While Democratic heavyweights including Obama are enthusiastically backing Kamala Harris for US president at their party’s convention, an unexpected group of insurgents is joining the effort: Republicans urging their fellow conservatives to abandon Donald Trump.
This message is nothing new — many Republicans have spoken out against Trump over the years. But his presence at the carefully staged Democratic convention this week has prompted calls for conservatives and independents to reconsider their electoral choices in November.
“I want to make it very clear to our Republican friends at home,” Geoff Duncan, the former lieutenant governor of Georgia, where Trump tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election, said from the convention stage on Wednesday.
He said, “If you vote for Kamala Harris in 2024 you’re not a Democrat, you’re a patriot.”
Calling the recently convicted — and twice impeached — former president a “direct threat to democracy,” Duncan said he was aiming his comments at the millions of Republicans and independents he knows are “tired of making excuses” for Trump.
“Our party is acting like a cult these days, a cult that worships a criminal thug,” Duncan said.
Many Republicans in Chicago have offered similar messages as the Harris campaign seeks to turn out as many Republican and independent voters as possible in what is set to be a closely contested election.
Former White House communications director Stephanie Grisham, who had close ties to Trump, took the stage Tuesday to call her former boss a liar, saying he has “no empathy, no morals and no devotion to the truth.”
“I saw him when the cameras were off. Behind closed doors, Trump mocks his supporters, calling them basement dwellers,” he said.
Grisham, who was also First Lady Melania Trump’s chief of staff, noted how she went from being “a true believer” to a disgruntled close adviser who wanted out, and recalled a turning point during the 2021 US Capitol riot by Trump supporters.
“On January 6, I asked Melania if we could at least tweet that while peaceful protest is every American’s right, there is no place for anarchy or violence,” Grisham said.
“He answered with one word: ‘No.'”
Grisham resigned that day, “because I love my country more than I love my party,” she said to loud applause, adding that Harris “has my vote.”
– ‘Kidnapped by extremists’ –
John Giles, the mayor of Mesa, Arizona, and a self-described “lifelong Republican” who considers the late Senator John McCain his hero, was equally blunt.
He said at the convention that his Republican Party had been “hijacked by extremists and turned into a cult: the cult of Donald Trump.”
Giles’ message to Americans like himself who are in the middle of politics: “John McCain’s Republican Party is over, and we have no responsibility for what’s left behind.”
Organizers aired a video Wednesday of former Trump voters explaining why they’re drawn to Harris.
Florida voter Rich Logis explained in a video how he jumped to Trump’s MAGA movement, “I made a huge mistake.” Logis added, “But it’s never too late to change your mind.”
Olivia Troye, a former counterterrorism adviser to Trump’s Vice President Mike Pence, addressed the convention, while high-profile Republican, never a Trump supporter, former congressman Adam Kinzinger, took the stage on the closing night on Thursday.
Trump often characterizes such critics as traitors, and it is not yet clear how effective they will be.
David Urban, a Republican adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign, denied any significant influence.
But he told CNN that Duncan’s presence in Georgia “could give people permission to vote for Kamala Harris” in the state.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
