A president’s
cabinet is full
of great character
witnesses.
The president
chose them.They
said yes. They
worked together
closely.

A president’s cabinet is full
of great character witnesses.
The president chose
them. They said yes. They
worked together closely.

These cabinet-
level appointees
saw Donald
Trump up close.
And they
decided they
couldn’t
stand by him.

These cabinet-level appointees
saw Donald Trump up close.
And they decided they couldn’t
stand by him.

Ms. Longwell is the publisher of The Bulwark,
a conservative news outlet, and the founder
of the Republican Accountability Project.

In the history of presidential cabinets, former President Donald Trump’s stands out for two qualities: turnover and dissension. Mr. Trump churned through cabinet-level appointees so fast that at times it seemed like he was still on “The Apprentice” and had to fire one official every week. These appointees didn’t start out opposed to Mr. Trump. Not only are they people whom Mr. Trump chose — he claimed he would hire the “best people” — they are people who thought Mr. Trump was worth working for. But many of them quickly became alarmed by Mr. Trump’s personality, temperament and policy aims.

This matters because, as his comfortable victory at the Iowa caucuses demonstrates, Mr. Trump is almost certain to be the Republican nominee for president for a record-matching third time (only Richard Nixon was nominated as often) and has coin-flip odds of becoming president again. Judging only by the words of many former high-level appointees, a second Trump term would be catastrophic for the country. There was endless reporting that was critical of Mr. Trump’s administration. Some of this criticism may be cast as unreliable because it came from anonymous or hopelessly biased sources. But people who worked closely with Mr. Trump — whom he trusted, who worked with him every day, who saw him in private when the cameras were off — cannot be so easily dismissed.

Those who have spoken out must continue to do so, and those who have been content to silently hope that Mr. Trump’s campaign would self-destruct should break their silence. They must take their concerns directly to the voters — the only people who can save us from the disaster of a second term of President Trump.

Illustrated by Peter Arkle; Designed and produced by Akshita Chandra