NEW YORK: In an open letter 50 Republican national security experts have warned that presidential nominee Donald Trump “would be the most reckless president” in US history.

The group, which includes the former CIA director Michael Hayden, said Trump “lacks the character, values and experience” to be president. Many of the signatories had declined to sign a similar note in March.

The open letter comes after a number of high-profile Republicans stepped forward to disown the property tycoon, The New York Times noted.

The letter says Mr Trump would weaken the United States’ moral authority and questions his knowledge of and belief in the Constitution. It says he has “demonstrated repeatedly that he has little understanding” of the nation’s “vital national interests, its complex diplomatic challenges, its indispensable alliances and the democratic values” on which American policy should be based.

And it laments that “Trump has shown no interest in educating himself.”

“None of us will vote for Donald Trump,” the letter states, though it notes later that many Americans “have doubts about Hillary Clinton, as do many of us.”

Late on Monday, Trump struck back the NYT said. The signatories of theletter, he said in a statement, were “the ones the American people should look to for answers on why the world is a mess, and we thank them for coming forward so everyone in the country knows who deserves the blame for making the world such a dangerous place.”

He dismissed them as “nothing more than the failed Washington elite looking to hold onto their power.”

Published in Dawn, August 10th, 2016