Earlier this year, just after the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill insurrection, former Secretary of State Colin Powell boldly told Today anchor Savannah Guthrie that Trump should resign from office.
"What [Trump} is responsible for is one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen in all my years as a government employee here in the United States of America and in Washington, D.C.,” declared Powell at the time.
A few days later, Powell announced in January that he no longer considered himself a Republican, faulting the GOP for its support and enabling of Donald Trump even after the insurrection.
The break with the party, which came 25 years after Powell had first publicly declared his Republican affiliation, was in some ways a shocking turn of events. In other ways, however, it was the logical conclusion of Powell’s public role in the years since he left political office, and the result of a growing gulf between moderate Republicans like Powell and the party that has drifted to the right during the 21st century. And such a bold public declaration matched the career of a man who had the boldness to blaze a series of trails and the integrity to step away when he felt that he had accomplished all that he could.
As Blavity previously reported, former Secretary of State Colin Powell has died of complications from COVID, leaving behind a long and groundbreaking military and political career. Powell, who was 84, achieved a number of milestones in his long career. He was the first Black person to hold a number of positions, including national security adviser for President Ronald Reagan and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for President George H. W. Bush.
Powell retired from the military after President Bill Clinton took office in 1993, only to return to public service in 2001 as secretary of state under George W. Bush, again becoming the first Black person to hold that office. In this role, Powell’s once-stellar reputation was stained by his public role in arguing for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, based on since-proven false information about weapons of mass destruction in the country. Powell retired after Bush’s first term, with Condoleezza Rice taking over the role of secretary of state.
Even though Powell left public office in 2005, he never fully left public life. His later years were characterized by a gradual separation from the Republican Party, which continued to shift to the right as Powell remained a political centrist. When he first retired as an architect of the extremely successful U.S. effort in the Persian Gulf War, Powell was one of the most popular public figures in America. It was thus a huge deal when Powell announced in 1995 that he was a Republican, but he declined the requests of many in the GOP to enter the presidential race that year against Bill Clinton.
Instead of becoming the first Black president as a Republican, Powell publicly split with the GOP to support the eventual first Black president, Barack Obama, in 2008. The announcement, which was a major boost to Obama’s campaign, was a surprise to the public, Obama and Republican candidate John McCain, an old friend of Powell’s. Powell again endorsed Obama in October 2012, as the president and challenger Mitt Romney stood virtually tied in pre-election polling. During Obama’s time in office, Powell was generally supportive of the president; for instance, he publicly backed the Obama administration’s 2015 agreement with Iran to halt the Islamic Republic’s nuclear weapons program, which Powell called “a pretty good deal."
Powell’s political leanings became a point of contention in 2016, when an email hack revealed that he was critical of both presidential candidates, Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton and Donald Trump. Concerning Clinton’s email scandal, Powell wrote that she “could have killed this two years ago by merely telling everyone honestly what she had done and not tie me into it.” Powell was seemingly angry that Clinton had claimed that he advised her to use a personal email account in her duties as secretary of state, a conversation that The New York Times details happened in 2009 during a function attended by several past holders of the top State Department job.
“Everything HRC touches she kind of screws up with hubris," he said.
Nonetheless, the same email leak had much harsher words for Trump. The Washington Post reports that Powell called the businessman “a national disgrace and an international pariah," as well as a "racist" for Trump’s promotion of the anti-Obama birther conspiracy theory. A few weeks prior to the 2016 election, Powell announced that he would be crossing the aisle to vote for Clinton, just as he had for Obama. Powell’s leaked emails revealed that this was a calculated move. “Trump is nuts. Everybody wants me to speak out,” Powell had written in one of the leaked messages, “but I will pick the time and place for maximum effect like I did in 2008 and 2012. Right now, Trump is his worst own enemy.”
Powell and Clinton appeared to repair their relationship, at least publicly. The two even appeared as themselves, alongside fellow former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, in a 2018 episode of the CBS drama Madam Secretary; the three real-life former State Department heads gave advice to their fictional colleague on the show as she deals with a tricky policy issue.
Secretary Powell went a step further in 2020, speaking at the Democratic National Convention in support of Joe Biden against Trump, all but severing Powell’s ties to the Republicans. But it was the January insurrection and the failure of Republicans to hold Trump accountable that ultimately proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back, driving Powell away from the party. For a man whose storied career ended after he became the public face for making a false case for war, Powell’s break with the Republican Party was strikingly based on a simple motivation.
In criticism of the Republicans who put power above principles by supporting Trump, Powell said, “We need people that will speak the truth.” Former President Obama summed up Powell’s remarkable career, imperfections and continued public role in a statement shared on Instagram today. “Although he’d be the first to acknowledge that he didn’t get every call right,” Obama remembered of Powell, “his actions reflected what he believed was best for America and the people he served.”
