After the 2016 campaign, McMullin became a strong critic of Trump and Putin. In a December 2016, op-ed, McMullin blasted Trump as a threat to American constitutional government, saying that the president-elect's actions were "consistent with the authoritarian playbook" and "undermined critical democratic norms including peaceful debate and transitions of power, commitment to truth, freedom from foreign interference and abstention from the use of executive power for political retribution."