Even at the best of times, I strongly recommend that liberals include conservatives in their feeds, and vice versa.
Now, in these Trumpian worst of times, I recommend it even more strongly.
Not just because it’s the right thing to do, if you want to help preserve civil society.
But because it will restore your faith in human nature.
To help with that, I’ve started a list of scourging denunciations of Donald Trump — by leading conservatives.
These are not outliers, cranks, or turncoats. These are influential voices of the right. I can’t think of another time in history that members of a winning candidate’s own party have spoken this way about him.
Here you go. And you’re welcome.
Donald J. Trump has repeatedly revealed himself as a lying, crooked, narcissistic ignoramus, incapable of generous thoughts or deeds, indeed, incapable of seeing beyond himself at all. The idea of that man living in Lincoln’s house is nauseating.
— Eliot Cohen, Director of the Strategic Studies Program at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and former State Department counselor in the George W. Bush administration. www.the-american-interest.com/...
This candidacy, the magnitude of its disgrace to the country is almost impossible, I think, to articulate... Over the course of this last year, these candidates have repeatedly put their party before their country, ignoring what is so obviously clear to anybody who is watching his complete and total manifest unfitness for office.
— Steve Schmidt, political analyst and former manager of John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. www.redstate.com/...
The worst human being ever to enter the presidency, and I include all the slaveholders.
— David Frum, former speechwriter for President George W. Bush twitter.com/...
A fundamentally unworthy and radically unfit nominee... Republican leaders may think, or hope, that Trump is a sufferable evil. They will be cruelly disappointed in that judgment.
— Bill Kristol, Editor, The Weekly Standard www.weeklystandard.com/...
Trump is grossly unfit to be president, in both mind and character — especially the latter. Even if I agreed with him on the issues — even if I thought his worldview sound — I would balk at supporting him, owing to the issue of character.
— Jay Nordlinger, Editor, The National Review www.nationalreview.com/...
Donald Trump is a demagogue. Period. The right’s failure to see it is a disgrace.
— Bret Stephens, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Wall Street Journal www.wsj.com/...
Within 24 hours of his swearing-in, President Trump demonstrated that he intends to continue blatantly lying to the public, the press and the world. No higher standard of truth-telling than we saw from the campaign will prevail now that Trump is in the White House. To the contrary, he and his surrogates feel compelled to lie, even on small issues that are readily fact-checked.
— Jennifer Rubin, conservative Washington Post columnist www.washingtonpost.com/...
Perhaps it is imprudent to nominate a venomous charlatan.
— George Will, conservative Washington Post columnist www.washingtonpost.com/…
The single worst major party nominee in modern history — a man who has no political core, lies practically every time he speaks and is patently unstable — reached this point because every leader and institution in my party, the Republican Party, has failed again and again to grapple with the grim realities of Trump's impact on the election, the conservative movement and the character of our nation.
— Rick Wilson, Republican political consultant
www.nydailynews.com/...
Republicans will have to make amends for defining deviancy down to defend the indefensible Donald Trump.
— Erick Erickson, Publisher, Red State
www.nytimes.com/…
Republicans are stuck in these awkward standoffs that have come to embody everything that is uncomfortable and disorienting about this election: Our voters, in decisive numbers, picked a guy who embarrasses us.
— Nicolle Wallace, political analyst, senior adviser to the 2008 John McCain presidential campaign, and White House communications director for George W. Bush
www.nytimes.com/…
Trump might well be too ignorant to understand the danger he was courting, since he seems unable to understand anything that is not directly and immediately about himself. But the various hangers-on around Trump knew exactly what they were doing…
A President should inspire us and encourage us to be better than we are. Trump has degraded us, urged us to be as bestial as we wish, and to immerse ourselves in the kind of hatreds and prejudices that would make our lives in a community and as a nation utterly impossible.
— Tom Nichols, professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College, teacher at the Harvard Extension School, and writer at The Federalist
www.nydailynews.com/...
Mr. Trump was a cartoon version of every left-wing media stereotype of the reactionary, nativist, misogynist right... We destroyed our own immunity to fake news, while empowering the worst and most reckless voices...
This was not mere naïveté. It was also a moral failure.
— Charlie Sykes, commentator and conservative talk radio host
www.nytimes.com/...
Every person, each of us must decide what is a bridge too far... It is not acceptable to ask a moral, dignified man to cast his vote to help elect an immoral man who is absent decency or dignity.
— Glenn Beck, founder of The Blaze, former Fox News host
www.facebook.com/...
Added 1/29/2017:
He's the Eric Cartman of political candidates. He doesn't understand what's wrong is -- he doesn't understand that what he's done is wrong. He basically regrets that he was caught.
