The Amazingly Long List of former Members of the Trump Inner Circle who have turned Critics and Warn of the Danger of Trump

by Rod Williams, March 5, 2024- I was at a Republican luncheon today and a speaker said Trump was bound to win the 2024 election unless he was caught having sex with a goat on 5th Avenue. I spoke up and said even that wouldn't deter his supporters from voting for him. The speaker agreed and the room laughed. Unfortunately, I think it is true. 

I think I have some insight into what originally motivated Trump supporters and his appeal, but still yet, not for the life of me can I explain the continuing support. Trump is crude and rude. He is uninformed and undisciplined. He says dangerous things, bigoted things, sexist things, lies, calls people names, makes fun of people with disabilities, and dishonors wounded veterans, He attempted to prevent the peaceful transfer of power and remain in office after losing an election. He was found civilly liable for rape. Despite all of this, his supporters stand by him.  They still love him. Trump's people who served him in his first administration, however, know he is unfit for office and have turned on him. 

Every president has the occasional critic from within his administration. Whether is to make money from a tell-all book deal, argue a contentious policy issue, or revenge a slight, the disgruntled former advisor or cabinet member turning critic is not uncommon. With Trump however, supporter-turned-critic is an avalanche. No president has ever attracted more public detractors who were formerly in his inner circle.

Those who served in his administration, including many of his closest advisors, say he is unfit to serve in office, say he is morally corrupt, temperamentally unfit, and they say he does not understand government, is irrational, and dangerous. This does not sway his supporters. 

I don't know that anything will dissuade a Trump supporter from voting for him, but just in case anyone who might see this and is unaware of what those who were closest to him think of him, I am posting a few comments made by his former allies turned critics. 

Vice President Mike Pense

Former Vice President Mike Pense: "He asked me to put him over the Constitution and I chose the Constitution, and I always will.” 

“President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people, and the American people alone. And frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president.”

Referring to Trump's action on January 6th he said the president was "reckless." "The president's words that day at the rally endangered me and my family and everyone at the Capitol."

Attorney General Bill Barr

Former Attorney General Bill Barr: "The fact of the matter is he is a consummate narcissist, and he constantly engages in reckless conduct that puts his political followers at risk and the conservative and Republican agenda at risk. … He will always put his own interest and gratifying his own ego ahead of everything else, including the country’s interest. There’s no question about it. … He’s like a 9-year-old, a defiant 9-year-old kid, who’s always pushing the glass toward the edge of the table defying his parents to stop him from doing it.”

"Among the current crop of potential nominees, Trump is the person least able to unite the party and the one most likely to lose the general election." He has said Trump is unfit to serve and has probably committed crimes.

Defense Secretary James Mattis

Former Defense Secretary James Mattis: " He is he first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.” “We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution.” 

Former National Security Advisor John Bolton: "By the time I left the White House, I was convinced he was not fit to be president. … I think it is a danger for the United States if he gets a second term.”

National Security Advisor John Bolton

“I hope [history] will remember him as a one-term president who didn’t plunge the country irretrievablyinto a downward spiral,” Bolton said in an interview with ABC News. "We can get over one term. I have absolute confidence. … Two terms, I’m more troubled about.”

"(Under a new Trump term) the chief requirements for duty will be how quickly you say ‘yes, sir.'" "And I think that’ll apply to the DNI and CIA director in particular.” A second Trump term would be "unacceptable." "He doesn’t have a conservative philosophy. He follows his own personal interest, and that’s not what you need in a president.”

White House chief of staff
 John Kelly

Former White House chief of staff John Kelly, retired four-star general: "(Trump is) a person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution and the rule of law.”

“What’s going on in the country that a single person thinks this guy would still be a good president when he’s said the things he’s said and done the things he’s done?”  “It’s beyond my comprehension he has the support he has."

“I came out and told people the awful things he said about wounded soldiers, and it didn’t have half a day’s bounce. You had his attorney general Bill Barr come out, and not a half a day’s bounce. If anything, his numbers go up. It might even move the needle in the wrong direction. I think we’re in a dangerous zone in our country.” 

Former Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer: "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 and practices ..."

Omarosa Manigault Newman, former director of communications for the White House Office of Public Liaison: "Donald Trump, who would attack civil rights icons and professional athletes, who would go after grieving black widows, who would say there were good people on both sides, who endorsed an accused child molester; Donald Trump, and his decisions and his behavior, was harming the country. I could no longer be a part of this madness.”

Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci: "For the last 3 years I have fully supported this President. Recently he has said things that divide the country in a way that is unacceptable. So I didn’t pass the 100% litmus test. Eventually he turns on everyone and soon it will be you and then the entire country.” "... racist and unacceptable.”

