Kissing the ring: The Republicans who loathe Trump but are still voting for him

In April and May, three prominent Republican critics of Donald Trump indicated that they would vote for him. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu and former Attorney General Bill Barr — citing the former president’s commitment to secure the southern border, reduce inflation and roll back the “woke” agenda of Democrats — declared that Trump is the lesser of two evils.

Issued perhaps to ensure that they have a future in the Republican Party, their tepid support flies in the face of the compelling cases each of them has made that Trump is unfit to be president. Cases that surely represent what they and many other prominent Republicans really think.

Haley, who challenged Trump for the 2024 GOP nomination, has often acknowledged that Trump lost and Biden won the 2020 election. Trump thinks Jan. 6, 2021 “was a beautiful day,” Haley emphasized. “I think it was a terrible day.” His attempts to overturn the election “will be judged harshly by history.” Repeating false claims about widespread fraud “to scare the American people is wrong.”

In February, Trump wondered why Haley’s husband — Maj. Michael Haley, who was deployed in Africa with the South Carolina Army National Guard — was not on the campaign trail with his wife. “If you mock the service of a combat veteran,” she shot back, “you don’t deserve a driver’s license, let alone being president of the United States.” Trump “has never known how to sacrifice and the most harm he’s ever possibly had is getting hit by a golf ball when he’s sitting in a golf cart.” A man who calls servicemen and women “losers” and “suckers” cannot be trusted “to protect them.”

Haley claimed Trump has “gotten more unstable and unhinged.” He is “so obsessed with his demons from the past. He can’t focus on delivering a future Americans deserve.” The former president, she maintained, is also “more diminished” than he was in 2016. “He is now saying things that don’t make sense.”

Responding to Trump’s comment that he’d “encourage” Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO members who didn’t meet defense appropriation targets, Haley said, “If you are saying you were going to side with Putin, then I know it’s going to cause a war, not stop a war.”

Gov. Sununu stated that Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election results were “absolutely terrible” and Trump “absolutely contributed” to the insurrection at the Capitol. Trump, Sununu proclaimed in 2022, is “[expletive] crazy … I don’t think he’s so crazy that you could put him in a mental institution. But I think if he were in one, he ain’t getting out.”

That said, Sununu announced that he will vote for Trump “because for me it’s not about him as much as it is about having a Republican administration.”

Bill Barr, Trump’s second attorney general, compared his boss to “a defiant nine-year-old kid who’s always pushing his glass toward the end of the table, defying his parents to stop him from doing it.” Barr found Trump’s efforts to remain in office “detached from reality,” “nauseating” and “despicable.” Someone “who engaged in that kind of bullying about a process that is fundamental to our system and our self-government shouldn’t be anywhere near the White House.”

Barr stated that Trump’s assertion that he had the right to remove highly sensitive classified documents from the White House and retain them in unsecured locations at Mar-a-Lago is “totally wrong … anyone who really cares about national security — their stomach would churn at it.” Convinced that the Justice Department has a basis for indicting the president, Barr believes that presenting Trump as a victim of a witch hunt “is ridiculous.” He “brought it entirely on himself” by “going to excess and doing reckless things with the idea that he can get away with it.” Using campaign contributions from supporters to pay his legal bills is also “sort of nauseating. I mean, this guy claims to be a billionaire, asks hard-working Americans to donate to defend America” and then didn’t use the money on the 2020 election.

According to Barr, Trump’s motives for reelection include getting “revenge on people he feels didn’t give him his due” and “insulating himself” from prosecution. His “monumental ego” and determination “to pander to anger and frustration” will result in a chaotic second term with no one to “push back bad ideas.”

That said, Barr has concluded that “the greatest threat to the country is the progressive agenda” advocated by the Democrats.

While a candidate for the GOP nomination, Haley declared that “many of the same politicians who now publicly embrace Trump privately dread him. They know what a disaster he’s been and will continue to be … They’re just too afraid to say it out loud. Well, I’m not afraid to say the hard truths out loud. I feel no need to kiss the ring.”

These days, not so much. But Haley has tried to square the circle by indicating that she is voting for Trump, not endorsing him. While Trump is “not perfect,” Joe Biden has been “a catastrophe.” She predicted, inexplicably, that Trump would “have the backs of our allies and hold our enemies to account.”

Haley — seeking, it seems, to have it both ways — continues to quote Margaret Thatcher: “Never just follow the crowd. Always make up your own mind.” Haley stated that “it is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him.”

Nonetheless, it remains unclear whether Haley, or Sununu and Barr, want Americans to remember or forget what they really think of their party’s standard bearer.

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.