Colin Powell Endorses Joe Biden for President

Former Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell on Sunday endorsed Democratic former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, becoming the first major Republican to publicly back Donald Trump's rival ahead of November's election.

Powell, who led the U.S. military during the 1991 Gulf War under Republican former President George H.W. Bush and later led the U.S. Department of State under President George W. Bush, said Trump was "ineffective" and has only gotten worse since he took office.

"I cannot in any way support President Trump this year," Powell, who did not vote for Trump in 2016, told CNN in an interview.

Asked if he would vote for Biden, he added: "I will be voting for him."

Powell was asked for his thoughts about comments this week by fromer Defense Secretary James Mattis and several former generals condmning Trump's leadership. Powell said he strongly agreed with their statements, adding “the president has drifted away from the Constitution.”

“I’m so proud of what these generals and admirals have done and others have done,” Powell said. “I think what we’re seeing now, those massive protest movements I have ever seen in my life, I think this suggests that the country is getting wise to this and we’re not going to put up with it anymore.”

“I’m very close to Joe Biden in a social manner and political manner,” he said. “I’ve worked with him for 35, 40 years, and he is now the candidate and I will be voting for him.”

President Trump immediately responding on Twitter, slamming Powell and his career.

“Colin Powell, a real stiff who was very responsible for getting us into the disastrous Middle East Wars, just announced he will be voting for another stiff, Sleepy Joe Biden,” Trump tweeted Sunday.

“Didn’t Powell say that Iraq had ‘weapons of mass destruction?’ They didn’t, but off we went to WAR!,” the president added.

Trump’s threat to use troops against protesters has drawn high-profile criticism from several former military leaders, including former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and former Chief of Staff John Kelly.

More than a week of demonstrations against police brutality across the U.S. initially turned violent in some cities, though they’ve recently been mostly peaceful. On Sunday, Trump ordered the National Guard to start withdrawing from Washington D.C. after a massive but peaceful protest in the city Saturday.

Powell portrayed the protests as signs of a broader public dissatisfaction with Trump, racism and wealth and education gaps.

“The economy exists for all of the American people, not just you doing great or me doing better,” Powell said. “So what we have to do now is reach out to the whole people, watch these demonstrations, watch these protests -- and rather than curse them, embrace them to see what it is we have to do get out of this situation that we find ourselves in now.”

A number of other former military officials continued to criticize Trump on Sunday political talk shows.

“Many of us watched the use of active-duty military to clear peaceful protesters out of Lafayette Square, and it rang echoes of what the founders feared more than anything which was the use of armed active-duty military against citizens,” retired Admiral James Stavridis said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

A “whole spectrum” of former military leaders “jumped and felt that shock of watching active-duty troops clear peaceful protesters. Wrong answer,” said Stavridis, former supreme allied commander of NATO. Stavridis is also a Bloomberg Opinion columnist.

“Our military should never be called to fight our own people as enemies of the state. And that quite frankly for me really tipped it over,” retired Admiral Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Mullen wrote an essay for The Atlantic magazine last week criticizing the decision to use members of the National Guard and other security personnel to clear Lafayette Square near the White House last week.

Material from Bloomberg and Reuters news services was used in this story.