Politics
Column: Listen to Trump's former aides: He'd be far more dangerous in a second term
Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff, retired Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, broke a long silence and denounced his former boss as a man who fits “the general definition of fascist.”
The conservative, normally taciturn Kelly was moved to speak out after Trump condemned former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Adam B. Schiff and other Democrats as “the enemy from within” and said he would deploy troops onto the nation’s streets to suppress opposition.
“Using the military on, to go after, American citizens is … a very, very bad thing,” Kelly told the New York Times. “Even to say it for political purposes to get elected, I think it’s a very, very bad thing.”
Kelly wasn’t the only former Trump aide to warn that the GOP candidate shouldn’t be trusted with the nuclear codes. Dozens of people who worked in senior positions in the Trump administration have chimed in. Gen. Mark A. Milley, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called him “fascist to the core … the most dangerous person to the country.” Former national security advisor John Bolton said he was “unfit to be president.”
Trump “never accepted the fact that he wasn’t the most powerful man in the world — and by power, I mean an ability to do anything he wanted, any time he wanted,” Kelly said.
Did those warnings from authoritative sources — eminent figures Trump once appointed to high-ranking jobs — have any effect on his voters as election day approaches?
Not as far as anyone can tell.
Readers of this column won’t be surprised to learn that I agree wholeheartedly with Kelly, Milley, Bolton and their colleagues: Trump is a danger to our democracy.
He neither understands nor respects the Constitution. He yearns openly to rule the way China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin do, as an autocrat answerable to no one. “He controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist,” he said admiringly of Xi.
Trump revels in divisiveness and cruelty. And his economic “program,” which boils down to massive tariffs on imports plus unlimited drilling for oil and gas, would be disastrous.
Why do millions of voters — many of them, as Trump might put it, very fine people — blow past the warnings of figures like Kelly, Milley and Bolton?
Over the last year, I’ve listened to dozens of Trump voters describe their reasons for sticking with him.
Some, his hardcore base, agree with everything the former president says right down to the coarsest insults.
Others admit to qualms about Trump’s style but say they support him because they hope he can bring back the low-inflation prosperity of his first two years in office.
But a third group, which includes many independents as well as moderate Republicans, is the most perplexing. Not only do they dislike Trump’s style, they worry about some of his positions: his desire to unravel Obamacare, his threats to deploy the military against domestic opponents, his indiscriminate tariffs, his plan to fire thousands of civil servants and replace them with MAGA loyalists.
But many say they don’t think Trump would — or could — actually make those things happen.
In a focus group last week organized for NBC News by the public opinion consulting firm Engagious, for example, an Atlanta home inspector named Kevin said he worried that Trump’s tariffs would make consumer prices go up.
“It’s a bad idea,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s going to really go anywhere. I think it’ll cost too much money. It’ll be too difficult politically.” He’ll probably vote for Trump anyway, he said.
Pollsters have called this Trump’s “believability gap.” Voters hear what he says, but they discount it — they think that “he’s just talking” or that surely somebody will stop his more outlandish ideas.
But there are two problems with those Trump voters’ self-comforting rationalizations.
The first is that Trump already has a track record of trying to do most of those things. He tried to repeal Obamacare, but a handful of moderate Republican senators got in his way. He issued an executive order that would have enabled him to replace civil servants with political appointees, but time ran out on his term before he could use it.
And when demonstrators assembled across the street from the White House, he urged military officials to deploy troops and shoot protesters in the legs — but Gen. Milley and Defense Secretary Mark Esper stopped him.
“When he starts talking about using the military against people … I think we should take that very seriously,” Olivia Troye, who served as an aide to Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, told my colleague Noah Bierman recently. “He actually talked about shooting Americans. I was there … I witnessed that.”
The second problem with the “believability gap” is that if Trump gets back to the White House, he will be more likely to get his way.
He has frequently complained that he made a mistake in his first term by appointing aides like Kelly, Milley and Bolton, who believed it was their duty to restrain the president’s ill-considered impulses. If he gets a second term, he’ll surround himself with more people who will do his bidding without raising pesky questions.
He’ll run into less opposition from other institutions too.
Republicans in Congress, who occasionally restrained Trump when he was president, have purged most of the moderates from their ranks. Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah is retiring. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, an occasional Trump critic, will no longer be his party’s leader in the Senate.
Federal courts may be more hospitable, too, thanks to judges Trump appointed his first time around.
