Top Jeb Bush donor Mike Fernandez said Hillary Clinton’s intelligence, experience and humility balance out her shortcomings. | POLITICO Screen grab Top Jeb Bush donor says he's with Clinton

Donald Trump is unqualified for the presidency, Mike Fernandez, a top Jeb Bush and Rick Scott donor, said Thursday, announcing that he’ll be voting across party lines for Hillary Clinton in November.

Fernandez identified himself as “a firm believer in the fundamental tenets of the Republican Party” and as someone who takes his civic responsibilities seriously before slamming the GOP’s standard-bearer.


“Donald Trump is neither representative of our values nor qualified to lead the nation,” he wrote in an op-ed published Thursday in The Miami Herald.

Republicans can no longer “seek solace in wishful thinking or the illusion that this is just an election cycle and that by divine intervention all will be better after we vote” or “hide behind the excuse that party loyalty is paramount, and that a bad candidate of our own is always better than any candidate of theirs,” he cautioned, warning that Trump is capable of single-handedly leading America “off the precipice.”

“I have watched this election unfold, from that first press conference where the population of an entire country was cast as insulting to our core. This led to a neverending spiral of vulgarity, intellectual dishonesty, invective, abuse, misogyny, racism, intolerance, bullying, ignorance and downright cruelty,” he said. “The fact that the person unleashing these forces, reflecting beliefs and biases that we had long ago identified as at odds with the Founding Fathers’ principle of ordered liberty was a member of my party, was at first cause for irritation evolving into alarm and frustration and finally arriving at a sobering moment of embarrassment for my party, and beyond that, of profound concern for my beloved country.”

Fernandez ripped Trump for his antagonizing rhetoric, calling his claims of a rigged system should he lose to Clinton “insanity and dictatorial machinations at best” and characterizing Trump as an “abysmally unfit candidate who has unleashed “racist and violent acts.”

“I harbor no illusion that Hillary Clinton is perfect; none of us is,” he continued. “I do not see eye to eye on some issues with the former senator from New York. However, Clinton is, without a doubt, a superior choice to Donald Trump.”

Clinton’s intelligence, experience and humility balance out her shortcomings and will serve her well in the White House, Fernandez said, noting that he is “equally convinced that our republic will be placed in fundamental peril if we are foolish enough to elect” Trump.

“And so my fellow Republicans, swallow hard, look into your heart — and your gut,” he added. “Vote for Hillary Clinton and then every single Republican on the ticket.”

It's not the first time Fernandez, who donated more than $3 million to Jeb Bush's presidential campaign, has gone after Trump. Last December, he took out full-page ads in several regional newspapers calling Trump “a hater” and a “narcissistic BULLYionaire." A lawyer for the Trump Organization subsequently threatened to sue Fernandez for defamation.

Fernandez, who fled Cuba in the 1960s before making his fortune in the health-care industry, has been supportive of President Barack Obama's overtures to the Cuban regime. In 2012, he donated more than $1 million to a super PAC supporting Mitt Romney.