Donald Trump lashed out at Colin Powell on Sunday in a series of tweets, calling him a “real stiff” and “highly overrated” after the former secretary of state announced he would be endorsing Joe Biden for president in the upcoming election.
“Colin Powell, a real stiff who was very responsible for getting us into the disastrous Middle East Wars, just announced he will be voting for another stiff, Sleepy Joe Biden. Didn’t Powell say that Iraq had ‘weapons of mass destruction?’ They didn’t, but off we went to WAR!” he wrote .
He later added a second message.
“Somebody please tell highly overrated Colin Powell that I will have gotten almost 300 Federal Judges approved (a record), Two Great Supreme Court Justices, rebuilt our once depleted Military, Choice for Vets, Biggest Ever Tax & Regulation Cuts, Saved Healthcare & 2A, & much more!” he said .
Powell, a Republican who served as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and secretary of state under former President Bill Clinton and former President George H.W. Bush, respectively, said on Sunday that Trump had “drifted away” from the constitution, as The Inquisitr previously reported.
He told CNN’s Jake Tapper that he was not happy with the way the president has been handling the Black Lives Matter protests that have spread across the country in the wake of the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died in police custody in Minneapolis on May 25.
He said that he believes the country is realizing that Trump is a bad leader and that the protesters are, in part, evidence of this understanding.
Powell is not the first prominent leader to come out against Trump. Earlier this week, Former Defense Secretary James Mattis also said that he believes that the president hasn’t handled the protests well and isn’t trying to unify a divided country. Trump reportedly ordered law enforcement to disperse protesters outside the White House with pepper balls and tear gas so that he could pose in front of a nearby church.
Former Chief of Staff John Kelly later echoed these statements saying that partisanship had reached an extreme under the Trump administration. Powell said that he, too, agrees with these sentiments.
Former President George W. Bush reportedly also refuses to support Trump’s bid for re-election. Both he and Mitt Romney, a Republican senator from Utah who ran for president, aren’t expected to cast a vote for the current president in November.
Powell has said that he voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and that he is proud of those who have spoken out against Trump in recent days.