ExTrump aides urged to speak out: ‘Now or never’

WASHINGTON — Elizabeth Neumann wrestled with the decision for weeks. She worried about the backlash, the impact it would have on her career, potential threats to her family.

But the former Department of Homeland Security official, who had resigned in April, reached a breaking point after President Trump deployed Homeland Security agents to Portland, exacerbating tensions there. She decided it was worth the risk to speak out against Trump, whom she had come to view as a threat to the country.

“Enough is enough,“said Neumann, the former assistant secretary of counterterrorism and threat prevention. “People need to understand how dangerous a moment we are in.”

There are plenty of others weighing the same decision. With just weeks left before the Nov. 3 election, now is the moment of truth for current and former Trump administration officials debating whether they, too, should step forward and join the chorus of Republican voices trying to persuade onthefence voters to help deny Trump a second term.

“It’s now or never,” said Miles Taylor, former chief of staff at DHS, who has been working to recruit others to join the effort. Taylor has accused Trump of routinely asking aides to break the law, using his former agency for political purposes, and wanting to maim and shoot migrants trying to cross the southern border.

“Those who witnessed the president’s unfitness for office up close have a moral obligation to share their assessment with the electorate,” said Taylor, who created the group REPAIR — the Republican Political Alliance for Integrity and Reform — to bring together concerned former officials.

A related group, Republican Voters Against Trump, has compiled nearly 1,000 video testimonials from Republicans across the country who want Trump out.

Other prominent “formers” have spoken out independently — or are considering it.

Former national security adviser John Bolton wrote a scathing book in which he said Trump “saw conspiracies behind rocks, and remained stunningly uninformed” on how to run the government. Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis broke a selfimposed vow of silence in June with an opinion piece slamming Trump’s response to racial justice protests. He and former director of national intelligence Dan Coats also were quoted extensively in a new book by journalist Bob Woodward calling Trump dangerous and unfit for office.

Rick Wilson, a longtime Republican strategist who cofounded the antiTrump Lincoln Project, stressed that time is running out.

“There will be a cottage industry when Trump is out of office of people who say, ‘Oh, I fought from the inside, I fought the good fight, I kept so many bad things from happening.’” he said. “It doesn’t matter. There’s only one moment in time where it matters. And that’s now.”