Once Close Allies Who Turned Against Donald Trump

If there's one thing everybody can agree on when it comes to Donald Trump, it's that he appreciates loyalty. Not necessarily his own loyalty toward others, to be clear; Trump has cut off many people he used to be close with. No — what he appreciates is when people are loyal to him. In his book "Think Big and Kick Ass in Business and Life," Trump wrote (via Politico), "I value loyalty above everything else — more than brains, more than drive, and more than energy." Advisor Roger Stone — who was sentenced to more than three years in prison for crimes committed on Trump's behalf — told Politico that Trump's definition of loyalty is clear. "Support Donald Trump in anything he says and does," Stone said simply.

Despite the fact that what Trump expects of the people he surrounds himself with is obvious, many formerly close allies have since turned against the "Art of the Deal" author. Many of those whom Trump has invited his inner circle have said they became disillusioned with the former president. As a result, many former allies have gone on the record in the years since their participation in Trump's agenda, attempting to sound the alarm about the former president's capabilities, his predilections, and what they see as his potential for future harm to standards of American democracy. Read on for statements from 12 allies who turned against Trump.

When President Donald Trump first brought John Bolton on as his national security advisor, Bolton was all for it. As The Washington Post noted at the time, Bolton had a reputation as a hawk, pushing for open conflict with North Korea and Iran. "There's a lot we can do, and we should do it," they quoted him as having told Fox News.

Bolton lasted a bit more than a year in the position, and he left the administration in September 2019. "I informed John Bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House," Trump posted to X (formerly Twitter). This quickly kicked off a public back-and-forth between the two men, as Bolton tweeted minutes later, "I offered to resign last night and President Trump said, 'Let's talk about it tomorrow.'"

In the years since his time in the White House, Bolton has been sharply critical of his former boss' position on the world stage. In the introduction to his memoir "The Room Where It Happened" (via Reuters), Bolton put it plainly. "Trump is unfit to be president," he wrote. "Trump really cares only about retribution for himself, and it will consume much of a second term." Speaking with French outlet Le Figaro in 2024 (via The Hill), Bolton also offered a stark appraisal of the former "Apprentice" host's intellect. Asked whether Trump might become a dictator in a second term, Bolton answered, "He hasn't got the brains!"

Leading up to the 2016 election, "The Apprentice" breakout star Omarosa Manigault Newman made the rounds, campaigning for the former host of the television game show that made her famous. While some voters may have thought Donald Trump's ambition for power would be a negative, Manigault Newman spoke approvingly of his desire to be on top. "[E]very critic, every detractor will have to bow down to President Trump," she told PBS. "It's everyone who's ever doubted Donald, whoever disagreed, whoever challenged him. It is the ultimate revenge to become the most powerful man in the universe."

In 2017, when Trump took office, Manigault Newman joined his administration as assistant to the president and director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison. It was a job she would hold for less than a year, announcing in December that she was leaving her post. Amid rumors that she had been escorted off the White House grounds after getting fired, Trump tweeted, "Thank you Omarosa for your service! I wish you continued success."

A few months later, Manigault Newman competed on "Celebrity Big Brother." Now that her relationship with Trump had turned tense, she told her fellow houseguests what it was like to work in the White House. "It's bad," she said, wiping away tears. When Ross Mathews asked if the country would be okay, she responded negatively. "It's going to not be okay. It's not," she said. "So bad."

Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley resigned that office so she could serve as Donald Trump's ambassador to the United Nations. She had criticized Trump during his presidential campaign, hitting out at his suggestion of a ban on Muslim travelers. When Haley appeared on "Today" to discuss her new role, since-disgraced anchor Matt Lauer called her out on her hypocrisy. "You called it un-American, unconstitutional. You said it defies everything that this country was based on, and it's just wrong," Lauer said, noting that Trump was pushing for a revised version of his plan. He asked, "Do you support it?" Haley answered, "Yes."

Haley resigned in 2018, telling reporters (via CNN) that she wouldn't run for president in 2020. "I can promise you what I'll be doing is campaigning for [Trump]," she said. Leading up to the 2024 election, however, Haley did indeed run against her former boss. This time, she was sharply critical of the way he ran their government. In a 2024 interview on "The Breakfast Club," she said, "He's made it chaotic. He's made it self-absorbed. ... He's left [behind the idea] that a president should have moral clarity and know the difference between right or wrong. And he's just toxic."

Speaking with NBC News, Haley insisted that Trump was no longer the same person she knew. Putting it simply, she said, "He is unhinged."

