Dozens of former officials who served in the George W. Bush administration have decided to flee the Republican Party over its continued support for former President Donald Trump.
In interviews with Reuters, these officials said that the GOP’s transformation into a personality cult for a longtime reality TV show host had made it impossible for them to stay.
“The Republican Party as I knew it no longer exists,” explained Jimmy Gurulé, who served as Bush’s Undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. “I’d call it the cult of Trump.”
Kristopher Purcell, who served in the Bush White House’s communications office, told Reuters that he estimates 60 or so former Bush officials have left the party and that “the number is growing every day.”
Purcell said he was discouraged to see the GOP continuing down the far-right conspiracy theory rabbit hole even after Trump’s defeat.
“We have QAnon members of Congress,” he said. “It’s appalling.”
Rosario Marin, a former Treasurer of the U.S. under Bush, said that the only way that she would consider going back to the GOP would be for the Senate to convict Trump and drive him out of politics for good.
“Unless the Senate convicts him, and rids themselves of the Trump cancer, many of us will not be going back to vote for Republican leaders,” she said.
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