Bulwark Takes - She Watched January 6 From Trump’s White House (w/ Sarah Matthews)

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

Sarah Matthews was inside Trump’s White House on January 6. Matthews, the former deputy press secretary explains to Sarah Longwell what it was like watching the Capitol attack from the West Wing, why Trump refused to meet the moment, and how that day finally pushed her to resign. Five years later, she reflects on Republican accountability, January 6 fading from public memory, and why Trump’s return to power still shocks her.Go to https://GetSoul.com and use the code BULWARKTAKES for 30% off.

Welcome to the bulwark. I am joined here by Sarah Matthews. Hey, Sarah. Thanks for having me. You've got the Sarah's and you are the newest employee at the bulwark. Congratulations. I'm so excited to be part of the team. Your job is going to be on TikTok. I don't even have TikTok because I think it's Chinese spyware. So explain to me why you are like a TikTok star. I feel like at this point I'm so addicted to TikTok that I might as well capitalize. on it. And so that's why I'm excited to be working with the bulwark to expand their presence there. I think too that I've just accepted that every major social media app has all my information. So might as well just give it to the Chinese at this point too. So I'm like, okay,

well, I enjoy TikTok. I have a lot of fun with it. I've given up on the security of it. But I think that also TikTok is such a good resource because it's where people are getting their news now. And so I think that it's important for the bulwark to have a presence there. When I think about communications, because I am like 20 years older than you are, but I like also came up in the communications world, Republican communications world. You know, it's like we wrote press releases and you went to the media. And now it's funny, like you and I live, we both are on platforms. I'm just a, I'm a Twitter person who will not call it X, but like I am addicted to Twitter.

That is where I live. That is where I do politics. in terms of the exchange of it. And then, like, in between is, I think, Instagram, which, you know, I only recently had to get on, which I, and I still don't understand it. Like, people who send me messages there, if I'm not replying to on Instagram, it's because I don't understand how to do it. And then, like, the really young people like you are on TikTok and Tim. Tim's on TikTok. It is an absolute truth that that is where young people are getting their information, like, for better or worse, which is crazy.

It's like, not only do we live in different information silos, but like generationally, we're on different platforms. Are you a gen? Are you a zoomer? Yeah, I'm right in the middle of Gen Z and millennial. I think I'm technically the youngest year of a millennial. The reason that I know you and that we all sort of move in the same universe of stuff is that, although you are like a never-trumper come lately, no offense.

I was a little behind. You worked in the Trump administration and were one of the people who broke with him after January 6th. And so it is the anniversary, obviously, today of January 6th. And one thing I realized I had never asked you, where were you on January 6th? Tell me about your day and where you were. Five years ago today, which is crazy that it's been five years, I was working at the White House in the West Wing as a deputy press secretary for him.

So Kaylee McEnany was the press secretary at the time. So my role was to be one of his chief spokespeople. I was there at the side of the stage when he gave his speech on the ellipse. After that, I went back to the West Wing and was at my desk. And that's when we started seeing the coverage on TV rolling in of these people coming to the Capitol and it's starting to get violent. And then I watched it all unfold from within the West Wing. It was a really crazy and surreal experience because I, think that everyone within the West Wing for the most part was freaking out other than Trump.

And I didn't interact with him that day, but I interacted with other higher-up senior officials in the administration who were having conversations with him. And they were the ones telling me he doesn't care, Sarah. He is enjoying what he's seeing. He doesn't want to call off the mob. I had always been really uncomfortable with all of the lies around the election. I knew on the night of the election that he lost fair and square to Joe Biden. And so it was this slow burn for me that then just culminated with January 6th. And I just couldn't stomach it any longer. When you heard him give that speech, did you think that the byproduct of that was going

to be an attack on the Capitol? Or was it just people are kind of used to listening to him bluster like this? And so it was like, this is just him blowing off steam. I honestly didn't think that it was going to result in an attack on the Capitol. Obviously, we know that he said things like fight like hell, but I had heard him talk about that in the election so much in the months leading up to that speech that I just kind of thought it was, oh, it's just another speech. And I honestly thought this is the last speech he's going to give as president most likely, or a rally type of speech. And so I didn't even think that it would end up being what it was. And I think what honestly bothered me the most during that speech was when he started going after his own vice president, Mike Pence.

