Colin Powell said Tuesday he plans to cast his ballot for Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton on Nov. 8, after writing in an email leaked last month, “I would rather not have to vote for her.”
The former secretary of state made the announcement during a business luncheon for the Long Island Association, according to Newsday reporter Robert Brodsky. Powell told attendees that Clinton would serve with distinction and said her experience as his successor at the State Department and a senator from New York make her qualified to be commander in chief.
In private messages posted by DCLeaks last month, Powell penned an email to Democratic donor Jeffrey Leeds in which he described Clinton as “a 70-year person with a long track record, unbridled ambition, greedy, not transformational, with a husband still d—king bimbos at home.”
The former George W. Bush cabinet member also took jabs at Trump during his appearance in New York on Tuesday. The Republican presidential nominee is “selling people a bill of goods” and “insults us every day,” he reportedly said.
Powell refused to endorse either candidate earlier this summer, particularly after he tangled with Clinton’s campaign about the advice he doled out as it related to her private email practices as secretary of state.
“Everything [Clinton] touches she kind of screws up with hubris,” he wrote in another email published by DCLeaks in September.
