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By Miriam Raftery
August 22, 2024 (Chicago, IL) – In an unprecedented action, numerous prominent Republicans have spoken at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for President—including top Trump administration leaders, a conservative judge,and elected Republican officials. These speakers urged Americans to put country over party, warning that their former boss poses a threat to American democracy and is unfit to hold the nation’s highest office.
Many other prominent Republicans have also endorsed Harris and/or warned that Donald Trump should not be president again, including his former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, his former national security advisor, Trump’s White House chief of staff, other administration insiders, and 15 former Republican members of Congress.
Trump has been convicted on 36 felony criminal fraud counts and was found by a judge to have committed sexual assault. The former President also faces dozens of additional charges ranging from espionage to election interference, including charges related to inciting the Jan. 6, 2020 violent insurrection that injured numerous police officers at the Capitol. He was twice impeached by the House of Representatives, though Senate Republicans blocked convictions on the impeachment counts.
“I left the Trump White House in August 2020 because I saw the danger Donald Trump posed for our country,” Olivia Troye, former counterterrorism advisor to Vice President Mike Pence, wrote in a recent editorial. Troye, who spoke at the DNC convention, says Trump “weakened our standing on the world stage, damaged our institutions at home, and restricted our freedoms.”
She added, “He endangers our allies, says he’d allow Russian President Vladimir Putin to “do whatever the hell” he wants to them, and has threatened to withdraw the United States from NATO. After losing in 2020, Trump tried to overturn a free and fair election, put his own vice president’s life in danger, and unleashed a violent mob on the U.S. Capitol that left five law enforcement officers dead.” Troye also warned that Trump has pledged to be “a dictator on day one” and to seek revenge on his political opponents.”
Troye praised Harris, stating, “She will stand by our global partners, from Israel to Ukraine to our NATO allies. She will defend our democracy and ensure we remain a nation in which nobody is above the law.” She adds, “To my fellow conservatives: The Republican Party has abandoned you. It’s not too late to reject Trump’s chaos and stand with Kamala Harris, who will defend our democracy and fight for our freedoms. Harris has a vision for the future of our nation. Trump only wants to drag us back into the past.”
Former federal appellate judge J. Michael Luttig, a conservative legal scholar appointed by Republican President George H.W. Bush, also endorsed Harris and spoke at the convention. At the convention, he said only Harris and the Democratic party “can claim the mantle of defender and protector of America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law” in the 2024 election.” Luttig famously advised then-Vice President Pence that it would be illegal for Pence to refuse to certify the 2020 election results in the Senate, as Trump demanded Pence do to block the peaceful transfer of power. Trump previously lost over 60 legal challenges, with not a single judge finding any indication of fraud, including judges Trump had appointed.
Luttig, a respected constitutional scholar, says policy differences should not be the key issue in this election, with America’s future self-governance at stake. He argues that the stakes today are as high as in the late 1700s, when political foes including founding fathers Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton joined together to voice concern over the potential rise of authoritarianism.
At least 15 former Republican members of Congress have endorsed Harris. Among them is Denver Riggleman, former member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus and an advisor to the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 insurrection. He described Trump as an "inveterate liar" and a "conspiracy theorist."
"When you see the data and you see the awful things I've seen — you see the command-and-control infrastructure of Jan. 6th — there's no way as a Republican that I could vote for anybody who's anti-Constitution," Riggleman told the crowd at the DNC convention.
John Giles, Republican mayor of Mesa, Arizona, also spoke. “I feel more at home here than in today’s Republican party. The grand old party has been kidnapped by extremists and devolved into a cult. The Cult of Donald Trump,” he said, adding the the Republican Party of his hero, John McCain, the 2008 presidential nominee, is long gone. Giles said Biden-Harris policies have benefitted Arizona.
Trump has not responded specifically to the growing Republicans for Harris movement, instead criticizing Harris as a “dangerous liberal” and reiterating personal attacks on her racial identity and policies.
Besides those speaking at the DNC convention, many other prominent Republicans have said they will not support Trump,but stopped short of endorsing Harris. Those include Trump’s former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, who told CNN that Trump “is not fit for office because he puts himself first, and I think anybody running for office should put the country first.”
Former Vice President Mike Pence has also refused to endorse Trump, after Trump goaded on a violent mob during the January 6 insurrection; Trump posted incendiary social media posts attacking Pence even after watching on TV as the mob chanted “hang Mike Pence” with a gallows erected outside the capitol.
Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, called Trump a “wannabe dictator.”
John Bolton, Trump’s former national security advisor, said there will be “celebrations in the Kremlin” if Trump wins because “Putin thinks that he is an easy mark.”
Retired General John Kelly, Trump’s White House Chief of Staff, asked about a second Trump term, said, “God help us.” He told CNN that Trump “admires autocrats and murderous dictators” and “has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.”
Cassidy Hutchinson, former Trump White House aide turned whistleblower, told ABC, “If Donald Trump is elected president again in 2024,I do fear that it wil be the last election where we’re voting for democracy,” adding that Trump seeks to undermine the Constitution.
Trump’s deputy press secretary Sara Matthews believes Trump “helped incite a deadly insurrection in our nation’s Capitol,” MSNBC reported.
Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci earlier endorsed Biden, before the President dropped out of the race. “This really is going to be a battle for democracy,” he said, warning that Trump plans “to expand executive power.”
Besides prominent politicians and Constitutional experts, the Democratic national convention also featured ordinary Republican voters such as Rich Logis, a former MAGA activist who stopped backing Trump after what he calls a failure of leadership during the COVID pandemic.
“So this is my message to all the Republicans and independents who are watching people like me, who voted for and believed in Trump,” Logis said. “I made a grave mistake, but it’s never too late to change your mind. You don’t need to agree with everything you hear tonight to do what is right.”
Ex-White House aide Stephanie Grisham joined the growing number of ex-Trump administration members who spoke at the Democratic convention to endorse Harris. ““Behind closed doors, Trump mocks his supporters. He calls them basement dwellers,” she revealed. “He has no empathy, no morals and no fidelity to the truth.”
Grisham resigned in after Jan. 6 Capitol attack which she blames on Trump. “Here I am behind a podium advocating for a Democrat, and that's because I love my country more than my party,” she concluded, adding this message for the American public. “Kamala Harris tells the truth. She respects the American people, and she has my vote.”
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Comments
This says more about Kamala than Trump.
Biden has been a super-autocrat responsible for the war
About that European war:
The Ukraine war was caused by Russian dictator Putin's invasion without provocation. Trump said of Ukraine that Putin "could do whatever the hell he wants" so clearly he'd have done nothing to stop that war. Biden sought funds from Congress to aid in Ukraine's defense but Congress was slow to act. If Ukraine falls to Putin, many fear that other European nations could be next, as when Hitler began invading neighboring nations.