Ex-official assures right-wingers: Trump just "cloaking" his actual "extreme" plans to get votes

Donald Trump is pretending to moderate his views, recently speaking out against a national abortion ban that polls show would be widely unpopular and cost Republicans more elections. But as HuffPost's Christopher Mathias reported, a former Trump staffer says the MAGA faithful can rest easy knowing -- just by who he's surrounding himself with -- that the former president would "actually govern in a more conservative and more aggressive fashion" if he returns to the White House.

William Wolfe served in both the Defense Department and State Department under Trump. On X, he continues to offer support for the president amid complaints about "anti-white racism" and other right-wing grievances.

On a recent conference call with other X users, as reported by HuffPost, Wolfe sought to reassure other conservatives who might think Trump is going soft.

“I actually think there’s wisdom in cloaking some of your power levels and maybe some of the things that you’re trying to do, and then once you secure power, and you have it, you govern in a more extreme position,” Wolfe said. “I think Trump is one of the first Republican candidates I’ve ever seen in my lifetime who has done that.”

Wolfe argued that the extreme policies of any future Trump administration can be sussed out by Trump's staffing. The former president has already installed loyalists at the Republican National Committee, ensuring that all staffers publicly proclaim their belief in the "rigged" election myth. He has pledged to bring back Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser who now leads a Christian Nationalist speaking tour that promotes deranged conspiracy theories on issues ranging from Ukraine to vaccines.

The Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, meanwhile, is widely seen as a playbook for a second Trump term, calling for a purge of the federal bureaucracy as well as bans on gay marriage and pornography, for starters.

“I am confident with the people that I see lining up to be with Trump in a second term that regardless of what the rhetoric looks like during this campaign season, that he would actually govern in a more conservative and more aggressive fashion in the White House,” Wolfe said. “That’s something that I think we need to be comfortable with and maybe we should use ― maybe even some other conservative Republicans out there who want to run for office and gain power and use it to do radical scary conservative things should consider doing.”