Claim:

40 out of 44 members of Trump’s former administration refused to endorse him as president in 2024.

Rating:

Since July 2023, the claim that “40 out of 44” members of Trump’s former administration refused to endorse his bid for the presidency in 2024 has spread across several social media platforms, including X and Facebook. A popular iteration of the claim circulates in the form of a meme featuring images from the former Trump administration:

“The rest of the country probably needs to see it for the flashing red flag that it is,” read this and similar iterations of the claim.

For several reasons, this claim is false. The numbers come from a Report for July 2023 from NBC News conducted ahead of the 2024 GOP primary contest. As the newspaper reported, its reporters tried to reach as many former Trump administration officials as possible, and only four affirmatively stated they supported his run at the time:

NBC News reached out to 44 of the dozens of people who served in Trump’s cabinet during his tenure. Most declined to comment or ignored the requests. A total of four have publicly said they support his candidacy for re-election.

Several have been coy about where they stand and stopped supporting Trump with the GOP primary race underway. Then there are those who outright oppose his bid for the GOP nomination or are adamant that they don’t want him back in power.

Describing a pool of 40 people made up primarily of those who “declined to comment” or “ignored” a request for comment before the GOP primaries as those who actively “refused” to support his candidacy is a distortion of an outdated number. Of the 44 people NBC contacted, these four endorsed him in July 2023:

Those supporting Trump’s bid for another term include former Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker; Mark Meadows, his last chief of staff; former budget chief Russell Vought; and former Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, who in June tweeted “Trump 2024” above a tweet from Trump’s main GOP rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Several of the people who did not make a statement in the July 2023 NBC News report publicly supported Trump ahead of the November 2024 presidential election. In August 2024, the Washington Post tracked the positions of 42 former members of Trump’s cabinet. They concluded that more than half (24 out of 42) supported his election as president at the time:

In total, The Post reached out to all 42 members of Trump’s cabinet and asked each of them if they supported his presidential bid. Twenty answered. Twenty-two did not, but we were able to determine through public statements that nine of them supported Trump’s candidacy and two did not.

Like the Post Office reportedthe list of former members of the administration supporting the president is significantly larger than four, and includes several people mistakenly included in viral images shared along with the meme. The list includes former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, former Energy Secretary Rick Perry, former Attorney General Bill Barr and Jeff Sessions, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Since the absence of an endorsement is not a refusal to endorse, and since more than half of Trump’s former administration did in fact ultimately support Trump’s general election for president in 2024, the claim is false.