Generals and GOP stalwarts back Harris as candidates prepare for debate

WASHINGTON: Amid polls showing Donald Trump and Kamala Harris tied in the 2024 Presidential race, top US public figures including retired military generals continue to warn American voters about dangers the former president poses to US national security and democracy.

While many of them, including prominent Republicans, are endorsing Kamala Harris despite their long association with the GOP, some, notably former President George Bush, have said they will not support anyone in the coming election, inviting taunts from never-Trumpers to "man-up" and be like his mother. The matriarch Barbara Bush was openly contemptuous of Trump and wondered how anyone could vote for him.

In fact, while Harris has the support of all living former Democratic presidents and vice-presidents, Trump has the support of only one Republican -- Sarah Palin -- with his own vice-president Mike Pence, disdaining him. On Monday, the Harris campaign dropped a scorching ad in which several Trump administration officials, including Pence, unloaded on their former boss, saying he was unfit for office.

The ad, titled “The Best People,” compiles footage of some of them senior-most officials who served under Trump -- including Pence, former defense secretary Mark Esper, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, and former NSA John Bolton -- calling him narcissistic, untrustworthy, and unfit for office.

“In 2016, Donald Trump said he would choose only the best people to work in his White House. Now those people have a warning for America: Trump is not fit to be president again,” a voiceover says.

The ad also features a segment showing Milley saying, “We don’t take an oath to a king or a queen or a tyrant or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator” -- a smackdown from a respected general, among several who have incurred Trump's wrath. He describes many of them, including three who served him in the White House, as "woke tv generals" going so far as to call them "stupid."

Such rants against the generals, even though he professes to have the support of military families because he rebuilt the military and made America strong, have upset many military leaders and split the institution. On Monday, a group of 10 retired military generals endorsed Harris, saying she is the only presidential candidate fit to serve as the nation's commander in chief and calling Trump "a danger to our national security."

The letter cited Trump's comments disparaging members of the military and his own "chaotic approach" to Afghanistan ahead of the U.S. withdrawal, including negotiating a deal with the Taliban that allowed 5,000 of the group's fighters to return to the battlefield. Trump blames Biden and Harris for the fiasco even though most discerning analysts say he (Trump) first threw the Afghan government and US troops under the bus.

In contrast to Trump's actions, the generals wrote, Harris "has demonstrated her ability to take on the most difficult national security challenges in the Situation Room and on the international stage," from Russia's invasion of Ukraine to tensions with China in the Indo-Pacific. "Harris is the best — and only — presidential candidate in this race who is fit to serve as our commander in chief," they wrote in the letter posted on X by Harris' campaign.