Ben Howe, Senior Contributing Editor for Red State, Republican campaign video producer
www.realclearpolitics.com/…
The refugee executive order is not a policy based in fact... The facts since 9/11 do not offer the hint of a suggestion that refugees who have already gone through a vetting process pose a terrorist threat, either here or (as yet) in Europe... his promulgation of a mass Muslim ban in late 2015 was one of the many reasons many of us were horrified by his candidacy and opposed him.
— John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary magazine
www.commentarymagazine.com/...
Added 1/30/2017:
There isn’t any new Trump, just as there was never a “new Nixon.” It’s the same old Trump that we saw all during the campaign and indeed during his previous 69 years on this Earth: offensive, divisive, prickly, bombastic, impetuous, conspiratorial, and resistant to any evidence that contradicts his idée fixe. And to the extent that anybody is calling the shots in this presidency besides the president himself… it’s [Steve] Bannon, the former publisher of Breitbart, a website that he has proudly described as a “platform” for the racist, anti-Semitic, and xenophobic “alt-right.”
— Max Boot, Senior National Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations
foreignpolicy.com/...
Added 10/5/2017:
I simply view President Trump as the Wizard of Oz. Loud and bombastic. A charlatan. Nothing behind the screen — other than the institutional chaos that defines his White House and the psychic chaos that governs his ever-changing mind. What to do? Ignore what’s behind the curtain. Deal with what comes out in front: the policy, the pronouncements, the actions...
What happens when the red phone rings at 3 in the morning?
I’d say: Let it ring. Let the wizard sleep. Forward the call to Defense Secretary Mattis.
— Charles Krauthammer, conservative Washington Post columnist and Fox News commentator
www.washingtonpost.com/…
The president’s primary problem as a leader is not that he is impetuous, brash or naive. It’s not that he is inexperienced, crude, an outsider. It is that he is weak and sniveling. It is that he undermines himself almost daily by ignoring traditional norms and forms of American masculinity.
He’s not strong and self-controlled, not cool and tough, not low-key and determined; he’s whiny, weepy and self-pitying. He throws himself, sobbing, on the body politic. He’s a drama queen. It was once said, sarcastically, of George H.W. Bush that he reminded everyone of her first husband. Trump must remind people of their first wife. Actually his wife, Melania, is tougher than he is with her stoicism and grace, her self-discipline and desire to show the world respect by presenting herself with dignity.
— Peggy Noonan, conservative Wall Street Journal columnist
http://www.peggynoonan.com/trump-is-woody-allen-without-the-humor
White identity politics as it plays out in the political arena is completely noxious. Donald Trump is the maestro here. He established his political identity through birtherism, he won the Republican nomination on the Muslim ban, he campaigned on the Mexican wall, he governed by being neutral on Charlottesville and pardoning the racialist Joe Arpaio.
Each individual Republican is now compelled to embrace this garbage or not.
— David Brooks, conservative columnist for the New York Times
www.nytimes.com/…
I am sure there are a lot of Donald Trump supporters who are not garbage human beings. I am sure there are quite a lot of them who just quite frankly don’t know about the abominable things he’s done since he started this campaign (including his mockery of a disabled reporter, his likening Ben Carson to a child molester, his multiple intentional lies about his own past positions, his open courting of white supremacists, or his lengthy history of supporting Democrats, including Hillary Clinton).
Some (many?) of his supporters just see a guy on TV who’s entertaining and talking about making America great again and stopping illegal immigration and that’s probably all they know. I have no beef with those people, except that I wish they’d pay closer attention to the news, but Americans by and large have always been terrible at that.
On the other hand, in terms of public leaders, the Trump train is being driven by just the worst, most garbage human beings on the planet, and that starts at the top with Trump himself.
— Leon Wolf, Managing Editor of The Blaze
www.redstate.com/…
Some of his sentiments [on Charlottesville] — including the contention that there were “fine people” protesting alongside the Nazis — would be outrageous enough if uttered by the proverbial blogger rather than a man standing in front of a lectern affixed with the presidential seal of the United States...
Charlottesville highlights how the problem with Trump is not the crudity of his expression. This, at times, can be part of his charm and makes him a distinctively powerful communicator. It’s the crudity of thought and feeling. These qualities can’t be dismissed in an office whose occupant is supposed to represent the nation…
He is slip-sliding toward a crisis of legitimacy. This is the significance of the dissolution of his business councils. It’s not unthinkable, should this trajectory continue, that a time could come when some Republican officeholders refuse to visit the White House. If they wouldn’t feel comfortable at the Breitbart editorial offices, why would they want to show up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?
— Rich Lowry, Editor of the National Review
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450579/donald-trump-charlottesville-response-diminished-him