The grainy first-person testimonial arrived at 2 a.m. in late June. A 40-year-old man with a thick southern accent — shirtless, the red ember of his cigarette glowing in the green twilight between drags — looked into his smartphone and began talking.
“Hi, my name is Josh and I live in North Carolina and I voted for Donald Trump — my bad, fam,” he begins, before explaining that this November will mark the first time “ever, ever” that he will vote for a Democrat. “If Joe Biden drops out and the DNC runs a tomato can, I will vote for the tomato can, because I believe the tomato can will do less harm than our current president.”
The unsolicited video submission to a group called Republican Voters Against Trump is just one small part of a broader “Never Trump” rebellion that began four years ago as a largely ineffective cadre of appalled Republicans, but which has transformed in recent weeks into a potentially disruptive force in this year’s presidential race.
Groups such as the Lincoln Project and Republican Voters Against Trump — which is focused on first-person testimonials like Josh’s — emphasize guerrilla tactics and scathing ads as they troll the president. The movement seeks to build a national political operation to oust both the president and his supporters in Congress, with a particular emphasis on convincing white suburban voters who consider themselves true Republicans to break from the president, according to interviews with more than a dozen anti-Trump advisers and allies who are involved in the planning, some of whom requested anonymity to describe private discussions.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-once-mocked-never-trump-movement-becomes-a-sudden-campaign-force/2020/07/11/8683c14c-c1f3-11ea-b178-bb7b05b94af1_story.html