That's honestly what stuck out the most to me. And I think the other fellow staffers and I was standing there with watching the speech, we were all really disappointed when he started attacking Mike Pence. Because we knew that Mike Pence was correct. Just real quick, what did he say about Mike Pence in the speech? It's funny, I can certain parts of it are burned into my brain. But was it like if Mike Pence just has the courage? Yeah, it was along those lines of if Mike Pence has the courage to do the right thing. It's funny how there are parts of the day that are so burned into my memory that I can remember it like it was yesterday.

And then there are other moments that honestly feel like a blur because it was such a whirlwind of a day. The January 6th sort of mob is tacking the Capitol. You guys are watching it on TV. He's in the West Wayne watching it on TV. Is that right? He was in the Oval Office dining room watching it all unfold on a TV. Correct. The reason that we know each other is like we kind of got to know each other during you were testify. You testified during the January 6th committee.

And so you and a couple other people, Cassidy Hutchinson, were people who worked in the administration who helped put together what was happening that day for the January 6th committee because you guys were all in the West Wing. I guess what was your impression of Trump before that? Like, did you think he was fine before that? Like, I think people want to know this. I get this a lot. It's kind of people want to know like this. sequencing of when you decided, because they're sort of like, why didn't you know before? There's always something that people are like, well, you did the right thing in the end, but why didn't

you do this sooner? Yeah, there's always some sort of criticism of it. But what I will say is that it is kind of crazy to say this, but I have said this publicly before. I didn't vote for Trump in 2016. That doesn't surprise me in the least bit, actually. I mean, you know, I know this because I know lots of Republicans who either worked for Trump or Trump adjacent in the think tank world or whatever, tons of them in D.C. didn't vote for Trump. It's like it is an under-discussed, underappreciated facet. But sorry, go ahead. Exactly, though. There are so many people who did not like him and didn't vote for him. And I didn't vote for Hillary Clinton. I just left the top of my ballot blank. So, you know, people can criticize that and say that I was, you know,

one of the folks who led to him ascending to the presidency by not just putting my conservative values aside and voting for Hillary Clinton. But at that time, I wasn't willing to make that choice and wasn't willing to cross. Yeah, how old were you in 2016? I was a senior in college. Okay. Well, you know, we're like unformed. Your prefrontal cortex hasn't even close or whatever. Exactly. I was 21, I think, years old at the time. It was one of those things where I had grown up in a conservative household. I was a member of college Republicans, volunteered on all these campaigns. And so it was ingrained in me that Democrats are bad. And so even if I thought Trump was a piece of shit and lacked the character to be president, it was in my mind, I couldn't,

I couldn't vote for either because I didn't want either. So I just chose to leave the top of my ballot blank. Then I will say as time went on, I graduated college, moved to Washington, D.C., that's where I knew I wanted to start my career, work on Capitol Hill, and that's where I got my start. And I think over time, I started to be one of those folks who would say, oh, well, you know, at least we have a Republican as president, and we can do these things and pass this legislation and kind of slowly started to be okay with the idea of him. And, oh, well, he's not as crazy as I thought he'd be. And he's doing some good.

Then eventually, when the 2020 campaign started getting stood up in 2019, they came knocking at my door and asked if I wanted to be part of the campaign. And this, I don't know if I've ever said publicly. I actually cried to my parents when I got offered the job because I said, I know that I'm a sellout if I take this job. I didn't even vote for the guy. And here I am now about to go be a spokesperson for him. him on his 2020 re-elect.

