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Conservative columnist George Will says he's leaving GOP over Trump
| CNN | - |
Washington
(CNN) Conservative commentator and columnist George Will says he is
leaving the Republican Party because of Donald Trump -- and he's
advocating that others do the same.
Conservative columnist George Will says he's leaving GOP over Trump
Story highlights
- In a speech at a Federalist Society luncheon, he told the audience, "This is not my party"
- Will has been a harsh critic of Trump in the past
Washington (CNN)Conservative
commentator and columnist George Will says he is leaving the Republican
Party because of Donald Trump -- and he's advocating that others do the
same.
In a speech at a Federalist Society luncheon Friday, he told the audience, "This is not my party," according to PJ Media, a conservative news website.
The
Pulitzer Prize winner confirmed to PJM in an interview after his speech
that he had left the party and was now "an unaffiliated voter in the
state of Maryland" before switching the subject.
PJM
reported that Will cited House Speaker Paul Ryan's endorsement of Trump
is one of the reasons why he decided to leave the party. Will didn't
say whether he'd vote for either Democratic presumptive nominee Hillary
Clinton or a third-party candidate, such as Libertarian Gary Johnson.
Will,
who worked on President Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign, also said at the
luncheon that Trump as president with "no opposition" from a
Republican-led Congress would be worse than Clinton as president with a
Republican-led Congress.
When asked by PJ Media
about his message to conservatives regarding Trump, Will responded,
"Make sure he loses. Grit their teeth for four years and win the White
House."
CNN efforts to reach Will were not immediately successful Saturday.
Will
has long been a harsh critic of Trump. Just earlier this month, he told
Fox News that Trump is a "real amateur in politics."
"He
seems to confuse the enthusiasm of the crowds in front of him at the
moment in the high school auditorium with the larger electorate," he said. "Whereas, in fact, crowds are definitionally not a representative selection of the American people."
And
this is not the first time the conservative has broken with Republican
Party orthodoxy. In 2009, he wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post calling on the United States to get out of Afghanistan, which received criticism from his party.
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