Several former Trump administration officials are speaking out in the final weeks of the 2024 campaign to warn of the risks of electing their onetime boss to a second term.
Former chief of staff John Kelly told The New York Times that former President Trump “prefers the dictator approach to government.”
Former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley told Bob Woodward that Trump was a “fascist to the core,” and multiple press aides have hit the campaign trail in recent days to warn that Trump is unfit to serve as president.
The flood of statements come as voters head to the polls for early voting in what is expected to be a razor-close election.
While very few of the officials have endorsed Vice President Harris, their warnings feed into her campaign’s efforts to court moderates and Republicans who are skeptical of backing Trump in November.
Harris delivered remarks Wednesday from her residence to highlight Kelly’s comments in an effort to keep them front and center in the news cycle.
“Donald Trump is increasingly unhinged and unstable, and in a second term, people like John Kelly would not be there to be the guardrails against his propensities and his actions,” Harris said.
“We know what Donald Trump wants. He wants unchecked power. The question in 13 days will be what do the American people want,” Harris added.
Kelly, a retired four-star general, served as Trump’s chief of staff for roughly 16 months and has been quoted previously in stories about Trump disparaging military veterans. The New York Times on Tuesday published an interview in which Kelly said Trump met the definition of a fascist and recalled the former president expressing admiration for Adolf Hitler.
A Trump campaign spokesperson dismissed Kelly’s comments as “debunked stories.”
“John Kelly has totally beclowned himself with these debunked stories he has fabricated because he failed to serve his President well while working as Chief of Staff and currently suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” Steven Cheung said in a statement.
“President Trump has always honored the service and sacrifice of all of our military men and women, whereas Kamala Harris has completely disrespected the families of those who gave the ultimate sacrifice, including the Abbey Gate 13.”
Kelly is far from the only former administration official to offer a public warning about the dangers of electing Trump again.
Milley, who served as head of the joint chiefs of staff from October 2019 until September 2023, has previously said he worried Trump posed a threat to democracy. In an upcoming book by Woodward, Milley went a step further and called the GOP nominee a “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to this country.”
Mark Esper, who served as Trump’s secretary of Defense for 16 months, has spoken out in recent weeks about how Trump might use the military for political purposes in a second term.
John Bolton, who spent 17 months as Trump’s national security adviser, has been a regular presence on television warning that the former president does not have a coherent national security strategy beyond his own self-interest.
Lower-level aides have also gotten more active in the lead-up to the election. Sarah Matthews, a former deputy press secretary in the Trump White House who resigned on Jan. 6, 2021, has appeared at multiple events in Pennsylvania this month to speak about her opposition to Trump.
At one event, Matthews was joined by fellow Trump administration alumni Alyssa Farah Griffin and Cassidy Hutchinson. Farah Griffin is an outspoken Trump critic who served as his White House communications director, while Hutchinson was a top aide to Mark Meadows in the Trump White House who testified about the events of Jan. 6.
Matthews, in an interview with The Hill, argued Kelly’s comments in particular should carry weight with voters because of his military background and the fact that, as chief of staff, Kelly would have worked with Trump more closely than most.
“I think collectively when you have so many of Trump’s former officials coming out and saying he’s unfit, I do think that has made an impact and caused people to question their support for him,” Matthews said.
But some strategists are skeptical that the criticism will break through given voters’ views of Trump are so entrenched. Most of what Kelly told the Times also has been previously reported.
“In Donald Trump’s political history, has any story that exploded on the scene about something that he has said made a material impact on the election? No,” said Doug Heye, a former spokesperson for the Republican National Committee.
Others have pointed to the timing of Kelly’s remarks, two weeks before Election Day, to suggest they are a political attack that many voters may shrug off.
“Do you think half of America is voting for a fascist? No, it’s just an outrageous statement,” New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) told “NewsNation Now” in an interview Wednesday with Connell McShane.
“Those types of statements are a bit outrageous. They don’t really move the needle. What moves the needle is who’s going to make my life better? It’s that simple,” he added.
Harris and her campaign have made a concerted effort to appeal to Republicans and past Trump voters who may feel exhausted or anxious about the prospect of sending him back to the White House. There has been specific outreach to voters who backed Nikki Haley in the GOP primary. Those voters are critical to Harris’s path to victory at a time when she has struggled to match President Biden’s 2020 support among Black and Latino voters.
The Harris campaign this week deployed former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), a fierce Trump critic, in battleground states. Harris and Cheney appeared together at events in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania earlier this week, flanked by signs that read, “Country Over Party.”
The Harris campaign has pointed to the thousands of Haley primary voters in swing states who could be won over. But skeptics of the strategy have argued that voters concerned about the events of Jan. 6 or Trump’s character are likely already in Harris’s corner.
A Marist College poll published last week found Harris leading Trump by 5 percentage points nationally. In that poll, the vice president drew support from 6 percent of Republicans, while Trump garnered support from 4 percent of Democrats.
But there are signs the steady stream of criticism from former officials may resonate with voters.
During a Univision town hall, a voter named Ramiro Gonzalez told Trump he was a former registered Republican who wanted to give the former president a chance to win his vote back.
“I’m curious how people so close to you and your administration no longer want to support you. So why would I want to support you?” Gonzalez asked.
Trump gave a lengthy answer in which he described Jan. 6 as a “day of love” and dismissed the former officials criticizing him as disgruntled ex-employees.
“When you fire somebody, they say bad things. When I fire a John Bolton or when I fire any of these people — he was terrible — but when I fire people, they go out and say — if I didn’t fire people, they wouldn’t say it,” Trump responded.
Gonzalez told Univision after the event he would not be voting for Trump.
