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‘You Bet Your [redacted] I've Got Regrets.’ As Election Day Nears, More of Trump’s Former Officials Are Speaking Out Against Him
Never in recent history have so many senior former U.S. officials publicly attacked the commander in chief they served, or the decisions he’s made, as the ranks lining up to say President Donald Trump put himself and his re-election ahead of the country, thereby threatening its security.
One of the latest salvos comes from Trump’s second National Security Adviser, retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster. McMaster tells TIME that Trump’s moves toward withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan —a 2016 campaign promise — have handed the Taliban a victory by allowing them to talk peace while still attacking the Afghan government. He adds that Trump’s acting as a public apologist for Russia has sown confusion in what is an otherwise tough U.S. approach toward Moscow. . . .
For months, the President’s former colleagues have been coming out one by one, in a rare display of disloyalty to a sitting president, to warn that Trump does not have America’s best interests at heart. Now, as Nov. 3 looms, the pace is picking up, as those officials hope that some of the punches land with American voters. Trump’s approval ratings have remained virtually unchangedfrom February to today, despite a devastating global pandemic, economic crisis, and national reckoning of racial injustice. These critics who saw Trump up close, and often carried out his policies against their better judgement, are hoping at least some of his supporters will change their minds based on their first-hand accounts of how self-absorbed and inattentive to the country’s needs they say he has been.
In June, John Bolton, Trump’s third National Security Adviser, called the incumbent president a “danger for the Republic” ahead of the publication of his book that accuses Trump of shaping U.S. security policy to win votes. The same month, former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis denounced Trump as the first ever President who “tries to divide us,” after Trump threatened to use active duty military troops to crack down on Black Lives Matter protests. Trump’s former chief of staff and Homeland Security Secretary, retired Marine general John Kelly, has said he was harming the country. And former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Trump got “frustrated” whenever Tillerson pointed out that he was asking for something illegal.
Others censures have been less direct. Trump’s two most senior military officials, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley, both rebuked him in effect by admitting their own error in joining Trump in his march across Lafayette Square at the height of the George Floyd protests, to hold a Bible aloft in front of a church damaged by the protests as the U.S. Secret Service deployed pepper spray to clear the way. Some have even criticized Trump by their silence, as Mattis, former Joint Chiefs Chairman Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford and Kelly did by declining to comment on an account published in the Atlantic that Trump called U.S. war dead “suckers” and “losers” for laying their lives down in service to the country. . . .
And this week, a group of nearly 500 former national security leaders, including three senior officers who served under Trump, signed a letter backing Democratic candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden as “a good man with a strong sense of right and wrong” and indirectly referencing the Atlanticreport, saying Biden believes “those who sacrifice or give their lives in service of our nation deserve our respect and eternal gratitude.” Signatories included Trump’s former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired Air Force General Paul J. Selva, retired Navy SEAL Vice Admiral P. Gardner Howe, III, who served as CIA’s director of military affairs, and retired Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Paul Zukunft.
One of the most vocal former Trump critics now publicly endorsing Biden is the former DHS chief of staff to retired Marine general Kelly, Miles Taylor. Biden is “a good and decent man. And this is a character election,” says Taylor. In September, Taylor formally launched the Republican Political Alliance for Integrity and Reform (REPAIR), an organization aimed at rebuilding the post-Trump Republican Party and funded by the umbrella anti-Trump Republican group, Defending Democracy Together. . . .
Since going public with his dismay, Taylor has been getting what he calls “graphic death threats” but says speaking out was worth the weight off his conscience of being part of misguided and poorly executed policies designed to win Trump voters, like the shutdown of the U.S. border that separated thousands of children from their families.
“Do I have regrets about that? You bet your [redacted] I’ve got regrets about that,” he says, adding that former Homeland Security chief Kirstjen Nielsen foresaw that particular nightmare coming, but got outvoted by Trump’s inner circle of yes men.
Not everyone is sure they want to put themselves in the President’s crosshairs. Taylor says more senior officials, including a former cabinet member, are in touch with him and are considering speaking out, but worry about both rhetorical retribution by Trump and physical threats by his supporters.
One former senior official who regularly briefed the President is considering speaking out against his former boss, too. “Everything, every decision, was made based on his re-election as opposed to what’s good for the country,” the official says of Trump. “There is no bottom to this guy … There is no level so low that he will not stoop to. And his sycophants will support him every step of the way.”
He spoke anonymously because he also fears for the safety of his family, who he believes could face threats from the far-right extremist Boogaloo Boys, or Q-Anon conspiracists —“some real nuts that actually believe that there are these pedophiles working out of a pizza shop,” and might take violent action, as one Q-Anon follower did when he fired an AR-15 rifle inside a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant. “Everything’s changed, and it’s a dangerous world,” he says.
