Republican Exiles Make the Case Against Trump
Targeted by the big orange boss and ousted from Congress, they’re finally speaking up.
ONE BY ONE, DONALD TRUMP IS PURGING Republicans he doesn’t like. Last June, after Trump threatened him with a primary, Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina announced he wouldn’t run for re-election. In November, facing a similar threat, then-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia chose to resign. A week and a half ago, Sen. Bill Cassidy lost to a Trump-backed challenger in Louisiana. Two days later, another Trump recruit knocked off Rep. Thomas Massie in Kentucky. And on Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, with Trump’s blessing, defeated Sen. John Cornyn.
Trump has taunted these targeted Republicans for months, and he’s crowing about driving them into exile. Only now, on their way out, are they criticizing him. You can call it sour grapes. You can call them cowards for not speaking up earlier. But what they’re saying is true. It’s an early sketch of what should be, and eventually could be, a conservative repudiation of America’s worst president.
In his concession speech on May 16, Cassidy alluded to Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. When you lose, “You don’t claim the election was stolen,” he told his supporters. “You don’t manufacture some excuse.” At a press conference three days later, a reporter asked Cassidy, “Has President Trump been honest with you?” The senator burst out laughing.
Greene, who—as far as anyone can tell—still thinks the 2020 election was stolen, is angry about a different lie: that Trump wouldn’t start wars. “In 2024, the American people delivered a mandate, and the mandate was: put America first; no more foreign wars,” she argued last week in a CBS interview. In Iran, she has often noted, the president broke that promise.
Cassidy supports Trump’s goals in Iran. But after losing his primary, he voted for a resolution to impose congressional control over the war. Part of his concession speech sounded like a rebuke of Trump’s conduct of the war. “Leadership should be steady, not erratic; thoughtful, not impulsive,” the senator warned. “Leaders should think through the consequences of their actions before embarking on something and then seeing the American people suffer those consequences later.”
The exiles have heaped scorn on Trump’s ballroom. At his press conference, Cassidy called it “a spit-in-the-eye insult to all my taxpayers in Louisiana—to spend a billion dollars on a ballroom when we should be doing something about the high price of gas, groceries, and health care.” On Sunday, speaking on Meet the Press, Massie called it “an egregious waste of money” and a “slap in the face of Americans.”
Last Wednesday, in an interview with Spectrum News, Tillis pointed out that Americans were “trying to put food on the kitchen table. And now we’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars for a ballroom?” He condemned Trump’s recent remark that he doesn’t think about Americans’ financial situation when negotiating with Iran. “A billionaire saying he doesn’t worry about what people are dealing with that grew up in trailer parks like I did, that’s not very wise,” said Tillis.
Some of the exiles sound angrier about the slush fund Trump has set up to pay off people who claim to be victims of “weaponization” by the Department of Justice. “If you’re going to create a fund, it has to be voted on by Congress. The president can’t do this by executive authority,” Massie explained on Meet the Press. At his press conference, Cassidy denounced the scam: “It’s as if somebody sued themselves, agreed upon a settlement with themselves, and that’s going to be funded by the rest of us. There is no legal precedent for this.”
To Tillis, it’s not just self-dealing; it’s a deliberate gift to criminals. “A lot of thugs that should still be in prison” for their crimes on January 6, 2021 “are eligible for this payout. Your dollars, my dollars,” he told Spectrum News. “When you take money from me to give to a purpose that I vehemently disagree with, that’s tyranny. And that’s what that account is.”
It’s also a betrayal of the GOP’s promise to clean up fraud in federal programs. “There’s no way that we’re going to be in a position to fund $1.5 billion for an anti-fraud division when we’ve got this bogus” $1.8 billion slush fund, Tillis told CNN on Sunday. “I call it a payout pot for punks.”
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)—who, like the Republicans targeted by Trump, is on his way out the door—joined the chorus of outrage. “So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops,” McConnell said last week. “Utterly stupid, morally wrong—take your pick.”
The exiled senators are partly responsible for Trump’s malfeasance, having confirmed his cabinet. Cassidy still hasn’t admitted that he was wrong to approve Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of health. But Tillis now concedes that the man he confirmed as secretary of defense is unfit. “Pete Hegseth has demonstrated to me he doesn’t have the competence” for the job, the senator told Spectrum News.
Tillis also drew a line against Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general who signed off on the slush fund. When Spectrum News asked the senator whether he would confirm Blanche as attorney general, Tillis replied: “Anybody who equivocates and supported the thugs that harmed police officers will never get my vote in committee or on the floor.”
The next question is whether the exiles will speak out against the toadies Trump has recruited to fill Congress. Cornyn pointed out Paxton’s corruption during their primary, but that’s easy to dismiss as campaign rhetoric. It’s more notable that Tillis is saying the same thing. “To call Paxton ethically challenged is to call Jeffrey Dahmer suffering from an eating disorder,” Tillis told CNN.
Ultimately, the challenge is to address Trump’s unfitness directly. “You all don’t like bullies, and you don’t tolerate them,” Massie told his supporters on primary night. He didn’t name the bully, and Cassidy didn’t either. But the senator painted a stark portrait of Trump’s immorality:
Our country is not about one individual. It is about the welfare of all Americans, and it is about our Constitution. . . . And if someone doesn’t understand that and attempts to control others through using the levers of power, they’re about serving themselves. They’re not about serving us. And that person does not qualify to be a leader. . . .
I’m also asked if I am bothered by being attacked on the internet. Insults only bother me if they come from somebody of character and integrity. I find that people of character and integrity don’t spend their time attacking people on the internet.
It would have been helpful, not to mention more credible, to hear that kind of frankness before Cassidy lost his seat.
But the exiles aren’t just opening up about Trump. They’re also beginning to acknowledge the broader sickness in their party. In his election-night remarks, Massie referred to authoritarianism in the congressional GOP. “If the legislative branch always votes with the president, we do have a king,” he warned.
Tillis used to take pride in his party’s support for police. He sees Trump’s slush fund as a total betrayal of that commitment. “There’s no moral difference between the Democrats on Act Blue raising money for ‘All Cops Are Bastards’ and actually rewarding someone for assaulting a police officer” on January 6th, he told Spectrum News.
On CNN, the senator went further:
Earlier this week, I was called a RINO by the president. And I will tell you, if the Republican party stands for standing with insurrectionists who assaulted police officers, turning a blind eye towards Putin and what he’s doing in Russia, negotiating a deal [in Iran] that may be subpar to the Obama deal, then don’t call me that Republican. Just call me a conservative.
That’s a straightforward case, based on the longstanding principles of the political right, for leaving the party of Trump.
In his concession speech on Tuesday night, Cornyn reaffirmed his loyalty to the GOP. “My hope is to keep my party in power for generations,” he told his supporters. But after Trump’s betrayal of Cornyn, who had voted almost in lockstep with the president—and the decision of Texas Republicans to nominate an absolute scoundrel instead—in what sense is this still Cornyn’s party?
Defeat can be liberating. “If you’re not running for re-election,” Tillis explained on CNN, you can get rid of the “filter” that Republican officeholders apply to themselves “to make sure your words are measured so that the Democrats can’t use it against you and maybe some Republicans.” “It’s great not having it,” he reported. “Now you can use unambiguous words. And I’m being unambiguous on Paxton. He is a failure. He doesn’t deserve to be in the U.S. Senate.”
The party of Trump and Paxton isn’t your party, Sen. Cornyn. Let it go.
These people are being hoisted on their own petard and they deserve it.
They are not brave for 'speaking out' now. Talk is cheap and they are bonzos rich and have every tool at their disposal to get richer.