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Harris Secures Major Win as 100 GOP Officials Turn Against Trump

12 0
18.09.2024

More than 100 former GOP officials have signed a public letter endorsing Kamala Harris for president and warning that Donald Trump is “unfit” for the presidency or “any office of public trust.”

Signatories include Republican national security officials who served in previous administrations—such as former Secretaries of Defense William Cohen and Chuck Hagel, former Bush Sr. official and World Bank President Robert Zoellick, and former CIA and FBI Director William Webster—as well as former members of Congress, including Barbara Comstock and Adam Kinzinger.

“We expect to disagree with Kamala Harris on many domestic and foreign policy issues,” the letter says, “but we believe that she possesses the essential qualities to serve as President and Donald Trump does not. We therefore support her election to be President.” The letter contains a bulleted list of reasons for their endorsement of Harris, including some of her more hawkish foreign policy stances.

The letter calls Trump “unfit to serve” and notes his “dangerous qualities,” including his coziness with “authoritarian leaders,” “contempt” for ethical and legal norms, and “chaotic national security decision-making.” As commander in chief, it says, Trump “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 letter goes on to condemn Trump’s incitement of the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

In the penultimate paragraph of their letter, the authors acknowledge Republican voters’ “potential concerns” about Harris but say they “pale in comparison” to Trump’s record of “chaotic and unethical behavior and disregard for our Republic’s time-tested principles of constitutional governance.”

This is just the latest showing of support for Harris by prominent Republicans. This week, over a dozen high-level alumni of the Reagan administration endorsed her presidential bid. The vice president has also been endorsed by other prominent Republicans, such as former Representative Liz Cheney and former Vice President Dick Cheney, and the Harris-Walz campaign has been courting moderate red voters through a “Republicans for Harris” initiative.

After controversially flip-flopping his opinion on Donald Trump last month, Joe Rogan has shared an unexpected review of Vice President Kamala Harris’s debate strategy: “fucking amazing job.”

During Monday’s episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the multimillionaire podcaster and former Fear Factor host celebrated Harris’s performance during last week’s debate, joking that the “puppet master” behind her campaign was absolutely crushing it.

“Whoever’s helping her. Whoever’s coaching her. Whoever’s the puppet master running the strings,” Rogan said, “fucking amazing job. They did an amazing job from the moment Biden drops out, forcing Biden to drop out. Whatever they’re doing, whoever is writing those speeches, getting her to deliver, coaching her. She’s nailing it.”

Rogan also argued that the debate—and the presidential race—had boiled down to which candidate had better prepared for the moment, and to Rogan, that choice was obvious.

“See, the difference in that debate was not a difference in, like, who’s gonna have better policies? Who’s gonna be better for the country?” Rogan told comedian Tom Segura. “The … debate, in my opinion, was who was better prepared. She was way better prepared.”

Rogan then continued to mock Trump for failing to work with his team, while praising Harris for building and landing effective sound bites and, effectively, being a “savvy politician.”

“She’s nailing it.” Joe Rogan raves about Kamala Harris’ campaign and debate performance, and he mocks Donald Trump. (Video: The Joe Rogan Experience) pic.twitter.com/tnAWPnZlFM

The podcaster shared an odd exchange with Trump in August, when Rogan appeared to side with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over the MAGA leader, before the independent presidential candidate bent the knee to Trump. Trump then chose to clap back, writing on Truth Social that he was looking forward to Rogan getting “booed” at a UFC tournament.

Audiences online read between the lines of Rogan’s salute to Harris, noting that Rogan—who hosts one of the biggest podcasts in the country for Republican and independent men—has the potential to significantly sway undecided voters.

“This is a huge problem for Donald Trump,” wrote Obama-era Democratic strategist Tim Fullerton on X. “If Joe Rogan turns on him and starts praising Kamala Harris like he is here—Trump is toast.”

Right-wing pundit Tim Pool announced that he is suing Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign for interfering with his business by posting a false statement.

Pool declared on his podcast Tuesday night that he had filed a lawsuit in West Virginia against Harris’s presidential campaign alleging that the campaign had committed defamation and bad faith misconduct.

Pool’s lawsuit is in response to a post on the KamalaHQ account, the campaign’s press account, that includes a clip of Pool speaking with right-wing conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer in late August.

“Trump operatives say their Project 2025 plan is to give Trump total, unchecked legal power so they can jail and execute those who don’t support Trump if he wins (They have since scrubbed this video from YouTube),” the post said, without referring to either Pool or Loomer by name.

“Should Democrats be in jail? No question,” Pool said in the clip. “When Donald Trump gets elected should he start locking them up? No question. Should there be lists of Democrats that need to........

© New Republic


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