McMaster: Trump running again would be ‘terribly divisive’

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President Trump’s former national security adviser H.R. McMaster said Sunday that he would not support another run for office by Trump following his 2020 election defeat and the riot at the U.S. Capitol, which left five people dead.

In an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union,” the former Trump administration official refused to take a position on whether the Senate should convict the president of inciting an insurrection against Congress, but said that the House’s vote to impeach Trump a second time was evidence that “nobody is above the law.”

Asked by host Jake Tapper if he would support another run for office by Trump, McMaster countered that he doesn’t “support anybody” but stated that he thought it would negatively affect the country if Trump ran for office again.

“No, I think it would be terribly divisive,” McMaster said.

McMaster is the latest former senior Trump administration official to come out against the president following his supporters’ storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. A number of top administration officials have resigned in the wake of the attack, including Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.

In a resignation letter sent last week, Azar wrote that despite the administration’s work so far, the attack on the Capitol threatened to “tarnish these and other historic legacies of this Administration.”

Downtown Washington, D.C. has seen military checkpoints and a major ramp-up of security in recent days as officials prepare for more possible violence on Wednesday, the day President Trump is expected to leave the White House and President-elect Biden is inaugurated.

Tags Donald Trump Elaine Chao H.R. McMaster Impeachment Jake Tapper Joe Biden U.S. Capitol riot

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