For the first time in its 128-year history, the Harvard Republican Club said it will not endorse the party’s nominee, calling Donald Trump’s views “absurdly cruel” in a Medium post published Thursday.
In the post, the group slammed Trump for many of his high-profile gaffes, including mocking a New York Times reporter with disabilities and Trump’s more recent war of words with the parents of a fallen Muslim-American soldier.
“The rhetoric he espouses –from racist slander to misogynistic taunts– is not consistent with our conservative principles, and his repeated mocking of the disabled and belittling of the sacrifices made by prisoners of war, Gold Star families, and Purple Heart recipients is not only bad politics, but absurdly cruel,” the post read.
The group also criticized Trump’s “vicious” temperament, a common critique of the GOP nominee.
“In response to any slight –perceived or real– Donald Trump lashes out viciously and irresponsibly,” the post read. “In Trump’s eyes, disagreement with his actions or his policies warrants incessant name calling and derision: stupid, lying, fat, ugly, weak, failing, idiot –and that’s just his ‘fellow’ Republicans.”
The Harvard Republican Club went on to give possibly the sickest burn it could deliver to a fellow Republican: that former President Ronald Reagan himself would be ashamed of the party’s nominee.
“(Reagan) called on us to maintain decency in our hearts by loving our neighbor,” the post read. “He would be ashamed of Donald Trump. We are too.”
The group did not endorse a third-party candidate or Hillary Clinton instead, but said it encourages fellow Republicans and party leaders to denounce Trump and revoke support for him.
“He isn’t eschewing political correctness,” the group wrote. “He is eschewing basic human decency.”
