Former Reagan, Bush official backing Clinton over Trump

Well this isn’t a good sign:

POLITICO – Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state under George W. Bush, says he will vote for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, in one of the most dramatic signs yet that Republican national security elites are rejecting their party’s presumptive nominee.

Armitage, a retired Navy officer who also served as an assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan, is thought by Clinton aides to be the highest ranking former GOP national security official to openly support Clinton over Trump.

“If Donald Trump is the nominee, I would vote for Hillary Clinton,” Armitage told POLITICO in a brief interview. “He doesn’t appear to be to be a Republican, he doesn’t appear to want to learn about issues. So I’m going to vote for Mrs. Clinton.”

I’m guessing Armitage can’t be much of a Republican if he’s backing Hillary. I don’t know any #NeverTrumpers who are backing Hillary. So I wouldn’t put too much stock in Politico’s analysis.

Meanwhile the Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam is having concerns about Trump’s tone at this point. He’s clearly not ready to endorse Trump, but he hasn’t backed away from supporting Trump yet:

THE TENNEESEAN – Gov. Bill Haslam stopped short of endorsing Donald Trump on Wednesday after Haslam and five other Republican governors met a day earlier with the presumptive Republican nominee in New York.

The governor said the meeting went well and dealt mostly with state-federal issues. Asked if he’s ready to endorse Trump after the long-planned meeting, Haslam said: “To be honest, we never even talked about it. He asked me what I think will happen in Tennessee, and I said: ‘I think you’ll win.’ And then the conversation moved on, and we ended up talking about a lot of other things.”

The Tennessee governor acknowledged he’s had concerns about the tone of Trump’s rhetoric, which was discussed Tuesday.

“We did have a conversation about that,” Haslam said. “Remember, there were six different governors so everybody has different opinions there. But I think several of us expressed a real concern that what we say and how we say it matters.

“I think what a lot of us said is we’re at the point where it’s really important to bring all the Republicans onto the ship that you can, and the importance for the candidate to do that I think will mean the difference between winning and not winning in November,” he said.

The Republican nominee should be getting strong endorsements from every Republican governor around the country. The fact that isn’t happening just shows how many bridges Trump has burned down in order to win the primary and how weak he is as a Republican candidate.


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