Jacob Monty, a lifelong Republican donor and activist, announced this week he has quit the GOP and joined the Democratic Party, citing the deadly U.S. Capitol riot incited by former President Donald Trump as “a bridge too far for me.”
“I’m out,” the immigration lawyer from Houston told Erin Burnett on Friday’s broadcast of CNN’s “OutFront.”
Asked by Burnett if the GOP was now more the party of the unhinged QAnon conspiracy theory than of conservatives like himself, Monty replied “Absolutely,” before adding: “Trump owns the party and Trump has always loved the conspiracy theories and this is Trump’s party now.”
“I tried for four years to be a Never Trumper in the Republican Party but it’s obvious now, everyone is paying homage to this ex-president,” he added. “No one will stand up to him.”
Before the 2016 election, Monty served briefly on Trump’s Hispanic Advisory Council until the then-GOP candidate delivered a “combative, red meat nativist stemwinder” campaign speech against immigration. Monty later expressed hope for Trump following his victory over Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
On Friday, the attorney who campaigns for immigration reform acknowledged he didn’t agree with everything that Democrats stand for.
“But that’s the big-tent party, the Democratic Party is the party that has more diversity of opinion,” he said. “If you stay in the Republican Party, you have to pay homage to Trump and I don’t do that, I don’t pray to any man.”
Monty’s comments to Burnett echoed those he published in an op-ed this week for the Houston Chronicle, in which he revealed that “watching thousands of Trump supporters invade the Capitol literally brought tears to my eyes.”
“As the descendant of immigrants, I revere the United States Capitol and all it stands for. To see it desecrated — at the urging of a Republican President — broke my heart,” he wrote.
