U.S. Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris boards Air Force Two at John Murtha Johnstown-Cambria Airport in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on September 13, 2024.
Drew Angerer | AFP | Getty Images
More than 700 former national security and military officials endorsed Kamala Harris for president over Donald Trump in the 2024 election in an open letter published Sunday by National Security Leaders for America.
“This election is a choice between serious leadership and vindictive impulsiveness,” said the group, made up of bipartisan senior leaders who have served in the military and other offices and agencies.
“We are trained to make sober, rational decisions. That is why we know that Vice President Harris would make an excellent commander in chief, while Mr. Trump has proven himself to be unfit for the task,” they added.
The statement, which called Trump “impulsive and ill-informed,” was signed by 741 people, including Democrats who openly support Harris, such as Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, as well as Republican defense secretaries Chuck Hagel and William Cohen. Both Hagel and Cohen served under Democratic presidents.
The signatories include 15 retired four-star generals, 12 former Cabinet officials, eight service secretaries, more than 120 ambassadors and three Trump-era officials: retired U.S. Army Gen. Peter Chiarelli, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired four-star Gen. Paul Selva and retired Maj. Gen. Eric Thorne Olson.
“Mr. Trump is the first president in American history to actively undermine the peaceful transfer of power that is the foundation of American democracy,” the letter reads. “He has shown no remorse for attempting to overturn the 2020 election on January 6, has promised to pardon convicted perpetrators, and has made clear that he will not respect the results of the 2024 election if he loses again.”
The letter also accuses Trump of publicly and privately criticizing the leaders of U.S. allies such as the United Kingdom, Israel, Australia, Canada and Germany, and criticizes his decision to abandon allied Kurdish fighters in Syria in the face of an expected Turkish attack in 2019.
“These are the same people who have dragged our country into endless foreign wars and profited from them while the American people suffered,” Steven Cheung, the Trump campaign’s communications director, told CNBC in response to the critical letter. “President Trump is the only president in the modern era who will not drag our country into new wars.”
Sunday’s support comes after 111 former Republican national security and foreign policy officials endorsed Harris in a letter Wednesday, saying Trump was “not fit to serve again.”
Harris’ campaign has sought to appeal to conservative and moderate voters who might be hesitant to vote for Trump, starting with the launch of “Republicans for Harris” in August. Since then, the vice president has received endorsements from several prominent Republicans, including Dick Cheney, George W. Bush’s former vice president.
“Mr. Trump threatens our democratic system, he has said so himself,” the letter of support on Sunday reads. “He has called for ‘removing’ parts of the Constitution. He has said he wants to be a ‘dictator,’ and his statement that he will only be a dictator for a day is not reassuring.”
