The New York Times editorial board has officially called on both leading presidential candidates to stand down, one because he is aging, the other because he is dangerous to American democracy.
Donald Trump — former president, convicted felon and presumptive Republican nominee — was deemed unfit to lead in a damning editorial released by the Times Thursday morning.
"HE IS DANGEROUS," the Times declares in all caps. "IN WORD, DEED AND ACTION."
The opinion from the Times' opinion journalists comes weeks after the newspaper published multiple calls on Biden to stand down — one from Hollywood actor George Clooney — after his lackluster debate performance on June 27.
On Thursday, the Times warned that Trump "loathes the laws we live by," just days before he is expected to become the Republican nominee.
"A once great political party now serves the interests of one man, a man as demonstrably unsuited for the office of president as any to run in the long history of the Republic, a man whose values, temperament, ideas and language are directly opposed to so much of what has made this country great," the Times editors write. "It is a chilling choice against this national moment."
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The editors went on to compare Trump to "great" Republicans such as Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney, and found him sorely lacking.
"The Republican Party once pursued electoral power in service to solutions," the Times writes. "Its vision of the United States ... was rooted in the values of freedom, sacrifice, individual responsibility and the common good."
Those are not values the Times believes Trump holds, and the editors argue this makes him a danger to his party and his nation.
"Instead of a cogent vision for the country’s future, Mr. Trump is animated by a thirst for political power: to use the levers of government to advance his interests, satisfy his impulses and exact retribution against those who he thinks have wronged him," the Times writes. "He is, quite simply, unfit to lead."
The New York Times editorial did not back away from its calls for Biden to stand down, stating that Democrats "are rightly engaged in their own debate about whether President Biden is the right person to carry the party’s nomination into the election, given widespread concerns among voters about his age-related fitness."
But it notes the debate is made more urgent by the character of the candidate that Biden's party is desperate to defeat.
"This debate is so intense because of legitimate concerns that Mr. Trump may present a danger to the country, its strength, security and national character — and that a compelling Democratic alternative is the only thing that would prevent his return to power," the editorial states.
"It is a national tragedy that the Republicans have failed to have a similar debate about the manifest moral and temperamental unfitness of their standard-bearer, instead setting aside their longstanding values, closing ranks and choosing to overlook what those who worked most closely with the former president have described as his systematic dishonesty, corruption, cruelty and incompetence."
