Endorsements from Former Colleagues of Donald Trump

This is largely from an well-researched CNN piece dated Oct 3, 2023, “24 Former Trump Allies and Aides Who Turned Against Him” by Zachary B. Wolf October 3, 2023.
I also amended that material with further quotes from an excellent NY Times article, “What 17 of Trump’s ‘Best People’ Said About Him” by Sarah Longwell, Jan. 18, 2024. I also used material from a NY Times piece, “Trump’s Former Aides and Advisers on the Peril He Poses” written by Jennifer Schuessler on May 12, 2022. A March 18, 2024 piece in the Washington Post declares that less than one-third of Trump’s cabinet has supported him in 2024.

What’s below is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but rather a catalog of notable quotes by former aides and top officials whom Trump at one point chose to work for him at the White House. Also included are other folks who have worked with him during his administration. Some are now actively working against him. Three were running against him in the presidential primary. Others have stayed relatively quiet after resigning in protest.

These are some of the people that knew him best while Trump was president and have maybe the best idea of what another Trump term would be like. They joined Trump because they largely agreed with his policies and politics and despite that agreement are now saying something very different about the man.

1. His vice president, Mike Pence: “The American people deserve to know that President Trump asked me to put him over my oath to the Constitution. … Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.” “It should come as no surprise that I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year.”
2. His second attorney general, Bill Barr: “Someone who engaged in that kind of bullying about a process that is fundamental to our system and to our self-government shouldn’t be anywhere near the Oval Office.” “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.”
3. His first secretary of defense, James Mattis: “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people – does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us.” “We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution.”
4. His second secretary of defense, Mark Esper: “I think he’s unfit for office. … He puts himself before country. His actions are all about him and not about the country. And then, of course, I believe he has integrity and character issues as well.” “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.”
5. His chairman of the joint chiefs, retired Gen. Mark Milley, seemed to invoke Trump: “We don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We take an oath to the Constitution and we take an oath to the idea that is America – and we’re willing to die to protect it.”
6. His first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson: “(Trump’s) understanding of global events, his understanding of global history, his understanding of US 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.” “Moron.”
7. His first ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley: “He used to be good on foreign policy and now he has started to walk it back and get weak in the knees when it comes to Ukraine. A terrible thing happened on January 6 and he called it a beautiful day.” “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.”
8. His presidential transition vice-chairman, Chris Christie: “Someone who I would argue now is just out for himself.”
9. His second national security adviser, H.R. McMaster: “We saw the absence of leadership, really anti-leadership, and what that can do to our country.” “President Trump and other officials have repeatedly compromised our principles in pursuit of partisan advantage and personal gain.” “It’s a gift to our adversaries, who want to shake our confidence in who we are, shake our confidence in our democratic principles and institutions and processes.”
10. His third national security adviser, John Bolton: “I believe (foreign leaders) think he is a laughing fool.” “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.” “The concern I have, speaking as a conservative Republican, is that once the election is over, if the president wins, the political constraint is gone. And because he has no philosophical grounding, there’s no telling what will happen in a second term.” “I think in private, honest conversations, almost all of Trump’s cabinet members and other senior advisers” would agree that “Trump is not fit to be president.”
11. His second chief of staff, John Kelly: “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. There is nothing more that can be said. God help us.” “What happened on Capitol Hill yesterday [Jan.6, 2021] is a direct result of his poisoning the minds of people with the lies and the frauds.” “Trump has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about”. “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.”
12. His former acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, who resigned as US special envoy to Ireland after January 6, 2021: “I quit because I think he failed at being the president when we needed him to be that.”
13. One of his many former communications directors, Anthony Scaramucci: “He is the domestic terrorist of the 21st century.”
14. Another former communications director, Stephanie Grisham: “I am terrified of him running in 2024.” “Everybody’s showing their fealty to them, he’s on his revenge tour to people who dared to vote for impeachment. I want to just warn people, once he takes office, if he were to win, he doesn’t have to worry about re-election anymore, he will be about revenge, he will probably have some pretty draconian policies.”
15. His secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, who resigned after January 6: “When I saw what was happening on January 6 and didn’t see the president step in and do what he could have done to turn it back or slow it down or really address the situation, it was just obvious to me that I couldn’t continue.”
16. His secretary of transportation, Elaine Chao, who resigned after January 6: “At a particular point the events were such that it was impossible for me to continue, given my personal values and my philosophy.
17. His first secretary of the Navy, Richard 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.”
18. His first homeland security adviser, Tom Bossert: “The President undermined American democracy baselessly for months. As a result, he’s culpable for this siege (of Jan. 6), and an utter disgrace.”
19. His former personal lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen: “Donald’s an idiot.” “Donald Trump is the single greatest threat to democracy.”
20. His White House lawyer, Ty Cobb: “Trump relentlessly puts forth claims that are not true.” “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.”
21. A former director of strategic communications, Alyssa Farah Griffin, who is now a CNN political commentator: “We can stand by the policies, but at this point we cannot stand by the man.” “Fundamentally, a second Trump term could mean the end of American democracy as we know it, and I don’t say that lightly. Donald Trump in office could spell, frankly, the last election in our lifetime.”
22. A top aide in charge of his outreach to African Americans, Omarosa Manigault Newman: “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.”
23. A former deputy press secretary, Sarah Matthews, who resigned after January 6: “I thought that he did do a lot of good during his four years. I think that his actions on January 6 and the lead-up to it, the way that he’s acted in the aftermath, and his continuation of pushing this lie that the election is stolen has made him wholly unfit to hold office every again.”
24. His final chief of staff’s aide, Cassidy Hutchinson: “I think that Donald Trump is the most grave threat we will face to our democracy in our lifetime, and potentially in American history.” “If Donald Trump is elected president again in 2024, I do fear that it will be the last election where we’re voting for democracy because if he is elected again, I don’t think we’ll be voting under the same Constitution,”
25. Secretary of Health and Human Services from Jan. 29, 2018, to Jan. 20, 2021, Alex Azar, criticized Trump for the events of Jan 6, 2021 “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.”
26. Director of National Intelligence from March 16, 2017, to Aug. 15, 2019, Dan Coats, criticized Trump for his handling of classified documents. “It’s more than just a bunch of papers and what big deal is this and so forth. Lives can be lost.”
27. Secretary of State from April 26, 2018, to Jan. 20, 2021, and director of the C.I.A. from Jan. 23, 2017, to April 26, 2018, Mike Pompeo, “We need more seriousness, less noise, and leaders who are looking forward, not staring in the rearview mirror claiming victimhood.”
28. Director of the FBI 2013-2017, James Comey. “I don’t think he’s mentally unfit. I’ve read stuff about dementia and what-not. I don’t buy that. … That’s not what I mean. I actually believe he’s morally unfit to be president.” “The comparison to the leadership of a Cosa Nostra family, a Mafia family, actually started to hit me right away … in the sense that the leadership culture is very similar. It’s all focused on the boss. What is done in this family must serve the boss.”
29. Former Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell. “The mob was fed lies (about Jan 6). They were provoked by the president and other powerful people, and they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding … which they did not like,”