President George W. Bush’s Secretary of State Richard Armitage plans to vote for Hillary Clinton instead of the presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.
“If Donald Trump is the nominee, I would vote for Hillary Clinton,” Armitage stated during an interview with Politico. “He doesn’t appear to be a Republican, he doesn’t appear to want to learn about issues. So, I’m going to vote for Mrs. Clinton.”
Armitage, who also worked as assistant secretary of defense for President Ronald Reagan, is a top former Republican national security official that is voicing support for Clinton instead of Trump.
He said he doesn’t know of any other Republicans that also plan to voice their vote for Clinton, but Politico suggests more may come forward as the general election approaches.
More national security heavyweights with conservative credentials could emerge in opposition to Trump in the coming months, though. Several retired generals, some with strong Republican connections, are privately alarmed over Trump’s candidacy and are debating whether to say so publicly. One retired general who served in a senior command role during the Obama years said former generals and officers are wary of the political fray, but that he expects a group of them “probably will try to energize something.”
One former senior commander, the retired four-star Marine Gen. James T. Mattis, even recently considered joining the 2016 presidential race as an independent candidate, at the behest of a group of anti-Trump Republicans that includes Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, who discussed the idea with Mattis over dinner in Washington in late April. Kristol says the general gave the idea serious consideration. Mattis has never declared a party affiliation but is widely believed to lean Republican.
“They’re in kind of a fog,” Armitage added about his national security colleagues.
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