Having for the Sunday paper provided an editorial explaining its strong endorsement of Hillary Clinton for President, for the Monday edition The New York Times now offers us an editorial titled Why Donald Trump Should Not Be President. The title of this post is from the subtitle of that editorial.
After an introduction that starts with Trump at his early worst — remember Mexican rapists? — the paper comes down to a simple proposition:
Here’s how Mr. Trump is selling himself and why he can’t be believed.
It then goes through a series of questions, for each providing a detailed answer that demolishes that talking point.
I am going to provide the complete first example:
A financial wizard who can bring executive magic to government?
Despite his towering properties, Mr. Trump has a record rife with bankruptcies and sketchy ventures like Trump University, which authorities are investigating after numerous complaints of fraud. His name has been chiseled off his failed casinos in Atlantic City.
Mr. Trump’s brazen refusal to disclose his tax returns — as Mrs. Clinton and other nominees for decades have done — should sharpen voter wariness of his business and charitable operations. Disclosure would undoubtedly raise numerous red flags; the public record already indicates that in at least some years he made full use of available loopholes and paid no taxes.
Mr. Trump has been opaque about his questionable global investments in Russia and elsewhere, which could present conflicts of interest as president, particularly if his business interests are left in the hands of his children, as he intends. Investigations have found self-dealing. He notably tapped $258,000 in donors’ money from his charitable foundation to settle lawsuits involving his for-profit businesses, according to The Washington Post.
Here are the other questions, similarly well answered:
A straight talker who tells it like it is?
An expert negotiator who can fix government and overpower other world leaders?
A change agent for the nation and the world?
After these four questions, the paper continues with lots of additional problems with the candidacy of the Republican nominee, including all the policy changes he has put forth, from resuming waterboarding to giving Japan nuclear weapons, and more. At the end of that paragraph we read this sentence:
He has so coarsened our politics that he remains a contender for the presidency despite musing about his opponent as a gunshot target.
The editorial board also puts forth a number of issues on which Trump how somehow remained silent to this point. After listing all of these, with the serious questions that are thereby raised, this paragraph concludes with these words:
In all these areas, Mrs. Clinton has offered constructive proposals. He has offered bluster, or nothing. The most specific domestic policy he has put forward, on tax breaks for child care, would tilt toward the wealthy.
All that is left is the concluding paragraph, which is a caution to those voters considering voting for Mr. Trump,
Voters attracted by the force of the Trump personality should pause and take note of the precise qualities he exudes as an audaciously different politician: bluster, savage mockery of those who challenge him, degrading comments about women, mendacity, crude generalizations about nations and religions. Our presidents are role models for generations of our children. Is this the example we want for them?
Note in particular the synonym for lying that is a part of that paragraph: mendacity
Now wouldn’t it be nice if Lester Holt simply read that paragraph to Mr. Trump tomorrow and asked him to respond???
This is a brutal editorial, from the nation’s newspaper of record.
One can only hope that it has some impact upon the punditry and the rest of the campaign.
h/t is in order for the image I used — it was created by HalBrown for his diary What we know about Trump the liar vs. what we don’t. which went up shortly before mine did, which is why his image was near the top of the common pool.