after President Trump's victory.
And they have a theory.
- It is so easy in today's society to lash out online.
But when you're looking at someone face to face,
you can't help but see their humanity.
You can't help but connect with them.
- Tria and I really loved the idea of food
bringing people together to be present with one another.
- [Narrator] So after the election,
they started working on this idea.
They wanted to find eight people
with very different perspectives.
Have them sit down, eat dinner,
and wrestle with some of the most contentious issues
facing our country.
- The point is not even to like the other person.
The point is to expose ourselves to things
that we may not be comfortable with.
- [Narrator] So when this first started,
they were excited, but they didn't know any Trump voters.
- [Tria] Of course, I want to talk to them,
but I don't know how to find them.
- [Narrator] So they reached out to some Republican groups,
they posted on Facebook,
and after awhile they found some.
At their very first dinner they made an unexpected friend.
- [Tria] One particular guest stood out to us.
He offered to host our next dinner.
- [Walt] I'm Walt Shjeflo.
I'm a lawyer in San Mateo, and I voted for Donald Trump.
- [Tria] I have to admit,
I didn't have very warm feelings
when I thought about Trump voters,
but from the very first emails with Walt
and just kind of hearing his reaction to the dinner,
I was kind of flooded with this warmth for him.
- [Justine] We felt like a little bit of a kinship with him
because we really felt like he was onboard.
- I want to hear what motivates other people
and see what I can learn from it,
and maybe I'll have something that
somebody else wants to hear.
- So Walt is a return guest from our first dinner
and tonight's host, so thank you Walt.
- [Narrator] After a quick ice breaker,
the discussion gets going.
- As a transgender, Korean, adopted man,
human rights, I think,
should be top of what we're talking about.
- I think we can all agree just the partisanship right now,
nobody likes that.
Because everyone's just choosing their tribal side.
- Seeing 2,000 page bills passed that nobody has read.
That shouldn't be happening.
- [Tria] There is a desire for hearing people dialogue
and talk and not just yell at each other.
- That is a really good point.
- [Narrator] One of the most vocal participants was Walt.
- [Walt] So do you think things have gotten better
for transgender people in the last 20 years?
So is freedom the most important thing
we have in America or not?
Whereas a lot of the the things that you said were true
I don't think are true at all.
You read the article about Heather McDonald,
do you know who that is?
- No I don't, who's that?
- [Walt] If you haven't,
you really haven't studied this issue at all.
- [Narrator] Walt definitely pushed some buttons,
and not just with the other guests.
- [Justine] Hearing Walt's perspective,
I mean it was very hard for me not to physically react.
- [Tria] I had to stop myself from being
personally offended from some of the things that he said.
- [Narrator] So in some ways Walt seemed to fulfill
the stereotypes Justine and Tria had in their minds
about Trump voters.
But now something was different.
They actually knew him.
- There are many of his opinions that I don't agree with.
But I like him as a person.
And for me that's been a really healing and freeing feeling.
- [Narrator] Tria and Justine weren't the only ones
affected by these conversation.
When Walt was asked he said that the transgender participant
Min had really changed his perspective.
- [Walt] Min is the one that changed mine the most.
Hearing some of his ideas about how you approach
the idea of feeling excluded, included,
was different than anybody I had heard before.
He had a lot of interesting ideas of the way you
look at it.
- [Tria] I think growth by definition is moving outwards.
It's okay to make yourself uncomfortable.
A big part of this for me has been personal growth.
And that's what I hope for
for everyone who comes to the dinner as well.
We're not going to heal the nation in one night.
It's a dinner of eight people, it's tiny,
but it creates so many conversations that wouldn't
be had otherwise.
- I feel like Make America Dinner Again
has offered a place for people to practice
listening and understanding.
- [Narrator] Justine and Tria have hosted four dinners
since the election and now they're seeing some momentum.
- [Tria] So we heard from people in Colorado,
in Oregon, in DC, all across the country,
and they said we've downloaded your guide,
we're ready to go, help us out.
- I learned so much from all of you.
- I think we should have more of these conversations.
- [Tria] We are actually part of a much larger movement
of other people who are creating ways for you
to meet someone who's totally different.
Who grew up with a very different set of perspectives,
and I think that all of us will only be better from that.