Trump Alum Turned Harris Supporter Says She Knows There’s Now a ‘Target’ on Her Back

Matthews, a longtime conservative, recalls that early in her time in the White House she began to have reservations. “I was never a die-hard Trumper, I was never a MAGA kind of person, but I was one of those Republicans who thought, Well, at least he’s better than Hillary. And obviously I think it’s difficult to maintain that kind of cognitive dissonance,” she says. “At a certain point, you kind of start drinking the Kool-Aid and you start to be okay with ignoring some of the warning signs. And there were definitely times when I was working for him – and especially being a spokesperson for him – where I stood up for things that I wasn’t necessarily proud of and that I looked the other way at.”

Ultimately, his breaking point was witnessing the former president’s reaction to Jan. 6, when a riotous mob of Trump supporters violently stormed the Capitol. “He didn’t want to lift a finger to break up the crowd because he liked what he was seeing. And that’s when I lost all faith in him,” Matthews recalls. “He was not disturbed by the violence. I thought that was one of the most horrible things I’ve ever witnessed.”

She gave up right away.

Afterward, Matthews resumed a less chaotic life in Republican politics, but realized he had a higher calling when, more than a year later, he agreed to testify to the Jan. 6 committee about his experiences. Still, it wasn’t a decision she made lightly. “I knew I needed to do everything I could to try to help the Harris campaign,” she says, “to spread the message, to help create this permission structure for disaffected Republicans like me, who, look, we need to leave Donald Trump. back and turn the page on it.”

In July 2022, Matthews officially joined the likes of Cassidy Hutchinson—another former member of the Trump White House—on the witness stand in Congress, testifying about what he saw on January 6. But this did not come without costs; she potentially sacrificed a career in Republican politics for good, suffered endless online harassment, and may have put a “target” on her back in the event of a Trump victory. “I’m sure there’s a list and I might be on it somewhere,” she admits, “but that’s why I think it’s so important for me to be out there spreading this message of saying, ‘Look, I used to support this man. I used to work for this guy as a spokesperson and he’s not the same candidate he was in 2016 and 2020. He’s become even more radicalized because he’s not running to make America great again. He’s not trying to solve problems for ordinary Americans; he’s running for revenge and what This is what a second Trump term will look like.’”