Donald Trump has maintained a sizable lead in the polls ahead of the 2024 primaries — but he faces a growing list of once-allies who have now ditched him, explicitly declaring opposition to a second Trump presidency.
Many people once close to the former president — members of his cabinet, supporters in Congress, and even his own attorneys — have now voiced their opposition to his 2024 candidacy.
They have cautioned against electing him again, concerned about the dangers a Trump second term would pose for democracy.
Whether the tipping point was the January 6 Capitol riot, one of Mr Trump’s federal indictments, or something else entirely, each of these former loyalists has arrived at the same conclusion: they don’t think Trump should be president again in 2024.
Over the weekend, ex-Trump White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci went so far as to say that if 2024 became another Biden-Trump matchup, he would back the Democratic incumbent.
Although he stands alone in that category, here is a list of every former Trump ally who has said they wouldn’t support him in 2024.
Let’s start with former members of Trump’s White House staff.
Alyssa Farah Griffin
Former White House Communication Director Alyssa Farah Griffin has made it clear that she fears a second Trump term. She told ABC News in December: “Fundamentally, a second Trump term could mean the end of American democracy as we know it, and I don’t say that lightly.”
She reiterated the dangers that another Donald Trump presidency poses this month on “The View,” where she now sits as a co-host. She warned, “Donald Trump in office could spell, frankly, the last election in our lifetime.”
Ms Griffin has thrown her support behind Nikki Haley.
Bill Barr
Trump’s hand-picked former Attorney General Bill Barr has been very openly critical of Mr Trump. He resigned from his post shortly after the Justice Department found no evidence of voter fraud, contradicting Mr Trump’s baseless claims after he lost the 2020 election.
Mr Barr told Fox News in December: “One of the reasons I’m against Trump as the [Republican National Committee] nominee is I don’t think he’s going to move the country forward.”
The former AG has emphasised that he will not endorse Trump in 2024. When NBC News asked him in July how he would vote if it came down to a Biden-Trump matchup, Mr Barr retorted: “I’ll jump off that bridge when I get to it.”
Anthony Scaramucci
The ex-White House Communications Director, who served just 10 days in the post before being fired, said that if 2024 becomes a 2020 repeat, he would be backing President Biden.
He added, “I will do everything I can to make sure that the president stays in office.”
Mr Scaramucci outlined the potential dangers of re-electing Mr Trump, like expanding executive power and “going after his adversaries using the Department of Justice.”
Sarah Matthews
The former White House deputy press secretary sat down with ABC News last month to discuss the risk of a second Trump presidency. She resigned on January 6.
She emphasised to the network that her former boss has not backed down on his 2020 election fraud claims and said that she believes his rhetoric since has become “increasingly erratic.”
She added, “We don’t need to speculate what a second Trump term would like because we already saw it play out.”
While she characterised a Biden-Trump rematch as a “lose-lose scenario” for her, Ms Matthews indicated that if it came to be, she would back Biden: “I’ve never voted for a Democrat in my life, but I think that in this next election, I would put policy aside and choose democracy.”
Mick Mulvaney
Mick Mulvaney, one in a line of Trump’s many chiefs of staff, previously said that he thinks Mr Trump can win the primaries but lose the general election.
Mr Mulvaney was named the acting chief of staff in January 2019, a position he served until he was ousted in March 2020, shortly after the former president’s first impeachment.
However, Mr Mulvaney was tapped to serve as a special envoy for Northern Ireland. He stepped down from that post after January 6.
He has since discussed his own stance on the 2024 election. “I am working hard to make sure that someone else is the nominee,” Mr Mulvaney told NBC News in July. “I think he’s the Republican who is most likely to lose in a general election, of all our leading candidates. If anyone can lose to Joe Biden, it would be him.”
Cassidy Hutchinson
The former aide of chief of staff Mark Meadows, Cassidy Hutchinson, stayed in her role until the end of the Trump presidency, but later bravely provided bombshell testimony to the House January 6 select committee about the former president’s behaviour during the Capitol attack.
The insider-turned-whistleblower told ABC News last month that 2024 “is a fundamental election to continue to safeguard our institutions and our constitutional republic.”
She cautioned against another Trump win. “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,” Ms Hutchinson said in November.
She explicitly said she would not be voting for Mr Trump in 2024. Although she refrained from sharing who she planned to vote for, the former aide encouraged “everybody” to vote for Mr Biden “if they want our democracy to survive.”
John Bolton
The former national security adviser has said that he will not vote for Mr Trump in 2024, and instead do the same thing he did in 2020: write in a different candidate entirely. In September 2019, the former president said he fired Mr Bolton, who, in turn, said he resigned from his post.
In 2020, he wrote-in a conservative candidate. He told CNN in July: “I always like to vote for a conservative Republican. Between Biden and Trump, there was no conservative on the ballot. So I wrote in the name of a conservative, and I would do the same in 2024.”
Mr Bolton added, “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.”
In addition to those who served with him in the White House, many of Trump’s former attorneys and once-political allies said they wouldn’t support his 2024 run.
Jenna Ellis
Donald Trump’s former lawyer Jenna Ellis, who took a plea deal after being charged alongside Mr Trump and in the sprawling Georgia criminal case, has now pledged to not support him in 2024.
Ms Ellis said in a radio interview in September that she knows the former president while she has “great love and respect for him personally…I simply can’t support him for elected office again.”
She said that she has distanced herself “because of that frankly malignant, narcissistic tendency to say that he’s never done anything wrong.”
Joe Walsh
Joe Walsh is a former Illinois Republican Congressman turned Trump advocate — who has now turned Trump rival.
One month ahead of the 2016 election, Mr Walsh tweeted that he would be voting for Mr Trump. “If Trump loses, I’m grabbing my musket,” he wrote.
Four years later, he dramatically pivoted and launched a 2020 bid to take on Mr Trump. Although his campaign was short-lived, he said he entered the race “because I thought it was really important that there was a Republican out there every day calling out this president for how unfit he is.”
Last month, he indicated that he would be backing Joe Biden in 2024. “It’s my obligation as an American. It’s my duty as a defender of democracy,” he wrote on X.
Michael Cohen
Donald Trump’s former “fixer” Michael Cohen, who in recent years has been an outspoken critic of his former boss, has indicated that he would vote for Mr Biden in 2024.
When someone on X asked Mr Cohen if he was satisfied with Joe Biden, he replied with a quote that he attributed to former New York City Mayor Ed Koch: “If you agree with me 6 out of 12 times, you should vote for me. If you agree with me 12 out of 12 times, you should see a psychiatrist.”
He then wrote he agreed with Mr Biden “6 out of 12 times.”
Mr Cohen elaborated on his thoughts about his former client to the MeidasTouch podcast in December: “Donald Trump is the single greatest threat to democracy.”
