‘We Know They Think He’s Dangerous’: GOP Strategist Challenges Ex-Trump Officials to Join Campaign Trail Against Former Boss

MSNBC’s Jonathan Lemire spoke with longtime Republican political strategist and publisher of the Bulwark, Sarah Longwell, on Tuesday about a recent op-ed she wrote in the New York Times calling for former Trump officials to speak out.

Lemire noted that many former officials who “have served in uniform resist talking politics, but this seems like it could be indeed the exception.”

“And to your point, there was a lot of weight, a lot of importance from the words of those who testified before the January 6th committee, who were Republicans, who were there up close, who saw Trump’s behavior that day, and that seemed to break through. I assume that’s the theory here as well, that those who were next to Trump, not just on January 6th, but throughout his term and could speak credibly as to what he would do next. That’s who you’re going to want to hear from. You know, if not perhaps daily between now and November,” he added, setting up the conversation.

“That is absolutely right. I think the people who served with Trump when people told their stories, when Cassidy Hutchinson and other brave people who worked for Donald Trump came out and made the case that he was unfit, and also said what they saw that he didn’t do anything about January 6th,” Longwell replied, adding:

That had an enormous impact. And I do think that for somebody like, you know, Jim Mattis or some of the other generals, I think they may tell themselves, look, it’s not my job as somebody who is in the military to get involved in politics, and I understand that. But I think when you take a senior role in an administration, with a Republican president, that you’ve engaged in politics, and I look and I give them all the credit, I think that they joined the administration because they wanted to be the adults in the room.

They knew Donald Trump was dangerous back then, or at least unfit. And they wanted to be there to serve the country. I think they did it all for the right reasons. But I think that they have to serve the country again by saying what they saw.

We know because they give blind quotes, you know, to background, on people who are writing for people who are writing books and, they’ve said things once or twice. We know that they think he’s dangerous. And there’s people like Mark Esper who have been out there saying that Donald Trump’s a threat to democracy. And so I think one of the things also that’s the theory here is you need to speak with one voice. There is safety in numbers, there’s amplification in numbers. You can’t just have one person here or there because they get excommunicated from the party or called a RINO, or they do to them what they did with Cheney.

“You need to all come together and say it loudly, relentlessly, and in a concerted way so that swing voters hear it because there’s already, I think, as you can see, yes, Donald Trump owns the base of the Republican Party, and the base is quite large, large enough to win any primary,” she continued, concluding:

But there have been people that he has been alienating, Republicans that Trump has been alienating for years. And that is who, but they are still Republicans, and that’s who these, people need to speak to to help them understand that it’s time, to abandon the Trump version of the Republican Party.

Watch the full clip above via MSNBC.