In an editorial for CNN, Republican strategist Ana Navarro wrote that she voted for Hillary Clinton “to make sure a bad person is not our next president.”
“I had hoped that a week before the election, Trump would be losing Florida by a large enough margin that my vote wouldn’t matter,” Navarro wrote, adding that she originally planned to write-in a vote for her mother as a protest against both major-party nominees.
“Then I cast my vote for Hillary Clinton,” she continued. “Let me rephrase that. I cast my vote against Donald Trump.”
The CNN commentator cited Trump’s comments against immigrants and Hispanic voters. She also cited Trump’s smear campaign against U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel. The Republican nominee attacked Curiel, the federal judge handling two high-profile cases against Trump University, as a “Mexican” and a “hater” who was “hostile” to him because of his proposed border wall.
“Attacking another American’s qualifications solely based on his ethnic background is bigotry,” Navarro wrote. “Plain and simple.”
Navarro condemned Trump’s attacks on Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), citing reports that Trump received several deferments from the Vietnam War draft for bone spurs in his feet. She also cited his imitation of New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, who is disabled, comparing it to mockery of her own disabled brother.
“My entire life, I have been pained and angered seeing young kids stare at him and mimic his disability,” Navarro wrote. “Trump did so in front of thousands of people at one of his rallies. In front of millions of people watching on TV. Most of us would punish our children for exhibiting such behavior.”
Navarro touched on Trump’s comments in a leaked 2005 recording in which he bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy” and getting away with it because of his fame, slamming his excuse that it was “locker room talk.”
“Trump was not a teen-age athlete when he said those words. He was a 59-year-old businessman,” she wrote. “Sexual assault is no laughing matter. It is a crime.”
While she criticized Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state, the “blurry lines and for-profit overlap between Clinton’s philanthropic, business and political worlds,” and her “bad judgment,” Navarro concluded that Clinton is “the lesser of two evils.”
“The personal decision for me boiled down to choosing between a person who I consider to have very bad character and a person who has exercised bad judgment,” Navarro wrote. “I worry that Trump brings out the worst in America.”
Navarro became a prominent figure in the 2016 presidential election for her enthusiastic rebuttals of Trump’s positions and comments. In June, she called his comments about Curiel “disgusting,” and said that Trump had a “hell of a wake-up call coming” on Election Day if he continued to alienate Hispanic voters.
She also faced off with Trump surrogate Scottie Nell Hughes during a panel interview on CNN in October, which went viral after Hughes objected to Navarro’s language in the wake of the leak of the “Access Hollywood” tape.
“I think that every single Republican is going to have to answer the question, what did you do the day you saw the tape of this man boasting about grabbing a woman’s pussy?” Navarro said.
“Would you please stop saying that word? My daughter is listening,” Hughes interjected.
“You know what, Scottie?” Navarro retorted. “Don’t tell me you’re offended when I say pussy, but you’re not offended when Donald Trump says it. I’m not running for president. He is.”
Watch that exchange below:
