Against Trump:
Peter Wehner (advisor and speechwriter in the Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush administrations): “Mr. Trump’s virulent combination of ignorance, emotional instability, demagogy, solipsism and vindictiveness would do more than result in a failed presidency; it could very well lead to national catastrophe. The prospect of Donald Trump as commander in chief should send a chill down the spine of every American.”Brian Walsh (veteran Republican strategist): “When you look at how he’s conducting every aspect of the campaign it seems entirely fair to ask if he’s purposefully trying to lose because the only alternative answer is complete arrogance and incompetence. And I’m not ruling out complete arrogance and incompetence.”
Robert Gates (Defense Secretary under George. W. Bush and Former CIA Director): Mr. Trump is also willfully ignorant about the rest of the world, about our military and its capabilities, and about government itself. He disdains expertise and experience while touting his own...on national security, I believe Mr. Trump is beyond repair. He is stubbornly uninformed about the world and how to lead our country and government, and temperamentally unsuited to lead our men and women in uniform. He is unqualified and unfit to be commander-in-chief. (Wall Street Journal 9/16/16)
Brett Stephens (Wall Street Journal deputy editorial page editor): "Hillary Clinton’s record in office is dreadful. Her ideas are dreadful. They will make us less safe, but there is no way I’m going to vote for a guy who is just totally uninformed, un-presidential as Donald Trump is. I think that for the United States, Hillary Clinton, as awful as I find her, is a survivable event. I’m not so sure about Donald Trump." See whole interview
George Schultz (Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan, on the prospect of a Trump Presidency): “God help us.”
Rick Wilson: (GOP media strategist): "You could be living on a diet of lead paint, cheap vodka and Real Housewives and still know more than Trump does about, well, everything."
George Will: “[T]his is a time for prudence, which demands the prevention of a Trump presidency. Were he to be nominated, conservatives would have two tasks. One would be to help him lose 50 states...Second, conservatives can try to save from the anti-Trump undertow as many senators, representatives, governors and state legislators as possible.”
David Brooks: “Donald Trump is epically unprepared to be president. He has no realistic policies, no advisers, no capacity to learn. His vast narcissism makes him a closed fortress. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know and he’s uninterested in finding out. He insults the office Abraham Lincoln once occupied by running for it with less preparation than most of us would undertake to buy a sofa.”
Charles Krauthammer: “I sympathize with the dilemma of Republican leaders reluctant to affirm. Many are as appalled as I am by Trump, but they don’t have the freedom I do to say, as I have publicly, that I cannot imagine ever voting for him.”
Jeb Bush: "Donald Trump has not demonstrated that temperament or strength of character. He has not displayed a respect for the Constitution. And, he is not a consistent conservative. These are all reasons why I cannot support his candidacy."
Lindsey O. Graham: “[I] cannot in good conscience support Donald Trump because I do not believe he is a reliable Republican conservative nor has he displayed the judgment and temperament to serve as commander in chief.”
Kathleen Parker: I find Trump so uninformed, thin-skinned, volatile and divisive that opposing him has become for me a moral imperative. I sincerely believe he’s a threat to our security and our nation’s equilibrium, which has been dangling by a thread since 9/11. (entire column)
Kevin Madden (veteran GOP operative: “For many Republicans, Trump is more than just a political choice. It’s a litmus test for character. I’m prepared to write somebody in so that I have a clear conscience.”
Mike Murphy (GOP Strategist): He fails my commander-in-chief test. I think he is a stunning ignoramus on foreign policy issues and national security, which are the issues I care most about. And he’s said one stupid, reckless thing after another, and he’s shown absolutely no temperament to try to learn the things that he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t know just about everything. …The guy has a chimpanzee-level understanding of national security policy.
Scott Rigell (representative of Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District): “Trump is a bully, unworthy of our nomination. My love for our country eclipses my loyalty to our party, and to live with a clear conscience I will not support a nominee so lacking in the judgment, temperament and character needed to be our nation’s commander-in-chief. Accordingly, if left with no alternative, I will not support Trump in the general election should he become our Republican nominee.”
Ben Sasse (senator from Nebraska): “A presidential candidate who boasts about what he’ll do during his ‘reign’ and refuses to condemn the KKK cannot lead a conservative movement in America. If Trump becomes the Republican nominee my expectation is that I’ll look for some 3rd candidate – a conservative option, a Constitutionalist.”
Reid J. Ribble (representative from Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District): “I am not obligated to support a bad candidate from any party. I will not support Donald Trump for president of the United States, no matter what the circumstances.”
Christine Todd Whitman (former governor of New Jersey) when asked on Bloomberg Politics if she would support Trump: “No, I won’t. I can’t.”
Eliot Cohen (served in the George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush administrations), tweeted a list of reasons to not vote for Trump: “Short list: demagoguery, torture, bigotry, misogyny, isolationism, violence. Not the Party of Lincoln & not me.”
J.C. Watts (former Oklahoma congressman): “It’s going to be a tremendous setback for the party if he wins.”
Mel Martinez (former senator from Florida): “I would not vote for Trump, clearly, If there is any, any, any other choice, a living, breathing person with a pulse, I would be there.”
