Thread by @dsamuelsohn

NEW: The members of an exclusive, powerful club of people at the center of US conservative policy and political movements told @thisisinsider they are not sold on Donald Trump as their next Republican nominee for president. ($) businessinsider.com/council-for-na…

That secretive group, the Council for National Policy, is meeting in Colorado this weekend, Insider learned through interviews with six members. The organization has been meeting for four decades under a shroud of silence in upscale locations three times a year.

Insider started calling up the cell phone numbers of CNP members after Distributed Denial of Secrets, a transparency collective that publishes data in the public interest, posted the organization's unredacted directory on its website Wednesday.

"I'd like to see somebody that would be a little less toxic," said Roy Stringfellow, a longtime CNP member. Chuckling when asked whether Trump should run again, he added, "I'm not sure Trump's electable."

Fifteen people associated with the Council for National Policy answered their phones and most agreed to speak in interviews about the state of the GOP after four tumultuous years under Trump.

While Republicans are headed into a 2022 midterm election cycle where they have a very realistic chance of winning back control of Congress, the conversations with Insider also revealed many conservatives are anything but sold about Trump leading the party for the 2024 campaign.

Stringfellow, an obstetrician and gynecologist from Colorado Springs, said that if Trump is the GOP nominee he'll support him "whole-heartedly."

But, he added, "if I could find someone who had good values and the skills necessary, the judgment necessary, and would have a personality that's more electable, that's who I'd want to see running. I'm not sure who that is yet."

Most people reached by Insider on Thursday and Friday said they didn't know that their personal information had been posted online. No one reported being inundated with outside calls, and there appeared to be little concern about the leak.

"I'm a public figure and I run a publicly traded company so I get a lot of weird calls," said Craig Bergman, the president and CEO at Vortex Blockchain Technologies Inc., a crypto asset holdings company. Bergman, who lives in Iowa, said he didn't know how the leak happened.

Conservative pundit Clarence "Mason" Weaver, who said he was no longer a CNP member, laughed when asked about the leak: "I'm a Black Trump supporter, so you're going to have to try a lot harder to get me upset, sweetheart. Little upsets me nowadays. I'm too old to get upset."

Lots more in this great report from @leonardkl @eliza_relman & @hannah_beckler - check it out and get access to even more from the @thisisinsider newsroom subscription by signing up via this link: businessinsider.com/council-for-na…