Retired four-star Gen. Stanley McChrystal has endorsed Joe Biden for the White House, citing his time working with the former vice president under the Obama administration and saying the Democratic nominee is “someone that you can trust.”
McChrystal, speaking on MSNBC Thursday morning, said Biden “is humble enough to listen to experts, is humble enough to respect people who serve and have served.”
“I think that he would surround himself with an effective team of good people, I think he would set a tone in which he would bring out the best of people. Again, not everyone will agree with every policy, nobody ever will, and that’s healthy in a democracy. But we have to believe in our values, you have to believe that your commander in chief at the end of the day is someone that you can trust. And I can trust Joe Biden,” McChrystal added when asked if he thinks Biden would be a better commander in chief than President Trump.
McChrystal is best known for his role as the former commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan. He is currently a senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs.
The Biden campaign touted McChrystal as joining a group of nearly 500 top military and national security officials who have already thrown their support behind the Democratic nominee, referencing a bombshell story from The Atlantic last month regarding remarks Trump allegedly made about dead troops.
“Vice President Biden is honored by General McChrystal’s endorsement. And he couldn’t agree more that the next commander in chief must ‘respect people who serve and have served’ and be ‘someone that you can trust’ — which would be a decisive break from Donald Trump, the most dishonest president in American history and the only one to have utterly disgraced himself by calling veterans and the fallen ‘losers and ‘suckers,'” said Biden campaign spokesperson Andrew Bates.
McChrystal resigned from his post in 2010 after the publication of an article in Rolling Stone that quoted him and his aides mocking several government officials, including Biden, over the Obama administration’s handling of the war in Afghanistan. The four-star general apologized for his remarks at the time.
“I extend my sincerest apology for this profile. It was a mistake reflecting poor judgment and should never have happened. Throughout my career, I have lived by the principles of personal honor and professional integrity. What is reflected in this article falls far short of that standard. I have enormous respect and admiration for President Obama and his national security team, and for the civilian leaders and troops fighting this war and I remain committed to ensuring its successful outcome,” he had said in a statement.