Meg Whitman blasts Trump as a 'dishonest demagogue'

HPE chief crosses political battle line to support Hilary Clinton's presidential campaign

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) CEO Meg Whitman has abandoned her Republican roots to campaign against Donald Trump in the US presidential election.

Speaking to the New York Times, Whitman, who ran for governor of California as a Republican in 2010, declared her backing for Hilary Clinton and branded Trump a "dishonest demagogue".

"To vote Republican out of party loyalty alone would be to endorse a candidacy that I believe has exploited anger, grievance, xenophobia and racial division," Whitman said. "Donald Trump's demagoguery has undermined the fabric of our national character."

Whitman added that she would be encouraging "Republican friends" to help support Clinton and that she herself would be donating to Clinton's campaign.

She also stood by comments she made earlier this year which likened Trump to Hitler and Mussolini.

Whitman is the latest in a string of Silicon Valley bosses to speak out against Trump after over 100 industry leaders pledged support to Clinton in an open letter last month.

The letter, which claimed that Trump would be a "disaster for innovation", was signed by the likes of Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.

In other HPE-related news this week, HPE executive vice president Antonio Neri announced changes to top-level management across the cloud, storage and global sales division

Cloud boss Bill Hilf and storage head Manish Goel have both quit the vendor, while head of global sales Robert Vrij will leave at the end of the year.