Richard Armitage is one of the most prominent Republican foreign policy experts to not back Donald Trump. | Getty Exclusive: Armitage to back Clinton over Trump Former Reagan and Bush appointee is highest-ranking Republican to break ranks for Hillary.

Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state under George W. Bush, says he will vote for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, in one of the most dramatic signs yet that Republican national security elites are rejecting their party’s presumptive nominee.

Armitage, a retired Navy officer who also served as an assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan, is thought by Clinton aides to be the highest-ranking former GOP national security official to openly support Clinton over Trump.


“If Donald Trump is the nominee, I would vote for Hillary Clinton,” Armitage told POLITICO in a brief interview. “He doesn't appear to be a Republican, he doesn't appear to want to learn about issues. So, I’m going to vote for Mrs. Clinton.”

Dozens of Republican foreign policy elites have already declared their unwillingness to support or work for Trump, though far fewer say they would cast a ballot for Clinton. The latter group includes Max Boot, a prominent neoconservative military analyst and historian; Mark Salter, former longtime chief of staff to Republican Sen. John McCain; and retired Army Col. Peter Mansour, a former top aide to retired Gen. David Petraeus.

More national security heavyweights with conservative credentials could emerge in opposition to Trump in the coming months, though. Several retired generals, some with strong Republican connections, are privately alarmed over Trump’s candidacy and are debating whether to say so publicly. One retired general who served in a senior command role during the Obama years said former generals and officers are wary of the political fray, but that he expects a group of them “probably will try to energize something.”

One former senior commander, the retired four-star Marine Gen. James T. Mattis, even recently considered joining the 2016 presidential race as an independent candidate, at the behest of a group of anti-Trump Republicans that includes Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, who discussed the idea with Mattis over dinner in Washington in late April. Kristol says the general gave the idea serious consideration. Mattis has never declared a party affiliation but is widely believed to lean Republican.

Armitage declined to say whether he has ever voted for a Democrat in a presidential election. In 2008, he advised the campaign of Republican John McCain. In 2012, he gave at least one interview critical of GOP nominee Mitt Romney, though he did not say how he planned to vote.

Armitage gained national prominence in 2006 when he admitted to revealing the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame to the columnist Robert Novak after her husband, Joe Wilson, publicly challenged Bush administration claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He has called the act “foolish” and unintentional, and was never charged in the ensuing federal investigation.

Armitage told POLITICO Thursday that he didn’t know whether more Republicans might soon back Clinton. But he added that many of his conservative friends with national security backgrounds “are confused” by the choice before them and unsure about what to do.

“They’re in kind of a fog,” he said.