Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who served as President George W. Bush’s top diplomat, called Donald Trump a “national disgrace” and an “international pariah” in personal email exchanges that were leaked online Tuesday.
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Christie Whitman, the former New Jersey governor who has already endorsed Clinton over Trump despite being a Republican, wrote to Powell in late July: “Have you endorsed her yet?” The site quotes Powell in a June email to a former aide and journalist, Emily Miller, writing that Trump “is in the process of destroying himself, no need for Dems to attack him”.
Despite the fact that Powell prefaces his comments by saying he respects Clinton and considers her to be a friend, this description of the candidate is incredibly scathing.
In the interview – which was taped on Wednesday – Clinton said she was “well aware that I still have work to do” to attract young black voters.
Asked again, Clinton said: “I’m not going to comment on anything that is said in a private email”.
The New York Times reported in August that Clinton told federal investigators that Powell told her to use personal email at a dinner gathering during her three-and-half hour interview with the Federal Bureau of Investigation agents last month.
In another, he notes, referring to efforts by Clinton aides to attribute her private email server to his (Powell’s) advice: “Everything HRC touches she kind of screws up with hubris”.
NORAH O’DONNELL: Donald Trump has responded to Colin Powell’s e-mails that show Powell has a low opinion of the candidate.
“They are going to d*** up the legitimate and necessary use of emails with friggin record rules”.
“I have told [Hillary’s] minions repeatedly that they are making a mistake trying to drag me in, yet they still try”, the former Army general wrote.
According to emails highlighted by Intercept reporter Lee Fang, in March 2015, Democratic donor Jeffrey Leeds emailed Powell and said Sen.
“I have no further comment”. On HD tv she doesn’t look doesn’t look good. “She is working herself to death”.
But it seems Powell was particularly annoyed that his name kept popping up in reports about Clinton’s ongoing scandals.
As a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a former Secretary of State, Powell would seem uniquely qualified to comment on Congressional Republicans’ obsession with attaching some sort of malfeasance to Hillary Clinton in regard to the deaths of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans during a 2012 attack by Libyans on the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi.
“Benghazi is a stupid witch hunt”.
Powell added, though, that Clinton bore some blame: “But blame also rests on his leaders and supports back here”.
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Kennedy is the under secretary of state for management at the State Department.