But at that point, I had thought that, well, you know what? He's surrounded by people of good character who are advising him well. I was happy with many of the cabinet appointees. And I thought that he was doing some good. So I kind of, in my mind, justified it of, okay, Sarah, even if you don't love the guy, this is a great opportunity and you should take it. Then it was from there where I worked on the 2020 campaign for a year. year got asked to move from the campaign to the White House and then spent the last seven or

eight months of the administration there. And by that time, I was really dug in. I had dug my heels in and I thought, okay, you know, I made my decision. And as a spokesperson for him, it was my job to defend everything he did and said, whether I liked it or not. And that's the case for anyone who works for a politician, but obviously it's to an extreme when it comes to Trump. you have to check your own beliefs at the door because you're there to serve them and what their vision is. Obviously, then there were many,

like I get asked all the time, like, come on, Sarah. There had to be other things that bothered you before him trying to overturn the election in January 6th. And of course there was. But in my mind, it was just, there was nothing like January 6 and him trying to overturn the election results,

everything else that he did while there were bad things that he did, it kind of paled in comparison to that assault on democracy to me. That was my breaking point. That was my red line. A lot of people have criticized me for not getting there sooner. But to me, I feel like in the last five years, I've put in the work to try to rectify all the wrongs that I may have done and all the mistakes I may have made along the way, but I also think I needed to take that job to be where I'm at now, to have the platform I have to be able to speak out and call him out in his abuses of power. Bullwork takes a sponsor by Soul. Since the new year, everyone's trying to clean up their habits.

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a conservative think tank that published his book. And because I was the communications director, I was the one like promoting the book for the institution. Now I was super and I was super young. And I just want to say this, there is a reason that a lot of the spokespeople are young. You don't have your voice yet. You are like, I remember for myself, I was like, well, this is, I want to be in politics. I also come from a very conservative place growing up. You get sort of thrust into something, right? Like I didn't, I didn't say like, oh, I want to go work for Rick Santorum, but I did say like, man, I'm now the comms director and I get this opportunity to sort of be adjacent to politics. And at the time, people were thinking about him as George W. Bush's successor.

Like, he was a rising star in the parties from my home state of Pennsylvania. But I think about this how, like, they make young people's spokespeople because you don't, you don't know enough yet. And so I know you're going to get criticized and I have had a lot of criticism. And I take some of it. Like, I mean, I manage a lot of 25 year olds here. And I'm like, you guys have slightly better judgment than maybe I did. But like, man, there's two political parties. And if you are a political bug, like, you just really want to do it. And the other thing you just said that I sort of want to say, I have a lot of,

I reserve a ton of my contempt for a lot of the older people who know better. Because the thing is, you do when you are 24 years old or 25 years old, you are looking to the people in charge to be like, is that okay? Like, you do have your own internal judgment. Like, you're kind of sure it's not, but you've also, you haven't been in this world very long. You know it's rough and tumble. And so you're like, is that cool what's happening?

Or like, and so you look, just like kids look at adults and kind of like, is that how people are supposed to act? I, at the time when I worked at the Trump campaign, I was 24 years old. Then when I was working at the White House, I was 20, five years old. So I always joke that, you know, it took my prefrontal cortex fully developing for me to finally get there and make the decision to resign on January 6th because I was so young. And I think that, like you said, that's where I hold a lot of contempt to for the people who are, you know, two or three times my age who know better, who have nothing to lose at this point.

