Trump is making new enemies on the right — and they aren't the 'familiar Never Trumpers'

President Donald Trump at CPAC on February 22, 2025

One need only watch MSNBC for a few hours to be reminded of the fact that some well-known conservatives are scathing critics of President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.

Although MSNBC leans liberal, hosts Joe Scarborough, Nicolle Wallace and Michael Steele — all of whom rooted for Joe Biden in 2020 and Kamala Harris in 2024 — were prominent figures in the GOP in the past. And MSNBC often features outspoken Never Trumper conservatives as guests, from attorney George Conway to ex-GOP strategists Tim Miller and Rick Wilson.

Scarborough and Conway's total disdain for Trump is no secret. But in an op-ed published by The Guardian on June 5, author and Democratic insider Sidney Blumenthal — once a senior adviser to former President Bill Clinton — argues that new opposition to Trump is growing on the right and goes beyond the right's Never Trump faction. And Blumental cites Trump's tariffs and attacks on the federal courts as two of the things that are alienating them.

"As a political matter, besides being unpopular, Trump’s tariffs, in combination with his assaults on the institutions of civil and legal society, have drawn out the most intelligent and skillful members of the conservative legal establishment, who themselves have been some of the most crucial players in the rise of the right wing, to man the ramparts against him," Blumental argues. "These are not the familiar Never Trumpers, but newly engaged and potentially more dangerous foes."

Blumenthal continues, "While corporate leaders uniformly abhor Trump's tariffs, they have stifled themselves into a complicit silence on the road to serfdom. But Trump's new enemies coming from the conservative citadel of the Federalist Society are filing brief after brief in the courts, upholding the law to halt his dictatorial march."

In the past, The Federalist Society's Leonard Leo was a major ally of Trump. All three of Trump's U.S. Supreme Court appointees —Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch — were aggressively promoted by Leo and others in the Federalist Society, which Trump is now railing against.

"Trump’s venomous social media posts against Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society co-chairman and right-wing powerhouse, reads like a memoir of an ingenue taken advantage of in the big city by strangers," Blumenthal observes. "'I was new to Washington,' Trump explained, 'and it was suggested that I use The Federalist Society as a recommending source on Judges. I did so, openly and freely, but then realized that they were under the thumb of a real 'sleazebag' named Leonard Leo, a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America, and obviously has his own separate ambitions.'"

Blumental adds, "Slowly, Trump has come to the realization that this Leonard Leo 'openly brags how he controls Judges, and even Justices of the United States Supreme Court.' Trump was revealing that Leo understood his power beyond his influence over Trump on appointments. 'Backroom hustlers must not be allowed to destroy our Nation!'…. Trump is enraged that his betrayers from the Federalist Society have claimed roles in the resistance. He has no loyalty to anyone or thing, but demands personal fealty, certainly now above any ideological litmus tests."

Sidney Blumenthal's full op-ed for The Guardian is available at this link.