111 Former G.O.P. Officials Back Harris, Calling Trump ‘Unfit to Serve’

[Rebound]

More than 100 former national security officials from Republican administrations and former Republican members of Congress endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday after concluding that their party’s nominee, Donald J. Trump, is “unfit to serve again as president.”

In a letter to the public, the Republicans, including both vocal longtime Trump opponents and others who had not endorsed Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020, argued that while they might “disagree with Kamala Harris” on many issues, Mr. Trump had demonstrated “dangerous qualities.” Those include, they said, “unusual affinity” for dictators like President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and “contempt for the norms of decent, ethical and lawful behavior.” It quoted Mr. Trump’s own former vice president, Mike Pence, who has said that “anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.”

 

“As president,” the letter said, “he promoted daily chaos in government, praised our enemies and undermined our allies, politicized the military and disparaged our veterans, prioritized his personal interest above American interests and betrayed our values, democracy and this country’s founding documents.”

The 111 signatories included former officials who served under Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush. Many of them had previously broken with Mr. Trump, including two former defense secretaries, Chuck Hagel and William S. Cohen; Robert B. Zoellick, a former president of the World Bank; the former C.I.A. directors Michael V. Hayden and William H. Webster; a former director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte; and former Gov. William F. Weld of Massachusetts. Miles Taylor and Olivia Troye, two Trump administration officials who became vocal critics, also signed.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/18/us/politics/republican-officials-harris-endorsement.html

Edited September 18, 2024 by Rebound

[Rebound]

Oh, and one more thing:

[myata]

Yes, that would be a short and entirely true summary: "simply unfit". Sane and responsible people, of any affiliation, stripe and everything else should reject this style of politics and close this chapter.

[Moonlight Graham]

Some of the GOP like Pence I think have have genuine intentions.  Others like the Bush's, Zoellick and Liz Cheney etc are just establishment loyalists who are still chapped that they lost their power & influence in the party under Trump.  Trump is piece of crap but seriously who would care what some former Dubya Bush official thinks?  Not like they have some moral highground.

Imagine the crying from the Obama/Clinton/Biden-connected Democrats if Bernie Sanders won the Democrat nomination.

Edited September 18, 2024 by Moonlight Graham

[WestCanMan]

Like Trump said, if you fire people, they write books, but if you leave the people who bungled the Afghan withdrawal and the economy in place, you're golden. 

@leftard dipshits: you guys pretended that Biden was fit to serve for the past 4 years, you have absolutely no room to talk about anyone's fitness to serve in any capacity. 

[West]

How many are backed by big harma, and the military industrial complex? 

[gatomontes99]

The uniparty/deep state/blob/swamp or whatever you want to call it is alive and well. And the left will willingly vote for it.

[BeaverFever]

11 hours ago, WestCanMan said:

Like Trump said, if you fire people, they write books, but if you leave the people who bungled the Afghan withdrawal and the economy in place, you're golden. 

@leftard dipshits: you guys pretended that Biden was fit to serve for the past 4 years, you have absolutely no room to talk about anyone's fitness to serve in any capacity. 

But Trump says “he only hires the best people “  Are you calling your cult leader a liar and saying he can’t be trusted to hire qualified people for the most important jobs in the country?

Also few of these 111 people wrote books and they weren’t all fired. Many quit in disgust or frustration or actually managed to last until the end of Trump’s term. 

Edited September 19, 2024 by BeaverFever

[robosmith]

4 hours ago, WestCanMan said:

Like Trump said, if you fire people, they write books, but if you leave the people who bungled the Afghan withdrawal and the economy in place, you're golden. 

@leftard dipshits: you guys pretended that Biden was fit to serve for the past 4 years, you have absolutely no room to talk about anyone's fitness to serve in any capacity. 

But the REPUBLICANS CITED have plenty of room to talk about the dangers of a Trump POTUS, dipshit.

3 hours ago, gatomontes99 said:

The uniparty/deep state/blob/swamp or whatever you want to call it is alive and well. And the left will willingly vote for it.

Only in your MAGA CULT imagination.

[Rebound]

13 hours ago, WestCanMan said:

Like Trump said, if you fire people, they write books, but if you leave the people who bungled the Afghan withdrawal and the economy in place, you're golden. 

@leftard dipshits: you guys pretended that Biden was fit to serve for the past 4 years, you have absolutely no room to talk about anyone's fitness to serve in any capacity. 

In four years, Trump did not end the Afghan War, although he did cave into the Taliban. Biden got it done. End of story. 

[gatomontes99]

12 minutes ago, Rebound said:

In four years, Trump did not end the Afghan War, although he did cave into the Taliban. Biden got it done. End of story. 

In this fantasy world, does giving up billions of military equipment to the Taliban equal getting it done?

[WestCanMan]

9 hours ago, BeaverFever said:

But Trump says “he only hires the best people “  Are you calling your cult leader a liar and saying he can’t be trusted to hire qualified people for the most important jobs in the country?

Also few of these 111 people wrote books and they weren’t all fired. Many quit in disgust or frustration or actually managed to last until the end of Trump’s term. 

