CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The Harvard Republican Club, the nation's oldest College Republicans chapter, will not endorse Donald Trump – the first time in its 128 years the club has not supported the GOP nominee.
In a statement posted Thursday afternoon, the board said Trump "holds views that are antithetical to our values not only as Republicans, but as Americans."
"The rhetoric he espouses – from racist slander to misogynistic taunts – is not consistent with our conservative principles, and his repeated mocking of the disabled and belittling of the sacrifices made by prisoners of war, Gold Star families, and Purple Heart recipients is not only bad politics, but absurdly cruel," the club wrote in a post on its Facebook page.
According to Harvard's newspaper, The Crimson, the club polled its members earlier in the week to find that 80 percent said they would not support Trump.
In no uncertain terms, the club called Trump a "threat to the survival of the Republic."
"His authoritarian tendencies and flirtations with fascism are unparalleled in the history of our democracy," the club wrote. "He hopes to divide us by race, by class, and by religion, instilling enough fear and anxiety to propel himself to the White House. He is looking to to pit neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend, American against American. We will not stand for this vitriolic rhetoric that is poisoning our country and our children."
The club says it will instead focus its efforts on "reclaiming the Republican Party from those who have done it considerable harm."
Read the full statement by the club in the Facebook post below:
