Ana Navarro and Other Republican Trump Critics Appear on DNC Night 2

The second night of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Tuesday featured a series of Republicans who laced into their own party’s nominee.

The prime-time portion of the evening was hosted by television commentator Ana Navarro, a longtime Republican critic of former President Donald Trump, and included a plea from John Giles, the Republican mayor of Mesa, Arizona, who said his party had been hijacked by Trump.

“The Grand Old Party has been kidnapped by extremists and devolved into a cult,” Giles said, describing himself as somewhat uncomfortable at the convention and saying that his hero was John McCain, the 2008 Republican nominee for president.

But Giles, whose city is home to about 500,000 people, said he had come to Chicago because “John McCain’s Republican Party is gone.” He urged his fellow Republicans to “turn the page” and “put country first.”

Giles’ appeal followed speeches from Stephanie Grisham, who was the White House press secretary under Trump from 2019 to 2020, and Kyle Sweetser, an Alabama Republican who said he had voted for Trump twice but came to believe that the former president’s agenda was to “line his own pockets.”

Grisham drew on her past proximity to Trump to make a case against him.

“Behind closed doors, Trump mocks his supporters — he calls them ‘basement dwellers,’” Grisham told the convention, recalling the former president raging when cameras did not follow him during a hospital visit.

“He has no empathy, no morals and no fidelity to the truth,” Grisham added. “He used to tell me: ‘It doesn’t matter what you say, Stephanie. Say it enough, and people will believe you.’”

Navarro, whose family fled Nicaragua and the leftist Sandinistas when she was 8, played roles on Republican campaigns and served as a close adviser to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. But she has opposed Trump in three consecutive presidential elections.

In 2016, Navarro said she had voted without enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton. She appears much more energized by Harris’ candidacy, and has described the vice president as “my girl.”

Navarro, a co-host of ABC’s “The View,” said from the convention stage Tuesday that Harris was a “joyful, optimistic leader” who “cares about people.” She mocked Trump for characterizing the vice president as a communist, suggesting that it was the former president who had more in common with communist leaders who “attack the free press” and “refuse to accept legitimate elections when they lose.”

In featuring Republicans at the convention, Democrats are returning to a playbook they embraced at their convention in 2020, when former Gov. John Kasich, a moderate Ohio Republican and two-time presidential contender, delivered a taped address in support of Joe Biden’s campaign.

This year, Democrats have taken further steps to include Republican voices. The first day of the convention included a taped message from Rich Logis, a former pro-Trump pundit from Florida.

Later in the week, remarks are expected from Adam Kinzinger, a Republican former congressman from Illinois, and Geoff Duncan, a Republican former lieutenant governor of Georgia.

Kinzinger and Duncan have both broken decisively with the majority of their party over Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Kinzinger was one of two Republicans who served on the special House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He has called the attack a coup attempt.

Duncan was the lieutenant governor of Georgia when Trump sought to overturn the election result in that state. In a statement released by the Harris campaign Tuesday, Duncan acknowledged his policy disagreements with Harris, but said he supported the vice president because “she is committed to defending our country’s democratic principles.”

There was little Democratic presence at the Republican National Convention last month, though one prominent former Democrat, Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, has backed Trump.

The Trump campaign has ridiculed Republicans who are joining the Democratic convention. Caroline Sunshine, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, said in a statement Monday that she “thought the DNC was supposed to be filled with celebrities, not D-list failed CNN contributors.” Kinzinger and Navarro have both served as CNN contributors.

It is not clear how many Republicans will be persuaded, or even reached, by conservative voices at the Democratic convention. But this year, progressive Democrats have expressed little public dissent over the Republican presence at the convention, as other prominent speaking slots have gone to left-wing favorites such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers union.

Anthony Scaramucci, a New York Republican who served briefly as Trump’s White House communications director in 2017 but supports Harris, predicted that Democrats would benefit from using several Republican messengers to attack Trump.

In an interview, Scaramucci said Trump’s relative weakness in some states during the Republican presidential primary showed that the former president has soft support from a sliver of Republicans. He compared those swing Republican voters to cracks in a rock.

“If you hit a rock, a big boulder, and hit it once, it doesn’t have any impact,” Scaramucci said. “You hit it again, no impact. But if you hit it the 100th time, the rock explodes.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.