Photo: Paul Sancya Associated Press After experiencing Donald Trump's four years in power from the inside, former collaborators are seeking to prevent the Republican's return to the White House.
Fabien Deglise
April 6, 2024 Analysis
- United States
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On Monday, in a press release, Donald Trump's campaign team announced that “the majority of people who served in [the ex-president's] cabinet and in his administration […] ] massively support his candidacy” so that he can beat Joe Biden in the presidential election next November.
The claim may seem convincing at first glance. But above all she seeks to keep out of sight the increasingly long list of former collaborators of the populist who, for several months, have refused to line up behind their former boss.
All were key players in the tempestuous billionaire's four-year presidency and, after describing his time in Washington, they now hope the Oval Office seat eludes him. Who are they ?
Mike Pence
Traditionally, number 2 in American power supports its number 1, but not this time. The former vice-president said in mid-March on Fox News that he “could not, in [his] soul and conscience, support Donald Trump in this campaign”, although the former reality TV star is now assured of becoming the Republican candidate for this presidential election. “Donald Trump is pursuing and enunciating an agenda that is in contradiction with the conservative agenda that we have followed to govern during our four years,” continued Mike Pence, at odds with Trump since he refused, on January 6, 2021, to bend to keep the populist in power against the will of the ballot box.
John Bolton
Donald Trump's national security adviser from 2018 to 2019 has since become one of his biggest critics. On CNN a few days ago, he recalled that the only thing to remember from Trump's four years in the White House is the certainty that he “is not fit to be president.” . “He did a lot of damage in his first term. And he would do even more in a second one,” he said, while deploring that the opposition to the ex-president in the conservative camp did not succeed in keeping him away from this presidential campaign.
Mark Esper
Difficult to be clearer. Last Friday, the former US Secretary of Defense claimed on Bill Maher's HBO show that Donald Trump “represents a threat to democracy” and therefore there was “no chance » that he supports him next November. In his book A Sacred Oath, released in 2022, the former boss of the Pentagon paints a dark portrait of an unstable president, with questionable integrity and incapable to put the interests of the country before his own. Last week, he assured that seeing Trump reveal his madness every day “opened the door a little more”, for him, to a vote for Joe Biden.
John Kelly
In an interview with Washington Post, last November, Donald Trump's longest-serving chief of staff, who surrounded him from 2017 to 2019, said he was dismayed by his former boss' new march on the road to the White House. “What is going on in our country that even one person thinks this guy can still be a good president?” he asked, calling the populist’s persistence something that goes “to— beyond [his] understanding.” A few weeks earlier, on CNN, the retired general had called on God to help Americans avoid a second term for Donald Trump — “a person who admires murderous autocrats and dictators and has nothing but contempt for our institutions democratic,” he said.
Ty Cobb
It's quite a change of direction for this White House advisor, a fervent Trumpist, who supported the ex-president during the investigation into Russian interference linked to the election of 2016 and who has just stated in the pages of the Washington Post that in November, he will vote for… Joe Biden. “If a vote is necessary to stop Trump, then I will reluctantly vote for Biden,” he said. According to him, the Republican's return to the White House can only “accelerate the disappearance of democracy” in the United States, while “diminishing America's place on the world stage”.
Anthony Scaramucci
Last Saturday, Trump's former communications director at the White House reiterated on the social network X his intention to vote for Joe Biden. “I have seen with my own eyes the dangers and instability of Donald Trump,” he wrote of the “lies, criminality and insecurity that push [the Republican candidate] to away from everything America has built, to destroying our democracy and wanting to hug [Vladimir] Putin.” In an election year that has become a “battle for democracy,” he says he wants to “work to stop it.”
Jenna Ellis
She was hauled into court in Georgia for plotting, with Trump, to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Last October, she even pleaded guilty and signed a plea deal with the court, and has since , the populist’s ex-lawyer says she “simply can’t support him again.” On American Family Radio, where she has a morning show, Ellis said she distanced herself from the ex-president “because of his frankly malignant and narcissistic tendency to say that he never did anything done wrong” and “the total and disturbing idolatry” of some of his supporters, who put “conservative principles after their love for a star”.
Cassidy Hutchinson
After going from assistant to Mark Meadows, former Trump chief of staff, to whistleblower and key witness for the congressional commission responsible for shedding light on the insurrection of January 6, 2021, Cassidy Hutchinson has been in defense of American democracy — and sees the former Republican president as a great threat to the rule of law. Last December, on ABC, she said that the 2024 elections were going to be “fundamental for safeguarding American institutions.” A few days earlier, on MSNBC, she said she had “completely rejected the idea of voting for Donald Trump again” and called on “everyone who wants democracy to survive” to vote for Biden.
Stephanie Grisham
After spending six years in Donald Trump's entourage, first as White House press secretary, then as chief of staff to Melania Trump, then first lady, Stephanie Grisham says she sees clearly in the game of ex-president, who wants nothing more than “to become a dictator,” according to her. This is what she said on CNN on the sidelines of the meeting between her former boss and Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán held in early March at Mar-a-Lago. And now, she even says she is ready to work for Joe Biden's team to prevent the Republican's re-election. “We must see Donald Trump's second term as a project allowing him to become stronger, tougher with his own people, less kind to our allies. And I think those are things to think about. »
Alyssa Farah Griffin
Last week, the former communications director under Trump protested at the image of her former boss selling Bibles for $60 a copy to finance his election campaign and his lawyer bills, which are climbing under the effect of the 88 charges against him. “He [sells a holy book] to make a profit. And that tells you everything you need to know about him,” she told ABC. The former Trump aide has yet to say who she will vote for, but she praised Mike Pence's courage in not supporting the populist's election campaign. “For those of us who were conservatives before Trump started calling himself one, [the ex-vice president's] word matters,” she wrote on X.