Nearly All of Trump's Former Staff Have Spoken Out Against Him: a one-page explainer

[You can download and print a one-page PDF of this explainer here.]

This is a one-page explainer arguing that you should consider voting for Kamala Harris, not Donald Trump. My goal is not to criticize you or call anyone names, but to persuade you based on documented facts that you can check for yourself. 

It seems like everyone who works for Trump later comes out against him. Below are a few former cabinet members and White House staff who are now vehemently anti-Trump. Several of these folks are military leaders with strong reputations for honesty and integrity. They are not social media grifters or opportunists. They don’t benefit from turning against their former boss. 

Ask yourself: why do so many people who work for Donald later turn against him? What does that say about his judgment, about what kind of man he is? Maybe one of them is exaggerating or not being 100% honest. But could they really all be lying?

General John F Kelly, White House Chief of Staff. Kelly was a Marine Corps general who worked as Trump’s Chief of Staff from 2017-2019. After working closely with Trump for more than two years in the White House, he has had some of the harshest things to say. One that jumped out at me related to a military parade Trump wanted to organize in honor of himself (Trump): 

Trump tells Kelly, “Look, I don’t want any wounded guys in the parade.”

“Those are the heroes,” Kelly said. “In our society, there’s only one group of people who are more heroic than they are – and they are buried over in Arlington.”

“I don’t want them,” Trump said. “It doesn’t look good for me.” (Click the QR code for more John Kelly’s accounts of what Trump said at various points about veterans)

John Bolton. John Bolton was a Fox News regular for years before he went to work for Trump. He also had high-ranking positions in previous Republican administrations, including George W. Bush. He worked for Trump as National Security Advisor. Here is some of what he’s said about his former boss: 

On one level, “The Room Where It Happened” is a blistering, bitter takedown of the president who Bolton describes as ignorant of such basic facts as that the United Kingdom is a nuclear power; a commander in chief who blathered through many of his own intelligence briefings and who changed his mind on a dime – “we made a weathervane look like the Rock of Gibraltar” – and who filtered all his decisions through an electoral lens, even to the extent of encouraging Chinese President Xi Jinping to help him get reelected by purchasing more goods from American farmers. Bolton observes, “I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by re-election calculations.”

Elsewhere John Bolton has said he considers Trump “unfit to be President.” 

Defense Secretary Mark Esper. Mark Esper was a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army and a veteran of the Gulf War. and served as Secretary of the Army under Trump (2017-2019). Between 2019 and the end of 2020, he was Trump’s Secretary of Defense. During the protests in the summer of 2020, Trump wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807, and deploy active-duty troops to shut down protests in American cities. Esper opposed that (and thankfully, it didn’t happen), but kept working for Trump. The final straw was Trump’s behavior leading up to and during January 6. He has described Trump as a “threat to our democracy,” and said that Trump’s actions during this time were “a national embarrassment that undermined our democracy, our credibility, and our leadership on the world stage."

Also look up Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, Attorney General Bill Barr (who was loyal to Trump for a long time before turning against him), Defense Secretary Rex Tillerson, and of course former Vice President Mike Pence. All of these are tried and true, life-long conservatives with nothing to gain by turning against Trump.

Here’s why it matters: throughout his Presidency, Trump was only concerned about his own appearance, not about the good of the country or respect for democratic institutions. No injured veterans at the parade; “it doesn’t look good for me.” No respect for democratic institutions (like the ban on using military troops against civilians on U.S. soil), no real competency or strategy on international affairs. In short, a weak leader. Why would we want him back?