Democrats have a secret weapon to defeat Donald Trump. At least 26 former top Trump administration officials (including Cabinet members and his vice president) have said Trump is not worthy of being president. They expressed thoughts about his character, leadership, impulsivity and narcissism, among his traits. The opposition from so many former close affiliates is unprecedented in the annals of American politics.
As the crusade enters its final months after a tumultuous and historic summer, Democrats are expected to keep those statements in rotation, resurfacing video clips and newspaper headlines about the grievances those former Trump allies have leveled at their former boss. It’s a smart position like anyone else to remind the electorate of Trump’s political and personal flaws.
An even more dramatic situation, perhaps outside of the Democrats’ ability to act, would be for some of those former Trump allies to come together to issue a joint statement, or even hold a joint press conference, affirming their opposition to the former president. They don’t even have to say they’ll vote for Kamala Harris. They just want to remind the American electorate of their serious considerations about the Republican presidential nominee.
In an interview with The Washington Post in March, former Vice President Pence, who was once one of Trump’s staunch defenders, said he wouldn’t. Referring to Trump’s technique toward Russia, China and other issues, Pence told Fox News that “Donald Trump is following and setting a timeline that is at odds with the conservative timeline that we’ve governed for our 4 years, and that’s why I can’t do it. “With a conscience, me, Donald Trump, in this campaign. “
Trump pressured Pence to prevent Biden from being elected president as Congress displayed Electoral College ballots. Pence insisted he had no authority to do so. At the time, the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol building, Trump remained silent as rioters chanted “Hang Mike Pence. “Pence had to flee the Senate chamber.
“Americans deserve to know that President Trump asked me to take an oath to the Constitution,” Pence said in his interview with Fox News. “Anyone who opposes the Constitution will never be president of the United States. “
In December 2018, Mattis wrote a scathing resignation letter, emphasizing that he did not support Trump’s views and adding the president’s plans to withdraw troops from Syria. Mattis said he resigned after “concrete responses and strategic advice, adding that maintaining acceptance as true by our allies, no longer resonated. ”
In June 2020, Mattis voiced even harsher criticism, focusing on Trump’s handling of protests following the death of George Floyd.
He called Trump “the first president in my lifetime who doesn’t try to unite the American people. “
“The words ‘Equal Justice Under the Law’ are engraved on the pediment of the United States Supreme Court,” Mattis wrote. “This is exactly what the protesters rightly demand. This is a healthy and unifying calling that we can all subscribe to.
“We are witnessing the consequences of 3 years of this planned effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership,” Mattis continued. “We can unite without him, building on the inherent strengths of our civil society. This will be easy, as the last few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to generations beyond who bled to protect our promise; and our children,” he wrote.
“We will have to push back and hold accountable those in place who would make a mockery of our Constitution,” Mattis said.
Following the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, Mattis accused Trump of his position of “destroying confidence in our elections and poisoning our respect for our fellow citizens. “
In July 2023, Esper, another former Trump defense secretary, told CNN that Trump “wasn’t a match for the office because he puts himself first, and I think anyone who runs for office puts the country first. ” first of all”.
It is not the first time he has criticized his former boss. In May 2022, Esper told MSNBC that the GOP needed to track down another leader.
“Every elected official will have to meet certain fundamental criteria: They will have to be able to put their country before themselves. They have to have a certain point of integrity and principles,” Esper said. “They need to be able to reach the other side of the spectrum, bring other people together and bring the country together. ” He observed: “To me, Donald Trump doesn’t meet those criteria. »
In his 2022 memoir, “A Sacred Oath,” Esper called Trump’s resolution to skip Biden’s swearing-in as “a supreme act of petulance” that “tainted our democracy. “He wrote that Trump is “unprincipled,” “petty” and “dangerous” and prone to “pure invention. “
In March of this year, he told HBO’s Bill Maher that there is “no way” he will face Trump in November because he believes the former president “is a risk to democracy. “
“I think he doesn’t have a good fit for this position,” he said in an interview. “He puts himself before the country. His movements only fear him and not the country. And then, of course, I think he has integrity and character issues as well.
While serving as Secretary of Defense, Esper clashed with Trump over several issues, adding Trump’s enthusiasm for deploying Army troops to respond to civil unrest following the killing of George Floyd. Trump fired Esper shortly after the 2020 election.
Milley, a retired Army general, served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from Oct. 1, 2019, to Sept. 30, 2023. “We do not swear in an aspiring dictator,” Milley obviously warned in his farewell speech. referring to Trump. ” We take an oath to the Constitution and to the concept of United States, and we are willing to die for it. »
Milley’s speech came days after Trump advised that Milley, the country’s most level-headed military officer, be executed over reports that while Trump was in office, Milley had contacted his Chinese counterpart to assure him that The United States was not preparing to attack. On social media, Trump wrote: “This is an act so egregious that, in the past, the punishment would have been DEATH!”
