'Open contempt': Conservative reports Trump's inner circle is starting to turn against him

Members of Donald Trump's inner circle have begun to publicly speak out against him following his indictment on charges under the Espionage Act.

Former Cabinet secretaries and other high-ranking administration officials have condemned the ex-president as a threat to national security and compared him to a "defiant 9-year-old," and conservative Charle Sykes wrote a new column for The Bulwark listing some of the most notable allies turned critics.

"Let’s put this in context, shall we?" Sykes wrote. "As I wrote last year, there’s no precedent for a twice impeached, defeated former president seeking to regain power. But this is also unprecedented: No president has earned the open contempt and denunciation of so many of his inner circle."

Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, William Barr, Mike Esper and Chris Christie all recently denounced Trump's mishandling of classified materials, joining the ranks of a number of former administration officials who have publicly turned on the ex-president.

"Whatever they might have thought about Trump’s election — whatever rationalizations, wishcasting, delusions, personal ambitions, or Faustian bargains that may have led them to serve him — they now grasp the consequences of a second term," Sykes wrote.

Sykes has doubts that their warnings have the influence to break Trump's hold on the Republican Party, and some of them haven't refused to rule out voting for him themselves, but their public criticism is noteworthy nonetheless.

"But that does not mean that they are irrelevant, because — unlike other critiques from the Resistance or Never Trumpers who have essentially become Democrats — these voices are coming from inside the house," Sykes wrote. "In theory, they could create what we euphemistically call a 'permission structure' for other Republicans to say out loud what they claim to be saying in private."