One thing I’ve always found utterly baffling about the Never Trump movement is how these purported conservatives went from being Republicans to being Democrats in the space of a matter of weeks. The original Never Trump contingent were always very clear that Trump wasn’t a real conservative in the sense that the pre-2016 Republican establishment would have understood the term. They cited his past positions, and it was absolutely true that those weren’t the positions of a traditional conservative.
They also wondered if his conservatism was rooted in principle or simply political expediency, having been an old Democrat and with his positions on various issues having changed over the years.
Fair enough. Heck, I wasn't on the Trump train in 2016 for those same reasons, and I never became a Never Trumper. In fact, I became a strong Trump supporter quickly, once he proved to be the fighter the GOP needed. So what explains all the so-called conservatives in the Never Trump camp who went beyond opposing Trump and started echoing the left? Disillusioned conservatives who simply didn't like or trust Trump should still have sounded like conservatives; instead, they sounded like Democrats.
Now we have an answer from one of the movement's leading voices.
Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark, told a Democrat Party strategy conference in Denver that Never Trumpers are now "libs just like the rest of you," according to a report from Mediaite. The remark spread fast among her critics.
Longwell spoke Thursday at the two-day What's Next conference, hosted by Majority Democrats and billed as a gathering of party officials and strategists mapping out the party's future after its midterm gains.
"Come on, Libs! I didn't come here so you could sit here like it's a conference. All right guys, I'm Sarah Longwell, the publisher of The Bulwark," she said as she took the stage.
Once the applause settled, she kept going. "You may know us, we're the 'Never Trumpers.' At least we were ten years ago, now we're just kind of libs just like the rest of you," Longwell told the crowd. "Just libs, hoping you guys can do it right. Hoping that we can seize this moment."
The Bulwark's Sarah Longwell at Democrat conference:
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) November 12, 2026
"You may know us, we're the Never Trumpers. At least we were ten years ago. Now we're just kind of libs just like the rest of you."
Yes, we know. https://t.co/ikdUQdUyHU
Longwell is a former GOP operative and long-time pollster who also runs the Republican Accountability Project and the umbrella group Defending Democracy Together. Those two organizations spent the 2020 and 2024 elections essentially trying to get anti-Trump messaging out to Republican voters. She spent many years telling Republicans how to vote and in all that time was apparently rooting for the other side.
Recommended: Does Ilhan Omar Know She's Cooked? She's Starting to Act Like It.
Why does that matter? Look at the business side. That very week, The Bulwark signed a three-year advertising sales and marketing deal with the left-wing outlet Vox Media to extract more money from its podcasts. Vox’s flagship podcast had already moved left in February 2024 when Tim Miller replaced co-founder Charlie Sykes, who had left to go out on his own as a journalist.
Longwell said The Bulwark wants to build on its audience growth. "We're a big media company now, and I think we're the future… I don't think the Trump question has any bearing anymore on that," she said.
So yeah, it's a grift. It always was.
Not everyone in the anti-Trump media world was happy about Longwell’s admission. “We’re not libs” was the response from Stephen Hayes of The Dispatch (another publication founded by anti-Trump types).
I think money is a big driver of this. Let’s be honest, though. Both sides have weathered some very bitter, divisive primaries in the past, and what happens is almost invariably that everyone backs the winner and doesn’t go over to the other side. The people who supposedly became liberal because of Trump were liberals all the way through.
Trump simply handed them a very convenient business model.
Political epiphanies do happen. Still, it's obvious that these were liberal Republicans who scapegoated Trump and built a brand around it for the cash. And boy, did the left get grifted good. I still don't get it, though. If Longwell finally admits that they're libs, a Never Trump movement made up of people who aren't Republicans or conservatives has no reason to exist as a movement demanding anything of the Republican Party, like they’re concerned about their party anymore.
