50 national security and foreign policy officials who served in Republican administrations from Nixon to W. have signed a letter stating that they will not support or vote for Donald Trump.
From the New York Times:
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.”
Trump has responded to the letter by saying he wasn't going to hire any of them anyway, but that's part of the problem.
It's not that everyone who signed the letter has an excellent record (Tom Ridge can take his color coded terror alerts and shove them up his ass), they simply don't represent an existential threat to the United States and the sovereignty of our European allies in the way Donald Trump does.
There's a curve or gradient to consider here. On one hand you have an assortment of on-again, off-again neocons who have gotten everything wrong, and on the other hand you have Donald Trump who also gets everything wrong, but when Donald Trump gets something wrong the results can be fatal.
The record of missteps committed by these officials, as egregious as they may be, are spilled milk compared to what President Trump could unleash on the world. That's how bad the Republican presidential nominee is.
It's amazing to think that if you go back just 10 years, elected Republicans would have sworn complete fealty to these national security and foreign policy officials, but today they aren't even remotely on the same page. Elected Republicans in Congress today care more about repealing Obamacare than stopping threats to civilization, whether it's climate change or Donald Trump.
I'll take every voice there is in opposition to Trump, but that doesn't mean their misdeeds should be forgiven or forgotten.