Story highlights "I believe Hillary Clinton has the wisdom and experience to lead our country at this critical time," Scowcroft said 
 
 Despite his long history as a Republican adviser, Scowcroft has shaped Democratic views as well 
 
 (CNN) Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, received an endorsement Wednesday from a heavyweight foreign policy adviser to Republican presidents. 
 
 Brent Scowcroft, who served as National Security Adviser to Presidents George H. W. Bush and Gerald Ford, and who worked in the White House of Presidents Richard Nixon and George W. Bush, said Clinton "brings truly unique experience and perspective to the White House." 
 
 His endorsement was released hours after the Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump launched a broad attack on Clinton's experience, honesty and foreign policy experience in a 40-minute speech. Scowcroft directly rebutted Trump's claim that Clinton does not have the temperament to lead, citing her experience working on high-pressure issues such as Iran and Israel. 
 
 "She brings deep expertise in international affairs and a sophisticated understanding of the world, which I believe are essential for the commander-in-chief," Scowcroft said. 
 
 His backing follows that of another prominent Republican in national security circles. Richard Armitage, who served in the State and Defense Departments under George W. Bush and President Ronald Reagan, announced last week that he will vote for Clinton over Trump. 
 
 Read More ||||| One was the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; the other, new to Washington, was a Democrat who had spent his political career in the Illinois state Senate and had no experience in arms control or foreign policy. 
 
 Despite their differences, Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar served as mentor and friend to then Sen. Barack Obama, inviting him along on a trip to Russia and Eastern Europe to inspect nuclear sites only a few months after the younger lawmaker was sworn in. 
 
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 “I very much feel like the novice and pupil,” Obama said of their relationship in 2005. 
 
 Now, Obama has again turned to Lugar for help on the nuclear weapons issue, enlisting the Senate’s senior Republican to drum up GOP support for passage of the so-called New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia. But Lugar’s advocacy for this relatively obscure item on Obama’s agenda may not only prove ineffective in bringing around Republicans, but open him up to a primary challenge from the right in two years, putting his long political career at risk for the first time. 
 
 Lugar has unapologetically backed Obama in support of START — a position that has put him at odds with Minority Whip Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), who has emerged as the GOP’s leading skeptic of the treaty. But months of lobbying by Lugar and administration officials has produced little to nothing in the way of public support for ratification from any other Republican. In fact, not even two Republican Foreign Relations committee members who voted for it in September — Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), and Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) — have said they will support it when it comes to the Senate floor. 
 
 In an attempt to rally bipartisan support for the treaty, the White House has enlisted the kind of GOP foreign policy wise men that Lugar exemplifies — among them former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and James A. Baker. But they have had no success with members of their own party, and it has left them scratching their heads over the source of the GOP opposition. 
 
 “It’s not clear to me what it is,” said Brent Scowcroft, a former national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush who noted that this START treaty is not very different from previous ones negotiated and ratified under Republican presidents. “I’ve got to think that it’s the increasingly partisan nature and the desire for the president not to have a foreign policy victory.” 
 
 But as the clock runs down on the lame duck session of Congress, there has been a conspicuous amount of silence on the part of a handful of moderate GOP senators, including Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who once would have been more open to arguments from establishment figures such as Scowcroft and Lugar. Collins said in a statement that she will “reserve final judgment” until it comes to the Senate floor. 
 
 Led by Kyl and Corker, Republicans argue that New START focuses on nuclear disarmament but does not do enough to shore up the America's nuclear deterrent capabilities. They have asked for a greater commitment — above and beyond the roughly $85 billion over 10 years that the Obama administration has proposed — to rebuilding the country's nuclear facilities, which they argue have fallen into disarray since the Cold War. ||||| Lea en español 
 
 
 
 There is only one serious candidate on the presidential ballot in November. We recommend Hillary Clinton. 
 
 We don't come to this decision easily. This newspaper has not recommended a Democrat for the nation's highest office since before World War II — if you're counting, that's more than 75 years and nearly 20 elections. The party's over-reliance on government and regulation to remedy the country's ills is at odds with our belief in private-sector ingenuity and innovation. Our values are more about individual liberty, free markets and a strong national defense. 
 
 We've been critical of Clinton's handling of certain issues in the past. But unlike Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton has experience in actual governance, a record of service and a willingness to delve into real policy. 
 
 PART ONE Donald Trump is no Republican His name may be at the top of the GOP ticket, but Trump doesn’t reflect Republican ideals of the past; we are certain he shouldn’t reflect the GOP of the future. 
 
 Resume vs. resume, judgment vs. judgment, this election is no contest. 
 
 In Clinton's eight years in the U.S. Senate, she displayed reach and influence in foreign affairs. Though conservatives like to paint her as nakedly partisan, on Capitol Hill she gained respect from Republicans for working across the aisle: Two-thirds of her bills had GOP co-sponsors and included common ground with some of Congress' most conservative lawmakers. 
 
