In the hours following the attack on a crowd of angry Supporters of Donald Trump on Jan. 6, several Trump administration officials and Republicans had had enough.
With a total of anger and indignation, they condemned Trump for stoking the riots or for doing almost nothing to prevent them. Cabinet officials sent letters of resignation. Golf friends and primary donors have damaged their partnerships. Top advisers have said they have. defected through Trump.
It was a remarkable moment of public dissension after 4 years basically marked by loyalty, but its incidence has been minimal.
A year after the Jan. 6 riots, the voices of those who broke up with Trump that day have been drowned, misplaced, or, in some cases, have come to embrace Trump again. . 6 or the waiver of which is appropriate. Only one agreed to officially speak of his resolution that day.
“I think it’s about survival,” said Stephanie Grisham, who resigned Jan. 6 as leader of first girl Melania Trump and recently published an e-book criticizing the president’s and first-girl’s handling of the riots. to be alone there. “
Twelve months ago, the outgoing president’s long political career was seriously compromised. Not only had he lost his campaign for re-election, but also his post-election conduct, adding unfounded lies about the integrity of Joe Biden’s victory, and his encouragement of a DC rally SCHEDULED with congressional certification of the vote, had created the chimney that led to the riots.
When those rioters stormed the capital and Trump presented only a milquetoast response, condemnation was rushed.
That day, on the House floor, Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Trump “is responsible” for the “attack on Congress through mob rioters” and that Congress censures the president. “Count on me,” said Trump’s closest Senate confidant and fellow golf favorite, Sen. Lindsey Graham. “Enough is enough. “
Former Attorney General William Barr called Trump’s habit “a betrayal of him and his supporters. “Republicans in Congress have encouraged articles of impeachment opposing the president. Twitter and Facebook suspended Trump.
Some TV commentators have speculated that Trump could simply disappear into a retired life of buffets and golf at his Mar-a-Lago hotel in Palm Beach, Florida. It seemed, at least for a moment, that Trump might simply have persona non grata at the national level.
However, over the next year, Trump’s grip on the party has waned. Instead, critically, it stands firm.
Trump has a courthouse in Palm Beach where a steady stream of Republican applicants and agents to get his approval and, they hope, his approval. Lawmakers are still answering the former president’s phone calls and some, like McCarthy and Graham, flocked to his precinct for Trump has held MAGA rallies, conducted interviews with conservative media outlets and gone hiking with former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. His 2021 Christmas picture eBook has sold thousands of copies. It is noticeable as a fait accompli in some corners that Trump will not run again, but will easily become the candidate of the Republican Party.
“Lately you have two camps of other people who deserve to talk and haven’t. The first camp knows that Trump is a harmful and vindictive man, but he does not need to disappoint their lives by provoking their anger. The field of the moment is more “purely transactional,” said Miles Taylor, a former staff leader at the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security who happened to be the writer of “Anonymous,” an anti-Trump revealer. They see that the Republican Party is still in the MAGA Kool Aid, and they don’t need to be left behind. “
A spokesman for Trump responded to a request for comment.
As Trump sought to claim his throne, those who resigned in protest walked away from the public, rarely, if ever, when talking about that day. David Shulkin, who tweeted through Trump as secretary of Veterans Affairs, said he wasn’t surprised. “We have noticed countless times that other people who have spoken out” against the former president have “paid the value of the non-public attacks that opposed them,” he said. He said his philosophy is to denounce Trump only on substantive issues.
But even substantive criticism has been stifled. Instead, some Jan. 6 defectors have come to challenge the concept that they once resigned in protest, while others seem content to admit that their former boss remains the de facto leader of their party. mainly, he resorted to silence.
Here are their stories.
In the wake of the riots, then-Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, the first closet official to resign. In a two-page letter to Trump, she detailed her apartment’s paintings and ended up pointing out, in just two sentences, her goal of leaving on the Monday following Jan. 6, in a message to her Department of Transportation colleagues on Twitter, she was more direct with her explanation of why to resign, calling January 6 “traumatic and totally preventable” and saying it “cared deeply about me in a way that I just can’t let go of. “
Since then, Chao has not publicly opposed Trump or the lies he has been pushing in the 2020 election, even though she and her husband, Trump’s enemy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, continue to be the former president’s target. Indeed, outside of office, Trump has sought to wrest McConnell from his own leadership position, making an incredibly long effort to strip the Kentucky Republican of his leadership position.
