Kori Schake has reservations about Hillary Clinton, but prefers her to Donald Trump. | Getty Bush White House adviser backs Clinton over Trump

Donald Trump is uniting at least two high-profile, politically divided sisters together this November — against him.

"For the first time ever @KoriSchake and I are casting our vote for the same candidate -- She is voting for @HillaryClinton," Kristina Schake, the deputy communications director for Clinton, tweeted Saturday, referring to her sister, Kori, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution who worked for the National Security Council and the State Department under President George W. Bush after a stint at the Pentagon in the 1990s.


That's not to say Kori Schake, whose sister Kristina spent three years as first lady Michelle Obama's communications director, is jumping in feet first for Clinton. A profile of the politically minded sisters in Vogue last December noted that their father, Wayne, is a Republican, while their mother, Cecelia is a "ferociously civically active Democrat," along with an older brother, Kurt, a Republican. In the same article, Kori Schake said of her choices: “I can think of at least seven Republican hopefuls I’d prefer to have running the country than Kristina’s candidate."

But, she told POLITICO in an interview Monday, "it is true, and I wish I had a better alternative," adding that Trump is "such a political arsonist" that she cannot support him, particularly for his comments regarding women and minorities, which she called "unconscionable."

Schake, who advised Arizona Sen. John McCain during his 2008 presidential run and backed Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, then John Kasich in this year's Republican primary, has been trashing Trump for months — she was among the signers of a March open letter by GOP foreign policy wonks that concluded, "we are unable to support a Party ticket with Mr. Trump at its head."

Though she has also been critical of President Barack Obama's foreign policy, Schake said that Clinton "will be slightly better" than the current president, remarking that in some respects, Clinton would be an "awful lot better than Obama."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates could not have, for example, carried his argument in favor of expanding troops in Afghanistan without Clinton's support at the State Department early in her tenure, Schake added.

Even so, Clinton is "not going to be a whole lot better" than the current president, Schake said, adding that she expects the former secretary of state to "make mistakes." As such, Schake said like-minded conservatives should focus on getting worthy candidates in public office elsewhere and set their sights on 2020.

While a vote for Clinton is difficult for a conservative such as herself to cast, she later said, "I don't think there's a doubt that she should be a better president than Donald Trump."

Schake is only the latest Republican foreign policy figure to come out in support of Clinton against Trump. Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser under President George H.W. Bush, announced last Wednesday that he is backing Clinton, while fellow foreign-policy realist Richard Armitage, George W. Bush's deputy secretary of state, told POLITICO earlier this month that he would vote for the former secretary of state over Trump.