Fiona Hill, a top Russia adviser on the National Security Council in Trump’s administration: “He wants to weaponize the intelligence community. And the fact is you need to look with a 360 degree perspective. He can’t just cherry pick what he wants to hear when there are so many U.S. adversaries and countries that don’t wish the U.S. well.” 

Stephanie Grisham, the press secretary who resigned after the Capitol riot: She described Trump as a "con man." "The Republican Party really needs to look within right now and decide are we going to go with the voters, who hire us, or are we going to go with this one man, Donald Trump?" 

“Anytime you speak out, all the haters come out and say you’re just disgruntled. All the Democrats come out and say it’s too little, too late. I do think that’s where so many people are,” she said. 

She warms about the backlash that comes with Trump attacking you — or his supporters turning on you. “It’s actual threats for your safety and your family. As we get closer to the election, it’s only going to get more intense. Why am I putting my family and my friends through this if we’re now going to get threats?”

Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff
Mark Milley

Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: Trump suggested Milley deserved execution for his disloyalty.  Mr. Milley criticized Mr. Trump in a speech without naming him. 'We don’t take an oath to a country. We don’t take an oath to a tribe. We don’t take an oath to a religion. We don’t take an oath to a king or a queen, or to a tyrant or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator.”

Former White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster: "President Trump and other officials have repeatedly compromised our principles in pursuit of partisan advantage and personal gain.”

Asked if Trump was as big a threat to election integrity in the U.S. as Russia, McMaster was unequivocal. “He is aiding and abetting Putin’s efforts by not being direct about this,”

Former Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar: "Unfortunately, the actions and rhetoric following the election, especially during this past week, threaten to tarnish these and other historic legacies of this administration. The attacks on the Capitol were an assault on our democracy and on the tradition of peaceful transitions of power that the United States of America first brought to the world.”

Former White House counsel Ty Cobb: “He has never cared about America, its citizens, its future or anything but himself. In fact, as history well shows from his divisive lies, as well as from his unrestrained contempt for the rule of law and his related crimes, his conduct and mere existence have hastened the demise of democracy and of the nation. Our adversaries and our allies both recognize that even his potential reelection diminishes America on the world stage and ensures continued acceleration of the domestic decline we are currently enduring. If that reelection actually happens, the consequences will extinguish what, if anything, remains of the American Dream.”

Former defense secretary Mark T. Esper: "I have a lot of concerns about Donald Trump. I have said that he’s a threat to democracy. I think the last year, certainly the last few months of Donald Trump’s presidency, will look like the first few months of the next one if that were to occur.”

US Ambassador to the United Nations
 Nikki Haley

Former US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley:  "He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.”

Regarding Trump's tweet attacking Pence as a mob of his supporters roamed the Capitol chanting that he should be hanged, Haley said, "When I tell you I'm angry, it's an understatement. Mike has been nothing but loyal to that man. He's been nothing but a good friend of that man. ... I am so disappointed in the fact that [despite] the loyalty and friendship he had with Mike Pence, that he would do that to him. Like, I'm disgusted by it."

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson

Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson: "Moron.” 

Tillerson said he found it challenging "to go to work for a man who is pretty undisciplined, doesn’t like to read, doesn’t read briefing reports, doesn’t like to get into the details of a lot of things, but rather just kind of says, ‘This is what I believe.’” 

"His understanding of global events, his understanding of global history, his understanding of U.S. history was really limited. It's really hard to have a conversation with someone who doesn't even understand the concept for why we're talking about this." 

 "We all remember in 2016 he said if he got elected there was going to be so much winning and winning and winning and winning, they'd get sick of winning," Christie recently said on ABC. "None of us knew at the time he was actually talking about the Democrats."

The above are quotes from only a few of the former Trump administration officials who have publicly criticized the former president. Below is a partial list of others who have done so: 

• Former Governor and Republican candidate for President Chris Christie
• Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
• Marc Short, Pence’s longtime chief of staff and a former Trump adviser
• Former Homeland Security adviser Tom Bossert
• Cliff Sims, former special assistant to the President and director of White House Message Strategy
• Gary Cohn, former National Economic Council director.
• Former Transportation secretary Elaine Chao who resigned.
• Bill Stepien, Trump's 2020 campaign manager
• Trump's former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, B.J. Pak
• Former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann
• Former White House Communications Director Alyssa Farrah Griffin
• Anthony Scaramucci, Trump's White House communications director
• Senior adviser and Director of the National Economics Council, Gary Cohn
• Trump lawyer Michael Cohen
• Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions
• Former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos
• Former Republican presidential nominee and US Senator Mitt Romney

Also, various journalist report that other former Trump advisors and members of his administration and current members of congress say much the same in private but don't want to alienate Trump supporters and their career by publicly saying anything negative about Trump. Also, some fear for their lives should they speak out.  

For source of quotes and more follow link, Link, link, link, link, and link. 

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