 As President Barack Obama's first secretary of state, she helped make tough calls on the Middle East and the complex struggle against radical Islamic terrorism. It's no accident that hundreds of Republican foreign policy hands back Clinton. She also has the support of dozens of top advisers from previous Republican administrations, including Henry Paulson, John Negroponte, Richard Armitage and Brent Scowcroft. Also on this list is Jim Glassman, the founding executive director of the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas. 
 
 
 
 Clinton has remained dogged by questions about her honesty, her willingness to shade the truth. Her use of a private email server while secretary of state is a clear example of poor judgment. She should take additional steps to divorce allegations of influence peddling from the Clinton Foundation. And she must be more forthright with the public by holding news conferences, as opposed to relying on a shield of carefully scripted appearances and speeches. 
 
 Those are real shortcomings. But they pale in comparison to the litany of evils some opponents accuse her of. Treason? Murder? Her being cleared of crimes by investigation after investigation has no effect on these political hyenas; they refuse to see anything but conspiracies and cover-ups. 
 
 We reject the politics of personal destruction. Clinton has made mistakes and displayed bad judgment, but her errors are plainly in a different universe than her opponent's. 
 
 Trump's values are hostile to conservatism. He plays on fear — exploiting base instincts of xenophobia, racism and misogyny — to bring out the worst in all of us, rather than the best. His serial shifts on fundamental issues reveal an astounding absence of preparedness. And his improvisational insults and midnight tweets exhibit a dangerous lack of judgment and impulse control. 
 
 After nearly four decades in the public spotlight, 25 of them on the national stage, Clinton is a known quantity. For all her warts, she is the candidate more likely to keep our nation safe, to protect American ideals and to work across the aisle to uphold the vital domestic institutions that rely on a competent, experienced president. 
 
 Hillary Clinton has spent years in the trenches doing the hard work needed to prepare herself to lead our nation. In this race, at this time, she deserves your vote. ||||| Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images Trump’s nuclear wake-up call ‘It’s a sobering moment,’ Bush’s chief of staff says about the classified nuclear briefing before a president’s swearing in. 
 
 By the time he is sworn in tomorrow, Donald Trump will have undergone a haunting rite of passage: the classified briefing given to every incoming president that explains how he can order a nuclear attack. 
 
 While neither U.S. nor Trump officials would confirm the exact time or location of Trump’s briefing, several past presidents have been briefed on the nuclear codes at the historic Blair House, on Pennsylvania Avenue near the White House, hours before their inauguration. 
 
 “It’s a sobering moment. It defines the ultimate obligation that you might have,” said Andrew Card, who served as chief of staff to George W. Bush and was with Bush just before and after his first nuclear briefing in January 2001. 
 
 It is also likely a sobering for millions of the Americans who heard a series of Trump rivals warn last year that the New York mogul must never gain access to America’s massive nuclear arsenal. 
 
 “How can you trust him with the nuclear codes?” Obama said at one October rally. “You can’t do it.” 
 
 But America will do it on Friday. From the moment Donald Trump is inaugurated, he will be trailed everywhere he goes by a military aide carrying a 45-pound black satchel colloquially known as the nuclear “football.” Inside will be the codes, war plans and communication tools needed to start a nuclear war. 
 
 “Every step needed to assure a peaceful transfer of power from one President to the next is taking place” — Sean Spicer, Trump spokesman 
 
 By then, national security officials will have instructed Trump on the chilling steps he would have to take to order a nuclear launch that could, in theory, kill hundreds of millions of people. 
 
 Little is known about the briefing itself, which an Obama White House spokesman declined to discuss. Trump spokesman Sean Spicer would say only that “every step needed to assure a peaceful transfer of power from one President to the next is taking place.” 
 
 But nuclear experts and former presidential aides offered some detail and historical context for what they call a harrowing glimpse at a nightmare scenario. 
 
 Confronting the reality of nuclear war has left past presidents deeply moved, even shaken. In his 1999 memoir, Bill Clinton’s former spokesman George Stephanopoulos described seeing Clinton emerge from his nuclear briefing, held at 7 a.m. on the morning of his inauguration. 
 
 “The man who would soon command the most powerful military force in the world emerged… silent and more somber than I’d ever seen him,” Stephanopoulos wrote. 
 
 Clinton wasn’t the only one moved. Stephanopoulos recalled that George H.W. Bush’s outgoing national security adviser, retired Gen. Brent Scowcroft, “slipped out of Blair House and into the street with tears reddening the rims of his eyes.” 
 
 Trump himself has spoken about the horror of nuclear weapons. “I’d be the last one to use the nuclear weapons, because that’s sort of like the end of the ballgame,” he said at a March 2016 MSNBC town hall. 
 
 But at the same event, Trump refused to rule out the use of nuclear arms, and cited the Islamic State as a possible target if “somebody hits us.” 
 
