Former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson announced in TV hits Wednesday night and Thursday morning that she will vote for Kamala Harris in November and said the country needs to focus on defeating the former president.
Hutchinson, who gave bombshell testimony about Trump and his allies to the Jan. 6 House select committee, explained her reasoning during an interview with Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC. “I’ve known for quite a long time, number one, that I would never in my life vote for Donald Trump ever again,” she said.
“I don’t ever want to try to tell somebody how to vote,” Hutchinson, who worked for Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, said. “But in my experience, number one, from being up close to Donald Trump, seeing his character, knowing who he is, believing him when he tells us who he is, and also who he chose as his vice presidential running mate—JD Vance, who’s a whole separate conversation—it’s just a despicable portrayal of the Republican Party.”
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She added that she is “really, really proud as a conservative to have the opportunity to vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in this election,” despite there being few issues on which she imagines she would see eye-to-eye with the vice president.
“We need to elect people that we can trust to uphold our rule of law,” Hutchinson said. “People that we want our children to look at and to want to emulate.”
Hutchinson has previously warned about the potential threats from a second Trump term even while saying she still considers herself a Republican.
“I say to Republicans who may be on the fence: I understand how frightening it can be to potentially break with your party,” she said in the MSNBC interview. “I also understand there are concerns—and very valid concerns—about inflation. But Donald Trump and JD Vance cannot be trusted with the Constitution, they cannot be trusted to uphold our rule or law, and they can’t be trusted to enact responsible policy.”
Those issues, in Hutchinson’s view, are “disqualifying” among other issues—including that Trump is under criminal indictments. Her opposition to the former president is such that she says she will even be voting for Democrats in House and Senate races too.
“I think it is so important that we get past this period of Donald Trump for America to begin healing,” Hutchinson said. “And once we’re past that period, hopefully we can open up responsible policy debates in the future. But right now, we need to focus on defeating Donald Trump.”
She continued her anti-Trump crusade on Thursday morning, specifically calling out his male supporters in the GOP on Morning Joe when host Mika Brzezinski asked why Republicans like Hutchinson and former Rep. Liz Cheney—who served as the vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee—appear to be few and far between.
“I don’t know why so many Republicans—specifically the men—are still cloaking themselves in cowardice, especially in the face of Donald Trump and JD Vance,” Hutchinson said. “The Republican Party is something that is completely unrecognizable from what it once was.”
“But we do have faith in our leaders,” she continued. “Like Liz Cheney, who has stepped forward, and Adam Kinzinger. There are still good Republicans out there who are trying to salvage what’s left of the party, but we need more people to step forward.”
