The New York Times editorial board on Thursday called on Republicans to reject former President Trump, calling the presumptive GOP nominee “unfit” to serve as president ahead of the party's national convention next week.
“Mr. Trump has shown a character unworthy of the responsibilities of the presidency. He has demonstrated an utter lack of respect for the Constitution, the rule of law and the American people,” the Times wrote in the editorial.
“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 editorial continued. “He is, quite simply, unfit to lead.”
The scathing rebuke of Trump comes less than a week before the GOP officially nominates him to lead the party’s presidential ticket at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
It also comes as President Biden’s standing as the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee has come into question, with several members of Congress publicly calling for him to step aside, while others have raised concerns privately about Biden’s ability to defeat Trump in November.
The Times, which has also called on Biden to withdraw from the race, said Democrats “are rightly engaged” in discussions over the president’s standing atop the party ticket and sharply criticized the GOP for not doing the same.
“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,” the editorial board wrote.
The Times called the GOP a “once great political party” that “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 board outlined five “essential qualities” that it said a president should possess: moral fitness, principled leadership, character, a president’s words and the rule of law.
“We urge voters to see the dangers of a second Trump term clearly and to reject it. The stakes and significance of the presidency demand a person who has essential qualities and values to earn our trust, and on each one, Donald Trump fails,” the board wrote, referring to the five qualities.
The board urged the American people to reject Trump at the ballot.
“The Republican Party is making its choice next week; soon all Americans will be able to make their own choice. What would Mr. Trump do in a second term? He has told Americans who he is and shown them what kind of leader he would be,” they wrote.
“When someone fails so many foundational tests, you don’t give him the most important job in the world,” the editorial continued.
In response to the editorial, a Trump spokesperson attacked the Times as “a flailing and failing publication that is out-of-touch with what everyday Americans believe.”
“If they spent more time actually covering the disaster of the Biden presidency, they would understand how dangerous their false reporting is to democracy,” the spokesperson added.
