Julie Kelly - Disloyal Opposition: How the NeverTrump Right Tried—And Failed—To Take Down the President

DISLOYAL
OPPOSITION

DISLOYAL
OPPOSITION

HOW THE # NEVERTRUMP RIGHT

TRIED AND FAILED

TAKE DOWN THE PRESIDENT

JULIE KELLY

2020 by Julie Kelly

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Encounter Books, 900 Broadway, Suite 601, New York, New York, 10003.

First American edition published in 2020 by Encounter Books, an activity of Encounter for Culture and Education, Inc., a nonprofit, tax exempt corporation.

Encounter Books website address: www.encounterbooks.com

Manufactured in the United States and printed on acid-free paper. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.481992

(R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).

FIRST AMERICAN EDITION

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Kelly, Julie, 1968 author.

Title: Disloyal opposition : how the NeverTrump Right triedand failedto take down the president / Julie Kelly.

Other titles: How the NeverTrump Right triedand failedto take down the president

Description: First American edition. | New York : Encounter Books, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020000596 (print) | LCCN 2020000597 (ebook) ISBN 9781641771146 (hardback) | ISBN 9781641771153 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Trump, Donald, 1946 | Republican Party (U.S. : 1854 ) Intra-party disagreements (Political parties)United States.

ConservatismUnited States. | United StatesPolitics and government2017 | PresidentsUnited StatesElection2016.

Classification: LCC E912 (print) | LCC E912 (ebook) DDC 973.933092dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020000596

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020000597

Interior illustrations by Elliott Banfield

DEDICATION

To John, Victoria, and Josie

To the late Alice Kitty Kelly (May 15, 1947June 15, 2019),
my mother-in-law and dear friend of 25 years whom I miss every day.

No one is more excited about this book than she would have been.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

As this book went to print in spring 2020, the country was in chaos due to the threat of coronavirus, or, as President Trump called it, the Chinese flu. After deadly outbreaks consumed parts of China and Italy, US government leaders started to enact harsh measures to combat the viruss spread here. Schools were closed; college campuses cleared out for the semester; public places shuttered; restaurants, bars, shopping malls, and public beaches closed during the height of spring break. The stock market started to crash, erasing all the gains under the Trump era. People were panicked about not just contracting the disease but the short-term and long-term ramifications of locking down the country during an economic boom.

Forecasts for economic growth in the second quarter were unfathomable: Some experts predicted double-digit drops in gross domestic product for the second and third quarters of 2020, just in time for the November presidential election. This, of course, titillated NeverTrump. As I detail in this book, Trumps foes on the putative Right seized on every crisis, every rumor, every scandal, to warn that the end days for Donald Trump finally were upon us. The Trump presidency is over, declared one NeverTrump writer in the Atlantic on March 13, 2020. It has taken a good deal longer than it should have, but Americans have now seen the con man behind the curtain.

The nonprofit run by Bill Kristol, NeverTrumps leader from the start, grotesquely exploited the crisis in television ads that mocked the presidents words as coronavirus cases began to rise., is largely funded by a left-wing billionaire and sworn enemy of Donald Trump.)

The Bulwark, the refuge of former Weekly Standard editors and contributors after the publication shut down in December 2018, was flooded with columns that accused Trump of lying about the disease and ignoring NeverTrumpers who had spent nearly four years dunking on Trump, his administration, Republican lawmakers, and Trump supporters suddenly were very worried about hurting the feelings of communist China. David Frum, a senior editor at the Atlantic, instead suggested calling the disease the Trump plague.

Jennifer Rubin, a Washington Post columnist and MSNBC contributor, fantasized that the disease would kill more Republicans than Democrats. Fox News, she falsely claimed, had downplayed the crisis. There is a particular cruelty/irony that it is their core viewers, the Republican older viewers, who are the most at risk, she said on MSNBC on March 15.

As of this writing, its hard to know how the economic and political fallout of the coronavirus crisis will affect Trumps reelection chances. (After instituting a 15-day social distancing policy to try to stem a rise in confirmed cases, President Trump on March 29 announced an extension of that policy until April 30, 2020.) But one thing is certain: NeverTrump will weaponize every aspect of the chaos, including the number of dead, against Trump. Of all the low points of NeverTrumps crusade against the president, it will be the lowest.

INTRODUCTION

Like many of todays writers on the Right, I grew up in a National Review household.

My dad was a longtime subscriber and a big fan of William F. Buckley Jr. Raised during the Reagan era, I would occasionally read the magazine, too. It helped shape many of my early political views.

When National Review online posted my first article in 2015, it was a huge thrill. Each time my work was published on NROand once in the magazineI thought about my dad, who passed away in 2012, and how proud he would have been. (He also would have been a MAGA man.)

While my dad was more of a typical 1980s country club Republican, I cut my political teeth in the 1990s during the reign of the so-called neoconservatives. A recent college graduate and political junkie, I signed up to volunteer for the 1992 Bush/Quayle reelection campaign. It was basic grunt work: working phone banks, registering voters, delivering yard signs. Even though it was clear President Bush would lose to Bill Clinton on November 3, 1992, it still was a shock. My first political defeat!

One figure emerged from the GOPs political wreckage after Bushs loss: Bill Kristol, who had served as Vice President Dan Quayles chief of staff. He helped the party regain its footing after Clinton took the White House; Democrats, at the same time, controlled Congress and all the experts were once again predicting the demise of the Grand Old Party.

But Kristol devised a plan to fight First Lady Hillary Clintons health care plan in 1993. I was working for a newly elected Republican Illinois state senator at the time and became a Bill Kristol fan. When he launched the Weekly Standard