Milley feared that Trump had used the military inappropriately for his own political ends.
On June 1, 2020, amid nationwide protests over the killing of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, Trump summoned Milley and other top management officials to escort him from the White House to St. John’s Episcopal Church. John, where Trump raised a Bible. et posed for a photograph outside the church’s parsonage, which had been toppled by a chimney and started protests last night.
Milley was still dressed in her combat uniform from a past event. Once she learned that Trump was him as a political pawn, Ella Milley left temporarily before arriving at the church. She told Defense Secretary Mike Esper, who was also summoned to accompany Trump, that he felt “sick” and was “done with this shit. “
Milley thought about resigning in the wake of the incident, and even wrote a resignation letter highly critical of Trump, noting that he “is employing the military to sow concern in people’s minds” and that the president was “causing irreparable harm to the nation. “Although Milley did not send it, he publicly apologized for his presence at the march, which may have created a belief of the military’s involvement in domestic politics. The letter was then published in 2022.
After Trump lost the 2020 election, Milley held informal conversations with aides about his fears that Trump was seeking to remain in power illegally. He told them, “You can try, but you may not succeed. You can’t do that without the military. ” You can’t do that without the CIA and the FBI. We’re the guys with the guns.
Milley reportedly referred to Trump’s efforts to overturn the election as the “Reichstag moment,” referring to the Nazis’ suspension of civil liberties in Germany. Milley called Trump’s false claims about voter fraud “the Führer’s gospel. ” Ahead of Joe Biden’s inauguration, Milley met with police and military officials and warned them, “Everybody in this room, whether it’s a police officer or a soldier, we’re going to arrest those guys to make sure we have a nonviolent power movement. We’re going to put a metal ring around this city and the Nazis won’t get into it. “
On Jan. 12, 2021, Milley and the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a statement condemning the insurrection at the Capitol led by Trump supporters, noting that members of the military have a legal responsibility to protect the Constitution and reject extremism.
Kelly, who served as staff leader from 2017 to 2019, is one of Trump’s vocal critics. He spoke out against a second term for Trump.
“What’s going on in the country for even a user to think that this guy would still be a smart president if he said what he said and did what he did?Kelly, a retired four-star Marine Corps general, to the Washington Post. “It’s beyond my comprehension that he has what he has. “
Kelly told CNN that Trump “admires murderous autocrats and dictators” and “has no contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution and the rule of law. “
Almost from the moment he joined Trump’s leadership as first secretary of state, Tillerson clashed with the president and a year later came close to resigning. In July 2017, reports emerged that Tillerson had called Trump a “moron. ” He did not deny that term and simply said, “I’m not going to deal with trivial things like that. “
Trump fired Tillerson in March 2018 and him along with Mike Pompeo, then director of the CIA.
In an interview with Foreign Affairs magazine, Tillerson said that “Trump’s perception of global events, his perception of global history, his perception of United States history was limited. “He said, “It’s hard to have a verbal exchange with someone who doesn’t even perceive why we’re talking about this. “
In 2018, Tillerson also called Trump a “rebel” and said he would ask him to do things that didn’t break the law.
“When the president said, ‘This is what I have to do and this is how I have to do it. ‘And I said: ‘Well, Mr. President, I understand what you have to do, but I can’t. ‘do it that way. This violates the law. This violates the treaty,” Tillerson said.
Tillerson added, “I was frustrated . . . I think he was tired of me being the guy who every day would say, “You can’t do this and let’s talk about what we can do. “
Tillerson also publicly criticized Trump for trying to get Ukraine’s president to launch an investigation into Joe Biden’s son Hunter as a condition of getting help from the US military. Tillerson said “it is clearly wrong to ask for private favors and American assets as collateral. ”
In a 2022 interview, Bolton observed that “the central point that is transparent about his tenure as president is that this is Donald Trump and, for him, the only rule that is discussed is: ‘Does this give me advantages?’ »
In January, Bolton, a regular member of Republican foreign policy circles who served as Trump’s national security adviser from 2018 to 2019 after serving as ambassador to the UN, told CNN: “I think they think: Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un and others – they think he’s a laughing fool and they’re in a position to credit him with credit. Trump’s self-centeredness prevents him from understanding this. “
In his 2020 book, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, Bolton described Trump’s “incoherent and scattered decision-making” driven by “reelection calculations” rather than national security. He wrote that Trump asked him to help pressure Ukraine to dig up information about Democrats. He claimed that Trump also asked him to arrange a meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
Trump fired Bolton in September 2019.
