One subtle way of gauging where this election is going is to abandon for a moment the entrail-poking priests of the polls – paid to make their leaders dreams sound true – and take a look at the visible signs of support or rejection from high-profile followers of each.
Here are a few people who have abandoned Trump:
All of his former senior staff, which has never happened before in presidential history. Multiple White House chiefs of staff, multiple secretaries of defence, his former national security advisor, his former White House communications director, have turned on him.
Jimmy McCain, son of Republican presidential candidate John McCain, changed his voter registration to Democrat a few weeks ago. When Trump did his thumbs-up happy face at the Arlington Cemetery, that finished it for Jimmy. He announced that he would be voting for Kamala.
“It just blows me away,” he said. McCain served 17 years in the military, and added that the site was no fit environment for a political campaign. “These men and women that are laying in the ground there have no choice…I just think that for anyone who’s done a lot of time in their uniform, they just understand that inherently — that it’s not about you there. It’s about these people who gave the ultimate sacrifice in the name of their country.”
The Arlington incident happened just after Jimmy had returned from a seven-month deployment to a small US base on the Jordan-Syria border known as Tower 22.
As a candidate in 2015, Trump said McCain was "not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
A doctor diagnosed President Donald Trump with bone spurs to help him avoid the Vietnam War draft as a “favor” to his father Fred Trump, say the two daughters of Dr. Larry Braunstein. In 1968, after receiving four deferments due to education, Donald Trump was diagnosed with the bone spurs in his heels at the age of 22.
Jimmy McCain’s mother Cindy and his sister Meghan have also distanced themselves from Trump. As this article was being published, Cindy McCain declared her support for Harris.
No word yet on his sister Meghan, who has simply said she won’t support either Trump or Harris.
Former Vice President Mike Pence says he opposes Trump and will not endorse him. Considering that Trump had tried to have a mob hang him at the Capitol, that’s easy to understand. What’s not as easy to grasp is Trump’s recent comment that Harris has been ‘unkind’ to Pence.
More than 200 Republicans who previously worked for Republican presidents or presidential candidates like former President George W. Bush, the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., or Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, have endorsed Kamala Harris. An open letter with 238 signatures said that the alternative to Harris “is simply untenable."
The signatories include former McCain chiefs of staff Mark Salter and Chris Koch; Joe Donoghue, former legislative director for McCain; Jennifer Lux, press secretary for McCain's 2008 campaign; Jean Becker, longtime chief of staff for George H.W. Bush; David Nierenberg, Romney's 2012 campaign finance chair; David Garman, under secretary of Energy for George W. Bush; and Olivia Troye, a former advisor to both George W. Bush and Vice President Mike Pence.
Others who signed the letters include: Reed Galen, McCain's deputy campaign manager and co-founder of the Lincoln Project; Jim Swift, a former Republican operative who is now senior editor of The Bulwark, an anti-Trump news and opinion site; and former McCain campaign strategist Mike Murphy.
The letter forecasts that "At home, another four years of Donald Trump’s chaotic leadership, this time focused on advancing the dangerous goals of Project 2025, will hurt real, everyday people and weaken our sacred institutions."
Mitt Romney himself, who voted to impeach Trump as a senator, said he won't support Trump in the 2024 election.
Bush did not attend last month's Republican National Convention, though he has not declared himself.
Former Republican Lt. Governor of Georgia Geoff Duncan stated "To my fellow Republicans at home that want to pivot back toward policy, empathy and tone, you know the right thing to do, now let's have the courage to do it in November." Standing up for the Georgia election results after the 2020 presidential election, Duncan faced such serious threats from Trump supporters that law enforcement had to protect his home.
Former Trump White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham and former Rep. Adam Kinzinger have also thrown their support behind the Democratic nominee and suggested Trump lacks the moral character to lead the nation again.
Grisham spent a lot of time with Trump when the cameras were off. “Behind closed doors, Trump mocks his supporters. He calls them basement dwellers."
She recalled a hospital visit during the Covid days when Americans were dying at the ICU and she said he was upset the cameras weren't on him: "He has no empathy, no morals, and no fidelity to the truth."
Kinzinger, a former Republican congressman, condemned Trump as "a weak man pretending to be strong. A small man pretending to be big. A faithless man pretending to be righteous. A perpetrator who can't stop playing the victim. He puts on quite a show. But there's no real strength there."
Retired federal appeals court Judge J. Michael Luttig, a prominent conservative legal scholar put on the bench by President George H.W. Bush, is endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris over former President Donald Trump, whose candidacy he describes as an existential threat to American democracy. It will be the first time Luttig, a veteran of two Republican administrations, has voted for a Democrat.
Luttig persuaded then-Vice President Mike Pence to defy Trump and certify the 2020 presidential election.
“Because of the former president’s continued, knowingly false claims that he won the 2020 election, millions of Americans no longer have faith and confidence in our national elections, and many never will again.”
