Ari Fleischer, George W. Bush’s spokesman for the majority of his administration, said he was no longer supporting Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
“I will vote for Republicans up and down the ballot. But when it comes to the presidency, I’m going to leave my ballot blank,” he said in a column for the Washington Post posted online late Friday.
Fleischer had been one of the few prominent members of the last Republican presidential administration to publically pledge his support for the billionaire businessman.
“There’s a lot about Donald Trump that I don’t like, but I’ll vote for Trump over Hillary any day,” he said in a May tweet.
Fleischer said he was never enthusiastic about Trump, having supported others in the GOP primary. He turned down an offer to be a Trump delegate to the GOP convention.
“I knew Trump was too often offensive, boorish and simplistic. He doesn’t have a good grasp of policy, but he did spend a career in the business sector, as opposed to the redistribution-of-income sector, and he is against the Iran nuclear deal, which Clinton favors. Clinton will nominate liberals for the Supreme Court. Trump won’t. I said publicly I would hold my nose and vote for Trump and, if he won, I would hold my breath,” he said.
He said that thinking changed over the summer when Trump veered “recklessly off-track” with attacks on the Mexican-American judge overseeing the probe into Trump-branded investment schools and the candidate’s criticisms of the family of a deceased Islamic U.S. military hero.
Fleischer concedes that he is still very conflicted over this. “On Tuesday, if someone puts a gun to my head and tells me to make a choice, I’ll say ‘shoot.'”
