Harris Secures Major Win as 100 GOP Officials Turn Against Trump

More than 100 former GOP officials have signed a public letter endorsing Kamala Harris for president and warning that Donald Trump is “unfit” for the presidency or “any office of public trust.”

Signatories include Republican national security officials who served in previous administrations—such as former Secretaries of Defense William Cohen and Chuck Hagel, former Bush Sr. official and World Bank President Robert Zoellick, and former CIA and FBI Director William Webster—as well as former members of Congress, including Barbara Comstock and Adam Kinzinger.

“We expect to disagree with Kamala Harris on many domestic and foreign policy issues,” the letter says, “but we believe that she possesses the essential qualities to serve as President and Donald Trump does not. We therefore support her election to be President.” The letter contains a bulleted list of reasons for their endorsement of Harris, including some of her more hawkish foreign policy stances.

The letter calls Trump “unfit to serve” and notes his “dangerous qualities,” including his coziness with “authoritarian leaders,” “contempt” for ethical and legal norms, and “chaotic national security decision-making.” As commander in chief, it says, Trump “promoted daily chaos in government, praised our enemies and undermined our allies, politicized the military and disparaged our veterans, prioritized his personal interest above American interests, and betrayed our values, democracy, and this country’s founding documents.” The letter goes on to condemn Trump’s incitement of the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

In the penultimate paragraph of their letter, the authors acknowledge Republican voters’ “potential concerns” about Harris but say they “pale in comparison” to Trump’s record of “chaotic and unethical behavior and disregard for our Republic’s time-tested principles of constitutional governance.”

This is just the latest showing of support for Harris by prominent Republicans. This week, over a dozen high-level alumni of the Reagan administration endorsed her presidential bid. The vice president has also been endorsed by other prominent Republicans, such as former Representative Liz Cheney and former Vice President Dick Cheney, and the Harris-Walz campaign has been courting moderate red voters through a “Republicans for Harris” initiative.