Donald Trump spent the beginning of New Year’s Eve re-posting years-old praise from some of his former staffers who have now become critics, posting screenshots on Truth Social of their old tweets.
Trump White House Communications Director Alyssah Farah left the administration in December 2020 disenchanted with Mr Trump, and quickly became a conservative critic on cable news. The 34-year-old is now a co-host of The View.
Sarah Matthews, 28, was appointed as the White House Deputy Press Secretary in June 2020. She left on January 6, 2021, the day of the Capitol riot. She later testified before the January 6 House Select Committee.
One of the star witnesses for that panel was Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. The 27-year-old corroborated some of the more startling accounts of Mr Trump’s actions on the day of the insurrection.
Both Ms Hutchinson and Ms Matthews appeared publically before the January 6 panel – all three cooperated with the committee and all three also appeared on ABC’s This Week on New Year’s Eve, warning about what may take place during a second Trump term.
“Fundamentally, a second Trump term could mean the end of American democracy as we know it, and I don’t say that lightly,” Ms Griffin told ABC. “We all witnessed him trying to steal a democratic election before and go to historic and unconstitutional lengths to do so.”
“And that just shows that he’s willing to basically break every barrier to get into power and to stay into power,” she added. “But also, I’m very concerned about what the term would actually look like.”
“We don’t need to speculate what a second Trump term would look like because we already saw it play out,” Ms Matthews told ABC. “To this day, he still doubles down on the fact that he thinks that the election was stolen and fraudulent. And then his rhetoric has just gotten increasingly erratic. I mean, he has literally called for things like doing away with parts of the Constitution, wanting to weaponize the DOJ to enact revenge on his political enemies.”
“The fact that he feels that he needs to lean into being a dictator alone shows that he is a weak and feeble man who has no sense of character and integrity and has no sense of leadership,” Ms Hutchinson said.
The Trump campaign sent a statement to ABC calling them “ungrateful grifters” who “used the opportunities given to them by President Trump” and had gone “full Judas”.
Mr Trump also spent New Year’s Eve bashing the women on Truth Social, dedicating more than a dozen posts to screenshots of social media posts by Ms Farah and Ms Matthews praising him.
The former president’s focus on past praise from those warning of what may come if he returns to power came after he spent the weekend pushing baseless conspiracy theories about Democrats using illegal immigration to rig the 2024 election.
“As the New Year fast approaches, I would like to wish an early New Year’s salutation to Crooked Joe Biden and his group of Radical Left Misfits & Thugs on their never ending attempt to DESTROY OUR NATION through Lawfare, Invasion, and Rigging Elections,” Mr Trump wrote in the afternoon of 30 December.
“They are now scrambling to sign up as many of those millions of people they are illegally allowing into [our] Country, in order [so] that they will be ready to VOTE IN THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2024,” he added.
Mr Trump’s New Year’s screed followed a previous post just after midnight early on Saturday, in which he wrote, “It’s becoming more and more obvious to me why the ‘Crazed’ Democrats are allowing millions and millions of totally unvetted migrants into our once great Country”.
“IT’S SO THEY CAN VOTE, VOTE, VOTE. They are signing them up at a rapid pace, without even knowing who the hell they are. It all makes sense now. Republicans better wake up and do something, before it is too late. Are you listening Mitch McConnell?” he asked of the Senate Republican leader.
