Donald Trump hasn’t shown much interest in reaching out to Republicans who think he’s an existential threat.
But Thursday, on the 80th anniversary of D-Day, President Joe Biden will take the first step in trying to win over voters his campaign believes could be the Holy Grail for them in the election, announcing a new national Republican engagement director in what will be a monthslong ramp up into the convention and beyond.
Beyond adding former Rep. Adam Kinzinger’s chief of staff Austin Weatherford as the leader of Republican outreach, operatives in Biden’s headquarters in Wilmington have been digging in on focus groups and polling for clues – particularly about the consistent 20% who kept turning out for Nikki Haley in Republican primaries long after she gave up on her campaign. They muse about Haley-supporting suburban moms focused on national security. They insist there are middle of the road voters exhausted by Trump’s attacks on the Constitution and restoring decency who are ready to find Biden palatable.
Super Top Trends interviews with two dozen Republican officials and aides, as well as multiple people in the White House and Biden campaign, detail the sometimes stilting, always-a-little-awkward conversations underway between liberal, mostly younger aides and frustrated, mostly older Republicans that go far beyond the generic statements about welcoming Haley voters and a few small but targeted online ads that the campaign has publicly announced.
Senior Biden adviser Anita Dunn has already met with several potential allies like Cassidy Hutchinson, the former assistant to Trump’s chief of staff who turned on the former president in her testimony to the January 6 committee, according to people told about the meeting. Several campaign aides spent last Wednesday on a Zoom call with two dozen Republican former members of Congress, hearing out their complaints and asking them to get involved.
Others who have turned on Trump, like his short-tenured communications director Anthony Scaramucci, have been consulted. Liz Cheney, the former Republican congresswoman, is being deliberately given space to get to what many expect will eventually be a rip-roaring fulfilment of her promise to do what she can to keep Trump from getting back into the Oval Office.
And a slate of GOP speakers for the Democratic convention in August and into the fall is being planned, following a similar schedule and roll-out as in 2020, when former Ohio Gov. John Kasich talked about how terrible Trump was and Cindy McCain recorded an emotional video about Biden’s “friendship that shouldn’t have worked” with her late husband.
In a slide obtained by Super Top Trends of the pitch campaign aides made to the Republicans on the Zoom call – next to photos of Biden meeting with members of the military and greeting young children – they laid out their wish list, including “Help us develop tailored outreach plans to recruit high profile Republican endorsements and supporters,” “Volunteer to be surrogates for print, TV, radio, podcasts and digital media stories, including op-Eds,” and “Make yourselves available to bracket key milestones in the Trump campaign,” along with asking for more advice and help notching endorsements from veterans and law enforcement.
“Republicans are leaving Trump in numbers that are well beyond what we’ve ever seen before,” said Jen O’Malley Dillon, one of Biden’s 2020 campaign managers and his 2024 campaign chair. The June 27 debate and other contrast points, she predicted, will remind people “about the chaos and the lack of leadership of Trump” and “harden those protest votes.”
The presentation to the Republican former lawmakers went further: “Many of you will be having these conversations in ways we could not. We need to create systems for feedback loops to bring your read-outs into our campaign strategy.”
But battered and lonely after years of feeling chased out of their own party, many anti-Trump Republican leaders complain they still haven’t heard from the Biden campaign. Agonizing about voting for a Democrat – even with all they’ve said about the threat they believe Trump represents – they insist Biden still has to “earn” their votes and that his positions on Israel and other issues are making that harder. They talk in terms like “creating a permission structure” and “mattering on the margins” as they insist there are more voters like them across the country who don’t want to tell their friends or families – or even pollsters – because they fear being attacked, doxxed, swatted and harassed but will vote against Trump once the curtains on the voting booths are pulled tight.
But while former Virginia Rep. Denver Riggleman told Super Top Trends he dreams of a big locking arms event with Biden and fellow apostate Republicans at the White House and Kinzinger told CNN he has offered advice about making more speeches about the fight for democracy in Ukraine, others say they are disappointed to see higher profile anti-Trump Republicans like former House Speaker Paul Ryan sit out so far. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Trump Vice President Mike Pence have said they can’t vote for either candidate. Neither responded to Super Top Trends's request for comment.
Tech billionaire and “Shark Tank” star Mark Cuban, who supported Haley before popping into a Biden fundraiser in Dallas in March, doesn’t think the decision he’s made is a “big revelation or change.”
“I think Joe is a better choice than Trump. That simple,” he told Super Top Trends He wishes he could have compared Biden and Haley or another Republican on the issues, he said. “I miss those kinds of elections.”
But then there’s Larry Hogan, the Republican former governor of Maryland now running for Senate, who – minutes before the Trump verdict came in last week – stood at the front of a room in a retirement home in the suburbs north of Baltimore last week nodding along as a man put a different spin on what has become a very familiar question for him: What should be done about “that one Mr. T – and I’m not talking about the one wearing all the jewelry.”
“Mr. T, ‘I pity the fool,’” Hogan said. “What a great question.”
Hogan, who also endorsed Haley, went into detail about how long he has been critical of Trump, explained that the former president is leading in the polls because Biden has done so badly, “but I have confidence in the American people that hopefully between now and November, they’re going to make the right decision.”
Hogan left out which decision he will make himself. In an interview outside after, he said he wouldn’t vote for Trump or Biden because he doesn’t think either would be a good president and, given that Maryland is expected to be solid blue, “I’m not going to impact the election.”
Shortly afterward, Trump campaign officials said Hogan’s campaign should be over because he released a statement saying to respect the New York verdict.
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