Indefensible
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 12 August 2016
⏱️ 19 minutes
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Summary
Earlier this week, fifty Republican national-security experts released an extraordinary public letter condemning their party’s Presidential nominee, Donald Trump. “From a foreign policy perspective,” they wrote, “Donald Trump is not qualified to be President and Commander-in-Chief.” Michael Chertoff, the former Homeland Security Secretary and one of the signers of the letter, joins The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos to discuss the split within the national-security community, his view of Hillary Clinton, and his warnings against the risks of a Trump Presidency.
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| 1:11.5 | This is the political scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and editors about |
| 1:15.9 | politics. It's Friday, August 12th. I'm Evan Osnos, a staff writer at The New Yorker, filling |
| 1:21.3 | in this week for Dorothy Wickenden. On Monday, 50 Republican national security experts, including former heads of the CIA and the Department of Homeland Security, signed an open letter calling Donald Trump unfit to be commander-in-chief, saying that their party's nominee would, quote, put at risk our country's national security and well-being. |
| 1:42.3 | I'm joined today by one of the people who signed that letter, |
| 1:45.1 | Michael Chertoff, who was Secretary of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush, |
| 1:49.6 | and in the months after September 11th, as a senior Justice Department official, |
| 1:52.9 | was one of the architects of the USA Patriot Act. Secretary Chertoff joins me to discuss this |
| 1:58.0 | very unusual split between the national security community and the |
| 2:01.2 | Republican nominee and what it may mean for the country and for the presidential race. |
| 2:06.2 | Secretary Chertoff, welcome. There are a lot of prominent names on this list, many of whom |
| 2:10.3 | served with you under President Bush, including Tom Ridge, your predecessor at Homeland Security, |
| 2:15.8 | Michael Hayden, former head of both the CIA and the |
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