Accepting the nomination to once again be Donald Trump's vice president, Mike Pence told the Republican National Convention (via CNN), "For the last four years, I have watched this president endure unrelenting attacks and get up every day and fight to keep the promises he made to the American people." That was August 2020. Within a few short months, Pence himself was under attack. On January 6, 2021, Pence was at the Capitol when it was attacked by a mob of Trump supporters aiming to overturn the election vote. "Hang Mike Pence," the crowds chanted.

Holed up in the White House, it seems that Trump agreed with the insurrectionists. In her book "Enough," former aide Cassidy Hutchinson revealed, "The president is okay with it. He doesn't want to do anything. He doesn't think they're doing anything wrong. He thinks Mike is a traitor. This is crazy."

This was, finally, enough for Pence to break with his boss. He ran against Trump for the 2024 nomination, criticizing the man in whose administration he once held the No. 2 position. In 2023, he condemned Trump's handling of the insurrection. "History will hold Donald Trump accountable for January 6. Make no mistake about it: What happened that day was a disgrace, and it mocks decency to portray it in any other way," he said (via Politico). "President Trump was wrong. His reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day."

Anthony Scaramucci only lasted 11 days as Donald Trump's communications director, but for that short period of time, he tried to defend the "Art of the Deal" author. When The New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza tweeted about a meeting between Scaramucci, Trump, and Fox News personality Sean Hannity, Scaramucci called the journalist to press him for his source. "You're an American citizen, this is a major catastrophe for the American country. So I'm asking you as an American patriot to give me a sense of who leaked it," he begged. He went on to insist, "I'm not trying to build my own brand off the f***ing strength of the president. I'm here to serve the country."

Scaramucci's appointment led Sean Spicer to quit the administration, but his tenure evaporated almost as quickly as it began. Scaramucci has been very outspoken ever since about how dangerous he thinks a second Trump presidency would be. In a 2024 appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Scaramucci reflected on Trump's attitude. "It goes down to the temperament," he said. "It goes down to a lack of curiosity, and then it goes down to, literally, the meanness. And it goes down to the way he will hurt anybody and anything in his way."

Once upon a time, Michael Cohen worked as Donald Trump's "fixer," a right-hand man who handled unseemly issues like the Stormy Daniels hush money payment. In 2017, even though he hadn't been given a role in the administration, Cohen pledged undying loyalty to Trump. Speaking with Vanity Fair, Cohen said, "I'd never walk away."

Amid fallout from the Stormy Daniels payment, Cohen did indeed walk away ... all the way to prison. In 2019, Cohen spoke out against Trump in prepared legal remarks that were given to the media. "I am ashamed that I chose to take part in concealing Mr. Trump's illicit acts rather than listening to my own conscience," he said (via ABC News). "I am ashamed because I know what Mr. Trump is. He is a racist. He is a conman. He is a cheat."

After completing his three-year prison term in 2021, Cohen emerged to tell the media (via The Associated Press) that he wouldn't stop trying to hold Trump accountable. "I will continue to provide information, testimony, documents and my full cooperation on all ongoing investigations to ensure that others are held responsible for their dirty deeds," he said.

Rex Tillerson was an interesting choice for secretary of state. At the time he was picked, he was the CEO of ExxonMobil. That meant he knew Russian leader Vladimir Putin well, and government officials such as Senator John McCain were hesitant about Tillerson's ability to guide the country's foreign policy given his experience putting an oil company's needs first. "Vladimir Putin is a thug, bully, and a murderer," McCain said on Fox News (via Politico), "and anybody else who describes him as anything else is lying."

Nevertheless, Tillerson's appointment was confirmed. He served in the position until March 2018, when, according to NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell, Tillerson found out he'd been let go on social media. "[Tillerson knew] there was tension but was not going to quit and did not know he was fired," Mitchell tweeted. 

Away from the administration, Tillerson has suggested that Trump is the one who doesn't have a grasp of ... well, much of anything. As he told Foreign Policy, "His understanding of global events, his understanding of global history, his understanding of U.S. history was really limited. It's really hard to have a conversation with someone who doesn't even understand the concept for why we're talking about this."

Attorney General Bill Barr was a controversial government employee even before he joined the Donald Trump administration. He first served in the position under George H.W. Bush, and he faced criticism for his tendency to decide that the president should be above prosecutorial oversight by Congress. "I'm not going to be buffaloed into appointing independent counsels by political clamor and by the views of editorial writers," he told The New York Times in 1992.

