The anti-Trump movement is in tatters. Now it’s scrambling to remain relevant.
Trump’s convincing win allowed him to quickly consolidate power within his party as he prepares to return to Washington.
By Lisa Kashinsky and Adam Wren
11/29/2024 05:00 PM EST
Donald Trump’s victory splintered the already fractured Never Trump movement into shards and further boxed out his MAGA outcasts, leaving some of his most prominent Republican critics scrambling for relevance in a reordered GOP.
In recent days, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley ripped into two of the president-elect’s top appointees, Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., on her radio show. Former Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock skewered Trump’s nominees as a Cabinet of “Putinists and pedophiles.” And former Vice President Mike Pence attempted to rally anti-abortion conservatives against Kennedy as Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary.
But they are screaming their words of caution from the sidelines as Trump, having already overhauled their party, forges ahead with remaking Washington in his MAGA image. And he is doing so with the backing of broadly supportive congressional Republicans who have little political incentive to listen to his detractors.
“The Never Trumpers and Lincoln Project folks just need to climb back under their rocks for a few years,” said Scott Reed, the veteran GOP strategist and leader of the Pro-Pence Committed to America PAC.
more
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/29/anti-trump-movement-tatters-00191914