Bolton has repeatedly said he will not vote for Trump but will work to secure a Republican Senate.
In October 2019, as Trump faced impeachment over his moves in Ukraine, a journalist asked his former national security adviser whether it was appropriate for a president to request foreign interference in the American political process.
“No, that’s surely not the case,” McMaster said.
Shortly after the January 6, 2021 insurrection, McMaster told CNN’s Jake Tapper that Trump incited “sustained disinformation. . . spreading those baseless conspiracy theories. ” He accused Trump of being “anti-leadership” and ” undermine the rule of law. “
“We have noticed the absence of leadership, anti-leadership and what that can do to our country. »
Trump’s most sensible national security adviser, Bossert, told ABC’s “This Week” that he was “deeply disturbed” by Trump’s call to the Ukrainian president. Bossert said he told Trump that the idea of Ukraine stepping in to help Democrats in the 2016 U. S. presidential election had been baseless, a conspiracy theory Trump has subscribed to.
Bossert also criticized Trump for wearing a mask in public amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“Doing what I say, what I do, is very helpful,” Bossert told “This Week. “
Bossert agreed with former Trump officials who condemned the former president’s role in inciting the insurrection.
“This is absolutely false and illegal. This is American,” Bossert tweeted. “The president has baselessly undermined American democracy for months. As a result, he is to blame for this siege, and it is a real shame.
Spencer sharply criticized Trump’s intervention in a war crimes case, calling his moves “shocking and unprecedented. “
The controversy involved Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, who was charged with several war crimes, including premeditated murder, before being convicted of a single misdemeanor after posing next to the body of a dead Islamic State fighter in contravention of regulations. In November 2019, Trump reversed Gallagher’s demotion and pardoned two other service members also charged with war crimes. He also tweeted that he would not allow the Navy to expel Gallagher from the Seals. These moves infuriated military leaders, who had warned Trump that his decisions could simply undermine the military’s order and discipline, undermine the integrity of the military’s justice formula, and erode the trust of United States allies who receive U. S. troops.
Spencer was fired for paying attention to the war of words over Gallagher’s fate between the Pentagon and the White House.
In a Washington Post op-ed, Spencer wrote that Trump’s meddling in the Gallagher affair is “a reminder that the president has very little understanding of what it means to be in the military, to fight ethically, or to be governed by a uniform set of rules”. “rules and practices.
Mulvaney resigned as Trump’s special envoy to Ireland after January 6, 2021 because “I think he failed to be president when we were supposed to be president. “
Mulvaney, a former congressman from South Carolina, had served in the past as director of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and staff leader.
Last year, he told NBC News he didn’t need Trump to win the Republican nomination again. “I’m working hard to make sure someone else is the nominee,” she said.
Like Mulvaney and other Trump administration officials, Pottinger resigned after Jan. 6 and left the White House the next morning.
Pottinger, a former Marine Corps officer who is one of Trump’s longest-serving aides, joined the leadership in 2017 as Asia director at the National Security Council before serving as deputy security adviser.
During his congressional testimony, Pottinger said that on the afternoon of Jan. 6, he suggested to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to convince Trump to ask the rioters to leave. Pottinger said he would resign when he saw Trump’s announcement at 2:24 p. m. ridiculing Pence.
“I just didn’t need to be linked to the events that were taking place at the Capitol,” he said, noting that Trump’s tweet added “more fuel to the fire. “
In March 2023, he told the Washington Post that he would not support Trump for a second term. He said: “This time I will probably choose other candidates. ”
Cohn served as Trump’s top economic adviser and director of the National Economic Council from 2017 to 2018. Before joining Trump’s team, he worked for 25 years at Goldman Sachs, where he was president and chief operating officer.
Cohn thought about resigning because of Trump’s reaction to the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. He was dismayed when Trump said there were “good people” on “both sides” of the demonstrations. Cohn has publicly stated that “this administration can and will have to do more by systematically and unequivocally condemning” white nationalists, noting that “citizens who stand for equality and freedom can never be equated with white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the KKK. “
The following March, Cohn resigned, after Trump announced a plan to impose price lists on metal and aluminum imports against his advice.
After his resignation, Cohn told CNN that he was “concerned” that there was no one left on Trump’s team who could confront him and tell him what he didn’t need to hear.
