The moral dilemma about working for Donald Trump

WASHINGTON: Unemployment is at an all-time low and there are other presidential candidates to work for, but dozens of Republican operatives, several highly respected stars among them, have chosen, despite all available payment options, to help the man who He tried to crush American democracy by going back to the White House.

“Defend the indefensible,” said Al Cárdenas, former president of the Republican Party of Florida, from where the former president donald trump is running its 2024 campaign. “I don’t know what’s in their hearts…. It’s a good payday.”

And while most of those who work for the Trump campaign, his political Save America committee, or his supporting super PAC are either new to politics or have grown personally loyal to Trump and his lies about his 2020 election loss, some are highly respected names in Republican politics.

Chris LaCivita, for example, served two terms as head of the Republican National Senatorial Committee and designed the infamous “Swift Boat” ads disparaging 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry’s service in the Vietnam War. Tony Fabrizio was the pollster for Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole in 1996 and has participated in numerous statewide Republican races since. And perhaps most puzzling of all is the woman running the Trump operation: Susie Wiles, considered one of the top Republican consultants in Florida, whose job she gave to the now-senator. Rick Scott two terms in the Governor’s Mansion, and who in the fall of 2018 rescued Ron DeSantis’ faltering campaign and helped him to a narrow victory as well.

“These are veterans who should know better,” said Sarah Longwell, a Republican consultant who has worked for several years to defeat Trump and who says her ability to find staff sheds light on the “amoral universe” her business inhabits. .

“I find it amazing,” he said, adding that he doesn’t know how people who, after January 6, 2021, can work for him and still see themselves in the mirror every morning. “If in your judgment you think he should be back in charge of the country, I think your judgment is terrible. And I think it’s immoral.”

LaCivita, Fabrizio and Wiles did not respond to multiple inquiries and requests for comment from HuffPost. Neither did the vast majority of the dozens of Trump campaign employees and vendors contacted by HuffPost.

Campaign spokesman Steven Cheung defended both Trump and staff like him who work for him. “Everyone in the campaign is committed to President Trump and the movement he has built,” he said, adding: “If you mean January 6, President Trump said ‘peacefully and patriotically’ in his speech, but the media communication and the ‘deselection committee’ of January 6 has despicably removed that part of their images”.

While he was “peacefully” in Trump’s speech that day, as Congress was certifying the Electoral College count, he also urged his supporters to “fight like hell” and warned they would lose their country if they didn’t. He further inflamed his mob that afternoon by attacking his own vice president for lacking the “courage” to agree to his coup attempt to stay in power despite losing his election. Four of his own supporters were killed that day, while 140 police officers were injured and five died in the days and weeks that followed.

Trump is now under criminal investigation for his actions prior to January 6, both by the US Department of Justice and by prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia.

Mac Stipanovich, who with Cárdenas helped make republicans the dominant party in Florida during the 1980s and 1990s, said Trump’s repeated lies about a “stolen” election that prompted the storming of the Capitol on January 6 in his name should have been the final straw for anyone. to consider working for Trump.

“He is a despicable human being. He is dishonest. He is a cheater. If he was my boss, he would quit. If he was my employee, he would fire him. If he was my son-in-law, he would spank him,” he said. “One, he is a bad man. And two, he is a danger to representative democracy in this country.”

HuffPost reached out to dozens of employees and vendors for its campaign, its “leadership PAC” Save America and its supportive super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., for this story.

Among the only ones to explain her choice to continue working for Trump despite her actions culminating in the January 6 riots was campaign spokeswoman Liz Harrington, to this day an enthusiastic spreader of Trump’s lies about fraud. electoral.

“The 2020 election was stolen and more evidence has only emerged to show that that is true,” said Harrington, who has earned $126,431 in the past two years from Save America and since Trump’s November announcement that he would run in 2024. , $16,875 from his campaign, according to a HuffPost analysis of Federal Election Commission filings. Both totals reflect payments made through the end of 2022.

It’s unclear whether claiming to believe Trump’s falsehoods about the 2020 election is a condition of employment, though the campaign list is littered with several Trump staffers who have repeated at least some of them.

Margo Martin, for example, was a press aide in Trump’s White House and immediately went to work for him at his Palm Beach country club after he left office. She has been paid $159,773 from Save America and $17,110 from the campaign.

