Former Trump White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham never imagined she would speak at the Democratic National Convention — in fact, that’s exactly what she told NBC News ahead of her speech at the quadrennial Democratic National Convention on Tuesday.
She described herself as a “true supporter” of Donald Trump and his message and described the Trump family as her own family with whom she spent the most important holidays.
But after the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, everything changed, she said, telling the crowd about a text exchange with former First Lady Melania Trump in which Grisham spoke out in favor of a tweet denouncing “lawlessness or violence.”
“She answered with one word,” Grisham said. “No.”
“He has no compassion, no morals and no loyalty to the truth,” she accused him, stressing that this is the case with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. “And she has my vote.”
“I love my country more than my party,” Grisham said.
While there has been much talk of the Democratic Party’s influential figures – from Bill and Hillary Clinton to Barack and Michelle Obama to President Joe Biden, the man offering the vice president the proverbial torch – coming together to hand the reins to Harris, a handful of Republicans have appeared on the convention stage in Chicago to try to draw a contrast with Trump and emphasize that the party they once opposed now offers a “big tent” despite stark differences on policy.
“To my Republican colleagues, you are not voting for a Democrat, you are voting for democracy,” said former Trump administration official Olivia Troye, who left the White House before the Jan. 6 attack and has since emerged as one of his harshest Republican critics. “You are not betraying our party, you are standing up for our country.”
“I want to make clear what I’m saying to my Republican friends at home who are watching,” Georgia Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan added Wednesday night in a speech immediately after Troye’s speech. “If you vote for Kamala Harris in 2024, you are not a Democrat. You are a patriot.”
John Giles, the Republican mayor of Mesa, Arizona, said he felt “more at home” at the DNC than “in today’s Republican Party.”
“John McCain’s Republican Party is gone, and we owe nothing whatsoever to what it left behind,” Giles said. “So let’s turn over a new leaf and put the country first.”
Throughout the convention, in addition to the speakers, the Democrats also showed video messages from former Trump voters who had turned away from the former president and toward the vice president.
Rich Logis, who described himself as a “full-fledged member of MAGA,” called his support a “grave mistake” and implored voters to change their minds about who they support.
That sentiment is likely to continue on the final night of the convention: Former Illinois state Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Trump critic who was one of two Republican members of the House Jan. 6 Committee, will speak at the DNC in Chicago on Thursday. Kinzinger endorsed Harris and Biden before Biden dropped out of the race, and his former chief of staff heads the campaign’s Republican outreach arm.
However, it is unclear whether the message that the country comes first over the party will lead to voter gains in November, experts say.
“That’s probably one of the things that makes the Democratic Party feel good,” says Kathleen Dolan, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. “They’re doing outreach. They’re showing, you know, people you could believe. But I’m just not sure that’s going to have a significant impact.”
Trump’s campaign team appears to agree with this sentiment. A campaign spokesperson told the New York Times earlier this week: “We thought the DNC should be filled with celebrities, not failed CNN D-list employees.”