So moderate Republicans and independents who are tempted to vote for Trump because they hope he will lower taxes or improve the economy should think long and hard about the risks of that bargain.
When Trump says he’ll order prosecutors to go after Joe Biden and “the Pelosis,” he means it. When Trump says he’ll punish businesses like Amazon if he doesn’t like their owners’ views, he means it. When Trump says he believes the Constitution gives him “the right to do whatever I want as president,” he means it.
And this time, he would know better how to turn his wishes into reality. A second Trump term wouldn’t be a benign rerun of the first version. As his former aides are trying their best to warn us, it would be far worse.
Politics
Trump Cabinet member scraps Obama-era gender identity housing rule, cites ‘biological reality’
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Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Scott Turner has ordered an immediate halt to enforcement of a key Obama-era housing rule tied to gender identity, directing the agency to operate programs based on biological sex.
The directive stops any pending or future enforcement of HUD’s 2016 Equal Access Rule, which expanded gender identity as formally recognized in federally-funded housing programs and shelters.
The move marks a significant shift in how shelters and HUD-funded providers operate, particularly those serving women fleeing domestic violence, and implements President Donald Trump’s executive order to restore what the administration calls “biological truth” across the federal government.
“I am directing HUD staff to halt any pending or future enforcement actions related to HUD’s 2016 Equal Access Rule, which, in essence, tied housing programs, shelters and other facilities funded by HUD to far-left gender ideology,” Turner said.
TRUMP STOPPED BIDEN’S PLAN TO FORCE DEI ON LOCAL COMMUNITIES
President Donald Trump stands with HUD Secretary Scott Turner at an event. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“We, at this agency, are carrying out the mission laid out by President Trump on Jan. 20 … to restore biological truth to the federal government,” he added.
“This means recognizing there are only two sexes: male and female. It means getting government out of the way of what the Lord established from the beginning when he created man in His own image.”
The 2016 rule allowed people to self-identify for gender when accessing certain housing services, limiting the ability of shelters to challenge that identification.
Critics of the rule argued it restricted the rights of shelters, particularly those serving women impacted by trauma, domestic abuse and violence, by requiring them to admit individuals based on gender identity rather than biological sex.
JUDGE FORCES CA HOSPITAL TO KEEP TRANS TREATMENTS FOR MINORS DESPITE TRUMP FUNDING THREAT
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development nominee Scott Turner testifies during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee Jan. 16, 2025. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc)
Turner framed the move as part of a broader overhaul of HUD policy and spending.
“Moreover, this is just the first of many examples of how, starting on day one, HUD is going back to work for the American people and being a good steward of taxpayer dollars,” he said. “There will be more where this came from.”
The Equal Access Rule was first introduced in 2012, prohibiting discrimination in HUD-funded programs based on sexual orientation, gender identity and marital status. A 2016 update expanded those protections by requiring programs to recognize gender identity as well.
President Donald Trump and HUD Secretary Scott Turner attend a reception with Republican members of Congress in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on July 22, 2025. (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg)
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Turner’s order does not repeal the rule but halts enforcement tied to the 2016 expansion.
“As I have said before, we are going to take inventory of HUD’s programs and ensure every dollar that goes out the door is advancing HUD’s mission, which is to provide quality, affordable homes for communities across the country — urban, rural and tribal — and promote economic investment to build stronger communities and a brighter future for all Americans,” Turner said.
WASHINGTON — The Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee said some members would support a presidential pardon for convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell in exchange for her assistance in the committee’s investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.
But good luck getting any of them to admit it.
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) told Politico on Wednesday that “a lot of people” support the idea of Maxwell receiving a pardon from President Trump in exchange for her cooperation in the committee’s investigation.
Although Comer said he opposed a pardon himself — “other than Epstein, the worst person in this whole investigation is Maxwell” — he offered that his committee was “split” on the issue.
Rep. Robert Garcia of Long Beach, the top Democrat on his committee, condemned the idea of a Maxwell pardon and said Democrats on the committee uniformly oppose it.
“It’s outrageous that Republicans on the Oversight Committee are considering a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell,” Garcia said in a statement. “She is a sexual abuser who facilitated the rape of women and children.”
The Times reached out to all 26 Republicans on the committee to see who, if anyone, supported the idea of a pardon.
Although most didn’t respond, the few who did expressed outrage at the idea.
“I am absolutely not supporting a pardon for her nor have I heard that from anyone else,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) said.
“Never in a thousand years,” Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) said.
