Enough

by Cassidy Hutchinson

Home is a feeling, a sense of security and belonging. If you have people who love and care about you, you have a home.

Emotions were unwelcome in the Trump White House. It was imperative to turn them off as a means to survive.

Trump hated fundraisers—he was expected to flatter people he thought should be flattering him.

While I had hesitated in previous interviews to share details about the president’s unhinged behavior, I now understood the gravity of those moments. Trump’s temperament wasn’t rational, but neither was it unfamiliar to me. His outbursts shed light on how his volcanic temper and egotism had lit the match that set his followers’ torches ablaze.

regretted the belligerence and crudity of some of the president’s messaging, the inappropriate, unpresidential tweets. But you can become inured to it, and I did.

I know the impact I could have, a White House staffer with extensive access testifying in an open hearing to what amounted to, at a minimum, President Trump’s shocking dereliction of duty. I know it will expose how much he was prepared to hurt the country to assuage his own wounded pride.

January 6 was a dark day—traumatizing—a genuine threat to the health of the world’s greatest democracy.

The portrait my answers paint of the president is damning: an unhinged chief executive, willing to overturn the will of the people and plunge the country into chaos and violence on the advice of crazy people. For what? To avoid the embarrassment of conceding an election he knew he had lost?

Trump continues to hurl insults in my direction. I learn how it feels to be on the other side. But I know enough not to react. That’s what he wants me to do. He wants me to be defensive. He wants to know when he’s hurt someone or gotten a rise out of them; he wants to project his hurt onto the source of it. Trump doesn’t care if you dispute him or call him a liar. Only silence bothers him. Being ignored drives him mad.

still consider myself a Republican. But I denounce the tribalism that produced the outlandish conspiracy theories and violence that some party leaders not only failed to condemn but even excused in their pursuit of power. If we do not restore responsible governing, respect for our democratic practices, and accountability for our leaders as core Republican values, I fear not only for the future of our party, but for our nation. I’m