Trump's attempt to discredit ex-staffers' 'gotcha' attacks destroyed by columnist

Ronald Reagan famously joked that his "11th Commandment" was "Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican.” But Donald Trump, in contrast, has never been one to cut his political foes any slack just because they're conservative.

Many of the people Trump now rails against are conservative Republicans, including Cassidy Hutchinson, Sarah Matthews and Alyssa Farah Griffin — all of whom worked in the White House when he was president.

Hutchinson, Matthews and Griffin were interviewed by ABC News' Jonathan Karl for a "This Week" segment aired on Sunday. The ex-White House staffers outlined the dangers a second Trump presidency would impose if he won the 2024 election. In response, Trump used his Truth Social platform to highlight favorable things that Matthews and Griffin said about him in the past.

Rolling Stone's Peter Wade noted that Trump "seems to be framing" their old "comments and posts as some sort of 'gotcha,'" but points out that "many — but not all — were from before January 6 and before Trump claimed the election was stolen."

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During their ABC News appearance, Griffin told Karl, "Fundamentally, a second Trump term could mean the end of American democracy as we know it, and I don't say that lightly…. I'm very concerned about what the term would actually look like."

Griffin, now a co-host on ABC's "The View," added that the former president went to "historic and unconstitutional lengths" to "steal a democratic election" in 2020.

Matthews and Hutchison were equally critical of Trump during the interview.

Hutchinson told Karl, "Our singular focus needs to be, if he is the nominee, on making sure that he is not elected the president again next November. … The fact that he feels that he needs to lean into being a dictator alone shows that he is a weak and feeble man."

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Matthews, warning that Trump has become "increasingly erratic," told Karl, "To this day, he still doubles down on the fact that he thinks that the election was stolen and fraudulent…. I've never voted for a Democrat in my life, but I think that in this next election, I would put policy aside and choose democracy."

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