Robert Zoellick, a top official under former President George W. Bush, spoke out against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump Monday, calling him a “dangerous man,” warning further that he should not be elected president.
Zoellick, who served as head of the World Bank and as deputy secretary of state under Bush, told GOP consultant Mike Murphy that he is worried about giving Trump access to the nuclear codes, adding that the real estate mogul has a “dark side.”
“I’ve seen the presidency up close. Trump is a dangerous man. I would not want that man with his finger on the triggers,” Zoellick said. “It’s a combination of his ego, his insensitivity to other people. The United States still is the most powerful country in the world. You have to act with a certain dignity of office, and that’s how we actually get other countries to do things with us. That man has no sense of dignity. There’s a dark side to him too.”
“Any president needs help. They need to study, they to learn things, and that doesn’t seem to be, kind of his style. He just tries to react with what he sees in the news, and it’s all related to his image of how you do real estate negotiations as a bargain and his sense of his own personal brand. And then how he treats aspects of the Constitution, how he treats other people,” Zoellick said, adding. “I would not be comfortable with him serving in that role.”
“The behavior and the character, to me, are the most grounding issues,” Zoellick added. “I don’t have a sense that he listens.
Zoellick has been opposed to Trump since the GOP primary contest. In March, he signed a letter with 50 other national security experts, blasting Trump for his rhetoric against Muslims.
Zoellick, who also served as deputy chief of staff under George H.W. Bush, also said that he is worried for the party as a whole, which he says could change drastically thanks to Trump, especially in the Senate.
“I’ve tried to build out the Republican Party, tried to reach out with Mexican-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, others. This is a big setback,” said Zoellick. “I’ve been trying to help some of my friends who are internationalists in the Senate to get re-elected, and the numbers are weighing them down. Very, very good people who we could lose.”