Carlos Curbelo (congressional representative from Florida’s 26th district): "This man does things and says things that I teach my 6- and 3-year-olds not to say. I could never look them in the eye and tell them that I support someone so crass and insulting and offensive to lead the greatest nation in the world.”
Robert Kagan (conservative think tank member and speechwriter for Reagan Secretary of State George Schultz): "His ultimately self-destructive tendencies would play out on the biggest stage in the world, with consequences at home and abroad that one can barely begin to imagine. It would make him the closest thing the United States has ever had to a dictator, but a dictator with a dangerously unstable temperament that neither he nor anyone else can control."
Charles Krauthammer: "I used to think Trump was an 11-year-old, an undeveloped schoolyard bully. I was off by about 10 years. His needs are more primitive, an infantile hunger for approval and praise, a craving that can never be satisfied."
Thomas Sowell: “At this late date, there is no point itemizing the many things that demonstrate Trump’s gross inadequacies for being president of the United States. Trump himself has demonstrated those gross inadequacies repeatedly, at least weekly and sometimes daily.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/434521/donald-trump-conservatives-shouldnt-be-obama-supporters?target=author&tid=900925
Thomas Sowell: “The political damage of Donald Trump to the Republican party is completely overshadowed by the damage he can do to the country and to the world with his unending reckless and irresponsible statements. What was once feared most by the Republican establishment — a third party candidate for president — may represent the only slim chance for saving this country from a catastrophic administration in an age of proliferating nuclear weapons.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/435051/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-american-disaster?target=author&tid=900925
Thomas Sowell: "A man in his 60s, who is still acting like a spoiled adolescent, is not going to grow up in the next four years. And, as President, he would have the lives of us all, and our loved ones, in his hands, as well as the fate of this great nation at a fateful time."
P.J O'Rourke: O'Rourke said his endorsement of Clinton includes "her lies and all her empty promises. It's the second worst thing that can happen to this country. But she’s way behind in second place. I mean, she’s wrong about absolutely everything, but she’s wrong within normal parameters.” Referring to Donald Trump, he remarked, “I mean, this man just can’t be president. They’ve got this button, you know, in the briefcase. He’s going to find it.” http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/pj-orourke-endorses-hillary-clinton-222954#ixzz4BYFfw2oT
Mitch McConnell: “He needs someone highly experienced and very knowledgeable because it’s pretty obvious he doesn’t know a lot about the issues.”
Michael Gerson: “Is Trump himself a racist? Who the bloody hell cares? There is no difference in public influence between a politician who is a racist and one who appeals to racist sentiments with racist arguments. The harm to the country — measured in division and fear — is the same, whatever the inner workings of Trump’s heart.”
Kathleen Parker: "Democracy, freedom, civilization — it all hangs by a thread. America was always just an idea, a dream founded in the faith that men were capable of great good. It was a belief made real by an implausible convention of brilliant minds and the enduring courage of generations who fought and died. For what? Surely, not this."
Rick Wilson (Republican strategist): “Man up. Show courage. Say what’s in your hearts; he’s insane. He’s poison. He’s doomed. He’s killing the party.”
Henry Paulson, Jr. (Former U.S. Treasury Secretary): "The GOP, in putting Trump at the top of the ticket, is endorsing a brand of populism rooted in ignorance, prejudice, fear and isolationism. This troubles me deeply as a Republican, but it troubles me even more as an American. Enough is enough. It’s time to put country before party and say it together: Never Trump."
Mark Salter (former top staffer and biographer for Sen. John McCain, on Clinton vs. Trump): “Basically, I think she’s the more conservative choice and the least reckless one.”
Tim Miller (Republican strategist): “I do think that there’s something dark about Trump’s view of the world. When a person running for president continually compliments brutal, undemocratic dictators and their methods, I think it’s fair to have some concerns that those are methods that they might be interested in deploying if necessary.”
Stephen Hess (Government scholar who served in the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations, advised President Ford): “It’s incredibly depressing. He’s the most profoundly ignorant man I’ve ever seen at this level in terms of understanding the American presidency, and, even more troubling, he makes no effort to learn anything.”
Open letter from 121 junior GOP National Security leaders: "Mr. Trump’s own statements lead us to conclude that as president, he would use the authority of his office to act in ways that make America less safe, and which would diminish our standing in the world. Furthermore, his expansive view of how presidential power should be wielded against his detractors poses a distinct threat to civil liberty in the United States. Therefore, as committed and loyal Republicans, we are unable to support a Party ticket with Mr. Trump at its head. We commit ourselves to working energetically to prevent the election of someone so utterly unfitted to the office." (Full letter here)
Open letter from 50 senior GOP National Security leaders: "None of us will vote for Donald Trump. From a foreign policy perspective, Donald Trump is not qualified to be President and Commander-in-Chief. Indeed, we are convinced that he would be a dangerous President and would put at risk our country’s national security and well-being. Most fundamentally, Mr. Trump lacks the character, values, and experience to be President." (Full letter here)
Michael Gerson: "It has been said that when you choose your community, you choose your character. Strangely, evangelicals have broadly chosen the company of Trump supporters who deny any role for character in politics and define any useful villainy as virtue." September 1, 2022 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/01/michael-gerson-evangelical-christian-maga-democracy/)