 Sources familiar with the shadowy world of the U.S. nuclear establishment said that Trump would customarily be briefed by the outgoing national security advisor, Susan Rice, along with the White House military aide responsible for the so-called nuclear football. Trump would likely be joined by his incoming national security advisor, Michael Flynn. 
 
 If the recent past is a guide, Trump’s briefing will occur at Blair House on Friday morning, where Trump plans to spend Thursday night. Like Clinton, Obama took his nuclear briefing on the morning of his 2009 inauguration, just before heading to an 8:30 a.m. church service. 
 
 The briefing itself does not involve grand nuclear strategy, nuclear experts and current and former U.S officials said. Presidents attend separate sessions in which military officials outline scenarios from all-out attack on Russia to war with China to limited strikes against rogue nations like North Korea. 
 
 Instead, Trump’s Friday briefing is meant to ensure that he understands how to quickly order a nuclear attack in the event of an emergency. 
 
 “The briefer is very, very military. It’s a military briefing,” Card said. “It’s not a briefing of the conscience. It’s by-the-book, it’s rote.” 
 
 “It’s kind of like how to use your remote control for the TV,” Card added. 
 
 The session guides a president in the use of the famous nuclear codes — which are not transmitted to missile silos, bombers and submarines but used, like a password, to verify the president’s identity when he sends a launch order to the Pentagon. 
 
 An October letter signed by 10 former nuclear launch officers warned that the pressures of nuclear command on a president “are staggering and require enormous composure, judgment, restraint and diplomatic skill.” 
 
 Timothy McBride, a former military aide in George H.W. Bush’s White House, said Scowcroft informed Clinton in their January 1993 briefing that he would be pulled aside in the U.S. Capitol building just after his swearing-in and presented with the nuclear codes. 
 
 Trump critics note with alarm that an American president does not need the approval of Congress, his cabinet or any other entity to order the use of nuclear weapons — although in theory, his defense secretary could refuse to transmit a launch order down the military chain of command. 
 
 A president’s largely unchecked power to order a nuclear attack was the subject of campaign ads in support of Hillary Clinton last fall. In one, Bruce Blair, a former nuclear missile launch officer turned disarmament advocate, declared: “The thought of Donald Trump with nuclear weapons scares me to death. It should scare everyone.” 
 
 Since the end of the Cold War, the prospect of a president being forced to respond within minutes to a massive Russian attack — the main reason for a system that allows a president to order an attack quickly and unilaterally — has been greatly reduced. 
 
 But the Cold War system endures, in part because Russia maintains about 1,800 active nuclear warheads capable of hitting the U.S. (The U.S. keeps active about 1,400 warheads.) 
 
 And in recent months, many experts have warned that the prospect of a nuclear conflict with an increasingly belligerent Russia has grown — although Trump says he wants warmer relations with Russia and said in an interview over the weekend that “nuclear weapons should be way down and reduced very substantially.” 
 
 It is unclear whether such talk will assuage critics who warned during the campaign that Trump could not be trusted with the presidency’s most awesome power. 
 
 An October letter signed by 10 former nuclear launch officers, including Blair, warned that the pressures of nuclear command on a president “are staggering and require enormous composure, judgment, restraint and diplomatic skill.” 
 
 “Donald Trump does not have these leadership qualities. On the contrary, he has shown himself time and again to be easily baited and quick to lash out, dismissive of expert consultation and ill-informed of even basic military and international affairs — including, most especially, nuclear weapons,” the letter said. 
 
 But some believe that first-hand experience with the theoretical means of destroying much of the world could have a profound effect on Trump. 
 
 “You cannot take over such an authority without getting a sense of such an unbelievable authority,” said Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists. “Not just to the nation, but to the planet.”
– When you hear the name "Brent Scowcroft," certain things may come to mind, including "retired lieutenant general" and "heavyweight foreign policy adviser" to several GOP presidents, CNN notes. He served as national security adviser to Presidents Ford and George HW Bush, as well as in White House roles during the Nixon, Reagan, and Dubya years. But we can now also add "Hillary Clinton supporter" to his résumé: Just hours after Donald Trump ripped into Clinton during a speech in New York (see the AP's fact-check of it here), the 91-year-old Scowcroft offered his endorsement of the presumptive Democratic nominee, underscoring the trepidation that the GOP establishment has for Trump as its main shot at the White House. "The presidency requires the judgment and knowledge to make tough calls under pressure," Scowcroft said in a statement, per the Los Angeles Times. "[Clinton] has the wisdom and experience to lead our country at this critical time." What makes his venture into Dem territory not a 100% surprise: Scowcroft fell somewhat out of favor with the George W. Bush administration when he publicly expressed reservations about the war in Iraq. And as CNN notes, Scowcroft has had an impact on Democratic foreign policy. Even President Obama recently lauded Scowcroft, saying of the man who helped him put together his own security team, "I love that guy," per the Atlantic.