Colin Powell's emailed comments calling Donald Trump an "international pariah" came as no surprise, as he is a member of the establishment Trump is challenging, Marc Thiessen, a former speechwriter for ex-President George W. Bush, commented Wednesday.
"What is fascinating is he hasn't said anything publicly," Thiessen, now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington D.C. think tank, told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" co-host Martha MacCallum about Powell's emails, which BuzzFeed reports were leaked by the website DCLeaks.com.
Powell hasn't endorsed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, and he believes "Donald Trump will be terrible president. He also thinks Hillary Clinton will be a terrible president, [because] she is dishonest about the emails and she keeps having these character mistakes," said Thiessen.
At the same time, Powell endorsed President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, at a time when he was running against moderate Republican challengers John McCain and Mitt Romney "who he clearly didn't think were international pariahs or would be terrible presidents," said Thiessen.
"He publicly endorsed them," Thiessen continued. "He has withheld endorsement of Hillary Clinton. His silence speaks volumes about her."
The fact that hackers were able to get hold of Powell's emails shows the dangers about Clinton's issues with online security, said Thiessen, and the fact that emails are vulnerable.
"This is the thing Colin Powell seems upset about in the emails, he says he did not use his emails for classified information," said Thiessen. "In one of the emails he says, 'I used secure state.gov server for classified information.' She put classified information on the private emails.
"It is one thing to hack Colin Powell's emails saying bad things about Donald Trump. Quite another thing to hack Hillary Clinton emails where she is talking about top secret national security information. In this era where everybody's emails are vulnerable, incredibly dangerous for her to put that stuff on the interweb, as they say."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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