Former Trump officials warn of a White House return

(WASHINGTON) — Three women who served in the Trump White House are sounding the alarm on what a second Donald Trump term could mean for the country, with one saying it could “mean the end of American democracy as we know it.”

Alyssa Farah Griffin, Cassidy Hutchinson and Sarah Matthews sat down with ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent and “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl to discuss their roles in speaking out against Trump in an interview that will air Sunday on “This Week.”

It marks the first time Griffin, Hutchinson and Matthews, who each cooperated with the House Jan. 6 committee’s investigation of Trump’s conduct following the 2020 election, discuss their story together.

You can watch more of Jonathan Karl’s interview with Alyssa Farah Griffin, Cassidy Hutchinson and Sarah Matthews on “This Week” Sunday morning. Check local listings.

“Fundamentally, a second Trump term could mean the end of American democracy as we know it, and I don’t say that lightly,” Griffin said. “We all witnessed him trying to steal a democratic election before and go to historic and unconstitutional lengths to do so.”

“And that just shows that he’s willing to basically break every barrier to get into power and to stay into power,” she continued. “But also, I’m very concerned about what the term would actually look like.”

Griffin served as communications director in the Trump White House until she resigned in December 2020, just after the presidential election. She’s now a co-host on ABC’s “The View.”

Griffin sat for a private behind-the-scenes interview with the Jan. 6 committee, while Hutchinson, a former aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, and Matthews, a former White House deputy press secretary, testified publicly at televised hearings in addition to closed-door testimony.

Most transcripts of the Jan. 6 committee’s closed-door witness interviews were eventually published, but not all those involving Hutchinson.

“We don’t need to speculate what a second Trump term would look like because we already saw it play out,” Matthews told Karl. “To this day, he still doubles down on the fact that he thinks that the election was stolen and fraudulent. And then his rhetoric has just gotten increasingly erratic. I mean, he has literally called for things like doing away with parts of the Constitution, wanting to weaponize the DOJ to enact revenge on his political enemies.”

Hutchinson, who became a main target of Trump’s ire following her bombshell testimony, highlighted Trump’s recent remarks on whether he’d rule like a dictator if elected in 2024.

“The fact that he feels that he needs to lean into being a dictator alone shows that he is a weak and feeble man who has no sense of character and integrity and has no sense of leadership,” she said, a sentiment with which Griffin agreed.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing with regard to Jan. 6.

The Trump campaign responded to ABC’s interview with a statement calling the women “ungrateful grifters” who “used the opportunities given to them by President Trump” and had gone “full Judas.”

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