A second Donald Trump term would see the 45th President flood the White House with "sycophants" and bring "never-ending chaos" to America, a top Republican has told GB News.
Charlie Dent, who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and is weighing up how to vote on November 5, also claimed Trump's Grand Old Party would leave historic Republican figures such as Ronald Reagan and Abraham Lincoln isolated on its fringes.
Opinion polls suggest the race to the White House is too close to call, with Kamala Harris opening up a narrow 3.4 per cent lead.
Since leaving the Oval Office in January 2021, a number of former Trump insiders have transformed from friend to foe and now hope for a Democrat victory later this year.
Trump predicted to flood White House with ‘sycophants’ with ex-President free to launch ‘unhelpful eruptions’GETTYEx-aides Stephanie Grisham and Anthony Scaramucci have been unapologetic in criticising the 45th President, with former attorney Michael Cohen facing down his former boss in court.
Discussing concern about Trump’s inner circle, Dent told GB News: “We'd see more of what we saw before. Never-ending drama, chaos, disruption for disruption’s sake.
“He was a very disruptive force and had very little interest in public policy, surrounded himself with people too often who were unable to challenge him. They couldn't do it.
“He had some good people around but most of those people aren't going to come around for the second time. They're not going to do it the second time, they saw what happened.
“I'm afraid that his next administration will be populated by people who tend to be more sycophantic and enablers of him rather than people trying to push back when he would have these types of unhelpful eruptions that were really dubious.
“I am very concerned that he'll be every bit as disruptive, perhaps more than he was. And he clearly doesn't have a whole lot of respect for norms or institutions. I still like to think that our courts and our judiciary and the press and other institutions would be able to withstand the pressure, but we won't know. But why take the chance?”
At least 24 former Trump allies have either turned against him or been hung out to dry by the former President.
Ex-Vice President Mike Pence and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have been among the most prominent figures at loggerheads with the 45th President.
Daughter Ivanka even distanced herself from her father’s campaign, with sons Eric and Donald Jr maintaining key roles.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:
Donald TrumpREUTERSDent’s comments come as he continues to spearhead the Our Republican Legacy movement.
The group of anti-MAGA Republicans want to steer the Grand Old Party back to its roots.
Dent said: “We're a group of people who I think you could probably fairly describe as dispirited or disillusioned Republicans who want the party to get to a better place.
“We're not happy about the direction of the party. We think there needs to be an alternative narrative to MAGA. There needs to be a counter-argument within the party.
“There hasn't been which is a big part of our problem. There are many honourable Republicans who have listened to things that Trump has said or some of the more extreme elements of the MAGA wing have proposed.
“Their response has been silence, and unfortunately, silence too often means acquiescence. We believe that we need to create this alternative and we are looking not just at this election, but we're looking beyond the 2024 election.”
Explaining the shift in the Republican Party since 2016, Dent added: “You think about people like Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, you go to Eisenhower, even Nixon, Ford, the Bushes, Reagan, all of them would probably feel a bit out of place. And I say that because many, like Eisenhower, developed the Republican Party into an internationalist-oriented institution … I suspect Ronald Reagan, who espoused free markets, would be appalled by these types of tariffs being applied willy-nilly.”
He added: “It’s not just not just Reagan and Eisenhower and the Bushes. How about John McCain and Mitt Romney? Mitt Romney was all but driven out of the party just for voting for impeachment.”
Harris' tiny lead in the opinion polls comes after a golden opportunity was seemingly missed by Trump.
Charlie Dent speaking to GB NewsGB NEWSRepublicans believed Trump had the opportunity to entrench his support ahead of November 5 following the botched assassination attempt that resulted in two supporters being fatally shot.
However, Dent argued Trump reverted back to type rather than adopting a sombre and earnest approach.
He told GB News: “Everybody who witnessed with their own eyes that horrific assassination attempt felt empathy for the former President. We're all mightily relieved that he escaped with a minor injury at the end of the day. It could have been so much worse. We're all grateful that he survived that attack.
“Clearly, it was it was a moment of Americans being sympathetic toward him. But then we went right into the Republican convention and we thought that Donald Trump was going to, well, I didn't think it, but many thought he was going to turn the page and that this was going to change him.
“Well, I don't think it did, maybe it did slightly. But you know, his campaign, his convention speech was pretty much the same old rule. After talking about what nearly happened to him, nearly assassinated, he kind of went into the same old grievance victimization politics.”
Dent was also keen to dismiss the idea that Robert F Kennedy’s decision to give Trump a free run in a number of key swing states would do may to sway the race.
“I'm not sure it'll make much of a difference,” he claimed. “If you're an RFK supporter and you're deeply concerned about abortion rights, you probably want to go with Harris.
“If you're an RFK supporter who was anti-vaccine, prone to conspiracy theories, well, then you're probably going to want to go towards Donald Trump. It's hard to dissect all those Kennedy voters.”