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Marc Short’s Spent Weeks Debating Trump With Students. And With Himself.

The former senior Trump official was shaken by Jan 6. and has been leading discussion groups about what has happened to his party. But like many conservatives, his path to a voting booth in November is uncertain.

Marc Short
Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

Before he held forth on Donald Trump, free trade and his own growing alienation from the political party he once helped run, Marc Short stopped to make a critical announcement.

He brought Chick-fil-A for the whole class.

Short, former chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence, arrived last week to a Georgetown University classroom to lead a discussion for the eighth and final time, mostly about how the Republican Party had changed — and was continuing to change — under Trump. Like any true-blue Republican, he had turned to the conservative-friendly fast-food restaurant to feed the roughly dozen students seated before him.