Retired Navy admiral behind bin Laden raid says he voted for Biden

William McRaven, the retired Navy admiral who oversaw the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

McRaven, who served as commander of U.S. Special Operations Command from 2011 to 2014, wrote that he has already voted for Biden in Texas, where early voting began last week.

McRaven describes himself in the op-ed as “pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, small-government, strong-defense and a national-anthem-standing conservative.”

However, he wrote, “I also believe that black lives matter, that the Dreamers deserve a path to citizenship, that diversity and inclusion are essential to our national success, that education is the great equalizer, that climate change is real and that the First Amendment is the cornerstone of our democracy.”

“We need a president who understands the importance of American leadership, at home and abroad. We need a leader of integrity whose decency and sense of respect reflects the values we expect from our president. We need a president for all Americans, not just half of America,” McRaven wrote.

The retired admiral has been critical of President Trump in the past. In 2018, he wrote that Trump has “embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage and, worst of all, divided us as a nation.”

Trump, when when asked about the comments during an interview, dismissed McRaven as a “Hillary Clinton fan” and questioned why bin Laden had not been killed earlier.

In response, McRaven said “I did not back Hillary Clinton or anyone else.”

In October 2019, McRaven published a New York Times op-ed saying the American republic was “under attack” from the president. And this February, he condemned Trump for dismissing acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire for briefing congressional leaders about foreign election interference.