“We had an attractive core of people when I was in the White House: the original team. We weren’t shy. It’s an organization willing to tell the president what he needed to know, whether he wanted to hear from him or not. “Cohn said, “None of us are here anymore. So I’m concerned that the environment in the White House is no longer conducive, or that no one has the personality to stand up and tell the president what he doesn’t need to hear. “” he said.
Matthews supported Nikki Haley in the Republican primary. In February, she told the Washington Post that if she had to choose between Trump and Joe Biden, she would vote for Biden.
“We can make bad policy from a moment in the Biden administration,” Matthews said, “but I don’t think we can a moment in Trump’s term, in terms of our democracy. “
Matthews Trump’s advisers are trying, unsuccessfully, to get the president to condemn the violence of January 6.
“To me, it’s a complete breach of duty that he didn’t live up to his oath,” he told USA TODAY. “That day I lost all confidence in him. “
He resigned from his post and later testified before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.
“The fact that Trump continues to spread this lie that the election was stolen has made him utterly unworthy of holding office again,” Matthews said.
“We saw that he didn’t settle for the nonviolent force movement the first time,” he told Congress. “What makes you think that he would be satisfied with being elected for a second term and that he would be in a position to leave office?
Grisham, who served as Trump’s press secretary and Melania Trump’s staff leader, said she would be willing to prepare Biden for a debate with her former boss.
“I’m terrified that he’s running in 2024,” he told ABC News in 2021.
Grisham, who resigned after the Jan. 6 riot, said Trump was not “qualified to do this job” and observed, “I think it’s spotty. “I think he may have illusions. I think he is narcissistic and cares about himself first and foremost. And I don’t need it again for our president.
Griffin, who served as Trump’s White House communications director, told the Post earlier this year that Trump “is a risk to democracy and I never will. “
“Basically, a second Trump term may simply mean the end of American democracy as we know it, and I don’t say that lightly,” Griffin told ABC in December.
Scaramucci Trump, a “domestic terrorist of the 21st century”.
He held his White House post for less than two weeks and was fired for a series of gaffes that embarrassed Trump. After his release, Scaramucci continued to protect Trump until the president traveled to El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, following two mass shootings. . He called Trump’s comments a “catastrophe” and said they “divide the country in an unacceptable way. “He went on to call Trump’s attacks on 4 congressmen of color “racist and unacceptable. “.
“I will say that my door is absolutely closed to voting for Donald Trump,” Hutchinson, a very no-nonsense adviser to White House leader Mark Meadows, said in an interview with MSNBC.
“I, Donald Trump, am the gravest risk we will face to our democracy in our lifetime and, potentially, in the history of the United States,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper last year.
Trump “never cared about the United States, its citizens, its future or anything other than himself,” Cobb, Trump’s White House lawyer, wrote in an email to the Washington Post last year. “In fact, as history shows through their divisive lies, as well as their unbridled support for the rule of law and the crimes that flow from it, their conduct and mere lifestyles accelerated the demise of democracy and the nation. “
If Trump is re-elected, “the consequences will extinguish whatever is left of the American dream, if there is any left,” Cobb wrote. He told the Post he would vote for Biden.
Newman claimed she was fired because she knew too much about a conceivable audio recording of Trump uttering a racial epithet.
In his e-book “Unhinged: An Insider Account of the Trump White House,” Newman added a harsher complaint against his former boss. “Donald Trump, who would pass after civil rights icons and professional athletes, who would pass after the grieving black widows, who “I would say there were other smart people on both sides, who supported Donald Trump, accused of molesting minors; His decisions and habits were harming the country. “He may not be part of this madness anymore,” he writes in his e-book.
Chao, a wealthy businesswoman who served in George W. Bush’s cabinet and later served as Trump’s transportation secretary throughout his term, resigned after the Jan. 6 insurrection: “At one point, the circumstances were such that it was up to me I continue, given my personal values and philosophy.
Bye, who is married to Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, said the violent attack on the Capitol “deeply disturbed me in a way that I just put aside. “
DeVos, a top donor to the reasons and conservative politicians Trump picked for his education secretary, also resigned after the Jan. 6 insurrection.
“When I saw what was happening on January 6 and I didn’t see the president intervene and do what he could have done to reverse the situation, slow it down or fix it,” he said in an interview with USA Today. “It was obvious to me that maybe I wouldn’t continue. “
The former New Jersey governor, who served as vice president on Trump’s transition team in 2016 and then opposed him in the 2024 Republican primary, called Trump a “coward” and a “Putin puppet. “told CNN last September.
