Colin Powell referred to Donald Trump as a “national disgrace and an international pariah” in a series of leaked emails.
“He appeals to the worst angels of the GOP nature and poor white folks,” the former Secretary of State and retired four star general wrote in another email from June, per BuzzFeed.
Powell didn’t stop there, either, calling Trump’s attempts to get President Obama to release his birth certificate to prove he was born in the United States “racist.”
“When Trump couldn’t keep that up he said he also wanted to see if the certificate noted that he was a Muslim,” Powell said in an August email.
He also took issue with Trump’s attempts to win over black voters and for retaining former Fox News head Roger Ailes–who stepped down amid a sexual harassment scandal–as a campaign adviser.
“For [Trump] to say yesterday that within four years he would have 95% of blacks voting for him is schizo fantasy,” Powell wrote. “And Ailes as an adviser won’t heal with women.” Indeed, Trump has lagged far behind Hillary Clinton in the favorability ratings among both African American voters and women by a wide margin.
But Powell also took swipes at Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. “Everything HRC touches she kind of screws up with hubris,” Powell wrote in 2015, per The Intercept.
Powell also claimed in the emails that he told the Clinton camp not to try and pin her email troubles on him after he told her about his own use of a personal email account during his time at the State Department, which they did.
“I warned her staff three times over the past two years not to try to connect it to me,” he wrote. “I am not sure HRC even knew or understood what was going on in the basement.”
Powell’s aide Peggy Cifrino told CNN, “The emails are accurate. No further comment at this time.”