Trump Alum Turned Harris Advocate Says She Knows There Is A 'Target' On Her Back Now

Inside the Hive

Vanity Fair

News

4.2 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 24 October 2024

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Republican Party has long been lacking in courage. But profiles in it can still be found among the scores of Trump administration staffers who have come out against their former boss, at potentially immense personal cost. One among them: Sarah Matthews, who served as Donald Trump’s deputy press secretary until January 6th. On the latest episode of Inside the Hive, Matthews opens up about the “cognitive dissonance” she experienced as a spokesperson for Trump, recalls how the Capitol riot became her breaking point, and unpacks why she has thrown her support behind Kamala Harris’s campaign, even if doing so puts a target on her back. “Donald Trump is so much bigger than just me,” she says. “The guilt that I would feel” from sitting on the sidelines,” Matthews adds, “would have been much greater than the fear that I might feel right now.”

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi, it's Radika Jones, editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair.
0:05.0	If you love digging into the week's political headlines,
0:08.0	subscribe to Vanity Fair.
0:10.0	Our reporters take you behind the scenes of some of the biggest stories from the campaign
0:14.9	trail to the halls of Congress.
0:17.6	Just for our Inside the Hive listeners, save 15% on a yearly digital subscription to Vanity Fair with promo code
0:24.4	pod 15 that's vanity fare dot com promo code pod 15 for 15% off one year of all you can
0:32.4	read watch and hear.
0:35.6	So you were a press secretary in Donald Trump's White House.
0:41.6	You've never voted for a Democrat before, but now you've endorsed
0:46.0	Kamala Harris.
0:47.0	Why?
0:48.0	Yeah, I mean, I always joke that if you would have told me four years ago that I would be campaigning for
0:53.2	Kamala Harris and trying to encourage other Republicans to do so that I probably
0:57.3	would have had my head explode. But I also didn't think that an insurrection
1:01.6	at our nation's capital was possible. I never thought
1:04.1	we'd have a president who would disrupt the peaceful transfer of power and I saw
1:07.6	firsthand how unfit Donald Trump is and so yep I'm willing to vote for a Democrat for the first time of my life and trying to encourage others to do the same.
1:16.0	That is Sarah Matthews. She worked for Republicans on Capitol Hill before joining the Trump
1:21.8	re-election campaign in 2019 and then the Trump administration in 2020.
1:27.1	She was a deputy press secretary until January 6, 2021, the day she resigned and now she is campaigning in battleground states for
1:37.6	Trump's opponent and I'm Brian Stelter. Welcome to Inside the Hive from Vanity Fair.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -153 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Vanity Fair, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Vanity Fair and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.