75 retired diplomats in letter against Trump
Agroup of 75 retired career foreign service officers, including ambassadors and senior State Department officials under Republican and Democratic presidents over nearly a half-century, has signed an open letter calling Donald Trump “entirely unqualified to serve as President and Commander-inChief.”
The diplomats said “none of us” will vote for Trump. While they said not all of them agreed with every decision made by Hillary Clinton, they said they all supported her candidacy.
“Because the stakes in this election are so high,” the letter said, “this is the first time many of us have publicly endorsed a candidate for President.”
The letter is the latest in an unprecedented number of joint public statements signed by retired high-level government officials and military officers this election cycle. Most have focused on national security, and most have been against Trump.
Prominent exception
The most prominent exception was a letter early this month signed by 88 retired generals and other military officials who endorsed Trump as a “long overdue course correction in our national security posture.”
Last spring, more than 100 Republican national security experts signed a petition, even before Trump won the GOP nomination, saying they would never work for a Trump administration. Last month, 50 more Republicans, including former top aides and cabinet members for the George W. Bush administration, signed a letter saying Trump would be “the most reckless president in American history” and that none of them would vote for him.
Most of the diplomats who signed the new letter have never been publicly associated with a political party.
In their letter, they wrote that they “have proudly represented every President since Richard Nixon as ambassadors or senior State Department officials in Senate-confirmed positions.
We have served Republican and Democratic Presidents with pride and enthusiasm.”
They had decided to speak out, the signers said, because “very simply, this election is different from any election we can recall.” Trump, they said, “is ignorant of the complex nature of the challenges facing our country.”