Former Trump allies who now oppose his re-election | Univision Politics News

Donald Trump is not the first former president to try to regain office. He is preceded in this by Martin Van Buren, Ulysses Grant, Millard Fillmore, Theodore Roosevelt, and Grover Cleveland, and he is the only person who succeeded in this, and for this reason he is distinguished as the twenty-second and twenty-fourth president of the United States. States.

However, if he wins the Republican primary, Trump will become the first former president nominated by a party in more than a century, and only the second by his original party.

On the other hand, this was openly opposed by an important group of former supporters, and even close collaborators in his government.

This group includes the Vice President, members of his cabinet, senior military, economic and legal advisors, White House officials, and members of his first campaign. These are the most prominent reasons for opposing Trump’s re-election:

Former Vice President Mike Pence, who until mid-November was vying with Trump for the Republican presidential nomination and was a very loyal second-in-command, was placed on Trump’s enemies list when he did not follow through on his plan to remain in the White House out of spite. After losing the 2020 presidential elections.

That plan included Pence, as President of the Senate, not certifying the Electoral College vote on January 6, 2021.

Pence told CNN, “The American people deserve to know that President Trump asked me to put him above the oath I take to the Constitution, but I have fulfilled my oath and I always will.”

After Special Counsel Jack Smith accused Trump of trying to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election, Pence said in a statement: “Anyone who puts himself above the Constitution should never become president of the United States.”

John Kelly, a retired Marine general, served as Secretary of Homeland Security from the beginning of the Trump administration until July 2017, when he was appointed chief of staff and interacted with the president on a daily basis.

“I think we are in a danger zone for our country,” Kelly was quoted as saying. Washington Post.

Additionally, in an interview with CNN, Kelly described Trump as “someone who has nothing but contempt for democratic institutions, the Constitution, and the rule of law.” There is nothing else I could say. God help us!”.

One of the arguments Trump and his allies used to explain their actions after he lost the election in November 2020 was that the former president honestly believed he had won that election.

Bill Barr, who headed the Justice Department at that time, denied the allegation before the House Select Committee that investigated the events of January 6, 2021.

Barr said Trump’s fraud claims were “lies” and that he warned the then-president that they were doing “great harm to the country.”

According to an NBC News report, then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told colleagues on July 20, 2017, after a meeting at the Pentagon with Trump, his senior advisers and the Joint High Command, that the president was a “fucking idiot.” Hillwas the word he used in English).

Tillerson described Trump in a 2018 interview with CBS as “a fairly undisciplined guy, who doesn’t like to read, doesn’t read briefings, doesn’t like to go into detail about a lot of things.”

James Mattis, another respected retired Marine general when he joined the Trump administration as the first Secretary of Defense, resigned from his post in December 2018 in protest of the president’s Syria policy.

Mattis remained silent until June 2020, in the middle of the election campaign, when he accused Trump in a statement of dividing the nation.

“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people; He doesn’t even pretend to try. “Instead, he is trying to divide us,” the retired general said.

Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper wrote in a memoir published in May 2022 that Trump’s behavior was so bizarre after a meeting on China with the Joint Chiefs of Staff that an officer, whom he did not name, investigated the option of using the 25th Amendment to impose sanctions on China. He was removed from office.

Although Esper made clear in the book that he did not believe Trump’s conduct warranted impeachment, he also told the court. New York times And that the former president was “an unprincipled person who, by virtue of his personal interests, should not hold a position in the public service.”

Former National Security Advisor John Bolton said in an interview with News Nation that Trump “doesn’t think in terms of policy when he makes decisions, certainly in terms of national security.” Donald Trump personally.”

Bolton, a hardline conservative, said those who give Trump credit for foreign policy “don’t really understand how we got where we got.”

He added: “In many of these accomplishments, for which they now give credit to Trump, he wanted to go in the opposite direction.”

Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham accused the former president in his memoir of his time in the Trump administration of mistreating his staff, appeasing tyrants like Putin, and making sexual comments about a young White House aide.

According to Grisham in her book, Trump was constantly berating her, and she knew that sooner or later the president would ask her to “lie to the public,” making her look like she was “crazy.”

In an interview with CNN, former White House adviser Ty Cobb likened Trump to a “mob boss.”

Cobb also said in a post on Facebook that, regarding the issue of the attempted coup against the 2020 elections, more than one witness will be able to say that “Trump admitted that he lost the election,” and added that the former president is “toast.”

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was Trump’s first opponent in the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries that supported him after his retirement, and he was a loyal supporter of the former president for years.

Today, Christie is one of Trump’s main critics, with whom he is once again vying for the Republican presidential nomination.

This time Christie is not expected to endorse Trump. “I can’t,” Christie said. Axios in March. He added: “I do not think that a person who shows videos celebrating January 6 in his rallies is suitable for the presidency.”

Anthony Scaramucci, the New York businessman famous for his brief tenure as White House communications director in July 2017, does not hide his opposition to the re-election of Trump, whom he described in an interview with CNN as “the great terrorist.” 21st century.

Scaramucci, who recently said on the show Meet the press of NBC called Trump a “con artist” with “sociopathic political behaviors,” and noted that in 2019 he broke up with the then-President because it seemed “increasingly ridiculous.”

Cassidy Hutchinson was an aide to Mark Meadows, White House chief of staff, during the violent takeover of the Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters on January 6, 2021. She was an eyewitness to the behind-the-scenes events that day, and she told CNN that Trump: “The most dangerous threat to American democracy in our lifetimes and perhaps in the country’s history.”

It is impossible to summarize the huge amount of accusations and descriptions that Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, has made against the former president, since professional and personal relations between the two men were cut off after Cohen’s conviction in the case of illegal payments to buy silence. Porn actress Stormy Daniels in connection with an alleged extramarital affair she had with the former president.