Dan Scavino, whose service to Trump began as a caddy decades ago, was and remains the top aide in helping him expose his election lies. Save America has paid him $160,651 and the campaign $23,125.

Meanwhile, Natalie Harp and Christina Bobb began spreading Trump election conspiracy theories as reporters for One America News. Both are now on Trump’s campaign staff. Harp received $69,955 from Save America and $13,125 from the campaign, while Bobb earned $95,561 from Save America and $25,000 from the campaign.

Also on staff are Stephen Miller, a former senior Trump White House adviser who bragged in a television interview on the day the Electoral College convened on December 14 that the Trump campaign was working to produce voter lists. “alternatives” to use on January 6, as well as two members of his staff in the White House speechwriting office: Ross Worthington and Vincent Haley. All three were involved in the fake electoral scheme that was key to the January 6 coup attempt and is now under criminal investigation.

Miller received $137,092 from Save America and $14,750 from the campaign. The campaign paid Worthington and Haley $26,250 and $28,375, respectively.

Yet others on Trump’s global payroll have acknowledged in public statements or in testimony before the committee on January 6 that Trump lost the 2020 election.

Pollster Fabrizio, whose company Save America was paid $252,875, released a report in December 2020 explaining why Trump lost and said he communicated directly to Trump. However, he continues to work for Trump.

And Jason Miller, a longtime Trump adviser who now works for the campaign, admitted under oath to the Jan. 6 committee that “fraud and irregularities … were not enough to nullify the election.” Save America has paid him $97,500 through his company SHW Partners.

Meanwhile, some consultants have created corporate fronts in the past two years that allow them to receive money from Trump anonymously.

In December, for example, a company called 305Sunnshine Strategies was created. It has no website, and corporate records in Florida do not provide details about its owners. He has received $60,000 from Save America and $15,000 from the Trump super PAC.

Redshift Strategies is registered with the same company that handles corporate registrations in St. Petersburg, Florida as 305Sunnshine Strategies. He has received $22,398 from the super PAC.

Republican consultants who oppose Trump said it is not surprising that some of their colleagues are willing to accept money from Trump’s operation as long as they can do so without being publicly linked to him.

“The thing that absolutely boils my blood is the kind of consultants who will tell you that they and their firms put limits on working for Trump, but happily gobble up Republican National Committee contracts, 501(c)(4) vehicles, PACs doing independent spending around turnout that would boost votes at the presidential level, and every single committee,” said Lucy Caldwell, who led former Illinois congressman Joe Walsh’s quixotic primary challenge to Trump in 2020. “However, They have somehow deluded themselves into thinking that they are taking a principled position because they are not literally contracted to the Trump campaign committee.”

Fabrizio, though he did not respond to inquiries from HuffPost, did address the question of working for Trump after Jan. 6 during a podcast interview with Democratic consultant David Axelrod.

He said in an episode that aired a year ago that he was “in shock” watching the violence on Capitol Hill on January 6 and that he believed Trump should have done something to stop it. However, she defended her decision to work for him.

“If people expect us to be the moral police, I think they expect a lot from our profession because our profession is not going to do that,” Fabrizio said. “We are not going to be the moral police.”

That attitude is all too common in his business, Longwell said, and Trump’s enablers tell each other that what he did wasn’t too bad and, besides, the Democrats are worse. “A lot of our normative values ​​are determined by what the people around you are doing,” he said. “I can’t imagine the moral calculus that would allow you to go back and work for Trump after January 6th.”

Still, he points out that a number of experienced and respected Republican consultants turned down work for Trump, leaving him with a staff of lesser ability than a former president with a strong chance of winning the nomination would have. “There will always be ‘C’ players,” he said.

Stipanovich said he can understand young officers, early in their career, making moral concessions. “They have mortgages, they have children who have to go to university,” he said, adding that it was easier for someone like him who had already made a lot of money to leave. “I can afford principles. Some of my colleagues can’t.”

Stuart Stevens, a consultant to the 2012 campaigns of former President George W. Bush and Republican candidate Mitt Romney, isn’t about to reduce that level of flexibility, at least when it comes to working for a man who accepted help from Russian dictator Vladimir. Putin in won his 2016 election, supported Putin throughout while he was in office, tried to extort Ukraine to win re-election, and then last year called Putin’s invasion of Ukraine a “genius.”

“So you’re supporting someone you know is backed by Putin?” Stevens said. “Who introduced a pro-Putin element into American politics and who then tried to overthrow the government?”