Of course I think Trump is trying to hire the best people, but it's not as easy as you think.

Look at all the propaganda out there about how great Kamala is, or how great Biden was....

They're both so useless that they could be considered treasonous, but we're all led to believe that they're superheroes. 

Kamala and Biden aren't the only people in DC whose awful careers are cloaked in shiny propaganda.

 

And FYI, Kamala is the queen of unhappy employees:

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/harriss-personnel-problem-over-90-percent-of-vps-staff-left-in-last-three-years/

The difference between her and Trump is that Trump was extremely effective as POTUS despite everything, while Kamala just sucks. Literally and figuratively.

[Rebound]

1 hour ago, gatomontes99 said:

In this fantasy world, does giving up billions of military equipment to the Taliban equal getting it done?

Yup. 

Look, the fact of the matter is that the Afghan military and police caved to the Taliban.  There was no way to stop that. Not in ten or twenty more years. If those people aren’t willing to fight for their country, like the Ukrainians do, there’s nothing that can be done. They had their chance and they blew it. 

[Deluge]

20 hours ago, Rebound said:

More than 100 former national security officials from Republican administrations and former Republican members of Congress endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday after concluding that their party’s nominee, Donald J. Trump, is “unfit to serve again as president.”

In a letter to the public, the Republicans, including both vocal longtime Trump opponents and others who had not endorsed Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020, argued that while they might “disagree with Kamala Harris” on many issues, Mr. Trump had demonstrated “dangerous qualities.” Those include, they said, “unusual affinity” for dictators like President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and “contempt for the norms of decent, ethical and lawful behavior.” It quoted Mr. Trump’s own former vice president, Mike Pence, who has said that “anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.”

 

“As president,” the letter said, “he promoted daily chaos in government, praised our enemies and undermined our allies, politicized the military and disparaged our veterans, prioritized his personal interest above American interests and betrayed our values, democracy and this country’s founding documents.”

The 111 signatories included former officials who served under Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush. Many of them had previously broken with Mr. Trump, including two former defense secretaries, Chuck Hagel and William S. Cohen; Robert B. Zoellick, a former president of the World Bank; the former C.I.A. directors Michael V. Hayden and William H. Webster; a former director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte; and former Gov. William F. Weld of Massachusetts. Miles Taylor and Olivia Troye, two Trump administration officials who became vocal critics, also signed.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/18/us/politics/republican-officials-harris-endorsement.html

All sellouts. They probably wine and dine with democrats on a regular basis. 

[Hodad]

1 hour ago, gatomontes99 said:

In this fantasy world, does giving up billions of military equipment to the Taliban equal getting it done?

Fair question. Maybe Trump shouldn't have abandoned the Afghan government and given the country back to the Taliban? They didn't live up to any of what they promised. Seems like "the art of the deal" guy got suckered pretty hard.

[Nationalist]

2 hours ago, Rebound said:

In four years, Trump did not end the Afghan War, although he did cave into the Taliban. Biden got it done. End of story. 

Brandon surrendered. End of story.

[WestCanMan]

2 hours ago, Rebound said:

In four years, Trump did not end the Afghan War, although he did cave into the Taliban. Biden got it done. End of story. 

Are you honestly stupid enough to believe that you imbecile? Or are you just lying again? I honestly can never tell with some of you leftards.

In Beave's case, at least you can tell that he's an intelligent liar because he at least throws some pertinent BS into his posts in an attempt to cloud the issue, but you never make any attempt to provide evidence of what you say, you just belch out drivel.  

I know this is hard to believe, but there actually are a lot of Demonrats who are stupid enough to believe the things that you're saying. If you don't want people to call you stupid then you should admit that you're just amoral, and you think lying is normal. 

Facts regarding the Afghan war:

1. Trump negotiated an anti-climactic end to the war: American troops wouldn't be killed and the Taliban would meet Trump's requirements and in exchange the Taliban leaders could survive and American troops would withdraw.
2. While Trump was still president that deal was proceeding smoothly. Less than ten Americans were killed in the last 18 months of the war, none from Taliban sniper fire. 
3. Biden was about as capable of handling that deal as a 3-yr-old is of juggling chainsaws on a unicycle. Biden bungled everything, to say the least.
4. After months of Biden's "Operation Sideways", it came to the end and Biden wasn't prepared. So America just cut off communications with its allies and went every man for himself, stranding Americans and leaving Afghanistan in a humiliating defeat that makes Custer look like a conquering hero. 

Leftards like to say that Trump pissed off NATO allies by telling them to get to 2% of their GDP, but it worked and it was necessary. No actual men hold grudges for that. But nothing pissed off American allies as much as the way they were mistreated in the Afghanistan retreat debacle. In all of America's history of coordinating with other military forces, they never ditched allies and left them to fend for themselves like they did under Biden.  

[Deluge]

52 minutes ago, Hodad said:

Fair question. Maybe Trump shouldn't have abandoned the Afghan government and given the country back to the Taliban? They didn't live up to any of what they promised. Seems like "the art of the deal" guy got suckered pretty hard.

