Former Trump Aide Says Fed-Up Republicans Are ‘Valid’ for Feeling Reluctant to Vote for Harris. She’s Doing It Anyway

Mar. 15, 2025

Cassidy Hutchinson ahead of her Jan. 6 testimony.Photo: Brandon Bell/Getty

Cassidy Hutchinson— a former White House aide under PresidentDonald Trumpwho testified against him in theJan. 6 House hearings— is throwing her support behindKamala Harrisfor president.

Hutchinson has stayed in the Republican Party despite becoming a vocal opponent of Trump, yet this year, she says she will vote blue down the ballot. She shared her reasons for eagerly crossing the political aisle onMSNBC.

“We need to be able to elect people that we can trust to uphold our rule of law. People that we want our children to look at, and to want to emulate,” she said on the broadcast. “Kamala Harris is from a working-class background.Tim Walzis from a working-class background.”

“[The working class] are the people that Donald Trump claimed to represent but actually exploited and manipulated their support,” she added.

Hutchinson acknowledged that it’s unnerving for most Republicans to consider voting for Harris, saying that “policy is important” to her and recognizing that as a conservative, she disagrees with Democrats on multiple issues. Still, she asserted that voting blue and then pushing those Democratic candidates to meet Republicans in the middle is the only option on the table for her this year.

“To Republicans who may be on the fence, I understand how frightening it can be to potentially break with your party,” Hutchinson shared. “I also understand there are concerns and very valid concerns about inflation.”

“But Donald Trump andJ.D. Vancecannot be trusted with the Constitution. They cannot be trusted to uphold our rule of law and they can’t be trusted to enact responsible policy,” she continued. “That in and of itself is disqualifying amongst many other things, some of them being that Donald Trump is also under federal and state indictments.”

The former White House aide noted that she hopes to come to a “consensus” with Harris on “a lot more issues,” but claimed what really “matters” in the meantime is the “character of our leaders.”

As for why she will also be supporting Democrats for the House and Senate, which Trump has had significant influence on since leaving office, she said, “I think it’s so important that we get past this period of Donald Trump for America to begin healing.”

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and aide Cassidy Hutchinson dance to “YMCA” at a Trump campaign rally on Sept. 21, 2020.Alex Brandon/AP/Shutterstock

She also claimed that the former president had been warned about using incendiary rhetoric prior to his speech that urged supporters to “march” to the Capitol.

Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer.

She previously told PEOPLE about her decision to testify, which made her an enemy of MAGA Republicans.

“I knew from the moment that I decided that I wanted and needed to come forward with the information that I had, that it would take a toll on my career,” she said. “But it was a small price to pay in exchange for living the rest of my life in this aura of dishonesty and inauthenticity.”

source: people.com