Democrats have a dangerous tendency to underestimate Donald Trump, warned Wesley Clark, a retired senior US general and former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.
“I don’t think anybody who works for Trump has ever recommended him,” Clark said. “Not John Bolton, not John Kelly, the retired marines general who was [White House] chief of staff … not [retired marines general] Jim Mattis, who resigned as secretary of defense under Trump. I don’t think people who work for him have any respect for his ability.
“But here’s the thing about Trump. He works really hard. He’s very clever. He is charismatic. He can be very charming. And so Democrats and people who are on the outside have a tendency to underestimate him, because he has misspellings in his tweets and he’s very emotional and he doesn’t know anything about policies.
“But he does touch a chord in the American public.”
Clark was speaking to the One Decision podcast, hosted by the journalist Julia Macfarlane and Sir Richard Dearlove, a former head of the British MI6 intelligence service.
A tumultuous presidential election now pits Trump against Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice-president, after Joe Biden, 81, heeded calls to step aside for a younger candidate.
Harris, 59, has enjoyed a surge of support, fundraising and positive polling.
Clark, 79, was Nato supreme allied commander, Europe, before retiring in 2000. He ran for the Democratic nomination in 2004, withdrawing after being outperformed in southern states, the basis of his planned challenge to George W Bush.
Speaking to One Decision, Clark said Trump, 78, retained his strong connection with the US public in part through playing on “a chord of grievance” about foreign wars.
Clark ran for president during wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Trump, he said, tapped into a distrust fed by those conflicts but which “goes back really to the aftermath of the war in Vietnam, which he didn’t fight in, by the way, which he escaped with a spurious bone spur [note] from a doctor”.
As a young soldier, Clark was severely wounded in Vietnam. Shot four times, he was awarded the Silver Star.
He continued: “But the point is, [Trump is] not to be underestimated as a politician. And I think a lot of the problems that President Biden had are traceable to Donald Trump, in foreign policy.”
Clark cited the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, after Trump reached an agreement with the Taliban, but left Biden to end a 20-year US military presence with a chaotic evacuation.
For presidents, Clark said, foreign policy “almost always” produces a “crisis within the first year”. Asked what challenges might await the next president, Clark identified “managing China”, maintaining Europe and Nato as partners in the face of Russian aggression and organising an alliance in opposition to Iran.
“Iran is going to be nuclear within a year, for sure,” he said, starkly. “They could be nuclear right now. Some of my friends tell me they’ve already got five or six nuclear weapons. They’re just waiting to test … and so this is going to be probably the first crisis that a President Kamala Harris has to face when she comes into office.”
For that to happen, Harris and her as yet unnamed running mate must defeat Trump and his vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, a 39-year-old former marine turned hard-right Ohio senator.
Clark was asked about Trump’s appeal to military veterans and voters, given proliferating reports of his remarks belittling service and sacrifice.
“I think Trump comes in with an advantage for the veterans vote simply because he’s masculine,” Clark said. “He … talks tough, and so a certain number of people will like that. [But] I can tell you support among the senior officer corps is maybe 5%, or maybe less, because people have seen him and worked for him up close.
“I have no respect for him whatsoever. He doesn’t care about the facts, doesn’t care about the concepts, doesn’t learn, doesn’t listen. [He’s] not somebody who can be trusted with national security secrets. He’s a security threat, etc, etc.
“But you also have a divergence in the ranks of veterans because you have a number of African Americans and minority members. I don’t think they’re going to be inclined to vote for Mr Trump. So, hard to say, but my guess is the veterans vote on the whole will be maybe 55 to 60% against Trump.”
Asked if he thought the US military was ready to accept Harris as a female commander-in-chief, Clark said simply: “Sure. There’s no problem there.”
