BREAKING: 50 G.O.P. Officials Warn Donald Trump Would Put Nation’s Security ‘at Risk

[cali]

This is a pretty big deal.




By DAVID E. SANGER

nytimes.com | Aug. 8, 2016

Fifty of the nation’s most senior Republican national security officials, many of them former top aides or cabinet members for President George W. Bush, have signed a letter declaring that Donald J. Trump “lacks the character, values and experience” to be president and “would put at risk our country’s national security and well-being.”

Mr. Trump, the officials warn, “would be the most reckless president in American history.”

The letter says Mr. Trump would weaken the United States’ moral authority and questions his knowledge of and belief in the Constitution. It says he has “demonstrated repeatedly that he has little understanding” of the nation’s “vital national interests, its complex diplomatic challenges, its indispensable alliances and the democratic values” on which American policy should be based. And it laments that “Mr. Trump has shown no interest in educating himself.”

<snip>

Among the most prominent signatories are Michael V. Hayden, a former director of both the C.I.A. and the National Security Agency; John D. Negroponte, who served as the first director of national intelligence and then deputy secretary of state; and Robert B. Zoellick, another former deputy secretary of state, United States trade representive and, until 2012, president of the World Bank. Two former secretaries of homeland security, Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, also signed, as did Eric S. Edelman, who served as Vice President Dick Cheney’s national security adviser and as a top aide to Robert M. Gates when he was secretary of defense.

Robert Blackwill and James Jeffrey, two key strategists in Mr. Bush’s National Security Council, and William H. Taft IV, a former deputy secretary of defense and ambassador to NATO, also signed.

<snip>

read:http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/us/politics/national-security-gop-donald-trump.html?_r=0

[MFM008]

1. Rats bailing from the

Flaming USA tRump.

[rjsquirrel]

2. This is huge

and I don't mean yuuuuge either.

Look at the names on that list. It's the Bush National Security policy team except for Condi herself. I wonder if she and Powell will be speaking up soon.

This has to swamp Donnie's little reading exercise ths afternoon. This is a kill shot.

[cali]

3. I agree. I thnk this is pretty damn devastating. As you say, it's a "kill shot."

To be disavowed by these people, so scathingly and so publicly, is a nail in his coffin.

[rjsquirrel]

5. Ironically to anyone who fought the Iraq disaster

this is a rogues' gallery!

I can't believe I'm grateful to them.

[cali]

8. Paradoxes abound.

[wiggs]

11. It should be big. But a couple of hours ago when I checked, it wasn't ANYWHERE

on the Fox News website and it was not on CNN's front page. After searching, I saw it was on CNN's politics page.

It was on the NY Times front page.

It's as big as the media wants it to be.

[kentuck]

4. Can you imagine if 50 Democratic experts were to say that Hillary Clinton was "unfit"?

And this story will probably be gone tomorrow?

[imanamerican63]

6. Oh man, you beat me to it!

But it is bigly HUGE news!

[geek tragedy]

7. This resolves it: Rumsfeld was the worst and the dumbest of that lot

He's a proud Trumpkin

[La Lioness Priyanka]

9. so i'm guessing you are back from your DU breakup?

[napkinz]

10. K&R

[napkinz]

12. Tweety covering this now on Hardball!

Trump is attacking the 50 who signed the letter.

[gelsdorf]

13. This is his Keith Richards telling you

you are too high moment

[cali]

15. OK. That was really funny.

kudos.

[catbyte]

14. Oh, myyyy. If Drumpf is too sleazy for the likes of Negroponte, he IS in trouble.

[auntpurl]

16. This is beautiful.

I just want to soak it all in.

[FairWinds]

17. I'm not going to take the time to go through the whole list . .

because I'd start tossing my cookies hither and yon.

But most of them are torture loving, constitution shredding,
UN destroying, innocent killing, rule of law ignoring . .

WAR CRIMINALS

WHO FINDS PEOPLE LIKE THIS CREDIBLE? NOT ME.

[TrogL]

18. Apparently the Donald has replied

...saying these were the people who caused the problem.

One wag suggested he may have a point.

[roamer65]

19. There is a very dark name in this batch of people.

NEGROPONTE.