As the most consequential election of our lifetime draws near, it’s worth asking about Trump’s most prominent critics in the Republican party. Surely they are aware of the clear and present danger Trump represents, because they were once very public, very outspoken. But what about NOW, when it matters?
Here’s what George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, and five other once-outspoken critics of Donald Trump are doing NOW, to save our democratic republic from fascism.
(Spoiler alert: NADA, ZIPPO, BUPKIS, NOTHING!)
PAUL RYAN: “Everybody knows I’m not a Trump guy” is what he told Harvard’s Institute of Politics in April, but he followed his mild critique with “but…” In fact, the former Republican candidate for Vice President and former Speaker of the House seems to have followed every criticism of Trump with some sort of qualification. It adds up to something worse than silence.
MITT ROMNEY: The former candidate for President (2012) has been ‘evolving’–but, unfortunately, in the direction of silence. He was a harsh critic of Trump back in 2016 and twice voted to convict him when he was impeached. However, lately his criticism has been muted. Here’s part of what he said at Harvard in April: “I’m not the first one to suggest that that we’re taking steps towards an authoritarian approach,” Romney said. “When President Biden said, ‘I’m going to get rid of a trillion dollars of student debt without Congressional approval,’ that’s a pretty authoritarian thing, and President Trump has done far more than his share.”
He was more critical in 2024: “I’m, as you know, not a supporter of President Trump’s. I didn’t support him in this election. I didn’t the last time he ran either, largely for matters of character,” the Utah Republican, who was the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, told CNN’s Jake Tapper in a wide-ranging interview on “State of the Union” on Sunday.
And in 2016 he said “Here’s what I know: Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University,” Romney said.
GEORGE W. BUSH: His prolonged silence is analyzed in detail in an insightful article, “George W. Bush’s Code of Silence,” in The New Yorker in September. I urge you to read Jacob Weisberg’s entire article, and perhaps this one paragraph will entice you to click on the link above:
Bush coming out against Trump could have made a difference at many points. It likely would have mattered in the fall of 2016, by which point his post-Presidential approval rating had risen above fifty per cent with all voters. If Bush had endorsed Hillary Clinton, it might have encouraged members of his own party to vote for a responsible Democrat, however disliked, over a malignant Republican. The same was true again in 2024, when Bush could have joined the Cheneys in endorsing Kamala Harris as a far lesser evil. But, by then, Bush’s show of staying above the fray had hardened into a fixed posture. He hadn’t criticized Trump before, and he wasn’t going to now. This post‑Presidential abdication stands as the final, damning failure of the Bush Presidency. A leader who framed politics around a straightforward, Christian morality of right and wrong saw evil and failed to call it out.
MIKE PENCE: Pence was, of course, Trump’s Vice President during his first term. He incurred Trump’s wrath when he denied Trump’s request/order to disapprove of the slate of electors that voted to certify Joe Biden’s victory. He then ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, failing spectacularly. He subsequently declined to endorse Trump, although he did not endorse the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris.
Pence’s language has been muted, as in this interview with NPR: Trump and Pence ran in 2020 on a mission to “drain the swamp,” rooting out government corruption and wasteful spending. However, Pence said Trump appears to have shifted from those goals. “There’s maybe nothing more swampy than the battle over getting tariff waivers for big business,” Pence said.
JEB BUSH: If anyone could be expected to be publicly critical of Trump, it’s Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor who ran for and lost the 2016 Republican nomination to Trump, who mocked him mercilessly. “Low Energy Jeb” was just one of the epithets Trump flung his way, month after month. After dropping out, Bush endorsed Ted Cruz.
That was 10 years ago, and since then (like his brother George) Jeb has been silent about Trump’s attacks on democratic institutions and traditions.
He did, however, surprise observers by endorsing Trump’s Iran policies back in January: “President Trump continues to demonstrate historic leadership on Iran, with unprecedented support for the Iranian people as they face bullets for freedom.” And “We applaud President Trump for his courageous decision to launch this military operation. For 47 years, the Iranian regime has unleashed terror, violence and misery—against its own people and across the region—while threatening the United States, Israel and our allies.”
REX TILLERSON: Trump’s first Secretary of State publicly stated that Trump was “undisciplined,” unwilling to read important material, and prone to supporting actions and policies that would be clear violations of international law. Privately, he called Trump “a moron.” That was in 2016-2017. Fired by Trump, Tillerson, the former chief executive of ExxonMobil, has gone dark.
ELAINE CHAO: Chao, Trump’s Secretary of Transportation, was the first Cabinet member to resign after the January 6th Insurrection attempt. Chao, the first Asian-American to serve in a Presidential cabinet, later called out Trump for his anti-Asian remarks in speeches and on social media in which he attacked Chao and her husband, Senator Mitch McConnell, calling her ‘Coco Chow’ and him ‘Old Broken Crow.’ Here’s one TruthSocial post from January, 2023: “Does Coco Chow have anything to do with Joe Biden’s Classified Documents being sent and stored in Chinatown?” Trump wrote. “Her husband, the Old Broken Crow, is VERY close to Biden, the Democrats, and, of course, China.”
Chao responded, saying that his attacks say “a whole lot more about him than it will ever say about Asian Americans.”
Like Mitt Romney, Chao seems to have ‘evolved’ into silence. It’s probably just a coincidence that in January 2025 Trump appointed Chao to the Kennedy Center Board of Trustees (and we know how that Board has voted, lock-step).
BETSY DEVOS: DeVos, Trump’s first Secretary of Education, also resigned from Trump’s Cabinet in a public display of (feigned) integrity after the January 6th Insurrection attempt. I say ‘feigned’ because she continues to support Trump financially through at least one major PAC.
GENERAL JOHN KELLY: Of all the men and women I’m writing about, Trump’s former Chief of Staff has been the most critical of Trump, saying that he “could fit the bill of a fascist” and that he was unfit to serve–all this just two weeks before the 2024 Presidential election.
“Well, looking at the definition of fascism: It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy,” he told The Times.
“So, certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America,” he told ABC News.
CNN reported that, the day after the January 6th insurrection, Kelly supported using the Twenty-fifth Amendment to remove Trump from office, saying “What happened on Capitol Hill yesterday is a direct result of his poisoning the minds of people with the lies and the frauds.”
I haven’t seen General Kelly, Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, Mike Pence or any of the other well-known Republicans stepping up to the plate to defend our democratic republic.
So I guess it’s up to us!