Chao, meanwhile, has recently served on the board of directors of kroger Corporation and the board of directors of the Foundation and Institute Reagan. Su official biography of her claims she has been appointed to two positions in the presidential closet and presents a photo with former President George W. . Bush, but he doesn’t mention Trump by name. Chao declined to comment.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos submitted her resignation letter the day after the Jan. 6 riots and wrote to Trump: “There is no doubt that your rhetoric has had an effect on the situation, and this is the turning point for me.
“Impressive young people are seeing all this and learning from us. We all have an ethical legal responsibility to exercise intelligent judgment and design the habit we expect them to emulate,” DeVos wrote. “They want to hear from us that America is bigger than what happened yesterday. “
Since leaving Washington, DeVos has been rumored to be running for governor in her home state of Michigan, but has denied any plans to participate in the race. This summer, at Mackinac’s Republican Leadership Conference, he made a veiled critique of Trump, according to the Detroit Free Press. “Principles have been overcome through personalities” in the Republican Party, DeVos said. “Ours is not a motion that depends on a single person. “
After leaving office, DeVos personally donated to only 3 CANDIDATES for the Republican Congress, one of the 3 Representatives Virginia Foxx (RN. C. ), who among more than a hundred Republican representatives who voted against certifying the effects of the election. DeVos declined to comment.
After serving as Acting Trump’s staff leader, Mick Mulvaney accepted the role of U. S. special envoy to Northern Ireland. But in the wake of the Jan. 6 riots, he announced in a live interview on CNBC that he would resign. “I called [Secretary of State] Mike Pompeo last night to let him know I’m resigning. I can’t do it. I can’t stay,” Mulvaney told CNBC’s “Squawk Box. “Mulvaney said Trump is “not the same as he was 8 months ago. “
“People who have spent time away from our families, risked our careers to move into paintings for Donald Trump, and we’ve had those successes hunting back, but now it will always be, ‘Oh, yeah, you’re running for the guy who tried to overtake the government in passing,'” Mulvaney said. “This legacy has since been passed on and is incredibly disappointing for those of us who painted for it. “
According to a user familiar with their relationship, Mulvaney is now on good terms with Trump, but not in normal communication with him. When they talk, it’s a circle of family and golf, not politics or January 6. television and radio to talk about economics and politics. He put his hedge fund on hold to be the number one caregiver for his father, who died of back cancer last year. He is a senior researcher at the University of Sydney in Australia and has consulted with some former colleagues from the Office of Management and Budget and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Mulvaney declined to comment.
Trump’s deputy national security adviser, Matt Pottinger, resigned on the afternoon of Jan. 6 as riots spread on Capitol Hill. Pottinger played a leading role in orchestrating the administration’s reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic and led the administration’s Chinese portfolio.
Pottinger is now a prominent member of the Hoover Institution and since leaving the White House, has written op-eds and conducted interviews on U. S. -China relations. Pottinger declined an interview request.
Grisham herself doesn’t know whether or not she will return to politics, or even find a position for herself in Washington political circles. After writing an e-book about his experience in the Trump White House, Grisham spent some time with his circle of relatives in Kansas figuring out what would follow.
Other senior Trump administration officials, who would have found themselves alienated through it, have now moved into jobs on Capitol Hill, K Street, Trump-aligned organizations, conservative teams and even secured seats on the board.
“In retrospect, Donald Trump and our management the story of ‘The Emperor Has No Clothes. ‘Everyone around him told him what he was looking to hear all the time, whether it’s true or not and they still do it today,” Grisham said. “A lot of this is just survival for God. But the number is the strength and if other people stay together. . . we may return to normal. “
Other officials who resigned because of Trump’s habit on Jan. 6 were one of Trump’s most sensible economic advisers, Tyler Goodspeed; Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Matthews; White House Social Secretary Rickie Niceta; and John Costello, deputy assistant secretary for commerce who now serves in the Biden administration. Goodspeed and Matthews responded to a request for comment. Niceta and Costello declined to comment.
Elinore McCance-Katz, who is under secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services for Mental Health and Addictions; Eric Dreiband, Deputy Attorney General, Civil Rights Division; Ryan Tully, senior director of European and Russian Affairs at the National Security Council; and FAA officials Arjun Garg, Brianna Manzelli, Kirk Shaffer, Bailey Edwards and Andrew Giacini also resigned after Jan. 6. Garg, Manzelli and Giacini declined to comment, while McCance-Katz, Dreiband, Tully, Shaffer and Edwards declined to comment. not responding to a request for comment.
CORRECTION: An earlier edition of Senator Lindsey Graham’s misspelled name.