By Longtime Republican strategist and neoconservative pundit Bill Kristol has officially severed ties with the Republican Party, blasting what he called the party’s complicity in “cruelty and autocracy” under President Donald Trump’s leadership. The announcement, delivered via a post on the social media platform Bluesky over the weekend, was the inevitable conclusion of Kristol’s Never Trump stance, which has come to dominate his entire life.
Kristol wrote that “normie Republicans” had willingly enabled an administration marked by “destructiveness and lawlessness,” concluding, “some of us are no longer Republicans, and unlikely to become Republicans again.” Though unsurprising to many given Kristol’s years-long opposition to Trump, the formal disavowal punctuates a slow-motion breakup between the former Weekly Standard editor and the party he once helped shape.
Four R senators and four R House members could announce they’re caucusing with the Dems for now, and will vote for Schumer for Majority Leader and Jeffries for Speaker, because the threat to the rule of law is dire. Meanwhile, they’ll work with Democrats to construct guardrails against dictatorship.
— Bill Kristol (@billkristolbulwark.bsky.social) April 14, 2025 at 1:47 PM
The move cements Kristol’s role as a key figure in the liberal “resistance” movement against Donald Trump and underscores his broader pivot toward pro-democracy activism. Through organizations like Defending Democracy Together and The Bulwark, Kristol has tried to rally disaffected Republicans and centrist Democrats around a shared rejection of populist authoritarianism. Yet critics on the right argue Kristol’s departure was long overdue—if not inevitable—after years spent undermining the party’s presidential nominee and now sitting president.
While Kristol’s break has gotten praise on the left, polling shows that he’s out of step with the country. On June 1, 2025, The Hill reported a notable rebound in President Donald Trump’s approval rating, according to the DDHQ/The Hill polling average, which climbed to 52%—a significant uptick from earlier dips in his second term. This resurgence comes despite controversies surrounding Trump’s trade policies, particularly his “Liberation Day” tariffs introduced in April 2025, which initially caused a stock market downturn and drew mixed public reactions. The polling data suggests that a majority of Americans are responding positively to Trump’s broader economic agenda, with some analysts attributing the approval boost to recent trade negotiations that have stabilized markets and addressed concerns over inflation and supply chain disruptions.
Once a power player inside Republican administrations—serving as chief of staff to both Education Secretary William Bennett and Vice President Dan Quayle—Kristol helped orchestrate opposition to Hillary Clinton’s 1993 health care plan and played a behind-the-scenes role in early neoconservative policymaking. But even before Trump’s rise, Kristol had begun to drift from the party’s base, backing John McCain in 2000 and voicing early skepticism toward the populist shift overtaking conservative politics.
One of the most prominent defenders of war to “defend democracy,” with Trump back in the White House following his 2024 reelection, Kristol’s exit may not carry electoral consequences, but it serves as a cultural marker of the GOP’s transformation. For Kristol, it’s not merely a protest—it’s an admission that there is no longer a home for neoconservatism in the party he once championed.
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