#23. Eliot Cohen
Open letter from Republican foreign & national security policy leaders on Trump, organized by me and Bryan McGrath. https://t.co/ElZqycjNSV
— Eliot A Cohen (@cohen_eliot) March 3, 2016
Who: Former Counselor of the State Department During President George W. Bush’s Second Term
What: A professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, Cohen is a well-known hawk within the GOP. He turned to Twitter to give his “short list” of reasons why he wouldn’t vote for Trump: “demagoguery, torture, bigotry, misogyny, isolationism, violence. Not the Party of Lincoln & not me.” Cohen described Democrat Hillary Clinton as “the lesser evil, by a large margin” when compared to Trump; Cohen also said he would “prefer a third-party candidate” but would vote for Clinton if there was no alternative in the general election.
In early March, Cohen dove into his Rolodex and got more than 100 Republicans, many with foreign policy expertise, to sign an open letter opposing Trump. “We have disagreed with one another on many issues, including the Iraq war and intervention in Syria. But we are united in our opposition to a Donald Trump presidency,” the letter reads.