Ex-Trump Official Says Trump Is Hiding Extreme Positions While Campaigning

A former White House official and prominent fundamentalist Christian said Donald Trump is “cloaking” his actual, “radical” beliefs on the campaign trail, and that a second Trump administration would see him “govern in a more conservative and more aggressive fashion.”

William Wolfe ― a self-described “Christian nationalist” who served under Trump as a deputy assistant secretary of defense at the Pentagon and as director of legislative affairs at the State Department ― made the remarks Thursday during a conversation on X Spaces, a live audio chat room on the platform formerly known as Twitter. Wolfe was among half a dozen panelists convened by editors at The Sentinel, a far-right digital media outlet, to discuss Trump’s stance on abortion.

The panelists were concerned that Trump had publicly criticized the Arizona Supreme Court’s decision to uphold an 1864 law banning nearly all abortions in the state. They were also perturbed about Trump’s claim that he would not support a federal abortion ban, Right Wing Watch first reported .

But Wolfe argued that Trump — whose selections for the U.S. Supreme Court led to the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, which had protected abortion rights in America — is hiding his actual position on many issues, including abortion.

“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.”

“Power levels,” a popular term in online far-right and white supremacist circles, refers to the degree of a person’s extremism or