I had everything to lose when I resigned and I did it because I knew it was the right thing to do and I didn't care how it was going to impact my career moving forward. I definitely understand where people criticize me and I take it. I'm not I'm not immune from it and I'm not someone who can't handle it. I and I'm always willing to have those conversations with people because I get asked this stuff all the time. I'm always willing to answer and be honest with people like, hey, here's where I was at, why I made the decision I did. did and they can, you know, choose to believe that I did it for the right reasons because I think I get a lot of, oh, well, you were a rat jumping ship. It's like, well, I think that if I had stayed on board that ship, I'd be doing a lot better right now. But I knew that it was the right thing to do

no matter what. I am extraordinarily hostile to the people who work for Trump 2.0 because I think anybody who works for Trump after January 6th, like, you know, like, there's, I, I actually did think it made sense for a lot of people to work in Trump 1.0 and say, I'm going to keep things on the rails. Like, I am, and look, and it was a tough, I struggled with that, but I did understand that, like, if you were a general or, you know, if you were Mattis and Millie, you're like, no, no, no, I should be in there. But I think people like Susie Wiles and, um, and all of the people who work from now who saw what he did post-January 6th. There's a lot of conservative pundits, too, like the Eric Erickson's where people who were never Trump,

who literally after January 6th, when they said Trump should be impeached, decided to come around and say, no, Scott Jennings, exactly. But the thing I want people to understand is, 99% of Republicans who had something to lose career-wise when it came to Trump, not only went along with Trump, but they twisted themselves into moral pretzels to do it. And they are grown-ass men and women who absolutely know that everything they're doing is wrong. They know what Republican politics was supposed to look like.

They know what a decent candidate looks like. They claim to have believed in conservative principles. And they are out there still working for a guy who tried to overthrow an election. And they are doing it under the guise of saying that they're the ones fighting for a democracy. democracy and Dems are. And so I just, I just want people to understand that like, yeah, they can criticize you if they want. And, and I think there is, I think it is fair to be like, I don't understand

how anybody could, like, I understand their criticism. Yeah. I do too. That being said, people should understand that, like, you are the extraordinary one. Like, you are the one who stepped away. You are the one who had to say, like, all right, I, I give up my future in Republican. And like, now you are 25 having worked in the White House, like from a resume standpoint in a party that is now entirely captured by Trump, you gave up a lot. And people should know that. Ninety-nine percent of people deserve the real criticism. And like, you did the thing that was hard. I'm glad you're here at the bulwark because that is, even though now we're not just like a never-trump publication, I think we've grown beyond that. There's no doubt that I think part of the firmament,

part of what launched us was that we were people who said absolutely not when most of the people around us were like okay, I'll do this. And that's why I'm so excited to be part of bulwark now just because I do think that everything you guys are doing and your mission

and just that you're telling the truth and just like calling a spade a spade. Like that's the thing that kills me is like yeah, you mentioned these Republicans who twist themselves into pretzels to justify everything Trump's doing. you know, whether they're, you know, whitewashing the events of January 6th or defending things

like tariffs and the government buying a stake in Intel. I mean, like, the list goes on where people will come at me and be like, you're not even a Republican anymore and you're not conservative or, you know, you're a liberal or rhino. Oh my God, but you guys are the ones out here that have completely flipped on your views. Like, I don't think I've actually changed a lot in my views. Sure. I've definitely moved to the middle considerably. But that's been as a result of, like, because of Trump and everything that he's doing, that it's pushed me toward the middle because the way that he has just reshaped the Republican Party in his image, it doesn't align with my ideals and my values. First of all, I mean, this is where people who say that, like, we are rhinos or it makes me angry, not because I care how people categorize me politically because I actually think a lot of these labels that try to put you along a spectrum, Trump has made them, has rendered them. obsolete. Like the idea of what it means to be a conservative now just means you support Trump

and all of this nonsense. I'm sorry, what is conservative about Donald Trump's economic policy and the tariffs? Like, okay, the tax cuts I'll give you. He always is there to protect his elite pals. But like, what else besides the tax cuts is like regular conservative orthodoxy? The tariffs aren't. He doesn't care about the Constitution. He doesn't have fidelity to the Constitution. He's not trying to limit government. Elon Musk's doge, waste, fraud, abuse. All they did was dismantle our soft power, which is something Republicans really used to understand. And instead, now they've just decided to have hard power where they just go in and they're like, no, we run the, we run the hemisphere now. You know, they don't believe in the rule of law. They don't believe in pluralism.

