President Joe Biden and Donald Trump are scheduled to debate Thursday in Atlanta at CNN studios. We can call it part of their audition for the world’s most powerful job — one where both have job experience.

But as the men prepare to square off, I cannot get over this fact: Just four people of the more than 40 who served in Trump’s cabinet have publicly endorsed him to serve in the job again. Earlier this year, The New York Times tallied 17 former cabinet officials who have criticized him.

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This is a unique occurrence in modern presidential history, for a president to have so little support among people who were once on his team.

“It’s no surprise that, with our differences, I won’t be backing Donald Trump this election,” said Mike Pence, who was Trump’s vice president, in April, although he added he would not vote for Biden.

One of those differences: Pence refused to use vice presidential power (he did not have) to block certification of Biden’s 2020 victory, as Trump had wanted. For this transgression, Trump’s MAGA supporters erected a hangman’s scaffold and shouted “Hang Mike Pence!” during the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol. These were the same riots and insurrection Trump had ginned up, and for which he was later impeached.

Trump cabinet members once believed

Think of what it means to serve in a president’s cabinet. For many, it means rearranging their lives and moving their families to Washington and the New York-D.C. news media fishbowl.

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Some cabinet appointees are purely political, but many other appointees believe in the president they chose to serve, or they believe in the president’s mission, or even a higher purpose.

When Rex Tillerson, an ExxonMobile oil executive, came out of retirement to serve as Trump’s secretary of state, he said his wife told him, “God’s not through with you.”

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Trump, however, was through with Tillerson after a year. In March of 2018, Tillerson was told over the phone about his imminent firing while he was sitting on the toilet, suffering from diarrhea in a foreign country — an embarrassing detail the Trump team made sure got out to the press. Trump later canned him by tweet.

Tillerson in an interview with Foreign Policy has said that Trump could barely understand global events and global history, and it was difficult to brief him.

He told the magazine, he “started taking charts and pictures with (him) because I found that those seemed to hold his attention better.”

Trump’s former chief of staff: ‘God help us’

A number of Trump cabinet members and aides have spoken out against their former boss. Among his high-profile critics:

-His former Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper: “I do regard him as a threat to democracy, democracy as we know it, our institutions, our political culture, all those things that make America great and have defined us as, you know, the oldest democracy on this planet.”

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-His former Attorney General Bill Barr: “I have made clear that I strongly oppose Trump for the nomination and will not endorse Trump.”

-His former National Security Advisor John Bolton: “Trump is unfit to be president.”

-His former Chief of Staff, Gen. John Kelly, who has shared the sickening comments Trump made about American soldiers killed in combat. Kelly said Trump is “a person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators” and, “a person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.

“There is nothing more that can be said. God help us.”

Only the ‘best people’

Trump was recently convicted of 34 felony charges based on his attempt to criminally influence the 2016 election by paying hush money to pornographic actress Stormy Daniels. It seems unlikely the former Cabinet members who have been critical will now change their minds in his favor.

It also seems like a long time ago when candidate Trump said in his first race he would only hire the “best and most serious people.”

Sarah Matthews, a former Trump deputy press secretary, said in an Associated Press story it was “mind-boggling” how many of his senior staff oppose his reelection.

“These are folks who saw him up close and personal and saw his leadership style,” she noted. “The American people should listen to what these folks are saying because it should be alarming that the people that Trump hired to work for him a first term are saying that he’s unfit to serve for a second term.”

I guess my question for MAGA world and others still supporting Trump is this: What do you think you know about Trump as a leader that is not known by the people who worked closest with him?

Opinion Editor Myron B. Pitts can be reached at mpitts@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3559. 

This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: As Biden-Trump debate nears, ex-Trump officials have already decided