Maybe Biden should've rescinded that decision and stayed there? He sure as hell rescinded all the work Trump was doing on our southern borders.

Looks like the hair sniffer has been into his own shit by erasing our southern borders and f*cking up the Afghanistan withdrawals. 

[WestCanMan]

1 hour ago, Hodad said:

Fair question. Maybe Trump shouldn't have abandoned the Afghan government and given the country back to the Taliban? They didn't live up to any of what they promised. Seems like "the art of the deal" guy got suckered pretty hard.

The Taliban were living up to their agreements while Trump was president, but they knew they could walk all over stupid Joe. 

[Black Dog]

Just now, WestCanMan said:

The Taliban were living up to their agreements while Trump was president, but they knew they could walk all over stupid Joe. 

Well yeah: he gave them everything they wanted.

[Aristides]

When have so many former staffers of a party come out so forcefully against one of its former presidents? Ever.

[WestCanMan]

31 minutes ago, Black Dog said:

Well yeah: he gave them everything they wanted.

He let their leaders live, so basically yeah. In exchange, American soldiers weren'attacked.

You could be thankful, but you don't care about the lives of soldiers, just the DNC. 

[robosmith]

3 hours ago, gatomontes99 said:

In this fantasy world, does giving up billions of military equipment to the Taliban equal getting it done?

It seems you are IGNORANT about what happened.

Republicans Inflate Cost of Taliban-Seized U.S. Military Equipment

Quote

The Taliban seized an arsenal of U.S.-made military equipment when it overran the Afghan army, but not nearly as much as numerous Republicans have claimed.

Several Republican members of Congress and former President Donald Trump have cited a grossly exaggerated figure of $85 billion worth of equipment they say has now fallen into the hands of the Taliban. But that figure — actually $82.9 billion — is the total amount spent on the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund since the war began in 2001.

Only a portion of that is equipment. And military experts say much of the equipment has been used up or is otherwise inoperable; the military has moved or destroyed some of it as well.

For those reasons, and others, Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told us, “The figure is statistically rubbish.”

Nonetheless, numerous Republicans have cited it, including Trump, who has done so repeatedly.

....

How Much Is Inoperable?

For starters, most of the equipment provided to the Afghans was used in fighting over the last 20 years, and “we junked most of it,” Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told us in a phone interview. “War tends to use stuff up in a hurry.”

Nor should anyone assume the Taliban will have the expertise or wherewithal to operate all of the equipment.

“U.S. military equipment tends to require extensive support from technical specialists,” Loren Thompson, a defense industry consultant and military analyst at the Lexington Institute, told us via email. “In the absence of such specialists, much of it will run down due to wear and a lack of spare parts.”

“This applies in particular to aircraft, many of which will likely be grounded in short order,” Thompson said. “Vehicles will also tend to wear out fairly quickly because of inadequate maintenance. 

....

During a news briefing on Aug. 30, Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., commander of U.S. Central Command, said of the equipment at the airport in Kabul, “We brought some of it out, and we demilitarized some of it.” By demilitarized, he means disabled — and likely means key components were blown up. There were reports of explosions at the airport, which Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor, the joint staff deputy director for regional operations, described as “controlled detonations.”

McKenzie said American forces had “demilitarized” up to 70 MRAPs “that will never be used again by anyone” and 27 Humvees, “that will never be driven again.”

In addition, he said, there were 73 aircraft on the ramp at the Kabul airport.

“Those aircraft will never fly again when we left,” McKenzie said. “They’ll never be able to be operated by anyone. Most of them were non-mission capable, to begin with, but certainly they’ll never be able to be flown again.”

Just before leaving, the military also destroyed a weapon system used to intercept rockets, artillery and mortars, known as C-RAM, McKenzie said. The New York Times reported that C-RAMs and several armored vehicles left behind at the U.S. Embassy were also destroyed or rendered inoperable.

Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said the military has been relocating and destroying equipment in Afghanistan for several years now.

....

In a press conference on Aug. 23, Kirby said the U.S. does not have an “exact inventory of what equipment that the Afghans had at their disposal that now might be at risk. Obviously we don’t want to see any weapons or systems that, to fall into hands of people that would use them in such a way to harm our interests or those of our partners and allies. I mean, we have a vested interest obviously in not wanting that to happen.”

But while an exact accounting is not possible, the $83 billion figure being used by some Republicans is wildly inflated.

 

IOW, Trump LYING as USUAL

 

[Black Dog]

16 minutes ago, WestCanMan said:

He let their leaders live, so basically yeah. In exchange, American soldiers weren'attacked.

You could be thankful, but you don't care about the lives of soldiers, just the DNC. 

He let 5,000 of their members out of jail and undermined the Afghan government so the Taliban could takeover without too much fuss. Trump surrendered.

[WestCanMan]

5 minutes ago, Black Dog said:

He let 5,000 of their members out of jail and undermined the Afghan government so the Taliban could takeover without too much fuss. Trump surrendered.

Biden let the terrorists out of Bagram prison, Trump did a POW swap.