Republican Voters Against Trump, the group of disaffected Republicans devoted to stopping Trump from returning to the White House, has created an $11.5m ad buy in critical battleground states featuring former Trump voters vowing never again to back him. The ads are being focused on the three so-called “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Ads will also be placed in Arizona and Nebraska, along with about 80 billboards strategically located in swing states.
Sarah Longwell, executive director, said that the thinking behind the ad buy was to give former Trump voters who are thinking about switching to Harris a “permission structure” She said that there is a “tremendous openness” among some Trump voters to backing Harris.
In fact, if Republicans want to win in the future, they’d better make sure that Trump loses big time now. The Never Trump movement is the most senior of the groups backing this plan, and they have been active since 2016. It encompasses such luminaries as Mitt Romney, Senator Paul Rand, Governor John Kasich and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Trump is in fact in a very weak position in the Republican Party. According to a new survey from Brookings, the numbers do not point to an overwhelming Trump takeover of the Republican Party. Of all the House Republican challengers so far, only 37 percent have made positive mentions of the president while 53 percent have not mentioned him at all! And as a majority of the primary-winning House candidates make no mention of Trump, a large percentage of Republican candidates may decide to get elected by trying to convince the public that it’s not Donald Trump’s Republican Party after all.
Trump has been in free-fall among women voters in particular. They don’t seem impressed by his championship of the ban on reproductive rights. Two of the Senate’s most prominent women, Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), say they won’t vote for Trump. Both will be key swing votes in the next Congress if Republicans win back control of the upper chamber.
Last week Trump criticized Florida’s six-week abortion ban as being too strict, but backtracked after receiving criticism from his puritan base. He now opposes a Florida statewide ballot initiative to make abortion legal.
The Republican election advisors are so far behind the curve that they think Trump should start talking about issues that matter to female voters -- such as pocketbook issues that affect family.
Hate to tell you, guys, but that is not even a minor concern. The Cause of female voters is the reproductive freedom Cause. They would need a Time Machine to erase the damage Trump has done, with his Evangelicals.
They have been abandoning Trump as well, convinced that he lacks sincerity. Perhaps this has been reinforced by Trump’s social-media tirade blaming pro-lifers for the Republicans’ lackluster midterm performance.
We have not even scratched the surface of the non-Republican famous people who condemn Trump…the usual Democratic hoard like George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep… They are being joined daily with comments from people like newly-enraged Stephen King, whose books have been banned from the school shelves in Florida. "What the (expletive)?" King wrote on social media.
Incidentally, the group that launched the book banning, Moms For Liberty, championed a group of candidates in the recent Florida primary to support Governor DeSantis; they were wiped out. In Pennsylvania, Iowa, Virginia, Minnesota, New Jersey and other states, voters also favored candidates who were against the agenda of the Moms. Perhaps this hate group is dying out.
They now fully embrace Donald Trump, just to show us what ‘losers’ really look like.
And we don’t need to go into the musicians who are suing Trump for the illegal use of their songs for his campaign. Issac Hayes, Adele, Beyoncé, Celine Dion, Foo Fighters, Axl Rose (Guns N’ Roses), Jack White, Abba… That’s how popular Trump is with the current culture.
When Republicans who are voting for Trump are asked "what's so bad about Harris" they don't really have an answer. They may spout nonsense about socialism, but they cannot define the meaning, when pressed.
Now, in contrast, how many Democrat VIPs have abandoned Harris to vote for Trump?
None.
That would be “zero”.
Robert Kennedy Jr. has jumped onto Trump’s train, but he was never a ‘Democrat” per se. He was a glory-hungry clown; an anti-vaccine activist and conspiracy theorist. He has no fixed principles, as his many stances on abortion illustrate. He cuts the heads of dead whales and leaves dead bears for people to find.
Even MAGA folks call him ‘self destructive’.
“A sad ending to a sad story,” said a comment by Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Courtney Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy, Chris Kennedy, and Rory Kennedy. They have a certain inside perspective.
He had attempted to get a position on Harris’ team and threw a massive tantrum when he was ignored, attacking the woman from whom he was only recently trying to get a job.
Ducked a bullet, Kamala!
Anyway…
That’s a partial list of Democrats who have abandoned the party to join Trump.
I may not be Sherlock Holmes, but I detect a pattern here.
Methinks that Kamala has the glow of salvation, and Trump the darkness of the Titanic’s deck.
We’ll see how these instincts play out, in November. Maybe the people close to the action know something…
What I know, is that the meme at the start of this article subtly shows a leader rowing backwards towards the sinking ship. Of course, it may simply be that the artist did not know that the oarsman faces to the back of a rowboat…and there is a line of froth at the bow of the rowboat, so maybe it’s going forward.
It’s as confusing and uncertain as the GOP itself.
And that’s all we need to realize at the moment.
They don’t know whether they are coming or going.
But for the Republicans, more people are going, than are coming.
Thanks for this article Barry
I’m stealing your phrase: “the entrail-poking priests of the polls…”
Polls are not a good gage of the “spirit” of the race. I remember the tsunami of defections from Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal - “little by little then all at once…”
Trump may be immune from scandals of morality such as Watergate, but I sense he is about to meet his Waterloo.