The employees who signed the letter have worked for the former US President George Bush the elder, former President George W Bush and the candidates John McCain and Mitt Romney.
Many of the over 200 former high-ranking and powerful advisors had chosen a low public profile in the ongoing election campaign, which is customary in the USA. But the content of the open letter became known to the newspaper USA Today on Monday, and the content spread quickly in the USA. The political firestorm has no equivalent in modern American history.
Completely Unacceptable
The Republicans do not mince words in their criticism of the party's presidential candidate. Trump is "simply unacceptable", and "will harm real people in everyday life".
Among the advisors are relatively well-known individuals in Washington, such as Reed Galen, who has worked for both George W Bush and McCain, and Olivia Troye, who also worked for Bush and was a security advisor to Trump's Vice President Mike Pence.
Groveling to Dictators
The former employees warn of "four more years of Trump's chaotic leadership", and state that "the broad democratic movements (in the USA) will be destroyed when Trump and his followers, including J D Vance, grovel to dictators like (Russia's President) Vladimir Putin".
The Trump campaign team dismissed the criticism as irrelevant. Trump's spokesperson Steven Cheung said that the letter is "comical since no one knows these people".
Trump, on the other hand, received support from the former Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard from Hawaii on Monday. Gabbard has left the Democrats in protest against the party's policy. Earlier, presidential candidate and former Democrat Robert F jr Kennedy had chosen to support Trump.