Like, there was nothing conservative in the true sense about this administration. And there's not even anything really Republican about it. It is just the doctrine of Trump. When he talks about the Don Roe doctrine. That's a pretty honest thing. They didn't even put out a platform. They were like our platforms, whatever this guy says. These are the most cowardly, uh, principal free human beings I have ever witnessed. And so like, they can say whatever they want. And then even the left when they're like, Sarah, your Republican roots are showing. I'm like, you know, here's the thing, guys. I have always just sort of been the same. I've always been kind of a moderate squish who, you know, likes the Constitution and really likes America. What a crazy thing.

But you like the Constitution in America. But apparently nowadays, people are totally fine with him just railroading the Constitution. And it's crazy, just the justifications for it. And going back to January 6th, you would think that any patriotic American would have looked at the events of that day and been like, that man should never step foot anywhere near the Oval Office again. And it makes me so sad to think that million. and millions of Americans were okay with putting him back in power even after we saw the first U.S. President to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. And I mean, it's just absolute. Like, insane doesn't even, it's too weak of a word when I think about if five years ago, if I thought

that we'd be out where we're at today. Since we are in the anniversary of January 6th, and like it has not gone the way one would have imagined in America post-Donald Trump, lying about the election being stolen and then, you know, having a mob attack the Capitol. What do you make of the fact that America looked at that day was horrified by it and then just slowly kind of got used to the idea that it happened and put Trump back in charge? I feel like we're just so desensitized nowadays, especially because of Trump and anything crazy, that people became okay with the idea of moving past that day and whitewashing the events of that day,

particularly because they saw our leaders do so, the people that we're supposed to look up to. You know, I think about Kevin McCarthy going down to Mar-a-Lago and meeting with Donald Trump in the aftermath of January 6th. I think of Mitch McConnell not even trying to fight and find 10 extra votes so the Senate could convict him and ensure that Donald Trump would never be put back in power. So they watched the leaders of the party be okay with what Trump did. And so in their mind, this was just another crazy Trump thing, something else that was crazy

that happened. And they were able to move past it. And I think, too, that it takes a special level of privilege to care about democracy. And I think that so many people are just consumed with what's going on in this. their day-to-day life that January 6th, even though it was a horrific day to them and they were appalled by what they saw, it didn't affect their day-to-day life unless you were, you know, one of the 140 police officers that was brutally beaten that day. They looked at it and they were horrified by that day, but it didn't really affect them when it came to their day-to-day life.

And so I just think that people can be a little selfish in that way. And so I think that that's kind of how we got to where we're at today, I think it just showed Trump that he can get away with anything now. And I saw Tom Jocelyn, who is the lead author of the January 6th committee report put it this way. And so I want to quote him that he compared it to the velociraptors figured out how to get out of their cages. And I thought that that was such a brilliant way of putting it because Trump and his cronies have now figured out that they can test the limits of the Constitution and that there are ambiguities and loopholes there that they can exploit, that there is little to zero accountability for it. And that's what those Republican leaders showed him

when they didn't make him face any accountability. And I won't just put it on the Republican leaders. I'm also pissed off at Merrick Garland for dragging his feet. I think that he's a big reason why we're at where we're at today. And so I rest part of the blame at his feet. as well. Those decisions in real time, I understand why they are tricky. Like, nobody had faced the question exactly of like, how do we prosecute a president, a former president? Like, you can see why they were reluctant, but you can also see now what happens without accountability. When you don't have it, it shows people that they'll just let you go. And that's why Trump pardoning the January 6th, the people who did attack the Capitol, made it very clear. It was one of the grossest things I've

ever seen because it made it very clear that, hey, you fight on behalf of Trump, you attack legislators on behalf of Trump. This is where, I mean, when you say, like, there's not a word for it, what does it mean? Like, Republican legislators, they were attacked that day. They were hiding under their, like, benches at the Capitol. And now they're all like Josh Hawley with his fist in the air and then coupling that with him running down the hole while they're attacking him. It is hilarious, but also it's like, you guys, you guys are so full of it. And the American people learn from that, right? They learn, like, I listen to voters all the time and they say things like, well, if it was really so bad, something would happen to him because of it. Like, they take

