- The Washington Times - Tuesday, August 18, 2020

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Joseph R. Biden “will be a president we will all be proud to salute” on the second night of the modified Democratic National Convention.

“Our country needs a commander-in-chief who takes care of our troops in the same way he would his own family,” Mr. Powell said in a videotaped segment. “For Joe Biden, that doesn’t need teaching - it comes from the experience he shares with millions of military families, sending his beloved son off to war and praying to God he would come home safe.”

“With Joe Biden in the White House, you will never doubt that he will stand with our friends and stand up to our adversaries - never the other way around,” he said. “He will trust our diplomats and our intelligence community - not the flattery of dictators and despots.”

“Today, we are a country divided, and we have a president doing everything in his power to make it that way and keep us that way,” Mr. Powell said.

Mr. Powell had said in June he will vote for Mr. Biden, prompting President Trump to call him a “real stiff.”

Mr. Powell, who was secretary of state in the George W. Bush administration and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the George H.W. Bush administration, had endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016 and former President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.

Cindy McCain, the wife of the late Sen. John McCain of Arizona, was also part of a video on Tuesday highlighting the unique friendship between her husband and Mr. Biden.

“Thank you for your example on how to remain the same good guy that you were when you first got here,” McCain, the 2008 GOP presidential nominee, said in the video.

McCain had been a persistent foe of Mr. Trump before the senator died of brain cancer in 2018.

Mr. Trump continued to criticize McCain after he died for voting against a GOP health care bill in 2017.

Democrats have been touting GOP voices who are supporting Mr. Biden on the first two nights of the convention.

On Monday, the convention featured testimonials from former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, former Hewlett-Packard executive Meg Whitman and former Rep. Susan Molinari of New York.

• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.

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