Kissinger, Schultz mull Hillary endorsement
Former secretary of state and foreign policy adviser and guru to Republican presidents Henry Kissinger is reported to be considering endorsing Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton.
This could be a devastating blow to Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, who has struggled to shake off a persisting perception that he is weak on national security and foreign policy, and had actively sought Kissinger’s blessing in a highly publicized visit to his home in New York in May.
Politico, a news site, reported that possibility — of Kissinger endorsing Clinton — based on remarks made exclusively to it by George Schultz, another former secretary of state who served from 1982 to 1989 in the Reagan administration.
“We are going to do it together,” Schultz told Politico editors on Thursday about his plans to issue an endorsement for Clinton along with Kissinger, who, however, had not either confirmed or denied that till the filing of this report.
A joint endorsement, Schultz said, will “have more impact”. Kissinger started out as Republican president Richard Nixon’s national security adviser and in 1973 became his secretary of state in which role, he engineered, most famously, opening of relations with China. He went on to serve Gerald Ford, another Republican president, as secretary of state.
While Kissinger hasn’t spoken abut Trump before, Schultz has. And on Thursday he told Politico: “When the next president takes office, if he or she turns inwards, the chaos will only develop more. There is no substitute for the US.”
The Republican nominee has promised to disengage the US from the rest of the world to large degree, cut its responsibilities to NATO, and let allies such as South Korea and Japan go nuclear to defend themselves against North Korea.
MELANIA TRUMP SUES MEDIA OUTLETS
Melanie Trump, the Republican nominee’s wife, on Thursday sued a UK newspaper and an American blogger for $150 million for alleging she had worked as an escort in the 1990s.
Both the newspaper, The Daily Mail, and the blogger, Webster Tarpley, have since retraced their articles. “These defendants made several statements about Mrs Trump that are 100% false and tremendously damaging to her personal and professional reputation,” her lawyer Charles Harder said in a statement.