‘A Trump Appointment Is Confederate Money’: Ann Coulter Warned Mark Meadows Not to Accept Chief of Staff Job

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Mark Meadows can’t say he wasn’t warned.

The fourth and final of Donald Trump’s chiefs of staff left Congress, where he held an influential role within the House Freedom Caucus, to join the Trump administration in March 2020. On Monday, the January 6 Select Committee released an executive summary of its findings in which it named Meadows as co-conspirator in an effort “to obstruct a lawful function of the government,” namely the certification of the 2020 presidential election. The committee recommended that Trump face criminal charges for his conduct on and before the January 6 Capitol riot.

Ann Coulter, a conservative commentator and the author of In Trump We Trust, claims that Meadows accepted the job against her advice. The year prior, Coulter had pleaded with Meadows to steer clear of the White House in a text message exchange with a top Meadows staffer.

“There’s no way he [Meadows] can leave the House for some b.s. Trump appt.,” argued Coulter in a screenshot from the 2019 texts she shared on Twitter. “A Trump appointment is Confederate money,” she continued before joking that proximity to Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner would be the only way to influence policy.

Republicans should just hang on my every word. Here’s me advising Mark Meadows NOT to take an appointment to the Trump White House on Jan 3, 2019. pic.twitter.com/pd1Xzi20hY

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) December 19, 2022

Coulter, a longtime critic of the Republican establishment, backed Trump in the 2016 GOP presidential primary before later turning on him for not delivering on his promises. She’s described the former president as “abjectly stupid” and accused him of betraying his base.

The firebrand has offered Trump’s failure to deliver for conservatives as an explanation for his 2020 loss to Biden, while rejecting the conspiracy theory that the presidency was stolen from him.” He [Trump] says he cares about them and he not only betrays them, but he lies to them,” said Coulter told Andrew Sullivan last year.  In the immediate aftermath of the election, Coulter had declared that she was “glad” Trump lost.

Despite Coulter’s warning, Meadows not only accepted the job, but worked feverishly in between election day 2020 and inauguration day 2021 to overturn the results of the election, coordinating with his former colleagues in Congress among others in an effort to secure Trump a second term. He also supported the pressure campaign to get former Vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally throw out electoral votes for Joe Biden, telling Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) that he had “pushed for” that.

In Trump Mark Meadows trusted. A long list of ex-associates and admirers could have — and Coulter did — tell him how that would work out for him.

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