those lessons. Okay. Last question. And then I'll stop torturing you. Is there anything about that day that people don't know that you know from being. there that's like a memory that's locked in anything of who anybody you saw behave truly atrociously or truly good like what do you remember about the day i feel like a lot of my account of that day obviously was um transcribed by the january 6th committee and so i've talked about it a lot publicly so i'm trying to think of anything that well just because you've talked about it doesn't mean people know it like are there facts that you think have flown under the radar or I think one of the most important conversations I had that day was immediately when we

started seeing the violence unfold that I went to Kaylee McAnney, the press secretary at the time, and I told her he's got to put something out. Like you got to go talk to him right now. And he needs to call off the mob and say that we need people to be peaceful. And he needs to tell them, there needs to be a call to action. He needs to tell them to leave. And she went to him after being in the Oval Office dining room with him for a bit, she came back to me and she looked horrified. And I saw a tweet went out and the tweet did not meet the moment. It did not say what it needed to say at that time.

Which tweet was it? Was it the one where he was like, it ended with him saying stay peaceful, exclamation point. And I remember saying to her, I go, what the fuck? What does he mean, stay peaceful? Are you kidding me? They're not peaceful. peaceful. That implies that they are being peaceful right now. And she said, Sarah, he didn't want to mention peace of any sort. And she was like, we went through several phrases with him trying to get him to include that word. And it was only after Ivanka Trump suggested the phrase, stay peaceful, that he said, okay, we'll go with that one. But he did not want to tell them to be peaceful because it was obvious that he was enjoying.

what he was seeing. That showed me that he wasn't going to meet the moment and that this was going to be a test for him and that he didn't want to call off the mob because he, this was exactly what he wanted them to be doing. I feel like people, they know, oh, well, he put out a video later that day. And, you know, he said all these things and told them to go home and all this stuff. Well, you know what? That was after the Capitol Police had regained control of the building. By that point when that video came out, it didn't freaking matter. And so I think, you know, when he has the world's largest megaphone and he had every opportunity to tell these people to leave, if he had instructed them, I'm sure that many of them would have left. He didn't.

He told them to stay peaceful. And so I just think that that just shows the type of guy he is because I was watching these videos unfold and the violence and I was horrified by what I saw. It makes me so sad that that seemed to have little to no impact. I mean, obviously he was elected to the presidency again. But I just can't imagine anything more unpatriotic, un-American. It still blows my mind that we're here today, just because I think that if you had told me five years ago after I resigned that he would be president again and that all of these Republicans would come around and be defended. him and try to whitewash the events of that day. It's like those police officers put their lives on the line to protect you.

You guys were the ones who were hiding in your offices and hiding under desks on the floor. You know, Speaker Mike Johnson can't even hang a plaque in the Capitol for those police officers to honor them for what they did and their sacrifice. It's sad because obviously I thought that January 6th would be the breaking point. for Trump, but it seems like it's just been the beginning of of it for him and him getting more power, being able to push the limits of the Constitution. And yeah, I just, I, it, it still shocks me to this day. But I guess that's just where we are as a country. That is, unfortunately, where we are as a country. I wouldn't have believed it. And I am somebody who says, I think we're underreacting all the time. Sarah Matthews, welcome to the bulwark. Thanks for doing.

doing this. And I can just imagine that this is happening on January 6th, the awfulness of the day, and the idea that there's a young 25-year-old who is the one trying to be the voice of reason. I don't know. Good on you. Thank you. Go follow us on TikTok, if that's your bag, or you can do Instagram. I'm there now. Tim is a big celebrity on Instagram, which I just figured out. All right, guys, good luck, America. We'll see you soon. Bye. Thank you.