Former top Trump officials are betting he'll lose

At least 19 former top Trump administration officials in total have broken publicly with their former boss in one form or another, according to a POLITICO count, and several have already lent their names to various Republicans-for-Biden efforts. Not all of them have said they will vote for Democratic nominee Joe Biden — former national security adviser John Bolton, for instance, says he will pull the lever for an unspecified third person. It amounts to a never-before-seen wave of defections of people who have denounced him or his policies or criticized his character in other ways.

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But the potential pool of opposition within the president’s ranks is much larger, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former senior Trump officials. Anthony Scaramucci, for one — Trump’s short-lived former White House communications director — claimed he has talked to 20 former White House and administration officials who plan to vote for Biden but don’t want to speak publicly to avoid getting hit by Trump on Twitter.

“Anybody of substance is voting for Biden,” he said. “Anybody who has an IQ of over 100 and has worked for Donald Trump, with the exception of Steve Bannon, is not voting for him.” (In early August, Trump tweeted that Scaramucci was “a fool” and “a loser who begged to come back.”)

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