Trump is “the cheapest son of a bitch. ” I’ve met him before in my life,” Christie told Politico in June 2023. “He’s a billionaire who refused to pay his lawyers with his personal money and instead people who were on him and looking for him. “To be elected president they are giving him cash to advance his candidacy. . . and he uses that money to pay his own legal fees. “
Several of Trump’s harshest critics, including Senators Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham, as well as current Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance, have turned around and aligned themselves with the MAGA motion. Three of the most prominent members of Trump’s Cabinet (Attorneys General Jeff Sessions and William Barr, as well as United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley) followed the same path, lashing out at Trump after he left the administration, then returning crawling over to kiss Trump’s ring when it becomes clear that he would be the Republican nominee for president this year.
Alabama Sessions was the first U. S. senator to endorse Trump in 2016. Trump appointed him attorney general, and on nearly every issue, Sessions has been a steadfast servant, doing Trump’s bidding. But in 2017, Trump asked Sessions to impede the FBI’s Russia investigation. interference by Trump in the 2016 elections.
Sessions declined to do so, recusing himself from any involvement in the investigation, in part because he had met with Russian officials on Trump’s behalf during the election.
This sparked months of public confrontation between Trump and Sessions. On November 7, 2018, Sessions resigned at Trump’s request.
Sessions ran in the 2020 Senate election in Alabama to regain his old seat. In that race, Trump continued to criticize Sessions for recusing himself and supported his first-election Republican opponent, Tommy Tuberville, who won the first general election.
“Look, I know your anger, but the recusal was required by law. I did my duty and you’re lucky I did. Protected the rule of law and resulted in his exoneration,” Sessions tweeted during the Senate race. “His private emotions do not dictate who Alabama elects as senator, but the rest of the people of Alabama do. ”
In July, Sessions told the Post that he would return as his former boss. “I intend to be President Trump,” he said when he was contacted through a journalist.
In a June 2023 CBS interview, Barr called Trump a “consummate narcissist” who “constantly engages in reckless behavior that endangers his political leaders and the conservative and Republican agenda. “Two months later, he told CNN, “I don’t think I deserve to be anywhere near the Oval Office. “He also said that “voting for Trump is playing Russian roulette with the country,” according to Mike Allen of Axios. Barr told NBC News that “I have made it clear that I strongly oppose Trump’s nomination and that I will not,” but then said, “to me it is unlikely that I would not vote for the Republican nominee. “
While attorney general, Barr defended Trump’s moves as president while privately and continually telling his boss that he had lost and that election fraud was not a serious challenge. After leaving the administration, he said Trump’s impeachment for the January 6, 2021 insurrection was fair and said the Justice Department had a “legitimate case” against Trump.
Haley, who served as Trump’s ambassador to the UN, criticized him long before and when she ran against him in this year’s Republican primary. She was Trump’s last primary challenger before dropping out of the race in early March.
In January, while campaigning in Iowa, Haley said the United States would not “survive” Trump for another four years. “The truth is, rightly or wrongly, chaos follows, and we all know that’s true,” he said. “We cannot have a country in disarray and a world in flames and go through another four years of chaos. We won’t.
During her crusade for the Republican Party nomination, Haley Trump was “toxic,” “unhinged,” and lacking “moral clarity. ” Criticizing Trump’s lack of military service, Haley said, “The closest danger to him is getting hit by a golf ball. ” in a golf cart. “
“Someone who continually disrespects the sacrifices of military families has no business being commander in chief,” Haley said after Trump mocked Haley’s husband, who was on military deployment.
Shortly after the Jan. 6 riot, Haley said, “Something terrible happened on Jan. 6 and he [Trump] called it a beautiful day. ” Haley said Trump’s “moves since Election Day will be harshly judged throughout history. ” He told Politico: “He took a path he shouldn’t have gone down, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that happen again. ”
But in May, after postponing her campaign, Haley said she would vote for Trump and then spoke at the Republican conference excited about him.
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. The Democrats have a secret weapon in…
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s news and opinion research platform. It would be difficult for you. . .
This article is part of TPM Café, TPM’s news and opinion research house. Originally published in The. . .
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s news and opinion research platform. First published in The Conversation. In two. . .
I wouldn’t call those who criticized him one day and then logged back in here to say that from now on they were going to vote for him as a “secret weapon. ” Democrats are “worse. ” That’s ridiculous.
Bolton says he will vote for the TMF, but will work to keep the Senate in fascist hands.
Then it’s a treacherous little walrus weasel.
I participated in the 2004 Swift Boat crusade against John Kerry. This list of names presents a unique opportunity to launch a similar attack against the TFG. How many former management officials surely don’t need to have anything to do with the former president? It is unprecedented in number and vitriol. A smart crusade strategist would line up those disgruntled administration veterans to lead the TFG’s crusade.
In the distance, karma screams like a.