Colin Powell: Antics of the GOP candidates is ‘belittling’ our country’s highest office

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said in an interview on NPR that the GOP needs to quit the screaming and shouting, pouting and “childhood taunts.”

Powell, who has been critical of his fellow colleagues in the past, slammed the Republican presidential campaign for their “junior high school tricks on one another” and “belittling the county” during an interview with NPR’s Michel Martin on All Things Considered.

“We have to become more respectful of each other and listen to each other,” Powell said.“Even Jerry Springer thinks it’s gone too far, and when Jerry Springer thinks you’ve gone too far, my friends, you have gone too far.”

According to NPR, Powell insists he’ll remain a Republican despite his displeasure with the direction and rhetoric of the modern GOP, saying that there is “a level of intolerance in some parts of the party — and there was. And I think there still is.”

“In 2008, I spoke out against calling the president a Muslim as if that was a curse,” Powell said. “I don’t know anything in the Constitution that says Muslims are bad.”

Powell served as Secretary of State under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005 and went to the United Nations to present the administration’s evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. NPR said that Powell later referred to that time period as a “painful” memory.

Listen to the audio below, via NPR:

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