Republican Secretary of Homeland Security Under Bush Endorses Hillary Clinton, Trashes Trump

Regrets Prosecuting Whitewater Investigation

Former George W. Bush Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, a life-long Republican, has just endorsed Hillary Clinton. Chertoff, who prosecuted the Congressional investigation into Whitewater, also says he regrets the time spent on that partisan look into the Clinton’s finances.

Hillary Clinton “has good judgment and a strategic vision how to deal with the threats that face us,” he says, as The Hill reports.

“People can go back decades and perhaps criticize some of the judgments that were made. That is very, very insignificant compared to the fundamental issue of how to protect the country.”

“I realized we spent a huge amount of time in the 90s on issues that were much less important than what was brewing in terms of terrorism,” Chertoff, 62, referring to Whitewater, told Bloomberg News in an interview published Monday.

Chertoff, the second head of Homeland Security, serving from 2005-2009, now heads a securtity management firm that bears his name and employs former Bush and Obama administration members.

He blasted Donald Trump, likening his remarks in support of Russia and its President, Vladimir Putin, to “making enemies of your friends and cozying up to your adversaries.”

And he also addressed Trump’s misogynistic comments about former Miss Universe Alicia Machado.

“Not only did he seem at the debate to lose his temper, but to get up at 3:30 a.m. and reach for your smartphone is to me a hysterical reaction,” Chertoff added of Trump’s criticism of Machado after the contest. “If you’re president, the button you reach for is not the Twitter button; it’s the nuclear button.”

 

Image by U.S. Department of Homeland Security via Flickr