Maxwell declined to answer the committee’s questions during a video deposition in February from the Texas federal prison where she is serving her 20-year sentence.
She still is challenging her 2021 conviction on five counts related to the sex trafficking of minors for her role in recruiting and grooming girls for Epstein to abuse. She was accused at trial of also participating in the abuse of one victim.
At the time of her February deposition, Maxwell’s attorney David Oscar Markus said she would offer the “unfiltered truth” if granted clemency by Trump.
Attorneys who have represented victims abused by Epstein and Maxwell strongly opposed the idea of a pardon.
“This is a woman who belongs behind bars for the rest of her life for what she did to women,” said Spencer Kuvin, who has represented numerous Epstein victims.
Sigrid McCawley, a managing partner at Boies Schiller Flexner, questioned the value of information Maxwell could provide.
“Ghislaine Maxwell is a proven self-serving liar,” McCawley said in a statement. “There is nothing credible that she will offer the government, and the assertion that she would provide information is simply a smoke screen.”
Trump has not said he is considering a pardon, but when asked by reporters he has declined to rule it out.
Epstein abused more than 1,000 girls and young women over the span of decades. He negotiated a lenient deal nearly two decades ago with federal prosecutors in south Florida that allowed him to serve 13 months in a Palm Beach County jail, where he was allowed to come and go freely, to settle claims that he had abused dozens of high school girls.
Following investigative reporting on that deal by the Miami Herald, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York brought new sex charges against Epstein in July 2019. He died in federal custody one month later.
Epstein and Maxwell counted members of the British royal family, multiple presidents and business titans among their friends. They have been accused of forcing victims to have sex with some of those men. Maxwell is the only other person who has been charged in connection with Epstein’s crimes.
The committee has deposed numerous people who knew Epstein, including Ohio billionaire Les Wexner, who hired Epstein to manage his finances, and former President Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The committee has not, however, deposed Trump, who once famously called Epstein a “terrific guy” and said “I just wish her well” when told of Maxwell’s arrest in 2020.
The Department of Justice has released millions of pages of documents from its investigations in response to the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was signed into law last year.
The release led to criminal inquiries in the United Kingdom into Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former prince, and Peter Mandelson, the former British ambassador to the United States, over allegations that they provided secret government information to Epstein.
So far, the files have not led to any publicly known criminal investigations in the United States.
U.S. military forces stopped and boarded a second sanctioned tanker carrying oil from Iran in the Indian Ocean, the Pentagon said on Thursday, ramping up pressure on Tehran as the Trump administration seeks to resume negotiations to end the war.
A naval boarding team roped down from hovering helicopters and fanned out on the vessel, the M/T Majestic X, according to a Pentagon statement that included a 17-second video of the operation.
The military said the boarding was part of a “global maritime enforcement to disrupt illicit networks and interdict vessels providing material support to Iran, wherever they operate.”
Earlier this week, Navy SEALS boarded another ship in the Indian Ocean, the M/T Tifani, after the Pentagon said it was carrying oil from Iran.
Navy destroyers are also shadowing several other Iranian vessels, including the Dorena and Sevin, which had left from the Iranian port of Chabahar before the U.S.-imposed blockade began on April 13, a U.S. military official said. The Navy is directing those ships to return to an Iranian port, the official said.
With the M/T Tifani and M/T Majestic X now at least temporarily in the custody of the military, a U.S. military official said it was up to the White House to decide what to do with the sanctioned vessels and their cargo. The administration previously seized several tankers carrying illicit oil from Venezuela after a U.S. commando raid there in January that seized Nicolás Maduro, the country’s president.
“International waters cannot be used as a shield by sanctioned actors,” the Pentagon said in its statement on Thursday, adding that the department would “continue to deny illicit actors and their vessels freedom of maneuver in the maritime domain.”
Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, hinted last week that the U.S. military would likely commence boarding operations like the ones this week. He said that U.S. military commanders elsewhere in the world, and especially in the Indo-Pacific region, would “actively pursue any Iranian-flagged vessel or any vessel attempting to provide material support to Iran.”
The U.S. Navy has turned back at least 31 ships trying to enter or exit Iranian ports since an American blockade outside the contested Strait of Hormuz began about a week ago, U.S. Central Command said late Wednesday.
Last Sunday, a Navy destroyer disabled and seized the Touska, an Iranian cargo ship, after it tried to evade the blockade. It was the first time a vessel was reported to have tried to evade the U.S.-imposed blockade on any ship entering or exiting Iranian ports since it took effect last week.
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