US election 2024: big-name ‘never-Trumpers’ are now falling into line

By Katie Pruszynski, University of Sheffield

“I’m a Never Trump Guy. I never liked him.” What happens to the people who once swore they’d never back Donald Trump in the wake of an attempt on the former president’s life? The answer for one, at least, is that he runs as Trump’s nominee for vice president.

J.D. Vance, a Republican senator from Ohio, compared Trump to Hitler in private, called him an idiot in public, and warned fellow Christians that “everyone is watching when we apologise for this man”.

But like many of those fellow Christians, Vance has found himself able, as it turns out, to embrace the man he once railed against. This is a familiar about-face.

During the 2016 Republican primaries, Trump drew fierce criticism from other candidates that went far beyond the usual jibes at a political competitor. Senator Ted Cruz called him “utterly amoral”. Senator Marco Rubio said, “Friends do not let friends vote for con artists.” And Senator Lindsey Graham warned that if Trump became the nominee, “we would get destroyed … and we would deserve it”.

Yet each one fell in line to become vocal supporters of the former president.

Why have so many prominent Republicans risked their own reputations to back Trump? One explanation is a justifiable fear that their reputations would suffer far worse damage at the hands of Trump’s bombast. Trump prizes loud expressions of fealty and deals out swift retribution for dissenters.

But perhaps more compelling is the argument that in Trump, the GOP found the catalyst to deliver a hardline, right-wing agenda. This was something so long sought after that everyone held their nose and wrapped their arms around the maverick real estate developer and reality TV star.

That tolerance was sorely tested by Trump’s time in office and in the years since. His behaviour as president, and subsequent catalogue of legal jeopardy (including an unprecedented felony conviction) would make him political poison almost anywhere else.

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