Never in recent history have so many senior former U.S. officials publicly attacked the commander in chief they served, or the decisions he’s made, as the ranks lining up to say President Donald Trump put himself and his re-election ahead of the country, thereby threatening its security.
One of the latest salvos comes from Trump’s second National Security Adviser, retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster. McMaster tells TIME that Trump’s moves toward withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan —a 2016 campaign promise — have handed the Taliban a victory by allowing them to talk peace while still attacking the Afghan government. He adds that Trump’s acting as a public apologist for Russia has sown confusion in what is an otherwise tough U.S. approach toward Moscow. . . .
For months, the President’s former colleagues have been coming out one by one, in a rare display of disloyalty to a sitting president, to warn that Trump does not have America’s best interests at heart. Now, as Nov. 3 looms, the pace is picking up, as those officials hope that some of the punches land with American voters. Trump’s approval ratings have remained virtually unchangedfrom February to today, despite a devastating global pandemic, economic crisis, and national reckoning of racial injustice. These critics who saw Trump up close, and often carried out his policies against their better judgement, are hoping at least some of his supporters will change their minds based on their first-hand accounts of how self-absorbed and inattentive to the country’s needs they say he has been.
In June, John Bolton, Trump’s third National Security Adviser, called the incumbent president a “danger for the Republic” ahead of the publication of his book that accuses Trump of shaping U.S. security policy to win votes. The same month, former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis denounced Trump as the first ever President who “tries to divide us,” after Trump threatened to use active duty military troops to crack down on Black Lives Matter protests. Trump’s former chief of staff and Homeland Security Secretary, retired Marine general John Kelly, has said he was harming the country. And former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Trump got “frustrated” whenever Tillerson pointed out that he was asking for something illegal.
Others censures have been less direct. Trump’s two most senior military officials, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley, both rebuked him in effect by admitting their own error in joining Trump in his march across Lafayette Square at the height of the George Floyd protests, to hold a Bible aloft in front of a church damaged by the protests as the U.S. Secret Service deployed pepper spray to clear the way. Some have even criticized Trump by their silence, as Mattis, former Joint Chiefs Chairman Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford and Kelly did by declining to comment on an account published in the Atlantic that Trump called U.S. war dead “suckers” and “losers” for laying their lives down in service to the country. . . .
And this week, a group of nearly 500 former national security leaders, including three senior officers who served under Trump, signed a letter backing Democratic candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden as “a good man with a strong sense of right and wrong” and indirectly referencing the Atlanticreport, saying Biden believes “those who sacrifice or give their lives in service of our nation deserve our respect and eternal gratitude.” Signatories included Trump’s former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired Air Force General Paul J. Selva, retired Navy SEAL Vice Admiral P. Gardner Howe, III, who served as CIA’s director of military affairs, and retired Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Paul Zukunft.
One of the most vocal former Trump critics now publicly endorsing Biden is the former DHS chief of staff to retired Marine general Kelly, Miles Taylor. Biden is “a good and decent man. And this is a character election,” says Taylor. In September, Taylor formally launched the Republican Political Alliance for Integrity and Reform (REPAIR), an organization aimed at rebuilding the post-Trump Republican Party and funded by the umbrella anti-Trump Republican group, Defending Democracy Together. . . .
Since going public with his dismay, Taylor has been getting what he calls “graphic death threats” but says speaking out was worth the weight off his conscience of being part of misguided and poorly executed policies designed to win Trump voters, like the shutdown of the U.S. border that separated thousands of children from their families.
“Do I have regrets about that? You bet your [redacted] I’ve got regrets about that,” he says, adding that former Homeland Security chief Kirstjen Nielsen foresaw that particular nightmare coming, but got outvoted by Trump’s inner circle of yes men.
Not everyone is sure they want to put themselves in the President’s crosshairs. Taylor says more senior officials, including a former cabinet member, are in touch with him and are considering speaking out, but worry about both rhetorical retribution by Trump and physical threats by his supporters.
One former senior official who regularly briefed the President is considering speaking out against his former boss, too. “Everything, every decision, was made based on his re-election as opposed to what’s good for the country,” the official says of Trump. “There is no bottom to this guy … There is no level so low that he will not stoop to. And his sycophants will support him every step of the way.”
He spoke anonymously because he also fears for the safety of his family, who he believes could face threats from the far-right extremist Boogaloo Boys, or Q-Anon conspiracists —“some real nuts that actually believe that there are these pedophiles working out of a pizza shop,” and might take violent action, as one Q-Anon follower did when he fired an AR-15 rifle inside a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant. “Everything’s changed, and it’s a dangerous world,” he says.
