Henry Kissinger and George Shultz announced Friday that they will not be backing either major party candidate in the 2016 race, saying they’d prefer to focus on working across party lines to improve America’s standing in the world.
The decision by the former Republican secretaries of state is the latest public snub of GOP nominee Donald Trump, who has been spurned by several other prominent party elders.
“We are not making any endorsement in the current presidential election,” they wrote in a joint statement. “We are dedicated to fostering a bipartisan foreign policy and we will devote ourselves to this effort now and after the election.”
Politico first reported earlier Friday about the prospect of the two former diplomats backing Clinton.
Kissinger, a former national security adviser and later secretary of state to Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, and Shultz, who served President Ronald Reagan, join other notable Republicans who have so far refused to fall behind their party’s standard-bearer.
Neither of the two Presidents Bush, as well as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, have endorsed Trump. The party’s 2012 nominee, Mitt Romney, has said he’s considering voting Libertarian, and Brent Scowcroft and Richard Armitage, both of whom held high posts in Republican administrations, have said they’ll vote for Clinton.
This isn’t the first time Kissinger’s name has surfaced on the 2016 campaign trail. In February, Clinton’s primary challenger, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, declared that he was “proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend,” referring to past Clinton statements that she sought Kissinger’s advice as secretary of state.