Trump appointed him in 2019, and Barr once again got to work protecting his president from oversight. Barr sparked a political furor when he released a summary of Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. While Barr waved away the findings, Mueller had actually laid out clear, prosecutable cases of Trump committing obstruction of justice. "A comparison of the report and Barr's statements shows that Barr downplayed Mueller's findings about Russian contacts with Trump campaign associates as well as the damning evidence of the president's obstruction of justice that Mueller assembled," the American Constitution Society wrote in a fact sheet.

Barr stuck by Trump's side up through December 2020, ultimately resigning amid Trump's insistence that the election was stolen. In his memoir "One Damn Thing After Another" two years later (via NBC News), Barr revealed just how tense their relationship really was. "[H]e has no concern with ideology or political principle," Barr wrote. "His motive is revenge, and it is entirely personal."

These days, Alyssa Farah Griffin is best known as one of the panelists on "The View." Just a few short years ago, however, she was the White House communications director under President Donald Trump, and fans of "The View" won't let her forget it. "I came from an environment and was raised to have a deep distrust of institutions," she told The New York Times, noting that her father founded WorldNetDaily, an early conspiracy website. Trump's insistence that the election had been stolen, however, had been a bridge too far for her — even though she had defended Trump's infamous call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find him more votes. "[W]hat he's saying he wants to do is get to the bottom of irregularities, and it's not just in Georgia, it's in other states," she told Fox News (via Media Matters for America).

While she might have supported the president's agenda in the past, Farah Griffin now views him as a danger to America's future. She held nothing back in an interview with ABC News, insisting that his authoritarian tendencies spell disaster for the country. "Fundamentally, a second Trump term could mean the end of American democracy as we know it, and I don't say that lightly," she insisted.

In the last few years of the Trump administration, Cassidy Hutchinson worked as an aide to Mark Meadows, the man who wound up serving as Donald Trump's final chief of staff. While she supported Trump's agenda enough to work in his administration, Hutchinson found herself increasingly uncomfortable with his rhetoric following the 2020 election, as he continued to insist that a win had been stolen from him despite all evidence to the contrary. Hutchinson had a privileged seat on January 6, witnessing the president's behavior as a mob stormed the Capitol, and she later wound up testifying about what she had seen to the January 6 congressional committee.

In particular, Hutchinson revealed that Trump was upset with the presence of metal detectors at his speech on the National Mall that morning. "'I don't effing care that they have weapons. They're not here to hurt me,'" she testified that Trump said (via CBS News). Her attorneys released a statement about her testimony, claiming, "Ms. Hutchinson believes that January 6 was a horrific day for the country, and it is vital to the future of our democracy that it not be repeated."

Donald Trump and Chris Christie have fought and made up several times over the years. The former New Jersey governor ran Trump's presidential transition team, a team that Trump apparently didn't think needed to exist. Christie later told Transition Lab, "Each time he called, he'd say to me, 'Chris, you're wasting a lot of time on this. You and I are both so smart, if we win this thing, we can do the entire transition if we just leave the victory party two hours early.'"

Even though Christie wasn't rewarded for his loyalty with a position in the administration, he often defended Trump on various news shows, leading Trump to circle back around and appreciate his support. Christie defended their relationship in 2018, telling The New York Times, "I don't feel like he's been disloyal to me. It's been a long time he and I've been friends, and talking with each other, through a number of different jobs for me and a number of different situations and iterations for him." 

Christie later ran against Trump for the 2024 nomination, refusing to support Trump ever again and now criticizing things he previously accepted. He told a radio host (via Politico), "I think he's a coward and I think he's a puppet of Putin."

Early in his time in the White House, President Donald Trump sparked significant controversy over how he treated the families of slain service members, known as Gold Star families. Chief of Staff John Kelly appeared at a press briefing (via PBS) in order to defend his boss' treatment of veterans, insisting, "We don't look down upon those of you that haven't served. In fact, in a way, we're a little bit sorry, because you will never have experienced the wonderful joy you get in your heart when you do the kind of things our servicemen and women do."

Kelly lasted about 16 months in the position and left by the end of 2018. Two years later, in 2020, he opened up about what he'd witnessed in the Trump administration. According to CNN, Kelly had told friends, "The depths of his dishonesty is just astounding to me."

A few years later, Kelly went on the record with CNN to confirm several damaging stories about the former president. Most significantly, Kelly hit back at Trump over his treatment of veterans, confirming he'd called people who died in war "suckers" and "losers." Kelly wrote, "[Trump is] a person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law. There is nothing more that can be said." He concluded, "God help us."